Video Transcript: Christianity Lecture 2
Next lecture on Christianity, and we're continuing now with the life and ministry of Christ. I've done the theological stuff, oh, I should take that off the board, or you'll be staring at it, you should already have this down in your notes. But this is pretty important stuff. On this, I have sided with the minority of theologians, that is with the Eastern Orthodox, and the two great champions of the Reformation, who were not followed on it by Protestantism, despite their status in that tradition. But then we go back to the life of Christ. And we come to this person who is the Son of God and God the Son the same time. And his ministry begins when he sits down in the synagogue and reads. from Isaiah, The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me, for He has consecrated me to preach the Good News to the poor. He has sent me to announce to the prisoners, their relief, release and to the blind, the recovery of their sight, to set the John the downtrodden at Liberty, and proclaim the year of the Lord's favor. And he says them today this is fulfilled. I'm here. So the people are shocked, of course. But one writer has put what follows this way. On this point, Jesus spoke with profound assurance. God was the sovereign moral personality, ruling the universe, the moving spirit of the course and the end of history, a transcendent, being sternly righteous, who never departed from perfect justice in determining the course of events or the destiny of an individual. This God drew near to anyone who bowed down in prayer, he was forgiving and merciful, primarily occupied with human redemption. In character in action, he was paternal and Jesus favorite name for him was father or Father in heaven. It's implied in this teaching that though God allows people to make their own decisions. And like the prodigal son in the famous parable, to take the means at their disposal and waste them. He continues to love them throughout the redemptive process that inevitably follows and will forgive them when they return to Him. God is therefore utterly good as well as holy. People should trust him and regularly seek spiritual enlightenment through prayer, especially private prayer in their rooms, or solitude, or in fields or hilltops. Not a bad description, but a couple of things. We should not let slide by there without comment. One is the characterization that reads, God never departs from perfect justice in determining the course of events, or the destiny of an individual. And this is true with respect to how God treats us. But we must not miss read it to say that God promises that nothing unjust will ever happen to those who love Him. That's not the case. God's perfectly just in his dealings with us, other people may not be and and God does not say, No harm, no injustice, no sorrow, no tragedy will ever befall Anyone who's one of my people, though, that's not anywhere in Scripture. And then it's the end it also refers to God is holy. And that's a term we haven't defined. And I've been trying to define terms as we go. The way Bible writers use the word holy, it means set apart for special use to God, or by God. When it's used the people or things or places their holy if they're set aside for special use. So a place of worship is holy. Water can be holy, if it's used for baptism, and for example, and when it's used of God, it
means his worthiness to have things set aside for special use there, so the Holy God is deserving of our prayer, our blessing our Thanksgiving, and of our contrition when we wronged him. So I hope that I've clarified now, two of the the Remarks in this section I just read, otherwise very good. So what how does Jesus sum up this gospel message that he's been called to bring to all mankind? Well, he tells us very clearly, you've heard it said, by men of old, you must love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. So that you may show yourselves true sons of your Father in heaven, for he makes the sun to rise on good and bad alike. And he makes rain fall on the upright and wrongdoers, you are to be perfect as your heavenly father is. Now you see, on the view that that means Platonic perfections. That would be the crazy statement that you must have the maximal degree of power, wisdom might justice, mercy, and so on. All the Platonic perfections because God has them. And if you did, that would make you God. That's not what this means that all the Jewish meaning of perfect was complete, complete fulfilled, Not a maximal degree of some quality that makes you better to have it. So what this means is, you are to be completely faithful to your end of the covenant, as your Father in heaven is completely faithful to his end of the covenant. Has nothing to do with platonic perfections. Or does it suggest at all that God is a being that has all of them and only them? Jesus goes on, you must always treat other people as you would like to have them treat you this sums up the law and the prophets. Here's what sums them up. You must love the Lord your God with all your whole heart, your whole soul, your whole mind, that is the first great commandment. And there's a second like it, you must love your neighbor as yourself. These two commands, sum up the whole of the law and the prophets. There is Christian religion, in a nutshell. