Category: Theology

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New Testament Scripture Notes Theology

Notes on the Samaritan Woman

The time when Jesus spoke to the Samaritan Woman at the well, described in John 4: 1-42, is one of the most significant acts of evangelism in the Gospels. The Samaritan Woman, being of her background, was not someone who a Jew such as Jesus would speak to at all, so Jesus’s choice to speak to her was puzzling to her. It also turns out that she had been married five times and lived with a man who she wasn’t married to, but she was the first one Jesus chose to minister to in Sychar, Samaria.

            It is only on the surface that the Samaritan Woman would be a strange person for Jesus to evangelize to this way. She was effectively chosen to usher fellow Samaritans to listen to Jesus, and many believed. What stood out about her was that she loved truth. She kept wanting Jesus to explain what he told her. When Jesus told her about her embarrassing life history, she took it in stride, decided that Jesus must have been a prophet, and sought out more wisdom from him.

            What is most telling is that, when Jesus explained that it was time for people to worship God, not at any specific location, but in Spirit and truth, the Samaritan Woman immediately mentioned that the Messiah would reveal the truth. This would have been considered an extreme jump in logic in the respectable circles of the Jews. What Jesus explained, however, resonated with her anticipation of the Messiah and who he would be even if she did lack the full picture. She was truly ready to receive Jesus as Messiah and Lord because she was willing to worship God the way he wants to be worshiped. This is why Jesus chose to announce to her that he is the Messiah.

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New Testament Scripture Notes Theology

Notes on the Two Miracles of Mark 5:21-43 and Faith

Jesus made many miracles occur, as is seen throughout the Gospels. Some of the most memorable ones are in Mark 5. The first miracle is that of the possessed man being completely healed by Jesus after he drove all the demons afflicting the man into a herd of pigs. As important as that miracle is, it is a good idea to pay good focus to the latter miracles described in the chapter, as well as why they are written about as they are.

            First, a synagogue leader named Jairus begged Jesus to heal his dying daughter. Jesus ascents and follows Jairus to his house. Before he can get there, however, a woman described as bleeding for twelve years touched Jesus’s cloak with faith she would be healed and immediately the bleeding stopped. Jesus noticed that someone touched his garment and, when the woman confessed to it, he blessed her and declared that her faith healed her. By that time Jairus’s daughter had died, but Jesus went to Jairus’s house anyways. Jesus stated that the girl was not dead but asleep and was laughed at by the mourners. Jesus then healed Jairus’s daughter.

            It is clear that Jesus performed many miracles, often in close sequence. But these two miracles that happened one after the other needed to be recorded in order to reveal a little about how God works. The first thing of note is that God is no respecter of persons, and the reasons why he shows favor have nothing to do with human standards. Galatians 3:28 says of believers, “There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” Faith in Christ Jesus is the qualifier for being in Christ Jesus. We see two vastly different people approaching Christ in faith. The first is Jairus, a leader of the synagogue. He was a man and of great religious authority. He would have been perceived as spiritually superior to most in the community. The second person is a woman, typically deemed inferior in both ancient Jewish culture and the Roman Empire. On top of it, she suffered from a health condition that was presumably constant menstrual bleeding when a female was considered unclean when she simply had her period. She would have been considered constantly unclean. She also became broke seeking ineffective medical treatments in a time when women lacked means of supporting themselves. Both Jairus and the bleeding woman had faith in Jesus. There was nothing against either Jairus as a powerful individual or the woman who bled as an outcast, nor were these features what commended them in the sight of Jesus. Their faith made them equally blessed in the eyes of God.                                              

We also see something important in terms of timing. Jesus certainly knew that he would heal both the woman who bled and Jairus’s daughter, but in the time that Jesus healed the bleeding woman, Jairus’s daughter died. The woman who bled would have seemed impossible to heal already, and Jesus’s power had to be displayed through this seeming impossibility. Jairus’s daughter was supposed to be healed once she was deemed impossible to heal. The most important thing was that it needed to be obvious that Jesus was responsible for the miracles by working in time frames that served as ultimate signs of faith on the part of those who believed in him.

            The woman who bled suffered twelve years of a brutal health condition and was healed. The daughter of Jairus was twelve years old- she was at the cusp of womanhood in her time in history- and died. These miracles occurred back to back to display the variety of believers in Christ Jesus and the different and equally valid ways and timetables God chooses to work miracles for those who love him. But as proven by these acts of Christ Jesus, as well as others recorded in the Bible, God is fond of working miracles at the cross section of the unlikelihood or seeming impossibility of the situation and absolute faith in Christ Jesus.

