​Jesus was a Jewish Rabbi. His life’s fullest meaning can only be discerned in his Jewish context (see Jesus vs. Synagogues Part 1: Where he agreed with Rabbis). Even the word “Christ” is a Greek translation of the Hebrew term for an anointed ruler, Messiah. It isn’t his last name, but rather a theologically charged designation for the long-awaited redemptive role he was playing in an old Jewish story.

However, the overlap between First-Century Jewish culture and Jesus’ Way has limits. Jesus not only embodied his culture and embraced its accoutrements; he also challenged its everyday assumptions.

People often ask, "Why do some churches let women preach when 1 Timothy 2:12 prohibits it?" My Socratic response is: "Why do all churches let women braid their hair when 1 Timothy 2:9 condemns it?"

No one takes the Bible at face value. First, because no one grows up speaking Koine Greek and ancient Hebrew at home (so they can't read its "face value"), but second because English translations tell even the most novice reader that certain commands are culturally irrelevant. When you read Paul's repeated command to "Greet one another with a holy kiss" (Romans 16:16; 1 Cor 16:20; 2 Cor 13:12; 1 Thess 5:26), no one gets convicted and starts puckering up for church. Those commands were clearly intended for a different cultural context, and we recognize it. We know to distinguish the temporary cultural expression from its enduring principle.

The same cultural sensitivity must be applied to 1 Timothy 2. In first-century Ephesus where Timothy pastored churches, braided hair and female teachers were a bad idea. Why? The first one is easy. Braided hair, gold jewelry, and expensive clothing flaunted wealth. And Paul wanted "those who are rich in this present world not to be conceited" (1 Timothy 6:17). The injunction against female teachers and Paul's prescription for females to learn quietly in church gatherings are much more culturally nuanced.

​Christians have struggled for centuries to explain why Jesus hasn’t returned to earth. That frustration has led many Bible readers to search for answers. 
 
Although Jesus told his followers they couldn’t figure out the exact day or hour, that hasn’t stopped the search for clues about the general timeframe. In the last hundred years, people have latched on to Jesus’ prediction of “the end” in Matthew 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.”

Do Jesus' words mean systematically sharing the gospel around the globe can speed up "the end"?

What Many Christians Think

When the context of this statement is disregarded or misunderstood, Christians assume Jesus’ words explain why we are still waiting for him to return and set up his kingdom on earth. Theologian George Eldon Ladd summarized how a growing number of Christians interpret Jesus’ explanation in his 1959 book The Gospel of the Kingdom and The Gospel Coalition (whose council members include John Piper, D.A. Carson, Tim Keller and Al Mohler) promote his logic to this day:

This conviction has led to hashtag hype to #CountforZero and to finish the #MissiontoZero. The “zero” means zero groups of people are unreached. Ministries like Finishing the Task have formed to track spreadsheets of unreached people groups until no group is left on the list. Donors have created the Finishing Fund to pay ministries to reach those people groups so Jesus can be freed up to return to earth. All these initiatives are driven by the same conviction that led editor Rick Wood of the Mission Frontiers to publish the article "Bring Back The King?" and claim, “Matt. 24:14 clearly indicates that world evangelization is a prerequisite to the Lord's coming.”
 
But what if we have misunderstood the message of Matthew 24:14 and pinned our hopes on a false promise? We must dissect the language and context of Jesus’ statement to determine what he meant and to clearly identify what exactly would end once the nations heard about the kingdom’s arrival.

The way things are said often communicates more than what is said. We know this rule of communication is true when we are talking, but we often forget it when listening to Jesus’ written words in the Gospels.

If you have ever seen a “Red Letter” Bible, you know how easy it becomes to pick out the words of Jesus in the Gospels. You may also know that the Gospel of Matthew has a ton more red font than Mark. Why? Because Mark focuses more on Jesus’ activity while Matthew is focused on his teaching.

If you skim through Matthew in a “Red Letter” Bible, you will find a few long sections of uninterrupted red font. Sayings that Luke spread out across many chapters about Jesus’ life are gathered into lengthy sermons in Matthew. Most people have heard about the first one: the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7). However, 4 other sermons have been formed out of Jesus’ sayings around common themes: Instructions for Disciples in Matthew 10, Kingdom Parables in Matthew 13, Dealing with Sin in the Church in Matthew 18, and the Judgment Sayings of Matthew 23-25.

In total, Matthew created 5 long sermons out of Jesus’ sayings. We know the 5 sermons were created intentionally because they all have the same ending: “when Jesus had finished saying these things” (Matthew 7:28; 11:1; 13:53; 19:1; 26:1). This literary marker gets the attention of the careful reader. It brings up the important hermeneutical question: Why did Matthew organize Jesus’ sayings into 5 sets of instructions?

Isn't it obvious what we can do through Christ who strengthens us? "All Things." Philippians 4:13 says so. That's why sports figures love the verse. It's why they tattoo it on their chest. Who cares if it makes no sense for players on opposing teams to believe Christ will help them both win the same game (think about it). It pumps you up with a sense that you have divine power to pummel your opponents.

But that's not why Tim Tebow wrote Philippians 4:13 on his black eye stickers when he played football. During an interview at the end of his college career, he told the Baptist Press:

​Thomas Aquinas sent Christianity down a disastrous road. What started out as an attempt to translate biblical faith into contemporary philosophical discussions became an irreversible distortion of doctrine. His intrigue with a philosophical fad re-directed how theology was done for the last 700 years.

