Uninvented: John 13 and Jesus Washing the Disciples Feet

Uninvented: John 13 and Jesus Washing the Disciples Feet

Dec 18, 2023 | Uninvented

Of the many unexpected things Jesus did in his life, washing his disciples feet has to be up there among the most astonishing. I would add the most uninvented as well. Almost everything Jesus taught and did upended cultural and religious norms. The kingdom he came to bring to earth would be nothing like the kingdoms of this world built on power and force, but because of that it would have the power to transform those kingdoms. That is the point of the prayer he taught us, “Thy kingdom come thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” No longer would kingdoms be established and maintained solely by force and violence, but transformed by peaceful means of persuasion and service. This applies not only to geopolitical kingdoms, but anywhere rule is necessary for order and direction, be it a family or business or school, any organization. Direction, leadership, authority, and yes sometimes power displayed as force (e.g., government, military) are required for anything to run in harmony and symmetry, or else there is anarchy and dysfunction.

Jesus’ Foot Washing Object Lesson
Foot washing was not uncommon in the ancient world because people walked on dirt roads in sandals everywhere they went. Often it was used as a sign of hospitality when coming into someone’s home, but it was servants or slaves who did the foot washing. Never would someone of superior social status ever wash an inferior’s feet. That would have been, literally, inconceivable, as in nobody could imagine such a thing—Until Jesus did it. You can see this in the response of impetuous Peter when he sees Jesus begin to prepare the basin of water and start washing the other disciples feet. He is incredulous: 

6 He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, “Lord, are you going to wash my feet?”

7 Jesus replied, “You do not realize now what I am doing, but later you will understand.”

8 “No,” said Peter, “you shall never wash my feet.”

Jesus answered, “Unless I wash you, you have no part with me.”

9 “Then, Lord,” Simon Peter replied, “not just my feet but my hands and my head as well!”

You gotta love Peter, so honest, and so wrong. Jesus gently rebukes him, and typical of Peter, he goes to the other extreme. Jesus replies that those who have had a bath, only need their feet washed. That meant something in the ancient context when baths and water were hard to come by, but in redemptive-historical context it is positively elegant. I read it as those belonging to Christ are justified, and as we walk along the sinfully dusty streets in a fallen world, we just need our feet cleansed with the water of sanctification. As Paul tells us in I Corinthians 1:30, Jesus is for us both our justification and sanctification.

Jesus, as he often did, is teaching through object lessons. He asks them if they understand what he’s done for them. It was a rhetorical question because he knew they were clueless, as they always seemed to be. Then he tells them:

13 “You call me ‘Teacher’ and ‘Lord,’ and rightly so, for that is what I am. 14 Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another’s feet. 15 I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you. 16 Very truly I tell you, no servant is greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him. 17 Now that you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them.

We’ll remember how the disciples argued among themselves who was the greatest, so Jesus figured they needed one final lesson in humility, and one they could never forget.

Why We Can Serve Others
What prompted me to write about this event was how Jesus prefaced his lesson. John tells us:

3 Jesus knew that the Father had put all things under his power, and that he had come from God and was returning to God; 4 so he got up from the meal, took off his outer clothing, and wrapped a towel around his waist. 5 After that, he poured water into a basin and began to wash his disciples’ feet, drying them with the towel that was wrapped around him.

It struck me that the reason Jesus was willing to act and be viewed as a lowly servant was because he knew who he was. Not only was he equal with God, what his enemies accused him of, he was God! And here he is doing something only a servant or slave would do. Jesus was giving us a glimpse into what it means to bring the kingdom of God or heaven into this fallen world. I will explore that more below. The point isn’t washing feet, although in the ancient world serving others may have taken that form, but serving others in general, and why we can do it. It is not just because we saw Jesus do it as our example—it’s much deeper than that.

This passage has profound theological meaning if we understand the radical nature of the gospel, what it says about us, and what it means for us. The gospel first transforms our heart from God-hating stone to God-loving flesh. Then by the power of the Holy Spirit transforms us so we can in turn transform our world. Jesus accomplished redemption for his people and the world, and at Pentecost the Holy Spirit began to apply it. The beginning of redemption starts in Genesis 3. Because of the fall, the serpent, Satan, the devil, will strike the heel of the woman’s seed (Christ and his church, his people), but Christ will strike the serpent’s head where real damage can take place. As we see the history of redemption wind its way through the Bible, we begin to understand the utterly tragic nature of sin, and the horrific consequences it leaves in its wake. We are sinners, guilty, justifiably condemned sinners. We are by nature enemies of God, in fact God haters. He died for us, so we can and must die for others—as I said, radical. But as Jesus said, only in dying to ourselves for him will we find true life.

