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Fear's Failure and Death's Defeat - Power E1
134 Plays1 year ago
You can’t give yourself a nickname. Before Jesus came, another man was heralded as the savior of the Jewish people. Judas, nicknamed “The Hammer” Maccabees was a brash, bold warrior who gave the Jewish oppressors more than they could handle. Surely, generations later, under the oppression of Rome, God’s people needed another Hammer, right? Nick and Matt discuss Jesus’s surprising approach to dealing with the powers that be, his victory over death and fear of death, and resurrection hope.
Interlude Music: Aeon Ending by Dew of Light
Theme Song: Believe by Posthumorous
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Episode Outline:
00:00 Introduction - Human History is a History of Fear of Death
00:24 Historical Context: Violence in Human History
02:00 The Maccabean Revolt: A Case Study
04:09 The Aftermath of the Maccabean Revolt
04:19 The Expectation of a Warrior Messiah
05:34 Jesus Enters the Scene: A Different Kind of Messiah
07:10 Jesus' Teachings: A Radical Departure from Violence
10:33 Jesus' Crucifixion: A Defeat or a Victory?
19:00 Death as an Intruder and Jailer
19:09 Jesus' Mission to Defeat Death
20:07 The Fear of Death and Power Struggles
20:31 Jesus' Victory Over Death
23:25 The Power of Resurrection Hope
24:32 The Church as a Witness to Jesus' Victory
27:30 The Dichotomy of Fear and Love
32:47 The Call to Active Resistance and Suffering if Need Be
37:57 The Early Christian Ethic and the Cross of Jesus
39:44 Closing Thoughts on Living Out the Gospel
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Transcript
The Concept of Power through Jesus' Teachings
00:00:00
Speaker
Hey, it's The Repared, I'm to podcast. Today is the first conversation in a series on power. We explore the ethic of Jesus of Nazareth and how it puts to shame worldly power structures.
Hobbes and the Biblical Perspective on Violence
00:00:27
Speaker
Philosopher Thomas Hobbes wrote, the condition of man is a condition of war of everyone against everyone. He explores the human nature behind violence and argues that the fear of violence and death is the primary factor driving human desire for power over others. This power is achieved through violence and death. Is he right, Nick? Yeah, I can't say he's wrong looking at world history and even looking at present circumstances in which we find ourselves.
00:00:51
Speaker
Yeah, any study of human history pretty quickly becomes a study of violent conflicts and warring peoples. One of the first events that gets recorded after Adam and Eve were exiled from the Garden of Eden was Cain's murder of his brother Abel. Yeah, Genesis 6.5, when Yahweh saw that human wickedness was widespread on the earth and that every inclination of the human mind was nothing but evil all the time. Backing up a little bit, you can look specifically at Lamech in Genesis 4, 23-24.
00:01:18
Speaker
Lamech said to his wives, Ada and Zilla, hear my voice, wives of Lamech, pay attention to my words, for I killed a man for wounding me, a young man for striking me. If Cain is to be avenged seven times over, then for Lamech it will be 77 times.
00:01:34
Speaker
Pretty easy to see how this vengeance turns into a violent cycle of human history. Today, we can look back at the 20th century as the bloodiest century in human history. We can see there's a consistent pattern in humanity. Power is obtained through violent victory and it's maintained through force and fear.
Jewish Oppression and Rebellion against the Seleucids
00:01:51
Speaker
Nation states maintain allegiance through providing this hope of security and comfort from this system of violence for their citizens. Yeah, protect me from the fear of death.
00:02:00
Speaker
And that's the situation that the Jewish people were in in the second century BC. Things were not going well. They were right in the middle of this cycle of violent history. They were a small group of people subject to the larger warring peoples of the region. At this time, they're actually under the role of the Seleucids. And the Seleucids were in this process of implementing a system of rules meant to unify their kingdom culturally. So they began to outlaw Jewish religious practices like circumcision and their temple practices.
00:02:25
Speaker
There was a man named Mattathias. He and his five sons launched a rebellion against Israel's oppressors. They fought back against their oppressors to take back control of the temple and to restore Israelite identity. They started forcibly circumcising any Israelites they found. That's one way to push back against enforced homogeneity.
00:02:42
Speaker
They decided they needed to go rescue their fellow Israelites who'd been taken into the neighboring nations. They began warring against their neighbors. They tore down pagan altars, they burned idols, and they plundered a little bit as they went along, too. Mattathias was urging the people to follow his son Judas, who got the nickname Maccabeus, which means, like, the hammer. Pretty sweet nickname. 1 Maccabees 1, 66-68. Judas Maccabeus had been a mighty warrior from his youth. He shall command the army for you and fight the battle against the peoples.
