Theology of Jesus Archives - Page 5 of 24

In Part 1 of this short series called “Satan Casts out Satan” we saw that although Satan stole dominion over the earth from Adam and Eve, Satan loves nothing more than to use violence to get rid of violence, and in so doing, consolidate and amplify his own power over the earth. One way he does this is through violent religion. This post looks a little more at this topic.

God’s Activity in Satan’s Dominion

God was not inactive during this endless cycle of Satan using religion to “cast out Satan.” He constantly sent messengers, individuals, people, and even nations in an attempt to spread light and love in this dark world. But it is in these instances where Satan’s power really worked. Satan loved nothing more than to use redemptive violence against those whom God had sent so that God’s messengers were killed in God’s name (Matt 21:33-46, 23:34-37). How did Satan do this? Through religion.

God’s message to the world has always been a message of grace, love, mercy, forgiveness, and acceptance. But Satan has always taken God’s message and perverted it so that it becomes a twisted set of rules, regulations, sacrifices, and laws by which mankind seeks to regain God’s love and favor.

But whenever God sent messengers and prophets to proclaim grace to the world, religion reared up to condemn God’s message of grace as false, heretical, contrary to God’s will, and of the devil. Then, having used religion to convert God’s messenger into a messenger of Satan, Satan used religious redemptive violence to kill and destroy God’s messenger in the name of God.

Satan turns God’s messenger into “Satan,” and then uses violent religion to destroy this newly minted “Satan.” It is in this way that Satan “casts out Satan,” and once again, protects and consolidates his own power in the world.

So by causing violence to be ascribed to God, and by using violent religion to “cast out Satan,” Satan had developed the perfect cycle of violence from which there seemed to be no escape. When bad things happened, it was God’s fault. And when God sent messengers to proclaim His truth and love, Satan vilified them until they too were killed in the name of God. This beautiful lie was perpetrated upon the world and carried out in plain view over and over and over since time began.

Satan Turned Religion against Jesus

But when Jesus arrived, He began to unmask the lie and pull back the curtains on Satan’s scheme. He told people what God was really like. He invited people to turn away from violence, and live in love and forgiveness. He set people free from sin, from darkness, from slavery, and from hate. He called people to a new way of living.

This, of course, was not something Satan could allow. It was not something Satan could permit. And so he resorted to the same ploy that had worked millions of times before. Every previous time that God had sent a messenger, Satan raised up religion to kill God’s messenger in God’s name. Satan did the same thing with Jesus, believing that such a plan would work as it always had before. He got religion to condemn Jesus as a son of Beelzebub, a blasphemer, an idolater, as one who was opposed to God and God’s Word. And then Satan got religion to kill Jesus in the name of God. Satan used religion to turn Jesus into a “Satan” so that religion could then kill Jesus in the name of God. Once again, Satan sought to “cast out Satan,” and thus solidify and consolidate his power even further.

And just as it had always done before, the plan worked beautifully.

Almost too beautifully.

One can almost feel the confusion of Satan in the end the Gospel accounts as Jesus, who has struggled and taught and healed against all the death and destruction and lies of the devil throughout His entire three years of ministry, now goes silently to the cross, like a lamb to the slaughter. Satan does not see the trap until it is too late.

For all of human history, Satan cast out Satan so that he might continually reinforce his own power, and reinsert himself into human structures and institutions, forever consolidating and expanding his own power and dominion over God’s creation. But when he tried it with Jesus, he failed to recognize that he was snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

Jesus Beat Satan at his own Game

Jesus, of course, knew what Satan was about. This is why He asked earlier in His ministry: “How can Satan cast out Satan?” (Mark 3:23). Jesus asks this question, but never answers it. Why? Because the answer was the key to His victory over Satan. The initial answer to Jesus’ question seems to be that “Satan would not cast out himself. It would be foolish to do so. For if Satan cast out Satan, then his kingdom would crumble, his house would fall, and his power would come to an end.” But Jesus knew, as did Satan, that the key to Satan’s power was that Satan had been casting out Satan since the beginning of time, but blaming his violent overthrow upon God.

