I know I have written about John 3 before, but there is always more to mine here – even without getting into the whole “should verses 13-21 be in red or black” question (i.e. is it Jesus speaking or John editorialising, and if so, where does the changeover happen?)

I understand why translators have translated the earlier part of the chapter as they have; whatever choices they make are essentially saying, “this is what Jesus was saying to us, today.” That involves making theological choices.

But what I want to do today is simply ask, “what did Nicodemus hear?”

To ask the question at all, I am assuming that Jesus did speak in Greek. As I have mentioned before, He clearly could speak Aramaic, but people didn’t always understand Him when He did so; and 1st Century Judaea seems to have been much more Hellenised than we sometimes realise.

If I am wrong on this, and He spoke to Nicodemus in Aramaic, then we have to ask what His translator into Greek was thinking, to use such ambiguous language. But for now I am assuming the ambiguity was all His, and therefore deliberate.

Let me summarise the ambiguities:

ἐὰν μή τις γεννηθῇ ἄνωθεν (in verse 3)

ἐὰν μή τις γεννηθῇ ἐξ ὕδατος καὶ πνεύματος (in verse 5)

καὶ τὸ γεγεννημένον ἐκ τοῦ πνεύματος πνεῦμά ἐστιν (in verse 6)

τὸ πνεῦμα ὅπου θέλει πνεῖ, καὶ τὴν φωνὴν αὐτοῦ ἀκούεις, ἀλλ’ οὐκ οἶδας πόθεν ἔρχεται καὶ ποῦ ὑπάγει· οὕτως ἐστὶν πᾶς ὁ γεγεννημένος ἐκ τοῦ πνεύματος (all of verse 8)

So what is ambiguous here?

First, is ἄνωθεν “from above” or “again”. I realise I am risking the hallmark phrase of evangelical and Pentecostal Christianity here; but I honestly think we only choose the “born again” option, because that is clearly what Nicodemus heard. He heard “born again” and so started saying “surely a grown man can’t climb back into his mother’s womb…” This doesn’t mean that this was what Jesus was saying. Nicodemus appears to have assumed “the Kingdom of God” was just a way of saying “Israel”, and so wasn’t primed to think that seeing God’s Kingdom might require birth “from above”; but that seems a more likely interpretation, given what we know.

Second, there is πνεῦμά, which appears first as ὕδατος καὶ πνεύματος, or “water and …” well, what. What did Nicodemus hear? We read John only after the NeoPlatonists have been all over it, and we have accepted a tripartite division of mankind into body, soul and spirit. So whenever we see πνεῦμά, we instinctively say “spirit”. But what did Nicodemus hear? Water and wind? Water and breath? Water and spirit seems the least likely option, unless he heard a reference to Ezekiel 36.25-27 in what Jesus said; and his “how can these things be” makes that unlikely, even if that is what Jesus meant.

So what does Jesus mean by ὕδατος καὶ πνεύματος? Is water a reference to Baptism, or to Ezekiel? Or is it a reference to the first (natural) birth? You can’t see the Kingdom of God unless you are first born human, and then born from above? I suspect it is a reference to the promise in Ezekiel, and that believer’s baptism is the sign of that promise, become reality; but I am sure there are 98 other options.

And what about πνεῦμά, itself. I doubt that Nicodemus heard Spirit, even though we (probably) understand that this was what Jesus was trying to tell him. My own understanding of “the mystery” or “the secret” of the Kingdom of God in the Synoptic Gospels is that it is Emmanuel – God dwelling in us, by His Spirit. Since it was very important that Satan never caught onto this plan, Jesus hints at it, but not in a way that anyone could understand until it was too late to shut the stable door on Gods plan.

Therefore I suspect that Nicodemus heard ”wind”, or “breath”, throughout. It is a bit much to translate verse 8 as being about the wind, and then about the Spirit: make it all about the wind, or all about breath, or all about the Spirit. And maybe that is the issue: whenever Jesus is deliberately playing with words (which is often), we probably need to leave our conventions of choosing one version, and give all two or three options in parallel. We can always label them. What Nicodemus heard: “the wind blows where it will…” What Jesus was saying: “the Spirit blows where it will…” – if in fact that is what we think He is doing.

Because here is the clincher: Jesus knows what Nicodemus is hearing.

εἰ τὰ ἐπίγεια εἶπον ὑμῖν καὶ οὐ πιστεύετε, πῶς ἐὰν εἴπω ὑμῖν τὰ ἐπουράνια πιστεύσετε; (verse 12)

If I have spoken to you (plural) of earthly things, and you don’t believe, how would you believe if I was to speak of heavenly things?

