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Peter as the Prophetic History of the Church

By Jeremy Myers
17 Comments

Peter as the Prophetic History of the Church

In Matthew 16, Jesus asks His disciples who they thought He was. It was Peter who answered that Jesus was the Christ, the Son of the living God (Matt 16:16). As a result, Jesus said this:

I also say to you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build My church (Matt 16:18).

Of course, in the very next paragraph, Jesus was calling Peter “Satan” and telling Peter that he knew nothing about why Jesus had come or what He was doing (Matt 16:23).

I think that this little exchange in Matthew 16 perfectly describes the history of the church.

The church is like Peter. We know who Jesus is, but we haven’t a clue about why He’s come.

We think Jesus has come to rule the world. To dominate. To control. To manage people’s sin. To stop people from disobeying God. To set those of us who follow Him up as rulers over others.

And when we begin to talk and act like this, we ignore Jesus telling us that although we know who He is, we are listening to Satan regarding what Jesus wants to do in this world.

But I am hopeful.

I am seeing great changes in the church today.

We are beginning to awaken to the reality of why Jesus came and what Jesus stood for.

We are beginning to see what Peter eventually saw.

In a way, Peter’s life is a prophetic summary of the history of the church.

Apostle Peter

The Calling of Peter

The calling of Peter to be a follower of Jesus is similar to the birth of the church in Acts 2. The church is born and sets out with gusto and bravery to follow Jesus wherever He leads.

In these early years, the church sometimes says and does some dumb things, but we don’t let this stop us from loving Jesus. While we might stick our foot in our mouth, we keep our feet on the path of following Jesus.

The Confession of Peter

Peter is the one who first publicly stated that Jesus was the Messiah, the Son of God.

This seems parallel to the early creeds and confessions that were developed by the church. As the church grew and expanded, they wrestled with the question about who Jesus truly was. They debated about whether Jesus was fully God and fully man.

Eventually, we ended up with the Apostle’s Creed, the Nicene Creed, and the Chalcedonian Creed all set down what the church believed about the identity and nature of Jesus Christ.

The Craving of Peter

Almost immediately after Peter makes his confession in Matthew 16 about the identity of Jesus, Peter reveals that he doesn’t have a clue about why Jesus came to be the Messiah. He thinks Jesus came to rule and reign over the entire world with strength, power, glory, riches, and might. Peter wasn’t alone in this, of course. This is what every Jewish person expected of the Messiah. Peter craved power, and he saw Jesus as the ticket to the power.

And so it is interesting that almost at the exact same time the church was debating about the identity and nature of Jesus Christ, they were also consolidating their power in the world.

After the conversion of Constantine, the church leaders saw that using the power of the Roman Empire and the threat of the sword would help them gain glory, riches, honor, prestige, land, and wealth. To their credit (like Peter), they believed that such things would help them spread the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

But it didn’t. And it hasn’t. Such things only hindered the gospel. This was especially true when the church started using violence to advance their cause.

The Violent Cause of Peter

Peter is the one who struck out violently to defend Jesus when He was arrested in the Garden of Gethsemane. He took off the ear of Malchus, the servant to the High Priest. I believe Peter was actually trying to take off his head…

Why did Peter do this? Because he wanted to protect Jesus. He wanted to defend the honor of Jesus. He was also looking out for his own cause, that he had invested three years of his life into. That he had abandoned his lucrative fishing business for. He had forsaken all to follow Jesus, and if Jesus got arrested and condemned, all the work and sacrifice would be for nothing.

It has been the same with the church. We work. We labor. We invest. We serve. We tithe. We build. We follow. We sacrifice.

And we want it to pay off.

And we are willing to exhort to violence if necessary.

It is a clear fact that most of the violence carried out in Europe and the Middle East from about 400 AD to 1900 AD was violence done in the name of Jesus. It was violence to “defend Jesus” and they carry the gospel to the heathens. Like Peter swinging his sword at Malchus, we swung the sword at heathens in the North, and Muslims in the East, and Jews in Jerusalem.

Frequently, we also swung the sword at each other, because “they” did not follow Jesus or believe the same thing about Jesus as “we.”

The Cursing of Peter

When Jesus was finally arrested and brought to trial, Peter followed Him. But when challenged and questioned about whether he was a follower of Jesus, Peter ended up denying Jesus and cursing Him.

Peter cursed JesusThis is exactly what the church has done as we have carried the Gospel and spread the name of Jesus with violent and greedy methods. In seeking to spread the name of Jesus with the use of money, power, domination, control, manipulation, and the sword, we have only ended up cursing and denying Jesus, and have led many other people to do the same.

