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The Third Sunday in Lent is March 12, 2023.
Readings for Year A can be found here.
The Gospel is as follows (emphases mine):
John 4:5-42
4:5 So he came to a Samaritan city called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob had given to his son Joseph.
4:6 Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, tired out by his journey, was sitting by the well. It was about noon.
4:7 A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.”
4:8 (His disciples had gone to the city to buy food.)
4:9 The Samaritan woman said to him, “How is it that you, a Jew, ask a drink of me, a woman of Samaria?” (Jews do not share things in common with Samaritans.)
4:10 Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is that is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.”
4:11 The woman said to him, “Sir, you have no bucket, and the well is deep. Where do you get that living water?
4:12 Are you greater than our ancestor Jacob, who gave us the well, and with his sons and his flocks drank from it?”
4:13 Jesus said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will be thirsty again,
4:14 but those who drink of the water that I will give them will never be thirsty. The water that I will give will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life.”
4:15 The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I may never be thirsty or have to keep coming here to draw water.”
4:16 Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come back.”
4:17 The woman answered him, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband’;
4:18 for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. What you have said is true!”
4:19 The woman said to him, “Sir, I see that you are a prophet.
4:20 Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you say that the place where people must worship is in Jerusalem.”
4:21 Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem.
4:22 You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews.
4:23 But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such as these to worship him.
4:24 God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”
4:25 The woman said to him, “I know that Messiah is coming” (who is called Christ). “When he comes, he will proclaim all things to us.”
4:26 Jesus said to her, “I am he, the one who is speaking to you.”
4:27 Just then his disciples came. They were astonished that he was speaking with a woman, but no one said, “What do you want?” or, “Why are you speaking with her?”
4:28 Then the woman left her water jar and went back to the city. She said to the people,
4:29 “Come and see a man who told me everything I have ever done! He cannot be the Messiah, can he?”
4:30 They left the city and were on their way to him.
4:31 Meanwhile the disciples were urging him, “Rabbi, eat something.”
4:32 But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you do not know about.”
4:33 So the disciples said to one another, “Surely no one has brought him something to eat?”
4:34 Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to complete his work.
4:35 Do you not say, ‘Four months more, then comes the harvest’? But I tell you, look around you, and see how the fields are ripe for harvesting.
4:36 The reaper is already receiving wages and is gathering fruit for eternal life, so that sower and reaper may rejoice together.
4:37 For here the saying holds true, ‘One sows and another reaps.’
4:38 I sent you to reap that for which you did not labor. Others have labored, and you have entered into their labor.”
4:39 Many Samaritans from that city believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me everything I have ever done.”
4:40 So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them; and he stayed there two days.
4:41 And many more believed because of his word.
4:42 They said to the woman, “It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this is truly the Savior of the world.”
Commentary comes from Matthew Henry and John MacArthur.
I will be writing this in more than one part, as this is almost a whole chapter. As such, Forbidden Bible Verses will appear sometime next week.
Last week’s reading — John 3:1-17 — was about the prominent Pharisee Nicodemus who sought Jesus in the night to learn more about Him.
It is interesting to contrast our Lord’s one-on-one encounter with him compared to that of the Samaritan woman, who was an outcast and an adulteress.
In both, Jesus cites spiritual analogies involving water. In the case of Nicodemus, it was being born of water and the Spirit. Here it is about receiving living water. Both analogies point to eternal salvation.
John MacArthur says:
We learn some things from Nicodemus, how to respond to someone who comes and says, “I want to enter the kingdom,” and Jesus says, “Well, wait a minute, that’s not in your power, you need to be born from above.” And we understand that. And so you need to pray and ask God for that new birth if you want to be in His kingdom …
Unlike Nicodemus, who sought out Jesus, here’s a woman who wasn’t looking for Him at all, didn’t know He existed, had no idea who He was. He is an unknown, unsought stranger that she meets sitting on a well who is as far as she is concerned really bizarre, strange. He is saying very strange things, things she can’t sort out—at least that’s how it starts.
Jesus dismisses her indifference. It’s not a barrier. He dismisses her ignorance. It’s not a barrier. And He dismisses, this is important, her immorality … That’s not the enemy, that’s the mission field. And all sinners are in the same situation headed for the same hell, even if they’re not homosexuals or they’re not Islamic terrorists. They’re alienated from God and it’s our responsibility in this world to go to them. They are the sick who need the physician. They are the unrighteous, the sinners.
After Jesus met with Nicodemus, St John tells us that He was baptising at the same time as John the Baptist (John 3:22-24):
22 After this, Jesus and his disciples went out into the Judean countryside, where he spent some time with them, and baptized. 23 Now John also was baptizing at Aenon near Salim, because there was plenty of water, and people were coming and being baptized. 24 (This was before John was put in prison.)
At the beginning of John 4, the evangelist tells us that Jesus had His disciples do the baptising. The Pharisees, who did not like John the Baptist, found out that Jesus was gaining more disciples than His cousin, hence our Lord’s departure (John 4:1-4):
4 Now Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard that he was gaining and baptizing more disciples than John— 2 although in fact it was not Jesus who baptized, but his disciples. 3 So he left Judea and went back once more to Galilee.
4 Now he had to go through Samaria.
By the time that happened, John the Baptist was in prison, as Matthew Henry’s commentary tells us:
Observe, 1. When the Pharisees thought they had got rid of John (for he was by this time imprisoned), and were pleasing themselves with that, Jesus appears, who was a greater vexation to them than ever John had been. The witnesses will rise again. 2. That which grieved them was that Christ made so many disciples. The success of the gospel exasperates its enemies, and it is a good sign that it is getting ground when the powers of darkness are enraged against it.
The quickest way to Galilee was through Samaria, although because the Jews considered Samaritans unclean, the more pious among them went via one of two more circuitous routes.
MacArthur surmises there was also a divine plan involved in going through Samaria:
If you are a severely fastidious and sort of orthodox Jew, worried about defilement, you either take the coastal route, or you take the eastern route across the Jordan River because you don’t want to go through Samaria. But here He had to pass through Samaria.
Literally in the Greek, it was necessary, it was required for Him to go through Samaria. We could argue that it was the shortest route and so that laid the necessity on Him. He wanted to get out of there. And He didn’t want to prolong His trip. He wanted to get to Galilee as quickly as possible so He took the shortest route. But I think we would have to go beyond that and say He had to go through Samaria because there was a sovereign appointment, that it was established for Him with a woman by a well and that had been ordained before the foundation of the world. And it was going to lead to her salvation and the salvation of an entire group of people from a local Samaritan village. He had to go that way.
MacArthur says that St John includes the story of the Samaritan woman as further proof of His deity, the theme of his Gospel:
… the purpose of John is not set aside here, and the purpose of John is stated again in chapter 20, verse 31 of his gospel: “These things are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you might have life in His name.” So while it is about the woman and her conversion, that is the secondary purpose of this section as we would know, being consistent with John’s mission. The primary purpose is to unveil Christ. The primary purpose is to declare Jesus as the Messiah, the Son of God. The primary purpose is to put Him on display. And in this account, His humanity is on display as He is weary and thirsty sitting by a well.
But His deity is also on display because He meets a woman whom He has never met in His life and He knows her entire history. So we see His humanity and His weariness. We see His deity and His omniscience. It is then, more than it is anything else, a presentation of Christ. And what makes it unique is that up to now in the gospel of John, John the writer, John the apostle has presented Christ as the Son of God. John the Baptist has presented Christ as the Messiah. The disciples of Jesus have given testimony to the fact that He is the Messiah. So we have the witness of John the apostle. We have the witness of John the Baptist. We have the witness of the disciples. But this is the first time that the proclamation of the messiahship of Jesus comes from His own lips and that we find in verses 25 and 26 where the woman speaks of the Christ, the Messiah who will come, and Jesus said to her in verse 26, “I who speak to you am He.”
John tells us that Jesus came to a Samaritan city called Sychar, near the plot of ground that Jacob gave to his son Joseph (verse 5).
MacArthur reminds us that Samaria’s history began in 722 BC:
Samaritans were essentially a corrupted form of the Jewish race. The Jews who remained in the northern kingdom of Israel when the Assyrians came and took them captive in 722—the Jews that remained after the population was removed the land—intermarried with all kinds of pagan, idolatrous nations and so they were a hybrid people who had forsaken their Judaism and committed the most heinous crime that a Jew could commit, and that was to mingle with idolatrous Gentiles. They had done that. They were outcasts …
Now Samaria originally was the name of the capital city of the northern kingdom. When the kingdoms split after Solomon—Solomon was the last king of the unified kingdom (Saul, David, Solomon, and from Solomon’s sons)—the kingdom split, ten tribes went north, two stayed south. The south became known as Judah. The north as Israel. That’s historic.
When the kingdom was established independently in the north, Omri, who was one of the kings of the north…and by the way, all of them were evil, all of them were wicked, all of them were unrighteous, there was never a good king in the north. But Omri, according to 1 Kings 16, identified Samaria as the capital city. Well, it didn’t take long for the word Samaria to extend from the capital city to the whole region, so it all became known as Samaria.
In Samaria, somewhere along the way, is a village called Sychar. So we read there that He came to this place, a city in Samaria called Sychar. Probably modern Askar, still around, and located on the slope of Mount Ebal, opposite Mount Gerizim. Do you remember Ebal and Gerizim from Deuteronomy 28? The mountains of cursing and blessing where God warned the people, “If they obeyed they’d be blessed, if they didn’t, they’d be cursed?” That area …
Now again, you go back to 720, 722 B. C., Assyria captures the northern kingdom. Transports everybody out. You can read the story yourself in 2 Kings 17. Takes everybody into captivity, leaves a few people there, a few of the Jews from the ten tribes, and into the district come Babylonians, people from Cuthah, Avva, Hamath, Sepharvaim. They’re even listed in that chapter of 2 Kings. They come in, they intermingle, they bring their gods, they get married, they lose their racial purity. This is a gross crime in the eyes of the Jews. They concoct some bizarre form of their own religion, they build a temple on Mount Gerizim and they carry on their own kind of worship.
The bitterness is profound after the Jews in the southern kingdom, Judah, came back from captivity. Remember they came back from their captivity. After they came back and rebuilt, you remember, it was Samaritans who tried to help them. Do you remember at the story of Nehemiah? The Samaritans wanted to help them and they refused to let them help. And so the Samaritans then tried to stop what they were doing and the bitterness got deeper and deeper and it lasted, and it lasted, and it lasted.
A renegade Jew, actually, it was a renegade Jew named Manasseh, who married a daughter of the Samaritan Sanballat. You remember he was the enemy of Nehemiah. This renegade Jew named Manasseh, who married the daughter of Sanballat, he’s the one that went up into Samaria and built the temple to sort of be their temple because they couldn’t be a part of the new temple being built in Jerusalem. So this rivalry had gone on. Here we are four or five hundred years later and the attitudes are bitter and deep.
MacArthur says that, if Jesus had been staying with Mary, Martha and Lazarus in Bethany, this place was about 20 miles away. It would not have been a flat walk but a hilly hike.
Jacob’s well was at this place, where Jesus arrived, exhausted from His journey; He sat by the well, and it was about noon (verse 6).
MacArthur elaborates:
He came to this place, which is also further identified by letting us know that this is a place where Jacob purchased land and dug a well and then bequeathed that land and well to his son Joseph. And Joseph, of course, was even later buried there after the land was conquered by Joshua post-captivity. So this is just identifying our historical, geographic location, which the Bible loves to do because it is a real book about real people doing real things in real places. So Jesus goes the twenty miles and He arrives near Sychar, and some suggest that Jacob’s well—they know where that is today. It was probably between a half a mile and a mile away from the village of Sychar. Askar is about a half a mile or so away.
Henry has more biblical history on the location:
The place described. It was called Sychar; probably the same with Sichem, or Shechem, a place which we read much of in the Old Testament. Thus are the names of places commonly corrupted by tract of time. Shechem yielded the first proselyte that ever came into the church of Israel (Gen 34 24), and now it is the first place where the gospel is preached out of the commonwealth of Israel; so Dr. Lightfoot observes; as also that the valley of Achor, which was given for a door of hope, hope to the poor Gentiles, ran along by this city, Hos 2 15. Abimelech was made king here; it was Jeroboam’s royal seat; but the evangelist, when he would give us the antiquities of the place, takes notice of Jacob’s interest there, which was more its honour than its crowned heads. [1.] Here lay Jacob’s ground, the parcel of ground which Jacob gave to his son Joseph, whose bones were buried in it, Gen 48 22; Josh 24 32. Probably this is mentioned to intimate that Christ, when he reposed himself hard by here, took occasion from the ground which Jacob gave Joseph to meditate on the good report which the elders by faith obtained. Jerome chose to live in the land of Canaan, that the sight of the places might affect him the more with scripture stories. [2.] Here was Jacob’s well which he digged, or at least used, for himself and his family. We find no mention of this well in the Old Testament; but the tradition was that it was Jacob’s well.
Some Bible translations express part of verse 6 in these words, ‘Jesus being wearied from His journey was sitting thus‘. MacArthur explains what ‘sitting thus’ means:
Wearied, in a wearied condition; He sat in a slumped, wearied condition by the well. It was about the sixth hour. The day began at dawn, which means it began say around 6 A.M. and sixth hour puts it at noon. It is high noon; it is the middle of the day. The sun is at its peak and He has walked 20 miles, a rigorous, rigorous walk that morning. And He’s exhausted. The word “wearied,” kopiao, means to be to the point of sweat and exhaustion. It’s an extreme condition. He is worn out. He is spent. And at noon, under the blazing sun, He sits down on the edge of the well.
A Samaritan woman came to draw water and Jesus said to her — in the imperative — ‘Give Me a drink’ (verse 7). His disciples had gone into the city to buy something to eat (verse 8).
Henry reminds us to keep in mind our Lord’s discomfort on this and other occasions (particularly the Cross) while we do everything we can for our own physical comfort:
[1.] Labouring under the common fatigue of travellers … Here we see, First, That he was a true man, and subject to the common infirmities of the human nature. Toil came in with sin (Gen 3 19), and therefore Christ, having made himself a curse for us, submitted to it. Secondly, That he was a poor man, else he might have travelled on horseback or in a chariot. To this instance of meanness and mortification he humbled himself for us, that he went all his journeys on foot. When servants were on horses, princes walked as servants on the earth, Eccl 10 7. When we are carried easily, let us think on the weariness of our Master. Thirdly, It should seem that he was but a tender man, and not of a robust constitution; it should seem, his disciples were not tired, for they went into the town without any difficulty, when their Master sat down, and could not go a step further. Bodies of the finest mould are most sensible of fatigue, and can worst bear it.
[2.] We have him here betaking himself to the common relief of travellers; Being wearied, he sat thus on the well. First, He sat on the well, an uneasy place, cold and hard; he had no couch, no easy chair to repose himself in, but took to that which was next hand, to teach us not to be nice and curious in the conveniences of this life, but content with mean things. Secondly, He sat thus, in an uneasy posture; sat carelessly—incuriose et neglectim; or he sat so as people that are wearied with travelling are accustomed to sit.
MacArthur adds that Jesus had the power to make Himself comfortable but never did:
… Jesus never did a miracle to quench His own thirst, satisfy His own hunger, or provide anything for Himself, never. There’s no record in all four gospels that Jesus ever did any miracle to feed Himself, provide for Himself, and thus He honored work, and He honored effort, and He honored care, and He honored sacrifice, and He honored giving and all the things that we do in life to sustain ourselves. This was also part of His commitment to humanity. We get what we need through either our own work, and our own effort, or somebody else’s work and somebody else’s effort. He didn’t do those kinds of miracles that would supply His own wants.
It’s important to note that men of that era, particularly Jews, did not speak to women.
MacArthur says:
It’s a shocking thing, really, very shocking. Not so much in our culture, obviously, but in that culture it’s a shocking thing for Him to do because men don’t speak with women in public. That’s a breach of religious etiquette. And especially rabbis don’t speak to women in public. In fact, I remember reading years ago, a group of Pharisees and rabbis who were called the bruised and bleeding Pharisees and the reason they were bruised and bleeding was because every time they saw a woman they closed their eyes and they kept running into buildings. Jewish men didn’t talk to women. Do you know that Jewish rabbis were not supposed to talk to the women of their own family in public.
The Samaritan woman responded to our Lord’s request for water, asking how a Jew could ask a drink of a Samaritan woman, to which St John adds that Jews did not share things in common with Samaritans (verse 9).
MacArthur explains John’s parenthetical insertion:
… just to take that out of English and put it in Greek, “For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.” Literally the verb there is, “They don’t use the same utensils.” Literally, “Use not anything together with Samaritans.” They don’t use the same things. They don’t drink out of the same cup. Very specific. She’s saying, “I know Your culture, I know what You think about us.” And by the way, Jesus has shattered that because that was non-biblical tradition. That kind of hatred toward the Samaritans that came from the Jews was wrong, it was illegitimate.
Henry, as MacArthur does (see above), points out divine providence at work in this encounter:
There comes a woman of Samaria to draw water. This intimates her poverty, she had no servant to be a drawer of water; and her industry, she would do it herself. See here, First, How God owns and approves of honest humble diligence in our places. Christ was made known to the shepherds when they were keeping their flock. Secondly, How the divine Providence brings about glorious purposes by events which seem to us fortuitous and accidental. This woman’s meeting with Christ at the well may remind us of the stories of Rebekah, Rachel, and Jethro’s daughter, who all met with husbands, good husbands, no worse than Isaac, Jacob, and Moses, when they came to the wells for water. Thirdly, How the preventing grace of God sometimes brings people unexpectedly under the means of conversion and salvation. He is found of them that sought him not.
Jesus answered the woman’s query by saying that, if she only knew who was asking her for a drink, she would have asked Him instead and He would have given her living water (verse 10).
MacArthur elaborates on this verse, telling us that Jesus was showing the woman mercy by offering her the free gift of living water, or divine grace unto salvation:
This is unsolicited mercy, using physical thirst and water as the contact point, He reverses the situation. He starts out thirsty, asks her to give Him a drink. Turns the table. Identifies her as the thirsty one and He the source of water. She doesn’t know where He’s going with this. But here is mercy. It is pure mercy because He says, “If you knew the gift of God,” the dorean, the free gift of God. And this is where evangelism starts. You inaugurate the conversation, you find your way in at a common point of interest, and then comes the reality that you are offering the sinner without regard to morality, okay? It is mercy with no regard for morality. It is mercy with no regard for religion. It is just mercy. It is just grace.
It is the gift of God. This is the unique glory of the gospel. In opposition to all religion, all religion says, “Do this, do this, do this, do this, and God will give you this.” The gospel says, “In whatever state you’re in religiously, and whatever state you’re in morally, here’s a gift.” It is the gift of God. It is a gift of grace. It is a gift of mercy. Dorean, the word here, is “free gift.” Paul loves that word. Paul uses that word in Romans. He uses it in chapter 5, the free gift, the free gift. And that’s where our Lord starts with this unsolicited mercy being offered.
“If you knew the free gift, and if you knew who it is that said to you, ‘Give Me a drink,’ you would have”…What?…“you would have”…What?…“asked Him.” What did we say when we were going through regeneration in John 3? Regeneration is a work of God. You can’t participate in your own birth. All you can do is ask. All you can do is ask. There’s a gift from God. I’m here to give it if you only ask, and if you would ask Him—speaking in the third person concerning Himself—He would have given you living water. And with that statement about living water, He takes the conversation in a strongly spiritual direction, a strongly spiritual direction.
Now the woman is listening to our Lord’s words literally. Both our commentators say that she is probably hard-bitten because of her reputation. What happens when we encounter hard-bitten people? They can be dismissive, sarcastic and off-putting — all deliberate ways of saying, ‘Leave me alone’. Here one can certainly also factor in the animosity between Jews and Samaritans.
In that mindset, she addresses Jesus as ‘Sir’ — good move — but then goes on to say that He has no bucket and the well is deep; where will He get that living water (verse 11)?
She goes on to ask if He is greater than their father Jacob, who gave them the well, along with his sons and his flocks who drank from it (verse 12).
She’s mocking Jesus. She is also saying that He is an interloper, because, in a Samaritan’s mind, Jacob was their ancestral father and no one else’s. The Samaritans were mistaken. As Henry points out:
How absurd were those pretensions! …
She was out in speaking of Christ as not worthy to be compared with our father Jacob. An over-fond veneration for antiquity makes God’s graces, in the good people of our own day, to be slighted.
Jesus continued, undeterred (as one would expect), saying that everyone drinking ‘this water’ (the well water) will be thirsty again (verse 13), but those who drink of the water that He gives them will never thirst; His water will become in them a spring of water gushing up to eternal life (verse 14).