Jesus is saying, I have been talking to you about earthly things like birth – and maybe He is expecting Nicodemus to hear a reference to amniotic fluid and a great deal of heavy breathing – and you are not getting it. So how do I tell you things only I have seen and know, with any chance that you will follow?

And maybe He is being deliberately disingenuous; but whatever we (think we) know that Jesus was saying, it is always worth starting with what His hearer(s) heard. Then maybe we won’t be so hard on them!

In Luke 12.20, God says Ἄφρων – “senseless!” – to a rich man. And yet a careful reading of scripture, Old Testament and New, cannot escape the conclusion that God has always wanted His people to be notoriously wealthy. So here is a notoriously wealthy man, and God calls him witless. What is going on?

Unfortunately it is too easy to take this out of context and say, “see, God doesn’t like people having too much money.” That is, after all, what most of the church has concluded through most of history. But that is wrong: this story is about a missing purpose, not about too much wealth.

When Genesis 12 recounts what God had previously spoken to Abram in Ur of the Chaldeans, this is the formulation:

I will make you into a great nation,
and I will bless you;
I will make your name great,
and you will be a blessing.
I will bless those who bless you,
and whoever curses you I will curse;
and all peoples on earth
will be blessed through you.

Gen 12.2-3, NIV

The context is important too: in the previous verse, God has said to Abram, “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you.”

In other words, leave all your natural assets of home and family and familiar culture, and go where I show you to go; and I will make you into a great nation, and I will bless you, make your name great, make you a blessing, bless those who bless you, him who curses you I will curse, and every family clan on earth will be blessed through you.

But you won’t have any money or wealth.

No, I added that #fakeverse to make a point. Blessing implies, but is not limited to, prosperity: not scraping barely by in a “spiritually glorious but physically wretched” penury.

And there is purpose here; and it is not just “bless everyone [else] on earth”.

…I will bless you… I will make you a blessing… every family clan on earth will be blessed through you.

If you read on, you discover that Abram become very wealthy in silver and gold and livestock (Genesis 13.2), as did his son Isaac (Genesis 26.12). Abram – by now Abraham’s – great grandson Joseph added power to wealth and saved Egypt and the surrounding peoples by storing up so much grain that he had to stop counting it.

So you can see it wasn’t just wealth, it was purpose; and of course the ultimate plan was running out of sight from Satan: Jesus at last was the fulfilment of that promise that “every family clan on earth will be blessed in you.” Just read Revelation 5.9 and 7.9.

So why does the rich man in Jesus’ parable in Luke 12 get called Ἄφρων? Being so blessed in harvest that you need to pull down your old storehouses and build new, bigger ones? Not a problem. Gather all the corn and other goods in there? Still not a problem.

Thinking it was just about you? Yes, that’s a bit of a problem. This rich man is like the Dead Sea: water flows in, but nothing flows out. “I will say to my soul, “Soul, you have many goods laid up for many years: kick back, eat, drink be merry.”

Fundamentally he fails to understand what the goods that bless you are for: allowing you to do good; being a blessing; blessing every family clan on earth.

That is why what God says to him is a little more nuanced than what is suggested by the NIV’s “Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?”

What God actually says is this:

“These things you prepared, who are they for?”

In God’s kingdom, you get to enjoy the things with which you are entrusted, as a steward; if you are going to need bigger barns or a bigger bank, go for it. But you are a steward. Don’t forget that.

As I have been re-reading Galatians again, I got to Gal 6.6 again. I was sure I had written on this before, but after going through the archive twice, still couldn’t find it. In the end I had to resort to asking ChatGPT (AI makes a bad master, but it is a great research assistant – as long as you are willing to verify every reference!).

And the problem was that I had buried the lede – not for the first time. But this is so important that I will spell it out again – and give you the reference to the earlier post ( https://seeingthekingdom.com/2022/02/22/context-context-context/ )

According to the NIV, Galatians 6.6 says:

“Nevertheless, the one who receives instruction in the word should share all good things with their instructor.”

The King James (and ASV and other related translations) are rather more transcendental:

“Let him that is taught in the word communicate unto him that teacheth in all good things.”

A straight rendering of the Greek is rather different:

“But let the one being taught the word have a share in all good (noble, serviceable) things with the one teaching”

Which then makes more sense of the what follows: “don’t be led astray (literally, ‘don’t be wandered’), God is not to be sneered at. For that which a man may sow, this also he will reap.”

