What does Matthew 24 mean?

Matthew 24 is the longest discussion we have from Jesus about how “this present evil age” (Gal 1:4) will transition to the next. It’s important. It’s also difficult to follow. This article is my best attempt to simply explain what Jesus is saying.

Three questions

The passage opens with Jesus leaving the temple complex after condemning the Pharisees for missing the entire point of true faith (Mt 23). He declares he is finished with the Jewish civil and religious leadership (Mt 23:37-39). Jesus is likely in a dark mood as he and his disciples leave the complex and “point out the temple buildings to him” (Mt 24:1). It was an impressive compound and had been under construction for decades. It was far larger than the temple building itself—more of a compound with the temple as its center.

We can imagine Jesus scowling at the whole thing before declaring that it would soon all be destroyed (Mt 24:2). This is shocking—how can this be? How will people worship YHWH? How will they have atonement for their sins? Once they climbed the hill opposite the temple mount, they asked Jesus: “Tell us, when will these things happen, and what will be the sign of Your coming, and of the end of the age?” (Mt 24:3).

The end of the age (Mt 24:4-14)

Jesus answers the third question (“when will be … the end of the age?”) first. The basic answer is at Mt 24:14: “This gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in the whole world as a testimony to all the nations, and then the end will come.” The end will only come when the whole world hears. We don’t know when this will happen. But, because it is impossible to ensure every single person hears the Gospel (after all, someone is always being born somewhere), perhaps the idea is that when the world reaches a “gospel saturation point,” then Jesus kicks off the day of the Lord.

In the meantime, as local churches do their part to be sure the world reaches this gospel saturation point, we’ll see an escalating on ramp of hostility towards Christianity.

Many false teachers will claim to be the Messiah, but they’re liars (Mt 24:4-5).
Wars, famines, and political unrest will come and go. Any historical survey of any century proves we don’t live in a peaceful or friendly world. This does not signify “the end.” It’s simply the on-ramp (Mt 24:6-8).
Christians will be persecuted and even executed in various places—the gospel message is not welcome. Even professing believers will betray the faith and turn on one another, perhaps out of fear (Mt 24:9-10). History tells us this ebbs and flows depending on local circumstances.
False prophets will lead many people astray (Mt 24:11). Believers will grow cold towards the faith, perhaps insular (Mt 24:12). But, the true believer is the one who endures or perseveres to the end (Mt 24:13).

But, of course, “the end” will not come until the world reaches its undisclosed gospel saturation point (Mt 24:14). So, in the meantime, local churches must do their part to spread the good news.

The sign of Jesus’ coming (Mt 24:15-28)

Jesus says he’ll return after a period of awful persecution. He begins by directing his readers to the prophet Daniel, who spoke of an evil figure in Jerusalem who would bring abominations upon God’s people (Dan 9:27). But the picture is complicated because Jesus speaks of two different events at the same time—the destruction of Jerusalem by the Roman armies in A.D. 70, and the destruction wrought by the forces of darkness in the last days. We know this because, while Matthew and Mark emphasize the last days, Luke describes the Romans in A.D. 70:

Matthew 24:15-16	Mark 13:14	Luke 21:20-21
So when you see standing in the holy place ‘‘the abomination that causes desolation,” spoken of through the prophet Daniel—let the reader understand—then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains …	When you see “the abomination that causes desolation” standing where it does not belong—let the reader understand—then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains …	When you see Jerusalem being surrounded by armies, you will know that its desolation is near. Then let those who are in Judea flee to the mountains …

We know Luke is not describing Satan or the antichrist, because they never destroy Jerusalem (see Rev 19:19; Rev 20:9). But, Luke tells us that some abomination (the Roman armies) will make Jerusalem desolate—this happened in A.D. 70. Add to it that Jesus’ declaration of the future destruction of the temple mount is what triggered this conversation, and so the evidence suggests Jesus is speaking of two events at the same time in Matthew 24:15-28. Like a polaroid that slowly fades into focus, the “A.D. 70” bit begins at Matthew 24:15 but fades away until, by Matthew 24:21, the great tribulation has taken its place.

When the Jews in Jerusalem see the Roman armies massing against Jerusalem during the coming First Jewish War (A.D. 66-70), they should drop everything and ruin (Mt 24:15-18). Josephus (The Jewish War, 5.1 – 7.162) tells us that the ensuing siege was awful.
Indeed (shading to the end of days, but still with secondary applicability to A.D. 70), Jesus tells us, “for then there will be a great tribulation, such as has not occurred since the beginning of the world until now, nor ever will again” (Mt 24:21). Surely nobody would survive if the Lord did not end it (Mt 24:22)—and he will do so by returning (Rev 19:11f).

Jesus doesn’t tell us when he’ll come back. But, it will be so obvious and so clear as to be unmistakable. Liars and charlatans will sally forth, but we should ignore them (Mt 24:23-36) because Jesus’ return will be as obvious as lightening in the sky. You see it. You hear it. You can’t miss it. It’s unmistakable. That’s how blindly obvious it will be that Jesus has returned—no persuasion will be necessary. Just as surely as you know that a gathering of vultures means there is a corpse on offer, so will Jesus’ return be just as obvious (Mt 24:27-28).

Jesus’ return (Mt 24:29-31)

Immediately after the tribulation of those days—that is, the “great tribulation” which other scriptures (e.g., Dan 9:27) tell us will be the antichrist’s brief, seven-year reign—Jesus will return. To describe this event, Jesus borrows phrases from the prophet Isaiah’s declaration about Babylon’s destruction (Isa 13:10; Mt 24:29). It’s no accident that “Babylon” is the symbol of evil and is the kingdom which the Lord destroys just before his return (Rev 16, further described in Rev 17-18).

Otherworldly phenomena will kick off for all to see—no sun, no moon, stars falling from the sky. There will be no natural explanation.
A mysterious “sign of the Son of Man will appear in the sky” (Mt 24:30). Nobody knows what this sign will be—some ancient Christians believed it will be a cross floating in the heavens, likely illuminated against a now darkened world. If so, it would surely be terrifying beyond belief.
All the nations of the earth will mourn and wail in horror as Jesus arrives on the clouds of heaven (Mt 24:30), just as Daniel said he would (Dan 7:14)—perhaps with the blazing cross (“the sign of the Son of Man”) backlighting him from the heavens?
As Jesus arrives, he’ll send out his angels who will gather his elect people from the four winds (cp. Mt 13:24-30. 36-43). This is likely the same event the apostle Paul described at 1 Thessalonians 4:13-18. Elsewhere, Paul tells us that Christ will resurrect believers “at his coming” (1 Cor 15:23), and here it is.

So, this section leaves us with Jesus having arrived in Jerusalem to inaugurate his kingdom. He has gathered his saints from the earth (the living and the dead) to be with him (cp. Rev 19:11ff).

Be ready (Mt 24:32-51)

These signs are warning lights we can recognize. Just as the fig tree telegraphs when summer is close, so too will the signs of the “great tribulation” (Mt 24:21-28) tell us when Jesus’ return is near—“right at the door” (Mt 24:32-33). Indeed, once the kick-off happens, everything will be wrapped up within one generation (Mt 24:34). This is a solemn promise (Mt 24:35).

Some good Christians believe “this generation” refers to the folks to whom Jesus is speaking. Grammatically, this is an easy option and I used to believe it. Others believe it refers to the Jewish people, but the grammatical case for this is weak (however, consider Dr. Ryan Meyer’s argument for a variation of it here). But, when you harmonize our passage with Mark 12:28-32 and Luke 21:29-33, the scenario which best fits all three accounts is that “this generation = the folks alive when the great tribulation kicks off.”

Jesus tells us that, speaking from the perspective of his human nature, he has no idea when he will return (Mt 24:37). Just as the rains and floods burst upon the earth without warning during Noah’s day (Gen 7:11-12) “and they did not understand until the flood came and took them all away; so, will the coming of the Son of Man be” (Mt 24:39). Indeed, when Jesus arrives people will suddenly disappear (Mt 24:41-41). This is the rapture of living saints, wrought at the hand of the angels whom Jesus dispatches as he arrives on the clouds of heaven (Mt 24:31; cp. Mt 13:40-43; 1 Thess 4:13-18).

So, Jesus warns, true believers must be ready for his return … and live like it. If a homeowner knew when a thief would break in, he would be ready (Mt 24:42-43)! “For this reason you must be ready as well; for the Son of Man is coming at an hour when you do not think He will” (Mt 24:44).

The parables which follow (the ten virgins (Mt 25:1-13), and the talents (Mt 25:14-30)) emphasize this point—our job is to be faithful now while we wait. It isn’t to speculate about dates, times, or to fight about the timing of the rapture. It’s to carry out the great commission—to make disciples of all nations, baptize them into Christ’s family, and teach them everything the Lord commanded us (Mt 28:19-20). Indeed, one key criterion when Jesus separates the believers from the unbelievers on the day of judgment is whether we demonstrated love to our new covenant brothers and sisters (Mt 25:31-46)—whether we’ve lived and acted like Christians.

That must be our focus, and “blessed is that slave whom his master finds so doing when he comes” (Mt 24:46).

Understanding Daniel’s 70 “Weeks” Prophecy (pt. 3)

We continue our look at the great prophecy of Daniel 9:24-27. Read the rest of the series.

As we march onward in our study of Daniel 9:24-27, we’ve arrived at Daniel 9:26. What happens after the 69^th “seven”? That is, after Daniel 9:25? There is still one “seven” left, and a lot of stuff still to be fulfilled from the six-item list Gabriel revealed in Daniel 9:24. As the prophecy goes on, in Daniel 9:26, two key events happen:

The Messiah will be “cut off,” and
“the people of the prince who is to come” will destroy Jerusalem and its temple.

Let’s look at these one at a time.

Messiah and the “gap” between “weeks” 69 and 70

Then after the sixty-two weeks, the Messiah will be cut off and have nothing, and the people of the prince who is to come will destroy the city and the sanctuary. And its end will come with a flood; even to the end there will be war; desolations are determined (Daniel 9:26).

When will the Messiah be “cut off and have nothing”? What does it mean? Considering the bible’s whole story, it seems to suggest Messiah’s death:

He was despised and abandoned by men, A man of great pain and familiar with sickness; And like one from whom people hide their faces, He was despised, and we had no regard for Him … By oppression and judgment He was taken away; And as for His generation, who considered that He was cut off from the land of the living, for the wrongdoing of my people, to whom the blow was due? (Isaiah 53:3, 8).

Jesus was despised, rejected, and abandoned—he had nothing. Then he was “cut off”—the Romans executed him. According to Daniel 9:26, this will occur “after the sixty-two weeks …” Remember, there are two sets of “sevens” in Daniel 9:25—(a) seven “sevens,” and then (b) 62 “sevens. The Messiah’s death happens after this second set—the 62 “sevens,” like this:

So, while the phrasing is awkward, it seems that the Messiah’s death will happen after the 62 “sevens,” which means after the 69 “sevens.”[1] However, because the 70^th “seven” will not begin until Daniel 9:27 (“And he will confirm a covenant with the many for one week …”) it seems there is a “gap” of time here between the 69^th and 70^th “seven.” If there is no gap, then the 70^th “seven” happens immediately—the Messiah dies during the 70^th “seven,” because it happened after the 69^th “seven.