But in the crucifixion of Jesus, when Satan tries once again to use violent religion to “cast out Satan,” this time in the scapegoat of Jesus Christ, Satan did not realize that his plan would backfire.

When Satan attacked Jesus through the crucifixion, Satan believed he was conquering over Jesus and casting Jesus out of this world once and for all. But little did he know that Jesus, by submitting Himself as the willing scapegoat for all the violence, enmity, hatred, and evil of the world, was unmasking the power and dominion of Satan, and thus, defeating Satan even as Satan thought he was striking the victorious blow.

What do you think of this idea of Satan using religion to cast out Satan, which in reality, is nothing more than Satan using violence in the name of God to solidify his own power in this world? Include your own ideas in the comments below!

How can a God who says "Love your enemies" (Matthew 5:44) be the same God who instructs His people in the Old Testament to kill their enemies?

These are the sorts of questions we discuss and (try to) answer in my online discipleship group. Members of the group can also take ALL of my online courses (Valued at over $1000) at no charge. Learn more here: Join the RedeemingGod.com Discipleship Group I can't wait to hear what you have to say, and how we can help you better understand God and learn to live like Him in this world!

Satan Casts Out Satan

By Jeremy Myers

20 Comments

One of the great lies of Satan is in how he uses human institutions such as religion and politics to make it look like God uses violence to defeat violence. This is the great myth of redemptive violence, which is seen in almost every movie, story, and legend of history, as well as within every daily newspaper and every nightly news broadcast.

We have been taught that violence is the best way to defeat violence. This is the myth of redemptive violence.

But more than that, divinely sanctioned violence is the most successful, and can even be carried out in the name of God. But Jesus reveals in His life and ministry, and especially through His death and resurrection, the true emptiness of redemptive violence. He unmasks Satan’s lie of redemptive violence for all the world to see.

Although really, as it turned out, it was Satan himself who, in crucifying Jesus, unwittingly revealed his lie to the world. The trap that Satan had set for Jesus turned out to be a trap that Jesus had laid for Satan. This is why Paul says that if Satan had known that the death of Jesus would be his undoing, he never would have crucified the Lord of glory (1 Cor 2:8). In blaming God and finally crucifying God, Satan thought he was winning; but the death blow he dealt upon Jesus turned out to be his own. By using the power of Satan, Jesus defeated Satan, which in reality, turned out to be Satan causing his own defeat.

Satan Stole Dominion Over the Earth

It all began in the Garden of Eden. When Adam and Eve were created by God, they were given dominion over the earth. But when they sinned in the Garden, they effectively handed this dominion over to Satan. He did not steal the dominion; it was freely given to him. As a result, he now became the ruler of this age, the god of this world (John 12:31, 14:30, 16:11; 2 Cor 4:4).

Due to the nature of the dominion which God had given to Adam, God could not simply take back the dominion now that it had been handed over to Satan. God had freely given it to Adam, and Adam had freely given to Satan. The only way for God (or mankind) to get the dominion back from Satan was if Satan freely gave it back, which he was never going to do. Satan had wanted to be like God, and in gaining dominion over the earth, he became a god. Satan had an iron grip on this world, and he ruled it ruthlessly and with all dominion, power, and authority.

Under Satan’s rule, darkness, terror, death, and chaos reigned. If you have read Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy (or seen the movies), imagine what life would be like in Middle Earth if Sauron had been able to obtain the One Ring, the ring of power. The reason that Gandalf and the races of Middle Earth sought to stop Sauron from regaining the ring is because they did not want their world to plunge into eternal death and chaos. But in the biblical account, this is exactly what happened when Adam handed dominion over to Satan.

Satan Blamed God for Satanic Violence

But Satan was not content just to rule by spreading darkness and terror. He wanted to get humanity to blame God for all the evil that happened in this world, and in so doing, solidify his own power even more. How did Satan do this? He used the myth of redemptive violence. He got people to believe that when evil people rose to power, whether their power was over a single person or an entire country, violence was required to overthrow that evil. And yet almost without fail, when the new rulers rose to power, they became more oppressive than the oppressors they overthrew.

In this way, the cycle continued endlessly.