If you read the earlier post, you can see what I reference in terms of Jesus’ example, and of Paul’s. Both were primarily providing for those they led or taught – but were able to receive as well.

But the big point is that whoever is able to teach the Word will also be able to provide for those around them. To teach the Word in return for material support is… well, not supported by what Paul says here. Verse 7 suggests that if a man teaches the Word for financial gain, he is deceived (or deceiving), and (literally) turning his nose up at God. Paul doesn’t spell out what it is that he will reap – but it isn’t looking good.

This is all rather confronting, at least from the standpoint of our church culture; I write this from the perspective of someone who spent over a decade in a “faith” mission, supported by a handful of friends. But I have also seen what it looks like when someone who has discovered God’s goodness and faithfulness starts teaching that so that others can discover the same thing – not because they need a job.

It is the person who knows the Word who therefore has full access to “an uninterruptible bank account in the heavens” (Luke 12.33, θησαυρὸν ἀνέκλειπτον ἐν τοῖς οὐρανοῖς), and who can therefore share all good things with those they teach. And they, in their turn, will be able to do the same with those they teach.

No matter how uncomfortable this makes us feel, God’s truth is always better embraced than run from; nor should we bury this if it is – as I think – the lede. Read the whole of Isaiah 61 if you doubt me!

I want you to know, brothers and sisters, that the gospel I preached is not of human origin. I did not receive it from any man, nor was I taught it; rather, I received it by revelation from Jesus Christ.

Galatians 1.11-12, NIV

In Galatians, Paul can barely get his greetings finished before his frustration breaks through. “I am astonished…” And because his dear Galatians appear to have accepted “another gospel, which isn’t a gospel”, he has to talk about the Gospel he brought them. Hence the verses above.

But is it true?

Did he get his Gospel purely by revelation? And of course, the answer is yes, absolutely. The risen Jesus stopped him on the road and he was a totally changed man from that moment.

And also no.

Saul wasn’t some pagan walking along, minding his own business, when suddenly he got a download from Jesus. He was a highly ambitious young Jew, who had advanced within Judaism beyond many of his fellows. He knew the scriptures, and he knew all the glosses different rabbis put upon them.

Furthermore, he was savagely chasing down the followers of The Way, in order to destroy them. That is pretty difficult if you don’t have any knowledge of what marks these people out, including what they say, how they speak, what they believe and so on.

The arrogance of these people, trying to turn Judaism inside out and thinking they could overthrow the tradition of the fathers enraged him. The way he says this in Gal 1.14 loses something in the translation – it is more like “I was extremely zealous for the things the fathers had handed down from the beginning.” If we say ‘tradition’, it is just a static and possibly ridiculous thing; but what Paul says has much more of the sense of continuity from earliest times.

And it is into this context of “knowing everything” that Jesus appears and speaks. Our fixation in translating the verb διώκω as “to persecute” doesn’t serve us here. It is primarily the verb of the pursuit and the hunt, or as the French would say, la chasse.

Because in Acts 9.4, when Jesus says to Saul, “τί με διώκεις;” He is asking him “why are you pursuing me?”

And yes, as far as Saul is concerned, it is a deadly pursuit of the followers of Jesus; what Jesus confronts him with is the fact that he is actually trying to find Him, Jesus.

“Who are you, Lord?” Saul asked.
“I am Jesus, whom you are pursuing,” he replied. “Now get up and go into the city, and you will be told what you must do.”

Acts 9.5-6 NIV, with my correction

I love the fact that Jesus doesn’t mention four spiritual laws or explain the gulf that sin makes between God and man or anything of that sort. It is more like “okay, you found me – now go into town and await instructions.”

And that is where we need to go back and correct Gal 1.12. The NIV has a small but incredibly important defect. ἀλλὰ δι’ ἀποκαλύψεως Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ is not “but through a revelation from Jesus Christ”; it is “but through a revelation of Jesus Christ”.

And that is the truth of Paul’s Gospel. Nobody taught him the gospel, nor did he receive the Gospel from men. He knew everything he needed to know – and it only made him a savage enemy of the Kingdom, because he still lacked one thing.

And when he met Jesus, alive and glorious on the Damascus Road, that revelation of Jesus Christ rewired his whole being and everything he thought he knew. Henceforth he was someone carrying the Gospel of the Kingdom. And yes, later he checked in with “those who were Apostles before me” – but they could only give him a green light.

