20-14 Radical Language of Jesus
Because of the gracious words and manner of speaking of Jesus, therefore God so highly exalted Him (Ps. 45:2). The Father was so impressed with the words of His Son. Lk. 4:22 records how people were amazed at the gracious words He spoke; there was something very unusual in His manner of speaking. Evidently there must have been something totally outstanding about His use of language. God highly exalted Him because He so loved righteousness and hated wickedness (Ps. 45:7), and yet also because of His manner of speaking (Ps. 45:2); so this love of righteousness and hatred of evil was what made His words so special.
The Lord's choice of language was therefore radically different. Indeed, the Father Himself has inspired His word in a way which uses language quite differently to how we do. Thus there are many examples in Scripture of where even basic rules of grammar are broken- an obvious example is the way Leviticus and Numbers begin with “And…”, what scholars call a “waw conjunctive” that is not ever used to start a sentence let alone a book. The Father’s Son likewise used language in His own way. “’Peace’ [‘shalom’- the usual Semitic greeting] is my farewell to you” (Jn. 14:27) is an example of how He seems to have almost purposefully delighted in using language in a startlingly different way. There are times when the Lord Jesus seems to have almost coined words. The adjective epiousios in " our daily bread" is one example; there in the midst of the prayer which the Lord bid His followers constantly use, was a word which was virtually unknown to them (1). Our bread only-for-this-day was the idea. When He addressed God as abba, 'dad', the Jews would have been scandalized(2). But this was the experience He had of God as a near at hand, compassionate Father. He purposefully juxtaposed abba with the Divine Name which Jews were so paranoid about pronouncing: " Abba, glorify your name" (Jn. 12:28). This was nothing short of scandal to Jewish ears. And we are to pray as the Lord prayed, also using " Abba, father" (Rom. 8:15; Gal. 4:6). Seeing it was unheard of at the time for Jews to pray to God using 'Abba', Paul is clearly encouraging us to relate to God and pray to Him as Jesus did (cp. Jn. 20:17). The Lord made a big deal of calling God 'Abba', even forbidding His Jewish followers to use the term about anyone else (Mt. 23:9). The Lord's attitude to prayer was radical in itself. The observant Jew prayed three times / day, the first and last prayers being merely the recital of the shema. Yet Jesus spent hours in those morning and evening prayers (Mk. 1:35; 6:46). Perhaps He was motivated in His prayers by the lengthy implications of the fact that Yahweh is indeed one, and this demands so much of us.
He asked us to drink His blood, another idea repellent to Jewry. His healings broke all the purity boundaries of His social world. He touched lepers and hemorrhaging women. He ate with the outcasts and well known sinners. Women followed Him around the country, yet He was unmoved by all the scandal mongering which inevitably must have gone on. He allowed Mary to wash Him with her hair, and to speak with Him in public- even though the hair, legs and voices of women were felt by Judaism to be especially enticing. Jesus refused to share the usual Jewish fears of female sexuality. Believing that sexual desire was evil and uncontrollable, the Jewish world coped with women by secluding them. The Lord, however, accepted women into His company of disciples. He was comfortable with His humanity, He wasn’t paranoid about the ‘thin end of the wedge’. And moreover, He expected His responsible and comfortable-with-his-humanity attitude to rub off upon the men He’d chosen to be with those women. He valued persons for who they were, and this had radical results in practice. And yet He spoke with " authority" in the eyes of the people. What gave Him this? Surely it was His lifestyle, who He was, the way there was no gap between His words and who He was. The word of the Gospel, the message, was made flesh in Him. There was a perfect congruence between His theory and His practice. The repeated amazement which people expressed at the Lord's teaching may not only refer to the actual content of His material; but more at the way in which He expressed it, the unique way in which word was made flesh in Him. The way the Lord could ask men to follow Him, and they arose and followed (Mk. 2:14), is surely testimony to the absolute, direct and unaccountable authority of Jesus. It was surely His very ordinariness which made Him so compelling.
Jesus juxtaposed ideas in a radical way. He spoke of drinking His blood; and of a Samaritan who was good, a spiritual hero. It was impossible for Jews to associate the term 'Samaritan' and the concept of being spiritually an example. And so the stark, radical challenge of the Lord's words must be allowed to come down into the 21st century too. Lk. 6:35 has Jesus speaking of " children of the Most High" and yet Mt. 5:45 has " children of your father" . What did Jesus actually say? Perhaps: " Children of abba, daddy, the Most High" . He juxtaposed His shocking idea of abba with the exalted title " the Most High" . The Most High was in fact as close as abba, daddy, father.
“Amen” was what you usually said in the first century about the words of someone else. To use it about your own words was, apparently, unthinkable (3). But the Lord Jesus was so quietly sure of Himself that He could say this of His own words. Without being conceited or proud, the Lord valued His own person to this extent. Truly “Never [did a] man spake like this man”.
Notes
(1) J.H. Moulton & G. Milligan The Vocabulary Of The Greek Testament (London: Hodder, 1949).
(2) Joachim Jeremias, The Prayers Of Jesus (London: S.C.M., 1967) pp. 96,97 comments on how he searched through " the prayer literature of ancient Judah...[but] in no place in this immense literature is this invocation of God as abba to be found...Abba was an everyday word, a homely family word. No Jew would have dared to address God in this manner"
.(3) J.D.G. Dunn, A New Perspective On Jesus (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2005) p. 75.