Figure 2. In which “week” does Daniel 9:26 and Messiah’s death occur?

Evidence suggests there is a gap between “weeks” 69 and 70 because of this chain of logic:

Because the evidence for the first 69 “sevens” suggests each “seven” is a set of seven years, we are obligated to see the 70^th “seven” as also being a set of seven years.
Because Messiah was “cut off” after the 69^th “seven,” we might assume this happened during the 70^th “seven.”
If true, then Jesus was “cut off” at his crucifixion in ≈ A.D. 30.

But …

This would mean all six tasks in Daniel 9:24 (“Seventy weeks have been decreed for your people and your holy city …”) must take place within seven years of Messiah being “cut off” (A.D. 37-ish)—which must be the case if the 70^th “seven” truly followed right on the heels of the 69^th.

In other words, if there is no gap between the 69th and 70th seven, then …

Because each “seven” is seven years,
and the 70th “seven” begins with Jesus’ death in ≈ A.D. 30 (when he is “cut off”),
then the 70th “seven” would have ended in ≈ A.D. 37,
and so all six promises from Daniel 9:24 would have to be fulfilled by A.D. 37.

That did not happen! So, there must be a gap between the 69th and 70th “seven.” Bible-believing interpreters who do not account for this gap are left with an impossible dating problem. So, they are generally forced to take one of two options:

Option 1: Push the entire thing backwards and make the sinister figure at Daniel 9:27 the wicked Syrian king Antiochus Epiphanes IV, who ruled in the early 2^nd century B.C. (read about him in 1 Maccabees 1).[2]
Option 2: Make the mysterious ruler at Daniel 9:27 be Jesus and wrap the entire prophecy up with Jesus’ ascension to heaven.

Neither of these make the best sense of a straightforward reading of the bible. The “gap” between the 69^th and 70^th “seven” seems to be the best solution. If true, then the 70^th “seven” doesn’t begin until the events of Daniel 9:27, which is yet future. I can’t yet make a full case for the “gap theory” of the 70^th “seven” until we wrestle with Daniel 9:27, and that must wait for the next article.

The mystery prince

We now turn to the second event from Daniel 9:26:

Then after the sixty-two weeks, the Messiah will be cut off and have nothing, and the people of the prince who is to come will destroy the city and the sanctuary. And its end will come with a flood; even to the end there will be war; desolations are determined (Daniel 9:26).

The word translated as “prince” means leader, ruler, or a male sovereign other thanthe ruling king (i.e., “the prince”). This means that some ruler will come along one day, whose people will destroy Jerusalem and the temple the Jewish people just re-constructed in Daniel 9:25—the tale told to us in the books of Haggai, Ezra, and Nehemiah.

Well, this makes identification pretty simple—who destroyed Jerusalem (“the city and its sanctuary”) and when did they destroy it?

Daniel says it was “the people of the prince who is to come” (Dan 9:26) who will destroy Jerusalem and its sanctuary. Because the Roman army later destroyed this very city and that very temple in A.D. 70 (some ≈ 600 years after Daniel wrote this prophecy), this means our “prince” in Daniel 9:26 is somehow connected to the Roman empire—which Daniel 7 suggested will exist in three phases.[3]

Phase 1: The old Roman Empire under whose jurisdiction Jesus and Pontius Pilate lived (Dan 7:23).
Phase 2: Sometime after Jesus’ day, a splintered remnant that has divided into various pieces (the “10 horns” of the scary fourth beast, Dan 7:23-24).
Phase 3: A very powerful king who will arise from among the splintered bits of Phase 2 (Dan 7:24-26).

History tells that a Roman general (and later emperor) named Titus Vespasianus destroyed Jerusalem during the First Jewish War,[4] when the Roman empire was still intact in its original form (Phase 1, above). This will be a nasty finish to a brutal war. Gabriel tells Daniel: “… its end will come with a flood; even to the end there will be war; desolations are determined” (Dan 9:26). Now, on the other side of this event, we know that God brought this judgment on his people in A.D. 70 because they rejected the Messiah and Savior whom he sent to rescue them.

The Roman (and Jewish) writer Josephus tells us what happened to Jerusalem when the Romans destroyed it. He knows, because he was there that day.

There was no one left for the soldiers to kill or plunder, not a soul on which to vent their fury; for mercy would never have made them keep their hands off anyone if action was possible. So Caesar now ordered them to raze the whole City and Sanctuary to the ground … [a]ll the rest of the fortifications encircling the City were so completely leveled with the ground that no one visiting the spot would believe it had once been inhabited. This then was the end to which the mad folly of revolutionaries brought Jerusalem, a magnificent city renowned to the ends of the earth.[5]

Josephus tells of one Jewish woman named Mary, driven mad by hunger, who killed her infant son, roasted him, ate one half of him and saved the rest for later[6] (cp. Deut 28:53-57). The temple itself was destroyed by fire in a frenzy of rage by Roman legionnaires who ignored their commander’s orders.

All the prisoners taken from beginning to end of the war totalled 97,000; those who perished in the long siege 1,100,000 … No destruction ever wrought by God or man approached the wholesale carnage of this war.[7]

This must be very hard to hear and understand. We wonder what Daniel thought when he heard this news!

Daniel asks for assurance from God that he will set everything right (Dan 9:3-19)
God sends the angel Gabriel to say that he will make it right (Dan 9:20-23).
In fact, things will be set so right that the six-item list at Daniel 9:24 shows us paradise restored.
This shakes out with (a) Jerusalem being rebuilt, and then (b) Messiah the prince arriving on the scene (Dan 9:25). This will take 69 “sevens” to happen, but it’ll happen.

Everything sounds great. But then, after the 62^nd “seven” (i.e., 69 “sevens” in total):

The Messiah will be cut off and have nothing (Dan 9:26).
Jerusalem and its (as yet) un-rebuilt temple will be totally destroyed (Dan 9:26)!

This is a shock. What can it mean? Why will it happen? Why this bizarre reversal? Who is this mysterious prince who is to come? At this rate, Daniel may be thinking, the glorious six-item promise list from Daniel 9:24 seems far, far away. Clearly this is a one step forward, two steps back kind of thing. What is the endgame, here?

Evidence suggests there will be a long series of events after Messiah’s arrival at his baptism at Daniel 9:25 (the end of the first 69 “sevens”), and before the 70^th “seven” begins in Daniel 9:27.

At least one of those events will be Messiah’s seeming abandonment (“have nothing”), and his execution by Roman soldiers (“be cut off”).
Another event will be the destruction of the rebuilt temple and the city of Jerusalem by the people of the Roman ruler who will come on the scene (Dan 9:26)—the general Titus, who indeed razed the city in A.D. 70.
This “intermission” seems to best explain the “gap” between the 69^th and 70^th unit of seven years in the prophecy.

Nevertheless, in our next article on Daniel 9:27, the angel Gabriel tells us how God plans to make good on his six-item list of promises.

[1] John Gill: “To be reckoned from the end of the seven weeks, or 49 years, which, added to them, make 483 years” (Exposition of the Old Testament, 6:346). Stephen Miller writes: “After the reconstruction of Jerusalem in the first seven sevens (forty-nine years), another ‘sixty-two sevens’ (434 years) would pass” (Stephen R. Miller, Daniel, vol. 18, in New American Commentary (Nashville: B&H, 1994), 267).

[2] This is why Moses Stuart, an outstanding American bible scholar from the early 19^th century, remarks: “The third period (one week) of course begins with the same excision of an anointed one, and continues seven years, during which a foreign prince shall come, and lay waste the city and sanctuary of Jerusalem, and cause the offerings to cease for three and a half years, after which utter destruction shall come upon him, vs. 26, 27” (Daniel, 274; emphasis added). Stuart does not consider the possibility of a gap between the 69^th and 70^th “seven.”

[3] Young, Daniel, 147-50. He is excellent, here.

[4] See this video for free background.

[5] Josephus, The Jewish War, trans. G.A. Williamson, rev. ed. (New York: Penguin, 1969), 7:1 (361). Chrysostom suggests, “And let not any man suppose this to have been spoken hyperbolically; but let him study the writings of Josephus, and learn the truth of the sayings. For neither can any one say, that the man being a believer, in order to establish Christ’s words, hath exaggerated the tragical history,” (“Homily 76,” in NPNF 1.10, 457).

[6] Josephus, The Jewish War, 6:199-219 (341-342).

[7] Josephus, The Jewish War, 6:420f. See ch(s). 13-21 (i.e., 3:422 – 6:429).

Understanding Daniel’s 70 “Weeks” Prophecy (pt. 1)

This is the first of three articles about the great prophecy in Daniel 9:24-27. This prophecy is very complicated and very important. One writer called it “the key to prophetic revelation.”[1] Many good Christians disagree about how to interpret it. This bible study will not exhaustively defend its interpretation at every point against all comers. Instead, it makes a positive case for its own position and seeks to be straightforward and understandable to ordinary people.

This bible study takes a literal, futurist view[2]—meaning (a) we should interpret the passage according to the natural, ordinary manner of language in proper context (e.g., poetry is poetry, narrative is narrative, figurative language is figurative, etc.), and (b) its fulfillment lies in the future—not the past.

Prayer answered (Daniel 9:1-23)

This prophecy happens because Daniel prays to God for help. This is a beautiful prayer. Christians should study it. But it isn’t our focus here, so we won’t stay here for long.

The Babylonians conquered the southern kingdom of Judah in 586 B.C., after a lengthy period of national and spiritual decline. The Babylonians took many Jewish people far away to the east (2 Kgs 25:11). Daniel was one of them. But that was a long time ago. He’s now an old man. He’s spent his best years as a civil servant in the Babylonian and Persian bureaucracies, trapped in an exile he doesn’t want. Daniel knows God swore that he would punish Israel for 70 years before he brings his people back to the promised land (Jer 25:11-12; 29:10). These 70 years have just about come and gone.

… I, Daniel, observed in the books the number of the years which was revealed as the word of the LORD to Jeremiah the prophet for the completion of the desolations of Jerusalem, namely, seventy years. So I gave my attention to the Lord God, to seek Him by prayer and pleading, with fasting, sackcloth, and ashes (Daniel 9:2-3).

The angel Gabriel arrives on the scene with God’s reply: “so pay attention to the message and gain understanding of the vision” (Dan 9:23). This bit is especially important—Gabriel is answering Daniel’s question about when God will bringIsrael back to the promised land. Daniel wants to know when God will make good on his “70 years promise.” He begs God: “for Your sake, Lord, let Your face shine on Your desolate sanctuary …” (Dan 9:17).