Satan raised up oppressive and tyrannical individuals, governments, and religious institutions so that he might later raise up “righteous liberators” who would violently overthrow the oppressive regimes, but in so doing, become more oppressive and tyrannical than those who preceded them. Those who had power reigned with violent methods and those who came into power did so with violence. Almost always in human history, when the persecuted rise up in violence to overthrow the persecutors, it did not take long before the persecuted become the persecutors.

In this way, Satan “casts out Satan,” and thus endlessly consolidated and amplified his own power.

We will look more at this idea tomorrow. Until then, what do you think of the idea laid out above? Do you think that Satan uses violence to make it look like God is defeating Satan, when in reality, it is Satan “casting out Satan” so that it appears that God is defeating him?

How can a God who says "Love your enemies" (Matthew 5:44) be the same God who instructs His people in the Old Testament to kill their enemies?

Why does Jesus say “Go and sin no more” when it is impossible to “go and sin no more”?

By Jeremy Myers

228 Comments

A reader recently sent in this astute question:

Why does Jesus tell people to “Go and sin no more” when He knew it was basically impossible for them to stop sinning?

This is a great question, and one that has been cropping up a lot in the comments on this blog recently. For example, check out some of the comments in my post about “How do I stop sinning?”

“Go and Sin No More” Disclaimers

Before I attempt to answer this important question about what Jesus means when He says “go and sin no more,” let me state two disclaimers.

Yes, I know that Scripture contains numerous passages which seem to teach that sinless perfectionism is possible in this life (cf. Matt 5:48; 1 John 3:4-10). So please … don’t leave a comment below quoting all the text in the Bible which you think I haven’t read. I have read them, studied them, and believe them. I simply have a different understanding of those texts than you do.

Second, just because I believe the Bible teaches that it is not possible in this life to go and sin no more at all ever again in any way, this is not at all the same thing as telling people to go sin all they want. I believe that Christians can and should stop sinning, but I approach the issue of sin differently than often encountered elsewhere. I think the primary reason God wants us to stop sinning is not because it offends Him, but because sin damages us.

So can we “Go and Sin No More”?

There are two times in the Gospels when Jesus tells people to “go and sin no more.” One is after Jesus healed the man by the Pool of Bethesda (John 5:14) and the other is after He rescued the woman caught in adultery from getting stoned to death (John 8:11).

“Go and Sin No More” in John 5:1-18

What is strange about the instance with the man by the Pool of Bethesda is that the text mentions no sin which had led to his condition. The text simply says he had been there for 38 years (John 5:5). We aren’t told why. We aren’t told what happened. Though most commentators say that the man must have sinned in some way to cause his condition, the text says nothing of the sort.

Bible scholars say, “Well, it must have been some sort of sin which led to the man’s condition, or else why would Jesus say, ‘Go and sin no more or else something worse will happen to you’?”

Really? I have major problems with this. First, if the man had been invalid for 38 years, how old could he have been when he committed this terrible sin which caused God to strike him down as an invalid for the next four decades? I mean, what sort of terrible sin had this child from 38 years ago (or possibly a teenager) committed, which would cause God to punish him in such a terrible way?

And then, Jesus comes along and say, “Now don’t do that again, or I’ll have to punish you even worse!”

Does that sound anything like Jesus? Not the Jesus I know. I don’t think that sin led to this man being an invalid for 38 years, and I definitely don’t think that Jesus was threatening this poor man with some greater punishment if he committed that sin again.

So how then are we to understand Jesus’ statement, “Go and sin no more”?

Well, notice that it is not in the context of healing the man from being an invalid that Jesus says “Go and sin no more.” It is in the context of the religious leaders threatening the man’s life because he had the audacity to carry his bedroll on the Sabbath (John 5:10). Why do I say there were threating his life? I believe there is a parallel in John 5 with something that happens in Numbers 15:32-35.

There, man is caught picking up sticks on the Sabbath, so they arrest him and take him to Moses, who consults God on the matter. God (apparently) tells Moses that the community should stone the man for the high crime of picking up sticks on the Sabbath.

So when Jesus tells the man “Go and sin no more or else something worse might happen to you,” I think he says it with a sparkle in His eye, some satire in His voice, and a head nod toward the disapproving and judgmental religious leaders.