00:03:10
Speaker
You shall rally around you all who observe the law and avenge the wrong done to your people, pay back the nations in full, and obey the commands of the law." Of Judas' brother Simon, it was said. So Simon went to Galilee and fought many battles against the nations, and the nations were crushed before him.
00:03:26
Speaker
The message in these accounts is pretty clear. The Maccabees were to be viewed as the zealous and righteous saviors of Israel. In 1 Maccabees 5, 63-64, the man Judas and his brothers were greatly honored in all Israel and among all the nations. Wherever their name was heard, people gathered to them and praised them. In fact, Judas, when he had finally died in battle, was written of him. Judas also fell and the rest fled. Then Jonathan and Simon took their brother Judas and buried him in the tomb of their ancestors at Modin and wept for him.
00:03:55
Speaker
All Israel made great lamentation for him. They mourned many days and said, How is the mighty fallen the Savior of Israel?
00:04:03
Speaker
Wow, so he was very much memorialized shortly before the time of Jesus as a savior figure for the nation. And what he did was inspire and lead a violent revolt against the powers that be, against the Seleucid rulers, their Greek oppressors. Exactly. In a world of violence and power, he used violence and power and he used it effectively.
00:04:26
Speaker
for a very brief amount of time. I mean, it didn't secure them the kingdom promised for all generations. It's true that independence didn't last very long. So Rome came in and made Israel a client state. They placed Herod the Great in his position of power. The Jewish people not long after this found themselves back under foreign rule. I think for a lot of people in this situation, the solution seemed pretty clear. They needed a Davidic warrior, Messiah King, who's going to come and defeat the foreign rulers, just like Mattathias and his sons.
00:04:54
Speaker
but this time maybe with more power, something that sticks around a little longer. Yeah, exactly. Let's do that again, but even better, even stronger. Yeah. Wisdom of Solomon 17, 21-25. See, Lord, and raise up for them their king, the son of David, to rule over Israel your servant. In the time which you choose, O God, undergird him with the strength to destroy the unrighteous rulers, to cleanse Jerusalem from Gentiles who trample her to destruction.
00:05:18
Speaker
to drive out in wisdom and in righteousness the sinners from the inheritance, to crash the arrogance of sinners like a potter's jar, to smash all their substance with an iron rod, to destroy the lawless nations with the word of his mouth, to make the nations flee from his presence at his threat, and to put sinners to shame by the word of their heart.
00:05:38
Speaker
There rose up these violent rebellion groups who were seeking
Jesus' Radical Teachings on Nonviolence
00:05:41
Speaker
to bring this hope to reality. Groups like the Zealots, the Sicarii. There were people who came along and took up this title of Messiah. They led violent rebellions against Rome. There was the first Jewish war, the Bar Kokhba Revolt. It's into this world where you've got this Jewish war with Rome approaching. You've got rumors of war coming. This is the world that Jesus came into.
00:06:01
Speaker
Yeah, this sentiment was very much in the air when Jesus is living in the Galilee and doing his ministry all over the land of ancient Israel. These sects of zealous Jews that were trying to get back to Torah keeping and trying to get their national identity back.
00:06:20
Speaker
the sects were prominent and they obviously kept their identity as hidden as possible so that it wasn't sniffed out by Rome but it was very much just in the area you can imagine that a bunch of the people that Jesus talked to just folks spattered throughout every crowd he's speaking to were involved in some way in planning
00:06:40
Speaker
or at least were adjacent to these groups going to the secret meetings. And we're certainly chatting amongst friends about maybe future opportunities to enact some future revolt in the mold of the Maccabees. Jesus addresses this specifically in Luke 21. He says, when you hear of wars and uprisings, do not be frightened. Nation will rise against nation and kingdom against kingdom. He was speaking to his disciples, and I don't think there was any confusion there about what he was talking about. He's addressing the political context of the day.
00:07:10
Speaker
You know how a lot of pastors today will maybe skirt politics? Some go into it, but some are like, you know what, politics I'm going to try to stay out of. Jesus was not one of those pastors. He dove headfirst into this political conversation. He came announcing the arrival of the kingdom of God. He came demonstrating authority and power. However, the message he gave would have sounded really strange to anyone who was expecting this Judas Maccabeus-style Messiah.
00:07:35
Speaker
Obviously, he starts saying wild things. Like, if your enemy takes from you your tunic, you give him your coat as well. Or if your enemy slaps you on one cheek, turn to him the other as well. Love your enemies. Do good to those who persecute you. Yeah, Jesus gets into a lot of this in the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5, 43 through 45.
00:07:55
Speaker
You've heard that it was said, love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you so that you may be children of your father in heaven because he causes his son to rise on the evil and the good. And he sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous.