How the Gospel Helps us Serve Others
What has this to do with serving others? Until we know that we are truly dreadful sinners, and that there is nothing good in us worthy of God’s acceptance, will we be able to love others in our service to them. But first we must understand who we are in Christ as saved sinners. Probably the most important and consequential verse in my Christian life relates directly to this discussion, and I referenced it above. It is in the first letter of Paul to the Corinthians where he is discussing the foolishness of the cross and the wisdom of God. Toward the end he says:

30 It is because of him that you are in Christ Jesus, who has become for us wisdom from God—that is, our righteousness, sanctification, and redemption. 

The Him is God, and it is He that chooses us and puts us “in Christ Jesus.” It is God’s wisdom that in His presence He sees us as if we are Christ himself, positionally, justified (righteousness), and becoming in obedience more like Christ (sanctification). The reason this can all happen is because He purchased us in Christ to be forever HIs (redemption). The operative word in all this is obedience. What makes the gospel dynamic is obedience to the greatest commandment, love, which is the fulfillment of the law. As Jesus says, you will know the tree by its fruit. In this case, serving others is not an option, but done in obedience to God, and it is only in obedience to God that he can bless us. Notice how Jesus ends his object lesson: If you follow his example, you will be blessed. The lesson is a key that unlocks the door for Christians to bring the kingdom of God into this fallen world.

Serving Others Changes the World
I am convinced most Christians don’t understand the implications of the Lord’s prayer for the world. We tend to see the spiritual stuff for the church, and the fallen world beyond the scope of redemption, outside of God’s kingdom. I believe that is exactly wrong, but it was something I believed for over four decades of my Christian life. Now I see the entire world, literally, as the object of God’s saving work, not just individuals and their religious lives. The reason Jesus came to earth wasn’t just to save people’s souls, but through the process of transforming them he would bring his kingdom to earth as it is done in heaven, and thus transform the earth as well. That’s how radical the gospel is. When Jesus gave the charge to the eleven to make disciples of all nations, he was serious. And God the Father granted him “all authority in heaven and on earth” to accomplish specifically that. We are not doing this ourselves, brothers and sisters, God in Christ is doing it through us!

That means though the world is fallen, it is not irreparably so. Damaged and broken, it is not beyond repair. The darkness, the sin, the suffering are real, but not the end of the story. The kingdom comes slowly, often imperceptibly, like a mustard seed and leaven, but inevitably because Christ’s righteousness is more powerful than Adam’s sin. The victory of the cross and resurrection is a this world victory first, and only then a next world one. The ultimate transformation will take place when Christ returns, defeats death, and brings heaven down to earth to complete the transformation of his creation. I could write a book on this, and God willing I will, but one passage shows definitively that Christ’s reign and kingdom is not limited to a spiritual other worldly kingdom. In Ephesians 1:15-23, Paul is describing God’s “incomparably great power for us who believe.” This power is so great there is nothing to which it can be compared. I will quote a portion of verse 19 in Greek, the transliteration, and the modern English translation, because only in Greek can the incomparable be conveyed so well:

καὶ τί τὸ ὑπερβάλλον μέγεθος τῆς δυνάμεως αὐτοῦ εἰς ἡμᾶς τοὺς πιστεύοντας

Kai ti to hyperballon megethos tēs dynameōs autou eis hēmas tous pisteuontas

And what is the surpassing greatness of the power of Him toward us those believing

You’ll probably notice three English words we are familiar with that come from the three Greek words in the sentence: hyperbole, mega, and dynamite. The power, the dynamite of what God accomplished in Christ’s resurrection is hyperbolically mega. Words fail in conveying such power, but that’s as close as you’re going to get. Then Paul tells us what this power did:

Which he exerted when he raised Christ from the dead and seated him at his right hand in the heavenly realms, 21 far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every name that is invoked, not only in the present age but also in the one to come. 

God’s incomparable power did two things: raise Christ and seat him at his right hand, the position of ultimate power and authority in the universe. We rarely mention that it is both of these, or that the present age comes first in Paul’s thinking. And the word Paul uses for exerted is where we get our word energy, in Greek, energeó-ἐνεργέω. This exertion, this energy is done by the same God who created everything out of nothing. That, my friends, is power! It is this same power that transforms us and our world, not us! And what does it take to turn on this energy through us? Washing feet!

Serving others is the magic that makes gospel love flow and compels sinful darkness to flee, and there are infinite numbers of opportunities to serve others every day of our lives. What keeps us from doing this? Augustine and Luther rightly said it is homo incurvatus in se, or sinful man being curved in on himself. Sinful us thinks what we want, what we think, what we do, what we have, what we accomplish, and just plain old we is more important than others. If we really believed others were more important than us, I suggest we would treat them not better than we would treat ourselves, but treat them as we would want to be treated. It’s called the golden rule, and Christ’s resurrection and ascension power is what enables us to do it. Give it a try and you’ll see how it can change your world.

