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Family, Parenting and Religion
The Widening of God’s Mercy– Part Four

The Widening of God’s Mercy– Part Four

Last updated on: October 16, 2024 at 1:55 am by Ben Witherington

The Widening of God’s Mercy– Part Four 2024-10-11T11:24:25-04:00 Ben Witherington

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PART FOUR: THE TREATMENT OF THE NT

Let it first be said that Richard’s treatment of the Gospels does indeed place the emphasis in the right place in terms of God’s mercy and compassion as expressed in Christ’s various teachings and healings and acts of fellowship. The problem with these chapters is the important topics they fail to address. Examples are Christ’s views on marriage, sexual sin, the eternal consequences for rejecting the Good News, and Christ’s call of sinners to repentance in light of the coming Kingdom of God (see e.g. Mark 1.15 as a summary of his message).

We must have a concept of progressive revelation, namely that Jesus and his teaching and actions and character are the clearest revelation of God’s character. If so, there are points at which, when Jesus says something definitive on these relevant matters or even if one of his apostles like Paul does so, we must take these teachings very seriously as the clearest and furthest revelation of the character of a God. God is righteous, and holy, and just. He is also called Love in 1 John 4, and is light, life, compassionate, merciful and more. It is right to put an emphasis on the nouns like love, bearing in mind that we are not talking about eros but rather agape, God’s holy and gracious love. So, it is in order to point out that while the Hays’ book basically does not address the issue of marriage (which is odd), Jesus has something very clear to say to his disciples about this matter when the question is asked about why Moses permitted divorce. The importance of this passage is so great, that we must give it some detailed attention. Here is a translation of Matthew 19, bearing in mind that the Mark 10 account of this same teaching says Jesus said, “no divorce”.

3 Some Pharisees came to him to test him. They asked, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any and every reason?”

4 “Haven’t you read,” he replied, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’[a] 5 and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’[b]? 6 So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore, what God has joined together, let no one separate.”

7 “Why then,” they asked, “did Moses command that a man give his wife a certificate of divorce and send her away?”

8 Jesus replied, “Moses permitted you to divorce your wives because your hearts were hard. But it was not this way from the beginning. 9 I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another woman commits adultery.”

10 The disciples said to him, “If this is the situation between a husband and wife, it is better not to marry.”

11 Jesus replied, “Not everyone can accept this word, but only those to whom it has been given. 12 For there are eunuchs who were born that way, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by others—and there are those who choose to live like eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. The one who can accept this should accept it.”

First of all, notice that Jesus only endorses heterosexual monogamy, and he does so on the basis of his understanding of the original creation order design of God. God made us male and female for each other. Only males and females could share a one flesh union that could lead to the fulfillment of God’s plan that they be fruitful and multiply. Jesus is citing Gen. 1.27 and then 2.24. The only alternative he offers his own disciples is celibacy in singleness, using the language of being like a eunuch.

What about the exception clause, found both here and in Mt. 5.32. The word used in the exception clause is porneia. A porne was a prostitute (hence the English term pornography), and so the noun could mean except on grounds of prostitution. But the other singular meaning is incest—except on grounds of incest, like the case of Herod Antipas with his brother’s wife. One could see Jesus commenting on that since John the Baptizer also did. The other meaning of porneia is any and all sorts of sexual immorality. But this is unlikely to be the meaning in this passage since the disciples rightly discern that Jesus is being stricter than Moses on this issue and throw up their hands saying if this is the case, then better for a man not to marry.