00:08:12
Speaker
Jesus here gives this quote. He says, you've heard that it was said, love your neighbor and hate your enemy. This is pretty interesting because love your neighbor is a quote from scripture. This is coming out of Leviticus 19, 18. However, the other half of this is not scriptural. So this is apparently something that somebody added maybe to fit what they wanted to be able to say in the day.
00:08:31
Speaker
Maybe post-Judas Maccabees. Maybe, yeah. Sometimes we'll do the same thing today. We'll have a quote that kind of sounds almost scriptural, but isn't quite scriptural. You might have something like, cleanliness is next to godliness. Or, God helps those who help themselves. Jesus is addressing one of these quotes. It says, you guys have heard that it was said. And it's not a scriptural quote. Perhaps this love your neighbor, hate your enemy was used in a similar kind of way. And it's not hard to see why.
00:08:56
Speaker
somebody like Judas Maccabeus, he represented the idea of dedication to the Jewish way of life so zealously that he would have hated anyone not Jewish. On that note, it strikes me when he says, and God sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous. Those words to us maybe don't communicate the full weight of what he's saying there in English, righteous, unrighteous, because we very much just attach simple
00:09:19
Speaker
moral categories to that, like those who do good or are right with God and those who aren't. In this context, righteous and unrighteous, this is a way to refer to those in the covenant with God and good standing with God and the Israelite covenant and those not. The unrighteous he's talking about, it is the Romans. It is the non-Jews, the non-practicers, the ones who are not part of the covenant. They don't have a covenant relationship with God. Things aren't right between them and God. They are the nations, the goim, the people out there.
00:09:47
Speaker
So he's explicitly calling their attention to love the Romans. Jesus takes this idea of love your neighbor and hate your enemy and he takes it. He throws it in the sink. He turns on the garbage disposal. He picks the pieces out and then lights them on fire. He's going to have absolutely nothing to do with this.
00:10:02
Speaker
Yeah. Luke 6, 27. But I say to you who listen, love your enemies. Do what is good to those who hate you. Bless those who curse you. Pray for those who mistreat you. If anyone hits you on the cheek, offer the other also. If anyone takes away your coat, don't hold back your shirt either. Give to everyone who asks you, and from someone who takes your things, don't ask for them back. Just as you want others to do for you, do the same for them.
00:10:29
Speaker
This idea of loving your enemies, Jesus repeats it a few times. It's actually the most quoted of all of Jesus' commands by the early church. There was no doubt that for them, this was one of the most central and defining teachings of Jesus' ministry. Yeah, and name me another philosopher, teacher, rabbi, leader, who has such a worldview, who has such a teaching. Whether you like it or not, this is absolutely revolutionary.
00:11:12
Speaker
Jesus is not all words and no action here. He lives this out. We see later in his ministry when Jesus gets arrested, John 18, 10 through 11. Yeah, so when people are approaching Jesus to arrest him, it says, then Simon Peter, who had a sword, drew it and struck the high priest's servant and cut off his right ear. The servant's name was Malchus. At that, Jesus said to Peter, put your sword away. Am I not to drink the cup that the Father has given me?
00:11:38
Speaker
Tertullian, he's an early Christian writer. He's describing the way Jesus has led to his crucifixion like a lamb to slaughter. And he writes, "...had he willed it, legions of angels would at one word have presented themselves from the heavens, approved not the avenging sword of even one disciple. The patience of the Lord was wounded in the wounding of Malchus." I love that quote. The patience of the Lord was wounded in the wounding of Malchus.
00:12:03
Speaker
And this, I think, would have been deeply confusing. I mean, obviously it was. What is going on here, Jesus? It wouldn't be hard to understand why Jesus' nonviolent message and his nonviolent actions were really, really confusing to the disciples and his other supporters. If your hope was for a messiah who was going to establish Israel by defeating Rome, a nonviolent approach is not going to be very effective.
00:12:25
Speaker
You gotta hand it to Peter too. Even reading in the narrative, you don't really know that he's gonna get scolded for this. It just seems like the right thing to do. Like your buddy's about to be whisked off into an unjust trial for crimes he never committed. This is all messed up. He hasn't done anything wrong. He's been a man of the people and now you're taking him away.
00:12:45
Speaker
And in Luke, there's that kind of weird passage where before all of this, Jesus asks his disciples how many swords they have, and they say two, and he says, that's enough. It's like, oh, is he asking them to be armed? What is going on? And so like, if you're reading these passages, and you're familiar with all the gospels, and then Peter whips out one of his swords and cuts off the servant's ear, you're kind of expecting Jesus to be like, yes, that's why I armed you. But you don't get that.