Essentially Jesus tells the man (read the following with soft sarcasm): “Oh no! You carried your bedroll on the Sabbath! How could you do such a terrible thing! You sinner! Stop it! If you don’t, they’re going to have your head.”

Of course, although Jesus was speaking to the man with satirical humor, the situation was deadly serious as well, and Jesus knew it. It was true that if the man was not careful, the religious leaders would try to kill him simply because he carried his bedroll on the Sabbath. In fact, in the very next verses, their murderous rage gets redirected toward Jesus because He is the one who told the man to carry His bedroll (John 5:15-18). The text says they sought for a way to kill Jesus. The “something worse” which was going to happen to the man is now directed toward Jesus.

So was Jesus telling the man to “Go and sin no more”? Well … yes, but it is more like this: “Go and ‘sin’ no more, or the sin police over there are going to kill you.”

That’s how I read John 5:15-18.

Based on this, you can probably predict how I understand John 8:1-11.

“Go and Sin No More” in John 8:1-11

I think John included this incident in his Gospel just a few chapters after the “grievous sin of bedroll-carrying incident” because unlike the carrying of the bedroll on the Sabbath, the woman in this event was truly sinning. She was caught in the act of adultery.

The religious leaders are about to stone her to death when Jesus shows up, scribbles in the sand, and when no one is left to condemn her, tells her to “Go and sin no more.”

Most commentators note the connection here with the Levitical law that the punishment for adultery was death by stoning (Lev 20:10; Deut 22:22). Most commentators also point that the Levitical law required that both the man and the woman are to be stoned, but in John 8, only the woman is present. This was not because the religious leaders didn’t know who the man was, for they had caught the woman in the very act of adultery. Where is the man? We do not know.

There is some speculation that this woman was simply the innocent bystander in a malevolent plan by the religious leaders to accuse and attack Jesus (John 8:6). Since John 5:1-18, the religious leaders had been looking for ways to discredit and kill Jesus, and they had now found (or created?) a way in this poor woman. Could it be that her guilty partner was involved in the scheme himself?

It is likely that the woman was actually a prostitute, and the religious leaders saw this situation as a “win-win” opportunity for them. If Jesus did not defend her, then they got to stone a prostitute. Yay! If Jesus did defend her, then they could stone Him too as a bonus.

The plan, of course, didn’t go as expected, and Jesus wrote something in the sand which caused all the men to slink away. We don’t know what He wrote, though there is endless speculation about it might have been.

Anyway, once they have all left, Jesus tells the woman that He does not condemn her (and He is the only one present who could have!), and that she should “Go and sin no more.”

Why? For the same reason Jesus told the man in John 5 to go and sin no more: because the religious leaders were out to get her. Now that they had been rebuffed by Jesus and their righteous activity of stoning a prostitute had been denied them for the day, they would doubtless begin looking for a way to kill her again.

Basically, Jesus is saying, “My beautiful lady, I am sorry you got caught up in this. They were after me; not you. They framed you to get at me. I want to protect you from them, so please, consider leaving your current profession. They are likely going to seek to frame you again, and the next time, they won’t bring you to me. They’ll just kill you. Neither one of us want that, so go … do something different with your life.”

Clearly, Jesus did not mean that the woman should never sin again in any way whatsoever. He knew, and we know, that this is impossible. He was simply warning her about the danger of continuing in her current lifestyle.

Can you “Go and Sin no More”?

So what does this way of reading these texts say to you and me? Several things.

First, please, please, please … don’t be a religious jackass. If Jesus is the only one who has the right to condemn and judge a person, but He chooses not to (cf. John 8:11, 15), then we all better think twice (and thrice!) before we cast the first stone. Don’t call for people’s jobs, or pray for their house to burn down, or tell them that because of their lifestyle they are headed for hell.

Such behavior looks less like Jesus and more like the religious leaders who sought to kill Jesus.

Second, recognize what sin is (and isn’t). Sin damages our relationship with God and with one another. Sin destroys our lives and causes emotional, financial, physical, spiritual, and psychological harm. The reason God wants us to stop sinning is simply because God wants what is best for us, and sin does not result in God’s best.