What is equally important is to notice Jesus’ comment on Moses’ permission of divorce. We are told that God allowed divorce due to the hardness of their hearts. And here we have a window on Jesus’ own hermeneutic. He thinks that various of the OT laws were given because of the spiritual state of God’s people at that point. But now Jesus and the eschatological age has come, therefore, new occasions can bring forth new teaching. This new teaching is not progressive in the modern since of progressing beyond the OT teaching in ways that negate ethical rigor. To the contrary, Jesus is more demanding in his sexual ethic than the OT, not only basically ruling out divorce (and remarriage in Mark 10.11) for those ‘whom God has joined together’, but he also intensifies the demand in regard to adultery, to include adulterous thoughts (see Matthew 5). Jesus is taking away the male privilege of divorce in his Jewish setting which, as a result, gave women more security in marriage. But he is also allowing that the command to be fruitful and multiply is not required of all his followers – they can be single for the sake of the kingdom. You will not find a discussion of this anywhere in The Widening of God’s Mercy. What Jesus does not say is that his disciples should be allowed to find other sorts of marriage arrangements other than the one God intended at creation of humankind as male and female.

Another subject that could have used a careful discussion in this book is covenants. Covenants in the OT, such as the Abrahamic and Mosaic covenants and then the New Covenant announced by Jeremiah 31 and enacted by Jesus and his followers, are arrangements set up by God between God and his people. That there are limits to who is included in the saved category should be clear from Jesus’ sayings about people going to Gehenna, or his parable of the rich man and Lazarus, or his saying about the narrow gate, or his parable about the sheep and the goats. Neither Jesus nor his apostles and early followers thought that the Gospel was some form of universalism. As Paul says repeatedly, salvation is by grace through faith in Christ crucified and risen. While Christ has atoned for the sins of the world through his death, and is the objective means of human salvation, the subjective means is by trusting in Christ, being born again, and being baptized by the Spirit into the new covenant community.

Thus, when we see that the New Covenant doesn’t require sabbath observance of Jesus’ followers this is not a sign of a change of mind or incipient universalism. Rather, it’s a sign that the covenant has changed, and includes some of the same commandments as found in the Mosaic Law, but many new ones as well. Such is the nature of contracts between God and his people; they differ according to the point in time in salvation history they are covering. Jesus is not merely an advocate of a more enlightened reading of the OT, though that is true. He is also offering teachings that go well beyond and sometimes against some of the materials in the OT. This is true because he perceives the eschatological saving reign of God is breaking in, and the new occasion require a New Covenant, with many new commandments. This is not only for God’s Jewish people, but also for non-Jews, as would become clearer later.

Understandably, the term mercy comes up again and again in Richard’s treatment of Jesus’ teaching. Jesus does emphasize mercy, but what is mercy? Mercy is what a sinner needs and gets when he or she is not punished according to strict justice. Mercy is not the same thing as grace.

It is interesting that Richard points to the word hesed which he translates as steadfast love. It is interesting because that very word hesed is universally translated in the LXX as mercy, not as steadfast love, or loving kindness. Of course, the NT is in Greek and its authors use the LXX more than any other version of the OT. Jesus is perfectly well aware that tax collectors and ‘sinners’ are indeed in need of repentance (which E.P. Sanders says means ‘notorious sinners’). Note the parable of the tax collector pleading for mercy, while the Pharisee lifts himself up by comparing himself to the IRS agent. In the story of Zaccheus, we see this need for and response of repentance clearly. It is no accident that Jesus says salvation has come to his house on that day.

Note that Richard follows Chris’ lead and suggests that Hosea 11 shows God changing his mind to have mercy instead of judging (p. 138). This is not an accurate reading of the whole passage. God is depicted as debating with himself what he will do, and in the end concludes, because he is God and not quixotic likes humans, that he will not change his mind about his original love and mercy for his people. God will be faithful to his promises even when Israel is faithless. It is right to place the emphasis on Christ’s compassion and mercy, but not at the expense of what he says about eternal consequences for rejecting his Good News message. Jesus says far more about people going to Gehenna or outer darkness than any other speaker in the NT with the exception of John of Patmos. It is important not to neglect the justice and righteousness of God which is a theme throughout the Bible. Justice and righteousness ironically become an expression of love, through the substituting of God’s Son to be the atonement for our sins. It should have been us on the cross but, as Paul says, the God of righteousness could not pass over sin forever and remain the person who God is—a God of holy love, not holiness without love, and not love without holiness.