00:13:12
Speaker
One theologian said that I heard recently, he says Jesus arms them so that he can disarm them almost as a pedagogical act of teaching. Like he wanted that moment where he takes his sword away. Yeah, that is kind of interesting.
00:13:25
Speaker
Anybody who was going to make the sort of power claims that Jesus made throughout his ministry had better be ready to have the power to back it up when challenged. And Jesus had proven that he had the power to back up his claims. His disciples had seen him exercising incredible authority throughout his entire ministry. Matthew 26, 53, Jesus tells them, do you think I cannot call on my Father and he will at once put at my disposal more than 12 legions of angels? The disciples saw Jesus who was more than capable of defeating Rome.
00:13:53
Speaker
He could have overthrown the Jewish leaders who were opposed to him and taken his place as the Messiah King of a new nation state. He could have done it swiftly. He could have done it perfectly, no collateral damage, no unnecessary destruction. If Jesus had decided to make it happen, the whole thing would have been over in a matter of minutes. The whole world would have known it and Jesus would have been sitting on his throne. However, when his arresters arrived to take him into custody, he didn't
The Paradox of Jesus' Crucifixion and Victory
00:14:17
Speaker
fight back. He didn't even resist. Not only did he not resist,
00:14:21
Speaker
He went willingly to take on one of the most brutal and shameful means of execution available, crucifixion. Yeah, even crucifixion, just because of our familiarity with the cross, doesn't really strike us as a particularly horrible torment. But go ahead and Google crucifixion and just read up on it a little bit. Any sane adult human that knows they're going to be crucified is going to be terrified. Yeah, it was a symbol of terror.
00:14:48
Speaker
And it was effective, obviously. Yeah. I think the fact that people wear cross necklaces and we put them up in our churches maybe desensitizes us a little bit to the terror of the cross.
00:14:59
Speaker
Yeah, and I've heard preachers bring up a modern analogy like, this is like the electric chair or something like that. This is like the firing squad or the hanging gallows. No, nothing of this sort. Those don't even start to describe the terror. This is usually days, a day or two of nonstop torture.
00:15:18
Speaker
leading to one's slow drowning in their own mucus that they can't breathe anymore. Drowning itself, people talk about that as probably one of the worst ways to die. It's absolutely horrifying for any human to try to experience that grasping for air. That is how every crucifixion ends after you've been through all the terror when you can't lift yourself up anymore and your lungs are filled with fluid.
00:15:44
Speaker
It's just a slow, painful death from there. And that's already after you've been hanging on the cross for usually a day or two, after you've already been flogging your back skin ripped off. This is just a horrible experience and obviously the public humiliation too. Yeah, for somebody who was supposed to be the leader of this uprising, this is about the worst thing that can happen.
00:16:06
Speaker
How are you going to go home to your families who didn't believe and who didn't follow after your leader, your big Messiah guy, met his end in that way? Yeah. You're put to shame too. You're put to shame and I think you'd be fearing for your life. Especially if you're in that inner circle, you're known as one of those people who've been following Jesus around for the years of his ministry. I'd be terrified. That's precisely why Peter denies him three times in the courtyard. Exactly. So this, I think Nick begs the question, did Jesus lose?
00:16:35
Speaker
I'm not allowed to say no because I'm a Christian. It sure looked like it. To any worldly way of conceiving of power, authority, rulership, yes, he lost. Yep. By the rules of that violent power game that has defined most of human history, Jesus lost. And he lost in about the most terrible and embarrassing way possible. But is that how the New Testament describes it?
00:16:57
Speaker
No, that is one of the odd realities about the way Jesus' passion, the whole Passion Week is suffering, his death, is described in the Gospels and in later Christian writings as well, as if it's a great victory marker. Paul describes that he's going around preaching the Gospel of Jesus to these even majority, like, Gentile areas, non-Jewish populations,
00:17:20
Speaker
He describes it as, I preach the cross. I preach the worst part. What I'm proud of is the worst part of Jesus's ministry. I'm sure he said plenty about the healings and stuff like that. But what's interesting is in the preaching of the later apostles, you actually don't get much of at least recorded teaching about Jesus's miracles, ministry, the people he healed. You have those in the gospels, obviously, but you don't have Paul emphasizing those things in his preaching. You have Paul saying,
00:17:50
Speaker
At bottom, what I always did with those Gentiles and with the Jews, I preached Christ crucified. And for him, it was like, that was the big win somehow. It's like, how do you get there theologically? And I think, honestly, I think you only get there within the context of actually the Hebrew Bible and major rethinking of the nature of power itself.