MacArthur says:
In verse 14, our Lord promises an endless supply of satisfying water forever and really gets specific—we’re talking about eternal life. This is the fountain of youth. This is the fountain of eternal life. Now His point is unmistakable, unmistakable. This is permanent, consistent, full, satisfying, everlasting mercy and blessing from God to the sinner who asks. The analogy has now moved to its point. The doctrine is the doctrine of eternal life. He’s offering her eternal life which is a spiritual reality—the gift of mercy, the gift of grace for all who ask. What is it? It’s living water. It’s satisfaction forever, soul satisfaction forever.
The woman responded to Jesus in the imperative, ‘Give me this water’, again addressing Him as ‘Sir’, so that she would be relieved of thirst and never more have to return to the well (verse 15).
Both commentators say that it is difficult to know what was in her mind when she issued that imperative.
MacArthur says:
… all I can see in her is incredulity, who is this man and what is He talking about? What is she talking about? Does she get some of it? Maybe. Is she starting to think in terms of spiritual things and eternal things? Maybe. Or is this just more mockery? Or is it mingled? I don’t know at what point she is, as the Spirit of God works on her heart through the words of the Savior. I don’t know.
Henry says:
First, Some think that she speaks tauntingly, and ridicules what Christ had said as mere stuff; and, in derision of it, not desires, but challenges him to give her some of this water: “A rare invention; it will save me a great deal of pains if I never come hither to draw.“ But, Secondly, Others think that it was a well-meant but weak and ignorant desire. She apprehended that he meant something very good and useful, and therefore saith Amen, at a venture. Whatever it be, let me have it; who will show me any good? Ease, or saving of labour, is a valuable good to poor labouring people. Note, 1. Even those that are weak and ignorant may yet have some faint and fluctuating desires towards Christ and his gifts, and some good wishes of grace and glory. 2. Carnal hearts, in their best wishes, look no higher than carnal ends. “Give it to me,” saith she, “not that I may have everlasting life” (which Christ proposed), “but that I come not hither to draw.“
Then Jesus issued her with a command to go get her husband and bring him to the well (verse 16).
This is the turning point for the woman, even though she does not yet realise it.
MacArthur give us this analysis:
… she likely turned at that point to take her water and go back to the village, wondering about this somewhat delusional stranger making such strange claims. And then in verse 16 we come to the next element in this encounter. “He said to her, ‘Go call your husband and come here.’” That’s a bold command and that’s a very strong command. And Jesus always spoke with a great amount of authority, perhaps authority the likes of which no one has ever possessed but Him. This is a command. Go call your husband and come here–which means that she was probably on the way. And He commands her to go call her husband and bring him back.
The woman said that she had no husband; Jesus told her that she was correct in saying that (verse 17), because, in fact, she has had five husbands and that the man with her at that time was not her husband, therefore, what she said was true (verse 18).
That explains why she was at the well at the hottest point of the day to collect water. Respectable women collected water later in the day, when the weather was cooler. It was probably a time when they gathered around for a bit of chat. They probably would have shunned this woman for being immoral, for being an adulteress. Therefore, she went to gather water when she would have gone unnoticed. Otherwise, she might have received verbal abuse.
Let us look at what Jesus said in verses 17 and 18. MacArthur continues with his analysis:
“To which she responds correctly, ‘I have no husband.’” That brings us to the fourth component in His personal evangelism. First there was that condescension to talk to her about something that God had for her that was wonderful, living water, to extend that to the fact that it was eternal life, unparalleled promise. But there’s something else that has to be talked about. And so the fourth point is an unhesitating conviction…an unhesitating conviction sought. “Yes,” unexpected condescension offered, unsolicited mercy granted, unparalleled promise given, but–stop right there. If you had a person at that point pray a prayer, you might well have a false convert, because there’s something that hasn’t been dealt with and that’s sin. If you evangelize purely on the basis of all the gifts of God, everybody signs up, everybody signs up.
… If all you do is that and then ask for a response, you’re going to get a false conversion, and then you’re going to get somebody who is deceived about their true condition.
Well, like all sinners, she doesn’t want to tell the whole truth, so she says, “I have no husband.” Well, that was right and Jesus acknowledged that. He said at the end of verse 18, “You have truly said.” I mean, it’s not the whole truth but she didn’t have a husband. When she said that, there was a mega shift in the conversation. No more talk of blessing, no more talk of mercies, no more talk of satisfaction, everything changes now. She will not be able to take a drop of living water. This initially indifferent, ignorant, careless sinner must be brought to conviction and repentance over her wretched condition. Since she’s unwilling to tell the whole truth, Jesus tells it for her.
She would have known about divorce and adultery, because the Samaritans accepted the first five books of the Bible, those belonging to Moses, the Pentateuch:
Samaritans accepted the Pentateuch. Most historians think they accepted only the Pentateuch, but that’s enough. Exodus 20, “Thou shalt not commit adultery,” and there’s plenty in the Pentateuch about the penalty for adultery was death, death. It’s wonderful to present to the sinner all the glories of the gospel, all the blessings, the gift of God, the living water, the eternal life. But it’s not enough to stop there, not enough to present the positive truth of soul-satisfying blessing from God …
We know divorce was very common among the Jews in Israel. It was also equally common, maybe more so, among the Samaritans. And so we can assume that this woman lived this kind of life where she was an adulteress on repeated occasions and consequently led to repeated divorces and now she’s following the same pattern, living with a man who is not her husband. She’s an adulteress living in an immoral relationship.
And by the way, I just want to make a footnote here because this comes up in conversations. Jesus says, “The one you now have is not your husband.” She had a man in her life living with her but he was not her husband. So I need to remind you that living together doesn’t make a marriage? Living together doesn’t make a marriage. Living together is idolatry–adultery without marriage. Marriage is…marriage is always restricted to a covenant, a binding, formal, social, official, public covenant.
When Jesus stated that He knew about her, which would have been through His omniscience, she addressed Him once more as ‘Sir’ and said, ‘I see that you are a prophet’ (verse 19).
In older translations ‘see’ is ‘perceive’. MacArthur explains the word for us:
When the word “perceive” is used in the original language, it’s theoreo, which means “to come to the knowledge of.” It’s used in John chapter 6 of beholding the Son in a knowing way. She came to know and believe that He is at least a prophet, because He can’t know this unless God is telling Him. He knew her sin. “You are a prophet.”
She then moved on to a spiritual realm in her conversation.
To be continued tomorrow …
The three-year Lectionary that many Catholics and Protestants hear in public worship gives us a great variety of Holy Scripture.
Yet, it doesn’t tell the whole story.
My series Forbidden Bible Verses — ones the Lectionary editors and their clergy omit — examines the passages we do not hear in church. These missing verses are also Essential Bible Verses, ones we should study with care and attention. Often, we find that they carry difficult messages and warnings.
Today’s reading is from the English Standard Version Anglicised (ESVUK) with commentary by Matthew Henry and John MacArthur.
13 As for you, brothers, do not grow weary in doing good. 14 If anyone does not obey what we say in this letter, take note of that person, and have nothing to do with him, that he may be ashamed. 15 Do not regard him as an enemy, but warn him as a brother.
Benediction
16 Now may the Lord of peace himself give you peace at all times in every way. The Lord be with you all.
17 I, Paul, write this greeting with my own hand. This is the sign of genuineness in every letter of mine; it is the way I write. 18 The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all.
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Last week’s post discussed Paul’s prayer request for his ministry, the threat of evil men with no faith, the constancy of the Lord in protecting His faithful from Satan and the Apostle’s statement of confidence in the Thessalonians’ Christian journey.
As he closes his second of two letters to the congregation, he gives general reminders, particularly about the importance of work (emphases mine):
Warning Against Idleness
6 Now we command you, brothers, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you keep away from any brother who is walking in idleness and not in accord with the tradition that you received from us. 7 For you yourselves know how you ought to imitate us, because we were not idle when we were with you, 8 nor did we eat anyone’s bread without paying for it, but with toil and labour we worked night and day, that we might not be a burden to any of you. 9 It was not because we do not have that right, but to give you in ourselves an example to imitate. 10 For even when we were with you, we would give you this command: If anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat. 11 For we hear that some among you walk in idleness, not busy at work, but busybodies. 12 Now such persons we command and encourage in the Lord Jesus Christ to do their work quietly and to earn their own living.[d]
Paul has a message for those in Thessalonica who are hard working and supporting the church: do not weary in doing good (verse 13).
John MacArthur says:
When I first read it, I thought, “Well, what does this have to do with anything?” and then as I thought, I saw it. “But as for you, brethren” – that’s the rest, those of you that are working, those of you that are having to pay for these people, having to pass out your money and give them food – “the rest of you, brethren, do not grow weary of doing good.” You see, the potential was they would become so tired of these deadbeats, they’d become so fed up with giving this money and this charity to these lazy people, that they would become very weary of the whole process, and then when somebody came with a real need, they would be indifferent to it. So he’s saying, “Look, don’t you grow weary of doing what is really good.” The assumption is they were weary of taking care of these people who should have been taking care of themselves, and he says don’t let your weariness translate over to weariness in doing what you really should do, doing what is good. Kalos is the term that’s attached to the verb there. It means what is perceived by others to be noble, so says Milligan in his lexicon. What is perceived to be noble. Do what is noble.
You go back to the Psalms and you’re going to find out over and over again that we’re to take care of the poor and that when you take care of the poor, God will bless you. Go back to Proverbs, you’re going to find the same thing. Go back to Isaiah, go to Luke chapter 14 verses 12 to 14, and what does Jesus say? When you have a dinner, when you have a reception, don’t invite the wealthy people who are going to reciprocate, invite the blind and the lame and the halt and the maimed and the poor who can never pay you back, and God will pay you back in eternity in the resurrection. Take care of the poor.
Matthew Henry’s commentary has a more uplifting message about the verse:
He exhorts those that did well not to be weary in well-doing (v. 13); as if he had said, “Go on and prosper. The Lord is with you while you are with him. See that whatever you do, that is good, you persevere therein. Hold on your way, and hold out to the end. You must never give over, nor tire in your work. It will be time enough to rest when you come to heaven, that everlasting rest which remains for the people of God.“
Paul has strong words about those who refuse to obey the content of his letter: the congregation should take note of that person and, effectively, shun them so as to shame him into obedience (verse 14).
Paul really wanted everyone in the congregation to earn their own way. There were cultural reasons why people didn’t work. The Greeks considered work a punishment from the gods. Even though the people Paul wrote about were Christians, old habits die hard. There was also another group who thought that the Second Coming was imminent; therefore, they questioned the need to work when Jesus could be returning at any moment.
MacArthur says that:
they perhaps have been influenced by some of the Jewish background of the scribes who thought that anything other than studying the law was an unworthy way to spend your life. They surely were affected by the general Greek attitude that work was demeaning and sordid and base and low and belonged only to slaves and not to freemen.
And they probably had had those predispositions somewhat exaggerated by virtue of the fact that someone had come along and told them that they were already in the day of the Lord and the return of Christ was imminent and there probably wasn’t much use in doing anything other than evangelizing and studying the Word of God. And so they had given themselves to that happily because of their disdain for work anyway. Problem was, at least long term, if you can call several months long term for the Thessalonians in that Paul had dealt with it when he was there. Several months later, when he wrote them the first letter, he dealt with it, and here he is writing a second letter and dealing with it a third time. They didn’t want to work. It was beneath them.
MacArthur explains Paul’s reasoning:
Not only does disfellowship, example, survival, and harmony constitute a motive for going to work, but shame. Look at verse 14. “If anyone doesn’t obey our instruction in this letter, take special note of that man and do not associate with him so that he may be put to shame.” If anybody doesn’t obey the instruction in this letter, I’m telling you, they are really obstinate. He said it over and over again when he was there. He wrote it a couple of times in the first letter. He’s now saying it again, and if these people don’t obey this instruction, you take special note of that man. Mark him out. Give him serious attention. Keep on noticing that person. Keep your eye on that person for the purpose of not associating with him. Watch him so that you can avoid him. Stay away from him.
Withdraw your fellowship, a double compound verb meaning do not get mixed up with. Put the pressure of isolation. Only this time, you’re pushing him further. This continues to be that third step of discipline where you’re isolating him but your isolation is keeping him at a distance. You take note, you watch the pattern, and you avoid the man in order that he may be put to shame. Now you’ve gone beyond just his isolation, you’re trying to make him feel shame. That’s a distasteful word. Literally in the Greek it means to turn on yourself, to feel what you really are. Let him see what he really is, a wicked, disobedient, recalcitrant sinner. Shame him because he won’t work.
Can you imagine someone saying that today, especially on social media? The Conservative MP Lee Anderson ventured partially into that territory on food banks last year and got hammered for it. He also said that those visiting his local food bank in Ashfield, Nottinghamshire, had to sign up for courses on budgeting and cooking in order to continue to use it. He’s been there and done it as a single father, so he knows whereof he speaks, but that didn’t matter. St Paul would have backed him up, that’s for sure.
Henry is gentler, yet no less firm on the censure:
The directions of the apostle are carefully to be observed in our conduct towards disorderly persons. We must be very cautious in church-censures and church-discipline. We must, First, Note that man who is suspected or charged with not obeying the word of God, or walking contrary thereto, that is, we must have sufficient proof of his fault before we proceed further. We must, Secondly, Admonish him in a friendly manner; we must put him in mind of his sin, and of his duty; and this should be done privately (Matt 18 15); then, if he will not hear, we must, Thirdly, Withdraw from him, and not keep company with him, that is, we must avoid familiar converse and society with such, for two reasons, namely, that we may not learn his evil ways; for he who follows vain and idle persons, and keeps company with such, is in danger of becoming like them. Another reason is for the shaming, and so the reforming, of those that offend, that when idle and disorderly persons see how their loose practices are disliked by all wise and good people they may be ashamed of them, and walk more orderly.
Paul says that the shunned person should not be considered an enemy but rather as a brother in need of correction (verse 15).
Henry says there is always hope that such a person can mend his errant ways:
if they be reclaimed and reformed by these censures, they will recover their credit and comfort, and right to church-privileges as brethren.
MacArthur goes further, citing Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians:
No matter what the sin is, it’s the same things that should motivate. The threat of losing the fellowship with other believers, the fact that you have not followed the holy example of those who have walked before you, even the issue of survival – because you can die from continued sin, some Corinthians did – and certainly the idea of harmony, you’re disrupting and ripping and tearing the unity of the church, and certainly shame, you should feel guilt and shame, and certainly love should call you back as those who are in the body of Christ and are your brothers and sisters woo you. And so this is how we deal with any believer in any pattern of sin.
And if they resist this, then you can treat them like an enemy. Then you can turn them over to Satan. Then Paul says in 1 Corinthians 5, “I don’t want you to have any fellowship with them, I don’t even want you to eat with them.” I want you to turn them out totally. But here, Paul, one more time, for the third time in three steps, is pleading with the church to call them back.
Paul concludes with his benediction, his prayer of blessing, to the Thessalonians.
He prays that the Lord of peace himself gives the Thessalonians peace at all times, in every way and that the Lord be with them all (verse 16).
MacArthur explains that Paul wants to ensure they know they have to rely on the Triune God, not themselves:
This is the fourth time he has had, what we would call, a prayer wish, a benediction, in which he expresses the desire of his heart. It’s almost as if he can only go so far and he’s got this uncapped desire to ask God to enable them to do what he says. And every so often the praying just bursts forth. He goes a little while in chapter 1 and then prays for God’s enabling, a little while in chapter 2 and prays for God’s enabling, and twice he does it in chapter 3. You see, he understands that no matter what you know as a Christian, you don’t pull it off on your own. You must be aided by the Lord, you must lean on His resources. And so in this last simple little closing section Paul calls on divine resources. He calls on personal blessings from the Lord to enable the Thessalonians, and all the rest of us, to respond to what he has taught. And he really is speaking about four things that we need. We need the Lord’s peace. We need the Lord’s strength. We need the Lord’s truth. And we need the Lord’s grace. And all four of them are in those three little verses; the Lord’s peace, strength, truth and grace …
First of all then he prays or wishes for their experience of God’s peace, verse 16, “Now may the Lord of peace Himself continually grant you peace.” The first two words, “now may” mark a transition. The word “now” is transitional. He’s moving from command and exhortation to petition and to prayer. He is now turning to the Lord. He is expressing not the prayer itself but the wish in his heart that shows up when he prays. And his wish is for them to experience peace, peace. He’s asking for what God has already promised, for God has promised His own peace and strength and truth and grace. It isn’t that he is asking something that God gives reluctantly or not at all. In fact, prayer really is asking God for what it is His will to give. Prayer really is lining up with what God has promised to do. He recognizes that God has promised His people peace and strength and truth and grace. And he pleads for God to fulfill His promise. He lines himself up with what God has expressed as His own intention and purpose. His first request is for that lovely, that most sought after, that most evasive and that most elusive reality called peace.
We hear and read the word ‘peace’ all the time, so much so that it has lost its meaning.
Here Paul writes of an inner peace that only God can give each one of us. He can only give us that peace when we are reconciled to Him as believers through Jesus Christ.
MacArthur says:
We’re talking about a spiritual peace. And spiritual peace — the true, deep-down peace — is the attitude of the heart and mind that calmly, confidently believes and thus knows that all is well between the soul and God. That’s the peace we’re talking about. It’s that confidence that everything is right between myself and God and He is lovingly in control of my life in time and eternity. It is the presence of a calm assurance built on the knowledge that my sins are forgiven, God is concerned with my well-being and heaven is ahead. It’s a deep-down peace. It has nothing to do with what anybody says to you, it has nothing to do with what anybody does to you, or doesn’t do to you, it has nothing to do with any circumstance in life whatsoever. It is the peace that God gives to His beloved children. It is their possession and their privilege by right.
This peace is defined for us in several ways in verse 16. First of all, it is divine. “Now may the Lord of peace Himself grant you peace.” The Lord of peace is the one who gives it. He is the one who grants it. “Himself,” by the way, that pronoun is emphatic in the sentence and it’s emphasizing His personal involvement in this. “Himself, the Lord of peace, may He give you peace.” May God, the Lord, personally give it to you because it comes personally from Him. It is the very essence of His nature.
To say it simply, peace is an attribute of God. I don’t know if you think of it that way, you think of God being characterized by attributes of grace, and mercy and justice and righteousness and wisdom and truth and omnipotence and immutability and eternality and whatever. But do you ever think of God as being characteristically peace? He is peace. Whatever it is that He gives us He has and He is. God is love, we don’t argue about that. And God is also peace. He has no lack of perfect peace in His being. God is at all times at perfect peace. There’s no stress. God is never stressed. God is never in anxiety. God never worries, God never doubts, and God never fears. God is never at discord with Himself. He is never at cross purposes, it’s never so that He can’t make up His mind. He is never troubled. He is never indecisive. He is never unclear. He is never unsure. He is never threatened.
God lives in perfect calm, God lives in perfect tranquility, God lives in perfect contentment. Why? Because He’s in charge of everything and He can operate everything perfectly according to His own will exactly the way He wants it all the time. There is nothing in the entire universe that goes on that He doesn’t know about and there is nothing in the entire universe that can withstand His purposes. He knows there are no surprises for His omniscience. There are no unknowns to His omnipresence. There are no changes, no doubts, no fears. Even His wrath is clear, controlled, calm, and confident. There are no threats to His omnipotence. There is no possible sin that can stain His holiness. There is no sinner who can appear before Him who is beyond His grace. There is no threat to His immutable plan. There is no guilt in His mind. There is no shame in His mind. There is no regret in His mind for He has never done anything, said anything, or thought anything that He would in any way change.
He enjoys perfect and eternal harmony within Himself. He therefore is peace. And here He is called “the Lord of peace,” the Lord of the peace, literally, the definite article is there. The peace, not the kind the world has, but the real peace, the divine kind. He is peace, He is the source of peace. And what Paul wants is that the Lord of peace would give His kind of peace. If you look at the Trinity you find that it’s clear in Scripture that every member of the Trinity is peace and gives peace. First Thessalonians 5:23 says, “The God of peace,” so does Romans 15:33, Romans 16:20, 2 Corinthians 13:11, Philippians 4:9, and Hebrews 13:20, a common name for God, the God of peace. He is the author of peace. First Corinthians 14:33 says, “He is not the author of confusion but of peace.” He is peace, the originator, the source and the author of it.
The second member of the Trinity, the Son, the Lord Jesus Christ is here called “the Lord of peace.” Interestingly enough at the end of 1 Thessalonians Paul refers to the God of peace, here to the Lord of peace, both the first and second member of the trinity equally being God, equally being Lord, equally being the source of peace. Ephesians 2:14 says, “Christ who is our peace.” He is called in Scripture “the prince of peace.” He is peace. He is the source of peace. Colossians 1:20, He has made peace.
