How do you find the meaning to life? Meet the Author.
What’s life about? Its architect knows.
—
1 It all started with what the Author said.
What he wrote reflects the Author.
2 The Author was present in what he wrote.
3 The whole story came out of his being.
Not a single thing came from elsewhere.
The righteousness of God, calling on the name of the Lord, salvation and judgement — we hear all these words on the messiah’s lips in Psalm 145.
New Testament theology begins in the Old, where God is revealed as the heavenly sovereign who faithfully loves his people and his earthly realm. So when the OT uses phrases that are crucial to Christian theology, they’re the seeds of what God was planting. The OT provides another dimension of insight into what those phrases mean for us.
Four of those phrases turn up on the lips of the messiah in Psalm 145. We’ve seen how the Davidic king announced the kingdom of God (145:1–8) and extended it beyond Israel to all people (145:9–16). Then he makes four statements about the character of God, statements that brilliantly illuminate the theology (words about God) in the Gospels and apostolic letters:
This Psalm is not quoted in the NT, but the messianic voice provides background for the hope these keywords hold as we read them in the NT.
Continue reading “David’s final Psalm: keywords for theology (145:17-21)”
How did Jesus respond as Pilate asked the ultimate question?
Pilate’s question goes to the heart of the gospel: Are you the king of the Jews?
From the very start, Matthew described Jesus as the anointed leader descended from King David (1:1). But Jesus has been less direct in claiming the regal title. Not until his crowning statement at the end do we hear the Christ claiming all authority in heaven and on earth (28:18).
Matthew treats this question as the focus of the investigation. The Jewish trial demands, Tell us if you are the anointed ruler (26:63). The gentile trial begins, Are you the king of the Jews? (27:11)
Jesus’ authority is the issue at stake. Seven times Matthew underscores Pilate’s official status as the governor (27:2, 11, 14, 15, 21, 27).
So how are we to understand the governor’s question and Jesus’ reply?
Matthew 27:11 (my translation, compare NIV)
Jesus was placed before the governor and the governor questioned him, “You are the king of the Jews?”
Jesus responded, “Your words.”
Continue reading “Are you the king of the Jews? (Matthew 27:11–14)”
Jesus’ trial before the Sanhedrin was all about whether he claimed to be king.
Why was Jesus called to stand trial before the Jerusalem Council?
It won’t do to say, “Well, Jesus claimed to be the second person of the trinity (Son of God), and the high priest thought that was blasphemous.” The notion of a triune God was not formulated until much later. The high priest was not investigating a Christian dogma when he said, I adjure you by the living God, tell us if you are the Christ, the Son of God. (26:63 ESV).
Peter had used those titles: Christ, Son of God (16:16). We saw that the Gospel writers treat the two phrases as meaning the same thing (epexegetical). The Christ is the anointed ruler who represents on earth the reign of the heavenly sovereign. In that sense, he is the son proclaimed by the eternal sovereign. That’s what son of God meant to the high priest. It was the language of kingship (Psalm 2:2, 7), the language of God’s promises to David (1 Chronicles 17:13).
But the kingship had failed. The final Psalm in Book III laments the disconnect between God’s amazing promises and their experience of the failed kingship:
Continue reading ““Tell us if you are the anointed ruler” (Matthew 26:57–68)”
What does the word ‘Christ’ mean? Joshua Jipp shows that the New Testament’s message is that Jesus is the Messiah, the God-appointed king for humanity. That’s good news.
Over 500 times the New Testament refers to Jesus as the Christ. That’s twice a chapter! It must be important.
What are we saying when we call Jesus the Christ? Is it just an alternative name? Or is it making a statement about who he is and the authority he carries? How is the Christ the centre of the whole narrative, the one who reconciles earth to heaven’s authority?
You’d think that after 2000 years we’d have something this basic sorted out, but not everyone understands the Christ as a proclamation that Jesus is the Messiah — the leader anointed by God so heaven’s reign is restored to earth.
Christology is the branch of theology devoted to studying the Christ. Understanding Christ as king is often just a minor point of Christology. That’s being challenged. For example, last year Joshua Jipp wrote The Messianic Theology of the New Testament (Eerdmans, 2020) to show this:
Podcast and mediation on John 10:1-18.
“I am the good shepherd,” Jesus said.
Did he dream up this image? Or was it a widely used metaphor?
Why good shepherd? Were there bad shepherds?
Who were the thieves and robbers, trying to climb in some other way?
What makes Jesus the gate of the sheep?
This podcast (36 minutes, from Riverview Joondalup, 10 October 2021) will transport you from the children’s picture-book image of a little lamb in Jesus’ arms to a more expansive image: humanity’s true shepherd, the gate of the sheep.
With a chapter never quoted in the NT, we see how Jesus fulfilled what God promised through the Prophets.
The hope Jesus proclaimed was deeply rooted in the promises of the prophets. Matthew keeps telling us that Jesus fulfilled the prophets, using phrases from Zechariah far more than we do today.
