Digression 5 The Teaching Style Of Jesus
Patient Leading
The Lord Jesus spoke the word to men “as they were able to hear it”,
not as He was able to expound it (Mk. 4:33). He didn’t always relay to men the maximum
level of understanding which He Himself possessed. There is a tendency
amongst some personality types to turn every disagreement over interpretation
of Scripture into a right : wrong, truth : error scenario. Matters relating
to basic Gospel doctrine are capable of being dealt with like this. But to turn
the interpretation of every Bible verse into a conflict area is a recipe
for disaster in relationships.
This is perhaps why the Lord seems to have let some issues go without
immediate comment- His use of the language of demons is a major example.
He lost a battle to win the war- of showing men that the power of God
was so great that there was no room for belief in the existence of demons.
Yet on the way to that end, He commanded ‘unclean spirits’ to leave men,
with the result that observers marvelled that ‘even unclean spirits obey
him!’. He didn’t on that occasion challenge the wrong belief directly,
even though this meant that in the short term the wrong belief was perpetuated.
But over time in His ministry, and in the whole New Testament, reference to demons
becomes less and less, as His preaching of Truth by example and miracle
made the point that these things really don’t exist. Likewise the gods
of Egypt were not specifically stated to not exist: but through the miracles
at the Exodus, it was evident that Yahweh was unrivalled amongst all such
‘gods’, to the point of showing their non-existence (Ex. 15:11; 18:11).
When accused of being in league with ‘satan’, the Lord didn’t read them
a charge of blasphemy. He reasoned instead that a thief cannot bind a
strong man; and likewise He couldn’t bind ‘satan’ unless He were stronger
than Satan (Mk. 3:23-27). He doesn’t take the tack that ‘Satan / Beelzebub
/ demons’ don’t exist; He showed instead that He was evidently stronger
than any such being or force, to the point that belief in such a concept
was meaningless. Faith must rather be in Him alone.
We
must speak the word as others are able to hear it, expressing the
truths of Christ in language and terms which will reach them. There are
some differences within the Gospels in the records of the parables. It
could be that the different writers, under inspiration, were rendering
the Lord's Aramaic words into Greek in different styles of translation.
Also, we must bear in mind the different audiences. Mark speaks of the
four watches of the night which would have been familiar to Romans (Mk.
13:35 cp. 6:48), whereas Lk. 12:38 speaks of the Jewish division of the
night into three watches (cp. Jud. 7:19). Yet Luke seems to translate
the Palestinian style of things into terms which were understandable by
a Roman audience. Thus Lk. 6:47; 11:33 speak of houses with cellars,
which were uncommon in Palestine; and in Lk. 8:16; 11:33 of houses with
an entrance passage from which the light shines out. The synagogue
official of Mt. 5:25 becomes the " bailiff" in Lk. 12:58. In Palestine,
the cultivation of mustard in garden beds was forbidden, whereas Lk.
13:19 speaks of mustard sown in a garden, which would have been
understandable only to a Roman audience. It seems in these cases that
inspiration caused Luke to dynamically translate the essence of the
Lord's teaching into terms understandable to a non-Palestinian
audience. Even in Mt. 5:25 we read of going to prison for non-payment
of debts, which was not the standard Jewish practice. Imprisonment was
unknown in Jewish law. The point of all this is to show that we must
match our terms and language to our audience; and this principle is
revealed in the way that 'demon' language is used about the curing of
some diseases in the Gospels.
The Tolerance Of Jesus
Jn. 8:31 credits some of the Jews with believing on Jesus- and yet the
Lord goes on to show how they didn’t ‘continue in His word’, weren’t truly
confirmed as His disciples, and were still not true children of Abraham.
Yet it would appear God is so eager to recognize any level of faith in
His Son that they are credited with being ‘believers’ when they still
had a very long way to go. The Lord condemned how the Pharisees “devoured
widow’s houses”- and then straight away we read of Him commending the
widow who threw in her whole living to the coffers of the Pharisees. It
wasn’t important that the widow saw through the hypocrisy of the Pharisees
and didn’t ‘waste’ her few pennies; her generosity was accepted for what
it was, even though it didn’t achieve what it might have done, indeed,
it only abetted the work of evil men. The Lord was criticized for “receiving
sinners” and eating with them (Lk. 15:2). Instead of the usual and expected
Greek word dechomai, we find here the Greek prosdechomai- He welcomed
them into fellowship, symbolizing this by eating with them. This was an
act which had religious overtones in 1st century Palestine. Notice that
prosdechomai is used by Paul to describe welcoming a brother / sister
in spiritual fellowship (Rom. 16:2; Phil. 2:29). The Lord fellowshipped
people in the belief that this would lead them to repentance, following
His Father’s pattern of using grace in order to lead people to repentance
(Rom. 2:4). He didn’t wait for people to get everything right and repented
of and only then fellowship them, as a sign that they were up to His standards.