Also the Holy Spirit is the source of peace. The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace. Romans 14:17 says the kingdom is peace in the Holy Spirit.
So, God is peace. It is that divine peace possessed by the Trinity — Father, Son and Holy Spirit — that Paul wants us to have, that well-being that is deep-down settled and confident that all is well with God.
Divine peace is a free gift from God, one that He bestows on the truly faithful:
… we learn that it’s not only divine but it is a gift. “Now may the Lord of peace Himself grant you peace.” The word “grant” is the verb to give. It speaks of a gift. It is a sovereign gracious gift from the Trinity, bestowed on those who believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. It is a gift from God.
In Psalm 85, a wonderful verse, verse 8, you might not read this verse and think about it, but in Psalm 85:8 I read it to you because it ought to be kept in mind. “I will hear what God the Lord will say, for He will speak peace to His people, to His godly ones.” God grants peace to those who belong to Him.
This is so much a part of the New Testament. Start at Romans some time and read it in the first chapter of each of the letters: Romans, 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, 2 Thessalonians, Titus, Philemon, go into 2 John, and as you read you’ll find in all of those epistles peace, peace, peace given to God’s people. Sometimes it says grace and peace. Peace is a gift from the Lord. It is given to us by the Lord Jesus Christ and an example of that, you remember, in John 20 as he walked in the upper room to meet His disciples He said, “Peace be unto you,” in verse 19. In verse 21 He said, “Peace be unto you,” and again in verse 26, “Peace be unto you.” He was the giver of peace. It’s as if the Father authored peace, the Son purchased peace, and then gives it to us now in this age through His Holy Spirit …
There’s a third element in what he says and that is that this peace is not only divine and a gift but it is always available. “May the Lord of peace Himself continually give you peace.” By throwing the word “continually” in there, he is affirming that it is constantly available. This is not presumptuous as if God can only give it intermittently. He knows it’s always available. And he says, “I want God to give it to you all the time.”
Henry addresses the second half of verse 16, about the Lord’s presence:
That the presence of God might be with them: The Lord be with you all. We need nothing more to make us safe and happy, nor can we desire any thing better for ourselves and our friends, than to have God’s gracious presence with us and them. This will be a guide and guard in every way that we may go, and our comfort in every condition we may be in. It is the presence of God that makes heaven to be heaven, and this will make this earth to be like heaven. No matter where we are if God be with us, nor who is absent if God be with us, nor who is absent if God be present with us.
So that the Thessalonians know the letter is authentic, Paul writes his greeting in his own handwriting (verse 17). He would have dictated the rest of his letter to someone else to write.
MacArthur explains that false teachers sometimes sent not only the Thessalonians but also other of Paul’s congregations counterfeit letters:
Back in chapter 2, look at verse 2 for a moment. Somebody had come along and told them some lies ... And they lied to them about the Day of the Lord. This was a false teacher. But in order to make his lies believable, the middle of verse 2 says, he had “a letter as if from us,” to the effect that the Day of the Lord has come. In other words, to be believable, the false teacher said, “I’ve got a letter from Paul,” and he was waving around this thing, “this is my letter from Paul.” And Paul realized he had to deal with this. And I guess he hadn’t really faced this before. But when he wrote the first epistle it probably came to his attention that people were, one, not accepting it as from him. That became a reality soon and is still a reality today. You still have people today who want to deny that Paul wrote his letters. But there were…there are those people who would say, “Nah, nah, that’s not from Paul, we don’t accept that as authoritative.” If they didn’t like what it said they wouldn’t accept it as authoritative.
Well, Paul hadn’t…hadn’t really faced that until he wrote a letter. So he wrote 1 Thessalonians and now he becomes very much aware that people are going to deny his authorship. Secondly, they’re going to forge letters that aren’t written by him as if they were and therefore they’re going to take truth away from the church and they’re going to add lies to the church and confuse the church. Well he’s so burdened that they get the truth that what he says to them at the end of this letter is to seal the fact that this is indeed his own letter, he has written it. He says, “I, Paul, write this greeting with my own hand.” He’s dictated the letter, as was his custom. And he comes to the very end and he takes the pen away from his amanuensis or his secretary and with his own hands he says, “I am writing this greeting with my own hand and this is a distinguishing mark in every letter.” From now on, every single letter that comes from me is going to have something I have personally written with my own hand at the end, and then he adds, “This is the way I write.” You can tell whether it’s authentic because it’s going to have my writing, which is inimitable. We still do that. We authenticate documents today by a signature.
And what is he saying? He’s saying I am very concerned that you have the truth of God. There’s a lot more to come. I mean, you’ve got two letters. You’re going to be exposed before this deal is over to more of them from me, to some from John, to some from Peter, to some from Jude, to one from James. And you need to know all of that is the truth of God. I don’t want any doubt about mine and so I’m going to sign off every time like this. The only time he deviates from that in the future is in the book of Philemon which apparently, according to Philemon 19, he wrote all in his own handwriting and didn’t dictate it in any part. And perhaps Galatians, according to chapter 6 verse 11, he may have written the whole of the letter to the Galatians as well. But always his own inimitable handwriting was there because he was so consumed with the fact that God’s people needed to have the revealed truth and not be confused about what was authentic. He was the inspired instrument of truth and God wanted His people to have truth. And Paul could say with John, he had no greater joy than to see his children walk in the truth. He wanted them to have the truth. He knew they needed it. And so he throws in this which also expresses his wish for them to have the truth and to know it is the truth.
He was very concerned about that. In Romans chapter 9 and verse 1, “I am telling the truth,” he says. In 1 Timothy chapter 2 and verse 7, “And for this I was appointed a preacher and an apostle, I am telling the truth, I am not lying.” And why does he say that? Well, because there were people who were denying him. In chapter 11 of 2 Corinthians verse 10, “As the truth of Christ is in me,” and he goes on. He was concerned about people knowing he spoke the truth. God is a God of truth, He is the only true God, He is the God who cannot lie. And Christ is His incarnate truth. And the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of truth. And the Word is the body of truth. Thy Word is truth, John 17:17. God wants us to have His truth. He’s given us the indwelling Spirit of truth who is the anointing, who leads us into all truth so that we need not be taught by any human source. So Paul says, I wish you truth, and I don’t want you to be confused about it.
Paul ends by praying that the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with them all (verse 18).
MacArthur discusses grace:
What is grace? God’s goodness, God’s benevolence given to those who don’t deserve it. God’s goodness, God’s benevolence given to those who don’t deserve it. It is grace decreed by God given to us through Christ. Grace and truth, it says, came through Jesus Christ. The grace of God has appeared, Paul said to Titus. It has appeared through the work of Christ. It comes to us as the Spirit of God brings saving grace. And once we become a Christian then there is enabling grace. And that’s what he’s praying about, the enabling grace, grace for endurance, grace that is sufficient, as 2 Corinthians 12:9 says, for every serious trial. Grace for service, the kind Paul talked about in 1 Timothy 1, when he says as explicitly as it could be said, “I thank Christ Jesus our Lord, who has strengthened me because He considered me faithful, putting me into the service, (or into the ministry) even though I was a blasphemer and a persecutor and a violent aggressor and it was the grace of our Lord that did it.”
Grace for service, grace for endurance, grace for growth spiritually, grow in grace, 2 Peter 3:18. Grace for love and grace for humility and grace for sacrifice and grace for generosity. All of those things typified by the Macedonians in 2 Corinthians 8 and 9. In fact, they summed it up. They summed it up. They were examples, Paul said, of the surpassing grace of God which is in you. He wants God’s grace. There…God’s enabling grace to take them through their trials, to make them effective in ministry, to cause them to grow, to strengthen their love and their humility and their sacrifice and their generosity that they would be overwhelmed with this grace.
It’s available. There’s no limit to it. And again, the conditions to receive it are: trusting God, obeying His Word, enduring His refining process, doing good, walking in the Spirit, living your Christianity from the heart, living by the Word of God and praying. As we are what we ought to be, God infuses us with His peace and His strength and His truth and His grace.
Anyone who wants to know how to live in a godly manner can read the reflections from MacArthur and Henry in my exegesis on the Beatitudes (Matthew 5:1-12), a long read, granted, but one that explains those eight tenets thoroughly. Jesus gave us the blueprint. It is up to us to live by it, with the help of divine grace.
Henry has a beautiful prayer at the end of his commentary on 2 Thessalonians 3:
Let us be thankful that we have the canon of scripture complete, and by the wonderful and special care of divine Providence preserved pure and uncorrupt through so many successive ages, and not dare to add to it, nor diminish from it. Let us believe the divine original of the sacred scriptures, and conform our faith and practice to this our sufficient and only rule, which is able to make us wise unto salvation, through faith which is in Christ Jesus. Amen.
This concludes my study of 2 Thessalonians.
Next week, I will begin a study of 1 Timothy, along with an introduction to its content and purpose.
Next time — 1 Timothy 1:1-2
May I wish all my readers a very happy, healthy and prosperous New Year!
In 2023, there are three choices of readings for January 1, which falls on a Sunday.
One can choose from the Holy Name of Jesus, the First Sunday after Christmas Day (Year A) or New Year’s Day:
Readings for New Year’s Day — the Holy Name of Jesus (all Lectionary years)
Christmas 1 – Year A (all readings)
Readings for New Year’s Day (general, all Lectionary years)
I have chosen the last one, the Gospel for which is as follows (emphases mine):
Matthew 25:31-46
25:31 “When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory.
25:32 All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats,
25:33 and he will put the sheep at his right hand and the goats at the left.
25:34 Then the king will say to those at his right hand, ‘Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world;
25:35 for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me,
25:36 I was naked and you gave me clothing, I was sick and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.’
25:37 Then the righteous will answer him, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink?
25:38 And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing?
25:39 And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?’
25:40 And the king will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.’
25:41 Then he will say to those at his left hand, ‘You that are accursed, depart from me into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels;
25:42 for I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink,
25:43 I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not give me clothing, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.’
25:44 Then they also will answer, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not take care of you?’
25:45 Then he will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.’
25:46 And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.”
Commentary comes from Matthew Henry and John MacArthur.
This is a long post, because there are important points to understand about this passage and Matthew’s Gospel in general.
How is it, one might ask, that we have a reading about Christ’s Second Coming when we are still in the Christmas period of the Church year?
John MacArthur explains the reason why:
Now let me say something that maybe you’ve never thought of in these terms. The remarkable thing about Christ is not His second coming. The amazing thing about Christ is not His return. The wonder of wonders is not that Jesus will come in glory and judge the world. The amazing marvelous incredible indescribable mysterious truth is not that He will come the second time, but that He came the first time to do what He did. It is amazing that a holy God came to forgive sinners, not that a holy God comes to judge sinners. You understand that? The wonder is not the second coming, the wonder is the first coming, that He condescended to redeem us, to love us when we were unlovely, to provide a salvation into which any man can enter, any woman can enter by a choice. The wonder of wonders is that He stooped to be what we are, that He stooped to die our death, to bear our sin, to be separated from God. That is the wonder of wonders. The fact that He comes back to judge sin is not remarkable at all. That is only utterly consistent with His nature. And if you go back to the Old Testament, you find that God has always been a God who judges sin. And so we are not surprised at all that He is going to come and ultimately do that and finally do that and deal with sin in a final way. What is remarkable is that He came to redeem sinners who were worthy only of His judgment. And so He will come and we should not be so surprised that He will, since He is an infinitely holy God. And when He comes to judge, it is going to be a scene that language has strained to attempt to communicate.
Those who know Matthew’s Gospel recall that Chapter 25 has two parables of warning, that of the Ten Virgins and that of the Talents, or Bags of Gold.
The Parable of the Ten Virgins has stuck with me since I was in my formative years, because it seems so contemporary. It is about preparedness, yet, as it was in my schooldays, there are always those who are unprepared and expect others to pick up the slack for their carelessness:
The Parable of the Ten Virgins
25 “At that time the kingdom of heaven will be like ten virgins who took their lamps and went out to meet the bridegroom. 2 Five of them were foolish and five were wise. 3 The foolish ones took their lamps but did not take any oil with them. 4 The wise ones, however, took oil in jars along with their lamps. 5 The bridegroom was a long time in coming, and they all became drowsy and fell asleep.
6 “At midnight the cry rang out: ‘Here’s the bridegroom! Come out to meet him!’
7 “Then all the virgins woke up and trimmed their lamps. 8 The foolish ones said to the wise, ‘Give us some of your oil; our lamps are going out.’
9 “‘No,’ they replied, ‘there may not be enough for both us and you. Instead, go to those who sell oil and buy some for yourselves.’
10 “But while they were on their way to buy the oil, the bridegroom arrived. The virgins who were ready went in with him to the wedding banquet. And the door was shut.
11 “Later the others also came. ‘Lord, Lord,’ they said, ‘open the door for us!’
12 “But he replied, ‘Truly I tell you, I don’t know you.’
13 “Therefore keep watch, because you do not know the day or the hour.
MacArthur says that Jesus spoke these words the day before the Last Supper:
Here with the privacy of His disciples, having been found on the Mount of Olives, as He has left the temple ground and now talks with them in the privacy of the evening, Wednesday before His Friday crucifixion, He shares with them that He indeed is the Son of Man who is also the King who will come and judge to establish His kingdom.
Here we have our Lord’s description of His Second Coming. While our Lord has infinite love and will take His saints with Him to glory, He will also come in judgement for those who preferred to live a life of sin, in league with Satan and the world.
MacArthur explains what Matthew’s Gospel is meant to convey to the Jews, his primary audience:
Mark’s purpose was not to present Christ as King. Luke’s purpose was not particularly to emphasize Christ’s Kingship either and neither was John’s. The gospel which is intended to present Christ as King is Matthew. And that is why the great emphasis of the second coming comes in the gospel of Matthew because Matthew is wanting to present to us the triumph of the regal King, the Lord Jesus Christ. And that is why Matthew is the one chosen to give this passage.
Let me just remind you of Matthew’s emphasis. Matthew has focused primarily on Jesus as the King – King of Israel, King of glory, the one with the right to rule, the majestic one, the regal one. That has been his emphasis. And it falls into three basic categories. First of all, Matthew treats the King revealed – the King revealed. In other words, as the person of Christ unfolds in Matthew, He unfolds as a regal person. Whereas Mark treats Him as human; Mark emphasizes His humanity; and Luke talks about His servanthood; and John emphasizes His deity. Matthew’s emphasis is on His royal character, His Kingship.
And first of all, he emphasizes that the King is being revealed. For example, it is Matthew that has His ancestry traced from a royal line. It is Matthew who has His birth being dreaded by a rival king who is threatened by another king coming on the scene. It is Matthew who makes great emphasis on the wise men, who are oriental king makers, who come and offer Jesus homage and present Him royal gifts. It is Matthew who emphasizes that He has a herald to announce His coming as kings always did. It is Matthew who tells us that in His temptation, as it reached its climax, Satan offered Him all the kingdoms of the world knowing that indeed He was entitled to them all. It is Matthew who emphasizes that Jesus proclaimed in the Sermon on the Mount the standards of His kingdom. It is Matthew who uses the miracles of Jesus as His royal credentials, who emphasizes that His teaching was the royal law, that His parables are the mysteries of the kingdom of which He was the King. He is hailed by Matthew as the Son of David, a royal name. He claimed royal rights as the Son of God. He made a royal entry into Jerusalem and claimed absolute sovereignty. He told a story about a king’s son and He told it about Himself and it’s recorded in Matthew. And while facing the cross, Matthew records that He looked beyond the cross to the reigning and the glory that would follow. It is Matthew who emphasizes His commanding power over legions of angels. It is Matthew who records for us His last words, “All power has been given unto Me in heaven and in earth, go ye therefore” – in other words, He is commanding as a monarch who has all authority for such a command. So Matthew makes a great emphasis on the Kingship of Christ being revealed.
Secondly, on the Kingship of Christ being rejected. Matthew all the way through not only presents the regal character of Christ, but also shows how He was rejected as King. Before He was born, His mother was in danger of being divorced. Worse than that, she was in danger of being stoned as an adulteress. And so it could have been that His life would have been snuffed out before ever He could have reached the throne. At His birth all Jerusalem was troubled, and Herod who was threatened by the thought of another king on the scene sought to kill Him. And in the plains of Bethlehem, not longer after the angelic choir was absent and silent, those little hills began to ring again, but it wasn’t with the songs of angels, it was with the weeping and the mourning of mothers who were crying as their babies were being slaughtered, as Herod attempted to stamp out the would-be king by obliterating every child under the age of two.
And it is Matthew who tells us that Jesus had to escape for his life to Egypt. And then when He came back to His own homeland, He hurried away to live thirty years in obscurity in a non-descript off-the-road village called Nazareth where He was without honor and where on one occasion the people of the city itself tried to throw Him off a cliff and kill Him. Matthew makes a point of telling us that even His herald was imprisoned and eventually his head was chopped off. And it is Matthew who reminds us that Jesus had no place to lay His head. He was accused of being a drunkard. He was accused in Matthew of being gluttonous. He is accused of being from hell, from Satan, having a demon. And as he records His own parables, they mark out the rejection that was thrust against Him, how it was desired by people to take His life, to kill Him as they had killed the prophets who spoke about Him. And even in His death it is Matthew who has Him say, “My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?” In none of the other gospels, then, is the regal presentation as complete or is the rejection as complete as it is in Matthew.
But finally, Matthew presents Him not only as the revealed King and the rejected King but as the returning King. And in chapter 24 and 25, there is this great sweeping sermon of our Lord about His second coming. And it is not the first time it is mentioned in the gospel of Matthew. It is mentioned previous to this on several occasions in our Lord’s conversations with His disciples. It was of major importance to the Lord and of major importance to Matthew as well. In Matthew 16:28, “Verily I say unto you, there are some standing here who shall not taste death till they see the Son of Man coming in His kingdom.” Verse 27, “The Son of Man shall come in the glory of His Father with His angels and reward every man according to His works.” Matthew 19:28 similarly says that He will come in the regeneration and the Son of Man will sit on the throne of His glory and that the disciples will sit on twelve thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel and so forth. So He has spoken about it before to the disciples, but now in a great sermon embracing two chapters, the Lord speaks of His second coming and Matthew records it as the completion of His presentation of the royal character of Jesus Christ. He is coming as regal reigning sovereign King – that’s the message.
Jesus said that when the Son of Man — He Himself — comes in glory, accompanied by all the angels, He will sit on His throne of glory (verse 31).
MacArthur tells us:
And so Christ will come and not alone, but with His mighty angels in flaming fire. And He will take vengeance on them that know not God and that obey not the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. And they will be punished with everlasting destruction from the presence of the Lord and the glory of His power. And then He will be glorified in His saints and admired in all them that believe. So there will become a dividing then, there will be vengeance and punishment to those who do not obey, and there will be glory and honor and reward and respect toward Him for those who do know Him through Christ the Savior. So that is the judgment that occurs at His coming. It’s indescribable, but He comes with all of His holy angels …
Now Revelation 19 needs to be considered for a moment because this describes the scene itself in detail. In Revelation 19:11, “I saw heaven opened.” The doors of heaven all of a sudden swing open in the vision of John, and what is revealed is a white horse and one sitting on it called Faithful and True. By the way, this is the second time heaven opened in the book of Revelation – the second time. The first time heaven opened was in chapter 4 verse 1, “After this I look and behold a door was opened in heaven.”
Matthew Henry’s commentary discusses the term Son of Man, one which Jesus often used of Himself:
Here, as elsewhere, when the last judgment is spoken of, Christ is called the son of man, because he is to judge the sons of men (and, being himself of the same nature, he is the more unexceptionable); and because his wonderful condescension to take upon him our nature, and to become the son of man, will be recompensed by this exaltation in that day, and an honour put upon the human nature.
MacArthur says that Jesus called Himself the Son of Man so that we could relate better to Him and to avoid further blasphemy charges from the Jewish hierarchy:
So it is the Son of Man who is none other than Jesus Christ. I don’t think we need to take a lot of time, but only to remind you that the most familiar, the most common, the most used title by Jesus of Himself is Son of Man. He called Himself that all the time. That was His choice title for Himself. And I believe there were several reasons for that. Reason number one was that it confirmed His humiliation. It affirmed that it was an incarnation, that God had come all the way to being man. It was an affirmation of incarnation, of submissiveness, of the servant heart, the servant spirit, of coming not to be ministered unto but to minister and give His life. He became one of us. And Son of Man emphasized His condescension, His humiliation, His identification, His understanding, His sympathy with men. He became what we are. That was one reason He used it.