And so it is with us; provided we are encountering the risen Jesus. A purely “propositional gospel” won’t really cut the mustard; we need an encounter that rewires us into who God always meant us to be.

Those are the people who can say, with Paul, “what I now live in the flesh, I live by safe-conduct from (or by faith in) the Son of God who loved me and who gave Himself for me…” (Gal 2.20b)

“Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, was one of the two who heard what John had said and who had followed Jesus.”

John 1.40, NIV

Reading the first few chapters of John’s Gospel has reminded me that Scripture is not like The Lord of the Rings or Discworld. Tolkien and Pratchett each crafted a complete world, with some level of internal consistency. John on the other hand is eyewitness testimony, and doesn’t feel any need to explain the world around him.

Which gives us endless clues that we don’t know that world. As I have said before, 1st Century Judaea was not just “the Jewish State, with added Romans”. Huge cultural change and admixtures of peoples had happened since the one that we do talk about – peoples moved to the promised land during the Exile, and seen in John’s day in the Samaritans.

But that is to completely miss the level of Hellenisation that had taken place during the rule of Alexander and his Ptolemaic and Seleucid successors.

For example, we don’t actually know what language Jesus and His disciples spoke. The assumption that they spoke Aramaic and that everything got translated into koine Greek for later dissemination is just that – an assumption. I get grumpy when people talk about “the original Aramaic gospels”; show me even a fragment that suggests textual priority and I will be all ears.

On the contrary, Jesus tells jokes (lots) that work in Greek but not in Aramaic or Hebrew. Are we to thank an early translator? Seems unlikely, as many of those jokes seem to have gone straight over the disciples’ heads.

But when Jesus spoke a line of Psalm 22 in Aramaic from the cross, the common folk misunderstood and thought He was calling out to Elijah.

Here are a couple of other puzzles from Chapters 1-3 of John. In the wedding at Cana, John references the ἀρχιτρίκλινος as the person to whom the servants take the water turned into wine. The NIV calls him “the master of the banquet”, which makes it equivalent to the term συμποσίαρχος. But there is a problem. ἀρχιτρίκλινος is very specific in its construction: the “person in charge of a three couch dining room”. That isn’t to suggest that the wedding at Kana employed such a Roman dining room; but the word Jesus uses is found in only one other (much later) source, a late antique novel. So where does Jesus (or John) get it from? We simply don’t know; but it is a reminder that even our knowledge of koine – the “global trade language” of the Roman world – is worse than sketchy.

Here’s another. When you read the story of Nicodemus in chapter 3, surely this is the most “Jewish establishment” person who ever came to Jesus on friendly terms? Yes? So doesn’t Νικόδημος (conqueror of the people or victory of the people), seem a surprisingly un-Jewish name to be carrying around? Someone came up with a Hebrew root for this – Naqdimon – but even the proposer seems to think this is pretty thin. Νικόδημος is already attested as a personal name in Athens by around 350BC. If a Pharisee was comfortable walking around with a Hellenistic name, then this world is not quite the one we may have thought it was. (And it is worth looking at Saul/Paul as well; we seem to assume he changed his name after becoming a Christian, but it is more likely that he always went by either, depending on which world he was in. Roman citizen from birth, remember…)

All of which long introduction is just to prepare the ground for a curious passage in chapter 1. Have you ever noticed? Apparently hard-headed Galileans become convinced that Jesus is the Messiah, sometimes with just a word or two.

Firstly, yes John the Baptist pointed Jesus out to his disciples on at least two occasions; and John’s testimony doubtless counted for something. But here is the passage broken down:

• Two disciples of John start walking after Jesus, and end up spending up until 4pm with Him. As a result, one of them – Andrew – goes and tells his brother Simon that they have found the Messiah. Well, what did Jesus say or do that convinced them of this? We have no idea.
• Simon meets Jesus, who says “you are Simon son of John; I think we’ll call you Rock(y).” Simon is the only one we don’t get a recorded verdict from.
• The next morning, Jesus has decided to leave and go to Galilee. He bumps into Philip and tells him “follow me”.
• Philip goes straight to Nathanael and tells him that they have found the one Moses wrote about – Jesus of Nazareth. How did Philip work that out from Ἀκολούθει μοι? (Follow me)
• Nathanael expresses some doubt that anything good can come from Nazareth. But when Jesus sees him coming, He says “here comes an Israelite indeed“ and then quotes the end of Psalm 32.2 – “in whom there is no deceit”. And this is our first tiny clue as to what may be going on. Nathanael is obviously shocked and asks “where do you know me from?” – obviously thinking they must have met before. Except that it seems likely that his shock was because he had just been meditating on Psalm 32.2; so when Jesus says “I saw you under the fig tree before Nathanael found you” – which was presumably where Nathanael had been rolling Psalm 32.2 around his mind – he makes his heart felt declaration of Jesus’s Messiahship. Not a bad journey from “Nazareth? Meh!”
• There is of course one more loose end: who was the other one of John’s disciples? No proof, but the eyewitness flavour of this passage suggests it could well have been John himself.