 

 

Uninvented: John Chapters 5 and 6-Lord, Lunatic, or Liar

Uninvented: John Chapters 5 and 6-Lord, Lunatic, or Liar

Dec 4, 2023 | Uninvented

When I read these chapters recently I couldn’t get over how bizarre they were. There are many things Jesus says and does that are unexplainable unless he was who he said he was: the divine Son of God, the long-awaited Jewish Messiah, and Savior of the world. More than the Synoptics (Matthew, Mark, and Luke), John’s gospel captures Jesus saying things that are especially difficult for the skeptic who tries to explain away Jesus as just some kind of good moral teacher. That is not an option. Yet for hundreds of years that is exactly what non-Christians of every stripe have declared Jesus to be. Rejecting the Jesus of the gospels, however, and replacing him with some other Jesus has been going on a lot longer than that.

Even though they reject him as Lord and Savior, everyone wants a piece of Jesus. We can go as far back as Mohammed in the 7th century rejecting the Triune God and turning Jesus into a great prophet. At some point Eastern religions embraced him as some wise moral shaman. When the Enlightenment came on the scene in the 17th century the divine nature of Scripture was rejected, so Jesus had to be explained as something other than what the New Testament declares him to be. Yeah, let’s go with a good moral teacher, that’s it! There was no explaining away the historical person, so they had to get rid of him in some other way.

When we talk about Jesus, we must go back to one of the most effective arguments for his divinity, the classic trilemma. Either Jesus was Lord, God incarnate in human flesh, or he was a lunatic or a liar. There is no Jesus as a good moral teacher option. Good moral teachers do not say the things he said. Scottish minister John Duncan (1796-1870) seems to have been the first to apply the term “trilemma” to this argument when he observed: “Christ either deceived mankind by conscious fraud, or he was himself deluded and self-deceived, or he was divine. There is no getting out of this trilemma. It is inexorable.” As often phrased, Jesus is either Lord, lunatic, or liar. As you develop your apologetics skills this is an indispensable one to have in your tool belt. When you use examples from the gospels it’s impossible for anyone to counter. Some people may contend Jesus didn’t say such things, but rather, those who wrote the gospels put these strange sayings in Jesus’ mouth. That’s even more impossible to believe than Jesus having actually said them. Who makes up stuff like this? And where did they get these ideas? What he says sounds strange to us now, but to first century Jews they were not only inconceivable but blasphemous. It’s far easier to believe Jesus was who he said he was, Lord God and Savior of the world.

The Bizarre Jesus
Of any person in recorded history, Jesus would be the most difficult to invent, by far, specifically because what he said was so bizarre. Nobody expected Israel’s long-awaited Messiah would say such outlandish things. Israel’s Messiah would be an exalted, anointed king like David, not Jesus. We could pick almost any chapter in John, but chapters 5 and 6 are especially strange. The gospels are primarily Jesus picking fights with the Jewish religious leaders and using those encounters to teach the world who he is and what he came to do. He says things that are so scandalous he consistently infuriates them. Eventually it gets him killed. In John 5, Jesus is in Jerusalem for one of the Jewish festivals, and he’s giving the Jewish leaders fits, specifically because he’s healing on the Sabbath, a no-no. And as John says, “he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God.” Let’s look at some of the assertions Jesus makes about himself, and remember the Trilemma as you read.

“Very truly I tell you, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does. 20 For the Father loves the Son and shows him all he does. Yes, and he will show him even greater works than these, so that you will be amazed. 21 For just as the Father raises the dead and gives them life, even so the Son gives life to whom he is pleased to give it. 22 Moreover, the Father judges no one, but has entrusted all judgment to the Son, 23 that all may honor the Son just as they honor the Father. Whoever does not honor the Son does not honor the Father, who sent him. 

24 “Very truly I tell you, whoever hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life and will not be judged but has crossed over from death to life. 25 Very truly I tell you, a time is coming and has now come when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God and those who hear will live. 26 For as the Father has life in himself, so he has granted the Son also to have life in himself. 27 And he has given him authority to judge because he is the Son of Man.

28 “Do not be amazed at this, for a time is coming when all who are in their graves will hear his voice 29 and come out—those who have done what is good will rise to live, and those who have done what is evil will rise to be condemned.

All those who want the good moral teacher Jesus, or like Muslims, want the great prophet Jesus, have to ignore entire passages like this. Think about what he is saying here. This carpenter from Galilee (to Hillary Clinton he would be a “deplorable”) is claiming to be the Living God, Yahweh, Israel’s covenant Almighty God. No wonder he confused everyone he encountered. Then he goes and gets killed on a Roman cross, end of story—he was both a lunatic and a liar! Jews could come to no other conclusion. Then he rose from the dead. Over time the first Christians realized, because Jesus told them (Luke 24), that the entire Old Testament was about him, and then in due course it all made perfect sense.

