Episode 55: Gospel of Mark 1: Son of Man vs the Messiah

The Gospel of Mark points out something very interesting. When referring to Himself, Yeshua (Jesus) uses the term “Son of Man” instead of Messiah. We’re going to do a cultural expectation study about what the term Messiah had come to mean to first-century Jews and talk about why Yeshua instead chose the more obscure title “Son of Man.”

Transcript below:

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Sometimes there arises a bit of manufactured controversy over the fact that Yeshua/Jesus didn’t really use the term “Messiah” to describe Himself but instead used the phrase “Son of Man.” In fact, when describing Himself He almost exclusively uses “Son of Man” and we mostly only see the word Christos pop up in the mouths of others, many of the instances being editorial references after the fact instead of directly coming out of the mouths of the disciples and crowds to whom He preached. So today we are going to tackle this subject—Son of Man vs Messiah, and figure out why Yeshua used the one and not the other. Don’t worry, it will make sense. The explanation is really very simple.

Hi, I am Tyler Dawn Rosenquist and welcome to Character in Context, where I teach the historical and ancient sociological context of Scripture with an eye to developing the character of Messiah. If you prefer written material, I have five years-worth of blog at theancientbridge.com as well as my six books available on amazon—including a four-volume curriculum series dedicated to teaching Scriptural context in a way that even kids can understand it, called Context for Kids—and I have two video channels on youtube with free Bible teachings for both adults and kids. You can find the link for those on my website. Past broadcasts of this program can be found at characterincontext.podbean.com.

Most verses this week are taken from the TLV Bible, the Tree of Life Version.

So, before we delve into Son of Man vs Messiah, I want to address the Greek word “christos” which has been branded in some circles as pagan and there is quite a bit of bullying over the use of the term. Let’s just set the record straight, shall we?

We need to stop being afraid of words and we need to stop being intimidated by those who label everything as pagan but without anything but wild stories backing it up – there are people out there who want to outlaw just about every word that has been associated with Christianity, sometimes making up preposterous stories about pagan origins –– how about “Christ.” I was looking at the Septuagint a number of years ago and found this in Habakkuk.

Habakkuk 3:13 in the Septuagint – referring to the Messiah as the ‘anointed’ – the word is christos. The Septuagint (translation began during 3rd century BCE and was completed roughly 132 BCE) was translated by a group of 70 (or 72) great Torah scholars who were fluent in Greek, and is an incredibly useful tool for the understanding of what words meant in context at the time. Many quotes from the Tanach (OT) by the NT authors were actually taken from the Septuagint version, which is why they do not match up perfectly with the Hebrew. Evidently, the scholars saw no problem with using the word christos in Messianic verses so it cannot possibly be an inherently ‘pagan’ word. Just ask any Jewish friend of yours and they will readily admit that getting 70 Jewish scholars to agree on something is a miracle! And in fact, they agreed to translate Maschiach, the Hebrew word translated into the modern English Messiah into the Greek Christos all 39 times it appears in the Septuagint.

ἐξῆλθες εἰς σωτηρίαν λαοῦ σου τοῦ σῶσαι τοὺς **χριστούς** σου ἔβαλες εἰς κεφαλὰς ἀνόμων θάνατον ἐξήγειρας δεσμοὺς ἕως τραχήλου διάψαλμα

Thou wentest forth for the salvation of thy people, even for salvation with thine **Christos (anointed);** thou woundedst the head out of the house of the wicked, by discovering the foundation unto the neck. Selah.

Psalm of Solomon 17:32 (Pseudopigraphic (false name) Jewish Wisdom Literature – first or second century BCE)

καὶ αὐτὸς βασιλεὺς δίκαιος διδακτὸς ὑπὸ θεοῦ ἐπ᾽ αὐτούς καὶ οὐκ ἔστιν ἀδικία ἐν ταῖς ἡμέραις αὐτοῦ ἐν μέσῳ αὐτῶν ὅτι πάντες ἅγιοι καὶ βασιλεὺς αὐτῶν **χριστὸς** κυρίου

And he will be a righteous king over them, taught of God. And there shall be no unrighteousness in his days in their midst, for all shall be holy and their king the Lord **Christos (Messiah).**

Apart from the word woundedst, which is an offensive assault on our modern ears, there is nothing terrible going on here. Christos is obviously a completely legitimate non-pagan word that was in use among the Jews long before the first century because it simply means anointed one, like Elohim means mighty one, adon means lord, baal means master. It is only the context that determines whether the specific usage is pagan, not the word itself.