So there is lots we can’t know here, and John doesn’t bother to tell us what was going on in heads and hearts. But it is the most extraordinary 24 hours of gathering … well, anything. Gathering disciples, recruiting a team, call it what you like. Simon The Rock doesn’t seem to have said anything, except possibly stand there like a stunned mullet. Or a Rock. So what was the secret?

Nothing is more powerful than feeling seen, and knowing that you are known. Except possibly, the long awaited Messiah stepping into your world and demonstrating that He sees you, knows you and that you have a place with Him.

Which is exactly how it is for you and for me, too. No theological proposition can do that for you; you need to know you are seen, known and welcomed.

Those who live according to the flesh have their minds set on what the flesh desires; but those who live in accordance with the Spirit have their minds set on what the Spirit desires. The mind governed by the flesh is death, but the mind governed by the Spirit is life and peace.

Romans 8.5-6, NIV

This may seem petty on my part, but I think verbosity is dangerous. When we add lots of words to a translation “to make it make sense”, there is a real danger that we change the sense. And yes, I do understand that sometimes one language has concepts and constructions that simply don’t translate word for word; but it is still better to try.

Here is Romans 8.5-6 in the original, from the SBL Greek NT:

οἱ γὰρ κατὰ σάρκα ὄντες τὰ τῆς σαρκὸς φρονοῦσιν, οἱ δὲ κατὰ πνεῦμα τὰ τοῦ πνεύματος. τὸ γὰρ φρόνημα τῆς σαρκὸς θάνατος, τὸ δὲ φρόνημα τοῦ πνεύματος ζωὴ καὶ εἰρήνη·

And my minimalist version:

For those being (who are, or who live) according to the flesh, are minded to the things of the flesh, and those according to the spirit, to the things of the spirit. For the mindset of the flesh is death, but the mindset of the spirit is life and peace.

The main difference between the NIV and my version is that I have got there without using the extra words desires (x2) and governed (also x2); I would also argue that my “minded” and “mindset” are tighter and more true to φρονοῦσιν and φρόνημα.

Why does this matter? I am just using this as a far-from-egregious example. But you can guarantee that many preachers will invest their time in exploring the depths of “desire” and the full weight of “governed” – when in fact, neither word is really there. Trust me, I have sat through sermons on words that aren’t there.

And this is the NIV, which has a high level of respect for the original; what happens when our preacher is using an admitted paraphrase, such as the Message; or worse, an augmented paraphrase that is dressed in sheep’s clothing, pretending to be a translation?

The truth is that Paul sometimes chooses to be extraordinarily verbose himself, and to write very (very) long sentences. Peter comments on how hard he is to understand sometimes.

But let us respect the text. “The mindset of the flesh is death” makes a direct equivalence between mindset and death; starting to talk about “the mind governed by the flesh is death”, loses that connection.

And please note: even I added the word “is”; in the Greek it is understood, but maybe “the mindset of the flesh: death; but the mindset of the spirit: life and peace” would better capture how punchy the original really is!

θεοῦ γάρ ἐσμεν συνεργοί· θεοῦ γεώργιον, θεοῦ οἰκοδομή ἐστε.

1 Cor 3.9 SBL Greek NT

This is really just a footnote to the previous post, but I just want to underline what happens when you are failing to follow the argument.

Nearly every translation renders the verse above as something like “we are God’s coworkers, you are God’s field, God’s building.”

Which is entirely tone-deaf. Only the King James (and not its descendant, the New King James) gets it right: “you are God’s husbandry, God’s building.”

The point is that both γεώργιον and οἰκοδομή are nouns of action “looking after a field, ie husbandry”, “act or manner of building, ie which gives you the ambiguous ‘building’ (not “building”, the thing, but “building”, the act).

In other words, we are God’s coworkers but He is the one who is doing the work.