The Bread of Life
To ratchet up the bizarreness, In John 6, Jesus says some things that are even more strange. He tells his disciples, and anyone else who would listen, that he is bread and wine, and they are supposed to eat and drink him! On the bizarre scale that’s about ten million. And just to emphasize the strangeness, he says his flesh is “real food.” So Jesus is promoting cannibalism? Imagine, someone doesn’t know anything about the Bible, never read any of it, and only vaguely that Christianity is a religion. Let’s say you give them this passage to read. Try to further imagine what they would think as they read it.

 I am the bread of life. 49 Your ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, yet they died. 50 But here is the bread that comes down from heaven, which anyone may eat and not die. 51 I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Whoever eats this bread will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world.” 

52 Then the Jews began to argue sharply among themselves, “How can this man give us his flesh to eat?”

53 Jesus said to them, “Very truly I tell you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. 54 Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. 55 For my flesh is real food and my blood is real drink. 56 Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me, and I in him. 57 Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on me will live because of me. 58 This is the bread that came down from heaven. Your ancestors ate manna and died, but whoever feeds on this bread will live forever.” 59 He said this while teaching in the synagogue in Capernaum.

Which is it? Lord, lunatic, or liar? Does a good moral teacher say things like this? We cannot ask that question enough.

Those who want a piece of Jesus completely ignore passages like John 5 and 6. For that matter, they ignore the entire gospel of John. It is the most in your face Jesus-is-God gospel, by far. When we come to it, we have to make a choice, and if we’re honest we will—for non-Christians it is inevitably the trilemma.

Jesus put the question of his identity to his followers. We read this in Matthew 16, Mark 8, and Luke 9. In the Matthew passage Jesus askes his disciples, “Who do people say the Son of Man is?” Then after they give him some answers, he asks the most important question in the history of the world: “But what about you?” he asked. “Who do you say I am?” Everything in life and history, and eternity, turns on this question, and the answer to it.

 

Uninvented: Why Did Judas Betray Jesus?

Uninvented: Why Did Judas Betray Jesus?

Nov 9, 2023 | Uninvented

As I often say, Christians need to read and study the Bible from an apologetics perspective, meaning we find in the text and stories its veracity, that it is true history and God’s inspired, divine word. I wouldn’t have included Judas in that perspective until my recent read through the gospels. It’s a sad story on many levels, and I’ve always wondered why he did it, what his motivation was. The gospels seem to make him a disreputable character, but how was it that he lived intimately with the other apostles for three years and nobody ever pegged him as a traitor? Even during the Last Supper as he walked out the door to hand Jesus over to the Chief Priests, nobody suspected him. It wasn’t until he walked up with the crowd of armed soldiers that they realized he had betrayed Jesus and them.

At the Last Supper Jesus reveals one of them will betray him, and each one wonders if it might be him. From Luke 22:

20 In the same way, after the supper he took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you. 21 But the hand of him who is going to betray me is with mine on the table. 22 The Son of Man will go as it has been decreed. But woe to that man who betrays him!” 23 They began to question among themselves which of them it might be who would do this.

It wasn’t at all obvious to any of them that Jesus was referring to Judas. I can only conclude that Judas was a true believer, but what he believed was not the truth. Before trying to understand the psychology of Judas, you might ask what makes this uninvented and evidence for the veracity of the gospels.

Israel’s History and Messianic Expectations
Fundamental to understanding the gospels is the Jewish nature of the world into which Jesus was born, lived, and died. Because of that, Jesus would have been impossible to make up given Jews of the time would never have conceived of a Messiah like Jesus, not in a million years. Judas was one of those Jews. He believed passionately Jesus was Israel’s long awaited Messiah, but for some reason Jesus wasn’t playing the part. Jesus was a complete enigma to everyone he encountered, especially to those who thought they knew who he should be. I can imagine Judas got increasingly frustrated as time went on. Jesus was not proving who he was to the Jewish religious leaders and acting like the king he was supposed to be. I believe he even thought he was doing Jesus a favor when he handed him over to the Jews.

Jewish Messianic expectation is the heart of the gospel story. Jews had been waiting over 400 years for the Messiah to finally come and vanquish their oppressors once and for all. Jews had as many varying opinions about their eschatology as Christians do today, but they all agreed the Messiah, God’s anointed, would be a king like unto David, only far greater. In John 6 we see what a powerful expectation this was among the people of Judea. Jesus had fed 5000 men, and additionally women and children, with a few loaves and fishes. Notice their response:

14 After the people saw the sign Jesus performed, they began to say, “Surely this is the Prophet who is to come into the world.” 15 Jesus, knowing that they intended to come and make him king by force, withdrew again to a mountain by himself.

That Jesus was a healer and could feed thousands of people with barely any food was amazing, but that wasn’t important to Jews who were looking for a new King David to overthrow their Roman oppressors.

