'And for my next trick': why Jesus walked on water

These are the notes from my sermon last Sunday on what, at first glance, is a perplexing miracle. The actual sermon was rather different and more 'vigorous', but this is surely more important than all the Church politics.

Introduction
What is Christianity?

That might seem a bit of an easy question —especially in Church on a Sunday morning. But it isn’t so easy. I was listening to the radio very early this morning and there was a programme on about religion where the guest speaker pretty well rejected the version of Christianity I was brought up on, and which I believe today, for quite another version.

So what is Christianity?

Admiring Jesus
Most people would say it is “about believing in Jesus”. But even that apparently simple answer conceals a lot of problems.

One is what we mean by believing, but the biggest problem is what we mean by Jesus.

There’s a writer for the Guardian newspaper doing a series at the moment on a well-known introduction to Christianity called the Alpha Course. So far, he’s got up to week three out of ten, but his comments on week two are very interesting. Week two is about the historical evidence for Jesus, and this is what he said,

On balance, I think a man called Jesus probably did exist and he formed the basis for Christianity. But I also think that the teachings of the biblical character Jesus are much more interesting, so in some ways I am grateful that we are getting this out of the way in the second week. Surely his words are more important than his fact?

That, I think, is a very common view, especially if I may say so, amongst intellectuals. They’re not too interested in all the supernatural stuff, but they admire Jesus as a spiritual teacher —as a kind of Jewish Mahatma Ghandi.

Jesus’ ‘fact’
It sounds wonderful. The trouble is, it just doesn’t work. Last week, we were looking at Mark 6 and the feeding of the 5,000, and I’d just like to take you back to that passage to highlight something — reading from v 30:

The apostles gathered around Jesus and reported to him all they had done and taught. ³¹ Then, because so many people were coming and going that they did not even have a chance to eat, he said to them, “Come with me by yourselves to a quiet place and get some rest.” ³²So they went away by themselves in a boat to a solitary place. ³³But many who saw them leaving recognized them and ran on foot from all the towns and got there ahead of them. ³⁴When Jesus landed and saw a large crowd, he had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd. So he began teaching them many things. ³⁵By this time it was late in the day, so his disciples came to him. “This is a remote place,” they said, “and it’s already very late. ³⁶Send the people away so they can go to the surrounding countryside and villages and buy themselves something to eat.” ³⁷But he answered, “You give them something to eat.”

Do you notice what is missing there? There is something missing that drives a coach and horses through the idea that Jesus’ teachings are what really matter. V 34 says, “So he began teaching them many things.” V 35 begins, “By this time it was late in the day ...”

Where is the teaching? If our Guardian writer is correct, and Jesus’ “words are more important than his fact”, surely this was a missed opportunity.

What Jesus taught
Actually I have a theory about this, which is that what Jesus was teaching them was basically the Old Testament. We have to remember, this was a culture largely without books. The Bible would have been something people heard read once a week, if that, in the Synagogue.

At the end of Luke’s gospel, after the resurrection, when Jesus was about to send the disciples out to preach about him again, it says this,

... beginning with Moses and all the Prophets [in other words, the Old Testament], he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself.

It would make sense if in these early days Jesus was laying the groundwork for this.

But notice also how Luke puts it: “he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself.”

Walking on water
If this is right, then many of the words of Jesus were about the Old Testament, pointing to himself. Our Guardian writer says, “Surely Jesus’ words are more important than his fact?” Jesus says no, my fact is precisely what matters. Who I am is the key issue.

And that is brought out in the bit of Mark we had read today, and it is very interesting, because frankly, it is a bit embarrassing. Jesus, we are told, sent the disciples back across Lake Galilee, while he went off to pray. Then in v 47 it all gets very awkward for Guardian readers, or for anyone trying to convert them:

When evening came, the boat was in the middle of the lake, and he was alone on land. ⁴⁸He saw the disciples straining at the oars, because the wind was against them. About the fourth watch of the night he went out to them, walking on the lake.

Don’t try this at home. I think at this point you have just lost three quarters of a modern audience. It is ridiculous. People cannot walk on water. Worse than that, saying Jesus did walk on water is just going to put people off.