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul and mind. No holds barred, nothing held back and love your neighbor as yourself. Notice that that does have a condition on it. First, it assumes that you are to love yourself. Because if you don't, you can't love your neighbor, your to love your neighbor, in balance with yourself, you're to balance your interests, with your neighbors interests. It the command is not to always sacrifice yourself, for the other person. But a balance, there's no balance when it comes to God. That's total dedication. But with respect to others around us, we owe them love. But on balance, it doesn't mean we have to harm ourselves to do it. It doesn't mean that if we do something good for someone else out of love, and we benefit too that the fact that we benefit cancels the act of love. No, not at all. It's nonsense. The scripture says of Jesus himself, for the joy that was before Him, He endured the shame, and the cross. So he got something out of it, too. He became king of the universe. That doesn't mean it wasn't an act of love. It doesn't mean it wasn't good. It was. So you have to avoid those mistakes. When thinking about love, and the balance of that we're commanded to strike between ourselves and our neighbors. Christ goes on through his
lifetime teaching and preaching and healing people, which is why they came to see him. Until, of course, the events that we celebrate in Holy Week when he's arrested and taken into custody, and then tried and executed. This is those things are, I think, well known to you all. So I didn't want to over stress take too much time with it. But here's the way, Paul, writing after Jesus has ascended into heaven, described this message of his. He says For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures that He was buried that he was raised on the third day, according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, that's Peter, and then to the 12, the disciples, then he appeared to more than 500 brothers at once. Most of whom are still alive, though some have died. And then he appeared to James, and to all the apostles. And last of all, as to one untimely born, he appeared also to me. Paul speaking there of the vision of Christ that he had on the road to Damascus, when he saw Christ, and Christ asked him, why are you persecuting me? So here's the, the gospel message, the message of Jesus Christ in a nutshell. And the account in includes Christ, both not only his crucifixion, and death, but his resurrection. And here, he defeats death, which the scripture says is the last of his enemies to be defeated. The Roman Empire thought they had nailed him. They thought they had gotten rid of him. They executed him. That's the end, right? And he comes back. And it seems that just about nothing else would have convinced his disciples that they hadn't made a mistake. When he appears to them on the road to Emmaus, they, they don't recognize him. And they say, we thought we had the Messiah, we thought he had come. And then to our great disappointment, the Romans took him and executed him. And now he's not going to set up the kingdom that we're looking for. And I guess we just made a huge mistake. But then they finally do recognize him, I take it, that it's like seeing someone you haven't seen in a long time. At first you don't recognize them and then suddenly, it all falls into place that you do. And, yes, it's my old friend. And that's how they realized when they sat down to eat with him that, yes, it was Jesus all along. And the kingdom that he's going to set up wasn't an Israeli empire, that defeats the Roman Empire and takes over the world. It's, it's his heavenly kingdom, one that will have no end. And so they were, they became convinced that he was alive again. That's why they risked their lives to preach that gospel. It's why they went, spent the rest of their lives preaching it everywhere they could go, it's why they risked being fed to lions and executed, because they had seen him. And they knew that he had risen again. Of course, Jesus comments on that himself when he says, Blessed are those who have never seen me, but still believe. And I want to suggest to you that the grounds in which the New Testament gives for that belief, is a kind of seeing in Ephesians 1, Paul's talking to the people at that church. And he says, Before you believed you were without God without hope. But now that the Holy Spirit has removed the blindness of your hearts, He says, you see the truth