Jewish Messianic expectations of the time were primarily about rectifying the political disasters of Israel’s history, once and for all. It’s impossible for any of us to capture the psychology of the Jews of Jesus’ day. One author described the times as electric with expectation as Jews hoped every man who acted like a prophet would be the one. King David reigned a thousand years previously, and Solomon solidified the kingdom both militarily and economically. It was the golden age of Israel. Everything that God had promised to the Patriarchs a thousand years before had finally come to pass. As soon as it was established and seemingly secure it started to fall apart.

First Solomon’s son as successor didn’t work out so well. Soon there was a civil war, and the kingdom was broken up into the northern ten tribes, Israel, and two other tribes in the south, Judah. This takes us to the time of geopolitical turmoil we read about in Kings and the prophets. Because Israel listened to the false prophets who scratched their itching years, and not God’s prophets who foretold doom, horrible times were ahead. First the northern tribes fell to the bloodthirsty Assyrians in 722 BC, and the Babylonians took Judah in 586 BC, destroying Jerusalem and the temple. This period was traumatic on the psychology of the Jewish people (they first were called Jews during their captivity in Babylon because they were the people from Judea).

When the Persians conquered Babylon in 539 BC, we read about the Jews making their way back to Jerusalem to establish the city again and rebuild the Temple in the 400s in Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther. These are the end of the historical books of the Old Testament. The final communication of God to His people came through the prophet Malachi and the last book of prophecy written around 430. From then on it was silence from God and much turmoil for the Jews. They were ruled by the Persians until Alexander the Great defeated them in 333, who then conquered Judea shortly thereafter. When Alexander died, the Jews were ruled by a combination of Greco-Macedonian kings, until finally in 160s to 150s they gained some semblance of independence under the Maccabees. Less than 100 years later, however, the Romans gained control over Judea; and in 37, Herod the Great, a questionable Jew, was appointed “King of the Jews” by the Romans. There was a whole cross current of ideas among the Jews trying to deal with this centuries long upheaval, but they all expected a divinely appointed human king like David, not a miracle working itinerate preacher who would be killed on a Roman cross for blasphemy.

Judas Doing Jesus a Favor
It’s easy to condemn Judas with 20/20 hindsight, even for the first Christians. We can see this condemnation in the gospels, and that makes sense since it’s a fully human book as well as a fully divine one. What would motivate him to betray Jesus? The only plausible explanation is that he wanted Jesus to prove himself, and that he was in fact the promised Messiah he and other Jews so desperately wanted him to be. His motivations were clearly psychologically complex because nobody suspected him before it actually happened. I’m sure he couldn’t fathom the Jewish religious leaders would put Jesus to death, although like other Jews he knew what happened to the prophets. Plus I’m sure it was well known Jesus’ life was in danger from the Jewish leaders. I suspect because he believe Jesus to be the Messiah, that Jesus would never allow that to happen.

In addition to the Luke 22 passage, the others are Matthew 26 and John 13, both also showing that nobody suspected Judas would be the traitor—most interestingly that Judas didn’t see himself that way. Matthew tells us one of the others said, “Surely you don’t mean me, Lord?” And it’s clear Judas didn’t see himself as the betrayer either.

25 Then Judas, the one who would betray him, said, “Surely you don’t mean me, Rabbi?”

Jesus answered, “You have said so.”

In John 13 Jesus tells Judas to go do what he has to so, and none of the others know what he means:

28 But no one at the meal understood why Jesus said this to him. 29 Since Judas had charge of the money, some thought Jesus was telling him to buy what was needed for the festival, or to give something to the poor. 30 As soon as Judas had taken the bread, he went out. And it was night.

Sadly, we know how it ends. From Matthew 27:

3 When Judas, who had betrayed him, saw that Jesus was condemned, he was seized with remorse and returned the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and the elders. 4 “I have sinned,” he said, “for I have betrayed innocent blood.”

“What is that to us?” they replied. “That’s your responsibility.”

5 So Judas threw the money into the temple and left. Then he went away and hanged himself.

The only plausible explanation for Judas’s action to hand Jesus over, and then regretting it after, is Jewish Messianic expectation. He didn’t see himself as betraying Jesus but doing him a favor so he could finally assert himself as the long-awaited Jewish Messiah. Even at this point he could have repented like Peter did, but he didn’t. Why?

Who knows what goes on in the convoluted mind of sinful emotional people, but Peter had Jesus’ words to hang on to. In Luke 22 before Jesus tells Peter he will deny three times that he even knows Jesus he says to him:

31 “Simon, Simon, Satan has asked to sift all of you as wheat. 32 But I have prayed for you, Simon, that your faith may not fail. And when you have turned back, strengthen your brothers.”

Of course Peter had no idea what these words meant, but when he was in turmoil after the crucifixion he must have held on to them for some kind of hope. Judas, on the other hand, might have had these words ringing in his ears only hours have he heard them and Jesus was condemned (Matt. 26):

 24 The Son of Man will go just as it is written about him. But woe to that man who betrays the Son of Man! It would be better for him if he had not been born.”