In fact, some years ago there was a fashion for trying to explain away these kind of things. I heard one famous Christian broadcaster suggest there was a sandbar and Jesus was walking on that, so it looked as though he was walking on water.

I’ve also heard it suggested that the miracle of feeding the 5,000 was really the miracle of persuading people to share their food.

Well, forget it. The miracle, if it was a miracle, was that Jesus walked on water. But why would he do that —and why would he make life so difficult for everyone who can’t believe he walked on water?

The glory of God
The answer goes back to Jesus said about the Old Testament —that it pointed to him. And the clue is the last bit of v 48, where Mark says, “[and] He was about to pass by them ...”.

The “and” is very important —it is all one action:

About the fourth watch of the night he went out to them, walking on the lake and he was about to pass by them.

Very early on in the Old Testament, the man called Moses asked to see God’s glory —his true character. God told him that he couldn’t, it would be too much for him, but then he said this:

There is a place near me where you may stand on a rock. ²²When my glory passes by, I will put you in a cleft in the rock and cover you with my hand until I have passed by. (Ex 33:21-22)

Jesus ‘passing by’ the disciples in the boat, has echoes of God’s glory ‘passing by’ Moses. If this is right, then we must think of what Jesus was doing as showing his glory, just as Moses asked God to show him his glory.

But this might not be very convincing until we ask, “Why did Jesus choose to do this by walking on water?” And if we turn again to the Old Testament, we can see why. In Psalm 77, we read this:

Your ways, O God, are holy. What god is so great as our God? ¹⁴ You are the God who performs miracles; you display your power among the peoples. ¹⁵ With your mighty arm you redeemed your people, the descendants of Jacob and Joseph. ¹⁶ The waters saw you, O God, the waters saw you and writhed; the very depths were convulsed. ¹⁷ The clouds poured down water, the skies resounded with thunder; your arrows flashed back and forth. ¹⁸ Your thunder was heard in the whirlwind, your lightning lit up the world; the earth trembled and quaked. ¹⁹ Your path led through the sea, your way through the mighty waters, though your footprints were not seen.

Remember, the Psalms were Israel’s songbook. And you can imagine how fishermen, like some of the disciples were, would have taken a special interest in Psalms about storms at sea.

Lines like verses 16, 17 and 18 might often have come to mind —and here they were straining at the oars because the wind was against them, when Jesus did what it says about God in v19:

Your path led through the sea, your way through the mighty waters, though your footprints were not seen.

Conclusion
It is so difficult, isn’t it? We want to have Jesus where we can manage him. We want him in a safe box where it is easy to believe in him. We want to be able to admire Jesus as a teacher, and kid ourselves that we follow his teaching.

But you can’t have the Jesus of the Bible and just admire him as a teacher. Or you can —but only if you accept that what he taught was that the Old Testament was about him, and that if you read the Old Testament and compare what it says with what he did, then there is something, or someone, completely amazing here.

Christianity is about believing in Jesus. But not a Jesus who came to teach us to be nice to one another. The Jesus of the Bible is a person who does things that are only done by the God of the Bible.

Believing in Jesus means believing and trusting in that. That, and only that, is what it means to be a Christian.


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What would Jesus teach?

Further to my ponderings on Mark 6:34 last Sunday, I didn’t raise it in the sermon, but we did spend some time in our staff meeting thinking about the last bit of this verse: “So he began to teach them many things.”

As I said previously, I believe that this was how Jesus did for the people what their leaders were failing to do —they were ‘sheep without shepherds’, and so he ‘shepherded’ them by teaching them. And in the process, he began to empower them, as the Church was later to empower people through the gospel.

But surely the question we’d like answered is this: what exactly did Jesus teach? You would have thought that the text would tell us, yet it says absolutely nothing! In fact, the gospels tell us remarkably little about what Jesus taught. There are the parables, there is the Sermon on the Mount (in Matthew) and on the plain (in Luke). But Jesus’ recorded ‘teaching’, especially in Mark, is astonishingly meagre.