Demonizing words is a form of online terrorism, guys. Let it go. We have to stop policing each other and looking for things to hate because it compromises our integrity. If you are interested in more of these little tidbits debunking some of this stuff, check out the section of my blog theancientbridge.com in the section entitles “Challenging the Memes.” I have a lot of stuff in there debunking the pseudo-archeological claims being passed around as facts on memes that are actually pure propaganda.

But, back to the terms Son of Man and Messiah.

By the time the first century had rolled around, the word Messiah had become very laden with meaning after having very little meaning throughout the Hebrew Scriptures. There are many maschiach in Scripture, it is a word generally used to describe the ones anointed with the holy oil—kings and high priests as well as prophets. Cyrus is even called a maschiach in Isaiah 45:1. And then the term is also applied sometimes to things like the altar or the bread offerings. But by the time of Yeshua, there was an additional concept, specifically THE Messiah. Messiah as a proper noun instead of as a descriptive word. Messiah became a person, sometimes two people, but a solid identity laden with external meanings and expectations. To claim to be the Messiah in the first century meant certain things—political things. It was, frankly, so weighed down with meaning that the word was almost unusable. To be the Messiah carried with it certain unreasonable expectations that were nonetheless firmly embedded in the Jewish identity and dialogue of the times. Everyone had very unshakeable ideas about what the Messiah would do.

Yeshua didn’t come to do what they expected in the ways they expected Him to do it. He wasn’t the Messiah that they wanted or were looking for—He was, however, the Messiah that they and the world needed.

It is popular within the Hebrew Roots and Messianic movements to teach about the Messianic expectations of His time—some of which we know from writings contemporary to His day, like the concepts of the Davidic warrior Messiah in 4QFloregium, and the prophetic Messiah of The War Scroll—found among the documents recovered from the vicinity of Qumran. The Damascus Document makes specific reference to the Messiahs of David and Israel, kingly and priestly. The earlier Pseudopigraphic Testaments of the Patriarchs contain references to a kingly ruler and a priestly ruler, but the term Messiah is not yet seen. Then there arose later the motif of the Suffering Servant Messiah, possibly written about first by early Christians and then later by Jewish sources like Pesikta Rabatti, where he is called Ephraim. But, in the first century, Messiah was inextricably tied to the concept of the deliverance of the people of God from foreign oppression. As Nehemiah pointed out in his covenant renewing prayer, in Chapter 9:

³⁶Behold, we are slaves this day; in the land that you gave to our fathers to enjoy its fruit and its good gifts, behold, we are slaves. ³⁷And its rich yield goes to the kings whom you have set over us because of our sins. They rule over our bodies and over our livestock as they please, and we are in great distress.

Although there was a brief respite from foreign rule during the times of the Hasmonean priest-kings, they were forced to turn to foreign powers once again due to infighting. So really, they had just continuously exchanged one slavemaster for another—the Babylonians, Medes, Persians, Greeks, and finally the Romans. The Jews of Yeshua’s day were longing for salvation from sins, a formal wiping clean of their national sins before God, where He would forgive them, provide a deliverer, and free them from being ruled over by oppressive pagans. Then they would be self-ruled under a Davidic monarchy once again, and under a true priesthood—as no one was particularly happy with the Temple leadership of Jerusalem. The Sadducees were just Roman cronies, getting rich and turning the Temple of God into a den of thieves. The high priestly family was disgustingly wealthy, owning the rights to all the little shops that lined the western wall and the area atop the southern steps to each side of the Huldah gates. To them, the high priesthood was a business venture—which is why they are the butt of several very nasty parables.

So, the Jews were desperate for a change in conditions. Unlike the Jews who remained in Babylon, they were impoverished, by and large. Year after year, more Jewish landowners were losing their property under the weight of oppressive Roman/Herodian taxation, on top of the 20% owed in tithes. Life expectancy was short, it was just awful. By the time the average Jew in the Roman empire reached 30, which was unlikely at birth, they were riddled with parasites, lice, they were malnourished, etc. Life was bad. Like Nehemiah said, they were slaves in their own land, giving their produce to foreign overlords and just managing to survive. The collaborators and educated and slaves were a lot better off, but the people of the Land were in a terrible state.