Many of us struggle to make sense of how the NT writers used the prophets. Read Zechariah in context, and it may not sound like predictions. For example, the blood of the covenant in Zechariah 9:11 seems to refer back to the Sinai covenant (Exodus 24:8), yet Jesus used the phrase for his Last Supper (Matthew 26:28).
Maybe our understanding of “context” is too narrow. You probably know to check a few verses either side of a quotation, so as not to take it out of context. In a limited sense, that’s true. But for Jesus and the New Testament writers, context was much broader — their place in the story of God.
When Jesus announced the good news of the kingdom, his context was the Jewish world that had not been a kingdom since the exile. Most of them lived in other countries, scattered like sheep without a shepherd. That’s how Zechariah had described them 500 years earlier (Zechariah 10:2; 13:7 etc), and it still described their context in Jesus’ day (Matthew 9:36; 10:6; 15:24).
Jesus fulfilled the prophets not merely by doing some particular thing they predicted. That happened, but it was far more: everything God promised to restore was finally fulfilled in his Anointed. That’s the scope of what Jesus fulfilled: All the promises of God find their Yes in him (2 Corinthians 1:20).
So, let’s take a chapter the NT writers never quoted. How is Zechariah 8 fulfilled in Christ?
Continue reading “How Jesus fulfils the prophets (Zechariah 8)”
Understanding the Bible is all about understanding the relationships. Jesus shows us how with his puzzle about the people in Psalm 110:1.
My wife loves relationships movies. She’s not looking for action scenes, spy plots, or superheros bringing everybody to heel. She loves stories that explore how people relate.
I think that’s how Jesus heard the Bible. Academics can focus on the form and structure of the text or making theology systematic, but for him it was all about relationships.
Matthew 22 gives example after example where his interpretation was relational:
Now, I know this isn’t how we usually read Scripture. Jesus’ approach sounded just as foreign to the Pharisees as it does to us. Can we learn the relational hermeneutic Jesus used? In this post, we’ll take the third example (based on Psalm 110) as our tutorial.
Notice the question Jesus asks:
Continue reading “David’s Lord (Matthew 22:41-46)”No, Jesus wasn’t promoting two kingdoms with divided loyalties.
Matthew already told us this was a trap. Pharisees and Herodians buttered Jesus up to ask this:
Matthew 22:17-22 (my translation, compare NIV)
17 “So, tell us what you think: should we pay tribute to Caesar or not?”
18 Aware of their evil intent, Jesus said, “Why are you testing me, you play actors? 19 Show me the tribute coin.” They offered him a denarius. 20 He says to them, “Whose image is this? And whose inscription?”
21 “Caesar’s” they replied.
Then he said to them, “Return Caesar what belongs to Caesar, and to God what belongs to God.”
22 His response astounded them. They took their leave and departed.
If you don’t understand what this question meant in his culture, you might misunderstand Jesus’ answer. We often separate life into two domains: the physical world includes the country where you pay taxes to your rulers, and the spiritual world includes the church where you pay tithes to God. This separation of the physical and spiritual worlds (church and state) has been so common in recent centuries that it has a name: the “two kingdoms” view.
That’s not the Bible’s framework. Earth is not divided into two domains, with God ruling part of life and humans ruling the other. God is sovereign over everything, and the problem with the world is humans resisting his commands, controlling each other through violence, taking power into our own hands (Genesis 1 – 11). God did not tell the Hebrews, “You’re to live in two kingdoms, serving Pharaoh and me.” He told Pharaoh, “Release my people so they may serve me.”
Continue reading “That taxing question (Matthew 22:17-22)”Look through the window of Jesus’ stories, and you see the world framed as God’s kingdom:
Matthew 21:33-44 (my translation, compare NIV)
33 “Listen, another parable. This person was a landholder. He established a vineyard, set up a protective hedge, dug a winepress, built a lookout, leased it to tenants, and went elsewhere. 34 As harvest time approached, he sent his servants to the tenants to collect his fruit.
The earth is the Lord’s. We don’t own it. We rent a space for a few years, but ownership remains with the one who lives forever. That’s our security, our meaning. It’s where we belong, our hope.
Continue reading “Tenants in God’s vineyard (Matthew 21:33-44)”Jesus’ authority is at the heart of the gospel.
If Jesus intended to confront Jerusalem’s leaders by overturning the temple, he succeeded. Priests claimed to be God’s representatives. Elders claimed authority over the people. They pushed back against God’s Anointed:
Matthew 21 (my translation, compare NIV)
23 Since he’d entered the temple complex and was teaching, the chief priests and elders of the people asked, “By what kind of authority are you doing these things? Who gave you this authority?”
In Israel, God’s authority was present in three main roles:
Continue reading “Who’s in charge? (Matthew 21:23-27)”If death and taxes are the only certainties, you don’t want to offend those who charge taxes. Taxation was not part of the created order. In the beginning, God only gave humans authority over the other creatures — fish of the sea, birds of the sky, animals and insects of the land (Genesis 1:26-28; Psalm 8 etc).