The Teaching Style Of Jesus
The Lord and the Gospel writers seem to have recognized that a person
may believe in Christ, and be labeled a 'believer' in Him, whilst still
not knowing the fullness of "the truth": "Then said Jesus
to those Jews which had believed on him, If you continue in my word, then
are you truly my disciples; and you shall know the truth" (Jn. 8:31,32).
Clearly the Lord saw stages and levels to discipleship and 'knowing the
truth'. The life of Jesus was a life of outgiven grace and seeking the
salvation of men, after the pattern of Joseph going to seek the welfare
of his brethren. Even when he was delirious, according to the Hebrew text
of Gen. 37:15 [AV “wandering”], he told the stranger that he was seeking
his brethren (who hated him); seeking them was his dominant desire. And
so it was in the life of the Lord. Like His Father, He was willing to
be incredibly patient, in order to win people.
Consider some examples:
The Demon Issue
The centurion seems to have believed in demon possession. He understood
that his servant was “grievously tormented” by them. He believed that
the Lord could cure him, in the same way as he could say to his underlings
“go, and he goes” (Mt. 8:6-10). And so, he implied, couldn’t Jesus just
say to the demons ‘Go!’, and they would go, as with the ‘demons’ in the
madman near Gadara? The Lord didn’t wheel round and read him a lecture
about ‘demons don’t exist’ (although they don’t, of course, and it’s important
to understand that they don’t). He understood that this man had faith
that He, as the Son of God, had power over these ‘demons’, and therefore
“he marvelled, and said… Verily… I have not found so great faith, no, not
in Israel”. He focused on what faith and understanding the man had. With
the height of His spirituality, with all the reason He had to be disappointed
in people, the Lord marvelled at a man’s faith. It is an essay in how
He seized on what genuine faith He found, and worked to develop it, even
if there was an element of false understanding in it (1).
Legion believed he was demon possessed. But the Lord didn’t correct him
regarding this before healing him; indeed, one assumes the man probably
had some faith for the miracle to be performed (Mt. 13:58). Lk. 8:29 says
that Legion “was driven of the devil into the wilderness”, in the same
way as the Lord had been driven into the wilderness by the spirit (Mk.
1:12) and yet overcame the ‘devil’ in whatever form at this time. The
man was surely intended to reflect on these more subtle things and see
that whatever he had once believed in was immaterial and irrelevant compared
to the Spirit power of the Lord. And yet the Lord ‘went along’ with his
request for the demons he thought were within him to be cast into ‘the
deep’, thoroughly rooted as it was in misunderstanding of demons and sinners
being thrown into the abyss. This was in keeping with the kind of healing
styles people were used to at the time- e.g. Josephus records how Eleazar
cast demons out of people and placed a cup of water nearby, which was
then [supposedly] tipped over by the demons as they left the sick person
[Antiquities Of The Jews 8.46-48]. It seems to me that the Lord
'went along with' that kind of need for reassurance, and so He made the
pigs stampede over the cliff to symbolize to the healed man how his disease
had really left him.
“By whom do your sons cast them [demons] out?” (Lk. 11:19) shows the
Lord assuming for a moment that there were demons, and that the Jews could
cast them out. He doesn’t directly challenge them on their false miracles,
their exaggerated reports of healings, nor on the non-existence of demons.
He takes them from where they are and seeks to lead them to truth.
There may well be more examples of this kind of thing in the New Testament than
may appear to the English reader. The warning that the wicked will be
cast into the everlasting fire prepared for the Devil (Mt. 25:41) was
referring to the apocryphal fate of supposedly ‘wicked angels’ as recorded
in 1 Enoch 54. The references to Tartarus and sinful angels in 2 Peter
and Jude are also clear references to wrong beliefs which were common
in Jewish apocryphal and pseudo-epigraphical writings. These wrong ideas-
and they are wrong- are not corrected directly, but rather a moral lesson
is drawn from the stories. This is the point of the allusion to them;
but there is no explicit correction of these myths in the first instance.
