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UNWORTHY

When you have done all that you were commanded, say, ‘We are unworthy servants; we have only done what was our duty.’  (Luke 17:10 ESV)

In the latest post, the same passage based on a translation where ἀχρεῖος, achreios, the word above ‘unworthy’, was better rendered as ‘unprofitable’.  Is ‘unworthy’ poor translation? Hardly, for it correctly conveys the sense that someone or something is ‘lacks utility’, the very literal meaning of achreios, and it is short step from ‘useless’ to ‘being without merit’ – but it may possibly mislead if taken in isolation from all the Jesus taught, and indeed, all Scripture.

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UNPROFITABLE

when you have done all those things which you are commanded, say, ‘We are unprofitable servants. We have done what was our duty to do.’  (Luke 17:10)

Jesus, through the unusual device of a parable based on rhetorical questions, seems to be challenging the stubborn thinking of his close disciples, and it is easy to see how the same attitude prevails in all who would follow Christ.

For it is easy to fall into the mistaken notion that in keeping the commandments, say the Great Commission, evangelising the Gospel and discipling those evangelised, a person adds to God’s purpose.  Put another way, the faithful disciples thinks that they are necessary for God to achieve his goals and without them God is at a loss.

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LYING

When he lies, he speaks out of his own character, for he is a liar and the father of lies.  (John 8:44b)

Jesus is speaking of the devil, who is elsewhere in the Bible shown to be Satan and he is the original deceiver.

The Greek word translated ‘lie’ is the verb ψεύδομαι (pseudomai) and it means ‘to falsify’ or ‘to wilfully misrepresent’.

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LAZARUS

Jesus cried out with a loud voice, ‘Lazarus, come out.’  

The man who had died came out, his hands and feet bound with linen strips, and his face wrapped with a cloth.  (John 11:43-44)

Lazarus is a name taken via the Latin Lazar, derived from the Hebrew ‘Eleazer’, which means ‘God helped’.

Lazarus was the brother of Mary and Martha.  The family were clearly very good friends, possible even relations of Jesus.  They lived in Bethany, now called El-Azariya (‘place’ of Lazarus), situated on the south eastern slope of the Mount of Olives, and thus a short walk from Jerusalem.

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STRONGHOLD

For though we walk in the flesh, we are not waging war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds. We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive to obey Christ, being ready to punish every disobedience, when your obedience is complete.  (2 Corinthians 10:3-6)

Paul identifies ‘strongholds’ – the Greek is ὀχύρωμα ochuróma, literally ‘fortress’ –  which means conceptually and in context, ‘a place of refuge from reality’; in other words, Paul is speaking about inner desires, wishes, dreams and fantasies, alongside any other idolatrous and rebellious notions to which the follower of Christ may cleave.  These are inner and personal fastnesses that resist the Holy Spirit, and he says that the individual is to seek them out in themselves and tear them down.  

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SHREWD

‘I am sending you out like sheep among wolves. Therefore, be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves.’  (Matthew 10:16 NIV)

This is Jesus’ advice to the twelve disciples as he dispatches them on their solo mission across Galilee, it may be obvious they go as sheep before wolves, in that people will vilify them; and in bringing the gospel of love and, in that vulnerability, they must necessarily be as ‘innocents’, unjudgmental, prepared to trust and risk rejection or worse, but what does Jesus mean when he says the must be as shrewd as snakes?

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ETERNITY

God has put eternity into man’s heart, yet so that he cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end.  (Ecclesiastes 3:11b)

The Bible affirms that human beings are eternal creatures.  Mortality was simply a mechanism of grace, for without mortal life the first infraction would doom to hell.  Solomon, granted all earthly wisdom, says self-knowledge of eternity is hard-wired into our very nature.

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UNFORGIVABLE (SIN)

‘Everyone who speaks a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but the one who blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven.’  (Luke 12:10)

The Greek word for the verb translated ‘forgiven’ is ἀφίημι aphiémi, from apó ‘away from’ and hiémi ‘send away, release or discharge’.  In this the verb directly mirrors the English word which comes from the Anglo-Saxon forgiefan, a combination of the prefix for ‘away’ and giefan ‘to give’.  For God to forgive then denotes the process where he relinquishes or ‘gives away’ His right to punish those that wrong him.  

Jesus declares…

‘Truly, I say to you, all sins will be forgiven the children of man…’  (Mark 3:28a)

The Apostle Paul knew that his crimes against God were grave, yet he tells his pupil…

The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost.  (1 Timothy 1:15)

And when he says ‘save’, he means save from rightful punishment.  The Gospel of Christ declares the guilty go unpunished, while the punishment is borne by God the Father’s guiltless Son, thus the just God is propitiated.  But Jesus also says that not that all punishment can be waived.  

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PILATE

So, when Pilate saw that he was gaining nothing, but rather that a riot was beginning, he took water and washed his hands before the crowd, saying, ‘I am innocent of this man’s blood; see to it yourselves.’

And all the people answered, ‘his blood be on us and on our children!’ 

Then he released for them Barabbas, and having scourged Jesus, delivered him to be crucified.  (Matthew 27:24-26)

The Gospel merely calls the prefect (or governor) of Judaea by the cognomen ‘Pilate’; in Greek, Πιλᾶτος (Pilatos), transliterated from the Latin pilatus, which means skilled with the pilum, the military spear of the Roman Army.

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AUTHORITY

And the devil took (Jesus) up and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of time, and said to him, ‘to you I will give all this authority and their glory, for it has been delivered to me, and I give it to whom I will.  If you, then, will worship me, it will all be yours.’  (Luke 4:5-7)

‘Authority’ is ἐξουσία exousia and it means licensed power, the right to act, to have charge of, or dominion over.

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