Today, when most people reject Jesus, they are not rejecting Him as He truly is, but are instead rejecting and denying the Jesus which the church has presented to them. The Jesus who builds monstrous buildings on the backs of the poor. The Jesus who looks out for the rich and the powerful. The Jesus who kills others in the name of power. The Jesus who doesn’t forgive. The Jesus of rules, regulations, and rituals.

When we present Jesus this way to the world, we are saying, with Peter, “No, I never knew Him.”

The Contrition of Peter

After the cock crowed, Peter realized what he had done, and went into mourning. I believe that while Jesus died on the cross, and was buried in a tomb, and stayed in the grave for three days, Peter was repenting and wailing and crying about what he had done.

PeterThe church is beginning to do this over the past ten to twenty years.

We have begun to awaken to the fact of how we were complicit in much of the violence of this world. How we have contributed to the abuse of the poor, the neglect of children and women, the trampling of nature, and the overall condition of the world today.

I believe that many churches in the West have not yet come to his realization, but I see signs every day that more and more people are doing so.

The Conversion of Peter

Acts 2 reveals a completely different Peter. He has awakened to a new reality, and a new understanding of Jesus. He not only understands who Jesus is, but He now understands why Jesus came: Not to rule, but to serve. Not to live, but to die. Not to be powerful, but to be powerless.

For Peter, Jesus turned the world upside down, and once Peter aligned Himself to Jesus, he began, for the first time, to see the world right side up.

And as Christians around the world awaken to the reality of how we have maligned the gospel and blasphemed the name of Jesus by using Him to defend our violent causes, we too are beginning to see our place in the world. We are beginning to see that we are here, not to rule, but to serve. Not to live, but to die. Not to be powerful, but powerless.

God is Redeeming Church Bible & Theology Topics: Discipleship, Gospels, Jesus, Matthew 16:16, Peter, Theology of the Church

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Interpreting the General Letters: Great Book; Boring Title

By Jeremy Myers
8 Comments

Interpreting the General Letters: Great Book; Boring Title

Interpreting the General EpistlesIt is usually quite rare to get excited about a book called Interpreting the General Letters, but either I am super geeky, or this book is simply excellent.

It’s probably a bit of both.

I initially thought this book by Herbert W. Bateman IV was going to be just another introduction to the General Letters (Hebrews, James, 1–2 Peter, 1–3 John, Jude), and while it is that, it was so much more. It contained cutting edge research on how the letters were composed, the theology they contain, and how we can understand and teach about these letters today.

Does it still sound boring? Well check this out…

The first chapter is about how the letters were composed. Yeah, I was ready to yawn also. But Bateman shows quite persuasively that the General Letters (and probably the letters of Paul as well?) followed clear letter-writing patterns that were common and well-known in the first century AD. The authors of these letters didn’t just sit down and scribble out a letter. Instead, it appears that they used the guidelines found in professional letter writing manuals that were popular at that time. Yes, that’s right. There were books in use at the time which instructed letter writers in the art of writing letters, even down to suggestions for which words to use in your letter. The letters of 3 John, Jude, and 2 Peter clearly exhibit many of these instructions from these professional letter writing guides, even down to the very words that are used!

Who cares?

Well, if Bateman is right, then what does this say about the inspiration of the Holy Spirit? Does it make you rethink the doctrine of the inspiration of Scripture a bit if, instead of Peter sitting down and just writing a letter because the Holy Spirit inspired certain words for Peter to write, Peter instead got many of these words and ideas from a letter-writing manual?

But it gets worse.

Bateman goes on to show that it is probably unrealistic to think that John, Peter, James, and Jude had special training in the art and skills of rhetorical professional letter writing. And yet since their letters show clear indications that professional letter-writing skills were used, the true historical situation was probably that John, Peter, James, and Jude hired professional letter writers to write the letters for them. And in fact, Bateman goes on to show how there is clear evidence in the General Letters that this is exactly what happened (p. 49ff).

Uh-oh.

Now what just happened to our doctrine of the verbal, plenary inspiration of Scripture? It seems that maybe what John, Peter, James, and Jude did was go to a professionally trained letter writer and provided them with the basic ideas, arguments, and points they wanted to make in their letter, and then let the professional letter writer compose the letter according to the letter writing standards of that day. Now certainly, John, Peter, and Jude would have read the letter before it was sent out, and maybe asked for some word revisions or changes in terminology, but still, if Bateman is right about this, what does this mean for the traditional, evangelical doctrine of the inspiration of Scripture.