They needed salvation, deliverance and were looking toward the long-awaited supremacy over the pagan gentiles. They were waiting for Messiah, but Messiah wasn’t the type of Messiah they were longing for.

Let’s take a quick look at where and how the term Messiah, Christos, appears in the Gospels.

In Matthew, it appears 15 times, almost always as a narrative term from the author describing Yeshua from the outside. For example, Matthew 1:17 “So all the generations from Abraham to David are fourteen generations, from David until the Babylonian exile are fourteen generations, and from the Babylonian exile until the Messiah are fourteen generations.”

Mark has six occurrences, Luke 8 and John 17—and it is mostly the same thing—the word is used narratively to describe Him years later, and not generally coming out of people’s mouths although in John, John the Baptist uses it a few times in order to assure people that he himself is not the Messiah.

The Synoptics all record once incident, however and I will read the account in Matthew 16 (we also see it written in Mark 8 and Luke 9)

¹³When Yeshua came into the region of Caesarea Philippi, He asked His disciples, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?”

¹⁴They answered, “Some say John the Immerser, others say Elijah, and still others say Jeremiah or one of the other prophets.”

¹⁵He said, “But who do you say I am?”

¹⁶Simon Peter answered, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”

¹⁷Yeshua said to him, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, because flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, but My Father who is in heaven! ¹⁸And I also tell you that you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build My community; and the gates of Sheol will not overpower it. ¹⁹I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven. Whatever you forbid on earth will have been forbidden in heaven and what you permit on earth will have been permitted in heaven.” ²⁰Then He ordered the disciples not to tell anyone that He was the Messiah.

Peter identifies Him, Yeshua praises him, He warns them all not to reveal His identity—and we will talk about why at length as we go through the Gospel of Mark over the course of the next year—and then, of course, He immediately puts the smackdown on Peter in the next passage for protesting Yeshua’s prediction of his own death. Man oh man, I feel like Peter a lot of the time—always putting my foot into my mouth.

At His trial, he is straight-up asked whether or not He is the Messiah and He will only say, “You said it” and then immediately makes reference to the Son of Man—which we will get to in a minute. This enrages the chief priests because they know exactly what He is talking about. Matthew 26:

⁶³The kohen gadol said to Him, “I charge You under oath by the living God, tell us if You are Mashiach Ben-Elohim!”

⁶⁴“As you have said,” replied Yeshua. “Besides that, I tell you, soon after you will see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of power and coming on the clouds of heaven.”

⁶⁵Then the kohen gadol tore his clothes and said, “Blasphemy! Why do we need any more witnesses? Look, you’ve heard the blasphemy. ⁶⁶What’s your verdict?”

“Guilty,” they answered. “He deserves death!” ⁶⁷Then they spat in His face and pounded Him with their fists. Others slapped Him and demanded, ⁶⁸“Prophesy to us, you Messiah! Which one hit You?”

So why were they so furious at this reference? Well, let’s explore the term “Son of Man” to find out. After all, it seems kind of a tame thing to call oneself compared to Messiah, which impresses us much more, right? Well, the Messiah wasn’t really presumed to be a divine figure—when we look at the text, we need to realize that we don’t see things looking back the same way they saw things at the time—how could they? 20/20 hindsight is a pretty great thing we have that they didn’t.

But anyway, back to the story—and enter the phrase Son of Man. Now, the Son of Man pops up all over the place in Ezekiel, meaning simply “human being” when applied to Ezekiel but it appears twice in Daniel, once in the exact same way it appears in Ezekiel, simply meaning “human being” as pointed at Daniel himself and of course the famous occurrence in chapter seven which we will read right now because this passage is the one that inspired Yeshua’s labelling of Himself as the Son of Man.

⁹“While I was watching,
    thrones were set up,
    and the Ancient of Days took his seat.
    His garment was as white as snow,
        and the hair of His head like pure wool.
    His throne was ablaze with flames,
        its wheels a burning fire.
¹⁰A river of fire was flowing and coming out from before Him.
    Thousands of thousands attended Him
        and ten thousand times ten thousand stood before Him.
    The court was seated,
        and the books were opened.

¹¹“I kept watching because of the boastful words that the horn was speaking. I continued watching until the beast was slain and its body destroyed and thrown into the blazing fire. ¹²As for the rest of the beasts, their dominion had been taken away, yet their lives were prolonged for a season and a time.

