It’s been a busy week with family stuff, so I apologize for the lateness of this week’s Lectionary Help. I’ll offer a few quick helps here since Palm Sunday and Holy Week offer so much material for us to preach on.
In Rigged Trial; Real Redemption (Luke 22:54–62) | Sunday Morning Greek Blog, I cover the injustices of the way the Jews used their own “legal” system to condemn Jesus. Everything about the trial before the Sanhedrin was contrary to their own laws and customs. It’s an early example of what we’ve come to call “lawfare” today.
Matthew indicates that Judas threw his blood money back in the temple and hanged himself after betraying Jesus. The pharisees bought the field where Judas hanged himself with that money (Matthew 27:5–10), which is why in Acts 1:18, Peter can say Judas bought the field. It was by proxy through the Pharisees, because they didn’t want their name associated with the title to the land because it was purchased with blood money.
Most scholars believe the description in Acts about Judas’s body bursting open is not a contradiction to Matthew’s “hanging” account. The Acts account comes from Peter to a small group of believers who were already familiar with the full story. It’s likely that Judas’s body started to bloat after he died on the tree and either the rope or the branch it was hanging from broke and caused the gruesome scene.
I also came across the following note on Matthew 27:28–31 in my files:
“The Greek text here has several words with the /pt/ sound or /p/ followed by an unstressed vowel sound. I have to think this is intentional on Matthew’s part to emphasize the mocking (ἐνέπαιξαν, from ἐμπαίζω) aspect of the scene. This passage is a chiasm as well, centering around the mocking (but true) statement, ‘Hail, king of the Jews!’”
One final note: Golgotha is likely the exact location (give or take a few hundred feet) where Abraham had taken Isaac to sacrifice him. The Hebrew text where Abraham says “God himself will provide the lamb” can be repointed (i.e., have a different vowel arrangement below the consonants; vowels weren’t added to the Hebrew text until about AD 1000) to say “God will provide himself as the lamb.” Consider the significance of that for a hot minute.
Peace to you as you approach Holy Week and the Easter season.
I preached this message at Mount View Presbyterian Church, Omaha, NE, on March 22, 2026. I had already preached my best message on Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead a couple times here, which was the gospel passage for the fifth Sunday of Lent, so I preached on the OT reading for this Sunday. I give a brief summary of all the “raised from the dead” passages in the Bible before tackling Ezekiel 37 and its context.
Do you know how many stories of dead people coming back to life are in the Bible? When I typed the question into Google to confirm if my own recollection was correct, I confirmed there are in fact ten, count ‘em, ten stories of people rising from the dead. Three of the stories are in the Old Testament, five in the gospels, and two in the book of Acts. Ezekiel 37, which I’ll read here in a bit, is another story of dead bones receiving new flesh and new breath, but it seems to end there. It reads more like a parable rather than an actual historic event, but it does seem to prefigure the story in Matthew 27:50–54 (which is included in the count) about the dead coming out of their tombs and graves the moment Jesus died on the cross.
Allow me to quickly recap the 10 miracles here so we can place the stories in their historical contexts.
Elijah raised the son of a widow in Zarephath during the drought in 1 Kings 17. Not to be outdone, Elisha did the same for a Shunammite woman’s son in Shunem. Nain, where Jesus raised the son of a widow in Luke 7, is located about halfway between Shunem and Zarephath.
Backtracking for a moment, there’s a little-known story in 2 Kings 13:20-21 where Elisha raises another man from the dead, even though Elisha had been dead for a few days! Here’s the account in 2 Kings 13:20–21:
20 Elisha died and was buried.
Now Moabite raiders used to enter the country every spring. 21 Once while some Israelites were burying a man, suddenly they saw a band of raiders; so they threw the man’s body into Elisha’s tomb. When the body touched Elisha’s bones, the man came to life and stood up on his feet.[1]
Getting back to the New Testament, in the next chapter after the boy from Nain is raised, Jesus raises the dead daughter of Jairus, a synagogue ruler. Of course, we also have Lazarus from our gospel passage this morning.
The most prominent one, though, is Jesus at the end of each of the gospels. He cites the first line of Psalm 22 to remind us that this was all prophesied a long time before his crucifixion. Psalm 22 has many details that were fulfilled in the crucifixion stories of the gospels. In Matthew 27, as I alluded to above, several people came out of their graves. Most scholars who consider that a real event assume that those people were reunited with their families, at least for a short time. It would seem odd for God to bring them back to life only to send them right back to their graves, so some scholars have suggested that they may have gone into glory when Jesus rose from the grave that first Easter morning!
Toward the end of Acts chapter 9, a young disciple named Tabitha who served the poor faithfully became sick and died. This happened in Joppa while Peter was ministering in nearby Lydda. The disciples called for Peter to come. Peter did not hesitate, and after he prayed for the young woman, he looked at her and commanded her to get up! Of course, she obliged and was restored to her community of believers.
Later, in Acts 20, Paul is giving a marathon sermon that went long into the night, and a young man named Eutychus was sitting in a third-story window listening to his message. He fell asleep, fell out of the window, and died. Paul went down and in true Elijah/Elisha fashion, stretched himself out over the young man, and God restored life to him.
These are all the stories in the Bible about people miraculously restored to life after being declared dead. In every instance, with the exception of Jesus, others were around to witness these events. The women who went to Jesus’s tomb arrived shortly after Jesus had risen, because he warned them not to touch him. And given how Jesus was treated on the cross, there was absolutely no doubt that he had died as well.
But there’s one “event” that I referred to earlier that seems to have been a vision for Ezekiel in chapter 37 and not an actual event, although the description seems real enough. The context and historical setting of this chapter is important. Ezekiel is part of the second wave of exiles being transported to Babylon. He had wanted to be a priest, but the exile happened before he could attain that position. Instead, God called him to be a prophet to the exiles and, in the latter chapters especially, to be an encouragement to them in their captivity, assuring them that one day they would be restored to the Promised Land.
Ezekiel proclaims that his role is a Watchman (ch. 33) and a messenger of the Lord, Israel’s Shepherd (ch. 34). He gives Israel and Judah the promise that they will once again be one nation after the exile. In chapter 36, he speaks of hope for the mountains of Israel and the assurance of the restoration of Israel as a nation, the chosen people of God. Ezekiel gives specific enough dates in these chapters that we can know he’s writing around 585 B.C., about 20 years after the first wave of exiles (that included Daniel) was transported.
Hear the words of Ezekiel 37:1–14:
The hand of the Lord was on me, and he brought me out by the Spirit of the Lord and set me in the middle of a valley; it was full of bones. 2 He led me back and forth among them, and I saw a great many bones on the floor of the valley, bones that were very dry. 3 He asked me, “Son of man, can these bones live?”