In his dealing with the book of Acts, most of the exegesis is fine until one gets to the Decree of the Jerusalem Council which is definitely not about a creative re-reading of Leviticus. For one thing there is no mention of the prohibition of ‘things strangled’ in Leviticus at all. This is actually a clue to the social setting James has in mind, namely idol feasts in pagan temples. Pagans did indeed strangle birds so the life breath would enter into the statue of the god, and thereby invigorate or feed the deity. Furthermore, eidolothuton refers to meat sacrificed to an idol which would be followed by a feast in which the idol or god would be the host. If one asks the right question as to where a Jew would assume one could find all four things prohibited in the decree (eidolothuton, blood, things strangled, and porneia) all in one place, including sexual immorality, it would be in a pagan idol feast in a temple’s dining room. After too much wine there would regularly be sexual, immoral behavior with the servants.

In short, the decree is about venue, not about a Levitical menu. Paul implements the decree in 1 Corinthians 8-10 where he prohibits attending idol feasts in temple dining rooms. Indeed, he says there is no problem with eating anything one finds in the meat market, including animals sacrificed in a pagan temple. Again, the issue is venue and where one finds those four prohibited things together, not menu. Finally, the reason James reminds the Gentiles about the heart of the Mosaic law, namely the Ten Commandments, is because at its core it is a prohibition of idolatry and immorality, including porneia.

So, if one wants to take the Jerusalem Council example as a paradigm for how to deal with the ‘presenting’ issue in regard to same sex, sexual expression, James’ answer would be God’s Word prohibits it! And so does the teaching of the Apostle to the Gentiles in Romans and 1 Corinthians. One must reject the idea of an analogy between inclusion of various non-Jewish ethnic groups into the covenant community, something all along hinted at in the mission of the chosen people to be a light to the nations. This has nothing to do with accepting sexual practices which are clearly at odds with specific statements in both the Mosaic law and the New Covenant teachings. Again, the Holy Spirit’s leading us into a deeper understanding of the Scriptures does not include leading us to contradict the clear teaching of Scripture on some important theological or ethical matter. If the decree of James suggests anything, it suggests that in the new covenant community the sexual ethical standards will still be as demanding as in the Mosaic law, if not more so. There is no trajectory of change on that issue in Scripture. Indeed, Jesus and Paul call us to a higher standard of ethical rectitude including in regard to the form of marriage they endorse.

Richard’s treatment of the Pauline letters rightly emphasizes the theme of mercy and love, while deliberately avoiding saying anything about the Pauline texts (e.g. Rom. 1.18-32; 1 Cor. 6.9) that clearly enough condemn same sex relationships. As it turns out, and we learn in the final chapter about ‘Moral Re-Envisioning’, this was part of the deliberate strategy of this whole book. The strategy was to NOT deal with the OT and NT texts that do indeed teach that the various behaviors being touted as normal by the LGBTQ+ are either explicitly or implicitly ruled out by these texts and also the ones that say that God’s intent is for heterosexual monogamy when it comes to marriage, a teaching Jesus himself insists on. And once more with feeling, it is quite false to say that what was being condemned in the Bible is NOT same sex relations between consenting adults. There are various ancient examples of that from Jesus and Paul’s world, so that claim needs to be dropped, as Preston Sprinkle and others have shown (see the blog post of Oct. 12th on this blog).

There is a further attempt by Richard at an analogy between the discussion of the weak and the strong in Romans 14. Richard rightly suggests that these passages probably refer to Jewish Christians, who have too many scruples about the food they eat and the day they worship God, versus the Gentiles who have no such scruples. Clearly, Paul identifies with the strong, but wishes to protect the weak as also is the case in 1 Corinthians. But the attempt to then suggest that today the strong are those who have abandoned scruples about same sex sexual behavior (and related LGBTQ+ advocated behaviors), whereas the weak are those who maintain the teaching that the Bible explicitly gives on such behaviors, is far-fetched. One could just as easily turn this argument on its head. The weak are those who have capitulated to the siren song of our pagan culture about sexual behaviors the Bible does not condone. The strong are those who have remained faithful to the Biblical teaching against the general flow of the American culture. In the end, the attempt at analogies using either Acts 15 or Romans 14 and situations today are strained at best, and frankly unconvincing.

