Tag Archives: rebuked

A Universal Message

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A UNIVERSAL MESSAGE

Later, Jesus appeared to the Eleven as they were eating; He rebuked them for their lack of faith and their stubborn refusal to believe those who had seen Him after He had risen. He said to them, ‘Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation. Whoever believes and is baptised will be saved, but whoever does not believe will be condemned. (Mark 16: 14-16)  

Although this final section of Mark’s gospel was not in the original manuscript, it is quite clearly the work of someone who was in the inner circle. Note how his addition links in with what had gone before.

The Eleven! The disciples were often officially called “The Twelve” but one had failed and dropped out. Whoever wrote this short ending was well aware of this and re-named the group “The Eleven”. After the ascension of Jesus, Peter took it on himself to convene a meeting of the believers to choose a man to replace Judas. However, although Matthias was chosen by lot, it is clear from the early history of the church that God’s choice to replace Judas and complete the Twelve was not Matthias but Paul.

When Jesus appeared to the Eleven after His resurrection, according to this anonymous writer, His first words were to rebuke them for their unbelief. Mark had made it very clear that no one believed the report of the women or the two whom Jesus had accompanied on their way home to Emmaus. Even the women themselves had fled from the tomb in fear after seeing and hearing the message of the young man. What a slap in the face for their Master!

Although Jesus had appeared and reappeared to His disciples at various times and places, it was never the same as it had been before. He was no longer with them constantly to teach and guide them on their journey with Him. He has promised that the Holy Spirit would come to take His place but His promise was yet to be fulfilled.

The additional ending to Mark’s story is a summary of the forty days between Jesus’ resurrection and ascension. He tied up all the loose ends of Peter’s denial and their desertion, making sure that they were all aware that their past was behind them and that they had a commission to fulfil which had not been withdrawn because of their failure. On the contrary, they were better prepared to do their Master’s will, now that they had tasted the terrible consequences of their independence and self-sufficiency. Already, some of Jesus’ teachings and warnings were coming home to them with painful clarity.

Jesus informed them that the sweep of their commission was far greater than just the human race. That didn’t mean that they had literally to preach to animals and inanimate creation, but it did mean that His death and resurrection had implications for the whole universe. The twelfth apostle, Paul, caught the impact of this and reported it to the readers of his letter to the church in Rome and, of course to all those down the centuries who have benefitted from his correspondence to them,

For the creation waits in eager expectation for the children of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the freedom and glory of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. (Rom. 8: 19-22)

A day is coming, said Paul, when all of creation, not just those who have believed and were baptised, will be restored to the original plan of the Creator. Tied up with the good news of redemption through the blood of Jesus, is the hope of restoration and renewal for all of the created universe.

Why did this writer make clear that baptism was to be an integral part of a believer’s initiation into the kingdom of God? Ritual washing was a common practice in Judaism, not a unique rite of Christianity. It was not a once-off occurrence among the Jews but a common practice because it testified to the washing away of old things; e.g., of uncleanness after physical healing or childbirth; of a preparatory stage in a person’s life, e.g., for the priesthood, and identification with a new group or movement. John’s baptism was symbolic of the washing away of old ways of thinking and believing (repentance) and identification with John and his teaching about the Messiah.

How unfortunate that the Greek word, baptizo, was transliterated instead of translated, making it appear to be something unique to Jesus. Baptism was not understood to be part of salvation, but a cut-off point for everyone seriously committed to following Jesus. It is the declaration of intent as well as the witness to what has already happened within.

Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptised into Christ Jesus were baptised into His death? We were therefore buried with Him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, so we too may live a new life. (Rom. 6: 3-4)

How sad that the church has made baptism to mean something different from Jesus’ original intenion. It is impossible for babies and young children to make such a commitment, or for parents to do it on their behalf. This is about mikvah, washing away the old life and entering into a new one, in union with Jesus through faith; and the public confession of identification with Him in His person and mission – to reveal the Father and to establish His kingdom on earth.

Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

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Clay Feet!

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CLAY FEET

“When Cephas came to Antioch, I opposed him to his face because he stood condemned, For before certain men came from James, he used to eat with the Gentiles. But when they arrived, he began to draw back and separate himself from the Gentiles because he was afraid of those who belonged to the circumcision group. The other Jews joined him in his hypocrisy, so that by their hypocrisy even Barnabas was led astray.

“When I saw that they were not acting in line with the truth of the gospel, I said to Cephas in front of them all, ‘You are a Jew, yet you live like a Gentile and not like a Jew. How is it, then, that you force Gentiles to follow Jewish customs?'” Galatians 2:11-14.

Even Peter! How strong are the traditions that enslave a person’s conscience!

 

Peter was far from Jerusalem. There were no scrupulously traditional Jewish believers in the vicinity of Antioch, so he freely mixed with Gentiles according to the dream which had led him to enter Cornelius’ the centurion’s house in Caesarea and eat with him (Acts 10). But when a group of Jewish believers came from James, the leader of the church in Jerusalem, he slipped back into his old Jewish attitude of exclusivism.

For Peter it was not a matter of conscience or conviction. He had long dealt with the right or wrong of eating with Gentiles – which was an expression of reconciliation; the Holy Spirit had seen to that. Here it was a matter of the fear of man and Paul was quick to rebuke him, even publicly, for going back on his conviction in order to appear loyal to his Jewish heritage. He wasn’t even honouring the word of God but rather Jewish customs which actually contradicted God’s intention.

In his defines of the gospel of grace he preached, Paul referred to this incident to convince his Galatian readers that he had actually stood up to the great Peter whom he had just described as one of the “esteemed” leaders of the church in Jerusalem.

By Peter’s behaviour he had inadvertently dishonoured the gospel of Christ which was the good news of salvation through Him alone. Peter was insinuating that Jesus had not really destroyed the barrier between Jew and Gentile through His death; that Jews were still superior to Gentiles, and showed it by their refusal to eat with fellow Gentile believers. In the end he was saying that he had to uphold the customs of his forefathers which took precedence over the truth of the gospel.

For Paul this was unthinkable. He had given up too much for the sake of the gospel and suffered too much at the hands of his fellow Jews because of their fanatical loyalty to useless traditions to sanction Peter’s hypocrisy by keeping quiet. To say nothing meant that he was allowing Peter to lead others, even his companion Barnabas, astray. If it meant publicly exposing Peter’s cock-eyed thinking, so be it.

Paul does not record Peter’s response. Did he defend himself? Did he make excuses? Did he graciously acknowledge his error? We do not know. All we know is that Paul clearly understood the message of the cross and he defended it fearlessly even to standing up to Peter himself. It was not his intention to belittle Peter or to show himself better than Peter. It was always and only his motive to hold Jesus up as an all-sufficient Saviour for both Jew and Gentile.

Paul had long since come to understand that, at the cross, everyone stands on level ground. There is no longer a difference between Jew and Gentile. All the differences that existed were artificial and man-made. The Jews, as God’s covenant people were chosen, not to make them exclusive, but to set them apart for a divine purpose – to show the world that their God was the only and true God by the way they lived.

They failed dismally, anyway, and all they did was to show how impossible it was to be like Him by following rules and rituals, most of which they made up, without having their hearts changed. It took the Son of God to show them how to love like the Father, and then to die in the place of sinners to reconcile them to the Father. Where, in all that, were they better than anyone else? They stood on level ground with every other human being in both their sin and their eligibility to receive God’s grace through the death of His Son.

Thanks to Paul’s understanding and clear presentation of the truth, Peter and his companions received correction and we have this letter which presents Jesus to us as the all-sufficient Saviour of sinners plus nothing.

How true it is that anyone, including Peter, can have “clay feet”!

Acknowledgement

Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.® Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.