Our sin doesn’t cause God to turn away from us, reject us, hate us, or cast us out. Our sin grieves God because He knows how much sin hurts us, and as our loving Father, He doesn’t want us to get hurt.

God doesn’t care about our sin; He cares about us — which is why He wants to help us not sin.

Finally, as I’ve said before, we stop sinning not by trying to stop sinning, but by walking with Jesus and inviting God into the dark places of our life. When a room is dark, you don’t chase away the darkness by talking against it, praying against it, and commanding the darkness to leave. No, darkness naturally recedes when light enters the room. You want to stop sinning? Invite God into it, and watch the light of His love cast out all sin.

The Light at the End of the Theological Tunnel

By Jeremy Myers

9 Comments

The solution I proposed yesterday (and last year) about how to understand the violence of God in the Old Testament is based on the two theological convictions, the two ways of reading Scripture, and the two key passages which were discussed in earlier posts (see the link list at the bottom of this post).

Of primary importance, however, is the concept of reading the Bible backwards. If we are to understand what God was doing at the beginning parts of the Bible, we must read those parts in light of the end of the Bible. And by “the end” I do not mean the book of Revelation. Though Revelation may be found on the last pages of the Bible, the book of Revelation is not “the end” of the Bible.

What do I mean?

The Telos of the Bible

In the New Testament, the Greek word telos is often translated “end,” but it could also be translated as “goal, purpose, or culmination.” So while the word can refer to the end of something chronologically, as in “then the end will come” (e.g., Matt 24:6, 14), it can also refer to the goal, purpose, or outcome of a series of events (cf. Rom 6:21-22).

One interesting use of the word in the New Testament, however, is in relation to Jesus Christ. There are numerous places which refer to Jesus Himself as the “end” (cf. Rom 10:4; 1 Cor 10:11; 15:24; Rev 21:6; 22:13).

This means that the goal, purpose, or culmination of God’s redemptive history is Jesus Christ. Jesus is what God has been working toward. Jesus is the fulfillment and completion of God’s eternal plan. Jesus is where all things have been headed. Jesus is the originator of history and is the light at the end of the tunnel of history.

So when I write about reading the Bible with the end in mind, I am thinking primarily about Jesus. We read the Bible with Jesus in mind. We read the Bible through Jesus-colored glasses.

The Telos of Jesus

With this in mind, there is one use of the word telos which I want to emphasize. It is found in Luke 22:37. Jesus is preparing His disciples for His crucifixion and His eventual departure from them, and says that the reason is because “this which is written about Me must still be accomplished in Me: ‘And He was numbered with the transgressors.’ For the things concerning Me have an end.” The word “end” Jesus uses there is telos.

Notice carefully what Jesus identifies as His end. He says that His end, His telos, His goal, His purpose, the culmination of His ministry, is that He be numbered with the transgressors. Jesus is saying that His goal, His purpose in coming, was to be identified as a transgressor—as a lawless, godless, sinner.

This does not mean that Jesus was going to sin or become a sinner, but that it was necessary for Him to identify with us in our sin. His goal was to be counted among the lawless, the godless, and the transgressors. One translation of Luke 22:37 even states that Jesus’ goal was “let himself be taken for a criminal” (JB).

Such an aspect of Christ’s ministry is sorely missing from most evangelical theology. Why would Jesus want to be counted among the lawless? Why would Jesus want to make it look like He was godless? Why was it the goal, the purpose, the telos of Jesus to be numbered among the transgressors?

Why?

Because Jesus is the ultimate and complete revelation of God, and this is what God has been doing from the very beginning.

By counting Himself among the transgressors, Jesus reveals to us once and for all what God has been doing all along. Jesus is not guilty, but to the outside observer, He looked guilty. To those who did not know better, as Jesus hung on the cross, He looked like a traitor, a thief, a common criminal dying on a cross.

So also with God.