Well, Gabriel has come with God’s answer. This brings us to the famous prophecy. It summarizes the entire scope of living history–the sum of God’s plan to set everything right that’s wrong in this world.

The sum of the whole thing (Daniel 9:24)

Gabriel says:

Seventy weeks have been decreed for your people and your holy city, to finish the wrongdoing, to make an end of sin, to make atonement for guilt, to bring in everlasting righteousness, to seal up vision and prophecy, and to anoint the Most Holy Place (Daniel 9:24).

The most obvious question is about these seventy “weeks.” What does this mean?

It’s complicated.

We won’t get there until the next section—sorry! But, for now I’ll say that the word means “sevens,” which is a vague time indicator. Its meaning depends on what’s happening in the passage. Your bible may translate it as “weeks” to help you out, but that’s not necessarily the most helpful gloss.

Whatever these 70 “sevens” are—and we’ll figure that out soon enough—clearly God will accomplish a bunch of things by the time they’re fulfilled. There are three bad things that God will fix, and three good things that will happen. Gabriel says these events are directed towards “your people and your holy city” (Dan 9:24).

Sometimes, God speaks directly to certain people, while at the same time speaking also to other people far in the future—sometimes in a deeper and more meaningful way. We usually only see this in light of revelation that comes later in the bible’s story. For example:

God told his rebellious people he would spare them from the poisonous serpents if they looked upon the image of a bronze serpent on a pole and truly believed this act would rescue them (Num 21:4-9). So far, so simple.
But, in a deeper way, this command foreshadowed that God’s people will be spared from the poisonous serpent—“the serpent of old who is called the devil and Satan” (Rev 12:9)—if they “looked upon” Jesus on his cross and truly believed this would rescue them (Jn 3:14-15).

Some of that is going on here. Yes, Gabriel speaks of the Jewish people (“your people and your holy city,” Dan 9:24), but the true reference is bigger than that.[3] Anyone who trusts in Jesus as his savior is a child of Abraham and an heir according to that covenant promise (Gal 3:26-29). After all, considering the bible’s whole story, God’s holy city is called the “new Jerusalem” (Rev 21:2; cp. Rev 21:1-4).

First, Gabriel lists three bad things that God will fix by the end of these 70 “sevens.”

God will “finish[4] the transgression.” Rebellion and transgression will end. The only time in history that rebellion against God will stop is in the new paradise to come—in the better tomorrow: “there will no longer be any curse” (Rev 22:3).
He will “make an end of sin.” Again, the only time in human history when God’s people will never sin is the eternity in paradise, where “the first things have passed away” (Rev 21:4).
There will be made an “atonement for guilt.” In the old covenant, God did provide a way for believers to receive atonement (see Lev 4:27-31). In Leviticus 4:31, the bible says: “So the priest shall make atonement for him, and he will be forgiven.” But Christ’s atonement is different and better. According to Hebrews 10:2, the old covenant sacrifices “can never, by the same sacrifices which they offer continually every year, make those who approach perfect.” This is why Christ is the better priest, who gives his people a better reconciliation: “For by one offering He has perfected for all time those who are sanctified” (Heb 10:14).

Next, Gabriel tells us three good things God will accomplish by the end of these 70 “sevens.”

He will “bring in everlasting righteousness.” This is a righteousness that will never end. The only time when everlasting righteousness will be here on the earth is in the new tomorrow, in paradise (see Rev 22:1-4).
God will “seal up vision and prophecy.” This most likely means there will no longer be any need for God to speak to his people by way of visions or prophecy, because he will reveal himself to us all personally—like he did with Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden (Gen 3:8). This is when “the tabernacle of God is among the people, and He will dwell among them, and they shall be His people, and God Himself will be among them …” (Rev 21:3).
He will “anoint the Most Holy Place.” This is the satisfaction Jesus makes to God because of our sins and crimes–the personal and legal reconciliation that sets us right with him.

There are two ways to understand what “anoint a most holy” means.

The phrase means “holy of holies” or “a very holy thing/place/person.”
We’re tempted to think “holy of holies = inner chamber of the temple,” but this is not necessarily correct. The phrase just means “a really, really holy thing.” The context must tell you what this “very holy thing” is in this passage—a person (Jesus Christ) or a place (the Millennial temple)?

Because the passage is about everything wrong in this world being finally fixed at the end of the age, Gabriel is likely referring to Jesus here[5]—God will anoint a most holy person as king at his resurrection and ascension (Acts 13:22-23; cp. Ps 2:6-7). Further, in light of the bible’s whole story, Jesus literally is the new and better temple.

In Matthew 12:6, Jesus said that, in himself, something greater than the temple was here.
The apostle John says in his vision of the new Jerusalem that he sees no temple, “for the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb are its temple” (Rev 22:22).
The psalmist gives us a prophecy of a king God will enthrone over creation: “I have installed My King Upon Zion, My holy mountain” (Ps 2:6). The apostle Paul explains that this passage refers to Jesus at his resurrection and ascension back to heaven (read Acts 13:32-33).

But some faithful Christian interpreters believe these six events refer to the new covenant era—to the time after Jesus’ ascension when the new covenant has launched. They say this isn’t about the last things at all—it’s all in effect right now. They believe this “everlasting righteousness” is about the righteousness from God (Rom 1:17) which he now offers to everyone who believes in Jesus.[6] To “finish the wrongdoing” and “make an end of sin” refers to Christ’s atonement for his people, etc.[7]

This is probably not right—there is surely no everlasting righteousness in our hearts, in our minds, or in this world. This world is awash in sin and temptation—the apostle Paul calls it “this present evil age” (Gal 1:4). This suggests the six great events are not yet fully accomplished. Believers (and this world) await the experiential transformation to match the legal pardon we already have (Rom 8:18-25).

So, it seems better to interpret these six momentous events as fulfilled when Jesus returns here from heaven to establish his kingdom—the “second coming.” Together, they tell us that God will fix everything that’s wrong in this world. No more transgressions, no more sin, a perfect atonement that brings personal and legal reconciliation with God, everlasting righteousness on earth as it is in heaven, no more need for vision and prophecy because all God’s people will see him as he is, and Christ anointed and ruling as king over his creation.

That’s why this prophecy matters.

How does all this good stuff shake out? We turn to that in Daniel 9:25-27, in our next two articles.

[1] John Walvoord, Daniel: The Key to Prophetic Revelation (Chicago: Moody, 1971; reprint, 1989).

[2] A free, scholarly resource that sketches my viewpoint is from Stephen R. Miller, “Interpreting Daniel’s Seventy Weeks: Dismal Swamp or Blessed Hope?” Available here.

[3] “… for all the people of God; who also were Daniel’s people and city in a spiritual sense, to which he belonged” (John Gill, An Exposition of the Old Testament, vol. 6 (London: Mathews and Leigh, 1810), 343).

[4] A very few English translations and commentators believe the phrase should be translated “restraining the transgression” (ISV translation and Edward J. Young, The Prophecy of Daniel (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1949), 198). But this is almost surely incorrect.

[5] One more strike against this “very holy thing” being the Millennial Temple is that Gabriel calls the temple “the holy place” (וְהַקֹּ֜דֶשׁ) at Dan 9:26, in contrast to the more generic phrase “a most holy thing” (קֹ֥דֶשׁ קָֽדָשִֽׁים) at Dan 9:24. H.C. Leupold is especially good here (Exposition of Daniel (Colombus: Wartburg: 1949; reprint; Grand Rapids: Baker, 1969), 416), as is Young (Daniel, 201).

[6] “This righteousness, or the Messiah who accomplishes it, was the treasure above all treasures that was most eagerly longed for by the Old Testament saints” (Leupold, Daniel, 414).

[7] Gill, Exposition of the Old Testament, 6:344.

Analogies to understand Christ’s atonement

In this article, I’ll discuss two common questions that Christians have about Christ’s atonement. By “atonement,” I mean the means by which Christ’s sacrificial death removes our guilt for wrongdoing and therefore reconciles us to God.

Atonement is a key tenet of the Christian story:

The prophet Isaiah spoke about a mysterious servant who would be pierced for our offenses, crushed for our wrongdoings, upon whom God would lay our punishment, by whose wounds we are healed. “[T]he Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all” (Isa 53:7, RSV).
The blood sacrifice rituals of the old covenant provided atonement for the participants (Lev 4:20ff) as a living parable of Christ’s perfect sacrifice (Heb 9:9).
Mark, the gospel writer, says Jesus came to give his lie as a ransom for many (Mk 10:45).
The apostle Peter writes that Christ “suffered for sins once for all time, the just for the unjust, so that He might bring us to God …” (1 Pet 3:18).
John the baptizer declared that Jesus was “the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!” (Jn 1:29).

Over and over, we see that somehow, someway, Jesus’ voluntary sacrificial death for his people brings about legal and personal reconciliation with God.

Christ, by his obedience and death, did fully discharge the debt of all those that are justified; and did, by the sacrifice of himself in the blood of his cross, undergoing in their stead the penalty due unto them, make a proper, real, and full satisfaction to God’s justice in their behalf (2LBCF, §11.3).

Fair enough. But here are the two questions:

How, exactly, does God apply the benefits of Jesus’ death to a sinner’s account? The Christian story says it does, but can we logically explain this? How does it work?
How is Jesus’ sacrificial, substitutionary death not a cruel measure? That is, how is it right or fair to punish an innocent man for crimes he did not commit?

I’ll answer these two questions with two analogies.

Question 1—How does atonement work?

The first analogy is that of a representative or delegate.

Your state has two U.S. Senators. These senators represent you in Washington D.C. They represent your interests, your concerns. They speak and vote on your behalf. You don’t have to go to Washington because your U.S. senators are there for you. Their actions (and votes) are imputed to you. They are you, in a sense.
Your state also has individuals who act as “electors” in each presidential election. We do not elect presidents by popular vote—they’re chosen by electors, who are representatives chosen by each state.

These are two common examples of “representatives” we accept in everyday life. It’s just the way it is. The application of Jesus’ atonement shouldn’t be a problem, then, because the Christian story has always worked through representatives:

Adam and Eve are our first parents. The apostle Paul spends much time explaining that they represent us (Rom 5:12ff, 1 Cor 15).
Abraham is the great patriarch from whom all true believers are descended.
Moses is the great representative of the old covenant—the one through whom God spoke and worked on behalf of the people.

Theologians often call this “federalism.” It means that God works through a representative whose actions set the course—good or bad—for his constituents. The two great representatives in the Christian story are Adam and Christ.

Adam is the bad representative. His failure to love and obey God brought sin and its penalty of death to everyone (Rom 5:12). We’re born belonging to him, by default, because God legally imputes Adam’s actions to his constituents. God does this because Adam represents us—he’s our delegate. This is bad news for us—unless we jump ship for a better deal with a better representative.
Jesus is that better representative. His success in loving in obeying God brings legal pardon and personal reconciliation for all who belong to him.