00:18:15
Speaker
I'm thinking even in this conversation of someone who's not a Christian and who's listening to us talk, obviously everything you said earlier about Jesus actually having the authority to call down legions of angels and actually demonstrate his power of the world. Yeah, they might not buy all that or think Jesus actually had that kind of power, obviously me and you do.
00:18:33
Speaker
But it is striking to me that even if you're a skeptic, you have to consider that after Jesus' by worldly standards unfortunate demise, the claim of Christians, the claim of the early church, was that through crucifixion, through that humiliation, Jesus somehow put to death the entire world system of power.
00:18:59
Speaker
along with all the spiritual forces that we affirm are behind those things. He put to open shame the principalities and powers and rulers of the darkness. Did Jesus lose? By the worldly rules, absolutely. But what if new rules are being written?
00:19:16
Speaker
Yeah, this New Testament claim that Jesus was victorious and conquering is very strange. Jesus didn't come to defeat the Jewish religious leaders. He didn't defeat Rome. He didn't defeat any of these warring nations. The only way that you can understand Jesus' crucifixion as being a victory is when you recognize that he came to break the underlying power. The very thing that motivates the violence of the nations, he came to defeat death itself.
00:19:41
Speaker
Yeah, death is a robber that, according to the Hebrew Bible tradition, was an intruder into the human story. Things weren't supposed to be that way, and Jesus is coming for it. Yeah, death is like a jailer that has come in incarcerated humanity.
00:19:57
Speaker
And then in humanities, in prison state, it got divided into these warring factions driven to violent fighting for power and survival. Jesus didn't show up on the scene and join one of these warring factions so that he could overpower the others. He didn't start a new faction just to defeat the others. He started a new faction formed around the defeat of the jailer itself, the freedom from that incarceration.
00:20:20
Speaker
That's a great point. It is because of the fallenness of humans and the introduction of death into the human story that humans then decided to go ahead and use fear of death to have power over other humans. That is the story of human history right there. And that's the story that you're saying. It seems like Jesus is rewriting or putting a violent end to in his own body.
00:20:48
Speaker
Yeah. Why did Rome feel the need to control other nations? Why did some Jews see violence as their only hope? Why do people seek the security that comes from power? It's motivated by this fear of death. Jesus didn't just come to pick teams in the arena of the world power structures. He came to tear down the foundations of that arena. He's going to dismantle the very thing that drives the whole system. He came to defeat death, breaking its power over humans.
00:21:25
Speaker
Hebrews 2.14 says,
00:21:42
Speaker
Right there, he broke the power of the one who wields death. People were held in slavery by their fear of death until Jesus came in the flesh to break that power. I love this Peter in his Pentecost speech, Acts 2.24 says, but God raised him from the dead, freeing him from the agony of death because it was impossible for death to keep its hold on him. 2 Timothy 1.10,
00:22:05
Speaker
This has now been made evident through the appearing of our Savior, Christ Jesus, who has abolished death and has brought life and immortality to light through the gospel.
00:22:15
Speaker
Colossians 2, 13 through 15. One of my favorite passages
00:22:41
Speaker
I love this idea of this public spectacle. So in Rome, it was typical that after winning like a military victory, that winning leader would celebrate their victory with a parade as they returned back to the city. The defeated prisoners of war would be marched in chains ahead of the victorious army to make a public spectacle over them. And that's the sort of imagery that's being used here. That's what Jesus did to the powers and authorities.
00:23:05
Speaker
Yeah, I also think of a kind of a reverse image of crucifixion as well. And it's probably along the same lines. It's another way that Rome publicly humiliated their enemy and promoted their own image was obviously by crucifixion. So I think of even the image of Jesus going to the cross and being subjected to that, stripped naked, ripped apart, nails through his hands and feet, put up on a cross. It's almost like even in that act itself,
00:23:34
Speaker
When he's hanging up there on the cross, he was displaying the foolishness and just the worthlessness, the profound weakness of death itself and a fear of death, the worldly system. He, in his act of being publicly humiliated, was shaming the whole system that put him, the innocent person, in that place.
00:23:57
Speaker
Yeah, that cycle that's characterized all of human history, the cycle of violence, power, death, he stepped right into the middle of it. He took on suffering and death while refusing to partake in this system of violence. And on the cross, he won a great victory. Death could no longer hold him. By his resurrection, he proved that victory and his authority over sin and death.
00:24:19
Speaker
What does this mean for followers of Jesus? What does it look like to live as the people of Jesus? This community that's now been freed so they don't have to live and operate under the fear of death anymore. I think this is a community that's characterized by resurrection hope.
00:24:35
Speaker
Yeah, 1 Peter 1, 3 says, Bless be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Because of His great mercy, He has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead. I love that. A new birth into a living hope.