To those who do not have eyes to see, to those who do not peer behind the curtain, to those who do not see read Jesus back into the pages of the Old Testament, God looks insanely guilty. God looks like the greatest traitor, thief, and criminal of the universe. Is God guilty of these things? He is not. No more than Jesus was guilty as He hung on the cross. But God looks guilty, because, just like Jesus, God was numbering Himself among the transgressors. God looks violent in the Old Testament in the same way that Jesus looks like a criminal when He hung on the cross.

Why would God do this? For the same reasons Jesus did: to free us from sin, death, and the devil. To destroy the destroyer’s work. To liberate us from bondage and decay. To reconcile us to Himself. To redeem a fallen world. To take the blame for that which would otherwise have sent humanity into an ever-increasing spiral of destructive violence.

How can a God who says "Love your enemies" (Matthew 5:44) be the same God who instructs His people in the Old Testament to kill their enemies?

Why did God wait thousands of years to send Jesus?

By Jeremy Myers

76 Comments

I have been working my way through dozens of Bible and theology questions which people have submitted through that “ask a question” area in the sidebar. Here is one about why God delayed to send Jesus.

Why did God wait so long to send Jesus?

I have answered similar questions before regarding the apparent “delays” in God’s timetable. For example, we have previously considered the question, “Why did Jesus wait three days to rise from the dead?” and “Why is Jesus waiting so long before He comes again?” Obviously, those questions are different than this particular question, but the answers are similar, which is why I reference them here.

So why did God wait to send Jesus?

As with many of the Bible and Theology questions I answer, I find it helpful to step back a little bit and get the big picture for this question.

The question is not just about why God waited so long to send Jesus, but about all the seeming delays in the redemptive plan of God. That is, why does God “wait” to do anything?

Why Does God delay in anything?

I mean, if we pray for something, and God knows He is going to give us what we prayed for, why does He sometimes make us wait weeks, months, or even years before granting the request?

There are, of course, a thousand possible answers to this question. Maybe God’s apparent delay had something to do with God’s perfect timing. Maybe God did immediately answer our prayer request, but Satan temporarily stopped us from receiving God’s answer (cf. Daniel 10:12-13). Maybe God was waiting for us to be an answer to our own prayer, and we were the ones who slowed Him down.

There are other possibilities as well, but these go to show that when it comes to delays in God’s timetable, there is really almost no way to know why God does what He does when He does it.

God’s Strange Order of Events

Here is a basic timetable of God’s major redemptive works in history, counting from the fall of Adam and Eve in the Garden. Note that in between each major event, there are larger periods of relatively uneventful history. (The number of years listed below is based on the the most conservative estimates. Obviously, there are more liberal estimates which extend these periods of time out to tens of thousands of years.)

The Fall of Adam and Eve
Wait 2000 years
The Call of Abraham
Wait 500 years
Giving the Law to Moses at Mt. Sinai
Wait 1500 Years
Ministry of Jesus
Wait 2000+ Years
(in the Future) The Second Coming of Jesus
The New Heavens and New Earth

Obviously, God is not silent and is not inactive during these waiting periods, but this outline of events is simply to show that God’s plan of redemption does seem to occur in small steps spread out over long lengths of time.

Rather than that order of events, we often think it would have been nice for the order of events to follow this outline:

The Fall of Adam and Eve
Wait 20 minutes
The Death and Resurrection of Jesus
Eternal Bliss

Honestly, from a human perspective, this second order of evens would have saved a lot of horrible grief, bloodshed, death, sorrow, and sadness. Nobody would have ended up in hell. There never would have been wars, or famines, or diseases. Adam and Eve would have sinned, Jesus would have immediately shown up to fix it, and that would have been that.

No Flood. No Hitler. No Atomic bombs. No raping of little girls.

That sounds like a much better plan, does it not?

So why indeed was there a delay in God’s redemptive plan? Why did He wait so long to choose Abraham? Why did He wait so long to give His law? Why did God wait so long to send Jesus? Why is He waiting so long to send Jesus back?

Some Traditional Answers to Why God Waited Thousands of Years to Send Jesus

People have often wondered why God waited so long before sending Jesus. Here are three of the more common answers:

1. It only seems long to us

The first answer some provide is really a non-answer. It is one of those pat answers to difficult theological questions which really does nothing to answer the question. It is a Christian cliche: “God’s timing is not our timing.”