The way the Lord constructed His parable about the rich man and Lazarus
in Luke 16 is proof enough that He Himself alluded to false ideas without
correcting them, but rather in order to make a moral point within the
faulty framework of understanding of His audience. Indeed, the Bible is
full of instances of where a technically ‘wrong’ idea is used by God without
correction in order to teach a higher principle. Thus an eagle doesn’t
bear its young upon its wings; it hovers over them. But from an earth-bound
perspective, it would appear that [looking up], the eagle is carrying
its young on its wings. God accommodates Himself to our earthly perspective
in order to lead us to Heavenly things. He doesn’t seek to correct our
knowledge at every turn, or else His end aim would not be achieved.
"Satan has an end"
In Mk. 9:23, the father of the child was asked whether he could believe
[i.e., that Jesus could cast out the demon]. The man replied that yes,
although his faith was weak, he believed [that Jesus could cast out the
demon]. His faith
was focused on by Jesus, rather than his wrong beliefs. Faith above all
was what the Lord was focusing on in the first instance. The Jews
accused the Lord of being in league with the prince of the demons,
Beelzebub. His comment was that if the family / house of Satan was so
divided, then Satan "has an end" (Mk. 3:26). His approach was 'OK you
believe in demons, Beelzebub etc. Well if that's the case, then
according to the extension of your logic, Satan will soon come to an
end, will cease existence. That's the bottom line. As it happens, I am
indeed 'binding the strong man', rendering Satan powerless, making him
'have an end', and so whichever way you look at it, believing in demons
or not, the bottom line is that My miracles demonstrate that
effectively Satan is powerless and not an item now'. The way the New
Testament is written reflects the same approach. When the Lord was
alone with His disciples, He explained further: "If they have called
the Master of the House [i.e. Jesus] 'Beelzebub', how much more shall
they call them of his household?" [i.e. the disciples] (Mt. 10:25). By
saying this, the Lord was clarifying that of course He didn't really mean
that He was part of the Satan family, working against Satan to destroy
the entire family. Rather was He and His family quite separate from the
Satan family. But He didn't make that clarification to the Jewish
crowds- He simply used their idea and reasoned with them on their own
terms.
Note in passing how the Jews actually thought
Jesus was Beelzebub, or Satan. This would be one explanation for their
mad passion to kill Him; for those labeled 'Satan' were hunted to their
death in such societies, as seen later in the witch hunts of the middle
ages. The Jews say Jesus as a false miracle worker, a false Messiah, a
bogus Son of God- all characteristics of their view of 'Satan'. Some
centuries later, the Jewish sage Maimonides described Jesus in terms of
the antichrist: "Daniel had already alluded to him when he presaged the
downfall of a wicked one and a heretic among the Jews who would
endeavor to destroy the Law, claim prophecy for himself, make pretenses
to miracles, and allege that he is the Messiah" (Maimonides' Epistle To Yemen). It's been suggested that the way the Jewish rabbinical writings call Him Yeshu is an acronym for the Hebrew expression ימח שמו וזכרו (yemach shemo vezichro
– "May his name and memory be obliterated"). This was the very Jewish
definition of Satan. They saw Jesus as Satan himself; hence they were
so insistent on slaying Him. Yet by the deft twist of Divine
providence, it was through the death of Jesus that the real Devil
(i.e. the power of sin) was in fact slain (Heb. 2:14). To those with
perceptive enough minds to see it, yet once again the Jewish ideas had
been turned back upon them to reveal the real nature of the Devil to
them, within their own frames of reference and terminology. Likewise
Beelzebub means literally 'the lord of the house'; and the Lord Jesus
alludes to this in describing Himself as the Master of the House of
God.
Other Examples In The Teaching Of Jesus
- The Lord’s men were accused of ‘threshing’ on the Sabbath because they
rubbed corn in their hands (Mk. 2:23-28). The Lord could have answered
‘No, this is a non-Biblical definition of working on the Sabbath’. But
He didn’t. Instead He reasoned that ‘OK, let’s assume you’re right, but
David and his men broke the law because they were about God’s business,
this over-rode the need for technical obedience’. The Lord Jesus wasn’t
constantly correcting specific errors of interpretation. He dealt in principles
much larger than this, in order to make a more essential, practical, useful
point.