The second reason that I believe this was a good choice and common to our Lord’s use was that it tended to be less offensive then if He were to call Himself Son of God all the time. If He were to call Himself Son of God constantly, He would have created more hostility than He did, at least initially. Calling Himself Son of God continually in front of the Jewish leaders would have fomented problems beyond the problems He had. And of course, as you well know, after three years of ministry they finally took His life with great hostility. It’s very likely that had He continually called Himself Son of God, the whole plan could have been brought to a halt a lot earlier and things that God had intended to accomplish would not have been accomplished. And of course that kind of conjecture is only conjecture since He didn’t call Himself Son of God but may explain to us some reason why He didn’t.
Thirdly, if He had called Himself continually Son of God, not only would His rejectors have been more angry, but His friends might have been more pushy. Had He called Himself Son of God or had He even called Himself King, had He called Himself all the time Messiah, there would have been even a greater pressure put upon Him by the people to take over the kingdom, to take over and rule, to dominate, to overthrow the Romans. So I believe Son of Man was the lowest title, the lowest profile that Jesus could take. It is a denial of any significant title. It is simply saying, “I’m one of you. I’m a son of man.” That’s all. It is true He was also Son of God; it is true He was also King of Kings; but had He paraded those things outwardly, it would have changed the whole series of events. And so He communicates Himself as Son of Man to emphasize His humiliation and identification, to deflect hostility and to deflect those who would force Him to become a King, as obviously many wished to do and even tried to do in Galilee.
There’s another reason. I think He chose to use Son of Man because it provides such a profound contrast to the titles that He will have when He comes in His glory. And it helps us to understand the distinction between the first and second coming of Christ. It provides a marvelous contrast, which contrast is pointed up to us here in Matthew chapter 25. Notice verse 31, He calls Himself Son of Man; then in verse 34, “Then shall the King;” in verse 30 – verse 40, rather, “And the King shall answer.” It isn’t long now in this particular message before He turns from Son of Man to King. But He starts out with Son of Man so that they might know who the King is. Right? If He just said, “When the King shall come,” somebody might say, “Well, it’s other than Him.” So He says, “When the Son of Man comes, then will the King say” – and He affirms that He is both Son of Man and King. Son of Man, humble, condescending, humiliated; King, glorious, sovereign, reigning, judging, establishing His kingdom. And so here He turns a corner. Beloved, this is very, very significant. He does not call Himself King up to this point. He tells a parable about a King’s son. He tells a parable about a King who is God the Father. But now He calls Himself King. It’s time to talk about His return. It’s time to talk about His reign as King of Kings and Lord of Lords. It’s time to look beyond humiliation and beyond condescension and see the one who will come in blazing glory. So the emphasis is on the kingship.
And may I remind you, too, that He’s talking, as 24:3 tells us, privately to His disciples – privately to His disciples. He maintained the privacy of His message about Kingship.
MacArthur says that the number of all the angels is an impressive one:
When He comes with all the holy angels with Him, not some but all of them. Ten thousand times ten thousand times ten thousand and thousands of thousands, an innumerable number, when He comes with all of them and all of His glory and all of His saints and when He sits on His glory throne – when He sits on His glory throne, that’s the time this judgment takes place.
Henry says the angels will be there to serve their Lord:
… his holy myriads, who will be not only his attendants, but ministers of his justice; they shall come with him both for state and service. They must come to call the court (1 Thess 4 16), to gather the elect (ch. 24 31), to bundle the tares (ch. 13 40), to be witnesses of the saints’ glory (Luke 12 8), and of sinners’ misery, Rev 14 10.
Jesus spoke here of all the people alive at His Second Coming. Unbelievers will not have a second chance to repent or believe:
So during that period there will be saved Jews and saved Gentiles. Those people will be persecuted by the Antichrist. Many of them will survive his persecution. So they will be alive at the end. There will also be the ungodly. The ungodly will be devastated by the judgments of God during that period. Some of them will survive. So at the end of the tribulation time you have saved and unsaved people, from all over the globe, who have survived the judgment of God and the holocaust of Antichrist. They have lived through the plagues. They have lived through the disasters, the diseases, the wars, the wrath of Christ and the wrath of Antichrist. They have lived through the judgment on the armies at Armageddon, and there are still multitudes, multitudes left. But all of those who are left, who haven’t faced God in death to be judged. will now face Him in His second coming. All the people. The word ethnē means peoples. So either a person faces God in death for judgment or at the second coming of Jesus Christ. And if you’re counting on waiting till then, remember this, it’s too late then. When the bridegroom comes, if you don’t have oil in your lamp, the door will be shut and you’ll never get in. There’s no second chance. And what happens here is irreversible, as verse 46 says, “Some go into everlasting punishment, others into everlasting life.” So what happens here is irreversible.
Also:
when He comes, in the moment of His coming there will be an instantaneous judgment. I don’t believe that when He comes there’s going to be a gap of time for people to decide what they want to do. It’s verse 31, “When the Son of Man comes.” Verse 34, “Then shall the King say,” and so forth. It’s when He comes, then He judges. There’s no reason to assume an interval.
Jesus continued, saying that all the nations of the world will be gathered before Him, and He will separate people from one another as a shepherd separates sheep from goats (verse 32).
He will put His sheep at His right hand and the goats at His left (verse 33).
Henry explains:
the Lord knows them that are his, and he can separate them. This separation will be so exact, that the most inconsiderable saints shall not be lost in the crowd of sinners, nor the most plausible sinner hid in the crowd of saints (Ps 1 5), but every one shall go to his own place. This is compared to a shepherd’s dividing between the sheep and the goats; it is taken from Ezek 34 17, Behold, I judge between cattle and cattle. Note, 1. Jesus Christ is the great Shepherd; he now feeds his flock like a shepherd, and will shortly distinguish between those that are his, and those that are not, as Laban divided his sheep from Jacob’s, and set three days’ journey between them, Gen 30 35, 36. 2. The godly are like sheep—innocent, mild, patient, useful: the wicked are like goats, a baser kind of animal, unsavoury and unruly. The sheep and goats are here feeding all day in the same pasture, but will be coted at night in different folds. Being thus divided, he will set the sheep on his right hand, and the goats on his left, v. 33.
MacArthur has more:
All people are going to be separated. They’re only going to be separated into two classes: Sheep and goats, in this analogy. Sheep go into the kingdom, goats go out of the kingdom. So there will only be two classes of people. As my grandfather used to say, “The saints and aints.” Only two classes of people, the redeemed and the unredeemed, the saved and the lost, that’s the basic classification into which everybody falls ultimately and eternally. There are only two destinies, heaven and hell.
And so that division must be made in regard to all people. There is no distinction here, beloved, about Jew or Gentile. That is not a distinction made particularly in this text. It’s just all the people. And the distinction here has nothing to do with ethnic identity, it has only to do with relationship to Christ. All the people. Now you say, well who are these people? Well, they have to be people that are alive when Jesus comes again. That’s what I want you to understand. They will be people alive on the earth at the coming of Christ.
Jesus, referring to Himself as King, said that He will beckon those on His right hand — those whom His Father has blessed — to inherit the kingdom prepared for them from the foundation of the world (verse 34).
That is a significant verse. Jesus spoke of election, predestination and inheritance as adopted sons and daughters of the kingdom of God.
Recall that, in those days, being adopted put one — always a man, in legal terms — ahead of the other family members. The adopted man became the head of the household and the man who adopted him took a back seat. The adoptive father’s sons took a back seat. The adopted son was in charge of everything: the estate, family decisions and so on. Why? Because the adoptive father considered him to have greater intelligence and capability than his own sons.
MacArthur addresses the importance of the right hand:
The right hand is the hand of blessing. The right hand is the hand of honor. The right hand is the hand – are you ready? – of inheritance – of inheritance. That is the preferred hand. The sheep here are preferred in the analogy. As I said, they are submissive; they are gentle; they are docile. The goats are unruly and rough and rugged and so forth and they represent those who are the non‑blessed …
By the way, in Greek, Roman, and Talmudic sources, the good people in any kind of adjudication, any kind of a trial situation, always went to the right side of the judge. So this fits that pattern. “Come you blessed of My Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the earth” – or the world.
Henry points out the individuality of our relationship with God through His Son and our inheritance of His kingdom. This is one of the few times Henry uses ‘you’ in his commentary:
It is prepared on purpose for them; not only for such as you, but for you, you by name, you personally and particularly, who were chosen to salvation through sanctification.
Henry discusses what lies behind election and predestination with regard to the kingdom:
It is prepared from the foundation of the world. This happiness was designed for the saints, and they for it, before time began, from all eternity, Eph 1 4. The end, which is last in execution, is first in intention. Infinite Wisdom had an eye to the eternal glorification of the saints, from the first founding of the creation: All things are for your sakes, 2 Cor 4 15. Or, it denotes the preparation of the place of this happiness, which is to be the seat and habitation of the blessed, in the very beginning of the work of creation, Gen 1 1. There in the heaven of heavens the morning stars were singing together, when the foundations of the earth were fastened, Job 38 4-7.
Secondly, The tenure by which they shall hold and possess it is very good, they shall come and inherit it. What we come to by inheritance, is not got by any procurement of our own, but purely, as the lawyers express it, by the act of God. It is God that makes heirs, heirs of heaven. We come to an inheritance by virtue of our sonship, our adoption; if children, then heirs. A title by inheritance is the sweetest and surest title; it alludes to possessions in the land of Canaan, which passed by inheritance, and would not be alienated longer than to the year of Jubilee. Thus is the heavenly inheritance indefeasible, and unalienable. Saints, in this world, are as heirs under age, tutored and governed till the time appointed of the Father (Gal 4 1, 2); and then they shall be put in full possession of that which now through grace they have a title to; Come, and inherit it.
MacArthur offers us this analysis:
First of all, “Come” – here comes number one point – “ye blessed of My Father.” That emphasizes the source of their salvation. You are blessed of My Father. You are entering into the kingdom because My Father has determined to bless you. Here you have sovereign grace beautifully expressed. By the way, the phrase in the Authorized, “You blessed of My Father,” in the Greek literally says, “My Father’s blessed ones.” You are coming into My kingdom because God predetermined sovereignly to bless you. He redeemed you out of His sovereign love. So verse 34 expresses the innate reality of redemption and salvation and justification.
And then it says, “Come you who are the blessed who belong to My Father, inherit” – inherit, which implies something very important. You inherit something because you are born into a family. Right? It implies again that they belong to the family of God, to which you belong by faith. You inherit what is yours because by faith you have become a joint heir with Christ, if we can sort of borrow Paul’s thought in Romans 8. So you are the elect by sovereign grace, the chosen to be blessed by the Father. And you are those who inherit because you belong to the family by faith, you are sons of God. And so you see the source of salvation and you see the gift of salvation given to those who are the children of God.
Further it says, “Inherit the kingdom prepared for you.” And that again emphasizes the selectivity of salvation. When God prepared the kingdom it was for you that He prepared it. You were chosen; you were ordained to this; you are those whom the Father designed to love. So you have the source of salvation in the Father’s blessing, desire to bless, you have the reception of salvation in the faith that brings you into the inheritance, you have the selectivity of salvation in the fact that the kingdom was prepared for those people. Let me tell you something, whoever it was prepared for are going into it. God isn’t going to lose any and He knows who He prepared it for.
And then a further thought. It was prepared from the foundation of the world. Now that emphasizes the eternal covenant that God made with Himself to redeem a people selected before the foundation of the world. Who are these people going in? They’re not just people who got involved in social action. They’re not just people who did good deeds on the earth. These are those chosen from the foundation of the world by sovereign God to receive His grace and be blessed and who responded by faith and became His heirs in the family. And all of that soteriological richness is compacted in verse 34. And that can’t be missed, that can’t be missed.
Jesus said that those inheriting the kingdom will have given Him food when He was hungry, drink when He was thirsty or a welcome when He was a stranger (verse 35).
They were the ones who gave Him clothing when He had none or cared for Him when He was sick or visited Him in prison (verse 36).
The righteous will respond by asking when they did any of those things (verses 37-39).
The King — Jesus — will respond by saying that when they did those good deeds towards ‘the least of these who are members of my family‘, they did them to Him (verse 40).
MacArthur explains:
The good deeds mentioned in 35 and 36 are not the primary emphasis. The primary emphasis in identifying these people is in verse 34. The good deeds are the fruit of the redemption defined for us in such simple yet profound terms in verse 34. And the people who get confused by this passage get confused because they perhaps haven’t looked as closely as they ought to look at verse 34. And looking at verses 35 and 36 alone might provide some difficulty …
The real fact of salvation is in verse 34. The proof of it is in verses 35 and 36. They are only outward evidences of an inward sovereign grace …
… it isn’t the deeds alone that qualify them. It’s their redemption which issues in those deeds. So when He says, “Come in on this basis,” He is judging them according to their works but only insofar as their works are a manifestation of the redeeming act which God foreordained in their behalf …
Verse 37, now watch this, “Then shall the righteous answer Him saying” – stop there for a minute. Who answered Him? The good deeders, the good doers, the philanthropists, the social activists? Then answered Him – who? – the righteous. And that is not just forensic. That is, it’s not just declared righteousness, it’s real righteousness. It’s imputed righteousness. And here again we are reminded that the reason these people do this is because they are made righteous in Christ. And this is the outflow of that miracle. It’s the righteous, it’s the blessed of the Father, it’s the inheritors of the kingdom, it’s the predetermined and foreordained who demonstrate their righteousness in good deeds …
“And the King shall answer and say unto them, ‘Verily I say unto you, inasmuch as you have done it unto one of the least of these My brethren, you have done it unto Me.’” What a statement. Who are His brethren? Well Hebrews 2:11 and 12 says He’s not ashamed to call us who believe His brethren. I believe He’s referring to the redeemed people. I believe He is simply saying this, “Whatever you do to meet the need of a fellow Christian, you do to Me.” Is that not right? Because, “He that is joined to the Lord is one spirit,” 1 Corinthians 6:17. “Nevertheless I live, yet Christ lives in me,” Galatians 2:20. Paul celebrates that again and again, we are in Christ and Christ is in us. Christ is in His people. What is done to me as a Christian is done to Him. He is so intimately identified with me.
Back in Matthew 18 He says, “When you receive one such little child,” Matthew 18 – I think it’s 4 and 5 there – “When you receive one such little child in My name, you receive Me.” And He means there not a physical child but a spiritual child. When you receive another believer and you open your arms and you meet their need and you embrace them and you take them in and you strengthen them and you encourage or you help them or whatever, you accept them, you do it to Christ. Whatever you do to another believer, you do to Christ. That’s the bottom line. That’s the simple yet profound truth that the Lord is endeavoring to communicate. Whatever you do to a fellow believer, you do to Christ. It’s that simple. And that is a truth that is oft indicated in the texts of Scripture. “He that receiveth you,” Matthew 10:40 says, “receiveth Me, and he that receiveth Me, receiveth Him that sent Me.” Boy that’s another dimension. When you open your arms to a fellow believer, you’re receiving Christ. And when you’re receiving Christ, you’re receiving the Father whom Christ represents. It’s a tremendous thought. What you do to another believer is what you do to Christ.
After addressing the saints, Jesus will turn His attention to those on His left, saying that they, the accursed, will depart from Him into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels (verse 41).
Henry answers all the questions of those who might think our Lord will offer a reprieve:
[2.] If they must depart, and depart from Christ, might they not be dismissed with a blessing, with one kind and compassionate word at least? No, Depart, ye cursed, They that would not come to Christ, to inherit a blessing, must depart from him under the burthen of a curse, that curse of the law on every one that breaks it, Gal 3 10. As they loved cursing, so it shall come unto them. But observe, The righteous are called the blessed of my Father; for their blessedness is owing purely to the grace of God and his blessing, but the wicked are called only ye cursed, for their damnation is of themselves. Hath God sold them? No, they have sold themselves, have laid themselves under the curse, Isa 50 1.
[3.] If they must depart, and depart with a curse, may they not go into some place of ease and rest? Will it not be misery enough for them to bewail their loss? No, there is a punishment of sense as well as loss; they must depart into fire, into torment as grievous as that of fire is to the body, and much more. This fire is the wrath of the eternal God fastening upon the guilty souls and consciences of sinners that have made themselves fuel for it. Our God is a consuming fire, and sinners fall immediately into his hands, Heb 10 31; Rom 2 8, 9.
[4.] If into fire, may it not be some light or gentle fire? No, it is prepared fire; it is a torment ordained of old, Isa 30 33. The damnation of sinners is often spoken of as an act of the divine power; he is able to cast into hell. In the vessels of wrath he makes his power known; it is a destruction from the presence of the Lord, and from the glory of his power. In it shall be seen what a provoked God can do to make a provoking creature miserable.
[5.] If into fire, prepared fire, O let it be but of short continuance, let them but pass through fire; no, the fire of God’s wrath will be an everlasting fire; a fire, that, fastening and preying upon immortal souls, can never go out for want of fuel; and, being kindled and kept burning by the wrath of an immortal God, can never go out for want of being blown and stirred up; and, the streams of mercy and grace being for ever excluded, there is nothing to extinguish it. If a drop of water be denied to cool the tongue, buckets of water will never be granted to quench this flame.
[6.] If they must be doomed to such a state of endless misery, yet may they not have some good company there? No, none but the devil and his angels, their sworn enemies, that helped to bring them to this misery, and will triumph over them in it. They served the devil while they lived, and therefore are justly sentenced to be where he is, as those that served Christ, are taken to be with him where he is … The fire is said to be prepared, not primarily for the wicked, as the kingdom is prepared for the righteous; but it was originally intended for the devil and his angels. If sinners make themselves associates with Satan by indulging their lusts, they may thank themselves if they become sharers in that misery which was prepared for him and his associates.
Jesus Christ, the King of Kings, will tell the condemned that they gave Him no food, no drink (verse 42), no welcome, no clothes and no visit in prison (verse 43).
Henry says that these are sins of omission, similar to the servant who buried his talent, the gold, that his master gave to him:
Now, [1.] All that is charged upon them, on which the sentence is grounded, is, omission; as, before, the servant was condemned, not for wasting his talent, but for burying it; so here, he doth not say, “I was hungry and thirsty, for you took my meat and drink from me; I was a stranger, for you banished me; naked, for you stripped me; in prison, for you laid me there:” but, “When I was in these distresses, you were so selfish, so taken up with your own ease and pleasure, made so much of your labour, and were so loth to part with your money, that you did not minister as you might have done to my relief and succour. You were like those epicures that were at ease in Zion, and were not grieved for the affliction of Joseph,” Amos 6 4-6. Note, Omissions are the ruin of thousands.
[2.] It is the omission of works of charity to the poor. They are not sentenced for omitting their sacrifices and burnt-offerings (they abounded in these, Ps 50 8), but for omitting the weightier matter of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith. The Ammonites and Moabites were excluded the sanctuary, because they met not Israel with bread and water, Deut 23 3, 4. Note, Uncharitableness to the poor is a damning sin. If we will not be brought to works of charity by the hope of reward, let us be influenced by fear of punishment; for they shall have judgment without mercy, that have showed no mercy. Observe, He doth not say, “I was sick, and you did not cure me; in prison, and you did not release me” (perhaps that was more than they could do); but, “You visited me not, which you might have done.” Note, Sinners will be condemned, at the great day, for the omission of that good which it was in the power of their hand to do. But if the doom of the uncharitable be so dreadful, how much more intolerable will the doom of the cruel be, the doom of persecutors!
Then the accursed will respond by asking when they neglected the Lord (verse 44).
The Lord will respond by saying that whatever they neglected towards the least of His people, they neglected unto Him (verse 45).
MacArthur brings us back to the five foolish virgins and to the servant with the buried talent:
You remember the virgins? It didn’t say, “And five virgins went into the wedding and five were shut out for being vile, immoral, ugly, gross, evil, wretched sinners.” No, it wasn’t what they did that left them out, it was what they didn’t do. They didn’t get any oil. The point there was that they didn’t have oil. It was something they didn’t have, they didn’t do. Not something they did that damned them. There’s nothing you can do in terms of sin. No matter how gross that sin is that results in your damnation, it’s what you don’t do. It’s the failure to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. It’s the same with the servant. The third one who got one talent, it wasn’t what he did, it was what he didn’t do. He just buried it and paid no attention to it that damned him and sent him to outer darkness.
The virgins weren’t vile they were just negligent. And the servant wasn’t immoral, he just did nothing. And people are damned to hell by what they don’t do. And what they don’t do is believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. It is the absence of righteousness. It is the absence of the love of God that comes through faith in Christ. It is the absence of those kind of deeds that demonstrate righteousness and demonstrate God’s love. It is the absence of the sin of – it is the presence of the sin of unbelief, the absence of faith.