Those who use this first answer quote 2 Peter 3:8 which says that with God, a day is like a thousand years, and a thousands years is like a day. So in other words, though it seems like God took thousands of years to send Jesus, from His perspective, it only seemed like a couple days.

Peter’s point is valid in the context, but I don’t think we can say that just because God is not restricted by time, this means that God doesn’t comprehend time, or that God doesn’t care that we struggle with how long His plan takes. I know that this is not what people mean when they say this, but to many, that is how it comes across.

To me, here is how this answer sounds:

“Oh, life is hard and you are wondering why God is taking so long to answer your prayers and set things right? Well, God’s timing is not our timing.”

This is a Christian way of saying, “Life sucks; then you die. Deal with it.” In other words, “Shut up. Nobody cares. Not even God.”

God does care. He knows that although our lives are less than mere breaths before His infinite existence, the years of our life are often full of pain, hardship, trials, burdens, sickness, fear, and sorrow.

2. To teach humanity about the depth of our sin.

If Jesus had shown up 20 minutes after Adam and Eve sinned, we never would have understood the depth and breadth of our sinfulness. Nor would we have understood how desperately we need God. It could be argued that one reason Adam and Eve sinned is because they didn’t fully comprehend how horrible it would be to live life disconnected from God.

Due to the long period of time in which we have wallowed in our sin, we now know — do we ever! — how wicked, evil, and brutal people can be.

One great benefit to this way of viewing God’s delay is that it seems to be supported by Scripture. Over and over again in Scripture we see this cycle:

Human development (e.g., the Law, the Land, Judges, Kings, Prophets, etc.)
Great expectations for human utopia
Greater evil than ever before

I like this explanation, except that it seems like a bit of overkill. Pun intended. Do we really need thousands of years of bloodshed, rape, murder, torture, war, famine, pestilence, and disease to tell us that sin is bad? I don’t know… maybe we do. After all, human history reveals that every so often, people think that humanity has progressed to the point that worldwide peace and prosperity is just around the corner, that human utopia is almost assured. Usually, not long after these rosy predictions of our future are made, humanity enters into one of the most violent and bloody eras of its history.

In fact, you can almost predict future events based on how rosy of a picture is being painted about that future. The rosier the picture, the bloodier the future. (This is one reason I am not a postmillennialist.)

3. To teach the angels about God’s redemptive purpose

This idea comes from 1 Peter 1:12 and a few other verses which seem to indicate that one reason God created humanity and is carrying out His redemptive plan is to teach something to the angels. Nobody really knows what God might be trying to teach the angels that they don’t already know, but apparently, the angels are learning from watching how God deals with rebellious humanity.

Some have even suggested that God’s plan of redemption may eventually include the angels as well! If so, the Bible says absolutely nothing about this …

Anyway, if God is teaching the angels something, then apparently, it takes a long time to teach them.

4. To wait until the time when the Gospel could spread the quickest

Sometimes, and specifically in connection to why Jesus came when He did, some people say it had something to do with the Roman empire. The Roman empire built roads and had a common tongue which allowed the message of the Gospel to spread more quickly and with greater ease than it could have at other times.

I suppose in theory, this is somewhat true, but if God was waiting until there was a common language and good lines of communication before sending Jesus, He could have picked no better time than right before humans decided to build the Tower of Babel. There was only one language at the time, and it seems their communication was so good, there was nothing they could not accomplish. That is partly why the text says that God scrambled human communication (Genesis 11:6).

Furthermore, if God was really waiting for the quickest and most worldwide method of communication, He should have waited for Twitter.

Ha! I’m kidding.

Kind of …

Look, when we say that God waited to send Jesus until there was a common tongue and a good road system, what we are also saying is that the only part of the world that God really cared about was the part under Roman rule (Most of Europe, Northern Africa, and Western Asia). The rest of the world did not have access to the Roman road system, nor did they speak the common language of the Roman empire. So are we saying then that God didn’t care about most of Africa, most of Asia, and all of North and South America?