I said, “Sovereign Lord, you alone know.”
4 Then he said to me, “Prophesy to these bones and say to them, ‘Dry bones, hear the word of the Lord! 5 This is what the Sovereign Lord says to these bones: I will make breath enter you, and you will come to life. 6 I will attach tendons to you and make flesh come upon you and cover you with skin; I will put breath in you, and you will come to life. Then you will know that I am the Lord.’ ”
7 So I prophesied as I was commanded. And as I was prophesying, there was a noise, a rattling sound, and the bones came together, bone to bone. 8 I looked, and tendons and flesh appeared on them and skin covered them, but there was no breath in them.
9 Then he said to me, “Prophesy to the breath; prophesy, son of man, and say to it, ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: Come, breath, from the four winds and breathe into these slain, that they may live.’ ” 10 So I prophesied as he commanded me, and breath entered them; they came to life and stood up on their feet—a vast army.
11 Then he said to me: “Son of man, these bones are the people of Israel. They say, ‘Our bones are dried up and our hope is gone; we are cut off.’ 12 Therefore prophesy and say to them: ‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: My people, I am going to open your graves and bring you up from them; I will bring you back to the land of Israel. 13 Then you, my people, will know that I am the Lord, when I open your graves and bring you up from them. 14 I will put my Spirit in you and you will live, and I will settle you in your own land. Then you will know that I the Lord have spoken, and I have done it, declares the Lord.’ ”[2]
The imagery is fairly simple to understand. The dry bones represent Israel in exile. They had finally withered up and dried out as a nation because they refused to follow the Lord. They had spent some 500 years in the land and never once did they give the land its rest every seven years. So now they faced 70 years of exile, one year for each of the years the land never received its rest.
God commands Ezekiel to prophesy to the bones to reanimate them. Ezekiel does so, and the bones begin to rattle like a china cabinet in an earthquake. Before Ezekiel’s eyes, he sees tendons and muscles and veins and organs form on these bones and finally a skin covering, and I would even speculate there was hair on their heads and the rest of their bodies. I don’t believe they all looked alike, like a bunch of clones. But there they were. Instead of just bones lying around, Ezekiel saw bodies lying around waiting for the breath of life. We’re not sure how many, but Ezekiel describes it as a vast army.
God then tells Ezekiel to prophesy to the “breath” so that these bodies can be filled with the breath of life again to live. And again, it worked! All these bodies began to breathe and rise to their feet. God closes out this scene by reassuring Ezekiel that God will indeed restore Israel to their homeland. The part about opening the graves and bringing them out again sounds very much like what happened in Matthew 27, when the dead came out of their graves after Jesus’s resurrection. Yet neither of my study Bibles make that connection between these two passages. I did, however, find a couple commentaries that make this connection.[3], [4]It’s hard not to think of Matthew 27:50–54 as a fulfillment of Ezekiel’s prophecy.
What is interesting here is that the word for “breath” is the exact same word in Hebrew that is translated “spirit” (as in Holy Spirit) in many other places. This is where I think we can make the connection to our own context today. COVID was a type of exile for churches everywhere. We were all but coerced to abandon meeting together in our familiar church settings and dwell in the foreign territory of “virtual church.” Some churches were connected enough and had enough resources and dedication of membership to persevere through that time. Many smaller congregations, however, did not survive or are still struggling mightily to get back to where they were.
Even before Charlie Kirk’s assassination, we were beginning to see revival take place, especially among young people. God was bringing life to the “dead bones” of those who had previously seen no hope in the church. The younger generation began to see what they had missed after willingly (or was it addictively?) spending hours per day on electronic devices only to have such a lifestyle imposed on them unwillingly by COVID and the powers that be. They didn’t like that imposition and started rebelling against it. Revival is happening because new and long-time believers stopped taking their freedoms for granted after they had them stripped for a season.
God is always moving through his Holy Spirit to bring redemption and revival for those he’s called and who call upon him. As believers, Christ-followers, we’re called to “Preach the word; be prepared in season and out of season; correct, rebuke and encourage—with great patience and careful instruction.”[5] If we are faithful to our respective ministries and to seeking the Lord with all our hearts, our faith will not return void. We will reap a harvest we may not have anticipated. I heard this the other day from an unlikely source, but it makes a lot of sense: While we are waiting on God, we should do what waiters do: serve.
May God continue to bless your ministry efforts here at Mount View. Amen.
[3] Green, Michael. 2001. The Message of Matthew: The Kingdom of Heaven. “Matthew 27:32–56.” The Bible Speaks Today. Leicester, England; Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press.
The gospel passage this week is Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead. It is the only one of the seven miracles of Jesus recorded that coincides one of his seven “I am” statements he makes in John’s gospel in the same chapter.\
This passage shows the full range of Jesus’s human and divine natures, especially the human emotions that Jesus expressed. It’s important to emphasize Jesus’s humanity as evidence that he was a high priest able “to empathize with our human weaknesses—yet he did not sin.” (Hebrews 4:15),
Martha is the one trying to hold it all together. It seems as if she’s not even started the grieving process yet. She and Mary are both upset that Jesus didn’t get there in time. But Martha is sure of the resurrection, something many of the disciples, I think, were still trying to wrap their heads around.
Jesus’s response just before he himself weeps is worth noting here. When John says Jesus was “deeply moved…and troubled” (NIV), some commentators have suggested Jesus may have groaned in agony or even anger at death itself. He was doing all he could to control his emotions when he asked, “Where have you laid him?” I’m not so sure he asked that politely. More like, “Let’s get this over with.”
Jesus seems to be in take-charge mode at this point. In vs. 38 we see he is “deeply moved” again, to the “Take away the stone!” command may have sounded like a very frustrated outburst.
We must be careful not to generalize from Jesus’s actions and attitudes in this event any sort of pattern for how you and I respond to the death of a loved one. Each one of us handles grief in our own unique way, but the one generalization we can make is that Jesus was fully relying on God in this moment of earthly existence. The one who came to bring us life had to confront the very thing he came to defeat.
I do hope this will give you some good ideas on how to make this story “come to life” (so to speak) for your congregation. I’ve included a couple links below, one with an audio file of my sermon, and the other that highlights the connections between Jesus’s miracles and his “I am” statements in John.
We have a long gospel passage for the fourth Sunday in Lent. In the congregation I preach in, I will typically read the entire gospel passage prior to the message. I have not previously preached on this passage for lent, but three years ago when I preached on John 4 for the third Sunday in Lent, I showed the clip from that scene in The Chosen instead of reading the passage. Here is the YouTube clip of healing of the man born blind from Season 4, Episode 3.