Jesus concluded by saying that those who neglected Him and His people will depart into eternal punishment, while the righteous will go on to eternal life (verse 46).
Of the former group and their fate, Henry says:
Note, (1.) The punishment of the wicked in the future state will be an everlasting punishment, for that state is an unalterable state. It can neither be thought that sinners should change their own natures, nor that God should give his grace to change them, when in this world the day of grace was misspent, the Spirit of grace resisted, and the means of grace abused and baffled. (2.) The wicked shall be made to go away into that punishment; not that they will go voluntarily, no, they are driven from light into darkness; but it bespeaks an irresistible conviction of guilt, and a final despair of mercy.
I also read this passage as a warning about death. We do not know the time or the hour for that eventuality, either.
MacArthur says:
when any person dies they immediately enter into that judgment right then. And the decision of their eternal destiny is rendered.
At the Second Coming, those of us who died previously will all appear to have our verdicts at death renewed and those who are saints, whose souls have been at rest with God since their death, will receive their glorified bodies, just as Christ received His at the Resurrection.
Henry says:
Note, The judgment of the great day will be a general judgment. All must be summoned before Christ’s tribunal; all of every age of the world, from the beginning to the end of time; all of every place on earth, even from the remotest corners of the world, most obscure, and distant from each other; all nations, all those nations of men that are made of one blood, to dwell on all the face of the earth.
While this is hardly the cheeriest passage for the New Year, it does provide food for thought as to a resolution for the coming 12 months.
We worry so much about resolving to do something about our physical appearance or health. Is it not time to pay more attention to our spiritual state in the year ahead? We know not the hour …
The three-year Lectionary that many Catholics and Protestants hear in public worship gives us a great variety of Holy Scripture.
Yet, it doesn’t tell the whole story.
My series Forbidden Bible Verses — ones the Lectionary editors and their clergy omit — examines the passages we do not hear in church. These missing verses are also Essential Bible Verses, ones we should study with care and attention. Often, we find that they carry difficult messages and warnings.
Today’s reading is from the English Standard Version with commentary by Matthew Henry and John MacArthur.
Final Greetings
21 Greet every saint in Christ Jesus. The brothers who are with me greet you. 22 All the saints greet you, especially those of Caesar’s household.
23 The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit.
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Last week’s post discussed Paul’s gratitude to the Philippians for their gifts to him over the years.
We have now reached the conclusion of Philippians and Paul’s benediction.
John MacArthur sets the scene for us (emphases mine):
So as the dear Apostle Paul watches the candle flicker, probably at night, and realizes that the darkness of night is soon to fall and waits the morning dawn when he hands the scroll, as it were, to Epaphroditus and he says, “Epaphroditus, the letter is done, you can now return to Philippi and give it to the leaders of the church,” as he waits to send off that dictated letter which an amanuensis or secretary has taken down, just before he is finished in the flickering of that last evening, he picks the stylus up himself and with his own hand it is very likely that verses 20, 21, 22 and 23 were written.
You say, “Well what makes you think that? The word of the Apostle Paul to the Thessalonians. The Apostle Paul in writing the final words of 2 Thessalonians said this, “I, Paul,” chapter 3 verse 17, “write this greeting with my own hand and this is a distinguishing mark in every letter, this is the way I write.” You wouldn’t write a letter without signing it to authenticate it, neither would Paul. And he says in that verse, “In all the letters I write, I always take up the pen and authenticate this.” You can understand how important that would be, right? People could be sending all kinds of letters and saying they were from Paul, it was vital that the true Word of God through that instrument be validated by his own inimitable inscription. And we know from Galatians 6:11 that he wrote with large letters. There’s reason to assume a rather large clumsy letters were his common way to sign off which would be very difficult to counterfeit. And so he picks up the stylus from his secretary, or amanuensis, and pens this final word. And as he does he introduces to us this lovely theme of sainthood.
Paul tells the Philippians to greet every saint in Christ Jesus and says that the brothers with him greet them also (verse 21).
The greeting Paul speaks of is more than saying ‘hello’. It suggests affectionate fellowship.
MacArthur says:
The simple verb translated “greet” or “salute,” although that has so many military connotations we don’t use it anymore, the simple verb means to say “hello” but not just in a vacuum, it implies a note of affection and a desire for one’s well being. And here we could assume that Paul is saying affectionately, “I want you to express to all the saints how much I desire their spiritual well being. Share my love and passion for their spiritual development.” That’s really what’s on his heart. It says I care, I care about you.
Would you notice he says “greet every saint.” He doesn’t say greet all the saints in sort of the collective way. Instead of using the collective “all” he uses the individualistic word “every.” And here he is noting for us that every saint is worthy of Paul’s concern, Paul’s care, Paul’s affection and Paul’s wishes for spiritual well being. Now this is a monumental and unique element of the Christian faith that we are to love one another the same. We are to consider others better than ourselves. There is no stratification in the body of Christ. There are to be no favorites. God is not a respecter of…what?…of persons. We are not to elevate some over the other. And what Paul shows us here that is…in his affectionate desire for the spiritual well being of the saints he included everybody. This is his heart. This is what he was after in chapter 2 when he said to them, “If there’s any encouragement in Christ, any comfort of love, any fellowship of the Spirit, any affection and compassion, please make my joy complete.” Why? “By having the same mind, loving everyone the same way, being united in Spirit, having one purpose, not being proud but humble, regarding one another as more important than yourself and not looking on your own things but the things of other,” namely, having the mind of Christ, the mind of humility. That’s fellowship.
That is not always how fellowship works in reality, but that is how it should work and what we should strive for.
MacArthur says that this instruction of greeting is meant for the church leaders:
Now the injunction here in verse 21 is directed at the church leaders who will get the letter. And when he says, “Greet every saint in Christ Jesus,” he is telling the pastors and elders and deacons to go greet the people on his behalf individually, assuring them of his love and his desire for their spiritual well being. This is the way it is with Christ. He had a heart for the individual. I remember Mark 5:31 where out of the midst of the multitude He felt the little lady who touched His garment. He always had that sense of being touchable. So it is in the church. There’s no stratification, there’s no elevation. We’re all commonly saints. None of us is superior to or inferior to the other, we are what we are by the grace of God, 1 Corinthians 15:10 says, and only because of His grace.
MacArthur explains who the brothers are in that verse:
Now I want you to know that while he was a prisoner in Rome for this time writing this letter, he had some pretty formidable folks coming to see him. He calls them the brethren who are with me and they send you the same desire for spiritual well being and affection and they’re the ones with me. These are his specific coworkers, as opposed to all the rest that he mentions in verse 22. And doing a little bit of background on this you find out who they were…quite an amazing group of people.
For example, we know that during his imprisonment Timothy was with him because he refers to him in the letter clear back in chapter 1 verse 1, then in chapter 2 verse 19. Timothy was his protege, his son in the faith, a very gifted, great, godly man, thirty years the junior of Paul but nonetheless a very unique and gifted man. There was also Epaphroditus, that godly saint who had come from Philippi, he too was with Paul, and you know the character of that man, it’s mentioned at the end of chapter 2. He was such a devout Christian that he came close to death for the work of Christ, risking his own life just to serve Paul. That is a sacrificial man.
So Timothy was there, and Epaphroditus was there. Chapter 1 and verse 14 also indicates to us that there were some other brethren who were courageously preaching the Word of God without fear, so there were a group of other preachers there, evangelizers. In addition to that it’s very likely that Tychicus and Aristarchus were there, well known and noble Christians. There are many who would tell us that Luke was there and Mark was there. If we compare all the data we have, and that’s a formidable duo, namely the two who wrote the two gospels, Mark and Luke. And some have suggested it’s very likely Onesimus was there, the runaway slave who ran into Paul and was converted to Christ, who went back then to serve Philemon. Others would say a man named Jesus Justus was there. And then there are some unnamed brethren who were there with him.
The point that I want you to see is very interesting, it’s this. That as high up the ladders of stratification as they might be, these gentlemen are only described as the brethren. And again we pull them down from any supposed rank and we talk again about the commonality of sainthood. Timothy may have been unusually gifted, and certainly was. Epaphroditus may have been a noble Christian soul, and certainly he was. And among the preachers at Rome, there were unquestionably some extremely gifted men. And no one would argue about the spiritual qualifications of Tychicus and Aristarchus, given that they had spent a lot of time with Paul. And who would question Mark and Luke’s character? But as formidable as they were, they need only be associated with such sort of non-descript and troublesome characters as Onesimus. And they are all pulled together in one term “brethren.” You see, the fellowship of saints is a common bond without strata ... There isn’t any stratification here. This is the common identity, the brethren who are saints, those others who love Christ. The fact that they were gifted in different ways doesn’t make them any superior at all. In fact, Paul when identifying himself said, “I am the least of all Apostles,” and in another epistle he said, “I am the chief of sinners.”
Paul goes on to say that all the saints greet the Philippians, especially those in Caesar’s household (verse 22).
Matthew Henry’s commentary says:
He sends salutations from those who were at Rome: “The brethren who are with me salute you; the ministers, and all the saints here, send their affectionate remembrances to you. Chiefly those who are of Cæsar’s household; the Christian converts who belonged to the emperor’s court.” Observe, (1.) There were saints in Cæsar’s household. Though Paul was imprisoned at Rome, for preaching the gospel, by the emperor’s command, yet there were some Christians in his own family. The gospel early obtained among some of the rich and great. Perhaps the apostle fared the better, and received some favour, by means of his friends at court. (2.) Chiefly those, etc. Observe, They, being bred at court, were more complaisant than the rest. See what an ornament to religion sanctified civility is.
MacArthur points out the unifying nature of the greeting:
… further opening up to us the window on fellowship, in verse 22 he says, “All the saints greet you,” and he just wraps his arms around the whole Roman church, all the people in Rome that were Christians…the wider circle of Christians, they send their love and their affection and their wishes for spiritual well being and growth.
Beloved, that’s the heart of Christian fellowship. We’re all saints, none superior to the other, though differently gifted and at points in our life differently faithful. But we are all one brotherhood, we are all one fellowship, we are all one body in Christ. And the less comely members, Paul says to the Corinthians, are not less significant, but are perhaps in many cases more significant, as the less beautiful members of your body are more significant than those ones which receive all the kudos. And so we find here that the fellowship of saints is a very simple thing, it is the sharing of common love and the desire for spiritual well being. The Christian singer is not a soloist, he’s a member of a choir. The Christian soldier is not solitary figure, he’s a member of an army. The Christian scholar is not a privately tutored leaner, he’s a part of a class and a school. The Christian son is not just a lonely child, he’s a member of a family. The Christian runner is not an individual performer, he is a part of a team. That’s the fellowship.
Catholics and Anglicans do not normally refer to each other as saints. That is something we leave to other denominations.
MacArthur defines what a saint is in Paul’s context, one which many Protestant denominations use:
Saints are not some group of people exist in isolation, as cold as the stone that marks them out. They’re common possessors of the eternal life of God who share their love with each other.
So sainthood is characterized then by being separated from sin unto God for holy purposes through faith in Christ. The worship of saints is godward praise in response to truth and blessing. The fellowship of saints is a loving and non-discriminating mutual care.
Number four, the joy of saints. Paul opens a window to that for us in verse 22 and I think he must have had a gleam in his eye as he penned this with his own stylus. He says in verse 22, “All the saints greet you, especially those of Caesar’s household.” And I just think he loved to say that. Why? Well this is the joy of the saints. You say, “What is the joy of the saints?” I’ll tell you what the joy of the saints is. In Luke 15 Jesus told a story about a lady who lost a coin, looked all day, found the coin, called her friends and rejoiced.
Then He told a story about a man who had sheep, lost a sheep, found the sheep, called his friends and they rejoiced. Then He told a story about a man who lost a son, found the son, called his friends, had a feast, they rejoiced. And through that fifteenth chapter of Luke the Scripture says that when a soul is saved there is joy in heaven. The theme of Luke 15 is the joy of heaven over the salvation of a soul. And may I say to you that that’s not the only place where there’s joy when a soul is saved. What is the joy of the saints on earth? The greatest, highest joy we have, isn’t it, is to see someone come to Christ.
We had the first two of those parables in the Gospel from Luke 15 in the Year C readings on September 10, 2022, the Thirteenth Sunday after Trinity.
The final element of sainthood is realising, as Paul did, that — even though we still sin — we still live in Christ:
Listen, He’s the theme of this whole letter, did you get that? The name of Christ is mentioned 40 times in these four chapters, one every couple of verses, He’s the heart of the whole thing. He is central to it. Paul began by describing himself as a slave of Jesus Christ. He addresses the Christians as saints in Jesus Christ. When referring to his imprisonment he says my bonds are in Jesus Christ. When he speaks about life he says for to me to live is Christ. When he speaks about death he says for me to die is Christ. When he exhorts people to godly conduct, it is to be like Christ. When he calls for proper attitudes, it is to have the mind of Christ. When he speaks of choices and desires and hopes, he says they are to be built on trust in Christ. When he speaks about joy it is the joy of Christ. When he speaks about strength it is the strength of Christ. When he calls for power and knowledge and fellowship, it is the knowledge of Christ, the power of Christ, the fellowship of His sufferings that he longs for. And when he looks for eternal hope and glory, he says I am looking for Christ. And when it’s spiritual steadfastness he needs, it is in Christ. And when it is sufficiency he wants, it is in Christ. It is Christ, Christ, Christ, Christ …
Our whole life is Christ, beloved. If you get nothing else, get that out of Philippians. Called by Christ, saved by Christ, to have the mind of Christ, to serve the way Christ served, to become like Christ. That’s the message. To be like the beloved Redeemer. We are saints, not yet all we should be, but moving to become like the one who called us saints.
MacArthur tells us of Paul’s mention of Caesar’s household in verse 22, which would have included a lot of employees, just as the British Royal Family has. By contrast, the Caesar at that time was the perverse Nero, who hated Christians:
Paul knows what joy this will bring when he says, “Especially those of Caesar’s household.” Why so? Because Nero was the Caesar and everybody knows what Nero thought about Christ and Christians. Nero had fancied himself a god, a competing deity, a competing lord and demanded that the people in the Roman Empire worship him. Now the household of Caesar would not just have been his own family, the household of Caesar is a word to indicate all who were in his direct employ. And if you study history you find it’s a very interesting group. You can do reading on it yourself. You will find it included courtiers, princes and higher ups in his personal court, judges. It included cooks, food preparers, tasters who tasted the food to make sure he didn’t get poisoned. Musicians, custodians, builders, people who attended to his stables, it included soldiers and those who led them, it included people who managed his financial affairs. All of those people who were in any sense a part of the direct system, they would have been by our definition today government workers, a large group of people. And I believe that because Caesar and his whole enterprise was the direct counterpart to Christ, that there was some special exhilaration in the heart of Paul when somebody in Caesar’s household became a Christian…when they turned their backs on emperor worship and embraced the true Christ.
Now to whom is he referring? Who are these who got saved? Well, two groups. First of all, those who had come to Christ in Caesar’s household since Paul had become a prisoner. Paul being the instrument of God that he was, you can be sure that the Roman soldiers who had been chained to him heard the gospel. In fact, if you have any question about it, I remind you of chapter 1 verse 13 which says that since his imprisonment, the gospel of Christ had become known throughout the whole Praetorian Guard and to everybody else. The Praetorian Guard or the Roman soldiers were exposed to Paul…it’s one thing to be chained to Paul, to guard him, it’s something else to have Paul chained to you. Talk about not being able to get away. And the result was people were coming to Christ in the Praetorian Guard. So some of those in Caesar’s household that you can rejoice over are converted soldiers and others who heard the Word, too, who were part of serving the Caesar.
But there’s something else here as well. There’s no reason to assume that it doesn’t also include people who were Christians before Paul’s imprisonment. The gospel had already come to Rome and many had come to know Christ.
MacArthur gives us a list of names we have already seen in our studies of Paul’s letters. These come thanks to the Victorian New Testament scholar, the Revd J B Lightfoot, not to be confused with the Revd Dr John Lightfoot whom Matthew Henry cites. I have not read that they were related:
J.B. Lightfoot, that great New Testament scholar, has a marvelous treatment of this whole idea of the Christians in Caesar’s household. And studying all kinds of lists that have been discovered archaeologically that give us names of Caesar’s household, and they’ve found them in archaeological digs, he has taken all the names on all those lists that have been discovered, gone over those names to see if he can recognize any of them, and found amazingly many parallels on the list of government workers with the list of names in Romans chapter 16. You remember when Paul was writing the epistle to the Romans and the sixteenth chapter he commends many, many people who helped him. Many of those names appear on the lists of Caesar’s household. In fact, Lightfoot concludes that Romans 16 should studied that way and that it’s pretty clear that people like Ampliatus, Apelles, Stachys, Rufus, Hermes, Tryphaena and Tryphosa, at least, and maybe others, were very, very much a part of Caesar’s household. So you have some people being converted out of Caesar’s household while Paul was a prisoner. You have some who were already Christians before that. And now Paul just loves to say, gathering up both groups, all the Christians in Caesar’s house send their love. How wonderful, how thrilling that the household of Caesar, the enemy of Christ had yielded up many souls to the conquering Christ. The crucified Galilean had already begun to rule the governments of the world spiritually. Surprising joy, surprising joy.
You can read more about them and others in my posts on Romans 16:
Romans 16:7-10 – Andronicus and Junia (Junias), Ampliatus, Urbanus, Stachys, Apelles, those of the household of Aristobulus
Romans 16:11-13 – Herodion, those ‘in the Lord’ in the household of Narcissus, Tryphaena and Tryphosa, Persis, Rufus and Rufus’s mother
Romans 16:14-16 – Asyncritus, Phlegon, Hermes, Patrobas, Hermas, Philologus, and the brothers who are with them; also, Julia, Nereus and his sister, and Olympas
Paul concludes by commending the grace of Jesus Christ to the Philippians’ spirit (verse 23).
We need divine grace daily, the way we need water and food. We cannot live in Christ without His grace.
MacArthur elaborates:
You want to hear something, you didn’t deserve to be saved and you don’t deserve to be kept saved. Do you understand that? You are no more worthy of your salvation now than you were then. And so you are sustained by grace just as you were saved by grace. It is grace by which our whole life exists. That’s why Paul says in Romans 5:2, “This grace in which we stand.” We live in it. Our life is governed by grace, guided by grace, kept by grace, strengthened by grace, sanctified by grace, enabled by grace. Listen, if God only gave us now that we’re Christians what we deserve, we’d still be damned to hell. It is the constant grace of forgiveness, the grace of enabling strength, the grace of comfort, the grace of peace, the grace of joy, the grace of boldness, the grace of revelation and instruction. We are dependent on all of it all the time.
He started out in chapter 1 verse 2 wishing them grace. He ends up wishing them grace and again comes full circle. He says the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit. What do you mean by that? Your spirit, your person, your inner man, the real you…may you know the fullness of grace, that purifying, beautifying, sanctifying grace.
What an uplifting note on which to end this study of Philippians.
Next week, I will introduce Paul’s letter to the Colossians. It, too, is a short letter, and most of it is in the Lectionary. We will see some familiar themes and names over the next few weeks.
Next time — Colossians 2:1-5
The three-year Lectionary that many Catholics and Protestants hear in public worship gives us a great variety of Holy Scripture.
Yet, it doesn’t tell the whole story.
My series Forbidden Bible Verses — ones the Lectionary editors and their clergy omit — examines the passages we do not hear in church. These missing verses are also Essential Bible Verses, ones we should study with care and attention. Often, we find that they carry difficult messages and warnings.
Today’s reading is from the English Standard Version with commentary by Matthew Henry and John MacArthur.
Greeting
1 Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God,
To the saints who are in Ephesus, and are faithful[a] in Christ Jesus:
2 Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
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Today’s post begins a brief exploration of Paul’s letter to the Ephesians.
It will be brief, because most of its six chapters are in the Lectionary. As such, I will include the content of the chapters in each post, because it is such a beautiful letter about the Church.
Both Matthew Henry and John MacArthur say that this letter is a handbook for the Church. Also, Paul was divinely inspired to reveal certain mysteries about the Gospel and God’s plan for the Church.
Furthermore, both commentators say that whether Paul actually addressed the book specifically to the Ephesians is in question. Some early commentaries omitted mentioning the church in Ephesus and had a blank space instead, suggesting it could have also been sent elsewhere. It could be argued that this letter was intended to apply to all the churches in Asia Minor.