That was why I was kind-of only half-joking when I mentioned Twitter. If God was waiting until the quickest form of communication was available to all the world, then He could have waited until a worldwide system of instantaneous communication was in place … a system much like Twitter.

So anyway, while I do think the Roman road system and common language helped the spread of the Gospel, I don’t think we can say that this was why Jesus came at the time and place that He did.

5. To fulfill prophecy

Then there is the explanation that Jesus came when He did because He had to fulfill prophecy.

There is some truth to this, especially depending on how you understand the prophecy of Daniel’s 70 Weeks (Daniel 9:24-27). It may be that Jesus had to come when He did to complete the prophecy given 490 years earlier.

Also, in relation to this, Paul writes that Jesus came “at the appointed time” (Galatians 4:4). Other New Testament authors say similar things.

While there is truth with this answer, it really doesn’t answer the question. All it does it move the question back. If Jesus came at that time to fulfill prophesy, then why did God prophecy that Jesus would come at that time? Why didn’t God move prophets to predict that Jesus would come a two thousand years earlier … or later? Why then? Why there?

(My! This post is getting long … Let’s see if I can wrap it up.)

6. To wait until human theological development had evolved to the point where we could understand Jesus

One final view is that God waited for so long because mankind had to develop socially and spiritually enough in order to understand and receive the revelation of Jesus Christ.

This idea is based on the concept of progressive revelation, that God has slowly explained Himself and unfolded His plan and purposes for the world over time. The reason is that we could not understand and grasp it all at once, and so He has had to teach us bit by bit, one step at a time.

I am teaching my daughters math, and while I know Calculus, I cannot attempt to teach them everything I know about math on day one, from basic arithmetic all the way to calculus. Not only is there not enough time to do this, they would not comprehend most of it, but would instead get overwhelmed and as a result, would not even understand the most basic concepts in math.

So also, this theory goes, God had to slowly teach humanity about Himself and His ways, so that over time, we would grow and develop into the people He wanted us to become.

Progressive revelation is a definite fact of Scripture, but I am a bit wary of this idea, for it seems to fall prey to what C. S. Lewis called “chronological snobbery.” Lewis often criticized other scholars for thinking that just because they lived in 1960, they knew more about how the world worked and what God was like than people who lived in say, 60 AD. Just because we are further along in years, C. S. Lewis argued, does not mean we necessarily know more. We may, in fact, know less.

But, for the most part, I think this view has some merit, and does help explain what Jesus might have meant in John 16:12 where He said He had much more to teach, but could not do so because they were not ready to hear it. Verses like this are everywhere in Scripture (cf. Matt 13:10-13), which seems to indicate that God only provides further revelation after we have incorporated His previous revelation into our thinking and practice (for the most part).

What is my view about why God waited thousands of years to send Jesus?

What is my view on all of this? I hold some strange mixture of all of the above.

Essentially, I believe that whatever we say about God’s timing in sending Jesus is similar to what we should say about God’s timing in doing anything. There are a variety of answers at any given time, and any action of God can have a variety of explanations.

I know, I know. Such an answer is not neat, pretty, and tidy. But then, life is not neat, pretty, and tidy, and neither is theology. Theology, like life, is a big mess of guesswork and scrambled answers.

While I believe that faith in God includes faith in God’s timing, I am not always sure we can understand God’s timing …

How about you? Which of the answers above is most helpful to you? Which is least helpful? What did I leave out? Why do you think God waited so long to send Jesus for the redemption of mankind?

PS., This post turned out be so LONG (2500 words!!!), I will post something nice and short tomorrow (for my and yours).

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The Light at the End of the Theological Tunnel

The Telos of the Bible

The Telos of Jesus

Why did God wait thousands of years to send Jesus?

So why did God wait to send Jesus?

Why Does God delay in anything?

God’s Strange Order of Events

Some Traditional Answers to Why God Waited Thousands of Years to Send Jesus

1. It only seems long to us

2. To teach humanity about the depth of our sin.

3. To teach the angels about God’s redemptive purpose

4. To wait until the time when the Gospel could spread the quickest

5. To fulfill prophecy

6. To wait until human theological development had evolved to the point where we could understand Jesus

What is my view about why God waited thousands of years to send Jesus?

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