In the 13th Century when Aquinas wrote, it had become cool again to reason like Greek philosophers. 1,000 years earlier, the Platonic ideas about the Divine essence, logos, and demiurge had already shaped the language of 4th-century church creeds about Jesus’ divine nature and the Trinity. Now, the Greek categories were returning with the Renaissance to reconstruct the Christian faith. Aquinas embraced Aristotle and Plato in a historic act of unintentional syncretism. The systematic Greek logic behind his Summa Theologiae became the standard for structuring the Christian faith. The theological enterprise turned into a “sacred science” (in Aquinas’s words) with its “propositions” and “principles” similar to other philosophical sciences.

The long-term impact of Summa Theologiae on how theology is done was unintentional. Most theologians and historians frame Aquinas as an intellectual missionary. He was trying to express genuinely biblical faith in the language and concepts of contemporary thought leaders, just as the 4th and 5th century creeds were doing. In the most generous reading, Aquinas and the creeds are not examples of the Hellenization of the Gospel but of the evangelization of Hellenism (thank you Van Hoozer for this succinct framework!).

Unfortunately, the context of such contextual theology often gets forgotten in future forms that imitate it. Aquinas was no exception. Aquinas's theological science hopefully affected scientific philosophers in his day, but his Aristotelian assumptions likewise infected future Christian theology. Going forward, doctrine became synonymous with categorizing answers to topical theology questions (Yeah, I'm looking at you Dispensational and Reformed theologians ;) .

By the time Protestant reformers had their heyday in the 16th Century, the rules of the theological game had been established. The Christian faith did not find itself in a trail of divine action left through human history. It was more philosophically astute and well-ordered than that. Christian theologians were now expected to run past epistemological humility in grandiose efforts to restructure biblical content into answers for any doctrinal question (think Grudem’s Systematic Theology). Systematizing theologians of the Protestant tradition have long since employed a dangerous formula: Words from the Bible + culturally and linguistically determined logic = answers to every theological or ontological question. The diversity of biblical genres that embodied truth and the diachronic developments from Genesis to Revelation gave way to uniform answers delivered in synchronic slices that did not reflect a dominant form of delivering truth anywhere in Scripture.

Now what could be wrong with breaking up the Bible into properly categorized propositions? In short, everything. If your theology doesn't look like or act like the Bible itself, then it cannot represent its contents faithfully. It distorts not distillate it’s substance.

Mental associations direct the way we interpret what people mean with their words. If the first place your mind goes is to the same meaning someone intends, communication works. But if you associate the words with the wrong meaning, you will misrepresent what someone means to say. That's a big deal when it's the Word of God.

A question that should push us all to study more carefully is: Are we mistaking the echo of our own assumptions for the meaning of God's Word?

If you haven't read it yet, Reenacting the Way (of Jesus) unwraps the commonly misunderstood messages of the Gospels. Jesus' healing miracles, turning water into wine, feeding the 5,000 and calming a storm all lose their meaning when we reduce them to miraculous moments that revealed Jesus' divinity. They had very specific meanings for their original audience not just some generic meaning for everyone.

​The same miscommunication happens when we chase the futuristic relevance of the book of Revelation rather than the reason John recorded it for his ancient audience. We miss Jesus' personalized message for his first century audience in Asia Minor. Let’s stop doing this. Flattening the Bible's first meaning loosens the anchor that holds it from floating down the river of your imagination.

So let's talk about a specific example: being lukewarm. In the popular passage of Revelation 3:15-16, Jesus says, “I wish you were cold or hot, but because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will vomit you out of my mouth.” Why does Jesus want people made of extreme temperatures, like hot or cold, or else he will discard them?

How can we avoid mistaking the echo of our own assumptions for the meaning of God's Word?

The terrific task handed down to us since the Reformation is to interpret Scripture on our own. Bible translations have proliferated. Bible reading has become the bedrock of Protestant spirituality. Bible interpretation, therefore, is the lynchpin to which Lord you serve. The watershed issue in our imagination of God is the way in which we determine the meaning of the text. So are you hearing God's voice or only pandering to your pre-existing beliefs by making verses verify your personal preferences?

Easter morning wasn't an unexpected miracle. Many Jews were waiting for what God would do next. Some had begun to expect resurrection from the dead.

Jewish Rabbis and ascetic Essene movements had been studying the Prophets to figure out everything God was about to do. Jewish documents produced from 1st Century theologians, like 2 Baruch, 4 Ezra, Enoch, and the Dead Sea Scrolls, talked about what would take place. God was about to step into history to redeem. He was about to put an end to an age of oppression and corruption. He was about to introduce a new age. But what signs would tell people the new age had begun?

The Gospel for Asia (GFA) lawsuit alleging misuse of donations to build a luxury HQ in Texas rather than do ministry in India has made headlines. Following Warren Throckmorton's critical posts, February news articles have been released in Christianity Today, Charisma News, and the Christian Post. What can we learn from this debacle?

I evaluated GFA's leadership, strategy, finances, and impact as a philanthropic advisor to wealthy Christians in 2010. After comparing 7 church-planting ministries in India, GFA came out on the bottom for many reasons, starting with no internal accountability. Our philanthropic advisory firm Excellence in Giving has directed all philanthropy clients away from GFA since our first evaluation of their work.

​GFA Lawsuit is an Indictment Against ECFA

For the past decade, GFA has had serious organizational problems. But they proudly displayed the ECFA seal up until last year. ECFA missed the issues at GFA for years because their seal of approval is virtually worthless for an international ministry. How can I make such a bold statement when ECFA discovered GFA's financial mismanagement in 2015 and revoked their membership before the lawsuit? Let me explain what ECFA does and does not check when they sell their seal to a ministry.