If you don’t believe me, try looking at a ‘red letter’ Bible, and you will quickly see that apart from what I have mentioned, Jesus’ teaching is confined almost entirely to a relatively few ad loc comments relating to his person or mission. (Interestingly, one of the few substantial blocks of specific material is about marriage and divorce —yet this is one of the things that the Church has recently tried hardest to ignore.)

Even the epistles are apparently no help. References to ‘what Jesus taught’ are notoriously few and far between. If Jesus’ teaching is ‘the heart of the Christian message’ it would seem we have a problem. Significantly, the lacuna seems to have been exploited by the Gnostics, for it is in the ‘Gnostic Gospels’ that we find the kind of ‘esoteric’ teachings of Jesus for which we might have hoped. Yet when we go to these documents, the teaching is hardly of the kind we associate with the Jesus of the New Testament, and hardly the kind of thing we would want to add to our existing understanding.

Nevertheless, as Mark 6:34 makes clear, Jesus spent a great deal of time teaching the people. So what did he teach them? And why do neither the gospels nor the epistles think it worth recording much of this teaching for us?

In the light of what I said earlier, I want to suggest this: that what Jesus taught the people was nothing other than the Old Testament. What he was doing when he addressed various crowds was the beginnings of what we read that he did with the disciples he later met on the road to Emmaus:

Then He said to them, “O foolish ones, and slow of heart to believe in all that the prophets have spoken! Ought not the Christ to have suffered these things and to enter into His glory. And beginning at Moses and all the Prophets, He expounded to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself.”

As yet he might not have been applying the Scriptures so openly to himself, but he may well have been raising questions, making connections, and laying the groundwork which could later be exploited by the preaching of the Apostles and first evangelists.

If this seems too little to explain how he drew and held the crowds, I would point to my own experience in the mid-1980s when I was with a group of similar-aged clergy (in our thirties) being addressed by none other than Phillip Jensen, brother of the now-Archbishop Peter Jensen.

In the middle of what he was saying, Phillip stopped and said, “Now to understand the next part of my talk, you have to understand how the Old Testament fits together. You do understand that, don’t you?”

But the truth was, we didn’t. Despite years of theological education (three, in my own case), and as much as a decade for many of us in parish ministry, most of us felt the Old Testament to be hostile territory —somewhere where we might find a lesson or two about social justice, and a verse or two about Jesus, but the rest was just confusing.

And so Phillip explained to us how the Old Testament worked. And I can still remember sitting there thinking, “I’ve learned more in the last five minutes than I ever learned in all my time at theological college.” Before, I’d had a miscellaneous collection of bits, now I had something which not only made sense in itself, but led directly to the gospel.

Now if that was what Jesus was doing —taking people who knew the Old Testament, but couldn’t make sense of it, and opening the Scriptures to them —no wonder he gathered the crowds. And this would also explain why we don’t find explicit references to Jesus’ teaching in the rest of the New Testament —because it is there behind everything, in the way that the Old Testament is understood, taught and applied, and in the shape this gives to the gospel.

And this would also give us an important indication of what we should be doing —that we should also be learning to present the Old Testament to people, to familiarise them with it, so that it becomes their own story, and to teach the gospel from it, so that they understand properly who Jesus is. This would fit exactly with the end of Luke, which is also the beginning of the expansion of the Church:

Then He said to them, “These are the words which I spoke to you while I was still with you, that all things must be fulfilled which were written in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms concerning Me.” And He opened their understanding, that they might comprehend the Scriptures.

Let us follow his example (if such it is) and do the same.

Revd John Richardson
21 July 2009

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Entertaining doubts on a Sunday morning

This morning I found myself stepping down from the pulpit with a sense of doubt. These were not those ‘nagging’ doubts about God or the gospel —they usually come at about 4am, and I have learned to treat them as one does ‘mood swings’. No, this was a much more determined doubt, a ‘Have we got it right?’ doubt, an ‘Are we barking up entirely the wrong tree doubt?’, indeed a ‘Have I spent my whole life on the wrong cause?’ doubt, to do with Anglicanism.

To make matters worse, the reason was my own preaching. We’ve been working our way through Mark, and I had meant to spend just a few moments on 6:34, just before the feeding of the five thousand: “When Jesus landed and saw a large crowd, he had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd. So he began teaching them many things.”