- The eagerness of the Lord for the inculcation of faith is seen in the
way He foresees the likely thought processes within men. “Begin not to
say within yourselves....” (Lk. 3:8), He told a generation of vipers;
and He eagerly strengthened the centurion’s faith when it was announced
that faith was pointless, because his daughter had died. And we sense
His eager hopefulness for response when He said to the woman: “Believe
me, woman...” (Jn. 4:21 GNB). Even though she was confrontational, bitter
against Jewish people, and perhaps [as it has been argued by some] pushing
a feminist agenda...the Lord sought for faith in her above correcting
her attitude about these things. God too seeks for faith, and some of
the ‘flash’ victories He granted in the Old Testament were to otherwise
unspiritual men who in their desperation turned to Him. He so respects
faith that He responded (e.g. 1 Chron. 5:10-20).
- When the Jews mocked Him for saying that He had seen Abraham, the Lord
didn’t respond that of course that wasn’t what He meant; instead He elevated
the conversation with “before Abraham was I am”.
- The disciples didn’t have enough faith to cure the sick boy. Jesus
told them this: it was “because of your little faith… if ye have faith
as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove…”
(Mt. 17:20 RV). Think carefully what is going on here. They had not even
faith as a tiny grain of mustard seed; they didn’t have the faith to cure
the boy. But Jesus says they did have “little faith”. He recognized what
insignificant faith they did have. He was so sensitive to the amount of
faith in someone, even if it was insignificant in the final analysis.
We likewise need to be able to positively and eagerly discern faith in
those we preach to and seek to spiritually develop. In a similar kind
of way, God was disappointed that His people had not only been disobedient
to Him , but they had not even been obedient to their conquerors (Ez.
5:7). He so values obedience, and had an attitude that sought to see if
they would show it to at least someone, even if they had rejected Him.
-
The Lord spoke of not making the Orthodox Jews stumble by not paying
the tribute; yet He goes on to say that one must beware lest we make
the little ones who believe, to stumble (Mt. 17:27; 18:6). Is it not
that He saw in Orthodox Jewry the beginnings of faith… a faith which
was to come to fruition when a great company of priests were later
obedient to the faith in Him? None of us would have had that
sensitivity, that hopefulness, that seeking spirit. It is truly a
challenge to us. As the Son of God, walking freely in His Father’s
house, Jesus didn’t have to pay the temple tax. He could have insisted
that He didn’t need to pay it, He could have stood up for what was
right and true. But doing this can often be selfish, a defence of self
rather than a seeking for the Father’s glory. And so He told Peter that
“lest we should offend them”, He would pay it. He was so hopeful for
their salvation one day that He was worried about offending these
wretched men, who weren’t fit to breathe the same air that He did. We
would have given up with them; but He worried about offending what
potential faith they might have.
- When the disciples foolishly sought to have what they thought were
to be the favoured places at His right hand and His left, the Lord could
have answered: ‘You foolish people! Those on my left hand will be condemned!’.
But He graciously didn’t comment on their glaring error. He pushed a higher
principle- that we should not seek for personal greatness, seeing that
God is the judge of all (Mt. 20:23). Yet sadly, so much of our preaching
has been solely concerned with pointing out the errors of others without
being sensitive to what little faith and understanding they do have, and
seeking to build on it.
- When the people asked: “What sign do you shew then, that we may see,
and believe you?” (Jn. 6:30), the Lord could have spoken words similar
to Heb. 11:1 to them- He could have corrected them by saying that actually,
faith is not related to what you can see. You cannot “see and believe”
in the true sense of belief. But the Lord doesn’t do that. He says that
He in front of them is the bread of God, miraculously given. And their
critical tone changes: “Lord, evermore give us this bread!” (:34). This
surely is our pattern- not to necessarily correct every error when we
see it, but to pick up something the other person has said and develop
it, to bring them towards truth.