Henry‘s commentary tells us how it was seen to be attached to Ephesus (emphases mine):
SOME think that this epistle to the Ephesians was a circular letter sent to several churches, and that the copy directed to the Ephesians happened to be taken into the canon, and so it came to bear that particular inscription. And they have been induced the rather to think this because it is the only one of all Paul’s epistles that has nothing in it peculiarly adapted to the state or case of that particular church; but it has much of common concernment to all Christians, and especially to all who, having been Gentiles in times past, were converted to Christianity. But then it may be observed, on the other hand, that the epistle is expressly inscribed (Ephesians 1:1) to the saints which are at Ephesus; and in the close of it he tells them that he had sent Tychicus unto them, whom, in 2 Timothy 4:12, he says he had sent to Ephesus.
Paul wrote Ephesians from prison:
It is an epistle that bears date out of a prison: and some have observed that what this apostle wrote when he was a prisoner had the greatest relish and savour in it of the things of God. When his tribulations did abound, his consolations and experiences did much more abound, whence we may observe that the afflictive exercises of God’s people, and particularly of his ministers, often tend to the advantage of others as well as to their own.
In addition to revealing mysteries of the Gospel and laying out a pattern for the Church, it is also theologically rich:
The apostle’s design is to settle and establish the Ephesians in the truth, and further to acquaint them with the mystery of the gospel, in order to it. In the former part he represents the great privilege of the Ephesians, who, having been in time past idolatrous heathens, were now converted to Christianity and received into covenant with God, which he illustrates from a view of their deplorable state before their conversion, Ephesians 1:1-3; Ephesians 1:1-3. In the latter part (which we have in the Ephesians 4:1-6) he instructs them in the principal duties of religion, both personal and relative, and exhorts and quickens them to the faithful discharge of them. Zanchy [Italian Reformer Girolamo Zanchi, 1516-1590] observes that we have here an epitome of the whole Christian doctrine, and of almost all the chief heads of divinity.
In 1978, John MacArthur said that he used Ephesians as a guide to modelling the principles of his own Grace Community Church, founded in 1969:
All that I had ever dreamed a church could be came to crystallization in my mind as I studied Ephesians. It formed, for me, the whole pattern of the church: what it is, how it operates, everything just came together in the study of Ephesians.
The result of that study was I wrote a book entitled The Church, the Body of Christ. Those months that we spent studying Ephesians eight years ago – seven or eight years ago – were the months that formed the character of Grace Church in terms of its present dimensions of ministry.
Grace Community Church is a church built on the principles of the book of Ephesians. In those days, I suppose we maybe had 400 or 500 people who studied with us all the way through the book. And now, at this point, we’ve got 5,000 people, and so the elders felt there were a whole lot of folks who ought to know what Grace Church is built on. And so, we’re going to study the book of Ephesians together.
I’m so excited about this because it’s a book that I absolutely love. I’ve taught it many, many times in other situations, and the riches of this book are unlimited. Really, more than any other book in the Bible, I feel this book was the catalyst that launched Grace Church. And, people, if you’re a part of Grace Church, you are a part of something that is indeed unusual, a church that has gone from 500 to 5,000 people in 9 years, a church where so many ministries have developed. It’s just really an incredible thing, and it isn’t due to one individual; it’s due to the will of God, but it’s due also to an understanding of the principles of the book of Ephesians, a very vital book.
When I think about how God has expanded this ministry, it just boggles my mind. We were talking the other day that the receipts, over the last two weeks, that have been given to Grace Church by you, God’s people, for the ministry here are more than the entire year’s giving of 1969. It’s incredible what God has done.
He describes the book in more detail:
If you get a handle on the book of Ephesians, you – some people have called it the bank of the believer. This is your spiritual checkbook, and every time you write a check out of this bank, your funds are non-diminished. In other words, you can write checks on all the riches of God as often as you want, for as much as you want and never diminish the account. Isn’t that nice? That’s the book of Ephesians. It’s a book about riches. It’s a book about fullnesses. It’s a book about being filled with things. It’s a book about inheritance. It’s a book that just tells us what we own in Christ. Some have called it the treasure house of the Bible …
You can draw out all you want, all the time, and never diminish your account. But you don’t know that unless you understand the principles in the book of Ephesians.
So, you want to get the book of Ephesians and get it down good. It’ll absolutely revolutionize your life … It will teach you who you are, how rich you are, and how you are to use those riches for God’s glory …
God is unloading all of His riches in the book of Ephesians. The word “grace” is used 12 times, and the word “grace” means God’s unmerited, undeserved kindness and favor. Grace is behind all of this lavishness that God pours out. So, the word “grace” is used 12 times. The word “glory” is used eight times. The word “inheritance” is used four times. The word “riches” is used five times. The words “fullness” and “filled” are used seven times. And the key to everything is because we are in Christ that all the fullness of the riches of the inheritance of the glory of His grace is ours. Do you see?
Because we are one with Christ in His Church, because we are redeemed, this incredible fullness is ours. Maybe the sum of it all is in chapter 3, “That you might be filled with all the fullness of God.” It’s just an incredible thought. That literally the believer can be filled with all the fullness of God Himself; that we would know the unsearchable riches of Christ; that we would be able to do exceeding abundantly above all we could ask or think according to the power that works in us.
You see, it’s all such magnanimous, grandiose concepts: fullness, riches, inheritance, wealth, resources – all in the book of Ephesians. There are enough resources in heaven to cover all past debts, present liabilities, and future needs and still not diminish your account. That’s God’s plan …
So, the guarantee for the believer in all of this is where it says it’s in Christ. And as secure as Christ is in the plan of God and in the love of the father, and as available as the resources of God are to Christ, so available are they to you. See? Because in our union with Christ, we become, according to Romans 8, joint – what? – heirs. And as Hebrews says, “He is not ashamed to call us brother.” And, “He that is joined to the spirit” – 1 Corinthians 6:17 – or “joined to the Lord,” rather – “is one spirit,” so that we have what He has. We possess what He possesses; all His riches are at our disposal.
Peter calls it an inheritance that’s laid away incorruptible and undefiled, reserved in heaven for us. That’s Ephesians. Now, it’s all in Christ. It’s all because we’re in Christ. And if you’re not in Christ, you’re poor; you’re destitute; you’re a pauper; you’re a beggar. If you’re in Christ, you’re rich beyond all wild imagination. It’s all based on Him. It’s not anything we did; it’s not anything we earned. It’s all His.
So, this is your bankbook. This is the treasure house. This is where you check out your resources. And in the first – now watch it – in the first three chapters, he tells you what they are, and in the last three, he tells you how to use them. You’ve got to get it all. You’ve got to stay with us for the whole thing. You can’t spend them if you don’t know what they are; and if you know what they are, you got to know how to spend them.
So, the first three chapters, the theology of the rich believer; the practice in chapters 4 to 6. And there are other things that are involved, but that’s just the main thing. Now, let me go a step further and turn the corner a little bit in your thinking. Just kind of file that category of riches related to Ephesians, and I want to talk about another dimension. It not only talks about our riches, but it talks about the whole idea that all this is ours because we’re in the Church. Okay? It’s all ours because we’re in the Church …
Now, the book, then, discusses the Church. It discusses what the Church is, how the Church functions, how we function in the Church, and it discusses the riches of the Church …
The book of Ephesians presents the mystery of the Church. The mystery of the Church … it’s been revealed to Paul.
… And what was it? That the Gentiles are fellow heirs of the same body, partakers of the promise in Christ by the Gospel. In other words, the hidden secret of the past was revealed to Paul. And what was it? It was that the Gentile and the Jew would be in one body in the Church. Now, stay with that; we’re going to expand it a little bit.
Let’s talk about how God reveals things. This will help you to understand this. There are three ways, basically, that I want to mention to you. Number one, there are some things God never tells anybody. Okay? God has some secrets that He never reveals to anybody any time. These are secrets. You just don’t know them; I don’t know them; nobody knows them. God doesn’t reveal them. Deuteronomy 29:29 tells about these things. It says this, “The secret things belong unto the Lord our God: but the things which are revealed belong unto us and our children forever” …
Second category. God has some secrets that He reveals to special people all through history …
In Psalm 25:14, it says this, “The secret of the Lord is with them that fear Him; and He will show them His covenant.” Proverbs 3:32 says, “His secret is with the righteous.” Amos 3:7, “He reveals His secrets unto His servants.” So, the righteous, the servants, the people of God, those that fear Him, they know His truth. Now, who are they? Believers. You and me. The fact of the matter is there are some things that nobody knows. The second part is there are some things that only believers know. We know things the unsaved don’t know. Right? …
There’s a third category I want you to get. There are some things which God keeps secret from everybody, for a period of time, and finally reveals to His special people in the New Testament. All right? Now don’t get lost. Point one, God keeps some secrets permanently. Point two, He reveals some things to all His people through all history. Point three, He keeps some secrets through history until the New Testament and reveals them only to the New Testament people.
Do you know we know things that the Old Testament saints didn’t know? That’s right. The New Testament wasn’t written yet. The New Testament is new truth for a new age, sacred secrets revealed by God. In fact, the Old Testament saints used to look to try to see what things meant. Read it in Peter’s epistle. He says they were searching what this thing was they were writing. Do you know that the angels long to understand some of the things that we know such as the meaning of salvation? There are some things that God has kept secret through all history and finally just revealed in the New Testament. Now, these are the mysteries. These are the mustērion, the Greek word …
Now, by the way, the man who was given, for the most part, the job of revealing the mysteries was Paul the apostle. He was the mystery man. He was the one to whom God revealed the sacred secrets that had been hidden from the Old Testament saints.
So, these are the mysteries. So, when you see the word “mystery” in chapter 3, verse 3, it simply means a spiritual truth never before revealed but now revealed in the New Testament. New truth for a new age …
So, when Jesus talked, He talked in a way, when He was on earth, that His people would understand it, and the unbelieving would not, and He talked in parables. Right? So, they said to Him … “Why do you speak in parables?” And He said, “Because it is given unto you to know the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, but to them it is not given.” Again, the mysteries are something hidden that God reveals to His special people in the New Testament age …
Where does He reign now? In the heart of the believer. He is enthroned. In the kingdom, will there be peace? Yes. In the heart of the believer, is there peace that passes understanding? Yes. In the kingdom, Christ will dispense salvation. He has dispensed it in our lives now. In the kingdom there will be joy and happiness and blessing, and things will flourish, and so do they in the life of an obedient believer now. You see?
At this point, it is worth noting that yesterday’s Gospel reading — for the Sixth Sunday of Easter (Year C) — pertains to this, particularly these verses from John 14, when Jesus was giving His final discourse to the Apostles after the Last Supper:
14:23 Jesus answered him, “Those who love me will keep my word, and my Father will love them, and we will come to them and make our home with them.
14:27 Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.
Let us now move on to Ephesians 1, keeping those verses in mind. This is serendipitous.
Paul calls himself an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God and greets the congregation as saints who are faithful in Him (verse 1).
Henry has a splendid analysis of the verse:
Here is, 1. The title St. Paul takes to himself, as belonging to him–Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ, c. He reckoned it a great honour to be employed by Christ, as one of his messengers to the sons of men. The apostles were prime officers in the Christian church, being extraordinary ministers appointed for a time only. They were furnished by their great Lord with extraordinary gifts and the immediate assistance of the Spirit, that they might be fitted for publishing and spreading the gospel and for governing the church in its infant state. Such a one Paul was, and that not by the will of man conferring that office upon him, nor by his own intrusion into it but by the will of God, very expressly and plainly intimated to him, he being immediately called (as the other apostles were) by Christ himself to the work. Every faithful minister of Christ (though his call and office are not of so extraordinary a nature) may, with our apostle, reflect on it as an honour and comfort to himself that he is what he is by the will of God. 2. The persons to whom this epistle is sent: To the saints who are at Ephesus, that is, to the Christians who were members of the church at Ephesus, the metropolis of Asia. He calls them saints, for such they were in profession, such they were bound to be in truth and reality, and many of them were such. All Christians must be saints; and, if they come not under that character on earth, they will never be saints in glory. He calls them the faithful in Christ Jesus, believers in him, and firm and constant in their adherence to him and to his truths and ways.
As ever, Paul stamps his apostolic authority on his work. MacArthur explains why he did so:
… this is the single credential that he lays out: “an apostle of Christ Jesus.” Even though he stood outside the twelve—he was maybe overshadowed by them in some sense—he wants us to understand that he is a legitimate apostle. He does this with no vanity, no self-glory. In fact, he says, “I am what I am by the grace of God.” He says, “We have received grace and apostleship,” Romans 1:5.
But what do we know about his apostolic calling? When he called himself an apostle, four things were in view; let’s look at them just briefly. First, his apostolic call. That is to say, it had to be directly from the Lord. An apostle was one called directly by the Lord Himself—as he was, on the Damascus Road. Only fourteen men were ever given this call: the twelve; Judas is out, Mathias is in, that makes the thirteenth; and Paul is the fourteenth. He had a divine calling. His life was interrupted on the Damascus Road; certainly the most dramatic calling of any apostle by Christ Himself—even the risen, exalted, ascended Christ.
The second thing that characterizes an apostle is that the notion of his identity is wrapped up in the One he represents. He belonged to Christ. He frequently refers to himself as a slave of Christ. This life was not his own; he was the possession of Christ, bought and paid for on the cross, so that he would say, “For me, to live is Christ.”
Now apostle means “sent one.” So here is one who has received a unique call personally from Christ, who belongs to Christ as a slave, for the sole purpose of fulfilling, thirdly, a commission. Apostolos means a sent one. His commission, in particular, was to the Gentiles.
The fourth element of it simply is to understand that he had power. An apostle is given delegated authority; he can speak for the one he represents. Even in the Jewish setting, the Sanhedrin was a supreme court of the Jews; and in matters of religion, they had authority over every Jew in the world. And when the Sanhedrin came to a decision about anything, and that decision as given then to the public, it was carried out by a messenger called an apostolos and taken to those who needed to hear it. When such an apostle of the Sanhedrin went out, he didn’t go with his own message or his own authority—behind him was the authority of the supreme court of Israel.
So it was with Paul. He had authority granted to him by Christ. That authority was validated by signs and wonders and miraculous things, as God validated him as a true apostle by supernatural signs. Not only is he an apostle, but he is “an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God.” This is double authority, from the Father and the Son. God sovereignly directed the work, specially equipped the apostle called the apostle, as did Christ Himself.
Again, although many translations mention the congregation at Ephesus, that was not the case in the earliest manuscripts:
“At Ephesus”—though this letter is directed to the Ephesians, and I think that’s legitimately to whom Paul wrote it, there are no personal aspects in this letter. There are no references to local people or local events or local issues in this church. And in some ancient manuscripts there’s a blank where it says, “who are at Ephesus”—“who are at blank.” Where did such manuscripts come from, and why did that occur? We can’t be certain, but many scholars believe that this was such a general letter that it was circulated to all the churches, not only in Ephesus and close by, but all through Asia Minor—the seven churches that are listed in the book of Revelation chapters 2 and 3. In Colossians, in fact, Paul refers to a letter from Laodicea. Some feel this might be that letter; we can’t know that. But nonetheless, in some ancient manuscripts there’s a blank there so that any church could fill its own name in, and it would be appropriate to them.
MacArthur gives us more information about Paul’s imprisonment, which Henry dates as AD 61, and the other letters that he wrote during that time:
It’s written from Rome. Paul is a prisoner during his third missionary tour. It’s carried by Tychicus and Onesimus, along with Colossians and Philemon, to the churches and to Philemon.
MacArthur says that calling the congregation saints refers not only to their justification by faith through grace but also sanctification on their Christian journey:
… to show you that, 1 Corinthians chapter 1. And you might say of all the people who didn’t act saintly, the Corinthians probably headed the list. But listen to how he begins 1 Corinthians: “Paul, called as an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God, and Sosthenes our brother, to the church of God which is at Corinth”—that’s the whole church at Corinth—“to those who have been sanctified in Christ Jesus, saints by calling.” If you’re a saint, you’re not only justified, you’re in the process of being sanctified. And the Corinthians seem like some of the least sanctified saints—and yet that is how Paul describes them …
There are plenty of scriptures that indicate there’s no such thing as justification without sanctification. One more comes to mind. Acts 26:18, Paul says his commission is to the Gentiles, to whom the Lord is sending him—verse 18, “to open their eyes so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the dominion of Satan to God”—that’s conversion, and—“ that they may receive forgiveness of sins and an inheritance among those who have been sanctified by faith in Me.” When you put your faith in Christ, you’re not only justified, you’re sanctified; not perfectly sanctified, but you’re on the path of sanctification.
So that, if you are a saint, you also can be designated faithful. That’s why those go together: “to the saints who are faithful.” What does that mean? Pistos, who are believers, who believe in Christ Jesus.
There [was] a movement years ago that I basically took on in The Gospel According to Jesus that said you could be a Christian and completely lose your faith, be an unbelieving believer. Not possible. True believers are justified and sanctified. They are saints who are faithful in Christ Jesus.
So Paul is writing this letter to those saints and faithful believers.
Paul wishes the Ephesians grace and peace from God the Father and His Son Jesus Christ (verse 2).
Henry explains:
The apostolical benediction: Grace be to you, c. This is the token in every epistle and it expresses the apostle’s good-will to his friends, and a real desire of their welfare. By grace we are to understand the free and undeserved love and favour of God, and those graces of the Spirit which proceed from it; by peace all other blessings, spiritual and temporal, the fruits and product of the former. No peace without grace. No peace, nor grace, but from God the Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ. These peculiar blessings proceed from God, not as a Creator, but as a Father by special relation: and they come from our Lord Jesus Christ, who, having purchased them for his people, has a right to bestow them upon them. Indeed the saints, and the faithful in Christ Jesus, had already received grace and peace; but the increase of these is very desirable, and the best saints stand in need of fresh supplies of the graces of the Spirit, and cannot but desire to improve and grow: and therefore they should pray, each one for himself and all for one another, that such blessings may still abound unto them.
MacArthur focuses on divine grace and divine peace:
First, grace—charis, the kindness of God toward undeserving sinners. Peace, eirēnē. Peace means peace with God, the peace of God, peace with each other. Those are the first blessings: grace and peace. Grace is the fountain; peace is the stream that flows from that fountain.
MacArthur summarises the next set of verses:
In verses 3 through 14, Paul gives one long sentence listing all the spiritual blessings in the heavenlies in Christ: election, sanctification, foreordination, adoption, acceptance, redemption, forgiveness, enrichment, enlightenment, inheritance, sealing, promise, on and on and on. Everything that is ours is laid out in that opening chapter. And, of course, from there you go through the whole treasure house of God’s provision for His people: the treasures of grace, the treasures of glory, the treasures of Christ. In this chapter, running down through verse 14, you will see the work of the Father, you will see the work of the Son, and you’ll see the work of the Spirit. And all of it has one purpose: verse 6, “to the praise of the glory of His grace”; verse 12, “to the praise of His glory”; verse 14, “to the praise of His glory.”
Everything that happens in the life of the church is to the praise of His glory. It is all for His glory—and particularly, the praise of the glory of His grace, praise of the glory of His grace, as we saw in verse 6.
Henry tells us to look at the rest of the chapter as a combination of praises and prayers:
… though it may seem somewhat peculiar in a letter, yet the Spirit of God saw fit that his discourse of divine things in this chapter should be cast into prayers and praises, which, as they are solemn addresses to God, so they convey weighty instructions to others. Prayer may preach; and praise may do so too.
Here is the rest of the chapter:
Spiritual Blessings in Christ
3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, 4 even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love 5 he predestined us[b] for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, 6 to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved. 7 In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace, 8 which he lavished upon us, in all wisdom and insight 9 making known[c] to us the mystery of his will, according to his purpose, which he set forth in Christ 10 as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in him, things in heaven and things on earth.
11 In him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will, 12 so that we who were the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of his glory. 13 In him you also, when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation, and believed in him, were sealed with the promised Holy Spirit, 14 who is the guarantee[d] of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it,[e] to the praise of his glory.
Thanksgiving and Prayer
15 For this reason, because I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love[f] toward all the saints, 16 I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers, 17 that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, 18 having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, 19 and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his great might 20 that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly places, 21 far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come. 22 And he put all things under his feet and gave him as head over all things to the church, 23 which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.
Next week, I will look at Ephesians 2 and the first part of Ephesians 3.
Next time — Ephesians 3:13
The three-year Lectionary that many Catholics and Protestants hear in public worship gives us a great variety of Holy Scripture.
Yet, it doesn’t tell the whole story.
My series Forbidden Bible Verses — ones the Lectionary editors and their clergy omit — examines the passages we do not hear in church. These missing verses are also Essential Bible Verses, ones we should study with care and attention. Often, we find that they carry difficult messages and warnings.
Today’s reading is from the English Standard Version with commentary by Matthew Henry and John MacArthur.