00:24:50
Speaker
I think this is going to look radically different. The community of people who are following Jesus and have been freed from this fear of death are no longer captive to these powers. They're supposed to be a transformed community.
Living Free from Fear and Embracing Love
00:25:02
Speaker
And this transformation becomes a key way that the church witnesses to the world. Jesus' message for his followers was that they were to be a city on a hill.
00:25:10
Speaker
a lamp that couldn't be hidden. They were going to stick out. They're going to be weird. In a world full of people and powers motivated by fear, seeking to wield power for security, the church was going to look very strange. The resurrection hope that comes from Jesus makes possible a whole new way of seeing the world. Exactly.
00:25:27
Speaker
In 1 Corinthians 15, one of the coolest chapters in the Bible, Paul discusses the gospel on which we now stand. And at the center of this is the resurrection. If resurrection hadn't happened, he said we'd all be better off being Epicureans, seeking our own pleasure. But Jesus' resurrection is the first fruit of our future resurrection, the day when we'll be resurrected and we'll get to mock death. Where, O death, is your victory. Where, O death, is your sting.
00:25:53
Speaker
Yeah, that is the very thing that gives us the freedom to not subject ourselves to the natural fear of death. We can choose to not let that fear drive us and motivate any of our actions because of the resurrection hope.
00:26:10
Speaker
Because when my body is buried in the ground, that is not the end of my story. There is a continuous me that is resurrected into the future. I understand that that is a very murky idea, but it's a clear idea that's communicated by Jesus's resurrection hope. That is why the gospel accounts include accounts of Jesus's bodily resurrection and him interacting with his disciples. It is to ground this hope in a future you
00:26:39
Speaker
where there is an identity continuity with the current you. And if any of that is even approximating the truth, you are completely freed to not subject yourself to extending this life of you as long as humanly possible even at the expense of other people.
00:26:58
Speaker
Yeah, with a resurrection hope, I think you can look out at this world of warring powers and you don't have to just resort to this instinct to protect yourself. It's not all about self-preservation and power and this need to protect yourself from other violent people. Suddenly you can look out at the world and you can see warring nations, you can see people fighting, and you can see that as a system that's enslaved by death. They're all just afraid, trying to extend their lives by suppressing the lives of others.
00:27:27
Speaker
And the work of Jesus through the church is all about declaring that these enslaving powers have been defeated. He brings the cure for this disease of fear and violence that fuels all of this warring in the world. You also get this really cool thing that happens when you get a community of people that are living without fear. You get a community of people that are actually characterized by love instead of fear.
00:27:50
Speaker
Yeah, in 1 John 4, 17, it says,
00:28:11
Speaker
Oswald Chambers had this famous quote, the remarkable thing about God is that when you fear God, you fear nothing else. Whereas if you do not fear God, you fear everything else. You're a slave to your fear.
00:28:23
Speaker
Yeah, that dichotomy between fear and love, I think is so important. Sometimes we think, what's the opposite of love? And we think, oh, hate. And yeah, sure, in a way. But one of the primary words that should come to our minds, I think, is fear. If love is approaching something, somebody, some object in self-giving for their benefit, then fear is the exact opposite.
00:28:47
Speaker
It is either approaching with aggression to kill the thing, fight, or fleeing to get away from the thing. Flight. And those two things just are opposites. They are just entirely opposite.
00:29:00
Speaker
Yeah, it's that self-preservation instinct versus that instinct to go look out for the best of someone else. Exactly. In Romans 8, Paul addresses the fact that Christians are going to face death. He says, No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.
00:29:30
Speaker
Yeah, John 1334 says, I give you a new command, love one another. Just as I have loved you, you are also to love one another. By this, everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.
00:29:44
Speaker
Yeah, this love that's been unfettered from fear, I think it's supposed to be a defining characteristic of the church. There's so much focus in both Jesus' teachings and in the rest of the New Testament on the unity and love among Christians, because that is supposed to be one of the things that defines Christianity as a group of people. They're the group of people who are radical because they've been freed from the fear of death so that they can actually love.
00:30:25
Speaker
That's interesting to me. Unity and love go together conceptually. Divisiveness and fear go together conceptually. We already talked about the apposition of fear and love. The differences are obvious. And that of unity and disunity or unity and division. There's also like an obvious connection between each of those together. Unity and love is because that is exactly what love strives for.