And you can follow that all the way back to 1 Cor 1.10:

You need to get with the programme, guys, because there is only one thing that matters, and it isn’t cliques around Paul and Apollos and Cephas…

Παρακαλῶ δὲ ὑμᾶς, ἀδελφοί, διὰ τοῦ ὀνόματος τοῦ κυρίου ἡμῶν Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ ἵνα τὸ αὐτὸ λέγητε πάντες, καὶ μὴ ᾖ ἐν ὑμῖν σχίσματα, ἦτε δὲ κατηρτισμένοι ἐν τῷ αὐτῷ νοῒ καὶ ἐν τῇ αὐτῇ γνώμῃ.

1 Cor 1.10 SBL Greek NT

One of my pet peeves is the habit of preachers to work through a Pauline letter, half a verse at a time, for months on end. I don’t deny that much can be drilled out of scripture in this way; but no one is thereby going to actually understand what Paul was talking about.

Take the verse above, and let me give you my ‘literal as possible and annotated’ rendering:

I summon you (a legal courtroom term) brothers, through the name of our Lord Jesus Christ (ie that is my authority for doing so), in order that you should all be careful to recount (λέγω is rarely just “say any old thing”; the fundamental part of it is intentionality and selection) the same thing, and that there should be among you no division of opinion (rather than just “division”), and that you should be reconciled (κατηρτισμένοι has a core meaning of restoration, so the NIV’s “united” is lacking something) in the same mind and in the same exercise of intelligence (γνώμη is the power of knowing or the ‘organ’ by which we exercise intelligent judgement).

Now, I agree it is more than possible to preach for a month on just this verse; but in doing so, it is unlikely that we will ever understand what Paul is concerned to say to the Church in Corinth.

So ask yourself, how far does this particular thread run in 1 Corinthians chapter 1?

Trick question: the issue Paul is raising here runs at least to the end of chapter 4, and I would argue, through to the end of chapter 6. Chapter 7 starts with “the issue you wrote me about…” and that seems distinct.

So what am I saying?

Verse 10 of chapter 1 is not a blessed thought; Paul is about to hit them with a major rebuke, and verse 10 is telling the Corinthians what solving this problem is going to require.

The rebuke starts with the report he has from Chloe’s household, namely that they have broken into factions – “I am of Paul”, “I of Apollos”, “I of Cephas”, and even “I of Christ”.

And everything that follows is highlighting their foolishness in getting hung up on trivia, when Paul had been so careful to come to them with the message that they actually need to agree on, a message demonstrated with the power of the Spirit and centred on the foolishness of Christ crucified.

And yet, instead of being ready for solid food, the Corinthians are still behaving like babies. I will leave you to reread this for yourself, but try to stop yourself saying “oh I love this passage about x or y” and instead see up to the end of chapter 6 as a lawyer’s speech aimed at bringing the Corinthian church to repentance, and to that simple reconciled agreement around the same mind and thought, the thing that actually matters: Christ crucified, the power of God.

In closing, let me point to one terrible and persistent mistranslation that has lured far too many into the delusion of their own infallibility.

For example, the NIV has:

The person with the Spirit makes judgments about all things, but such a person is not subject to merely human judgments

The KJV has:

But he that is spiritual judgeth all things, yet he himself is judged of no man.

That is dangerous stuff. “You can’t tell me off! I am the spiritual man…”

What 1 Corinthians 2.15 actually says involves one important verb, first in the active voice, and then in the middle voice. How generations of translators have managed to get this so wrong baffles me.

ὁ δὲ πνευματικὸς ἀνακρίνει τὰ πάντα, αὐτὸς δὲ ὑπ’ οὐδενὸς ἀνακρίνεται.

The person who is of the spirit inquires into or examines closely all things

[ἀνακρίνω Active voice]

But they themselves dispute or wrangle with no one

[ἀνακρίνω Middle voice]

And of course Paul continues in v 16, “for who has known the mind of the Lord, so as to instruct Him? But – we have the mind of Christ.”

And that in two verses is the heart of his answer to 1 Cor 1.10 – how do you Corinthians all get reunited into the same mind and power of thought? Yes, spiritual people ask questions about everything, and get into arguments with no one. Any of you know the mind of the Lord so that you could teach Him something? Of course not; but we all have the mind of Christ – so that is our agreement, right there!

And that is the answer today as well. Many of us seem to allow ourselves huge latitude to say “my church, my right to say what we are uniquely about”.

Time to get with the programme, people.

Jesus thinks it is His church, and that He already said what matters.

At that time if anyone says to you, ‘Look, here is the Messiah!’ or, ‘Look, there he is!’ do not believe it. For false messiahs and false prophets will appear and perform signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect. So be on your guard; I have told you everything ahead of time.