Even then as a pious Jew he could have known there was forgiveness and atonement, but Judas chose despair, self-pity, and death.

Uninvented on Creation Today Podcast

Uninvented on Creation Today Podcast

Nov 8, 2023 | Notable Quotations, Uninvented

I recently had the honor of being on the Creation Today podcast. I was interviewed by Eric Hovind, the president of the organization, and it was an incredible experience because he was very excited and positive about the book. It made me feel like maybe I sort of know what I’m doing. After this, I may have to go back to humility school and take a couple courses. If you watch you’ll see what I mean. That others are affected and get something out of my work is one of the great blessings of my life. You can learn more about their ministry at creationtoday.org. This is the entire hour long recording. They do the first half hour on social media, then go behind the paywall. I was able to get the entire thing to inflict on my readers.

Forgive the strange spacing on this post. It’s a Vimeo embed, and I can’t get it to work like YouTube or Rumble embeds. It plays the same, though.

Uninvented: How the Samaritans are Powerful Evidence the Gospels and Christianity are True

Uninvented: How the Samaritans are Powerful Evidence the Gospels and Christianity are True

Oct 26, 2023 | Uninvented

If you ask the average “man on the street” where the story of the good Samaritan comes from they will have no idea. Biblical literacy among non-Christians is pretty much near zero in our completely secularized society. Then inform him, or her, that it’s a story from the Bible, and it proves the Bible is true. That will give you a very strange look in response. I use the word “prove” provocatively because the story doesn’t actually prove it in the technical sense, but it and the two other stories of Jesus related to Samaritans are powerful evidence that it is. I was reminded of this as I was reading through Luke and came across one of those I’d completely forgotten about. Chapter 17 relates a story of Jesus healing ten men who had leprosy, a perfect example of the power of the uninvented argument:

11 Now on his way to Jerusalem, Jesus traveled along the border between Samaria and Galilee. 12 As he was going into a village, ten men who had leprosy met him. They stood at a distance 13 and called out in a loud voice, “Jesus, Master, have pity on us!”

14 When he saw them, he said, “Go, show yourselves to the priests.” And as they went, they were cleansed.

15 One of them, when he saw he was healed, came back, praising God in a loud voice. 16 He threw himself at Jesus’ feet and thanked him—and he was a Samaritan.

17 Jesus asked, “Were not all ten cleansed? Where are the other nine? 18 Has no one returned to give praise to God except this foreigner?” 19 Then he said to him, “Rise and go; your faith has made you well.”

In addition to the parable of the good Samaritan, and the Samaritan woman at the well in John 4, this one makes it a perfect Uninvented trifecta! If you haven’t read the book, you might not know why these are evidence for the veracity of the gospel accounts specifically because they happened in a Jewish context.

The Jewish Nature of Jesus’ World
Understanding the Jewish nature of Jesus and the world into which he was born, lived, and ministered is critical to the main contention of Uninvented. You might think it too obvious, hardly worth mentioning, to need to be told Jesus was a Jew; but for the first 150 years of critical biblical scholarship, this fact was mostly overlooked. Critical scholars generally admitted that some of what we read in the gospels was historical but argued the full-blown story we read in our Bibles was primarily a development of Greek and Pagan influences over a long period of time. Such a Jesus, however, entirely distorts the New Testament witness and has nothing to do with the Jesus who actually lived. Since the 1970s, biblical scholars have come to accept the thoroughly Jewish context of the gospels, which is the only way to really understand the Jesus of the New Testament. It would be much easier to make up a non-Jewish Jesus than a Jewish one. When coming to the gospels we must grasp this salient point: First century Jews could not conceive of a Messiah like Jesus, let alone invent one. In speaking of the Messiah’s birth to come, Alfred Edersheim in his magisterial work, Jesus the Messiah, agrees:

But of this whole narrative it may be said, that such inception of the Messianic appearance, such an announcement of it, and such manner of his coming, could never have been invented by contemporary Judaism; indeed, ran directly counter to all its preconceptions.

Being aware of the first century Jewish context of the New Testament is critical to knowing why we can have confidence in the historicity of the gospel record. 

A Samaritan Would Never be a Jewish Hero
What we know today as “a good Samaritan” as someone who helps others would have been an oxymoron to Jews during the time of Jesus. There was a long and contentious history between the Jews and Samaritans. So much so that they despised one another, each thinking they practiced Israel’s true religion. So, when Jesus tells a parable about a “good Samaritan,” such a phrase was a contradiction in terms to a Jew, and offensive. A Jew would never have considered making a Samaritan the hero of a story, especially to teach a moral lesson on how to treat our neighbor, that is if he wanted to attract a following among Jews.