¹³“I was watching in the night visions.
Behold, One like a Son of Man,
coming with the clouds of heaven.
He approached the Ancient of Days,
and was brought into His presence.
¹⁴Dominion, glory and sovereignty were given to Him
that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve Him.
His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will never pass away,
and His kingdom is one that will not be destroyed.

So obviously, this designation of the Son of Man isn’t less controversial than Messiah, it was just not overused at this point. When Yeshua called Himself the Son of Man, He was either claiming to be the second figure in the throne room of God or just a normal guy. A normal guy who heals the sick, raises the dead, casts out demons at will, claims to forgive sin, cleanses lepers, restores the lame and blind from birth, multiplies food, creates wine out of water and commands the wind and sea. You know, just a normal guy, right? Not so much.

If an angel came down and said to you or I, “son of man” they would be saying “Yo, dude…” but Yeshua was laying claim to be THE Son of Man—more than the Messiah. Folks weren’t sure if the Messiah would be divine or not, it was very controversial. A lot of the verses and especially in Isaiah talk about God Himself coming to save His flock, shepherd His flock, etc. This was hard for the ancient readers to reconcile—how can God, who has no form, who exists as spirit, come down and save His people and yet we have all these strange occurrences in the Hebrew Scriptures of people seeing God and living—most notably the time where Abraham met the three “men”—one of whom speaks to Abraham in such a way that He is obviously God. It was quite the dilemma.

Anyway, we see from Daniel a claim greater than simply being a human being—this “One like a Son of Man” comes into the presence of God and is given authority. “Dominion, glory and sovereignty were given to Him that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve Him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will never pass away, and His kingdom is one that will not be destroyed.”

But more than that, go up to verse 9—“thrones were set up, and the Ancient of Days took His seat.” Whoa there, multiple thrones. Rabbi Akiva made a stunning pronouncement about the multiple thrones in the second century:

The Gemara poses another question: One verse states: “His throne was fiery flames” (Daniel 7:9), and another phrase in the same verse states: “Till thrones were placed, and one who was ancient of days sat,” implying the existence of two thrones. The Gemara answers: This is not difficult. One throne is for Him and one is for David, as it is taught in a baraita with regard to this issue: One throne for Him and one for David; this is the statement of Rabbi Akiva. Rabbi Yosei HaGelili said to him: Akiva, how long shall you make the Divine Presence profane, by presenting it as though one could sit next to Him? Rather, the two thrones are designated for different purposes: One for judgment and one for righteousness. (BT Chaggiga 14a)

Now this was, of course, long after the resurrection. Akiva was taking a huge risk in even suggesting that “David” (another code name for the Messianic king) could sit next to God on His throne. However, Akiva is considered one of the greatest Rabbinic minds of all time. He was born a pagan and converted and became a great Torah scholar—if he had not wrongly chosen and declared Bar Kochba to be the Messiah, who knows how history might have been different. But he clearly saw what Yeshua saw—two thrones in Heaven one for the Father and one for the “Son of Man” to sit beside Him, the Messiah, “David the King” or “The Branch” as He is also called in Scripture—the prophet like Moses, etc. Akiva’s contemporaries were not amused—but it was for backing the false Messiah Bar Kochba during the early second century that it was executed, not for this.

How many times in the Gospels is Yeshua recorded as describing Himself and/or His actions/or future events with the term Son of Man? Twenty-eight times in the Gospel of Matthew, thirteen times in Mark, twenty-five times in Luke, and twelve in John.

⁹Which is easier, to say to the paralyzed man, ‘Your sins are forgiven,’ or to say, ‘Get up, and take your mat and walk’? ¹⁰But so you may know that the Son of Man has authority to pardon sins on earth…” He tells the paralyzed man, ¹¹“I tell you, get up, take your mat and go home!” (Mark 2:9-11)

²⁷Then He said to them, “Shabbat was made for man, and not man for Shabbat. ²⁸So the Son of Man is Lord even of Shabbat.” (Mark 2:27-28)

For whoever is ashamed of Me and My words in this unfaithful and sinful generation, the Son of Man will also be ashamed of him when He comes in the glory of His Father with the holy angels!” (Mark 8:38)

¹²Now He told them, “Indeed Elijah comes first; he restores all things. And how is it written that the Son of Man must suffer much and be treated with contempt? ¹³I tell you that Elijah has come, and they did to him whatever they wanted, just as it is written about him.” (Mark 9:12-13)