Jesus repeats his “I am the light of the world” statement in 9:5 (originally spoken in 8:12), which seems to close the loop on that description of Jesus and his actions. The miracle of bringing light to the man’s eyes for the first time is definitive proof of that claim. In the broader context of Scripture, this harkens back to Isaiah 9, as I’ve indicated in other passages where light is a significant theme. This also seems to be the final proof that John offers for his opening statements in chapter 1 about Jesus being “light,” especially the “light” of Genesis 1:3, the firstborn of all creation. Jesus would be the physical, visible representation of God’s divine nature in his incarnation.
This passage is unusual in that a large section of it (vv. 13–34) happens apart from the presence of Jesus and his disciples. This only happens a couple times in John (the other occurrence is in 11:45–57, where the Jews are plotting to kill Jesus after he raised Lazarus from the dead). It would seem reasonable that the healed man would have relayed the story to Jesus or his disciples when Jesus sees him again in 9:35. The greater the miracle, the more intense the religious leaders’ desire to take Jesus out.
This section of the passage gives us some sense of how the Pharisees seemed to operate to protect their legalistic view of the Law. It shows how they participated in the darkness, having important discussions about the nature of sin and the impact of healing on the Sabbath behind closed doors and coercing (unsuccessfully) the healed man to recant his claim of Jesus healing, especially on the Sabbath. Worse yet, they were trying to get him to say something damning about Jesus, but he was too excited and too grateful to turn his back on the savior. You can almost feel the power of the Pharisees draining from their fingertips before their very (blind) eyes.
The healed man’s courage to speak the truth about who Jesus is and what he’s done for him is a testimony for all believers in this day and age where Christian persecution seems to be increasing in the heartland of America and elsewhere. But people are responding with a desire for faithfulness in Christ in great numbers in spite of (or because of?) it.
I’ll close out here with a couple links to my articles on “I Am the Light of the World” if you want to dig deeper into that topic. Peace to you in the next week. May God richly bless your ministry as you proclaim his word to those within your influence.
I preached this message on February 22, 2026, the First Sunday in Lent, Year A.
When you think about it, Satanism, the worship of Satan, is an oxymoron. I know what you’re thinking, and you’re right. “That’s a weird way to start a sermon, preacher!” Yep, guilty as charged. But seriously, why would anyone want to put their “faith” in Satan when all the evidence points his core nature? He’s pure evil. He’s deceptive. He hates those who worship God. I would dare say he’s more interested in getting you to not worship and serve God than he is having people worship him. But he can ignore those people, because they’re already solidly in his camp.
John says this about the devil when he confronts the Pharisees in the Temple in John 8:
44 You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies. 45 Yet because I tell the truth, you do not believe me! 46 Can any of you prove me guilty of sin? If I am telling the truth, why don’t you believe me? [1]*
Adam and Eve had a first-hand encounter with Satan in the very beginning. He lied about what eating the fruit from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil could do for them. Yes, after eating the apple, they did experience the shame of their nakedness, so at least that much of what Satan said was true, but it was a half-truth at best. The lie that Satan told Eve was “You will be like God.” That was a lie in so many ways, and here’s why:
God is not just omniscient, knowing all that can be known, but he is omnipotent and omnipresent as well. Adam and Eve, relatively speaking, only got a fraction of the knowledge that God had about such things and NONE of the power or presence that God had. Their shame at disobeying caused them to fear the presence of God when God had designed Eden and the world for them to live in his presence. They lost power, because at that point, death became a necessity for survival. An animal would have to die to clothe them. Blood sacrifices became necessary for temporary atonement. And God’s son would have to die to redeem them forever from the curse.
Satan won that first round with God’s precious new creation, but out of that came the first prophecy of Satan’s defeat at the hands and feet of God’s son. It’s no wonder, then, that he thought he could try and pull that off when God’s one and only son came on the scene. If he could get Jesus to stumble, the world would be his, or so he thought.
In the garden, Eve had become convinced somehow that the forbidden fruit “was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom.” It shouldn’t surprise us that Satan used those same three categories to tempt Jesus in the desert as in our Gospel passage this morning. “I know you’re hungry for some food, Jesus. Go ahead and turn these stones into bread.” But Jesus knew, unlike Adam and Eve, that there was more to God than producing a little supernatural “manna” to satisfy what must have been an intense human experience of hunger. “Man shall not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God.”
Satan tried to trick him by twisting a promise of God into a perversion of wisdom. “Come on Jesus. You know God will catch you if you jump off the top of the Temple here! Imagine the scene when the crowd watches the angels swoop you up at the last second! You’ll be a superhero!” But Jesus knows it is foolish to put God to the test like that, and rebuked Satan with that fact in no uncertain terms.
Satan had one more chance. He took Jesus to a high mountain where he had a “pleasing sight” awaiting him—”all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor.” But once again, Jesus knew the price was too high to go along with Satan’s schemes, and he knew none of them would bring about what God had promised him when he fulfilled his mission. “You know the commandment, Satan. I will have no other gods before me. He was there to “worship the Lord God and serve him only.” The liar failed at trying to fool the one in whom there was no lie and only truth.
And that was the beginning of the end for Satan. Jesus won that battle, but Satan didn’t give up that easily. He had to switch his focus to others, and most of you know who that would be: someone from his inner circle. The signs would be there early on that something wasn’t quite right with Judas. Even Peter gets some of the blame, but that, it seems, may have been more to his impetuous nature at times, and Jesus had other plans for him anyway.
The power of death was defeated at the cross. I’m sure that was something that Satan actually felt. Jesus had even told Peter that the gates of hell could not withstand the coming of God’s kingdom, and I think for a while anyway, as the church began to coalesce after Pentecost, God and Jesus kept Satan at bay to give the fledgling believers a head start at getting the gospel out.
I want to turn now to Romans 5:12–19, the other New Testament passage in the Lectionary readings today, to look at the results, if you will, of Jesus’s victory over death and how he, as the New Adam, broke the curse brought on by the First Adam, who through passivity allowed his wife to give in to the serpent and joined her in her disobedience. Romans 5 has a powerful message about how you and I can be strengthened in our own faith walk because of what Jesus accomplished on the cross and in his resurrection from the dead.
Hear what Paul has to say:
12 Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all people, because all sinned—
13 To be sure, sin was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not charged against anyone’s account where there is no law. 14 Nevertheless, death reigned from the time of Adam to the time of Moses, even over those who did not sin by breaking a command, as did Adam, who is a pattern of the one to come.
15 But the gift is not like the trespass. For if the many died by the trespass of the one man, how much more did God’s grace and the gift that came by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, overflow to the many! 16 Nor can the gift of God be compared with the result of one man’s sin: The judgment followed one sin and brought condemnation, but the gift followed many trespasses and brought justification. 17 For if, by the trespass of the one man, death reigned through that one man, how much more will those who receive God’s abundant provision of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ!