Jesus responds to a question from an expert of the law about how to inherit eternal life. His answer is to fulfill the greatest commandment: loving God, self, and neighbor. Because the man wants to justify himself, he asks Jesus, “Who is my neighbor?” Jesus replies with a story. A Jewish man is going on a trip from Jerusalem to Jericho when he’s overtaken by robbers, and severely beaten. The beauty of the story is that two Jews, a priest and Levite no less, avoid the battered man and refuse to help him; but a Samaritan passing by stops to help. That Samaritan, the expert of the law must admit, truly acted as the injured man’s neighbor, and not the priest or Levite. We can imagine the Jews who heard Jesus tell the parable incredulously asking, “Who does this Jesus think he is, making Jewish religious leaders look bad, and a Samaritan look good!” Exactly.

Jesus Embraces a Samaritan Village
The women at the well might have been even more offensive to Jews because it wasn’t a parable, but Jesus actually interacting with and accepting Samaritans in a way no other Jew would have done at the time.

 Jesus is resting by a well in a Samaritan town called Sychar in the middle of the day, and a woman came to draw water. He asked her for a drink, and she was shocked because Jews just don’t talk to Samaritans like that, let alone a woman. Jews and Samaritans were hated enemies, so such an encounter would have been considered scandalous. When the disciples came back from the town with food, their response indicated as much:

27 Just then his disciples returned and were surprised to find him talking with a woman. But no one asked, “What do you want?” or “Why are you talking with her?”

 Again, Jesus was doing the unexpected and the counter-cultural in the extreme. Isn’t it funny and telling, that Jesus had something about him so intimidating to people even his disciples wouldn’t ask, “What in the world are you doing talking to a Samaritan woman! Really, Jesus?” And not only that, but this is the first person to whom he reveals he is Israel’s Messiah, and that to a woman who Jews saw as less than human. There are many other details in this story that sound authentic, that have verisimilitude in spades. Jesus and his disciples end up spending two days with the Samaritans, and many believed because of the woman’s testimony, and because of Jesus’ words “many more became believers.” Compare this with his own hometown of Galilee. Not only did those who knew him best take offense at him (Matt. 13:53-58), Luke tells us after he appeared in a synagogue the people were so furious they drove him out of down and tried to throw him off a cliff! Yet the Samaritans in this city, the Jews hated enemies trust him as Israel’s long-awaited Messiah. You just don’t make that stuff up!

The Grateful Samaritan
Then to add insult to first century Jewish injury, we have the leper who was healed, and unlike the nine other Jewish men, he came back to thank Jesus. Reading the text of the story as Luke tells it, we might think Jesus was the only one involved in this incident. Given Jesus’ fame and reputation for healing, however, he rarely travelled alone. Crowds followed him at times, I’m sure bigger or smaller depending on the situation. I’m inclined to think, though, there were quite a few people who witnessed this healing and Jesus using it to teach about the power of gratitude and faith. Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem, likely for the Passover. In chapter 19 we read of his triumphal entry, so it’s likely crowds of pilgrims were on the way to Jerusalem for the festival. The men calling out knew who Jesus was and stood at a distance because they were lepers. People were terrified of them. So they have to call out “in a loud voice” to be heard which mean masses of people likely witnessed the event.

Notice that Jesus doesn’t heal them right there in front of everybody, but sends them away to show themselves to the priests. Because they trusted Jesus the healer, they obeyed his command and on their way they were healed. Jesus calls the Samaritan a “foreigner” to contrast him to the nine others who were Jews; he is the only one who returns to thank Jesus. While the crowd didn’t witness the actual healing, they certainly witnessed the Samaritan “praising God in a loud voice.” Not only that, but he also throws himself at Jesus’ feet and thanks him, obviously no longer a leper. Luke writes with a bit of dramatic flair—”and he was a Samaritan.” As a rebuke to the Jews, Jesus asks where the other nine were, how come they didn’t also come back and give thanks. Many of those in the crowd would have been none too happy that the Samaritan was the hero yet again, even after having witnessed a miracle. We can have confidence that Jews do not make up this story, or the other two, and they do not make up Jesus. He was truly uninvented.

Uninvented: The Sermon on the Mount

Uninvented: The Sermon on the Mount

Aug 25, 2023 | Uninvented

One of my primary contentions in Uninvented is that the Bible is impossible to have been made up as merely human invention. I challenge the assumption (never argued for but always assumed) of over 200 years of biblical criticism that not only could the Bible be made up, but it would be relatively easy to do. Like all Christians I never believed the Bible was made up, but in the back of my mind I thought, sure, maybe it could be. I had no idea until I started diving deep into the apologetics literature as I was studying for my first book, The Persuasive Christian Parent, how difficult it would be to argue that the Bible is mere human imagination, so much fiction. Unfortunately, most Christians have no idea why. Having recently read through the Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 5-7) I was again reminded how compelling the uninvented argument is.