The plan was to point out to the congregation the link with Ezekiel 34, where the Lord condemned Israel’s ‘shepherds’, and then chapter 22 where we read about the conditions in Israel: corruption in high places, falsehood amongst the priests and prophets, and then in 22:29, “The people of the land practice extortion and commit robbery; they oppress the poor and needy and mistreat the alien, denying them justice.”

However, I’d forgotten my notes (or rather I’d printed off last week’s sermon instead of this week’s) so I was ad-libbing slightly, and I began addressing the issue of social injustice. Here, from memory, is roughly how it went:

“The failure of the leadership —the shepherds —in Ezekiel’s day had created injustice,” I observed, “And we see much injustice around us in the world today. But look at what Jesus did when, in his day, he saw the people as ‘sheep without a shepherd’.”

“What would we do in the same circumstances?” I asked. “Surely we would try to address the causes of injustice. But what does Jesus do? It says, ‘He began to teach the many things.’ But how would this help? The answer is that injustice is, in the end, caused by people, and so by teaching the people, Jesus was addressing the injustice.”

“But Jesus was not addressing the rich and powerful. So how would that help reduce injustice? Because he was empowering the poor by what he taught them. And that is the best way to reduce injustice, because there are more poor people than rich and powerful people. So in England, in the eighteenth century, the Wesleys empowered the poor, not the rich and the powerful, by preaching the gospel to them and empowering them, and they changed societies and communities.”

But as I was preaching, I could feel at the back of my mind a realization that what I was saying didn’t quite work. So often, the gospel has not changed society, because it has not empowered people. And my doubt is this: whether Anglicanism, and specifically the Anglican understanding of priesthood, will always disempower people, and can therefore never really change society.

As evidence of this, look at all the fuss that is made about ordination generally and women’s ordination in particular. Where in the pages of the New Testament do we ever find a heated discussion about ordination? Circumcision, yes, but ordination?

And then what about the link between ordination and the sacraments? It is no wonder people want to get ordained in the Church of England, if this is the only way you can, literally, get your hands on sacramental ministry. Hence women’s ordination is an issue of ‘justice’ because ordination is power. But where is ordination an issue in the New Testament?

I simply do not find convincing the argument that Jesus passed this on as an ‘apostolic’ ministry at the Last Supper. Michael Green, when he was principal of St John’s Nottingham, used to point out how in the Corinthian correspondence a great deal was said about the Lord’s Supper and the need for discipline, but nothing about who should ‘celebrate’ it. As he said, can you imagine that in a situation parallel to what we find in Anglicanism today?

So I found myself with my head in my hands after the sermon (people probably thought I was praying) wondering if we haven’t got it all wrong. How is the Church going to empower the poor, when the ‘rich’ —the rich in talent, and learning, and leadership qualities, and language skills, and the ability to work the middle-class ‘system’ of Bishops’ Advisory Panels and DDOs —monopolize the ministry of word and sacrament? Surely this is why the Church of England has never truly reached the poor in this country (except through works of ‘charity’, done in a condescending way and never really making a difference) and why only truly ‘indigenous’ ministry from the poor to the poor can work to transform the poor, such as we see, for example, in the best of Pentecostalism.

In short, am I simply part of the problem —along with all my dog-collard brothers and sisters —because merely by being what I am, I stifle the life of the Spirit by creating a dependency culture? Am I not colluding in the power structures, even whilst I try to preach the gospel for the poor? Are we not just as fearful as the religious leaders were in Jesus’ day, that if just ordinary people took on the privileges of priests and bishops then we would lose our influence?

I note that in Acts 4:13, the Sanhedrin saw that Peter and John were ‘agrammatoi kai idiōtēs’. The NIV translates this, ‘unschooled, ordinary men’. A more blunt version would be ‘ungrammatical idiots’. Would you and I trust them with what they were doing? I ask again, “What would Jesus do?”