The apostle Paul says:

So then, as through one offense the result was condemnation to all mankind, so also through one act of righteousness the result was justification of life to all mankind. For as through the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so also through the obedience of the One the many will be made righteous (Romans 5:18-19).

The question is: “How, exactly, does God apply the benefits of Jesus’ death to a sinner’s account?” The answer:

Because, like Adam, Jesus is a representative or delegate whose actions are reckoned or imputed to his constituents.
God reckons or imputes the benefits of Jesus’ perfect life and sacrificial death to everyone who trusts in him for spiritual rescue.
Those benefits are legal pardon and personal reconciliation with God.

If this seems too fantastic to believe, then I ask you to consider your U.S. senators—don’t you realize they act in the name of their constituents, and their actions are imputed to you? Think of your state’s electors in the 2024 presidential election—do you reject the votes they cast on behalf of your state when they chose the current president?

Jesus is the federal representative for everyone who trusts in him. That’s how and why God cheerfully applies the benefits of his eternal son’s sacrificial death to his people.

Question 2—Cruel and unusual?

The second analogy I’ll offer is that of vicarious liability.

Say your state’s Department of Transportation is fixing a highway. They close a lane. They set up cones and warning signs. But they don’t do a good job. A driver misses the signs, crashes into a work truck, and is horribly injured. He can sue the state for negligence and attempt to recoup monetary damages.
Suppose an inmate in a state prison needs urgent medical attention. He doesn’t get it. The prison doctors misdiagnosed his symptoms early on. He becomes terribly ill. By the time the prison doctors realize what’s wrong, it’s too late. The inmate dies of stomach cancer two months later. The inmate’s family can sue the state.

This makes sense, right? Nothing controversial here. Nothing outrageous. This is the principle of vicarious liability. The Department of Transportation guy is the one who messed up. The prison doctors are the ones who made the awful mistake. And yet—it is the state who is sued.

Why?

Because the state has voluntarily and willingly said: “If our guys mess up, you can hold us responsible.” It has taken on that responsibility. The state has chosen to bear the guilt of another. Of course, because the prison doctor is an agent of the state (i.e., a state employee), then in certain circumstances the state truly is responsible. But the principle of vicarious liability stands—one person is punished in place of another, as a substitute.

This is precisely what Jesus has done. He died, the just for the unjust, in order to bring us to God (1 Pet 3:18). The great difference, of course, is that we are not like the prison doctor—we aren’t agents of Jesus. He did not have to own us and our guilt, but he chose to do it anyway. “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him will not perish, but have eternal life” (Jn 3:16).

So, the question is: “How is Jesus’ sacrificial, substitutionary death not a cruel measure?” The answer is that:

Because Jesus willingly and voluntarily offers to bear the guilt of his people’s crimes,
God the Father makes his eternal son vicariously liable for our sins,
The just for the unjust, in our place, as our substitute, representative, or delegate,
And so, Jesus suffered and died to atone for our sins.

If this sounds absurd, then remember that the next time you read about somebody suing a government agency for negligence. I recently investigated an instance in which foster parents physically and sexually tortured a nine-year-old boy. There was one instance when the parents brandished garden shears and tried to castrate the child. Much later, after police intervened and removed him from that evil place, the boy sued the state for negligence because the state placed him in that home. Of course, the state didn’t torture the boy. But the state made the decision (in certain circumstances) to own the actions—good or bad—of the foster parents it licensed.

If you believe the boy can file suit against the state (and I suspect you do), then you also ought to believe that it’s fine for Jesus to be vicariously liable for our crimes. True, Jesus did nothing wrong (2 Cor 5:21). But that’s why vicarious liability is vicarious. It’s also why God is love (1 Jn 4:8).

Helpful?

Christians sometimes know something is good and true even if they can’t fully explain why. We know Christ died for us and his actions change our relationship with God. But the logical mechanics of how and why can be elusive. I hope these two analogies—that of a representative in the form of a U.S. senator or electoral college elector, and the legal concept of vicarious liability—help us understand Christ’s atonement a bit better.

Understanding Justification by Faith

The heart of the Protestant Reformation is that God declares you to be righteous by faith alone, in Christ alone. If you don’t believe this, then you do not have the true good news. This doctrine is often called “justification by faith.” It’s a churchy phrase that has lost some of its punch—many Christians know it’s “good,” but perhaps they can’t explain what it means. This article will show how the apostle Paul explains this vital truth in Romans 3:19-31. It’s a very big deal. Maybe the biggest deal ever.

The problem

We can trace the “Christian” family through three broad streams:

Eastern Orthodoxy. This stream hails from the traditional Christian lands in modern-day Greece, Turkey, Syria, etc. It largely went its own way after the Western Roman Empire crumbled to bits. We won’t be discussing this tradition here.
Roman Catholicism. This branch developed as a recognizable institution in the remnants of the western Roman Empire beginning from the late 6th century.
Protestants. This is the variegated stream which broke away from the corruption of the Roman Catholic church beginning in the early 16^th century, first in modern-day Germany, then in Switzerland, and beyond. If you’re a Christian in the West (that is, you’re not a convictional Roman Catholic and do not belong to a cult), then you’re in the “Protestant” stream—whether you know it or not.

Many churches celebrate “Reformation Sunday” on the Lord’s Day closest to 31 October to commemorate Martin Luther’s challenge to debate a series of theses about reforming the corrupt Roman Catholic church.

The Roman Catholic church believes good and true things about the trinity, about sin, about salvation, about Jesus, the virgin birth, our Savior’s life and death, his resurrection, his ascension, his return, and the new heavens and new earth.

So, what’s the problem?

The problem is about the sufficiency of God’s grace by Jesus Christ.
How, exactly, do we become Christians?

The Roman church teaches the equation: “Jesus + good works = merits eternal life.” It teaches that “Jesus + good works = forgiveness, reconciliation, and divine pardon.” Rome’s catechism explains (Art. 2010):

Rome speaks of “initial grace” and “the beginning of conversion.” There is no before and after. There is no bright line in the sand. Salvation is a cooperative process, not a divine event. Moved by the Spirit and by love, we must do good works to “merit for ourselves” the grace needed for eternal life.

This is heresy. It is false. It is wrong.

The truth is that we must trust in Jesus alone for salvation. God declares us to be righteous on the basis of what Jesus has already done. Based on that declaration, God gives his people legal pardon and personal reconciliation. Rome may speak of grace, charity, and conversion, but it means something very different.

Like all false religions, Rome teaches a version of “resume-ism.”

If you don’t believe God exists, then you’re not interested in submitting your resume to God. But, if you do believe he exists, then resume-ism will send you to hell—because it’s wrong.

You can talk about Jesus all you want, but in the end it’s about you—what you do, what you bring to the table.
The true faith is about Jesus, what he did, how he rescues you, and how God pardons you and declares you to be righteous if you trust in what Christ did for you.

The apostle Paul is against resume-ism. It’s his obsession. As we parachute into our passage at Romans 3:19-31, we learn from the first portion of the chapter that everyone is a sinner, without exception.

We’re all in trouble. We’re guilty before the King of the universe.
God’s old covenant law tells us how his people ought to act.
But we don’t act like that all the time, or even most of the time.
Most of us don’t want to act like it either.

So, most people don’t belong to God, because they don’t do what he says, nor do they want to. Now, to our passage.

Righteousness from God

The old covenant law tells God’s people how to live and love him. How to be different, weird, and separate from the world until the Messiah comes. This law speaks to people who are under its authority, “so that every mouth may be silenced and the whole world held accountable to God” (Rom 3:19).

He’s saying the old covenant law silences all excuses and acts as an immovable divine witness to which we are all accountable.

How does this accountability work? Why does it silence us as it confronts us?

Because by means of works of the law (ἐξ ἔργων νόμου) nobody will be declared to be righteous, in God’s sight (Rom 3:20). The word your English bible renders here as “righteous” or “justified” is a legal idea that means moral uprightness. You can’t achieve that by doing the works of the old covenant law—because you’ll keep messing up.

How do we know this? Because the law tells us so, because “through the law we become conscious of our sin” (Rom 3:20).

The law brings knowledge of sin.
It tells us we’ll always fall short of the mark—somehow, some way.
No matter what.
100% guaranteed.

This isn’t good, obviously. If God left it there, some people might think he were cruel. But God is not toying with us. The law isn’t about salvation at all. It isn’t there to make us gnaw our fingernails and fear damnation. That’s just resume-ism talking.

Law-keeping does not earn us salvation. It never did.
Instead, the old covenant law tells us how to live while we wait for our Rescuer—King Jesus.
But this “resume-ism” idea had so infected and twisted the popular Jewish understanding of salvation by Paul’s day (and Jesus,’ too) that in many circles it had become the default gateway to a relationship with God.
Trust in the coming Messiah. Do law-keeping really well. Repeat (see Lk 18:9-14).

But, the apostle Paul says, that’s all wrong. It’s always been wrong. Now, separate from the old covenant law (χωρὶς νόμου), righteousness from God has now been made known—testified to by the law and the prophets (Rom 3:21). Resume-ism has nothing to do with the righteousness from God that’s on the table.

If this righteousness from God—the kind that can never come by means of works of the law—is testified to by the law and the prophets … is it a new thing?

Of course not. This isn’t new. It’s simply the re-presentation of something very old. Rome would do well to listen to Paul. If so, it wouldn’t speak of “meriting for ourselves” the grace needed for eternal life.

Well, how do you get this righteousness that God is offering? “This righteousness is given through faith in Jesus Christ …” (Rom 3:22). We trust in his faithfulness—that he has been perfect for us, as our delegate and representative.
Who can have it? Who is eligible? “… to all who believe” (Rom 3:22).
Why is this righteousness open to anyone? “Because there is no distinction [between people]—everyone sins and therefore lacks God’s glory” (Rom 3:22-23, my trans.).

The phrase often translated as “fallen short of the glory of God” means to be deficient—to be missing or lacking something. Without Jesus, we are each missing the righteousness and holiness and love for God he made us to have. Instead, we sin, so we’re broken, and so we “fall short of” (i.e., lack) God’s glory.

So, how does this righteousness from God happen? Why is it by faith alone and not works?

Because God declares us to be righteous as a gift, or freely, or gratis (Rom 3:24). This declaration is “on the house.” This means there is no “merit” we bring to the table. Rome is wrong. Dead wrong.
God issues this declaration to his people by means of his grace, through the liberation (“redemption”) that comes from Christ Jesus (Rom 3:24).

How so?

Well, “God displayed him publicly as the instrument of forgiveness by his shedding of blood, to be received by special faith. God did this to prove his justice because, due to his long-suffering patience, he had let the sins of the past go unpunished” (Rom 3:25, my trans.).

Jesus is the propitiation or sacrifice of atonement or instrument of forgiveness. How so? By means of his death (ἐν τῷ αὐτοῦ αἵματι).