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New Testament Scripture Notes Theology

Notes on 1 Corinthians 1:18-31

There are truly only a few things that can garner true influence in society: money- and with it, belongings, the right personal connections, and wisdom. Wisdom, perhaps, comes the closest to any sort of egalitarian standard for granting power. It comes with a respect that money cannot buy and connections cannot produce.

            It is worth noting that there are limitations to wisdom as a threshold for influence in the world. This is because perceived wisdom and actual wisdom are two different things. Paul explains this in 1 Corinthians a few times, but in chapter 1 verses 18-31, he describes Christ and worldly wisdom to be diametrically opposed when he says in 1 Corinthians 1:18-19, “For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written: ‘I will destroy the wisdom of the wise; the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate.’” (New International Version)

            In order to be wise in actuality, one is required to understand what is not only true but what is most important as truth. That which is at the top of the hierarchy of truth must be understood first before anything else can be understood if one seeks to be considered wise. It is not necessarily knowledge, but the discernment of what actually matters, that determines wisdom. This is precisely why, as Paul says in verse 27, “…God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise.” (NIV) The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, but worldly wisdom grows pride, thus insuring that wisdom cannot develop. The root of actual wisdom is the acceptance that one can do nothing to be righteous, but that Christ died so that you can be righteous before him. Worldly wisdom is dedicated to seeking out solutions for becoming righteous by one’s own efforts. Because of the intrinsic pride of worldly wisdom in this way, it happens that actual wisdom will automatically register as being illogical to those with a pride block preventing them from seeing reality. But those who have not had much to boast in at all, and those who have seen the underbelly of the human experience, are far less likely to have a pride block than those who have been exalted among humans for wisdom. This makes it much easier for them to choose the actual wisdom of the gospel. When Christ said, “[…] it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle that for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God,” as recorded in Matthew 19:24, we understand that whatever will make one prideful will be a serious stumbling block that can prevent people from receiving Christ. (NIV) Wisdom and wealth are both things that lead people to be exalted in their own eyes and those of others. It is much more difficult to sacrifice pride when one has been exalted than to give up pride when one has nothing else to lose. So this is how the truly wise have accepted Christ and how those who are wise among the worldly have not.

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Theology

An Introduction to Truth Blocking

Christianity reflects truth. Honest seekers of truth without spiritual blocking must ascent to this fact. Part of the warfare against the Church therefore is funneling falsehoods into religious practice and doctrine. This phenomenon builds a couple of stumbling blocks. The first of these is to mislead those in the Church into being absolutely convicted that a falsehood reflects absolute reality and what it means to serve Christ. The second of these is to dissuade open seekers of the truth when it is clear that there are inconsistencies, that there is something deeply wrong in what they are told is the genuine expression of the Christian life.              

             These stumbling blocks explain precisely what is wrong in the West concerning religion. In particular it is why so many Westerners say that they like Jesus but hate Christianity and the hypocrisy they associate it with. The Bible says multiple times that all fall short of the goodness of God, that no one can earn salvation, and that the sanctification of the saved is a process that requires endurance- you will still make mistakes but must keep pursuing righteousness. This is poorly conveyed to people in the Church, let alone outside of it, so there is simply no context for why people in the Church are able to be hypocrites. Nor is there explanation on the reality of false believers who go into the Church to wreak havoc. The acknowledgment of false believers is in fact almost nonexistent. The key exception to this is to be found in the charismatic wing of the Church and this is not a coincidence. How you view the spiritual realm and its connection to your world will determine what precisely you think of spiritual warfare, if you think much of it at all.                                                                                                                                         In addition, it is the consequence of one particular stumbling block, which is the widespread illiteracy of the Bible. It is difficult to have important conversations across the Church as well because the languages and contexts of Christianity are far too wide ranging. Some of this cannot be helped temporarily. 1 Corinthians 13:12 says, “For now we only see a reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.” (NIV) This is why salvation is by the grace of God alone- we cannot possibly have full understanding in our present state, therefore we will sometimes err. But there is also the issue of knowing what is in the Bible. It would be scandalous how unfamiliar Christians were with the Bible if more people cared. Misapplication of scripture is the twin stumbling block of Biblical ignorance with its own whole history and contemporary presence.

            There are three key weapons against truth blocking: knowledge, honesty, and love. Christians must read the Bible and seek to understand what they are reading, meaning that substantial prayer must be considered a part of studying Scripture. Christians must seek to emulate Christ. In particular, they need to emulate the love and honesty of Christ, not only because these are important in and of themselves but because the main accusations against Christians are that they are dishonest, hypocritical, and unloving. These accusations are used as weapons to convince Christians to stray as well. So, the war on truth blocking is not only a war of apologetics, but of discipleship as well.