Revd (still) John P Richardson
19 July 2009

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Revelation and Temple

Phil Almond raised what I think is a valid criticism of what I’ve posted about the Temple and the Second Coming in his comment on my Re-placing the Temple. He wrote,

Mark 13 and Matthew 24 have material in common. Mark 13 is in answer to the some of the disciples’ question, ‘Tell us, when these things will be, and what the sign when all these things are about to be completed?’ In Matthew the question is expressed as, ‘Tell us, when these things will be, and what the sign of thy presence and of the completion of the age?’ Mark 13:27 has the Son of Man sending the angels to assemble the chosen. Matthew 13:40-41 says at the completion of the age the Son of Man will send his angels to gather and cast those doing lawlessness into a furnace of fire and then the righteous will shine forth. In the light of this your statement that Mark 13:26 is not a reference to the Second Coming seems over-dogmatic.

With reference to his conclusion, though I would not use the word ‘dogmatic’, I do think an interpretation and application of Mark 13:26 which excludes the Second Coming is overly restrictive.

Both the Mark passage itself, and the parallels in Matthew (24:1-44) and Luke (21:5-36), make it clear that the return of the Son of Man is in view. Yet it seems to me that a reference to the Son of Man entering the heavenly Temple is also more or less required by the language and the overall biblical context.

I would argue that we need to take into account that the disciples have asked a valid question, which demands an answer, but also that they are starting from assumptions (about Israel and the nations) which make a simple answer elusive (rather, I would suggest, like the child who asks, “Mummy, how did I get into the cabbage patch?”). Their question (I would hold) assumes a straightforward sequence in which the Glory returns to the Temple, followed by the establishment of God’s dominion over the world with Israel as its geo-political centre. This assumes a direct connection of Temple-restoration with the End of the Age, which both Jesus' words and subsequent experience deny.

Jesus’ answer embraces three things: (1) the fact that this scenario is wrong, (2) his actual entry into the heavenly Temple-presence of God and (3) the eventual ‘End of the Age’.

The wrongness of the disciples’ scenario is born out by predictions that the earthly Temple will be destroyed and rendered inoperable (the Abomination which causes Desolation). Incidentally, I do not think this is a reference to the crucifixion (contra Peter Bolt) unless there is also a double-reference here.

The entry into the heavenly Temple is referred to in the Son of Man coming with the clouds of heaven, following the parallel in Daniel 7. Stephen’s vision in Acts 8:56 ( “I see heaven open and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God”) is a practical consequence of this, but so is the theology of Hebrews 8:1-2 (“We do have such a high priest, who sat down at the right hand of the throne of the Majesty in heaven, and who serves in the sanctuary, the true tabernacle set up by the Lord, not by man”) and Revelation 5:1-14 (see also 11:19, “Then God’s temple in heaven was opened, and within his temple was seen the ark of his covenant”).

Christ’s presence in the heavenly Temple is thus not only an accomplished fact but an ongoing reality.

However, this is a reality which is hidden from sight. Thus what happens (I suggest) when Christ returns is not that we move on to another stage, but that this reality is revealed (see, eg, 2 Thess 1:7; 1 Pet 1:7,13; 4:13).

We have to bear in mind that the Temple is not a place of ‘worship’ in the sense that its focus is on praise, but is the house and palace of God — his dwelling place from which he extends his rule. Thus when Christ’s reign is finally established, it is appropriate to describe it (symbolically) in ‘Temple’ language:

I did not see a temple in the city, because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple. ²³The city does not need the sun or the moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and the Lamb is its lamp. ²⁴ The nations will walk by its light, and the kings of the earth will bring their splendour into it. (Rev 19:22-24)

Thus the narrative in Mark 13 and parallels embraces both the forthcoming reality of Christ entering into the heavenly Temple and the future reality of his reigning in the heavenly Temple being revealed at the End of the Age.

As to the angels, the translation may sometimes appropriately be ‘messengers’, as in evangelists, but will (obviously) sometimes be ‘angels’ as in heavenly beings.

I hope this may help.

John Richardson
30 September 2008

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Please, sir, I want less law

The news that Joy Tracey, a resident of Denton in Greater Manchester, was threatened with being fined for putting up posters about a missing cat underlines once again the sense that ours is a society which has lost its moral compass.

Five hundred years ago, Martin Luther began a treatise on Holy Communion with these remarkable words:

Experience, all chronicles, and the Holy Scriptures as well, teach us this truth: the less law, the more justice; the fewer commandments, the more good works. No well-regulated community ever existed long, if at all, where there were many laws.