- Another woman thought that by touching His garment, she would be made
whole. She had the same wrong notion as many Orthodox and Catholic believers
have today- that some physical item can give healing. The Lord corrected
her by saying telling her that it was her faith- not the touch of His
garment- that had made her whole (Mt. 9:21,22). Again, He had focused
on what was positive in her, rather than the negative. We know that usually
the Lord looked for faith in people before healing them. Yet after this
incident there are examples of where those who merely sought to touch
His garment were healed (Mk. 6:56; Lk. 6:19). They were probably hopeful
that they would have a similar experience to the woman. One could argue
they were mere opportunists, as were their relatives who got them near
enough to Jesus’ clothes. And probably there was a large element of this
in them. But the Lord saw through all this to what faith there was, and
responded to it. It is perhaps not accidental that Mark records the link
between faith and Jesus’ decision to heal in the same chapter (Mk. 6:5).
- Yet another woman was evidently a sinner; and the Lord made it clear
that He knew all about her five men. But He didn’t max out on that fact;
His response to knowing it was basically: ‘You’re thirsty. I’ve got the
water you need’. He saw her need, more than her moral problem; and He
knew the answer. When she replied that she had no husband, He could have
responded: ‘You liar! A half truth is a lie!’. But He didn’t. He said,
so positively, gently and delicately, ‘What you have said is quite true.
You had five men you have lived with. The one you now have isn’t your
husband. So, yes, you said the truth’ (Jn. 4:16-18). He could have crushed
her. But He didn’t. And we who ‘have the truth’ must take a lesson from
this. He let Himself be encouraged by her response to Him, even though
her comment “Could this be the Messiah?” (Jn. 4:29) implies she was still
uncertain. Raymond Brown has commented: “The Greek question with meti implies an unlikelihood” (The Gospel According To John, Vol. 1, p. 173).
And so this Samaritan woman was at best being deceptive when she said
that “I have no husband / man / fella in my life” (Jn. 4:17). The Lord
could have answered: ‘Don’t lie to me. You know you’re living with a man,
and that you’ve had five men in your life’. Instead, the Lord picks up
her deceptive comment positively, agreeing that her latest relationship
isn’t really a man / husband as God intends. I find His positive attitude
here surpassing.
- The Lord knew that Peter had a sword / knife hidden in his garment
when in Gethsemane. But He did nothing; He didn’t use His knowledge of
Peter’s weakness to criticize him. He knew that the best way was to just
let it be, and then the miracle of healing Malchus must have more than
convinced Peter that the Lord’s men should not use the sword. For their
Master had healed, not murdered, one of the men sent to arrest Him.
- “John bare witness unto the truth [i.e. the legitimacy of Jesus’ claims].
But I receive not testimony from man [e.g. John]; but these things I say,
that ye might be saved…I have greater witness than that of John… the works
which the Father hath given me… bear witness… the Father himself… hath
borne witness of me”. I wish to stress the Lord’s comment: “But these
things I say, that ye might be saved”. The Lord wanted men to accept His
Father’s witness; but He was prepared to let them accept John’s human
witness, and actually this lower level of perception by them, preferring
to believe the words of a mere man, would still be allowed by the Lord
to lead them to salvation.
- There is no record that the Lord corrected the disciples’ misunderstanding
that He was going to commit suicide in order to “go unto” Lazarus (Jn.
11:16). He let events take their course and allowed the disciples to reflect
upon the situation in order to come to a truer understanding of His words.
- The disciples thought the resurrected Christ was a spirit, a ghost.
They returned to their old superstitions. Yet He didn’t respond by lecturing
them about the death state or that all existence is only bodily, much
as He could have done. Instead He adopted for a moment their position
and reasoned from it: “A spirit has not flesh and bones as you see me
have” (Lk. 24:39). The essence of His concern was their doubt in Him and
His resurrection, rather than their return to wrong superstitions.
- The record stresses the incongruity and inappropriacy of the young
man’s self-righteousness: “The youth answered, all these have I kept from
my youth up”. He was young- and he says that since a young man he had
kept all the commands. Now the Lord doesn’t lecture him about self-righteousness,
nor does He point out that the young man is way over rating his own spirituality
and obedience. Instead, the Master focuses on the positive- as if to say
‘You are zealous for perfection? Great! So, sell what you have and give
to the poor. Go on, rise up to the challenge!’.
- The Pharisees had reasoned themselves into a position whereby plucking
heads of corn whilst walking through a corn field on the Sabbath was regarded
as reaping. When the Lord was questioned about this issue, He didn’t reply
as most of us would have done: to attack the ridiculous definition of
‘work on the Sabbath’. He seeks to teach by general principle that the
extent of His Lordship meant that He and His men were free to do as they
pleased on this kind of matter.