6 And from those who seemed to be influential (what they were makes no difference to me; God shows no partiality)—those, I say, who seemed influential added nothing to me. 7 On the contrary, when they saw that I had been entrusted with the gospel to the uncircumcised, just as Peter had been entrusted with the gospel to the circumcised 8 (for he who worked through Peter for his apostolic ministry to the circumcised worked also through me for mine to the Gentiles), 9 and when James and Cephas and John, who seemed to be pillars, perceived the grace that was given to me, they gave the right hand of fellowship to Barnabas and me, that we should go to the Gentiles and they to the circumcised. 10 Only, they asked us to remember the poor, the very thing I was eager to do.
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Last week’s post introduced Paul’s letter to the Galatians, which he opens by discussing his time in Jerusalem for the Jerusalem Council (Acts 15), which concluded that circumcision is unnecessary and antithetical to the Gospel.
Paul’s objective in writing this letter to all the churches in Galatia is to impress upon them the doctrine of justification by faith rather than works, e.g. circumcision.
John MacArthur explains (emphases mine):
So understand it this way: When Christ died, you died in Christ. When Christ rose, you rose in Christ. Christ perfectly fulfilled the law, and you have fulfilled the law in Christ. He has fulfilled the law on your behalf. He died on your behalf; He rose on your behalf. He lives in complete, perfect conformity to the law of God on your behalf as a believer. “Do not let anybody take you back into a yoke of slavery.” That’s Galatians 5:1, isn’t it. “Keep standing firm.” It was freedom, for freedom that Christ set us free. “Keep standing firm. Do not be subject again to a yoke of slavery.” In the Jerusalem Council of Acts 15:10, they called it a “yoke around your neck.” Salvation is by faith alone.
Paul met three of the Apostles in Jerusalem but, as he had received all his Christian doctrine from our Lord Jesus through divine revelation, he says that whether they were influential men or not — pointing out that it makes no matter to God — they added nothing to his knowledge of Jesus and God the Father (verse 6).
MacArthur says:
“God is no respecter of persons,” Acts 10:34. It’s never about persons. Jesus said this: “Who is My mother, who is My brother, who is My sister, but the one who does the will of My Father.” It’s not about people. It’s not about position.
Paul says that James (the brother of Jesus), John and Peter recognised that he had been entrusted in preaching the Good News to the uncircumcised — Gentiles — in the same way that Peter’s ministry involved preaching to the circumcised — the Jews (verse 7).
MacArthur explains that both Paul and Peter preached the same Gospel message, albeit to two different groups of people:
Listen, it is bizarre to think about it; but there are those who think Peter preached one gospel and Paul a different one. There’s one gospel to the circumcised. It’s not the gospel of the circumcised, and it’s not the gospel of the uncircumcised. It’s the gospel to the circumcised and to the uncircumcised, but it’s just one gospel. In verse 7 there’s just one gospel, entrusted with the gospel to the uncircumcised, as Peter to the circumcised.
It’s never about people. It’s not about who I am. It’s not about who Peter is, who James is, who John is, or anybody else. It’s about the gospel. And they saw it. “It was the same gospel, and I had been called to give it to the uncircumcised, and Peter had been called to give it to the circumcised.” Two worlds: the Jewish world, the Gentile world. These are what we call objective genitives. The genitive receives the action: the gospel to the uncircumcised, the gospel to the circumcised. It’s the one gospel. And any other gospel brings a curse.
Paul says that ‘he’ — the Holy Spirit — worked equally through him and through Peter in their respective ministries (verse 8).
MacArthur expands on the verse:
The same Holy Spirit that empowered Peter from the Day of Pentecost on, as he preaches his way through the early chapters of Acts, and thousands and thousands of people are converted, “The same power in Peter as an apostle is the power in me. We have the same gospel. We have the same Holy Spirit. No difference.”
In verse 9, Paul reiterates what he said in verse 7, except that he uses the word ‘grace’, calls Peter ‘Cephas’ and adds that the three Apostles gave him Barnabas as a companion in ministry to preach to the Gentiles.
Matthew Henry’s commentary says:
They were not only satisfied with his doctrine, but they saw a divine power attending him, both in preaching it and in working miracles for the confirmation of it: that he who wrought effectually in Peter to the apostleship of the circumcision, the same was mighty in him towards the Gentiles. And hence they justly concluded that the gospel of the uncircumcision was committed to Paul, as the gospel of the circumcision was to Peter. And therefore, perceiving the grace that was given to him (that he was designed to the honour and office of an apostle as well as themselves) they gave unto him and Barnabas the right hand of fellowship, a symbol whereby they acknowledged their equality with them, and agreed that these should go to the heathen, while they continued to preach to the circumcision, as judging it most agreeable to the mind of Christ, and most conducive to the interest of Christianity, so to divide their work.
The one difference — ‘only’ — was that the three Apostles asked Paul to remember the poor church in Jerusalem, which he was eager to do (verse 10). We saw in 1 and 2 Corinthians how Paul was collecting money from the churches abroad for Jerusalem.
Henry points out that Paul believed that all the churches were one in Christ. It did not matter whether the converts were Jews or Gentiles:
… he very readily falls in with it, whereby he showed his charitable and catholic [universal] disposition, how ready he was to own the Jewish converts as brethren, though many of them could scarcely allow the like favour to the converted Gentiles, and that mere difference of opinion was no reason with him why he should not endeavour to relieve and help them. Herein he has given us an excellent pattern of Christian charity, and has taught us that we should by no means confine it to those who are just of the same sentiments with us, but be ready to extend it to all whom we have reason to look upon as the disciples of Christ.
MacArthur says that, in the first part of Galatians 2, Paul lays out his commission to preach and heal, which he can do only through the gift of divine grace. The same grace holds true for the ministry of all godly clergypersons:
Only grace accounts for his ministry.
Notice that phrase at the beginning of verse 9, “recognizing the grace that had been given to me.” It’s the grace of the calling, the saving calling on the Damascus Road. That was all grace – wasn’t it? – out of nowhere. It was grace that called him to be an apostle. It was grace that taught him for three years. It was grace that empowered him. It was grace that produced the results. It’s all of grace.
If anything happens by the preaching of any pastor or any preacher, if anything ever happens as a result of anything I’ve ever said anywhere, anytime throughout my entire life, it isn’t because of me, it’s because of the grace that has been given to me. It is the grace that touches the souls of people. It is from heaven that all change takes place.
Only God’s grace accounts for the spread of the gospel. Only God’s grace accounts for the founding and growth of the church. Only God’s grace accounts for the power of the Word of God to transform lives.
So that’s the section I like, between verses 6 and 9, so much, because it frames his commission. He is an apostle. He preaches the same gospel Peter preached. He functions by the same power Peter had. And we all know the power of Peter on the Day of Pentecost, the power that came through the message there: three thousand saved, thousands and thousands and thousands more as the days and weeks went on. He is therefore validated by the Jerusalem church and its leaders.
You see, lastly, his commendation. “They gave to me and Barnabas the right hand of fellowship, so that we might go to the Gentiles and they to the circumcised.” They affirmed exactly what God had called to do. That was his call.
Paul goes on to describe a dispute he had with Peter in Antioch. More on that next week.
Next time — Galatians 2:11-14
The Second Sunday after Christmas Day is January 2, 2021.
The readings for Year C can be found here.
The Gospel is as follows (emphases mine):
John 1:(1-9), 10-18
1:1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
1:2 He was in the beginning with God.
1:3 All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being
1:4 in him was life, and the life was the light of all people.
1:5 The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.
1:6 There was a man sent from God, whose name was John.
1:7 He came as a witness to testify to the light, so that all might believe through him.
1:8 He himself was not the light, but he came to testify to the light.
1:9 The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world.
1:10 He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him.
1:11 He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him.
1:12 But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God,
1:13 who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God.
1:14 And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.
1:15 (John testified to him and cried out, “This was he of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me ranks ahead of me because he was before me.'”)
1:16 From his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace.
1:17 The law indeed was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.
1:18 No one has ever seen God. It is God the only Son, who is close to the Father’s heart, who has made him known.
My post on John 1:1-14, read on Christmas Day, can be found here.
Commentary for John 1:15-18 comes from Matthew Henry and John MacArthur.
John MacArthur tells us that these first 18 verses are a prologue. They explain the theology that we must understand and accept in order to know the true Jesus:
John opens his gospel with 18 verses that we would call a prologue – a prologue. This is John talking theologically. Starting in verse 19, he goes into the narrative part of it in which he starts to tell the story of Jesus’ life in the world. And he goes into the statements that Jesus makes and the works that He does and the miracles He performs and gives us the wonderful story all the way to the cross and the resurrection. But in the opening prologue, he makes his thesis statement, and the statement in the opening prologue is that Jesus is God in human flesh, that He is the Creator of the universe who has become a part of His creation.
He is pure, eternal being who has become a man. That is John’s message, that Jesus is not a created man, He is God in human flesh. And that, dear friends, that is the most essential doctrine in the Christian faith. That is it. And that is why there have been and continue to be so many heresies concerning Jesus Christ, concerning the essence or the nature or the person of Jesus Christ. This is the important doctrine in the Christian faith. It must be known, it must be believed, for someone to escape hell and enter heaven, that Jesus is God.
Summed up in four words at the beginning of verse 14, “The Word became flesh.” The Word became flesh. That is the central truth of Christianity, that is the theme of John’s gospel, and that is the required conviction for anyone who will escape hell, to understand that the Word became flesh.
Now, we’ve already learned in the opening thirteen verses that what that is saying is that the one, true, eternal God became human. That the infinite One became finite, that the eternal One entered time, that the omnipresent One became confined in the space of a human body, that the invisible One became visible. The true church of Jesus Christ has always believed that. It has always proclaimed that. It has always demanded that. Any other view of Christ is unacceptable – it is a damning heresy. This is the only view of Christ by which someone can escape hell and enter heaven. This is the reason John makes such a case out of the deity of Jesus Christ.
He gives his purpose in chapter 20, verse 31, at the end of his gospel. “These have been written” – everything in the gospel up to this point – “so that you may believe that Jesus is the anointed One, the Son of God, and that believing, you may have life in His name.” The only way to have eternal life is by believing in Him, believing who He is, first of all, and what He has done.
So in His opening prologue, John talks about the nature of Jesus Christ. He introduces Him as “the Word.” This is a metaphor which speaks of Christ as coming from God, as God revealing Himself, disclosing Himself, speaking. And he says, “The Word was in the beginning.” In other words, He already existed when everything that began, began, which means He’s eternal. He was with God, which means though He was God, He was at the same time distinct from God. He was with God and was God. That is Trinitarian. There is one God and yet three persons. Jesus is God and yet He is with God.
The theology here is profound. And in the beginning when everything came into existence that came into existence, He “was” – the verb “to be,” pure being, He eternally existed. To prove that, everything that came into being came into being through Him, and without Him did not anything come into being that came into being – and that because He is life. He has life in Himself. He is the Creator. And the Creator whose eternal being, verse 5 says, came into the darkness of this world like a light. And that’s how he introduces this incredible book, the arrival of the Light, the very life of God, the very Word of God, into the world.
Now, I think it would be safe to say that John was legitimately obsessed with this great foundational doctrine. And again I urge you, whenever anybody talks about religion and gets to Jesus, you want to focus right down on what Jesus they are talking about. Are they talking about the One who is the eternal God? The One who is the Creator who existed infinitely forever? Or are they talking about some other Jesus? John is obsessed with this.
John also wrote about those themes in his two letters, 1 and 2 John. John also wrote Revelation.
MacArthur explains:
… just to show you what was so much on his heart, turn to 1 John for a moment – 1 John – and John launches his epistle, and he’s writing this epistle to believers to identify for them the marks of true salvation. And listen how he starts. He starts very much like he started his gospel. “What was from the beginning,” that’s Christ, who, when the beginning began, already existed because He’s eternal.
“What was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, namely the Word of Life – and the life was manifested.” There is very parallel language. The eternal Word, life itself, manifested itself in the world, John said, and we saw it with our own eyes. And we looked at it, and we heard, and we touched Him with our hands. We’ve seen, he says in verse 2, we testify, we proclaim to you the eternal life – you could capitalize that, The Eternal Life, meaning the Son of God – which was with the Father and was manifested to us – and we’ve seen and we heard and we proclaim to you.
He can’t get over this. John is absolutely blown away by the fact that he has heard, he has seen, he has looked deeply into the face of, and he has touched the Creator of the universe in a human form. I think this would be something to obsess about. That’s where John is. And what we have seen and heard and touched, we declare to you so that, verse 3, you may have fellowship with us, so that you can come into the kingdom, believing in Him, and our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ. And these are things we write, so that your joy may be made complete, because complete joy can only be found in knowing Him.
You know, John never got over it. You wonder why John refers to himself in his gospel, not by his name, but he calls himself “the disciple whom Jesus loved” or “the disciple who leaned on Jesus” because he never, ever could fathom the reality that this is the eternal Creator God, the one true God in human form, and He loves me, and He walks with me, and He talks with me, and I touch Him, and I fellowship with Him, and I can’t get over it. This is the obsession of all of his writing.
John refers again to John the Baptist, who said that Jesus came after him in birth order but in eternal terms He comes first because He has been present before all creation (verse 15).
Matthew Henry’s commentary says:
He is before me, is my first, [1.] In respect of seniority: he was before me, for he was before Abraham, John 8:58; John 8:58. Nay, he was before all things, Colossians 1:17. I am but of yesterday, he from eternity. It was but in those days that John Baptist came (Matthew 3:1), but the goings forth of our Lord Jesus were of old, from everlasting, Micah 5:2. This proves two natures in Christ. Christ, as man, came after John as to his public appearance; Christ, as God, was before him; and how could he otherwise be before him but by an eternal existence? [2.] In respect of supremacy; for he was my prince; so some princes are called the first; proton, “It is he for whose sake and service I am sent: he is my Master, I am his minister and messenger.”
John the Apostle says that from the fullness of Jesus we have received grace upon grace (verse 16).
Henry gives us the various interpretations of ‘grace upon grace’:
1. We have received grace for grace. Our receivings by Christ are all summed up in this one word, grace; we have received kai charin—even grace, so great a gift, so rich, so invaluable; we have received no less than grace; this is a gift to be spoken of with an emphasis. It is repeated, grace for grace; for to every stone in this building, as well as to the top-stone, we must cry, Grace, grace. Observe,
(1.) The blessing received. It is grace; the good will of God towards us, and the good work of God in us. God’s good will works the good work, and then the good work qualifies us for further tokens of his good will. As the cistern receives water from the fulness of the fountain, the branches sap from the fulness of the root, and the air light from the fulness of the sun, so we receive grace from the fulness of Christ.
(2.) The manner of its reception: Grace for grace—charin anti charitos. The phrase is singular, and interpreters put different senses upon it, each of which will be of use to illustrate the unsearchable riches of the grace of Christ. Grace for grace bespeaks, [1.] The freeness of this grace. It is grace for grace’s sake; so Grotius. We receive grace, not for our sakes (be it known to us), but even so, Father, because it seemed good in thy sight. It is a gift according to grace, Romans 12:6. It is grace to us for the sake of grace to Jesus Christ. God was well pleased in him, and is therefore well pleased with us in him, Ephesians 1:6. [2.] The fulness of this grace. Grace for grace is abundance of grace, grace upon grace (so Camero), one grace heaped upon another; as skin for skin is skin after skin, even all that a man has, Job 2:4. It is a blessing poured out, that there shall not be room to receive it, plenteous redemption: one grace a pledge of more grace. Joseph-He will add. It is such a fulness as is called the fulness of God which we are filled with. We are not straitened in the grace of Christ, if we be not straitened in our own bosoms. [3.] The serviceableness of this grace. Grace for grace is grace for the promoting and advancing of grace. Grace to be exercised by ourselves; gracious habits for gracious acts. Grace to be ministered to others; gracious vouchsafements for gracious performances: grace is a talent to be traded with. The apostles received grace (Romans 1:5; Ephesians 3:8), that they might communicate it, 1 Peter 4:10. [4.] The substitution of New-Testament grace in the room and stead of Old-Testament grace: so Beza. And this sense is confirmed by what follows (John 1:17; John 1:17); for the Old Testament had grace in type, the New Testament has grace in truth. There was a grace under the Old Testament, the gospel was preached then (Galatians 3:8); but that grace is superseded, and we have gospel grace instead of it, a glory which excelleth, 2 Corinthians 3:10. Discoveries of grace are now more clear, distributions of grace far more plentiful; this is grace instead of grace. [5.] It bespeaks the augmentation and continuance of grace. Grace for grace is one grace to improve, confirm, and perfect another grace. We are changed into the divine image, from glory to glory, from one degree of glorious grace to another, 2 Corinthians 3:18. Those that have true grace have that for more grace, James 4:6. When God gives grace he saith, Take this in part; for he who hath promised will perform. [6.] It bespeaks the agreeableness and conformity of grace in the saints to the grace that is in Jesus Christ; so Mr. Clark. Grace for grace is grace in us answering to grace in him, as the impression upon the wax answers the seal line for line. The grace we receive from Christ changes us into the same image (2 Corinthians 3:18), the image of the Son (Romans 8:29), the image of the heavenly, 1 Corinthians 15:49.
John makes it clear that the Old Covenant was imperfect and only temporary. The law came from God via Moses but with the New Covenant in Jesus Christ we have grace and truth (verse 17).
Henry explains how excellent and unsurpassed the New Covenant is:
(1.) Its preference above the law of Moses: The law was given by Moses, and it was a glorious discovery, both of God’s will concerning man and his good will to man; but the gospel of Christ is a much clearer discovery both of duty and happiness. That which was given by Moses was purely terrifying and threatening, and bound with penalties, a law which could not give life, which was given with abundance of terror (Hebrews 12:18); but that which is given by Jesus Christ is of another nature; it has all the beneficial uses of the law, but not the terror, for it is grace: grace teaching (Titus 2:11), grace reigning, Romans 5:21. It is a law, but a remedial law. The endearments of love are the genius of the gospel, not the affrightments of law and the curse. (2.) Its connection with truth: grace and truth. In the gospel we have the discovery of the greatest truths to be embraced by the understanding, as well as of the richest grace to be embraced by the will and affections. It is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation; that is, it is grace and truth. The offers of grace are sincere, and what we may venture our souls upon; they are made in earnest, for it is grace and truth. It is grace and truth with reference to the law that was given by Moses. For it is, [1.] The performance of all the Old-Testament promises. In the Old Testament we often find mercy and truth put together, that is, mercy according to promise; so here grace and truth denote grace according to promise. See Luke 1:72; 1 Kings 8:56. [2.] It is the substance of all the Old-Testament types and shadows. Something of grace there was both in the ordinances that were instituted for Israel and the providences that occurred concerning Israel; but they were only shadows of good things to come, even of the grace that is to be brought to us by the revelation of Jesus Christ. He is the true paschal lamb, the true scape-goat, the true manna. They had grace in the picture; we have grace in the person, that is, grace and truth. Grace and truth came, egeneto–was made; the same word that was used (John 1:3; John 1:3) concerning Christ’s making all things. The law was only made known by Moses, but the being of this grace and truth, as well as the discovery of them, is owing to Jesus Christ; this was made by him, as the world at first was; and by him this grace and truth do consist.
John ends his prologue by saying that no one has ever seen God the Father; it is only through God the Son that the Father becomes known (verse 18).
Henry interprets the verse as follows:
This was the grace and truth which came by Christ, the knowledge of God and an acquaintance with him. Observe,
(1.) The insufficiency of all other discoveries: No man hath seen God at any time. This intimates, [1.] That the nature of God being spiritual, he is invisible to bodily eyes, he is a being whom no man hath seen, nor can see, 1 Timothy 6:16. We have therefore need to live by faith, by which we see him that is invisible, Hebrews 11:27. [2.] That the revelation which God made of himself in the Old Testament was very short and imperfect, in comparison with that which he has made by Christ: No man hath seen God at any time; that is, what was seen and known of God before the incarnation of Christ was nothing to that which is now seen and known; life and immortality are now brought to a much clearer light than they were then. [3.] That none of the Old-Testament prophets were so well qualified to make known the mind and will of God to the children of men as our Lord Jesus was, for none of them had seen God at any time. Moses beheld the similitude of the Lord (Numbers 12:8), but was told that he could not see his face, Exodus 33:20. But this recommends Christ’s holy religion to us that it was founded by one that had seen God, and knew more of his mind than any one else ever did.
This is why we cannot know God unless we believe in Jesus Christ. Only He can reveal the Father to us.
This is the wonder and awe of the Christmas story.
