The View from the West Mesa

Overheard in class: God blesses Job after Job prays for his friends. This is an interesting observation about this text: And the Lord restored the fortunes of Job, when he had prayed for his friends. (Job 42.10a, ESV) Job has just revealed his contrition regarding why God would cause him such sorrow and God had lectured Job's friends for their misunderstandings about God and Job's situation. God then tells the friends to ask Job to pray for them, and they do. They bring sacrifices and they ask for Job's intercession on their behalf. Get this picture. Job is, presumably, still sitting in ashes, covered with sores that he scrapes with a potsherd. He has suffered the loss of his children and his physical wealth, and his wife has suggested that he should just curse God and die. He has just sat through 40-ish chapters of being lectured by these same friends and finally, challenged by God. ...and his friends show up with sacrifices for themselves, asking Job to pray for them. Put...

We have all heard the phrase “None is righteous, no not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God.” Many, including most Protestants, take this to be a universal, divine description of humanity. Well, it isn’t; at least not as either Paul or the writer he's quoting meant it. In our chapter 3 of Romans, Paul is speaking to Jewish disciples in Rome. He has recently eliminated any claim to the priority they might have presumed based on having the Law or circumcision as signs of being ‘in.’ Then he moves to a rhetorical question, ‘If we are God’s people, is he unjust to punish us?’ Paul’s answer is that God is not unjust to punish Israel or Jews. He even has to address a silly assertion that we will have seen multiple times. It is this, should we sin more so that God can show even more grace? Paul’s answer is an understandable ‘Nope!” Then we get the next question, ‘Are we Jews any better off – because we are Jews?’ Again the answer is ‘nope.’ Why is that? Paul is going to justify...

"For I am not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek. For in it the righteousness of God is revealed from faith for faith, as it is written, "The righteous shall live by faith." (Romans 1.16-17, ESV) There are various renderings and understandings of the phrase as it is used here, "faith for faith." Both words for faith derive from pistis, with the first being pisteos (genitive) and the second, pistin (accusative) . Faith, we are told, begins in faith and leads to faith. The import of this origin and fulfillment is found in the next sentence above, the righteous shall live by faith (genitive). We might word this as "already held or possessed faith will result in or lead to faith. As it is written, the one who has faith will parlay that faith into a salvific faith. Faith held by the believer will lead the believer to greater or more complete faith, resulting in her s...

Introduction:  Paul's letter to the Roman house churches has become so 'specialized' that many understandings of it are severely limited to only a few options. Perhaps the most popular understanding of the letter is as Paul's magnum opus of grace/faith versus works . A close second is the Reformed use of the letter to emphasize Divine sovereignty in salvation , specifically, unconditional election . Leaving aside whether these themes appear in the letter and in what forms, they tend to overly simplify the letter. As a result, our understanding of the letter is anemic and at least slightly wrong-headed. Situation : Paul has never been to Rome; he did not establish the church there. He does know some of the people in Rome, however, and has heard of their situation. The Jews had been evicted from Rome (AD 40-51?) but were now returning to the city (AD 54?)  after their exile. During the Jewish disciples’ absence from Rome, Gentile disciples had led the house churches, a...

       In chapter 16 of Matthew, Peter ‘makes the great confession’ - Jesus he says is the Son of the Living God. At Covenant, when someone wants to become a member or to be baptized, we ask them who Jesus is and we expect this response. Peter is correct when he says this, but it is not clear that Peter (or the other disciples) understood the ramifications of his statement. Following Peter’s statement we find a series of incidents that make us wonder just how much Peters actually believed what he had said.      In the first instance, Jesus compares Peter to Satan. Jesus tells his disciples that he is going to Jerusalem and there he will die. Peter exclaims that he will not let that happen; Jesus will not be killed. Peter is expecting great things from Jesus as the Messiah, the Son of God on behalf of Israel and he cannot fit Jesus dying into his hope for a greater Israel under this Messiah. This cannot happen, he reasons. Jesus’s response is a harsh re...

  Jesus comes from the Wilderness where the Spirit has driven him for testing, announcing the imminent coming of the Kingdom of Heaven. His message to the crowds calls them to repent because the “Kingdom is at hand.” The kingdom or the effective rule of God has come upon Israel and Israel’s expected response is to return to her God. A number of passages tell us the sorts of things God has against Israel or at least her leaders. They have the form of the People of God, but not the substance. He will call those opposed to him “white-washed tombs” to describe their religious and moral corruption. They look good but are dead. He calls these people to repentance, to return to “their first love,” to actually live as though they are the People of God. In another place, he will tell them that while they do well to tithe mint and cumin, they have missed the larger point of caring for people. In the judgment scene, he describes sending into a place of gnashing of teeth those who failed to gi...