- The Lord explained that “the least in the Kingdom of Heaven” would
have broken “the least” commandments, and would have taught men so (Mt.
5:19); and yet “the least in the Kingdom” was a phrase He elsewhere used
about those who would actually be in the Kingdom (Mt. 11:11). Here surely
is His desire to save, and His gracious overlooking of intellectual failure,
human misunderstanding, and dogmatism in that misunderstanding (‘teaching
men so’).
- The Lord wasn’t naive, although He was so positive. He told the disciples
quite frankly that they were full of “unbelief”, and couldn’t do miracles
which He expected them to because they didn’t pray and fast (Mt. 17:19-21).
And yet when quizzed by the Pharisees as to why His disciples didn’t fast,
He said it was because they were so happy to be with Him, the bridegroom
(Mt. 9:15). Here surely He was seeing the best in them. They come over
as confused, mixed up men who wanted the Kingdom there and then and were
frustrated at the Lord’s inaction in establishing it. But He saw that
they recognized Him as the bridegroom, as Messiah, and He exalted in this,
and saw their lack of fasting as partly due to the deep-down joy which
He knew they had.
- Similarly, His parable of the sower concluded by lamenting that His
general Jewish audience did not understand, and He spoke the parables
knowing they wouldn’t understand and would be confirmed in this. And He
stressed that a feature of the good ground is that His message is understood.
In this context, the Lord commends the disciples because they saw and
heard, in the sense of understanding (Mt. 13:13,15,16,23). Yet so evidently
they didn’t understand. And yet the Lord was so thrilled with the fact
they understood a very little that He counted them as the good ground
that understood.
- The wedding feast at Cana had been going on for some time, to the point
that men had drunk so much wine that they could no longer discern its
quality. The Lord didn’t say, as I might have done, ‘Well that’s enough,
guys’. He realized the shame of the whole situation, that even though
there had been enough wine for everyone to have some, they had run out.
And so He produced some more. He went along with the humanity of the situation
in order to teach a lesson to those who observed what really happened
(Jn. 2:10).
- The Lord evidently knew how Judas was taking money out of the bag.
As the Son of God He was an intellectual beyond compare, and sensitive
and perceptive beyond our imagination. And He noticed it; and yet said
nothing. He was seeking to save Judas and He saw that to just kick up
about evident weakness wasn’t the way. If only many of our brethren would
show a like discernment.
- His attitude to John’s disciples is very telling. He saw those who
“follow not us” as being “on our part”, not losing their reward, as being
the little ones who believed in Him; and He saw wisdom as being justified
by all her children, be they His personal disciples or those of John (Mk.
9:38-41; Lk. 7:35). John’s men had a wrong attitude to fellowship- they
should have ‘followed with’ the disciples of Jesus; and it would seem
their doctrinal understanding of the Holy Spirit was lacking, although
not wrong (Acts 19:1-5). Indeed, they are called there “disciples”, a
term synonymous with all believers in Luke’s writing. And the Lord too
spoke in such an inclusive way towards them. No wonder His disciples had
and have such difficulty grasping His inclusiveness and breadth of desire
to fellowship and save.
- This focus on the positive is shown by the way the Lord quotes Job
22:7 in the parable of the sheep and goats: “You have not given water
to the weary to drink, and you have withholden bread from the hungry”.
These words are part of Eliphaz’s erroneous allegations against Job- for
Job was a righteous man, and not guilty on these counts. Yet the Lord extracts
elements of truth from those wrong words, rather than just contemptuously
ignoring them. Likewise Job 22:25 speaks of God being our “treasure… our
precious silver” (RV). Surely the Lord had this in mind when saying that
our treasure must be laid up “in heaven”, i.e. with God (for He often
uses ‘Heaven’ for ‘God’). And James follows suite by approvingly quoting
Job 22:29 about the lifting up of the humble (James 4:6).