This is a Federal, representative concept (see Rom 5:12f).
Like Adam, Jesus is the vicarious representative who acts on behalf of his people. Jesus lives the perfect life we cannot. He dies the criminal death we deserve. He defeats Satan and the curse of death on our behalf. He does this as our Federal representative.
Jesus takes our sins upon himself in the same manner as an employer that is legally, vicariously responsible for the actions of its employees.
The difference is, of course, that Jesus does this willingly and lovingly.

How do we receive this righteousness from God that Jesus achieves? By faith (Rom 3:24). Not by works. In fact, Jesus has retroactively paid for all the sins he had forgiven on credit from the old covenant days gone by (Rom 3:25).

God has done this as a demonstration or proof of his righteousness—his justice (Rom 3:26). I recently investigated a case in which adoptive parents sexually and physically tortured their adoptive children for years. It would have been evil if the state had opted to “forgive and forget” this. We instinctively know that. Crime demands punishment. Justice must be done. It’s the same with God, and so Jesus’ life—his death as our vicarious representative—is what satisfies the justice required. That’s why Jesus’ life and death demonstrates or proves that God is just.

And whom does God justify? Who does God declare to be righteous? The one with the best resume? The one who does more than the guy next to him? The one who does the most good works? No—it is “those who have faith in Jesus” (Rom 3:26).

The inevitable result of resume-ism is pride and self-satisfaction. But, because we now know that righteousness is a gift from God separate from works, we know that all boasting is excluded. It is shut out by the law of faith (Rom 3:27). It has nothing to do with being a Christian. “For we maintain that a person is justified by faith apart from the works of the law” (Rom 3:28). This is open to any person. Jew. Gentile. Azeri. Afghani. Japanese. God will declare anyone to be righteousness who trusts in Christ for salvation (Rom 3:29-30; cp. Gal 3:28-29).

This whole thing (righteousness from God by faith alone, in Christ alone—nothing to do with resume-ism) is not new. The new covenant does not rip up and invalidate the old covenant law. Instead, the apostle Paul declares, it upholds it (Rom 3:31) because Jesus teaches us that the law is about how to live as believers, not how to become a believer.

Why being a Protestant matters

It matters because this is about how you become a Christian. Is Jesus’ grace enough to (a) give us permanent, legal pardon, and (b) permanently heal our broken relationship with God? Or do we need to stir in some resume-ism, too? The apostle Paul says that, because we have been justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ (Rom 5:1).

We’re justified by God because we have faith … in what?

That Jesus died for you.
That he did it as your vicarious representative, in your place.
That resume-ism won’t get you there.
That it can’t get you there.

And so, the equation “Jesus + something else = salvation” is wrong. It will send you to hell, because it can’t get you this righteousness from God (Gal 2:21).

That means you’re still in trouble, no matter what label you put on yourself.
It means you don’t have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, because you haven’t yet trusted in him alone for salvation.
You’re still trying to upload your resume to the website.

But God does not want your resume. He wants you to only trust in what his eternal Son has already done for you. He declares you to be righteousness by means of faith and trust in his Son—nothing else. That is the core issue of the Protestant Reformation, and of the true Christian faith.

Review of my Galatians commentary

I wish to thank Dr. Joel Grassi for a very kind and generous review he just published on my book Faith Working Through Love: The Message of Galatians. He writes: “I am happy to recommend it as an addition to pastors for their libraries and churches for their classroom study.”

Some highlights:

I was also very interested to read a commentary written by a man who serves as a “bi-vocational pastor.” Many use this label when in reality they are one of several on a staff of pastors, and their “day job” is teaching in Christian education or something like that. But M.T. Robbins is truly a “bi-vocational pastor,” serving as the senior pastor of Sleater Kenney Road Baptist Church in Olympia, Washington, as well as working full time as a claims investigator for the state government. We are impressed and thankful for his efforts, and can appreciate how difficult, exhausting, and often thankless this particular vein of “tent-making ministry” is.

And this…

Robbins’ work is a down to earth, practical, and straight shooting overview of the message of Galatians. He seems to have labored to express himself clearly and forthrightly, and to try to break down big concepts into understandable sentences and paragraphs, including charts and graphics spread out over 13 chapters.

And finally this:

… we are very happy to recommend this book to those who are studying the book of Galatians either in their personal Bible study or in the setting of the local body of Christ, which is the pillar and ground of the truth, the NT immersionist assembly. We trust that it will help further the Gospel of Christ, which is of grace and unto liberty, and not under the Law to bondage.

I spoke a bit about my book on Galatians here, and you can find more info here. Suffice it to say that it is only 184 pages, it is short, it is written in a normal and conversational style, it has lots of charts and pictures, I pray that it can help you understand what Paul is saying in Galatians. It’s a really important letter in the New Testament! Consider grabbing a copy, and let me know what you think. If you feel I got something wrong (because I surely have), then let me know that, too! You can find more content from Dr. Grassi (who reviewed my book) here.

Identifying and Avoiding False Teachers

False teachers are a big deal in the bible. Here, I’ll answer three important questions about them that ought to help every Christian be on guard against their tricksy ways.

Q1: What is a false teacher?

The apostle Peter has a lot to say about false teachers. So does Jude. It’s possible that Jude had Peter’s second letter and borrowed a lot of his material for his own letter. If you read them, they sound similar! What, exactly, are false teachers? What makes them “false”? Both authors sum it up very simply:

Peter says they “secretly introduce destructive heresies, even denying the Master who bought them …” (2 Pet 2:1).
Jude tells us these bad actors are “ungodly persons who turn the grace of our God into indecent behavior and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ” (Jude 4).

There you have it. A false teacher is someone who denies, disowns, repudiates, or refuses to believe the truth about Jesus. You could say that every heresy, every false teaching, every lie about the gospel always begins by denying something about who Jesus is and what he’s done for his people. People create fake Jesus in their own image.

People say Jesus never really died.
That he is not God.
That he is not eternal.
That he is not co-equal with the Father.
That he was not conceived by a miracle of the Holy Spirit in Mary’s womb.
That he was not sinless.
That he did not die in our place, as our substitute.
That his death was not a ransom.
That his perfect life and willing sacrifice did not satisfy divine justice.

These lies (and others) keep coming back. Every Easter, a major newspaper trots out an article by some liberal scholar who claims to reveal “the truth” about Jesus. False teachers are alive and well. Peter said they would be: “false prophets also appeared among the [old covenant] people, just as there will also be false teachers among you” (2 Pet 2:1).

Q2: How do we know who Jesus is and what he has done?

If a false teacher is someone who denies some key truth about who Jesus is and what he has done, then what tools has God given us so that we can find out these truths? Very simple—by his message, recorded in the bible, and by the Holy Spirit.

Peter tells us about that, too. He wants us to know, with sure conviction, that we can trust the account he’s given us. He and the other disciples didn’t follow clever fables when they told everyone about Jesus—they literally saw him in his majestic splendor (2 Pet 1:16)! They saw what happened to him on that mountain, when he transformed before them into a figure of blazing white, radiant with pure holiness and heavenly light. Peter heard the Father speak words of affirmation about his eternal Son from the heavenly cloud of glory that surrounded them on that mountaintop (2 Pet 1:17-18).

So, he reminds us, the prophecies from the old covenant have now been made surer and more certain. Events have confirmed them. These prophesies and promises are like a lamp shining in a dark place, guiding us until that day when Jesus returns to be the literal light of the world (2 Pet 1:19). So, know this first of all, Peter says: these prophesies weren’t private intuitions or ramblings people made up—they were messages given by men as they were moved by the Holy Spirit to speak (2 Pet 1:20-21)!

The scripture is the record of God’s message to us, and that message is all about Jesus. The Holy Spirit is the who confirms and interprets the scripture for us—every Christian should read John Calvin’s short explanation of this (see Book 1, ch. 7, from Calvin’s Institutes of the Christian Religion). So, to know the truth about Jesus, we must read about his message in the holy scriptures and trust the Spirit of God to help us understand it all.

Q3: How can I be sure I’m interpreting the scriptures about Jesus the right way?

This immediately raises another important question—how do I know that I (and my church) are putting the puzzle pieces together correctly? How do we know we’re believing the right things about Jesus? How do I know I’m interpreting the scriptures the proper way?

Here is where we must deliberately leave our American individualism behind, and make sure we’re on the same page as the untold millions of our Christian brothers and sisters who have gone before us. Jesus tells us that true believers will hear his voice and follow him (Jn 10:1-4). This means that Christians down the centuries have heard the message of the true Jesus, have followed him, and have written down Spirit-led facts and summaries about what the bible says about the true Jesus.

We find this broad consensus about Christian doctrine in the great creeds and confessions of the early church. This doesn’t mean these documents stand atop holy scripture like an infallible filter. One Baptist scholar memorably said we ought to believe in suprema scriptura, which means the bible is the highest or supreme channel of religious authority.¹ This is good—we believe that “the Holy Scripture is the only sufficient, certain, and infallible rule of all saving knowledge, faith, and obedience …” (2LBCF, 1.1). So, creeds and confessions aren’t filters that interpret the bible for us—but they are guardrails that give us assurance that we haven’t run off the road and into a ditch.

I’m thinking especially of these documents:

The Nicene Creed of 325 A.D. and the Nicene-Constantinople Creed of 381 A.D. These clarified Jesus’ deity and his relationship to the Father. Is Jesus a created being? Is Jesus an angel? If Jesus is God’s “son,” then does this mean he came on the scene later than the Father? If Jesus is God, and the Father is God—are Father and Son one being/substance or two?
The Chalcedonian Creed of 451 A.D. What does it mean that Jesus is both divine and human? Did he stop being divine? Or was he not really a fully human person? What happened to him in the incarnation?

From there, see especially the major creedal documents that give shape to your Christian tradition. Assuming you’re a Protestant Christian, the buffet line goes a bit like this:

Lutherans have the Book of Concord, which consists of the Augsburg Confession, Luther’s small and large catechisms, and some other documents.
Presbyterians have the Westminster Standards, which include the Westminster Confession of Faith, and the Westminster larger and smaller catechisms.
The Reformed have the Three Forms of Unity, which are the Belgic Confession, the Heidelberg catechism, and the Canons of Dort.
Baptists are cantankerous in this regard, so I’ll just select one strand of the Baptist tradition and suggest the Second London Baptist Confession (“2LBCF”) and the Orthodox Catechism.²

I don’t care which flavor of Christian you are—go to your tradition’s confession of faith and read what it says about Jesus. No matter which tradition you consult from my list, they all say the same thing about Jesus—the same truths, the same affirmations, the same Jesus. Read the 2LBCF’s explanation here—it’s not long!

Why do creeds and confessions matter? Why are they good guardrails?

Because we don’t need to reinvent the wheel every generation. God gave the same Holy Spirit to our brothers and sisters in 325 A.D. as he does today. He led them into all truth, too. They believed the gospel, read the scriptures, learned from their church leaders and from one another, and had power on high from the Spirit of God. They wrote down summary statements of the faith. We have what they wrote. We would be fools to toss all that aside and start fresh with a blank sheet of paper.

