Kindle Notes & Highlights
Read between
April 28 - April 30, 2024
Moreover, for Paul the message of reconciliation and righteousness is also a mission of reconciliation and righteousness (5:20—6:2). Though the text may put the primary emphasis on Paul’s apostolic mission team as “ambassadors for Christ” (5:20), it is difficult to think that Paul wants the righteous, reconciled community in Christ to be anything less than a community of righteousness/justice and reconciliation in and for the world.162
The “Israel of God” (6:16) is defined, not as the community of the circumcised, but as those Gentiles and Jews, men and women, slaves and free (3:28) who have received the eschatological gift of the Spirit, which is now in and among them, as God had promised through Jeremiah and Ezekiel (and, even earlier, to and through Abraham; see 3:6–18). This Spirit is, of course, the Spirit of God, but also—and this is crucial for Paul—the Spirit of the Son (4:6; cf. Rom 8:9).
then Paul characterizes Jesus’ death as an act of both faithfulness toward God (2:16 [twice], 20) and love for us (2:20).
To live in the Son/Messiah, and to have the Spirit of the faithful and loving Son/Messiah within, means that the covenant community will be people of “faith working through love” (5:6), in whom Torah is fulfilled when they are filled with this Spirit.169 It will be impossible to separate the vertical from the horizontal, or the spiritual from the ethical and missional.
The death of Christ has brought those who were distant near (2:13), reconciling Gentiles and Jews into one new people who together have access in Christ to God by the Spirit.
Thus God’s action in Christ’s death reconciles people to God and to one another—inseparably. To walk in God’s ways, then, will mean not only to bless God for the forgiveness received, but also to embody the forgiving and reconciling love of God,
the self-giving love of Christ, in daily life (4:32—5:2).175
That is, to enter the community of Christ-followers through faith and baptism is to enter personally into the story and the reality of the crucified Messiah that has already generated the new-covenant community that walks “in newness of life” (Rom 6:4) and in which “the just requirement of the law” is “fulfilled” by “walk[ing] not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit” (Rom 8:4). It is a new-covenant community with a new life because its participation in the death of Jesus was, and is, coupled with participation in the resurrection of Jesus (Rom 6:4, 13).178 The Spirit effects
...more
“Not only is it [Jesus’ death] an atoning offering, it is also a covenant-inaugurating event.”
The death of Christ is not just a one-time offering but an all-time offering (10:14). Moreover, because Christ’s death was the ultimate demonstration of his faithfulness despite shame and suffering (12:1–3; cf. 2:17; 3:1–6), associating with his death in faith means sharing in his faithfulness, even in the face of persecution. (We will return to this topic in chapter 4.)
God has not changed, but God has effected a change, as promised; the Law of Moses has not been renounced, but it has been rewritten on hearts, as promised; the need for forgiveness by sacrifice and holiness has not ended, but the death of Jesus has offered a new and permanent way into that state of forgiveness and holiness, as promised. These are all theological claims, but they are not theological claims about replacement; they are theological claims about covenantal promises fulfilled that necessarily render previous ways of doing covenantal business—specifically, and in large measure only,
...more
Therefore, the sacrificial, liberating death of Jesus is also the faithful, witness-bearing death of Jesus, and it has created a people who are forgiven and liberated by his death in order to share in that death—whether figuratively or literally—as his faithful witnesses. In other words, Jesus’ death has created a new-covenant, faithful, cruciform, and missional multinational (5:9) people, a community of kings and priests (1:6), a new people of God in which all members have royal and sacerdotal status.193
Further, the saints’ “endurance” or “resistance” is defined as “keep[ing] the commandments of God and hold[ing] fast to the faith of Jesus” (14:12). David Aune argues that in Revelation “the commandments of God” serves as a summary of the Law’s ethical requirements (i.e., the second table). If he is right, as he probably is, then in these two texts, as well as in chapter 2, John describes covenant faithfulness as the inseparable vertical and horizontal practices of bearing faithful witness to and like Jesus (the vertical) and fulfilling obligations of the Law to others (the horizontal).198 If
...more
(not to mention its graphic images of divine judgment), Revelation does not—or at least does not intend to—produce a violent people. In fact, just the opposite is the case; the faithful are called to accept suffering and death if necessary, but not to inflict it (13:9–10). The new-covenant people is a community of peace, and specifically of nonviolence.200
interpreted the death of Jesus in senses that correspond to those aspects of the new covenant found especially in Jeremiah and Ezekiel. The prophets expected a new-covenant people who would be liberated, restored, forgiven, sanctified, covenantally faithful, empowered, missional, peaceful, and permanent. The New Testament writers are convinced that Jesus’ death created that people.