Mark 13.21-23, NIV

I suspect most of us feel well-proofed against going after false Messiahs. Of course it does happen, and once you go down that pathway, it is only a moment or two until every one is shooting Senators and drinking the cyanide-laced KoolAid.

But what if we are reading that wrong. χριστός (translated in verse 21 as Messiah) simply means ‘anointing’; only by extension does it also mean ‘the anointed one’. “‘Look, the anointing is here’ or ‘look it is there’” is a little more worrying – or at least, it should be. Because that then leads on to a warning about “false anointings and false prophets, giving signs and wonders for the seduction, if possible, of the elect.”

As Jesus said, “see it guys: I have told you everything beforehand.”

So how does one keep oneself safe?

Trust the Spirit in your spirit; if your spirit is uneasy, take that very seriously.

And watch how people handle scripture. What people who are teaching in the Church say should stand up to you checking it out in the Book. And yes that is getting harder, the more flakey translations and deliberately tweaked paraphrases there are floating around; but if you need wisdom, ask God for it and He will give you what you need.

Let me give you a real example: someone I was listening to quoted 1 John 4.17 “as He is, so are we in this world” (ESV). Look it up and you will see that the context is all about perfecting love, and that love casts out fear. But instead of using this verse in context, the speaker used it more like Aleister Crowley (the 20th Century satanist) saying “as above, so below”. They then suggested that since Jesus is coming back as a roaring lion, so we should become more aggressive and combative and so on (which was about the point where my spirit was so disturbed, I turned them off.)

My biggest worry is that even in my sharing this much, you might be seduced. Please don’t be. There is so much wrong with this.

Firstly, as I said a moment ago, the context is lost. John was speaking about love and the fact that we can be as full of love here in the world as Jesus is in heaven. He wasn’t leaving the door open to Christian political militancy.

Second, the speaker complained that Christians are too much influenced by Jesus as the lamb when they need to be like Jesus the Lion. I have bad news for them. The only reference to Jesus as the Lion of the Tribe of Judah (which itself is a reference back to Genesis 49.9) reads like this:

Then one of the elders said to me, “Do not weep! See, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has triumphed. He is able to open the scroll and its seven seals.”
Then I saw a Lamb, looking as if it had been slain…

Revelation 5.5-6a, NIV

What John saw in heaven was fulfilment of prophecy. The Lion of Judah was the prophecy; but when he looked, there was the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world, as the fulfilment now revealed. It simply isn’t biblical to say Jesus was a lamb, but He is now coming back as a roaring Lion.

To follow this speaker’s injunction requires that we overthrow everything Jesus and His disciples have actually instructed us, in favour of aligning ourselves with a picture of angry Jesus which has no biblical basis, but is a pure piece of preacher’s sleight of hand.

How do you protect yourself? Go back and read things in context. As a Chinese Navigator friend said to me, 40 over years ago, “a text without context is a pretext”.

And for the avoidance of doubt (not to mention the avoidance of a Disney villain version of the gospel), nothing will be more terrifying than the sight of the Slain Lamb to those who have opposed Him. Satan and His hordes will squeal in despair.

For the foolishness of God is wiser than human wisdom, and the weakness of God is stronger than human strength.

1 Cor 1.25, NIV

God simply doesn’t need to show off; God at His apparently weakest is infinitely more powerful than anyone else; even if they are posturing like a roaring lion.

And he was teaching them and saying to them, “Is it not written, My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations’? But you have made it a den of robbers.”

Mark 11.17, NIV

I want to overview most of Mark 11 this time, from v 11 onwards. The preceding 10 verses constitute “the Triumphal Entry”. I am interested here in what happens next.

The order is this:

Jesus has a look around the temple and goes back to Bethany because it is late in the day;

Going into Jerusalem from Bethany the next day, He is hungry, goes to a fig tree in leaf and – finding nothing on it (because it isn’t the season for figs) – “it having been rejected upon examination, He says to it, “may no one ever eat from you again”. And yes, the disciples heard Him say it.

An aside; translators all ‘know’ that ἀποκριθεὶς means ‘answered’; which is the problem: over and over again it is clear that translators would do better if they left their lexical certainties (and their dictionaries of NT Greek) behind and actually did their homework: ἀποκριθεὶς has far more fundamental meanings than ‘answered’, and the one that fits is “be rejected upon examination”. Most realise it is odd to have Jesus answering a tree, so leave it out altogether. Doh!