An odd way, you might think, to begin discussing church services. But Luther’s understanding of religion went far beyond what is done inside the four walls of a church. At the heart of his message was a radical divide between what we are and what we ought to be.

What we are is disobedient creatures in rebellion against God and in conflict with our neighbours. Therefore we must have laws, magistrates, police and prisons (and finally, hell itself). What we ought to be is sons and daughters of God, whose pattern is Jesus and whose home is the Kingdom of Heaven where the only law is the law of love. And between these two states of being there is a constant tension.

Thus we must have laws, because without them there would be no control over criminal behaviour, injustice and oppression. But the law can never make us good, and therefore it can never bring about justice. It can punish and limit wrongdoing, but it is always inefficient and ultimately ineffective. And therefore too much law is a bad thing.

The difference between Luther’s society and our own, however, is that in Luther’s day, and down to the mid-twentieth century, there was a general assumption that behind our laws lay a higher demand based on a greater authority. For Luther, this was God. And even when faith in God became diminished or distorted, the sense that laws should embody ‘justice’ remained.

In the Western world in the latter part of the twentieth century, however, the notion of ‘moral absolutes’ underwent a widespread collapse. And along with this, of course, went a collapse in moral standards and moral behaviour.

In its place, has come a deliberate remodelling of society, based on a redefinition of humanity. In Luther’s world, human beings were the pinnacle of a created order made in the image of their creator to serve him and rule their world in relationships based on no other law than self-sacrificing love. Law, in this view, was something that belonged to the unredeemed world of sin, not the sanctified future of salvation.

In our society today, all that is, of course, regarded as twaddle. There is no God, there are no moral absolutes, there is no ‘higher authority’. Hence we are ‘free’ to do as we want.

Ironically, however, the result is not an increase, but a decrease of freedom. And this is for two reasons. First, when there is no shared agreement as to how we should act, there have to be rules. If all believe they can act as they want, then all must be told how to act with regard to other people if we are to avoid chaos and conflict. Laws must increase, and become increasingly detailed, since no-one can be simply relied on to do the ‘right thing’.

Secondly, power lies in the hands of people who are themselves without any ‘higher authority’ but who want to shape society. We are now, therefore, subject to the will of a very small number of individuals whose controlling principle is the same as everyone else’s — to do what they want — but who differ from everyone else in having the power, backed up if necessary by force, to bend others to their will. Yet their own will is shaped only by their ‘appetite’ — by what pleases or displeases them from moment to moment or from time to time.

In this situation, law substitutes for justice because there is no justice above the law to which the law is itself subject. A woman whom the Guardian newspaper described as ‘public spirited’ is therefore threatened with legal action by the local council whose proper role is to engender ‘public spirit’.

For the Christian this creates a real dilemma. We are encouraged to obey the governing authorities, as being instituted by God (Romans 13). But when those authorities are godless they threaten not only our well-being but the well-being of society itself. At very least, we must ensure that when we preach the gospel we do not collude with the godless state. The law, as the Apostle Paul once wrote, is for lawbreakers and the godless (1 Timothy 1:8-11). Or as Charles Dickens put it, “The law is [at least on occasion] a ass.” Or as one of his other characters might have put it, “Please, sir, I want less law.”

Let us not put our hopes in the law, and let us never co-mingle the law with the gospel.

Revd John P Richardson
24 May 2008

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Jesus' "no" to Shari'ah

(See also Rowan and Islam for Dummies)

From one of my favourite books: Mission to Islam and Beyond (pdf file), by Jens Christensen (originally The Practical Approach to Muslims)

29. Muslims (and some Christians) will tell you that as man is limited by the imperfections and evils of sin, a practical shariat like that of Moses or of Muhammed is a necessity. Everybody knows that a state needs laws. What the Muslim and some Christians forget is that the word ‘shariat’ implies a God-given, revealed law for a kingdom of God here on earth. (It makes no difference if that kingdom of God is thought of as identical with the kingdom of Israel or the kingdom of Islam.) That is what our Lord protests against. The kingdom of God is the Kingdom of heaven; it is not of this world, and therefore the subjects of that kingdom must not and cannot blend or confuse its laws with that of any temporal state. Its laws must be purely religious (that is, related directly to God) and unattainable.