18 Consequently, just as one trespass resulted in condemnation for all people, so also one righteous act resulted in justification and life for all people. 19 For just as through the disobedience of the one man the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the one man the many will be made righteous.[2]
Even though Paul says plainly in 1 Timothy 2:14 that it was Eve who was deceived and sinned first (sorry, ladies, I’m just the messenger here), Paul considers the blame for “original sin” to be squarely on Adam’s shoulders. Adam had one command, and he (and Eve) blew it. But because it was a single command and the Law had not come yet, God could not permanently charge Adam with a violation of his law. Instead, they were expelled from the garden because they could not be trusted. That doesn’t mean they weren’t loved, though. God would declare even as he announced their punishment that the seed of the woman would crush the head of the serpent.
Paul demonstrates that Jesus fulfilled the role that Adam never could. Adam’s disobedience or lack of faithfulness brought sin into the world, but Jesus’s one act of faithful obedience, submitting to crucifixion, is the only act that could defeat the power of sin once for all and bring righteousness to all who would follow him. It took one sin by Adam to mess up things for everybody, but one faithfully obedient savior to restore us to God in his righteousness.
Romans says that Jesus Christ is our righteousness. He earned that designation by fulfilling the whole Law of God. But God still needed that once-for-all blood sacrifice that would make the animal and grain sacrifices of the Old Testament completely obsolete. Jesus was the only one who could be that spotless lamb. But it wasn’t just because of his 100% obedience to the law. The crucifixion had one more element that made it absolutely effective and impossible for the devil to challenge or destroy: It was love, pure and simple.
“For God so loved the world.” Only a perfect man with a fully divine nature who showed us beyond a shadow of doubt how he and his Father loved us in person and face to face could make that sacrifice. The bulls and goats and birds that were sacrificed under the Old Covenant could not ever love us the way Jesus did and does, which is why his sacrifice stands not only above the old sacrificial system, but above every other religion as well. Buddha, Siddhartha Gautama, was a real person, but he never loved anything about the world that should have mattered to him. He just tried to obtain a state of nothingness, a very selfish goal that no one else, by definition, could help him achieve. There’s no personal connection there and no promise of any help from the supernatural realm. Jesus’s sacrifice was by far the most superior of any that could have happened on this world God created with love, and the only one that can guarantee us eternal life in God’s glorious new kingdom.
As believers, then, know that you are “in Christ” in every sense of the concept. We are baptized “into Christ,” which means we are baptized into his death. So we share in his death so we can be free of the requirements of the law, beneficiaries of grace, and servants of righteousness. As you go forth in the world from here, declare God’s word unashamedly to those who need to hear the hope of his good news. Amen.
[1]The New International Version. 2011. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan. *I didn’t say it in my message, but I sure thought about adding: “The Pharisees must have had Jesus Derangement Syndrome.”
Welcome to Lectionary Help for the first Sunday of Lent, February 22, 2026, the temptation of Christ in the wilderness. The celebration of Easter/Resurrection of the Lord is on April 5 this year.
I’ll just pull a relevant quote from the sermon linked above, as I think it’s succinct enough to give you the sense of the words used for “temptation” and “testing.”
Word Study (from the sermon linked above)
Tempt, test (πειράζω peirazō)
Temptation, testing (πειρασμός peirasmos)
So why do three of the versions I mentioned use “test” instead of “temptation” for the same Greek or Hebrew word? Well, as I tell my students when they ask me questions like that, the answer is “context, context, context.” If you follow the use of the words in their respective story settings, you find that “testing” has to do with the relationship between God and humans. The general thrust of the verses in question goes one of three ways: either God is testing his people to see how they respond, or the people are testing God by NOT doing what he’s commanded them to do, or one person is testing another’s character. And consistent with the concept of testing, sometimes there’s a judgment or “grade” on how we responded to the test.
“Temptation” is a subset of testing. That is, all temptations are tests, but not all tests are temptations. The word “temptation” is used by these English translation committees to indicate a situation in which some personified evil power or influence is at work.
Application
In the message above, I offer three ways after the example of Jesus to fight against temptation and weaken their influence in your life:
Pray! (Hebrews 4:15–16)
Live in the will of God; Live “in Christ” (1 John 2:15–17)
Memorize and proclaim God’s word (Psalm 119:11)
Epistles passage (Romans 5:12–19)
If you’re looking for a different angle to approach the theme, consider using Romans 5:12–19 as your starting point. I’ve had Romans on the brain for the past couple months because I gave the kickoff message to our 2026 first semester church-wide small group study in Romans (Romans 1 & 2: Jesus Our Righteous and Faithful Savior (StoneBridge small group kickoff) | Sunday Morning Greek Blog). I side with the subjective genitive approach to Romans when it comes to talking about both righteousness and faithfulness, so Jesus is “the righteous one who lives by [his] faithfulness” and we’re saved through the faithfulness of Jesus, the Righteous One.
Having established my foundation for my understanding of Romans, I’ll give some quick hits here.
The “sin entered the world through one man” concept is countered by Jesus, the Righteousness of God, the “one man” through whom all are made righteous by being “in Christ.” Jesus’s faithfulness secures that for us.
Verse 19 makes the connection to the stated theme of Romans (leading the Gentiles to the “obedience of faithfulness”; 1:5 & 16:26): “Through the obedience [of faithfulness] of the one man the many will be made righteous.” This is the set-up for Paul’s discussion of baptism in chapter 6: If we’re baptized into Christ, we’re baptized into his death. That “death” is how we’re freed from the law (Romans 7), and our subsequent emersion (coming out of the baptismal waters) results in life “in Christ.” Our righteousness is not something separate imparted to us; it’s something we walk in when we walk “in Christ.”
Blessings this week as you enter into the Lenten season. If you’re in a tradition that gives up something for Lent, try giving up those things that keep you from drawing closer to your Savior. I’ve preached the above sermon twice in the last four years, so time for me write something afresh.
This Wednesday marks the beginning of the season of Lent, a time when Christians worldwide anticipate the remembrance of Christ’s death on the cross and the celebration of his resurrection from the dead on Easter Sunday. I can’t help but think there must be a small bit of irony that we celebrate the birth of Jesus and his resurrection, the beginning and ending of his life on earth, only about three or four months apart. Jesus is that special to us that we choose to recognize both those events as holidays in our culture and in Christendom more broadly. Most people who have holidays today only get them for their birthdays, like President’s Day tomorrow, or Martin Luther King Day last month.