Next Jesus goes into the temple and stops all the trade that is going on in there, and teaches – including the quote at the top of this post. In passing please note that what He says – the quotation from Isaiah 56.7 and the description of the temple as “a cavern of robbers” from Jeremiah 7.11 are both word perfect with the LXX of those passages (see my recent post for more). They all return to Bethany.

Next day, Jesus and His disciples return to Jerusalem and on the way: there is the now-dead fig, shrivelled to the roots. It took 24 hours (as opposed to the instantaneously of Matthew 21.19-22) but I find Mark’s version more compelling. When Peter calls this out, Jesus talks about faith (ie how He did this) and not what it meant; and that is very important.

Finally, when they reach Jerusalem, He is accosted by the Chief Priests, Scribes and Elders who demand of Him that He tell them His authority for “doing these things”; or “who gave Him this authority to do them”. Jesus says He will tell them if they first tell Him whether John’s baptism was of God or of man; they are too scared to answer that one, so He refuses to answer their question.

So what are we looking at here?

Is Jesus cruel to nature? Curse the fig tree for being without fruit at a time no fig has fruit? Was He teaching His disciples how to do extreme landscape gardening? “This mountain looks terrible from my balcony, let’s throw that into the sea…?”

The truth is that all the little episodes (biblical scholars call them pericopes, especially when doing synoptic study across the Gospels) are broken up in our bibles, each with their own heading; but they are far more connected than that.

Here is the meta narrative:

Jesus goes to Jerusalem and to the Temple, which since Solomon’s day (barring destruction, exile and reconstruction) has been the centre of Jewish worship. There is no surprise in what He sees, but He spells out the consequences in His living parable the next day. Fig trees in leaf look extremely green and vigorous in any context, especially in a dry Mediterranean climate; but like any fruit tree, if it isn’t harvest time, there is nothing to eat. Jesus uses this as a parable of Jewish religion and Temple-centric worship: whatever fruit there has been in the past, and however fancy Herod’s temple upgrades look, there is no fruit now. The prediction He speaks over the fig tree is for all of that. No one will eat fruit from you again. 24 hours later the fig is dead and withered to the roots. Likewise the Temple and all that goes with it, will be gone shortly.

So why does He not spell that out for the disciples? Would it be too great a shock for them as observant Jews? I don’t think that is the issue at all, and we can see what is going on when Peter says “wow, Lord, look at the fig tree…”

As I mentioned above, Jesus deflects what could have become a discussion of “what it meant” to an explanation of “how you do this kind of stuff”. And I think the obvious reason is that if He had spelt it out – the Temple is coming to an end, from now on the very Spirit of God will dwell in men – there was a real danger that Satan would have finally caught up with the plan. As usual when that is of concern, Jesus employs misdirection for effect.

But very clearly the whole fig thing wasn’t about an innocent fig tree.

He clears the temple of traders (I have written a whole post about this, and see no evidence that He ran around like a wild man, whipping and slashing; turning the tables upside down was like a McDonalds employee putting chairs on tables: “we are done for the day”.) Then He teaches what the Temple was meant to be – a house of prayer for all the nations (meaning a house into which all the nations could come in order to pray – except that the court of the gentiles was full of traders now); but you have turned it into a cave of robbers. He stopped the offence to His Father’s house (for a day, maybe a few? There was nothing to stop them coming back…) but said absolutely nothing about restoring the Temple as a house of prayer for all the nations.

That time is past. Nobody else knows it yet.

So to finish with the questioning of His authority to “do these things”, just note that there are two questions the Chief Priests and their posse ask Him. What authority (meaning scripture or the words of an accepted rabbi); and failing that, who gave you authority?

The truth is that Jesus has both on His side; every word spoken by God and recorded in the Hebrew Scriptures show that He was right and they were in the wrong; and He was commissioned by the Glorious Father whom they claimed to represent but didn’t.

But He wasn’t about to tell them that, at least not directly. Instead He asks them a question which demonstrates that they are nowhere near being on God’s side, and which therefore they are unable to answer without severe personal hazard. “Tell me about John’s baptism…”

So, to summarise, this is not a group of curious little actions and sayings. This is the most consequential commentary upon a system whose time is now over, and which has fallen into its final moral abyss. The question about John’s baptism is significant; John the Baptist was, Jesus says elsewhere, the final positive act of the Law and the Prophets.

Henceforth, it is all about the Kingdom, and the religious elite are a complete and irrelevant back number for this next chapter.