We are infinitely blessed that our Lord Jesus condescended to come to earth to be among us, sharing our human form but being all human and all divine, without sin from the beginning and forever more.
Forbidden Bible Verses will appear tomorrow.
The three-year Lectionary that many Catholics and Protestants hear in public worship gives us a great variety of Holy Scripture.
Yet, it doesn’t tell the whole story.
My series Forbidden Bible Verses — ones the Lectionary editors and their clergy omit — examines the passages we do not hear in church. These missing verses are also Essential Bible Verses, ones we should study with care and attention. Often, we find that they carry difficult messages and warnings.
Today’s reading is from the English Standard Version with commentary by Matthew Henry and John MacArthur.
2b Do you not know what the Scripture says of Elijah, how he appeals to God against Israel? 3 “Lord, they have killed your prophets, they have demolished your altars, and I alone am left, and they seek my life.” 4 But what is God’s reply to him? “I have kept for myself seven thousand men who have not bowed the knee to Baal.” 5 So too at the present time there is a remnant, chosen by grace. 6 But if it is by grace, it is no longer on the basis of works; otherwise grace would no longer be grace.
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Last week’s entry discussed Paul’s mention of Isaiah’s disappointment in the disobedient and stubborn Jews of his time.
In Romans 11, he changes tack, introducing his audience of Jewish converts to the fact that there is a remnant who will become faithful to Jesus Christ.
In order to do so, he takes them back to Elijah’s time, when the vast majority of God’s people were worshipping Baal under the wicked Ahab and Jezebel. It was so bad that Elijah felt he was the only faithful Jew left. In fear of his life, he fled to the desert. There he prayed (verse 2).
Paul cites the relevant Scripture passage describing that episode (verse 3), 1 Kings 19:10:
10 He said, “I have been very jealous for the Lord, the God of hosts. For the people of Israel have forsaken your covenant, thrown down your altars, and killed your prophets with the sword, and I, even I only, am left, and they seek my life, to take it away.”
Paul reminds the Jews that, even in the worst times of their wickedness, there was always a faithful remnant (verse 4). God told Elijah that He had a remnant of 7,000 Jews who had not succumbed to idolatry, 1 Kings 19:18:
18 Yet I will leave seven thousand in Israel, all the knees that have not bowed to Baal, and every mouth that has not kissed him.”
Elijah did not know that because the idolatry was so rampant.
Matthew Henry says:
Now the description of this remnant is that they had not bowed the knee to the image of Baal, which was then the reigning sin of Israel. In court, city, and country, Baal had the ascendant; and the generality of people, more or less, paid their respect to Baal.
Paul tells his audience that there was a similar remnant of faithful in his and the Romans’ own era, ‘chosen by grace’ (verse 5). That means God knew from the beginning of time who would be among the elect and His remnant in every generation.
Henry explains (emphases mine):
This is called a remnant according to the election of grace; they are such as were chosen from eternity in the counsels of divine love to be vessels of grace and glory. Whom he did predestinate those he called. If the difference between them and others be made purely by the grace of God, as certainly it is (I have reserved them, saith he, to myself), then it must needs be according to the election; for we are sure that whatever God does he does it according to the counsel of his own will.
Paul then tells the Romans that because the remnant’s election is by grace — a free gift from God — it is not an election by works, i.e. according to Mosaic law. If it were election by works, then grace could not be a part of that election (verse 6).
Henry has more:
Now concerning this remnant we may observe, First, Whence it takes its rise, from the free grace of God (Romans 11:6), that grace which excludes works. The eternal election, in which the difference between some and others is first founded, is purely of grace, free grace; not for the sake of works done or foreseen; if so, it would not be grace … Election is purely according to the good pleasure of his will, Ephesians 1:5. Paul’s heart was so full of the freeness of God’s grace that in the midst of his discourse he turns aside, as it were, to make this remark, If of grace, then not of works. And some observe that faith itself, which in the matter of justification if opposed to works, is here included in them; for faith has a peculiar fitness to receive the free grace of God for our justification, but not to receive that grace for our election. Secondly, What it obtains: that which Israel, that is, the body of that people, in van sought for (Romans 11:7): Israel hath not obtained that which he seeketh for, that is, justification, and acceptance with God (see Romans 9:31), but the election have obtained it. In them the promise of God has its accomplishment, and God’s ancient kindness for that people is remembered. He calls the remnant of believers, not the elect, but the election, to show that the sole foundation of all their hopes and happiness is laid in election. They were the persons whom God had in his eye in the counsels of his love; they are the election; they are God’s choice. Such was the favour of God to the chosen remnant.
John MacArthur summarises the remnants throughout the Bible:
In Elijah’s time there were seven thousand in the remnant. In Isaiah’s time there was a very small remnant. Do you remember chapter 6? God says to Isaiah, “You go out and preach the message and know this, that their ears will be fat, their eyes will be blind, their minds will not understand but you preach anyway till all the cities are laid waste, until there’s no inhabitants in the land. Because when it’s all said and done you’ll find a tenth and they’ll be a godly seed.” There’s always a godly seed. In Elijah’s time it was a remnant. In Isaiah’s time it was remnant. In the captivity, when they were in Babylon, there was a small remnant. The remnant was people like Daniel, like Ezekiel, like Shadrach, like Meshach, like Abednego, like Mordecai, like Esther, they were part of the remnant in captivity, while the rest of the people were rejecting the truth of God. And when they returned to the land, a remnant returned under the leadership of Ezra and Nehemiah. In Malachi’s time, there was a remnant and that remnant sought to have their names written in God’s book of remembrance, Malachi 3:16 says, “And the Lord had their names written there and He said, I will punish this whole nation for their apostasy but I have your names written in my book of remembrance.” And He said, “They shall be Mine in the day that I make up My jewels.” God had His remnant in Malachi’s time.
And when Jesus came, the whole nation of Israel was apostate, but He had His remnant. And His remnant was John the Baptist and his followers. And His remnant was Anna. And His remnant was Simeon, and those who looked for the redemption of Jerusalem. There was always a remnant. And in Paul’s time, look at verse 5, “Even so then at this present time there is a remnant, according to the election of grace.” Even in the time of Paul the whole of Israel hadn’t rejected. There was a remnant. I mean, there were the apostles. And there was the church at Jerusalem. Three thousand people converted at the day of Pentecost, thousands and thousands more in [Acts] chapters 4 and 5, you’re up to twenty thousand, by the time you get to chapter 8 they fill Jerusalem with their teaching.
There are more and more Jews being converted, there was a remnant of tens of thousands of them, no doubt, by the time the apostle Paul penned the epistle to the Romans. There was even then a remnant of believing Jews, according to the election of grace. The church at Jerusalem was growing under the leadership of James. They even founded a church in Antioch. And then that church sent out apostles, Paul and Barnabas to found churches all around the world. And in any city they went to, where did they go first? To the what? To the Jewish synagogue. And Jews were being saved all around. So there was a remnant according to the election of God’s grace.
There will always be a remnant, today and in future:
If you’re a Christian, beloved, it’s because God chose you before the foundation of the world and it was made manifest in your lifetime. The remnant is elected by grace, it is all of God’s sovereign love, all of God’s sovereign will, has nothing to do with human performance and that’s what Paul is saying. God has elected His remnant. God has chosen His remnant in every time period.
Chapter 9 verse 11, it says there, “According to the purpose of God, according to election.” It’s the same concept back in chapter 9 verse 11. So, there is a remnant. The salvation of the remnant, like the salvation of everyone else, is wholly based on God’s free gift of sovereign grace. Now listen, God chose a nation graciously, sovereignly. He determined by His own will to love that nation. Therefore in every period of time out of that nation He determines to love a remnant of people. Now may I add, so that you’re not confused, that that choosing is not without the response of faith, but it is initiated by the sovereign choice of God? All men deserve death, none of us has a right to be saved, no Jew has a right to claim salvation, but God graciously grants it.
So the first six verses add up to the reality then that God is not finished with the Jews. He [ha]s not cast off the nation of Israel, as Paul’s conversion proves, verse 1; and as the remnant proves, verse 2 through 6. There always will be a faithful group. There always will be a believing remnant to fulfill the Word of God. So very, very important.
As I write, many churches are succumbing to politics rather than pursuing holiness. Many of us feel as if we are alone in wanting to hear more about the Bible from our clergy in these troubled times.
Matthew Henry has these wise words of advice:
Note, First, Things are often much better with the church of God than wise and good men think they are. They are ready to conclude hardly, and to give up all for gone, when it is not so. Secondly, In times of general apostasy, there is usually a remnant that keep their integrity–some, though but a few; all do not go one way. Thirdly, That when there is a remnant who keep their integrity in times of general apostasy it is God that reserves to himself that remnant … The best evidence of integrity is a freedom from the present prevailing corruptions of the times and places that we live in, to swim against the stream when it is strong. Those God will own for his faithful witnesses that are bold in bearing their testimony to the present truth, 2 Peter 1:12. This is thank-worthy, not to bow to Baal when every body bows. Sober singularity is commonly the badge of true sincerity.
Churches are reopening this weekend in England. If our established church is any bellwether, many sermons will probably be about identity politics and social justice rather than this Sunday’s readings. If so, more’s the pity, as the Gospel reading is particularly pertinent during our health and social crises.
In closing, if you feel alone spiritually during this time, be assured that there are many others who feel the same way. Together, I pray that we are the remnant.
Next time — Romans 11:7-10
The three-year Lectionary that many Catholics and Protestants hear in public worship gives us a great variety of Holy Scripture.
Yet, it doesn’t tell the whole story.
My series Forbidden Bible Verses — ones the Lectionary editors and their clergy omit — examines the passages we do not hear in church. These missing verses are also Essential Bible Verses, ones we should study with care and attention. Often, we find that they carry difficult messages and warnings.
Today’s reading is from the English Standard Version with commentary by Matthew Henry and John MacArthur.
Released from the Law
7 Or do you not know, brothers[a]—for I am speaking to those who know the law—that the law is binding on a person only as long as he lives? 2 For a married woman is bound by law to her husband while he lives, but if her husband dies she is released from the law of marriage.[b] 3 Accordingly, she will be called an adulteress if she lives with another man while her husband is alive. But if her husband dies, she is free from that law, and if she marries another man she is not an adulteress.
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Last week’s post discussed the last two verses of Romans 5; God’s law makes us aware of our wretched sinfulness, but, thanks to Christ’s death and resurrection, believers have the promise of eternal life.
Most of the first Christians in Rome had been Jews, therefore, Paul wrote Romans in a Jewish context. The law was still very important to them. However, Paul wanted them to see that, outside of the moral law in the Ten Commandments, it was obsolete with Christ’s death and resurrection.
Throughout the Old Testament, we read numerous references to the law and how it must be obeyed. With the New Covenant that Christ initiated, however, we have the gift of grace and justification by faith through that grace.
Paul wanted his audience to understand that obeying the old Mosaic laws could not bring salvation. He began explaining that in Romans 6. John MacArthur recaps Paul’s thinking for us (emphases mine):
[Romans] 6:14. “For sin shall not have dominion over you.” And here is an absolutely shocking statement to a Jew who all his or her lifelong had been committed to the law. “For sin shall not have dominion over you: for ye are not under the law, but under grace.” Now a statement like that has to be defended. It just has to be defended. There’s no way that Paul can make that statement in 6:14 and then walk away from it and write the rest of this epistle. It’s going to leave such a massive block in their minds, he has to deal with what he just said. We are not under the law.
Now would you notice there are two basic statements in verse 14? “For sin shall not have dominion over you.” That’s the first statement. Now listen carefully. He explained the meaning of that statement in 6:15-23. That is an exposition of that statement. The second statement, “for you are not under the law, but under grace,” he explains in chapter 7. He makes those two statements, explains one, and then the other because he cannot leave them unexplained. For those who have such a high and sacred view of the law will be devastated by his statement and they will jettison all of his theology when he says “you are not under the law.” They have all their lifetime lived under the law. It’s all they’ve known. So he must explain it. And I believe he does it in chapter 7.
So now you understand the rationale for chapter 7. Against a background of such affirmation of God’s law, there must be some explanation about what it means to say we are not under the law. It seems that men have been under the law for a long time, how has that and why has that changed?
Now let me give you an overview before we go specifically into chapter 7. And I’m hurrying as rapidly as I can. Remember the context of all of this. The major theme of Romans is justification by faith. In other words, you’re saved not by keeping the law but by believing, right? Through grace. Now we have started with justification by faith in chapter 3. The first couple of chapters showed us how sinful we are. We hit 3:21 and we get into justification by faith, and it runs all the way to the end of chapter 8. Chapter 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8, all justification by faith. That’s the theme of all of those. And then in 9 to 11, he applies it to Israel, and then in 12 to the end he shows how it works out in living. But the main theme is justification by faith.
Having presented the doctrine itself in chapters 3 and 4, he then is presenting the fruit of that doctrine. And the first one was chapter 5, and in chapter 5 we learned that the first fruit of justification was security. We have peace with God. That’s settled. Security.
The second fruit of which he speaks in chapter 6 is holiness. We have union with Christ in chapter 6, and now His holiness is imparted to us. So the fruit of justification: First security, second holiness. Now we come to chapter 7 and the third fruit is liberty. Liberty. We are free from the law. Marvelous. And we’re going to see even more fruit of justification. But the point that we’ve been trying to stress since we got into this thing in chapter 3 is that salvation has tremendous effect. You cannot claim to be a Christian without a demonstrable effect in your life. Salvation transforms people.
That’s the essence of what Paul is spending chapter after chapter to tell us. We have in chapter 5 peace with God. We have in chapter 6 union with Christ. We have in chapter 7 freedom from the law. All of that is the fruit of salvation. And that all really answers the rather silly question in 6:1, doesn’t it? “Shall we continue in sin that grace may abound?” You see, that’s what the critic would say. Your doctrine of justification by faith through grace means that you can just sin all you want and every time you sin God has grace so your doctrine leads to unrighteous living.
In other words, the legalist says, “Boy, we keep people toeing the mark here. We’ve got all the rules. When you come along and say, ‘You’re not saved by the law. The law can’t save you. You can’t keep the law. You’re saved by grace through faith.’ You’re just turning people loose and they’re going to run amuck.” And so they accuse him of the doctrine that leads to sin. And he says quite the opposite. True salvation leads to holiness, right? That’s what we saw in chapter 6. It doesn’t lead to license. It leads to the very opposite of license. It leads to holiness, chapter 6. Chapter 7, it leads to freedom from the law.
Paul begins by saying that the law applies only to living persons (verse 1). Once we die, we are no longer bound to law.
In order to begin his explanation, he writes of marriage. A wife must remain with her husband as long as he lives, but, if he dies, she is no longer bound by law to him (verse 2).
If a wife is still married to her husband, who is alive, and lives with another man, then she becomes an adulteress. However, if her husband dies, she, as a widow, may remarry (verse 3).
Paul is saying that, under the Old Covenant, God’s people were married to the law. They had nothing else. Under the New Covenant, though, things changed. Now their bond — an eternal one — is with Jesus Christ.
We speak of the Church, of which we are a part, as Christ’s bride.
MacArthur explains:
Salvation is a complete change of relationship. You no longer have the first husband you had. You no longer are under the bondage of the law. You’re now married to Jesus Christ.
It’s a beautiful picture, isn’t it? We see it in Ephesians 5 where the church is seen as the bride and He is the bridegroom. We see it in 2 Corinthians chapter 11 where we are an espoused wife having a marriage consummated to Christ in glory in the future. So we are called to be married to another and it tells us who it is. “To Him who is raised from the dead.” Notice it says “is raised,” not “was raised”? Who is – in other words, it’s emphasizing His present life. We are not only identified in union with a dead Savior in the past, but we are one with a living Savior in the present. It’s a great truth.
There’s one good thought. I would just draw you back to 6:9 for a moment, I’ll tie this in. Knowing that Christ being raised from the dead dies – what? – no more. Will Christ ever die again? Will He? Then will we ever lose our husband? Never. That’s a great word about the security of our salvation. That’s a great word about the security of our marriage bond with Christ. Our husband will never die. He will never die. And so we will ever be secure in Him.
And so, we died in Christ by the mysterious miracle of our union with Him, by grace through faith. And we rise to walk in newness of life. And again I say, folks – and this is the salient element of all of this teaching – salvation is a total transformation. We are given security, chapter 5. In us is produced holiness, chapter 6. And liberty from the law, chapter 7. We are free from a works righteousness, from trying to earn our salvation. The resurrection of Jesus Christ was the key.
As Eastertide is coming to a close with Pentecost next week, this is well worth contemplating.
More on this theme follows next week.
Next time — Romans 7:4-6
The three-year Lectionary that many Catholics and Protestants hear in public worship gives us a great variety of Holy Scripture.
Yet, it doesn’t tell the whole story.
My series Forbidden Bible Verses — ones the Lectionary editors and their clergy omit — examines the passages we do not hear in church. These missing verses are also Essential Bible Verses, ones we should study with care and attention. Often, we find that they carry difficult messages and warnings.
Today’s reading is from the English Standard Version with commentary by Matthew Henry and John MacArthur.
20 Now the law came in to increase the trespass, but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more, 21 so that, as sin reigned in death, grace also might reign through righteousness leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.
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Last week’s post discussed circumcision in Romans 4; Paul points out that it was not salvific in and of itself, although it served as a seal of the covenant that God made with the Jews.
In Romans 5, Paul tells us that faith through divine grace brings us peace with God, made possible by Christ’s one sufficient sacrifice for our sins.
He then goes on to say that, although through Adam’s Original Sin, we lived in perpetual darkness, but, that, with Christ, eternal life is open to us. Taking the chapter up at verse 15, we read (emphases mine):
15 But the free gift is not like the trespass. For if many died through one man’s trespass, much more have the grace of God and the free gift by the grace of that one man Jesus Christ abounded for many. 16 And the free gift is not like the result of that one man’s sin. For the judgment following one trespass brought condemnation, but the free gift following many trespasses brought justification. 17 For if, because of one man’s trespass, death reigned through that one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ.
18 Therefore, as one trespass[f] led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness[g] leads to justification and life for all men. 19 For as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous.
Why the Lectionary editors left today’s verses — the conclusion of Romans 5 — out of their readings for public worship mystifies me. They are beautiful.
In verse 20, Paul asks what the purpose of God’s law is. He answers by saying that it is to make us more aware of how disgusting and displeasing to God our sins are. That is what ‘the law came in to increase the trespass’ means. It does not mean that the law causes us to sin more but, thanks to God’s law, we recognise that we have done wrong in His eyes. Believers want to please God, even though we know we need His grace to do that. God provides us with infinite grace to enable us to do the right thing.
This means that, as powerful as sin is in leading us down the path of spiritual death, God’s grace is infinitely stronger, leading to the promise of eternal life thanks to our Lord Jesus Christ (verse 21).
Matthew Henry explains:
The greater the strength of the enemy, the greater the honour of the conqueror. This abounding of grace he illustrates, Romans 5:21. As the reign of a tyrant and oppressor is a foil to set off the succeeding reign of a just and gentle prince and to make it the more illustrious, so doth the reign of sin set off the reign of grace. Sin reigned unto death; it was a cruel bloody reign. But grace reigns to life, eternal life, and this through righteousness, righteousness imputed to us for justification, implanted in us for sanctification; and both by Jesus Christ our Lord, through the power and efficacy of Christ, the great prophet, priest, and king, of his church.
John MacArthur says:
And would you notice how the chapter ends? “By Jesus Christ our Lord.” Beloved, it’s all there, isn’t it, in Him. Would you note that that’s really the theme that’s woven through this whole chapter. Look at verse 1, and let me give you a quick 15-second tour. Verse 1, “Through our Lord Jesus Christ.” Verse 9, “Saved from wrath through Him.” Verse 10, “Reconciled to God by the death of His Son. Being reconciled be saved by His life.” Verse 11, “We have joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ.” Verse 15, “By one man Jesus Christ.” Verse 17, “Shall reign in life by one, Jesus Christ.” Verse 21, “By Jesus Christ our Lord.” Now do you understand why the apostle said, “Neither is there salvation in any other name, for there’s none other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved.”
What’s the practical use of this? I’ll tell you what it is. I’m going to close with this. Listen, don’t turn off your mind now. Listen to this. Every one of us should bow before God in humiliating consciousness that we are vile sinners worthy of death. Every one of us should realize that apart from the work of Jesus Christ we would be doomed to eternity forever without God because God hates sin. But O my, where there was the reign of death, God came with His grace and overpowered that and death is overruled by life for all who believe in Jesus Christ.
May God continue to bless us with His grace.
May we never diminish what Christ did for us on the Cross.
May we always wish to live with Him forever.
Next time — Romans 7:1-3
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