This means that, if you and your church believe something about Jesus that no credible group has ever believed in the history of the church … then you’re probably wrong. We can consult a record of sorts because we have those creeds and confessions from centuries gone by that tell us what our brothers and sisters in Christ thought about who Jesus is and what he’s done.

How do we avoid false teachers?

They’re tricksy. They don’t wear orange jumpsuits. They preach false things about who Jesus is and what he’s done—they deny the real Jesus. So, we must read the scripture and trust the Holy Spirit to guide us. We make sure we’re on the right track by joining a local church which swims in the broad stream of Christianity that has existed from the beginning—one that doesn’t naively try to re-invent the wheel but appreciates the guardrails of the tradition of which it is a part.

Peter said to: “remember the words spoken beforehand by the holy prophets and the commandment of the Lord and Savior spoken by your apostles” (2 Pet 3:2). We give ourselves assurance that we’re interpreting the prophecies and our Savior’s words the right way if we make sure we’re not contradicting what our brothers and sisters have said for centuries!

Read your tradition’s governing documents. See what they say about Jesus—again, read the 2LBCF’s summary about him here. If your church proclaims no tradition beyond its own statement of faith or that of a niche movement with no meaningful roots in the broad Christian tradition, then you are likely at greater risk of bring tricked by false teachers.

[1] James L. Garrett, Systematic Theology: Biblical, Historical, and Evangelical, Fourth Edition, vol. 1 (Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 2014), 206.

[2] If you want to read a good, short, and learned explanation of the Baptist tradition, see Matthew Y. Emerson and R. Lucas Stamps, The Baptist Vision: Faith and Practice for a Believer’s Church (Nashville: B&H Academic, 2025).

Loving Your Enemies

Matthew 5:43-48 is one of the hardest passages in the bible. People usually know two things about Jesus—that he said not to judge, and that he loved people! This is the “he loved people” bit.

The Passage

First, we have Jesus’ statement about a common idea floating around in culture at the time: “You have heard that it was said, ‘YOU SHALL LOVE YOUR NEIGHBOR and hate your enemy’” (Mt 5:43).

This is kinda right and kinda wrong. Yes, the bible does speak of loving your neighbor (Lev 19:17-18). And yes—if you squint just the right way you can twist it to support hating your enemies, too. The Psalms have some hard sayings like this: “Do I not hate those who hate You, O LORD? And do I not loathe those who rise up against You? I hate them with the utmost hatred; They have become my enemies” (Ps 139:21-22).

There is a right way and a wrong way to understand these harsh psalms—but more on that later. For now, it’s enough to know that God has never wanted us to hate and loathe our enemies. But this is where popular piety was in Jesus’ day = love your neighbor, and feel free to hate your enemies if necessary.

This is wrong. Throughout the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus has combatted a lawyerly way of reading the bible. This is an approach that always wants to minimize personal responsibility and find loopholes that make compliance easier. It’s a rules-based approach to a relationship with God. It’s the same thing the lawyer tried to pull with Jesus that prompted the parable of the Good Samaritan.

As he does throughout this sermon, Jesus continues his “you have heard … but I say to you” pattern. How does he correct this misreading of scripture? He says: “But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you …” (Mt 5:44).

This means what it says. There is no hidden meaning in the original Greek that can give you something easier to swallow. We’ll come back to this in a bit. For now, let’s think about why Jesus gives this command. What’s the purpose of this almost impossible task? Jesus tells us: “so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven …” (Mt 5:45a).

What is Jesus saying?

He’s saying that if you don’t love your enemies, you’re not one of God’s children. If you don’t pray for your enemies, you’re also not one of his children.

Why does Jesus say this? “… for He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous” (Mt 5:45b). Jesus is saying that God has a common love (or common grace) for everyone—not just his adopted children. So, if we claim to be Christians, we must be the same way. We must have an authentic, baseline love for everyone, not just our covenant brothers and sisters in the faith.

Why is this important?

Jesus explains: “For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Even the tax collectors, do they not do the same? And if you greet only your brothers and sisters, what more are you doing than others? Even the Gentiles, do they not do the same?” (Mt 5:46-47).

Being kind and loving to people who already like you doesn’t make you a Christian. There are plenty of non-Christians who do that all the time. Nice people. Kind people. Caring people. That isn’t counter-cultural. It isn’t revolutionary. So Jesus says this isn’t enough. Being a Jesus person means more than that. A lot more.

But this is the cultural attitude Jesus is up against. When a lawyer asked Jesus what he must do to gain eternal life, Jesus recited the two commandments which summed up a believer’s whole duty—love for God and your neighbor. The lawyer agreed, then immediately tried to minimize the command to make his target smaller: “But wishing to justify himself, he said to Jesus, ‘And who is my neighbor?’” (Lk 10:29).

Jesus corrected this legalistic, lawyerly way of understanding scripture with his famous parable of the Good Samaritan. He said that your “neighbor” was anyone who was in distress—not just your covenant brother and sister.

So, Jesus sums it all up: “Therefore you shall be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Mt 5:48). He doesn’t mean “perfect” in the sense of “without fault” (e.g., “a flawless diamond”). Nobody is without fault! Instead, Jesus means “perfect” in the sense of “meeting the highest standard” (e.g., “my birthday was just perfect!”). The standard at issue here is this baseline, common love for everyone. One British translation does a good job by translating Matthew 5:48 like this: “Therefore, just as your heavenly Father is complete in showing love to everyone, so also you must be complete” (NEB).

Does Jesus contradict scripture?

There are several Psalms that show us raw, honest, unfiltered emotion. They ask why. They ask if God cares. They demand justice for evil. They complain about harm, injury, and heartache. They’re “real.” Read Psalm 109 and see for yourself. This all seems to contradict what Jesus says in our passage. Has something changed?

The best answer is that psalms like these teach us that we can be honest and open with God when we’re hurting. We don’t have to pretend we understand. We don’t need to pretend we accept everything without question. We can ask. We can plead. We can beg for justice. We can want evildoers to be punished. These psalmists almost never beg for the opportunity for personal retribution. Instead, they ask God for justice (see Rev 6:10).

There is a very small, but important, difference between (a) praying for God’s vengeance upon your enemies, and (b) hating them. Jesus is saying we must do more than just pray for justice. We must love our enemies, too.

What does it look like to love and pray for your enemies?

Here is where we need to set aside easy and cheap answers.

Some people say to love your enemies means giving them the gospel. Yes, but that’s a very safe answer. It’s Christianese. We can do better than that.
Others say that Jesus is really talking about “enemies” who persecute the church, so we ought to pray for our brothers and sisters who die for their faith around the world. Yes, but that’s too abstract and easy. It’s a cheap answer that doesn’t ask anything from you because you don’t know the people half a world away. This is correct, but it’s not good enough.
Still other Christians opt for half-measures and try to be kind to everyone, but that’s perhaps the cheapest cop-out of them all. Love is not kindness or a “bless your heart” facade. Jesus is demanding a whole lot more.

“Love” means a deep affection. It’s much, much more than being polite to someone. Jesus is speaking about our attitudes. He tells us to care about and have deep affection for the people who hurt us, who do us wrong. We only wrestle with what Jesus is saying when we apply his words here to the people in our life who are hurting us. Anything else is an evasion.

Jesus says to love and pray for the people who hurt you. As he was crucified, the bible tells us: “Jesus was saying, ‘Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing’” (Lk 23:34). As Stephen was being stoned to death he called out: “Lord, do not hold this sin against them” (Acts 7:60).

Set aside the cheap and easy examples. This isn’t about praying for the person who cuts you off in traffic. This is about the people who actually hurt you, harm you, and are cruel to you.

We can each think of these people.
We can hold them in our mind’s eye.
We can see them right now.
We remember what they did.
What they’re still doing.
How they hurt us.
How they betrayed us.
The ramifications of it all.

We remember it, and a sour scowl comes on our face. We shake our heads to banish them from our thoughts. Jesus says these are the people we must love and pray for.

Will we pray for them? Not a gloating sort of prayer (“Lord, I pray for Steve because he’s a no-good son of a you-know-what who needs judgment!”), but a prayer for the person’s salvation and well-bring. For us to not hate. For us to be willing to forgive.

Why does Jesus want us to do this?

So he can change you from the inside out. So people know we’re different. We sometimes forget why we’re here and disconnect Jesus’ commands from the larger picture.

The Christian story is about God rescuing a family, through King Jesus, to love him and be with him forever. This is the sum of Genesis 1 to Revelation 22.
Our job is to be a living part of a local church, which is sort of a forward operating base in hostile territory from which we sally forth to convince outsiders to join the Jesus family.
The Sermon on the Mount is Jesus telling us how to be countercultural—what it means to be Jesus people.

If there is no Jesus counterculture, then there is no Jesus culture at all. If that’s true, then what are we calling people to join?

Are we here to push truth, justice, and the American way? You don’t need the church for that. Just see the new Superman movie.
Is it our primary job to love immigrants, help poor people, and foster so-called “inclusion” in society? You don’t need the church for that—just go join an advocacy group.
Do you want to make a difference in your community? Run for city council.

It isn’t the church’s main job to do any of these things. It is the church’s job to call people to defect from Babylon and join the Jesus family, and that means being part of a Jesus counterculture which trumpets and lives out Jesus values, Jesus attitudes, and Jesus’ message.

If we claim to be Christians, then we must commit to the Jesus counterculture so his message of love and forgiveness has some teeth to it! One of the soldiers for whom Jesus prayed believed in him just after Jesus died! “When the centurion, who was standing right in front of Him, saw the way He breathed His last, he said, ‘Truly this man was the Son of God!’” (Mk 15:39).

The attitude behind everything Jesus says is in our passage: “love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you” (Mt 5:44). If we claim to be God’s children, we must try to make this our attitude, too. It isn’t easy or pleasant. But it is our duty to try.

Understanding 1 Corinthians 11:3-16: Paul’s Message Explained

Christians often wonder what on earth Paul is saying at 1 Corinthians 11:3-16.

Is this a passage about how women must submit to their husbands?
Should all Christian women wear head coverings?
Why does the apostle Paul mention angels?

It’s all very confusing! In this article, I’ll do three things:

I’ll give a summary of what I believe Paul is saying.
I’ll talk about what “head” means in 1 Corinthians 11:3.
Then, I’ll suggest a common-sense application for Christians in 2025 America.

This is an abbreviated version of a much longer article you can read in PDF here. Go there for more in-depth discussion.

What is Paul saying?

This is a passage about holiness and propriety, according to the cultural code language of the day, in an honor/shame context.