‘Why unattainable?’, is the question that both Christians and Muslims ask. The answer is simple. For if sinful man could attain perfection by keeping the law then he is either no longer sinful, or else sin has become a recognised and admitted part of the kingdom of God. The righteousness of the Pharisees was the best, the highest of which the Jews knew, and our Lord said that unless your righteousness exceeds theirs you cannot have a hope of getting into the kingdom of heaven (Matt. 5:20). The unattainable nature of the Christian way of life constantly reminds man of his sinful state and of his need of God’s righteousness.

30. The Jews thought this was a strange, astonishing, new teaching. So it was. The Muslims feel exactly the same way about it. However, until the Jew or the Muslim sees that Christ has unconditionally rejected the idea of a theocratic state as bringing in the kingdom of God, he will not be able to understand our Lord’s attitude towards his shariat.

31. Let me illustrate this very important point in another way. Our Lord said the law and the prophets all hang on these two commandments: ‘Thou shalt love the Lord thy God . . . [and] thy neighbour as thyself’ (Matt.22:37–40). The first of these commandments is taken from Deuteronomy, the second from Leviticus. The second more or less obscure command is found in Leviticus 19:18 and reads like this: ‘Thou shalt not avenge, nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people, but thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself’. When the lawyer asked our Lord to define ‘neighbour’, He would, if he had accepted the context in which that commandment is written, have said; ‘The children of your people, whom you contact’. Instead, He made the Jews and (of all people!) the hated Samaritans neighbours. Our Lord took the sense, the idea, in the old commandment and lifted it out of the covenant law which was the state law and applied it universally and personally.

32. When our Lord said, ‘Those of old said such and such, but I say unto you . . .’, He was not just spiritualising the law, as some would have us think. He was actually introducing a new element. He was introducing the consequences of His own preaching when he said: ‘The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand: repent ye and believe the Gospel’ (Mark 1:15). The kingdom of God is the kingdom of heaven.

No theocratic state with its shariat could ever bring it near. Repent, that is, turn your back on that idea, and believe the Gospel, believe that the Messiah, the Son of Man, the suffering and dying servant of Jehovah, has brought the kingdom near, and has introduced God’s righteousness for all men equally, everywhere.

33. The difference between our Lord and the Jews of His time was, concisely, this: The Jews knew that Jehovah had chosen them to be His covenanted people on earth. They therefore thought that they should establish a worldly kingdom of God on earth, probably through the work of the coming King Messiah. Jehovah had given them a shariat together with the Covenant. This they thought was everlasting and was to be applied universally as the law of that universal theocratic state, for by keeping it men became pleasing in the sight of God.

34. Jesus, on the other hand, said that while the purpose of the Covenant with Israel was to establish a special relationship to them, it was not intended to establish a universal theocratic state with a universal law, in which Israel, as a nation, was God’s viceroy on earth. No theocratic state, no shariat, could ever establish righteousness on earth, that is, God’s righteousness. With the rejection of the theocratic state, the law of that state (as the instrument appointed by God whereby men could be wellpleasing in His sight) must also be thrown overboard. Righteousness, God’s righteousness, could only come, as Isaiah said, through the suffering and death of Jehovah’s righteous servant, the Son of Man or, if you like, the Messiah.

35. If you will take this whole idea and apply it to Islam you will find how remarkably applicable it is. Although some of the details will differ (as for example, sabbath-keeping, which is unknown in Islam), yet as such, the picture is clear. Our Lord would be in direct, clear-cut opposition to the Muslims at every step. Nothing they could do would be right, because it is all based on the idea that they belong to the people whose God-given right it is to dominate the world in Allah’s name and thus bring in the ‘kingdom of God’ (although they never use that particular expression) on earth.

36. The Jews thought that they were bringing in the kingdom of God. The Muslims think they are bringing in the kingdom of God—and our Lord says to both: The time is fulfilled. The kingdom of God is at hand; repent and believe the Gospel, which you need as well as every other person on earth.

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