In the final chapter it is argued that what is said in the OT and NT about slaves and slavery is something the church now deems wrong and not to be followed despite what is said in the Bible. The problem with this judgment is it fails to realize that the Biblical dictates and statements about slavery which is a practice, like patriarchy, that is a result of human fallenness and sin, are all attempts to limit an existing and ongoing evil not license it! Despite the fact that various people over the last 2,000 years thought it provided a warrant for enslaving people, this was not the intent of what was being taught. For instance, in the household codes in Colossians 3-4 and Ephesians 5-6, Paul must start with a situation that already is in place and exists in the household of new high status Christians with slaves. And, like any good pastor, he must start with them where they are, but not leave them there.

Notice the trajectory of change from Colossians where there is a remark about equality between masters and slaves (isotes), to Ephesians where we hear that masters are to serve their slaves and treat them with respect, and finally to Philemon where we see where this trajectory of change is going. The trajectory is moving to ‘manumission’ because Onesimus must be seen by his owner, the Christian Philemon, as ‘no longer a slave, but rather a brother in Christ’. Paul already said in Gal. 3.28 that in Christ there is neither Jew nor Gentile, slave nor free, and no male and female. Amen to that. What he did not say or even remotely suggest is that the Biblical standards of sexual morality should be changed to meet the preferences of a pagan culture.

I take it for granted that we are to love and welcome everyone into the Church. This does not mean that we are to accept all their ideas, beliefs, and behaviors. They can come as they are, but no one should ever expect to stay as they are when they are encountering Christ and the Spirit in the gathering of the church for worship and fellowship and discipleship. To the contrary, everyone, being sinners, should expect to be changed by being part of the body of Christ. What the church should never do is baptize people’s sins, of whatever sort, and call it good and acceptable behavior. What actually does the most harm is treating sin and its consequences as if it isn’t sin and has no serious consequences. The message of the Church today should be the same today for the sexual sinner as Jesus articulated in his own day, that is, a message which balances mercy and righteousness. “Neither do I condemn you but go and sin no more.” If the church did an adequate job of making clear that single persons are loved members of the forever family of Christ and should be treated with the same love and respect as traditionally married persons, then we would not need to be citing the verse which suggests it is not good for a human being to be alone. To be an integral, indeed essential, part of the Body of Christ and to be loved as such is not to be alone.

In the end do we really want or need a God who is quixotic and changes his mind? How exactly can we trust God and his Word if he keeps changing his mind? How can we even know what God really thinks about crucial matters if this is true? I especially raise this question because both Chris and Richard Hays are raising this issue in regard to God changing his mind AFTER the writing of Scripture on this particular issue. There is no positive evidence in the Scripture that God changed his mind about sexual ethics, even if you accept the argument that God changed his mind on other subjects unrelated to human sexual behavior. To the contrary, the critique of same sex sexual behavior is strong in both the Old Covenant and the New Covenant, in both the OT and the NT.

The argument that after the Holy Spirit inspired the Bible, 2,000 years later that same Holy Spirit led the church in a different direction is not tenable. And the argument that we know that God’s mind has changed because we have experienced LGBTQ+ folk as good Christians who deserve to be included in anything and everything the Church does, is entirely an argument from personal experience and not tenable. In short, it is an argument based on assumed analogies. The Scriptural evidence that God changes his mind is not acceptable and involves a misreading of the key verb nacham.

Great is Thy faithfulness, O God my Father;
There is no shadow of turning with Thee;
Thou changest not, Thy compassions, they fail not;
As Thou hast been Thou forever wilt be.

Refrain:
Great is Thy faithfulness!
Great is Thy faithfulness!
Morning by morning new mercies I see:
All I have needed Thy hand hath provided—
Great is Thy faithfulness, Lord, unto me!

Lyrics by Thomas Chisholm, 1923

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