We don’t have a holiday that I’m aware of where recognize the death of an individual. We do have Memorial Day, Veterans’ Day, and Pearl Harbor Day to recognize the sacrifices of our loved ones and heroes who’ve served and in many cases given their all for this country for our freedom. Of course, as the old hymn goes, “Jesus gave it all” for each of us as well, but for our spiritual freedom and eternal life with him in Heaven.
Jesus knows what his end goal is: the cross. But he also doesn’t want his disciples to be taken by surprise by that event either. In Matthew 16, Jesus begins to warn his disciples that he must be handed over by the Jewish leaders who hated his disruption of their power over the people to the Romans for the death penalty. The first time Jesus says this, Peter is indignant: Most English translations have Peter saying something like “Never!” or “God Forbid!” The one word that Peter utters is the word for “Mercy!”
It was a dire prediction after all, and I’m sure the disciples weren’t ready for that just yet. That’s when Jesus responds to Peter, “Get thee behind me, Satan!” Keep in mind that just a few verses earlier Jesus said he was going to build his church on Peter, or at least on the truth of his confession that Jesus is the Christ.
But Jesus doesn’t stop there. In all three gospel accounts of this first prediction, Jesus goes on to say something about each of them having to take up their own cross to follow Jesus. In other words, they need to “die” too. But for those who would come to Christ later, that experience of “dying,” that is, “taking up the cross,” will look very different. That has got to be pretty earth shaking for a young group of disciples who thought that Jesus was going to lead them in breaking away from Roman rule. This background is important to emphasize here for what is about to happen.
About six days later, according to Matthew’s account, it’s at this point that the story from our gospel reading this morning kicks in. Jesus chooses what is apparently his “inner circle”—Peter, James, and John—to go up onto a high mountain, and he wastes no time getting to the reason he came: He transfigures himself before them to reveal his heavenly glory. Matthew says Jesus’s face “shone like the sun” and his clothes were “bright white.” Luke is much less dramatic: he just says Jesus’s appearance was “different.” In fact, Luke doesn’t even use the word for “transfiguration” in his account. That word is one that should be familiar to you: it’s the Greek word from which we get the English word “metamorphosis” (μεταμορφόομαι metamorphoomai, μεταμορφόω metamorphoō).
Mark is the only other gospel writer to use that word in his account. It simply means to change form. I don’t think anything “physical” happened to Jesus in this event. I think the divine nature of Jesus overpowers the physical nature and manifests its form on top of Jesus’s human form. For added excitement, Moses and Elijah show up in their heavenly forms to chat with Jesus.
But why Moses and Elijah? Luke tells us this: “They spoke about his departure, q which he was about to bring to fulfillment at Jerusalem.”[1] Elijah is not the first prophet in the Old Testament, but he is the most famous, and he never died. Maybe Elijah is sharing his experience of having his human form whisked off to heaven and what Jesus should expect at his resurrection. Elijah also represents John the Baptist, the last of the prophets under the old covenant, as Jesus would go on to explain in Matthew 17:12.
Moses’s presence is easy to explain. Moses was the one who was initially given the Law by God that he passed on to the Israelites, so it makes sense that he would be present to see the one in whom all that law is fulfilled. What did Jesus say in the Sermon on the Mount? “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them.”[2] The apostle Paul would say some 25 years later, “Christ is the culmination of the law so that there may be righteousness for everyone who believes.”[3] Both Moses and Elijah together represent the full experience of how God revealed himself in the Old Testament, and both of them get to see the fulfillment of their respective roles in that revelation firsthand.
The transfiguration event doesn’t seem to take very long, maybe a few minutes at the most, but then again, the disciples seem to be in a bit of daze at the whole event. It’s not long after they come down from that mountain-top experience that Jesus again repeats his prediction of dying. This puts a closing bracket on the transfiguration story and provides a final clue as to what we can take away from that story.
Jesus reveals his divine nature to his inner circle in the transfiguration event so that they can have assurance that Jesus’s death will not be the end of the story. The disciples see that Moses and Elijah are still alive, so there is proof of life after death. For the disciples to both see the glory of God in Jesus and hear his voice also puts them in the same unique class as Moses and Elijah, men who have seen the glory of God, have heard his voice, and have lived to tell about it.
There are at least three takeaways for us in this story, then.
Heaven is real and the patriarchs are alive and well in that realm;
Jesus himself will be resurrected when the time comes; and
Jesus has the fulness of divinity in him, i.e., he’s the Son of God.[4]
It’s possible this event may also be a sort of looking forward to what will happen on the Day of Pentecost. The tongues of fire I’m sure looked a bit different than what Peter saw in the transfiguration, but there would have been no doubt in his mind that this was God at work. In fact, Peter mentions this event in his second letter:
16 For we did not follow cleverly devised stories when we told you about the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ in power, but we were eyewitnesses of his majesty. 17 He received honor and glory from God the Father when the voice came to him from the Majestic Glory, saying, “This is my Son, whom I love; with him I am well pleased.” i18 We ourselves heard this voice that came from heaven when we were with him on the sacred mountain.[5]
Now I’ve been calling this event the “Transfiguration” because that’s the fancy, $20 religious term that’s in the Lectionary and that has been used for hundreds of years in English translations. I do believe it deserves that special designation, because it’s not something you see every day. But in everyday usage, this word simply means “transform,” and we find it in two other passages that have significance in our own faith walk. In 2 Corinthians 3, Paul is writing about the “greater glory of the new covenant” (NIV heading) and how we are being “transformed” into the image of Christ as we follow him and live in him:
“And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.”[6]
In other words, our transformation, our heavenly visage when we finally meet our Savior in glory, will be glorious in and of itself. We really will have a “glow” to us, so it seems. I’m looking forward to that day, and I pray you are too.
The other passage where we find this word is Romans 12:1–2:
Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. 2 Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.[7]
The “therefore” in this passage is important, because it follows on the heels of Paul’s 11-chapter treatise on righteousness and faithfulness. At the center of that argument is the event that triggers our transformation from being world-focused to being God-focused: baptism. Paul says that those “who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death.”[8]
This is what it means to be the “living sacrifice” Paul speaks of in Romans 12. Not only are we “buried with Christ,” but we’re raised up to live a new life. When we’re in Christ, he can begin and continue the work of transforming us into his image through the working of Holy Spirit. This is how much Christ loved us and continues to love us. He will never leave us nor forsake. Even if we blow it sometimes, he’s still faithful to continue loving and guiding us into his way.
As we transition from Epiphany to Lent this week, let us consider how we can improve our focus on Christ and living for him in service of others. May God bless you and yours this week. Amen.
My, how time flies! Next Sunday, February 15, 2026, is “Transfiguration Sunday,” the last Sunday before the Lenten season begins. Thank you for reading my new Lectionary Help series. Last week’s post was the most popular post on my blog for the week, almost twice what it was the week before. If you’re sharing these with your congregation or colleagues, a double dose of thanks for that! Now, let’s look at Matthew 17:1–9.