00:30:52
Speaker
for me to approach someone to use my own body to serve them, even if it costs me and my body. That's what love does. But that is an attempt, a unifying attempt. Whether or not it can be done in all cases is another matter, but it is an attempt to unite, to help, to aid, to come alongside another for their benefit, even at the expense of my body. Fear we know is the opposite, because it either fights the thing and sees them as a threat, or runs from the thing because
00:31:21
Speaker
You think you can't defeat it, so you've got to get away from it. You view it as a threat. And if it's a threat, then divide from it. That is the other. And you either get rid of the other, fight it, or run far from the other, flee from it. And so division and fear, that is a marker of thinking in worldly patterns, of thinking like base fallen humans have always thought.
00:31:45
Speaker
It's not much different than actually just like how animals think. It's basically like an animal instinct of self-preservation. That's all that is. So that you have that on the one hand and then you have another worldview that's characterized by self-giving love for the purpose of unity, at least the attempt for it.
00:32:04
Speaker
Yeah, I think it's fascinating. One of the things that Jesus was known for in his ministry and was criticized for heavily was that he drew close to people that he wasn't supposed to draw close to. He was in proximity with the people that the Jewish leaders thought you were supposed to hate or fear. And this desire to love people to draw close to them that we see in Jesus is exactly what Christians are called to live out.
00:32:24
Speaker
It's funny that you would say, we Christians. I mean, that is like saying, this ethic is exactly what we little Christs are called to live out. That's what Christian means is to be an imitator of Christ. Exactly.
00:32:36
Speaker
Philippians 2.5 says,
00:32:59
Speaker
Yeah, this echoes what Jesus said in his ministry, Matthew 10, 38 through 39, whoever does not take up their cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Whoever finds their life will lose it, and whoever loses their life for my sake will find it. There's supposed to be this community that is defined by this radical love for one another, and that's possible because resurrection hope breaks us from that fear of death.
00:33:22
Speaker
It liberates us from the former fallen cycle. What's really cool about this is that when the church lives this out, they are a powerful witness for the work of Jesus. When the followers of Jesus face a world where violence is still the standard, their choosing to follow Christ rather than participate in the violence of the world functions to just shout the message of Jesus.
00:33:43
Speaker
Arguably, it's the very thing that makes Christianity any different than any other somewhat helpful philosophy. The church is called to follow Jesus in standing against the system of violence that's characterized all of human history. This is active peacemaking resistance.
00:33:59
Speaker
Christ's followers are not simply called the sidestep the violence of the world, but to face it, head on, that's how we proclaim Christ's victory. This is not an inactive pacifism, but it's an active engagement requiring the sort of fortitude that you would normally expect to see in a soldier. It's not surprising, though I think it is a little ironic, that the New Testament and early church use military imagery to describe what it looks like to follow Jesus.
00:34:23
Speaker
That's intentional irony, it heightens the meaning of what they're trying to communicate by using the symbols of traditional violence and using it in a vastly different way. Even the book of Revelation, read it cover to cover, you'll probably be lost at some point and at some points you'll be disturbed by the language that's being used because it is filled with blood and this military language, violent language. Very intentionally ironically though,
00:34:52
Speaker
because the great coming one on the white horse that is going to tread on all of his enemies and destroy them all is a lamb who's already been stabbed, who's bleeding out his own blood on his garments.
00:35:07
Speaker
And when he goes to swipe his sword and wipe them all out, it's actually not a sword. It comes out of his mouth and it's his words that wipe out all the enemies. It's like very intentionally ironic. It's heightened. Like this nasty language is heightened. And then the twist comes and you actually have an entirely different worldview that is being presented in the victory of Jesus in the book of Revelation.
Irony in Early Christian Military Imagery
00:35:34
Speaker
Yeah, definitely. I think Paul does a similar thing in Ephesians 6 with the armor of God. He says, finally, be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. Put on the full armor of God so that you can take your stand against the devil's schemes. For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world, and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. Therefore, put on the full armor of God so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground and after you have done everything to stand.
00:36:03
Speaker
Clement of Alexandria, an early Christian writer, says, "'Will not Christ, who has blared a song of peace, to the very ends of the earth, gather together his own soldiers of peace?' Indeed, O people, he did assemble a bloodless army by his own blood and his word, and to them he entrusted the kingdom of heaven." I love this. He did assemble a bloodless army.
00:36:26
Speaker
Yeah, that is so good. I love how he picks up that same imagery as the New Testament and does the exact same thing with it. Uses the vocabulary and then just tweaks it to heighten the irony in all of it. It's almost like when the true power of Jesus is presented to humanity. For those who accept it and submit to it, it's almost like there's an ability now to just laugh at how foolish the old way was.