with the eyes of your heart. That's a kind of expression that had long been used to describe as truth, that self evident are always visual metaphors. You can just see that one on one makes two, well not with your eyes. I mean, you can see the numerals on the page. But you grasp intellectually, intuitively that That's right. And it can't not be just as you grasp things equal to the same thing or equal to each other. You we say you just see that it's just a vicious, you kept. The axioms are used to prove things they don't get proven. They've just intuitively right. And that's the way he spoke there of our recognition of the gospel as the truth about God from God. It's self evident. And that's the way they use the word faith. The word faith is used by New Testament writers to mean trust the way we normally use it, trust in somebody's report. Maybe they reported auto accident that we didn't see. And well this is a reliable person I'll take their word. We can do that. Do we know for certain, that's the way the accident took place? No, but we're, we're taking them at their word. The testament does use the word faith that way. but it also uses it in two other ways that were brand new, and not had no precedent in the Greek language. One is to use it as the whole of the Christian faith, the faith once delivered to the saints. It's that an all encompassing collective noun that includes all of the Christian religion. And the third way that they use it with a brand new was to mean faith that is, sure and certain knowledge. And we don't use the word that way at all. In our common, in common English today. But that's the way they used it. Who do men say I am? Jesus says to Peter, oh, some say, you're this and that the other one who do you say I am? We believe we have faith and know that you are the Christ, the Son of God. Believe and know not mere belief, not belief, hoping that it's right. But believe and know. And that term faith is used that way, constantly by Paul, and by Luke. And by the author of Hebrews. We find it consistent certainty, through knowledge, just as you know, for sure, if you see the thing happen yourself, just that certainly, you come to see that the gospel is the truth about God from God. It's God's love letter to the world, his message of redemption, forgiveness. So Faith is not something that means. That is that is less than knowledge. It's trusting in something because it's experienced to be the certainly be the truth. That's the grounds of it. A lot of people are scared off of that. They propose faith as meaning. Well, it's just blind trust. No New Testament writer ever uses the word faith that way, it's never blind. It's always a matter of seeing the truth, the way Paul puts it, see, with the eyes of your heart, it's usually translated see with the eyes of your mind. But his what he wrote is actually more powerful than that. The term heart is used by Bible writers to mean the very central unity of a human self. When I was a senior in seminary, I did my senior thesis on the use of the words heart, soul, and spirit, by Bible writers and I investigated every occurrence of them in Hebrew and Greek, in the scriptures, and found that the Bible writers mostly used heart for the central unity of the human being, they use spirit for the diversity of the human, gifts,
inclinations, dispositions, capacities, and they use soul to mean the embodiment of heart and spirit. Its expression through a living body, that is metabolically alive, biologically alive. So in their terminology, the soul is exactly what does die of the person, the body dies, but not the heart and spirit. In common usage, we've we use the term soul for that. It's very confusing. But the heart is the central unity of human being from which scripture says, come all the issues of life. So that's the that's the self. And it's something then that we see not just with the intellect, but also welcome, emotionally, we love the truth, and we will want to obey God. So it includes the whole person. It's seeing truth and loving God and wanting to please Him. And all of those are wrapped up in that idea of the heart, human heart. So these are all important points that need to be stressed, and taken into consideration as you do your reading. Again, I remind you read, watch the lectures read again, is the best way to get the most out of this. I want to make one final comment here, because it will carry over into the lectures on Islam. The book of Hebrews is translated roughly this way in most English translations have. I've got 18 Bibles at home and so if, if the quote I give you isn't exactly any one of them, but it's a mixture of them all God, who in past times began to continue to speak to our ancestors by prophets, as in this these last days spoken in son whom he is appointed heir of all things. That's that's what I read in most English translations. Here is what the Greek says, Now I'm going to bring out the force of the, the verb tenses. God, who in the past began and continued to talk to our ancestors by prophets, has in these last days finished talking in his son. I don't know of an English translation that that renders it that way that brings out the force of this but the first verb to talk is imperfect. It's an action begun and continued. And the second occurrence of the verb to talk is past completed action. It's over, finished talking in his son. And so the new the writings that we accept as the New Testament, were all of them. A criterion for being included in the testament is that all of them had to be been written by an apostle of Jesus, one who was taught by Him sent by him and wrote down his word. And we don't accept that there is any revelation from God after that. That's the the significance of that text. There's no revelation, direct revelation from God. God's Spirit may apply his word to our hearts. Yes, sure. We may pray for guidance and receive it and so on. But there's no new covenantal word to be added to the New Testament as the New Testament was added to the old it's cut off and ended.