Word Study
We can’t talk about “transfiguration” without talking about the Greek word Matthew uses to describe the event, and it should be a familiar one to you: μεταμορφόομαι (metamorphoomai), μεταμορφόω (metamorphoō).[1] Those of you who studied Greek may recognize that this verb occurs in deponent form (usually implies no direct object or perhaps middle voice, suggesting the action of the verb is focused on the speaker themselves) and active voice, at least in the lexical entry.
New Testament authors only use the verb four times.[2] In addition to today’s passage, we find it in Mark’s account of the event (9:2). Luke does not use this word in his account (9:28–36) but only mentions that Jesus’s “appearance” changed (“The form [εἶδος eidos] of his face [was] different”).
Paul uses the word in Romans 12:2 (“be transformed by the renewing of your minds”) and 2 Corinthians 3:18 (“And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.”[3]). In both instances, the passive would seem to be appropriate since it refers to changes you and I undergo because of what Christ is doing in the lives of the faithful. Although Paul was not yet a follower at the time of the Transfiguration event, it seems clear in the 2 Corinthians passage that he’s alluding to that.
In all four occurrences, the morphologies I checked[4] all identified the forms as passive voice. However, I would argue that the two occurrences in the gospels should be identified as middle voice, because Jesus has the power within himself to control the event. I don’t know that this is a huge thing theologically, whether God was doing it or Jesus was doing it, but as I’ll discuss below, I think the events leading up to this suggest Jesus initiates this for his inner circle.
The other NT reading for the Lectionary is 2 Peter 1:16–21. Peter references his participation in the Transfiguration event, which he is now free to do since Christ has risen. It’s in the opening chapter of his first epistle, so I wonder how long he was holding on to that little tidbit waiting for the opportunity to publish it! It’s not a boast, though. He’s merely establishing his credibility as an eyewitness to the event, so we can, I think, safely say that the Transfiguration is a genuine event and not resort to some psychological, metaphysical, or naturalistic explanation for the event.
Context
In the synoptic gospels, all three authors have the Transfiguration story closely tied to Jesus’s first and second predictions of his death. Matthew and Luke have it immediately after that prediction, while Mark inserts the pericope about taking up the cross after the prediction. All three follow the Transfiguration pericope with a pericope of Jesus healing a demon-possessed boy followed by Jesus’s second prediction of dying. Luke adds after the second prediction that “Jesus resolutely set out for Jerusalem,”[5] which establishes the historical setting for the rest of Luke’s gospel. I don’t think it’s too much of a leap of faith to say that Jesus is using the Transfiguration event to assure his disciples that:
Heaven is real and the patriarchs are alive and well in that realm;
Jesus himself will be resurrected when the time comes; and
Jesus has the fulness of divinity in him, i.e., he’s the Son of God.[6]
Those are the highlights I noticed as I begin my own preparation for preparing a message for next Sunday. As always, feel free to comment here in the blog or on my Facebook page for the blog. Also watch for the Reel as I’m going to dive into creating some video content for these Lectionary Help posts as well.
If you want to see past Lectionary Help articles on the blog, just search “Lectionary” from the blog search feature, usually on the right side of your computer screen. Peace to you all!
Good morning and Happy New Year. The Lord be with you.
Wow, what a crazy month our family has had! Thirty days ago we were all getting on planes across the country and headed to Europe. What an amazing time of togetherness between our family and Alec’s in-laws-to-be in Poland. A horse-drawn carriage ride in the woods with a meal and a trio of Polish musicians singing songs of joy we couldn’t begin to understand. Dancing and drinking hot tea and yes, even some hot wine in the winter chill. We went to a resort that has a heated outdoor pool and played around in that for about an hour while it was snowing on our heads! And that was just the first three days.
We went to Auschwitz one day; powerful. I don’t think I ever want to drive in Poland again! The speed limit changes five times in a mile. We spent a couple days in Wrocław, then took a train to Prague to finish our stay in Europe. Prague is an amazing historic city untouched by the ravages of World War II. But there was a price to pay. Almost all of us came back with some kind of bug, mainly influenza-A. I think we’re all past that now, but the trip was totally worth it.
But now to John’s gospel. After the apostle John’s introduction of Jesus as the incarnation of the Word of God and the true Light of the World, which I believe is a connection to the first act of creation, we move immediately to John denying that he himself is the Messiah, the Christ. John explains the difference between his baptism and the baptism Jesus. The gospel of Mark tells us that John’s baptism represents repentance for the forgiveness of sins (Mark 1:4), while only Jesus, after he’s revealed, can add the extra element of being filled with the Holy Spirit upon that event (Act 2:38).
It’s interesting here that neither John the Evangelist nor John the Baptist ever directly says the Baptist baptizes Jesus, but he does say Jesus is in the crowd that’s around him on that first day we meet him. Luke does say Jesus gets baptized along with everyone else in the crowd, so it’s a safe assumption to say that Jesus was baptized that first day. But John doesn’t do anything special to call attention to Jesus just then.
Whether John the Baptist knows it or not, the phrase “for the forgiveness of sins” will come up later in Matthew and in the book of Acts. Jesus uses that exact same phrase at the Last Supper with respect to the cup, the blood of the covenant (Matthew 26:28). Acts 2:38 says this: “38 Peter replied, “Repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. And you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.”[1]
In Romans 6, Paul makes baptism a permanent part of Christian theology in that it is the connection we have with the death (i.e., the blood of the covenant), burial, and resurrection of Jesus.
3 Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? 4 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, we too may live a new life.[2]
In the gospel of John, all of what we just talked about happened on the first day John the Evangelist chose to write about. Our gospel passage starts “on the next day” after that. This is where we see John the Baptist call out Jesus as he’s coming toward him. He claims to see the Spirit descending like a dove upon Jesus; it’s not clear from John’s gospel whether the others see it as well. John closes out this “next day” by saying that Jesus is “the Chosen One.”
The translator’s choice here of “Chosen One” is intentional here. Most of the early Greek manuscripts we have of the Gospel of John have “Son of God” here, and so most of our modern English translations have “Son of God” here. In fact, “Son of God” is probably the most popular title for Jesus after “Christ/Messiah” in the NT.
However, the most reliable copy we have of the Greek New Testament and a couple other descendants of that have the phrase “the Chosen one of God,” presumably borrowed from parallel language in Isaiah 42:1: “Here is my servant, whom I uphold, / my chosen one in whom I delight; I will put my Spirit on him, / and he will bring justice to the nations.”[3] By making this connection to Isaiah 42, John also hints that Jesus is the Messianic “Servant” of Isaiah chapters 42 and 49 through 53. Isaiah 49:3 says, “You are my servant, Israel, in whom I will display my splendor.”[4]
The next day after that, John, while he’s still out baptizing, introduces Jesus essentially the same way as he did the day before: “Look, the Lamb of God!” Only this time, some in the crowd perk up. Perhaps they had heard about Jesus having been revealed the day before and were hoping to catch a glimpse of him. But they wanted more. They wanted to follow their new Rabbi, the Lamb of God.