Christ’s death effected the new covenant, meaning specifically the creation of a covenant community of forgiven and reconciled disciples, inhabited and empowered by the Spirit to embody a new-covenant spirituality of cruciform loyalty to God and love for others, thereby peaceably participating in the life of God and in God’s forgiving, reconciling, and covenanting mission to the world.
New-covenantal, participatory love for God and neighbor manifests itself in concrete practices, some of which we have already considered in general terms.202 It is also worth remembering at this point the poignant words of Augustine: “Anyone who thinks they have understood the divine Scriptures, or any part of them [such as texts about atonement], but cannot with this understanding increase in the twofold love of God and neighbor has not yet understood them.”203
That is, the cross is not only the source, but also the shape, of salvation. Life within the new covenant is participatory, a participation in the event that brought about the new covenant and created the new-covenant people.
The kinds of death suggested by the metaphors are quite wide-ranging, from literal suffering and death to more metaphorical deaths like the death of the self, referring to the termination of certain practices or desires. They also imply a willingness to suffer and die, rather than kill.
consists of three fundamental types of practices: (1) self-denial—losing oneself as the path to finding oneself—in witness to the gospel (Mark 8:31–34 and parallels); (2) hospitality to the weak and marginalized, represented by children (Mark 9:31–37 and parallels); and (3) service to others rather than domination (10:32–45 and parallels), all with the possibility of suffering (Mark 13:9–13 and parallels).
(1) bearing faithful witness even to the point of suffering; (2) identifying with the weak as an expression of God’s cruciform wisdom and power; and (3) lovingly, as a servant, seeking the benefit of others rather than self. In sum, Paul’s spirituality of participation in the death of Christ is congruent with—indeed fundamentally the same as—Jesus’ call to cross-shaped discipleship. In addition to considering the connections between Jesus in the gospels and Paul, we will also note the same or similar themes in other New Testament witnesses.
In the Bible behaviors or practices are never discussed or demanded in a vacuum. They are always part of a relational, or covenantal, framework. As the initiator of the covenant, God makes both promises and demands within that covenant, as we have seen in previous chapters. The people with whom God covenants make promises in return, particularly promises to fulfill the demands of the covenant. These promises, especially within the framework of the new covenant, can be fulfilled (and can only be fulfilled) by the power of God’s Spirit. We therefore should refer to the practices the people of
...more
At the core of this theme is not merely the form of imitation but its substance: as Jesus called the disciples to follow him, which includes following him in his manner of dying, Paul called believers to follow Jesus by “entering into the mystery of his death and resurrection,”217 as Paul himself had done. In other words, an essential component of the material continuity between Jesus and Paul is cruciformity (my term, not Matera’s)—conformity to the pattern of the Christ-story told in both the gospels and the Pauline letters.218
If Mark did so, however, I suggest that he was almost certainly constructing a literary narrative that was faithful to the intentions of Jesus. Similarly, this argument also allows for the possibility that Paul or other figures had some effect on the content and structure of Mark.228
The intellectual transformation the disciples need is a conversion of their imagination232 about what messiahship entails for Jesus, while the personal transformation they need is a conversion of their imagination about what Jesus’ messiahship entails for them: a conversion of their very lives.
The summons is not “‘a counsel of perfection’ addressed to a spiritual elite but the apocalyptically realistic advice that, for everyone, life is only to be found in treading the pathway of death.”235
Indeed, such suffering is both an emblem of faithfulness to the gospel and an experience of conformity—involuntary imitation, so to speak—to the fate of Jesus, Paul, and other believers (1 Thess 1:6; 2:14–16; 3:3–4).
In 2 Timothy, suffering is not only a regular feature of Paul’s own life (1:8, 12; 2:8–13; 3:11; 4:6–7, 16–18), it is a non-negotiable aspect of ministry (2:3; 4:5) and, in fact, of all faithful existence: “Indeed, all who want to live a godly life in Christ Jesus will be persecuted” (3:12). To be in Christ is to participate in his suffering.
Third, the world’s hatred of Jesus’ followers is a logical continuation of its hatred of Jesus and of the Father.246 There is, in fact, a line of continuity in the dispensing and receiving of rejection, a “chain” of hatred dispensed by the world that moves from the Father to the Son to the disciples.
Thus the persecution the disciples will experience is a direct result of their missional activity, which is actually not their mission but God’s, in which they participate.