00:36:53
Speaker
If it weren't so sad, perhaps we would be laughing about it. Unfortunately, it is just deeply sad because it's all of our loved ones that are caught up in it, or even if it's not our loved ones, it's somebody's loved ones that is caught up in my violence. Yeah, but I think of Stephen at his stoning, where he looks at the people who are murdering him and he says, Lord, forgive them, for they know not what they do. The ultimate example to back up even further is Jesus saying the same thing. Father, forgive these folks who are making me suffer in this way.
00:37:23
Speaker
Active resistance to the system of violence and death in our world is going to end up in suffering. New Testament writers, they call their readers to be united with Jesus, even following him into suffering and death, so that we may share in his resurrection. This is the process of becoming more Christ-like. When we conform ourselves to the way Christ lived, we can become more like him. We put to death our old selves and we proclaim this resurrection hope in ourselves to the world.
00:37:51
Speaker
2 Corinthians 1.5, for just as the sufferings of Christ overflow to us, so also through Christ our comfort overflows. Philippians 3, 10-11, I want to know Christ, yes, to know the power of His resurrection and participation in His sufferings, becoming like Him in His death, and so somehow attaining to the resurrection from the dead.
00:38:14
Speaker
Revelation 2.10, don't be afraid of what you are about to suffer. Look, the devil is about to throw some of you in prison to test you and you will experience affliction for 10 days. Be faithful to the point of death and I will give you the crown of life.
00:38:30
Speaker
I love this image. Christians looking out at the violence of the world that has looked like this giant, terrifying beast. They look at it and they go, I know you're defeated. I don't fear you. I don't fear this death that you wield. I know that there's something on the other side. My resurrection hope gives me immunity from fear of you.
00:38:50
Speaker
It's like that scene in the Marvel movie where Hulk takes Loki and just whips him around on the ground like he's a piece of grass and says, puny god.
00:39:01
Speaker
I mean, it's obvious that this is the thrust of what Jesus' crucifixion means. I mean, the New Testament is replete with it. But I am curious, did the early Christians, post-Jesus, post-apostles, did they express this ethic? In other words, did they think that the crucifixion of Jesus meant something more than just implications on some otherworldly future? Did the death of Jesus have anything to do with their ethical system that they lived in?
00:39:31
Speaker
Absolutely it did. And I think that's what we need to take a look at next time. Yeah, let's do that. I think the history on this is really helpful because it's easy to look at these teachings and then to look at today and go, well, there's a disconnect there.
00:39:41
Speaker
Full disclosure here, I look around at me, like people like me. This is not judgmental. This is me and people like me. And I'm thinking, we have fallen far from the tree. I don't think I've lived most of my life very faithfully to the ethic of Jesus. I haven't considered that the cross of Jesus meant anything more than fire insurance for me.
00:40:05
Speaker
I haven't considered that it might demand everything from me. The way I live my life, my entire ethical system, the way I talk to human beings, my friends, my neighbors, my loved ones, I have not consistently seen that as having anything to do with the cross of Jesus, to be honest with you.
00:40:23
Speaker
Yeah, I'm in the same boat. I've gotten very good at finding ways to try to spiritualize Jesus' teachings or ways to massage them a little bit so that they're not quite as jarring as they feel when I read them. Because it feels like a call to go live radically differently.
00:40:38
Speaker
Yeah, how does it not? What I think is interesting is when we look at church history, especially the first few centuries of Christianity, the writings that we've got are from people who heard these words of Jesus and were committed to living them out in really radical ways.
Contemporary Reflections on Jesus' Teachings
00:40:52
Speaker
And they ran with it. They stuck with it. Yeah, we got to talk about that.
00:40:55
Speaker
Absolutely. I'd like to close with 2 Timothy 1, 7 through 12. For the Spirit of God does not make us timid, but gives us power, love, and self-discipline. So do not be ashamed of the testimony about our Lord, or of me, his prisoner. Rather, join with me in suffering for the gospel by the power of God.
00:41:14
Speaker
He has saved us and called us to a holy life, not because of anything we have done, but because of His own purpose and grace. This grace was given us in Christ Jesus before the beginning of time, but it has now been revealed through the appearing of our Savior Christ Jesus, who has destroyed death and has brought life and immortality to light through the gospel.
00:41:33
Speaker
And of this gospel, I was appointed a herald and an apostle and a teacher. That is why I am suffering as I am. Yet this is no clause for shame, because I know whom I have believed, and am convinced that he is able to guard what I have entrusted to him until that day.
00:41:54
Speaker
This conversation will be continued next time, along with some guest interviews which will contribute to these conversations that we're having about the nature of power. The ReParadigm podcast is recorded, edited, and produced by Nick Payne and Matthew Westlake. Theme music, as always, is produced by the South Carolina band Posthumorous. Check out our social media at ReParadigm on Instagram or on YouTube. Check out our website at ReParadigm.com.