Andrew was the first disciple to be mentioned by name in our passage. It’s not clear who the other one was; perhaps it was one of the sons of Zebedee, James or John. Andrew immediately went to find Simon, whom Jesus would rename Peter, “the Rock,” to let him know he’d found the Messiah. But it doesn’t seem like they follow him just yet. The most we can say for sure is that they spent the day with Jesus. But the introductions have been made. Jesus is starting to gain a following.
So just what were the Jews expecting from their Messiah when he appeared? We can detect an underlying current that some people thought Jesus would overthrow Roman rule and restore the theocracy. But the prophetic passages from Isaiah in the early chapters seem to paint a different picture.
For example, the first four chapters of John’s gospel seem to have a pretty solid connection with Isaiah 9, which is just a couple chapters after the “Immanuel” prophecy Matthew cites. Here’s Isaiah 9:1–2:
Nevertheless, there will be no more gloom for those who were in distress. In the past he humbled the land of Zebulun and the land of Naphtali, but in the future he will honor Galilee of the nations, by the Way of the Sea, beyond the Jordan—
Jesus’s family is from Nazareth in Galilee, so it’s natural that the gospel writers would make this connection. The concept of “Light” is mentioned several times in John 1–4. Jesus was the light of the world and was there in the beginning participating in the creative process with God. That sounds like a direct reference to Day 1 of creation: “Let there be light!” He’s the Son of God, firstborn over all creation.
John 3:19–21 seems to be a summary statement or conclusion for the first half of chapter 3:
19 This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil.[6]
The gloom and darkness of Isaiah 9:1 is laid bare: it’s because people hate the light and the goodness and transparency it represents. Jesus is coming to break through that, however. Jesus is the “light to the Gentiles” as well as to the Jews. This is why in John 4, the gospel writer says that Jesus “must go through Samaria” to get to Galilee. He’s going to bring hope to his ancestral (from an earthly perspective) home where Jacob’s well is still a prominent feature of the landscape.
Another popular Isaiah passage is chapter 40. This is the passage that John the Baptist cites about himself:
Jesus is going to level the playing field for everyone. No more ethnic distinctions or privileges. No more legal scorekeeping as to who is more righteous than whom. No more obstacles like the veil of the temple to impede access to God. Jesus is the Waymaker.
We also see this as Jesus takes to the podium in the synagogue when he quotes Isaiah 61 about himself:
18 “The Spirit of the Lord is on me,
because he has anointed me
to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners
No more distinctions between economic status; no more discrimination based on your health status. Jesus is here to set you free from the things that keep you from hearing and receiving the good news with joy and gladness in your hearts.
Isaiah 42 and 49 both hint at the Servant-Savior’s connection to Isaiah 9:
42:5 This is what God the Lord says—
the Creator of the heavens, who stretches them out,
who spreads out the earth with all that springs from it,
who gives breath to its people,
and life to those who walk on it:
6 “I, the Lord, have called you in righteousness;
I will take hold of your hand.
I will keep you and will make you
to be a covenant for the people
and a light for the Gentiles,
7 to open eyes that are blind,
to free captives from prison
and to release from the dungeon those who sit in darkness.[9]
49:6 It is too small a thing for you to be my servant
to restore the tribes of Jacob
and bring back those of Israel I have kept.
I will also make you a light for the Gentiles,
that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth.”[10]
Just like God told Moses at the burning bush, the prophets are telling us that Jesus has got this. All we need to do is heed the prophets and go forth in faith and in faithfulness proclaiming the Good News wherever we roam. In fact, Isaiah 49:8 tells us God will make a covenant with us the Servant-Savior will be with us to strengthen us for the challenge.
We’ve met Jesus. We know what he wants to do through us. But we need to know who we are to him as well. Yesterday in our men’s group study at my home church, one of the guys was saying he was just “dung.” I know what he meant; he didn’t have a self-esteem problem. He’s a faithful saint who is on fire for the Lord. He’s in his 70s and takes care of his wife at home who is slowly deteriorating from Alzheimer’s. But I felt I had to correct him. I don’t think we’re being fair to ourselves to be so self-deprecating when God has told us who we are to him.
Psalm 139 says we’re fearfully and wonderfully made. Peter tells us that we’re a kingdom of priests, a holy nation, a people who belong to God! God redeems us! Paul says in Romans that Christ died for us even in our “ungodly” state. Paul says in Ephesians that we are God’s handiwork, just like all your beautiful quilts!
Paul’s greeting to the Corinthians in his first letter to them puts it succinctly and beautifully: “to those sanctified in Christ Jesus and called to be his holy people, together with all those everywhere who call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ—their Lord and ours:
3 Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.”[12]
This is who we are in Christ! As we go forth from here this morning, let us bear that in mind so we can be shining lights in a dark world that surrounds us. Amen!
[3]The New International Version. 2011. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan. From a text-critical perspective, if ὁ ἐκλεκτὸς τοῦ θεοῦ comes from the original hand of John, then it does make some sense that numerous other copyists of the day would have tried to harmonize that with all of the other references to ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ θεοῦ in the four gospels. In other words, the guiding principle here to restore “Chosen One” is that it is the more difficult reading of the passage and thus more likely to have been “adjusted” or edited out. Then again, the phrase may have been so familiar as to cause the copyists to hear ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ θεοῦ instead of ἐκλεκτὸς. However, I should note that Metzger and the GNT editors chose with [B] confidence to side with the majority text and use υἱὸς(Metzger, Bruce Manning, United Bible Societies. 1994. A Textual Commentary on the Greek New Testament, Second Edition a Companion Volume to the United Bible Societies’ Greek New Testament (4th Rev. Ed.). London; New York: United Bible Societies.) NOTE: I think I may have said “Psalm 42” here instead of the correct “Isaiah 42.”
I preached this sermon at Mount View Presbyterian Church on November 23, 2025. It was the last Sunday of Year C of the Lectionary Calendar, commonly known as Reign of Christ the King Sunday. It was also the Sunday before Thanksgiving and the Sunday before the first Sunday in Advent. I had not checked the advanced copy of the church bulletin thinking they would have the Lectionary gospel reading for the day printed, but as it turned out, they had a Thanksgiving Service planned (more music), so I hadn’t prepared a message based on the reading. I went ahead preached the message I had prepared, which worked out find, because with more music, the service was a little longer than usual, and my message had been shorter than usual. I’ve also included some links to past Advent messages since the season is upon us.