So, there’s something seriously wrong when representatives from the temple expect tribute from God’s anointed king:
Matthew 17:22-25 (original translation, compare NIV)
22 Travelling back to Galilee, Jesus said to them, “The son of man is about to be handed over to the hands of men. 23 They’ll kill him, and on the third day he will be raised up.” They were deeply grieved.
24 When they reached Capernaum, the collectors of the temple tax approached Peter: “Your teacher pays the temple tax, doesn’t he?”
25 “Yes,” Peter said.
Peter didn’t even stop to think. He’d seen Jesus pay the temple tax each year.
But something is different this year. Peter just declared Jesus to be God’s anointed king (Christ), the Son appointed to rule the earth by his Father in heaven (16:16). And Jesus explained that the temple leaders in Jerusalem will kill him (16:21; 17:23).
Peter needs to stop and think. Why should God’s anointed king pay tribute to the rebels? Continue reading “Jesus did refer to himself as a king (Matthew 17:22-27)”
Dress for the job you want, they say. But Jesus didn’t. Except for this one time. Far from the cities of power, three trusted friends glimpsed him dressed in regal glory.
They had just declared him as God’s anointed ruler (16:16), and he said they would see him rise to power in his Father’s glory (16:27-28). For a brief moment they saw it: Continue reading “See a glorious king? (Matthew 17:1-8)”
“You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” — Apostle Peter, first century
“Do you believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God?” It’s the question I often ask when baptizing believers. Our faith is in a person, and Peter nailed it with his declaration. So, what did Peter mean by this great confession?
There’s a temptation to invest Peter’s words with later theological meaning and miss what he said. His phrases have snowballed with significant theological freight:
All of that is true and important, but this developed theology was not in Peter’s mind. Rather than treat his words anachronistically, let’s hear them in their context.
In our previous post (the apostles’ gospel), we surveyed 16 samples of the gospel in Acts. What phrases did you find recurring?
The heart of the apostolic gospel is a person: Jesus. They used these phrases to say Jesus is good news:
Are those the phrases you would use to explain the gospel to someone? How are these four things the gospel?
Let’s enrich our understanding of the gospel by unpacking what the apostles said. It turns out to be the same gospel Jesus announced.
The gift that’s exactly what we need.
We’re reading John 3:16 as the story of the kingdom of God, the lens Jesus used. God is sovereign. The world resists him. The sovereign persists in loving his resistant realm. He does so by sending the most amazing gift.
Queue the questions:
I woke up this morning meditating on how John introduces the person who is good news.
1 In the beginning was the Word —
the decree of the heavenly sovereign bringing shape and significance to a formless void,
the decree bringing light into darkness,
the decree bringing life into barrenness,
the decree that makes life productive,
the decree that makes humans his regal agents.
This Word is not other than God; he has his being in relation to God.
The Word was God: God revealed, God expressed.
2 We’ve heard him only recently, but the Word has always had his being in relation to God, from the beginning.
3 Everything exists because of this divine Word;
not a single thing exists apart from him, the ground of our being.
4 Life sprang forth from him.
His life lights up humanity.
5 Resisting the Word leaves humanity with a dark side, but his light shines in the darkness.
The darkness has not grasped God’s decree that there be light.
The darkness has not held God’s Word in the grave.
If you want to know how Jesus understood himself, you have to ask why he kept referring to himself as son of man. More than any other term. On more than 50 occasions.
Scholars offer opinions ranging from “it just means a human” (as it did in his language) to “it means Jesus is the divine figure of Daniel 7.”
You can imagine how exhilarating it was to find an author summarizing my own conclusions of what Jesus meant, especially one who wrote 100 years ago!
What Isaiah said about Israel, Matthew says about Jesus. How can he do that?
Open Matthew 12:17-21.
Years ago, I ordered the plans to build a 2-seater kit plane. It was fun pouring over the plans, but I didn’t really have the time or resources to commit to such a project. I took on pastoring instead.
Building community is nothing like building an aircraft. You only get one chance to get the critical things right in a plane, but you can stress-test the parts and be mathematically sure it’s good to fly.
Human beings are nothing like that. They decouple mid-flight and fly off in their own direction. There can be no blueprints for building community: the “parts” are living and constantly changing. A leader is always adapting the plans, reshaping and redesigning. Mid-flight!
Continue reading “Who is “the Servant of the Lord”? (Matthew 12:17-21)”
Calling Jesus “the Christ” is declaring him the ruler chosen by God to restore heaven’s reign to the earth.
Christology is the study of Christ. Well, that’s what it would be if it focused on the Christ bit.
These days, Christology is a branch of theology, the study of God (theos means God). Systematic theology starts with God, so Christology usually fits in as the study of the second person of the trinity. It discusses how Jesus could have two natures without his divinity messing with his humanity and vice versa. It rehearses how early Christians struggled with wrong ways to talk about God (heresies) and eventually found the right language (the creeds and Symbol of Chalcedon).
That’s all important, and I’m truly grateful for these great summaries of what we believe. But along the way, the emphasis shifted. Christology lost its focus on the Christ.
That word has a specific meaning in the narrative of the kingdom of God. The Christos is the anointed person. Continue reading “Put the Christ back in Christology”
Seeking the kingdom 