-
The Lord's tolerance is demonstrated by how He handled the issue of the
tribute money (Mt. 22:21). The coin bore an image which strict Jews
considered blasphemous, denoting Tiberius as son of God, the divine
Augustus (2). The Lord doesn't react to this as they expected- He makes
no comment upon the blasphemy. He lets it go, but insists upon a higher
principle. 'If this is what Caesar demands, well give it to him; but
give what has the image of God, i.e. yourself, to God'. He didn’t say
‘Don’t touch the coins, they bear false doctrine, to pay the tax could
make it appear you are going along with a blasphemous claim’. Yet some
would say that we must avoid touching anything that might appear to be
false or lead to a false implication [our endless arguments over Bible
versions and words of hymns are all proof of this- even though the
present writer is more than conservative in his taste in these
matters]. The Lord wasn’t like that. He lived life as it is and as it
was, and re-focused the attention of men upon that which is essential,
and away from the minutiae. Staring each of us in the face is our own
body, fashioned in God’s image- and thereby the most powerful
imperative, to give it over to God. Yet instead God’s people preferred
to ignore this and argue over the possible implication of giving a coin
to Caesar because there was a false message on it. Morally and
dialectically the Lord had defeated His questioners; and yet still they
would not see the bigger and altogether more vital picture which He
presented them with.
I am not suggesting from these examples that therefore doctrine is unimportant.
But what I am saying is that we must look for the positive in others,
and like the Lord in His attitude to demons, bear with them and recognize
faith when we see it. God worked through the pagan superstitions of Laban
regarding the speckled animals, and through the wrong beliefs of Rachel
and Leah regarding their children… in order to build the house of Israel.
He didn’t cut off His dealings with men at the first sign of wrong understanding
or weak faith or mixed motives. Moses seems to have shared the primitive
idea that a god rose or fell according to the fortunes of his worshippers,
when he asks God to not cut off Israel in case the nations mock Yahweh.
He could have responded that this was far too primitive and limited a
view. But no, He apparently listens to Moses and goes along with his request!
John the Baptist showed the same spirit of concession to human weakness
in his preaching. He told the publicans: “Extort no more than that which
is appointed you” (Lk. 3:13 RV). He tacitly accepted that these men would
be into extortion. But within limits, he let it go. Likewise he told soldiers
to be content with their wages- not to quit the job. Consider too how
the disciples responded to the High Priest rebuking them for preaching;
he claimed that they intended to bring the blood of Jesus upon them (Acts
5:24). The obvious, logical debating point would have been to say: ‘But
you were the very ones who shouted out ‘His blood be upon us!!’ just a
few weeks ago!’. But, Peter didn’t say this. He didn’t even allude to
their obvious self-contradiction. Instead he positively went on to point
out that a real forgiveness was possible because Jesus was now resurrected.
And the point we can take from this is that true witness is not necessarily
about pointing out to the other guy his self-contradictions, the logical
weakness of his position… it’s not about winning a debate, but rather about
bringing people to meaningful repentance and transformation.
Another example of the Biblical record going along with the incorrect
perceptions of faithful men is to be found in the way the apostles nicknamed
Joseph as ‘Barnabas’ “under the impression, apparently, that it meant
‘son of consolation’ [Acts 4:36]. On etymological grounds that has proved
hard to justify, and the name is now generally recognized to… mean ‘son
of Nabu’”(3). Yet the record ‘goes along’ with their misunderstanding.
In addition to this, there is a huge imputation of righteousness to human
beings, reflected right through Scripture. God sought them, the essence
of their hearts, and was prepared to overlook much ignorance and misunderstanding
along the way. Consider how good king Josiah is described as always doing
what was right before God, not turning aside to the right nor left- even
though it was not until the 18th year of his reign that he even discovered
parts of God’s law, which he had been ignorant of until then, because
the scroll containing them had been temporarily lost (2 Kings 22:2,11).
Notes
(1) It is likely that to some degree the Father overlooks the moral and
intellectual failures of His children on account of their ignorance, even
though sins of ignorance still required atonement and are still in some
sense seen as sin. This could explain why Eve committed the first sin
chronologically, but she did it having been “deceived” by the serpent;
whereas Adam committed the same sin consciously and was therefore reckoned
as the first sinner, the one man by whom sin entered the world.
(2) Documentation in E. Bammel and C.F.D.Moule, eds., Jesus And The Politics Of His Day (Cambridge: C.U.P., 1984) pp. 241-248.
(3) Margaret Williams, "Palestinian Personal Names in Acts"
in Richard Bauckham, ed. The Book of Acts Vol. 4 p. 101 (Carlisle:
Paternoster, 1995).