So, according to the cultural code language active in Corinth in the early 50s A.D., every man praying or prophesying with a head covering disgraces Christ, his prominent representative or “head.” He does this because local men in pagan worship often used head coverings. If a Christian man follows local custom and uses one, it communicates the wrong idea.
But, on the other hand, every woman praying or prophesying with her head uncovered disgraces her husband, her forward-facing relationship proxy or “head.” She does this because, according to the cultural code language of that day, if she prays or prophesies without her head covered she is signaling that she is one and the same as a prostitute and a whore.

“[I]t is the Corinthian women, not modern women, whom he wishes to persuade to cover their heads.”[1] To understand this passage’s meaning for today, we must (a) extract the principle from the A.D. 50-ish cultural dress in which it’s clothed, and then (b) translate that principle into 21^st century American cultural code language.

What does “head” mean in 1 Corinthians 11:3?

This verse is the crux of the passage and is the hinge upon which the other tricky bits turn. Christians have a long tradition of interpreting passages like this through a misogynistic lens. This doesn’t mean Christian scholars from bygone days used to be sexist pigs. It just means they were men of their times and, in those days, women were often treated as intellectual inferiors.

One commentator said, without explanation, that “the subordination of the woman to the man is perfectly consistent with their identity as to nature …”[2] Another wrote that this was simply “the Christian order” and didn’t bother to defend his statement.[3]
Still other writers show clear misogyny. One scholar declared that the man “must be head and chief; as he is also with respect to his superior gifts and excellencies, as strength of body, and endowments of mind, whence the woman is called the weaker vessel …”[4]

So, what on earth does “head” mean in 1 Corinthians 11:3, in the Greek dialect of the day? The verse reads: “But I want you to realize that the head of every man is Christ, and the head of the woman is man, and the head of Christ is God.” There are three common options: authority, source, or prominent representative. You don’t need to know Greek to decide—the context will help you.

Think about it:

Authority. Is Christ the authority over man, and the man the authority over the woman, and God the authority over God?
Source. Is Christ the source/origin of man, and the source/origin of the woman, and God the source/origin of Christ?
Prominent representative. Is Christ the representative for man, and the man the representative for the woman, and God the representative for God?

Does “head” mean authority?

The “authority” option struggles to explain in what way God has authority over Jesus. Some advocates point to the incarnation, but that is a temporary arrangement, and Paul speaks in the present tense-form—God is the authority over Christ right now.

So, that’s a problem.

“Authority” in this context, according to the standard Greek dictionary, means “superior rank.”[5] Another dictionary explains it means “one who is of supreme or pre-eminent status, in view of authority to order or command.”[6] Is this really the Father’s eternal relationship to the Son? Superior rank? Authority to command? Superior status?

If so, this would create a hierarchy in the Godhead. That’s bad.

If there is a hierarchy, then we have different wills, different agendas, an order that must be imposed—an authority structure. Different wills are a problem for monotheism. Christians have always denied that God is a composite whole—he doesn’t consist of various “parts.”[7] There is one being that is God, who eternally consists of three co-equal and co-eternal Persons. God has one will. There are not three wills to be corralled or commanded. There is no ”consensus” and compromise to arrive at a united decision. There is a single will, because of the mysterious circulation of the divine life that binds the three into one (Jn 10:30, 17:21-23).

Does “head” mean source or origin?

In this understanding, God is the source of Christ, and Christ is the source of man, and man is the source of the woman. The problem is that the word just isn’t used that way by anyone directly before, during, or directly after Paul’s era.[8]

The word can mean “source” in classical Greek,[9] but that was 4-5^th century B.C.—perhaps 400 to 500 years before Paul wrote. However, it is absurd to believe that Paul suddenly uses word in a way that’s as much as half a millennium out of date at this point. Here’s a contemporary example to illustrate how ridiculous this is:

ME:	The bible is absolute!
OTHER PERSON:	I agree. The bible is our supreme authority.
ME:	Yes, but that’s not what I said. I said the bible is perfect.
OTHER PERSON:	No, you didn’t say “perfect.” You said “absolute.”
ME:	Exactly.
OTHER PERSON:	But, “absolute” doesn’t mean “perfect.”
ME:	Ah, but it meant that in 1604![10] That’s the way I used the word just now.
OTHER PERSON:	Seriously … ?

“Source” would also make God the “source” of Jesus, perhaps meaning the incarnation, but that could only work in the sense that Jesus “came from” the Father’s location in heaven, but location is not source/origin. Finally, it is difficult to see how “source” could work in the sense of “the source of every man is Christ”—are women are not also “from” Christ?

Does “head” mean prominent representative?

The idea here is that the “head” is a figure of speech for a matrix of related ideas,[11] such as:

To occupy a place at the front of something, with the idea of prominence. Jesus is the cornerstone or, more literally, “the head of the corner” of a metaphorical building (Ps 117:22, LXX; cp. KJV at Ps 118:22). That is, Jesus is the most prominent stone in the structure. God told Israel that, if they obeyed him, “The LORD will make you the head, not the tail” (Deut 28:13), and vice versa (Deut 28:44). We still employ this usage in English as to “be at the head of the class,” etc. Likewise, God cut off “both head and tail” from Israel in the form of corrupt dignitaries and lying prophets, respectively (Isa 9:13-16). That is, he smote the most prominent and visible people in society.
The uppermost part or extremity (BDAG, s.v., sense 2.b.) The remnants of Saul’s army took their stand against Joab “on top of one hill;” that is, at the head of the hill (2 Kgdms 2:25 [2 Sam 2:25]). Solomon’s temple had “two bowl-shaped capitals on top of the pillars” (2 Chr 4:12).
The literal head being a figure of speech referring to the whole person. “Your blood be on your own heads!” (Acts 18:6). Solomon told Shimei that if he ever left Jerusalem “you can be sure you will die; your blood will be on your own head” (3 Kgdms 2:37 [1 Kgs 2:37]). The blessings of his father and mother “will be upon the head of Joseph” (Gen 49:26, LES). Ezra confessed that: “our sins have multiplied beyond our heads” (Esdras A8:72).

The sense would be that “head” in 1 Corinthians 11:3 signifies one who is the prominent, forward-facing representative of another. This “head” is prominent because he is “out in front” (as it were). He is also the “head” because he is the proxy for the larger relationship.

In a similar way, in Baptist polity the pastor is not the “ruler” or “authority over” the congregation. Rather, he is the most prominent member because he is “out in front” and forward facing. He is the local church’s proxy because he represents the congregation. This is why “he must also have a good reputation with outsiders, so that he will not fall into disgrace and into the devil’s trap” (1 Tim 3:7). In this sense, the pastor is “the head” of the local church.

Which use of “head” best fits the context?

“Source” is unlikely, as we have seen. This leaves “authority” or “prominent representative.” Which makes best sense of (a) the text of 1 Corinthians 11:3, and (b) the larger context of 1 Corinthians 11:3-16?

“But I want you to understand that …”

The “authority” option

Meaning	Significance
Christ is the [authority] of every man	Christ rules over the man.
And the man is the [authority] of a woman	Man rules over the woman.
And God is the [authority] of Christ	God rules over Christ.

The “prominent representative” option

Meaning	Significance
Christ is the [prominent representative] of every man	Christ represents man.
And the man is the [prominent representative] of a woman	Man represents woman.
And God the [prominent representative] of Christ	God (i.e., the Father) represents Christ.

Look at what Paul says in 1 Corinthians 11:4-5: the woman who prays with her literal head uncovered dishonors or disgraces her “head” (i.e., the man). Whatever “head” means, it is the reason why the disgrace happens. The shape of this relationship explains the disgrace. How do our two options explain this?

Authority. The idea is that insubordination makes the leader look weak. This is the most basic corollary to emphasizing authority and disgrace—you must not be a very competent ruler. Thus, the woman can disgrace the man by rebelling against his authority. Christ can do the same to the Father. Man may do the same to Christ. This cannot stand, etc.
Prominent representation. Your wrong action brings shame and disgrace upon the forward-facing, “out in front” proxy for your relationship. You disgrace your husband. The husband disgraces Christ. Christ disgraces his heavenly father. The prominent representative is the hinge upon which honor and glory pivot towards the whole. You must not bring dishonor upon your prominent representative.

Paul’s focus is dishonor, disgrace, and shame. We know this because that’s what he says in 1 Corinthians 11:5-6 (“dishonors her head … disgrace for a woman”).[12] The issue is not disobedience, which is the slant the “authority” option takes.[13] This tilts the scales in favor of “prominent representative.” It is a metaphorical usage well supported in contemporaneous Greek literature. It retains the “head” wordplay Paul deliberately employs. It makes good sense of the context of 1 Corinthians 11:3-16. It fits with the honor and shame culture in which Paul operated—one in which honor and dishonor were “the primary axis of value.”[14]

The passage has little or nothing to do with the issue of the man’s authority over the woman. What mars the headship relationship, whether between man and woman or between Christ and man, is dishonour, not disobedience: so the woman praying or prophesying with her head uncovered ‘dishonours her head’ (v.5). The question of authority is irrelevant to a discussion of the proper manner in which men and women should pray and prophesy; nor is it a valid deduction from the idea that man has authority over the woman that she should veil herself in worship, an activity directed not towards the man but towards God.[15]

The emphasis is honor to one’s prominent representative, and its negative corollaries dishonor, shame, and disgrace. Mulan understood this well.

What does all this mean for modern-day Christians?

The principle is this = a woman must not disgrace her prominent representative “head” by broadcasting “sexually available and interested” signals in the cultural code language of the day.

This means you must not do whatever behavior communicates that message in the cultural code language of your day.

First, consider what dress, actions, and behaviors a woman can use that signal to the wider world that “I’m sexually available and interested”?
Second, don’t do those things. You will disgrace your husband and yourself.

Summary of Paul’s Argument—Verse by Verse

Again, here is my much longer article for more information. I hope this honor/shame approach helps you understand Paul’s message and make it real in your life.

[1] Craig S. Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament, 2^nd ed. (Downers Grove: IVP, 2014), 482.

[2] Hodge, 1 Corinthians, 206.

[3] Edwards, 1 Corinthians, 271-72.

[4] Gill, Exposition of the New Testament, 2:683.

[5] BDAG, s.v. “κεφαλὴ,” 1.b.; p. 542.

[6] L&N, s.v. “κεφαλὴ,” p. 738.

[7] John Gill, A Complete Body of Doctrinal and Practical Divinity, new ed. (reprint; Paris: The Baptist Standard Bearer, 1995), 33; Augustus Strong, Systematic Theology, combined ed. (Philadelphia: American Baptist Publication Society, 1907),245f.

[8] I looked at every usage in the LXX, the New Testament, and the apostolic fathers—the usage just isn’t there. David Garland rightly observes, “[t]he paucity of lexicographical evidence—no Greek lexicon offers this as an option—makes this meaning for ‘head’ highly suspect,” (1 Corinthians, in BECNT (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2003), 515).