Now it is no longer “men of God writing Scripture as they were moved by the Holy Spirit” but rather, something like this: “Men of God having inspired ideas which they provided to a professionally-trained letter writer, who then composed the letter according to standards and guidelines found in a letter-writing manual before getting the approval of the man of God to send the letter out to its intended recipients.”

Yeah, not quite the same thing we hear from our pulpits… but I think Bateman is absolutely right to point some of this things out. It is past time we develop a more robust theology of the inspiration of Scripture. 

studying the Bible

The rest of the book follows this sort of revolutionary, thought-provoking, theology-shattering approach. The second chapter provides excellent historical and cultural background material to the General Epistles, without which you can never hope to understand the message and meaning of these letters. Chapter 3 provides an overview of the theology of the General letters, and specifically how they fit within the overall goal of God’s plan to reestablish His kingdom rule on earth and redeem a people for Himself to inhabit this kingdom. Again, without this big picture theological perspective, we cannot hope to understand the theology of the General epistles.

The remainder of the book (chapters 4–7) provide a detailed explanation of how to study and teach the texts of the General Epistles, beginning with interpreting them from the Greek and moving on into exegetical outlines and homiletical exposition. This highly scientific approach to the Scripture is the method they teach at Dallas Theological Seminary, and is roughly the same approach I follow in my own research and writing, though in a much abbreviated form. While I appreciate the approach that DTS teaches, it can really only be followed by expert scholars and theologians, and is not feasible for the average student of Scripture, which indicates to me that it is not the only oven the best way of reading and interpreting the biblical text.

Interpreting the General Letters by Bateman is a great introduction to the general letters. Even though the final four chapters will be overwhelming for most readers, the first three chapters contain great help and insight for situating the student of Scripture within the world and mindset of the first century authors and audience.

God is Uncategorized Bible & Theology Topics: Bible Study, Books I'm Reading, Hebrews, James, John, Jude, Peter

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The Two Most Beautiful Words in the Gospels

By Jeremy Myers
10 Comments

The Two Most Beautiful Words in the Gospels

Peter wept bitterlyWhat are the most beautiful words in the Gospels?

These two right here:

…and Peter…

These two words are found in Mark 16:7 and I find them to be the most beautiful and moving words in the Gospels. Every single time I read them, they get my heart beating. They give me shivers and chills. Sometimes I even choke up in tears.

…and Peter…

Why?

We all know what Peter did. He was one of the three closest companions that Jesus had. He was the spokesperson for the twelve apostles. He was the one who promised He would never deny Jesus.

And when the soldiers came to arrest Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, Peter was the only one who tried to defend Jesus.

When Jesus was escorted away to His trial, Peter was the only apostle who followed. The rest scattered into the night and hid.

…and Peter…

Peter denies ChristYet despite all this zeal for Jesus, it was only Peter who verbally denied Jesus. It was only Peter who cursed Jesus. Not once. Not twice. But three times. (Possibly even six times.)

This is certainly the low point of Peter’s life. He feels abandoned and betrayed. And Peter even betrays and denies Jesus. He probably feels that all is lost, and that whatever happens, He is lost for eternity. He is done for. God will never forgive him.

All of us have felt this way from time to time. Like we have done something or said something so terrible that Jesus could never forgive us.

…and Peter…

So when Jesus rises from the dead, I find it terribly comforting that when the angel tells the two women who first witness His resurrection to go and tell His disciples that Jesus has risen, the angel emphasizes that they must also tell Peter. He singles Peter out. “Go tell the disciples,” the angel says, “and Peter…”

Yes.

…and Peter…

The resurrection of Jesus is for all of us. It is for the Mother Theresas of the world and the Hitlers.

The resurrection is for John the beloved disciple, and Judas the traitor.

The resurrection is for you, me, …and Peter.

If you ever doubt or wonder about Jesus’ love for you, just remember these two words which tell us so much about our own sin, the heart of Jesus, and the complete forgiveness and love offered to us through His death and resurrection.

…and Peter…

The cross of Jesus is CENTRAL to everything!

Transform your life and theology by focusing on the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus:

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God is Redeeming Theology Bible & Theology Topics: crucifixion, cruciform, crucivision, Easter, forgiveness, Judas, Mark 16:7, Peter, resurrection, resurrection of Jesus, Theology of Jesus

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