We had a soup lunch afterwards and had a drawing to give away a few of the quilts our ladies had made. I won what I’m calling my Joseph Quilt. It is a nice sized quilt worked on by several of the ladies. My mom provided the stitching/decoration around the border.
Have you ever seen one of those movies where they start with some dramatic scene. In the cop shows, it’s usually a murder or finding someone badly injured in an unexpected place. In a Hallmark movie, it might be a wedding scene or a passionate kiss (we all know that’s coming in the Hallmark movie, so no need to put it off until the end!). But then in the next scene, the graphic pops up: “Six months earlier.” The opening scene has gone by so quickly that you didn’t even get a chance to figure out much about who the characters are, then you’re thrust back in time and have to figure it out all over again.
Today we come to the conclusion of the liturgical calendar: “Reign of Christ the King” Day. It’s hard to believe Advent (and the new liturgical year) starts next week. The Lectionary is kind of like those movies I mentioned earlier. Even though we read about the crucifixion of Jesus this morning, we’re not going to get back to that dramatic event of the Resurrection that kicked off the last eight months of the calendar until Easter next year.
This past year, we’ve journeyed through the gospel of Luke, which has the most material on the life of Jesus. Five months ago, we read in Luke 9:51 that Jesus “resolutely set out for Jerusalem.” The rest of Luke’s gospel from that point on is set in that context of Jesus knowing his life would be cut short. Yet he continued loving, healing, and teaching the masses about God’s true love for them. He also did not shy away from confronting the religious leaders of his day for their abuse of the spiritual authority God had entrusted to them. That violation of God’s trust brings us to where we are today in the gospel, the crucifixion.
Luke has details in this story that the other three gospel writers do not have. Luke is the only one who has Jesus saying “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.” He wasn’t just talking about how the Roman soldiers were treating him either. Matthew and Mark tell us that the criminals who were crucified with Jesus were BOTH hurling insults at him, but Luke indicates that one of them must have had a change of heart after hearing Jesus say “Father forgive them” and asked Jesus for forgiveness in his last hour. Jesus, of course, granted it.
The religious leaders were jeering and sneering at him as well. “He saved others, or so he claims! Let him save himself if he’s the Messiah!” One might expect that kind of behavior from criminals, but from those who had presumably dedicated their lives to serving God at the Temple or in the local synagogues? You know you must be getting close to the corruption and hardness of heart when the people who should be on your side are rejecting you for your teachings.
Even though our gospel reading stops just short of the final moments of the crucifixion, we are all familiar enough with that story to finish it from memory. And we know that because Christ defeated death and rose again into his heavenly glory, he lives and reigns as King of Kings and Lord of Lords. While his kingdom is here on earth, it is not of this world. Paul says in Ephesians 1:3 that God has “blessed us [i.e., Christ followers] in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. It was evident from the moment of Pentecost that God had begun a new work in his people through the empowering of the Holy Spirit sent to us by our risen Savior.
As Christ followers, then, we are by default emissaries of the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. In the rest of the New Testament we see Paul and the other apostles planting and shepherding churches that are growing by leaps and bounds in various places. In many cases, the word of God has already spread to places where Paul had yet to travel because other believers were doing that missionary work as well. In the first chapter of Paul’s letter to the Colossians, we get a glimpse at Paul’s heart for them in the first chapter. Paul praises them for having a faith that is “bearing fruit and growing” in their hearts and around the world. Let’s pick up his praise for them in verse 9:
9 For this reason, since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you. We continually ask God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all the wisdom and understanding that the Spirit gives, t10 so that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God, 11 being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience, 12 and giving joyful thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of his holy people in the kingdom of light. 13 For he has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves, 14 in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. [1]
Paul has incredible respect for the Colossians and wants to ensure they continue on the path of growing in righteousness and faithfulness. This is significant in that Colossae was an incredibly diverse town in south-central Asia Minor. He wants them to be filled “with the knowledge of his will through all the wisdom and understanding that the Spirit gives.” Paul has a similar thought for the Ephesians in the opening of that letter: “18 I pray that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in his holy people, 19 and his incomparably great power for us who believe.”[2]
In Colossians 1:6, Paul affirms that the gospel is “bearing fruit and growing through the whole world. He reassures the Colossians are doing their small part to contribute to that in vs. 10.
Being strengthened in all power means that they understand the working of the Holy Spirit in their lives. They do have some challenges, apparently, with some coming among them making “fine sounding arguments” against the gospel. But Paul has confidence that their knowledge will help them discern false teachings and stay the course of the true gospel with patient endurance.
They are also continually giving thanks because they’ve been rescued from darkness. They believed the gospel and have been living it out boldly because they know they’ve been forgiven and redeemed.
After praising them, Paul continues from verse 15 talking about the supremacy of Christ and why he reigns as King of Kings and Lord of Lords:
15 The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. 16 For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. 17 He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. 18 And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. 19 For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, 20 and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross. [3]
The concept of Jesus being the “firstborn” here seems to have a dual meaning. In verse 15, Paul says Jesus is the firstborn over all creation. That seems to suggest what we learn from John, that Jesus, the light of the world, was the “light” that God created on Day One of creation. A few verses later, in verse 18, Paul calls Jesus “the beginning,” which would seem to confirm the Genesis theory, but the then also calls Jesus “firstborn from the dead.” John also uses the phrase “firstborn from the dead” of Jesus in the opening chapter of Revelation (1:5). This of course is a reference to his resurrection.
Even though there are a few others in the history of the Bible who were raised from the dead, they all came back to life in their original human bodies. Jesus is the first one whose body was raised from the dead AND transfigured into its heavenly version. That earns him the title of head of the church—King of Kings and Lord of Lords—having supremacy over everything. This supremacy is not only for this world, but in the heavenly realms as well as Paul indicates.
Harkening back to Ephesians 3:10, we see that we have a role in proclaiming the gospel not only here but also in the heavenly realms. “10 His intent was that now, through the church, the manifold wisdom of God should be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms.”[4] The passage in Ephesians 6 on the armor of God reaffirms our role in fighting the good fight not only against flesh and blood, but against the powers in the heavenly realms. We have the divine protection and strength to stand firm in those battles because of Christ’s victory over death and the redemption he won for us. Not only does he reign as King of Kings and Lord of Lords in our lives, but he has also provided the means for us to walk faithfully in this world.
As we wrap up the liturgical year and look toward Advent and the Christmas season, we can take comfort and courage in having citizenship in the kingdom of Christ. A blessed Thanksgiving to all of you this week, and please join us for the meal after service. Amen.
Sunday Morning Greek Blog 