[9] See Henry George Liddell et al., A Greek-English Lexicon (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), s.v., sense II.d. For example, Philo speaks of a virgin goddess “whom the fable asserts to have sprung from the head (ἐκ τῆς τοῦ Διὸς κεφαλῆς) of Jupiter” (Peder Borgen, Kåre Fuglseth, and Roald Skarsten, “The Works of Philo: Greek Text with Morphology” (Logos Bible Software, 2005).

[10] Robert Cawdrey, A table alphabeticall, conteyning and teaching the true writing, and understanding of hard usually English words, borrowed from the Hebrew, Greek, Latine, or French etc with the interpretation thereof by plaine English words, gathered for the benefit & help of ladies, gentlewomen, or any other unskillful persons, whereby they may the more easily and better understand many hard English words, which they shall hear or read in scriptures, sermons, or elsewhere, and also be made able to use the same aptly themselves (London: IR, 1604), 10. Retrieved from https://tinyurl.com/4jwxyadh.

See also Oxford English Dictionary, s.v., “absolute” adj. and n., sense II.8.a., June 2025, https://doi.org/10.1093/OED/8089207512.

[11] See (1) A. C. Perriman, “The Head of a Woman: The Meaning of κεφαλὴ in 1 Cor 11:3,” in The Journal of Theological Studies, OCTOBER 1994, NEW SERIES, Vol. 45, No. 2, pp. 602-622, and (2) Anthony C. Thiselton, The First Epistle to the Corinthians: A Commentary on the Greek Text, in NIGTC (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000), 811-23. Garland follows them both (1 Corinthians, 514-16).

[12] Paul uses καταισχύνω in 1 Cor 11:4-5, which means dishonor, disgrace, or shame (BDAG, s.v., senses 1-2). He uses αἰσχρός at 1 Cor 11:6, which is “a term esp. significant in honor-shame oriented society; gener. in ref. to that which fails to meet expected moral and cultural standards [opp. καλός]) pert. to being socially or morally unacceptable, shameful, base” (BDAG, s.v.).

[13] Hodge says this passage is based on the principle “that order and subordination pervade the whole universe, and is essential to its being” (1 Corinthians, 206). Gould writes: “This rank and subordination form the principle on which the apostle bases his teaching in regard to the veiling of women” (1 Corinthians, 93).

[14] David A. DeSilva, Honor, Patronage, Kinship & Purity: Unlocking New Testament Culture (Downers Grove: IVP, 2000), 25.

[15] Perriman, “Head of a Woman,” 620. Emphasis added.

My Simple Commentary on Galatians for Everyone

My little book about Paul’s letter to the churches in Galatia is now published by Wipf & Stock. This is a “commentary,” which is a nerdy way of saying that it “comments” on every passage in Galatians and explains what it means. This book is my best shot at telling Christians, in simple language, what on earth the apostle Paul is saying in this letter.

Please consider buying a copy and reading through it as you study the letter to the Galatians. You don’t need to be a theologian to understand it. In fact, I deliberately wrote it for “normal” people like you. Here is a short interview I gave about the book:

Why did you write a book about the letter to the Galatians?

I come from a background that was very negative about the Old Covenant law. My tradition almost (but not quite) taught that life for Moses, David, and the psalmists in the old covenant was a slog—that relationship with God was more about works and less about loving obedience. It framed old covenant life as a series of tests and failures and covenant curses … until Christ came to finally bring us grace. So, my tradition basically taught that justification by faith (and not works) was a new thing. They didn’t explicitly say that (and the scholars within the movement do not teach or write that), but that’s how it came across from the pew—and therefore many Christians are confused about what Paul is saying to the Galatians.

What is the message of Galatians?

The message is that “in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision has any value. The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love” (Gal 5:6). We bring nothing meritorious to the table when we come to God for salvation. There is no merit, no earned credits, no consideration of your moral resume. There is only your faith in Jesus, which works or expresses itself by means of your love for him. The Galatians had become confused about this, and Paul wrote to set them (and us) straight.

Why do Christians need to understand the message of Galatians?

For at least two reasons, which Paul explains to us over and over again in the letter.

First, the foundation for a believer’s relationship with God has always been loving obedience. We love God, so we want to do what he says. It was true under the Old Covenant. It’s still true under the New Covenant. What has changed is not the way of salvation (it’s always been through Jesus), but the covenant shape of our relationship with God.

Second, we need to know (to really, truly know) that God makes us right with him (what the bible calls “justification”) by grace alone, through faith alone.

Why is Galatians so important for understanding salvation the right way?

First—if you think the way of salvation is new or radically different than it was for Moses, David, and Isaiah than it is for you, then you’ll read your bible all wrong. You’ll be confused. You won’t understand the Christian story. It’ll be like those newspaper pictures that printed slightly misaligned—everything will be out of focus.

Second, if it were possible to be good enough, smart enough, righteousness enough, obedient enough to be saved by obeying the Old Covenant law, then Christ came here and died for no reason (Gal 2:21)! So, we really need to understand how we can become right with God, and Paul tells us all about it.

What makes your book about Galatians worthwhile? Aren’t there other books about the same thing?

There are lots of great books about Galatians! Here are a few reasons why mine is worth your time:

I’m a bi-vocational pastor, which means I work fulltime in the real world and am used to “translating” Christianity into English for normal people! Nerdy stuff stays in the footnotes, and the text just explains what Paul says, section by section, in everyday, non-technical language.
I spend a lot of time emphasizing the right way to understand the Old Covenant law and the whole Christian story considering what Jesus has now done. I try to set the Galatians “episode” in its place in God’s bigger story.
It’s short!

You can find the book here, or at any major online retailer.

Here’s an excerpt:

Jewish agitators who believed themselves to be Christians were on the move among the churches in Galatia. Sure, they believed that Christians must trust in Jesus and His message, but they also believed we must observe Jewish boundary markers like the sabbath, circumcision, Old Covenant feast days, and other culturally “Jewish” ways of life.

These agitators were likely right–wing, hardline Jews who had “converted” to Christ and had not shed their Pharisaic tendencies. David deSilva characterizes them as a sort of clean–up team that sought to “fix” Paul’s “liberal” approach to the Mosaic law (cp. Acts 15:1–4; Phil 3:2–21). “[T]hey wanted to preserve fully the Jewishness of the new Christian movement and keep it firmly anchored within Judaism.”

In their eyes, Paul was a libertine who had tossed the Mosaic law aside. He couldn’t be trusted. He wasn’t teaching the truth, because he had forsaken the God–ordained cultural identity markers that made the Jews “God’s people.” So, the agitators attacked Paul’s authority. Their perspective shared some kinship with the more “Jewish flavor” of the congregation in Jerusalem, which was never entirely comfortable with Paul’s perspective on the Mosaic law’s role in the life of a New Covenant believer (Acts 21:21–22).

On the other side, Paul believed these agitators were not preaching the Christian message, but “another gospel” entirely. “I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you to live in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel—which is really no gospel at all. Evidently some people are throwing you into confusion and are trying to pervert the gospel of Christ,” (Gal 1:6–7).

Paul wrote this letter to warn the churches in southern Galatia against these false teachers. The letter is tinged throughout with a kind of hurt outrage—not bitterness, but wounded sorrow. “[H]e writes to the Galatians in the agony of heart which comes of the feeling that his work in Christ is being undone by false teachers, factious rivalries, and a mixture of stupidity and vice.” He wonders if he’s wasted his time on these believers (Gal 4:11). His relationship with them is particularly special because he first preached the gospel to them while ill, and the Galatians nonetheless welcomed him and listened to what he had to say (Gal 4:13).

But now so much has changed. They don’t trust Paul—the agitators have poisoned their minds against him. He’s forced to defend his credentials (Gal 1:11–2:10). He asks, “Have I now become your enemy by telling you the truth?” (Gal 4:16). So, Paul writes to explain the truth of the Gospel to them once again, to defend his own teaching, and to explain why “works of the law” can never be the vehicle for salvation.

Here’s another excerpt about the different ways to “read” the letter to the Galatians:

I like Nutella. A lot. My wife and I discovered it while we were stationed in Italy for six years, while I was in the military. Since we returned to the United States, we’ve made sure to always have some on hand. We often spread Nutella on toast, or maybe a croissant or a bagel. But, alas! some people don’t like Nutella. They prefer jam, or butter, or even cream cheese. What you put on the bagel will affect how it tastes. It’ll color everything about it. Sure, a bagel is a bagel—but it tastes very different with butter or Nutella!

Bible interpretation is kind of like that. What you bring to the table will color how the scripture “tastes”—how you read and interpret it. Different Christian traditions have their preferred way to “eat” the bagel! The book of Galatians is particularly tricky, because there are at least five questions which any interpretation of Galatians must answer:

What were the grounds of salvation under the Old Covenant?
How did these grounds of salvation relate to the “works of the law” about which Paul wrote in Galatians?
What were the Galatian agitator’s opinions on “works of the law”?
What was Paul’s position on the “works of the law”?
What was Paul’s main burden in the letter to the Galatian churches?

Depending on the flavor of your Christian tradition, you’ll answer each of these questions differently. This may surprise you. But the book of Galatians is a prism which refracts many assumptions about “what the bible clearly says” and exposes them to the light of day. When that happens, we find that many bible–believing Christians do not see eye to eye on “obvious” things.

We’ll highlight three different theological frameworks below. Each framework answers those five questions differently. In faithful, bible–believing churches in 2024 America, it’s likely you will find one of these three perspectives on offer.

What are these three different frameworks and how do they read Galatians differently? I’m afraid you’ll have to buy the book!

Musings on theology, apologetics, practical Christianity and God's grace in salvation through Jesus Christ

Three questions

The end of the age (Mt 24:4-14)

The sign of Jesus’ coming (Mt 24:15-28)

Jesus’ return (Mt 24:29-31)

Be ready (Mt 24:32-51)

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Messiah and the “gap” between “weeks” 69 and 70

The mystery prince

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Prayer answered (Daniel 9:1-23)

The sum of the whole thing (Daniel 9:24)

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Question 1—How does atonement work?

Question 2—Cruel and unusual?

Helpful?

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The problem

Righteousness from God

Why being a Protestant matters

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Q1: What is a false teacher?

Q2: How do we know who Jesus is and what he has done?

Q3: How can I be sure I’m interpreting the scriptures about Jesus the right way?

How do we avoid false teachers?

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The Passage

Does Jesus contradict scripture?

What does it look like to love and pray for your enemies?

Why does Jesus want us to do this?

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What is Paul saying?

What does “head” mean in 1 Corinthians 11:3?

Does “head” mean authority?

Does “head” mean source or origin?

Does “head” mean prominent representative?

Which use of “head” best fits the context?

What does all this mean for modern-day Christians?

Summary of Paul’s Argument—Verse by Verse

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Why did you write a book about the letter to the Galatians?

What is the message of Galatians?

Why do Christians need to understand the message of Galatians?

Why is Galatians so important for understanding salvation the right way?

What makes your book about Galatians worthwhile? Aren’t there other books about the same thing?

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