First, even the most dedicated heathen who reads it must admit it comes from the mind of a compelling figure. Note this sermon could not be the product of a committee, but clearly comes from the mind of one man who said things unlike any other in the history of the Jewish religion, or any other religion. In other words, these words could not have been placed in Jesus’ mouth. He says things that would have been so absurd to both Jews and pagans at the time that they would have been literally inconceivable, meaning unable to be conceived. I make this argument consistently in the book. If people can’t imagine something, if it is beyond their ability to even think it, how do they make it up? They don’t! The Sermon on the Mount is one of many examples of Jesus’ teaching first century Jews could not imagine. Skeptics often say the Bible is just another ancient legend or myth, but in the gospels and Acts we’re not dealing with pagan legends and myths, but with Jewish people in a thoroughly Jewish context. The question before us, then, is could a Jewish person, not the divine Son of God, say things like we read in the Sermon on the Mount.

In the book I do a chapter on Jesus’ teaching because it is such a powerful example of how difficult it would be, I believe impossible, to make Jesus up. I’ll comment on a few things in the Sermon below, but in that chapter I discuss how strange and disturbing, especially to Jews, was Jesus teaching that they should eat his flesh and drink his blood, and that it is “real food” and “real drink” (John 6). These are things a lunatic says, if the one who said them is not who he claims to be. Most non-Christians, however, ignore such difficulties, and use the “pick and choose” method. As a perfect example of this, in the chapter I quote Jewish historian Geza Vermes who says, “No objective and enlightened student of the Gospels can help but be struck by the incomparable superiority of Jesus.” He then quotes from another Jewish author:

In his ethical code there is a sublimity, distinctiveness and originality in form unparalleled in any other Hebrew ethical code; neither is there any parallel to the remarkable art of his parables.

Then Vermes adds:

Second to none in profundity of insight and grandeur of character, he is in particular an unsurpassed master of the art of laying bare the inmost core of spiritual truth and of bringing every issue back to the essence of religion, the existential relationship of man and man, and man and God.

There is a lot of fly food in those sentences made to smell like roses. The only way anyone can make such breathtakingly inane comments is by dealing with a partial Jesus, a Jesus who doesn’t say things like eat my flesh and drink my blood. To harbor such thoughts, a person would have to ignore a large portion of what Jesus actually said according to the gospels.

As for the Sermon, Jesus says things equally as incomprehensible but on the surface less radical, until you realize what he’s actually saying. Start with the Beatitudes. They seem innocent enough, and anyone can embrace them, but the last one is not so easy to accept:

11 “Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me.

Then in the next sentence he tells these people that because of this “great will be their reward in heaven.” Who says something like that? A good moral teacher? Hardly. If Jesus was a mere human being, and not God in flesh come to save us from our sins, then he was some kind of megalomaniac with delusions of grandeur. It’s even harder to believe someone would put those words in Jesus’ mouth, but to critics, neither of these are even an issue. They would be wrong, and the burden of proof is on them.

In this he compares himself with the prophets, implying he is greater than they were, but he then says something implying he is greater than both the law and the prophets:

17 “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.

Such a statement would have been stunning, and controversial, to any first century Jew. For someone to say he could fulfill all the law and the prophets was absurd. God through Moses had instituted the system of animal sacrifice to pay for the sins of all the people which indicates no person could fulfill all of it. Who says such a thing? And as I said, it is even more difficult to believe someone would invent those words and put them in Jesus’ mouth. Remember, we’re talking about first century Jews. Critics for over 200 years basically ignored this most salient fact, the Jewishness of Jesus’ world.

In the same vein, he says numerous times in the Sermon, “You have heard it said, but I say to you . . .” Implying that his authority far exceeded the religious professionals of the day. In fact, he was claiming ultimate authority to be the final arbiter of what God’s law meant. I try to imagine the religious Jews of the time trying to wrap their minds around the implications of that. There was no expectation this would be the Messiah’s role, so unless Jesus was actually the divine Son of God, this makes no sense. We must insist this has to be explained one way or another. Our Jewish scholars I quote above pass over such difficulties with fly food inanities.

We could continue to explore the difficulties, but the important point to take away is that we only have two choices when we come to Jesus and his teaching. As we might say today, it’s a binary choice, a one or a zero. Yet since Jesus walked the earth it seems everyone wants a piece of Jesus, every religion and philosophy, just not the whole Jesus. That Jesus, the one we read about in the gospels, is a real conundrum. He was either in the famous trilemma who he and his followers said he was, Lord, or  a lunatic or a liar. Saying he was a good moral teacher is not an option. Good and moral people do not say the things he said. Not only this, but his closest followers claimed he was the divine Son of God who rose from the dead and ascended to sit at the right hand of God. Then they were persecuted and many gave their lives for it. People don’t do that for what they know to be a lie.

The argument from Jesus, we might call it, is the most powerful argument we have Christianity is true. And he told us he is the way, the truth, and the life, and no one comes to the Father except through him (John 14:6).