Because Jesus’ disciples’ identity is a participation in his identity, represented in the bearing of his name, they will also participate in his fate—his rejection, suffering, and death. Or, to put it in narrative terms, his story will become their story.
they receive their reward, the fullness of salvation (1:6–10). According to 1 Peter, Udo Schnelle writes, faith is “faith-under-attack . . . faith that remains steadfast in trouble and consequently receives salvation.”251
suffering (2:21; hypogrammon; NRSV, “example”; cf. 4:1). Proper, or righteous, suffering is that which is unmerited and thus unjust (2:19–20, 22; 3:14, 17–18), and the proper response to such suffering is non-retaliation and even blessing toward the perpetrators (2:23; 3:9), as well as trust in God (2:23).
The latter text reminds us that for Peter, as for Paul and for Jesus (at least in Mark), faithful suffering for Christ is not merely imitation, it is participation, “an inner link with the suffering Christ.”254 This faithful participation in, or obedience to, Christ is made possible by the Spirit (1:2).
This does not mean that the suffering is punishment but, rather, a means of moral formation, specifically formation into the likeness of the Son, who also suffered in the process of perfection/attaining God’s ultimate will for him (Heb 5:7–10).
Jesus as the prototype of faithfulness, the audience of Hebrews, and others who have been faithful.256
Those liberated from sin by Jesus’ death (the cross as the source of salvation) are now shaped into faithful witnesses, even to the point of suffering and death (the cross as the shape of salvation). Moreover, John describes the situation that he and his churches find themselves in with the language of participation: “I, John, your brother and fellow participant (synkoinōnos) in the tribulation and the kingdom and the resistance that we have in Jesus . . .” (1:9).261
The protection, symbolized in Revelation by the ancient practice of sealing (7:3–8; 9:4; contrast the antithetical marks/seals of the beast in 13:16–17; 14:9, 11; 16:2; 19:20; 20:4), does not mean that the church avoids temptation and tribulation, but that it is protected from defeat by these inevitable realities. That is, it is and will be victorious—another major motif in Revelation (e.g., 2:7, 11, 26, 28; 3:5, 12, 21; 5:5; 12:11; 21:7).
Those who bear witness to the victory of God and the Lamb will not be able to separate their “vertical” faithfulness from horizontal action. As Richard Hays has eloquently said, “No one can enter imaginatively into the world narrated by this book [Revelation] and remain complacent about things as they are in an unjust world.”265
In a claim that is nothing short of a theological revolution, Jesus proclaims that such hospitality to the powerless is in fact hospitality to him and, ultimately, to God the Father (9:37).273
The normal path to greatness—to power and honor—is replaced by a path to “lastness,” a path of downward mobility that takes one, paradoxically, both to greatness and to God.
Jesus-like conviction: communities of those who are in Christ must attend to, and even give preference to, the weak.
God is revealed as the one who operates through and among the weak—the weakness of the Messiah’s shameful death on a Roman cross, which is indeed “the weakness of God” (1:25); the weakness of the status-poor “nobodies” who make up the majority of the Corinthian community, who are the weak chosen by God (1:27b); and the weakness of Paul’s own persona and preaching, an apostle beset by illness, unimpressive oratorical skills, and indeed an overall weakness (2:3; cf. 4:10; 2 Cor 10:
This discipleship, more specifically, is participatory in nature, a sharing so intense that it can only be expressed in the language of liquids (vv. 38–39): that which overtakes from without (baptismal waters) and that which fills from within (the contents of the cup); one that consumes like a flood, one that is consumed. Both images combine a sense of overwhelming power with a sense of profound intimacy. Such is the nature of discipleship with the crucified one.
Whereas in Mark 9 Jesus had made it clear that cruciform service to “all” embraces those of low and no status, even so-called non-persons, here he makes clear that it includes absolutely everyone.
We will not attempt to settle the complex issues regarding the meaning of “ransom” or the background of the “servant” image.290 What is absolutely clear, however, is that Jesus sees himself as a self-giving servant and as “the best example of his own ideal of servant leadership.”291 It is likely that Mark intends us to interpret Jesus’ servanthood not only as one act, his death, but as his entire ministry, culminating in his self-giving death.292 Jesus’ self-donation is expressed in the language of the giving of his own soul or life (his psychē)—the total self-gift.
It is clear both that this self-donation is a unique act, since no one else dies for others’ sins, and a paradigmatic act, since self-giving servanthood is expected of Jesus’ disciples.
it consists of both the call to countercultural cruciform service rather than domination, and the grounding of that call in the uniquely salvific...
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
Jesus’ “service” on the cross is the paradigm for all of his disciples for all time. Moreover, not to embody this kind of service would be a betrayal and denial no less significant than the actions of Judas and Peter.
Here Paul uses a pattern that I have elsewhere described as “although [x] not [y] but [z],” meaning “although [status] not [selfish exploitation] but [self-giving].”