He was teaching His disciples and telling them, “The Son of Man is going to be delivered into the hands of men, and they will kill Him. And after He is killed, three days later He will rise up.” (Mark 9:31)

He said, “Look, we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be handed over to the ruling kohanim and the Torah scholars. They will condemn Him to death and hand Him over to the Gentiles. (Mark 10:33)

For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for many.” (Mark 10:45)

And He comes the third time and says to them, “Are you still sleeping and taking your rest? Enough! The hour has come. Look, the Son of Man is being delivered into the hands of sinners. (Mark 14:41)

Commonly, Yeshua uses the phrase “Son of Man” to describe Himself in the midst of a controversy, in order to respond to someone who has challenged His authority to do something—like forgive sins, pluck heads of wheat on the Sabbath, heal on the Sabbath, teach with self-proclaimed authority and not as the Scribes did, etc. Although He uses it in the third person instead of the first person, it is always talking about what He has just done or what will soon (or even immediately) happen to Him.

Messiah, on the other hand, is used by others—and especially narratively by the Gospel writers—to describe Him. We see how Peter used it when Yeshua asked, “Who do people say I am” and He didn’t correct Peter and say, “I am Not the Messiah, how can you be so dense?”. But after His resurrection, Yeshua uses it as well.

²⁵Yeshua said to them, “Oh foolish ones, so slow of heart to put your trust in all that the prophets spoke! ²⁶Was it not necessary for Messiah to suffer these things and to enter into His glory?” ²⁷Then beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, He explained to them the things written about Himself in all the Scriptures. (Luke 24:25-27)

In this case, He uses it exactly the way He had previously used the term Son of Man.

⁴⁵Then He opened their minds to understand the Scriptures, ⁴⁶and He said to them, “So it is written, that the Messiah is to suffer and to rise from the dead on the third day, ⁴⁷and that repentance for the removal of sins is to be proclaimed in His name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem. ⁴⁸You are witnesses of these things. ⁴⁹And behold, I am sending the promise of My Father upon you; but you are to stay in the city until you are clothed with power from on high.” (Luke 24:45-49)

Now, of course, once we get past the Gospels, we almost never see the phrase Son of Man—Stephen utters it during his vision of Yeshua at his trial, which was the final straw before they rushed on him and stoned him.

And he said, “Look, I see the heavens opened and the Son of Man standing at the right hand of God!” (Acts 7:56)

Why were they furious? Well, Stephen just repeated what Yeshua said at His trial—which resulted in Yeshua’s conviction on blasphemy charges, making Himself equal to God as the second figure of Daniel 7. Remember how Rabbi Akiva’s contemporaries were angry when he brought up the same idea?

The only other place we see Son of Man is in Revelation 1:13

In the midst of the menorot, I saw One like a Son of Man, clothed in a robe down to His feet, with a golden belt wrapped around His chest.

Of course, this is describing Yeshua, as the proper name for this book is the Revelation of Yeshua the Messiah, Jesus the Christ. Otherwise, He is described everywhere as Messiah, messiah, messiah over and over again—hundreds of times not just by Paul but also by James (his brother), John, Peter and Jude (also his brother). We also see the terms Son of God (ben Elohim in Hebrew), Savior, etc. But overwhelmingly we see the Greek Christos, shorted to Christ in English, which was the translation of the Hebrew Maschiach, rendered later in Greek as Messias.

Next week we will be starting with Mark 1:1 and talking about what the Gospel is and what is the Greater Exodus.

Marinating in Messiah for a Year–Week 2

This last week, I commented on how Yeshua/Jesus transformed Paul from a merciless zealot to a merciful servant, and how Messiah shocked the Jewish world by showing them that external commandment keeping wasn’t enough. For sabbath discussions, I explored how some of the Pharisees were prone to argue and nitpick on the Sabbath, and how we should be a Sabbath for the people of the world. I also shared my recent experiences on having a breakthrough with someone I love who has anger issues who is very frequently in need of instant forgiveness.

Marinating in Messiah for a Year–Day 8–Acts 16:25-28

Merciless to Merciful. The Power to Transform.

About midnight Paul and Silas were praying and singing hymns to God, and the other prisoners were listening to them. Suddenly there was such a violent earthquake that the foundations of the prison were shaken. At once all the prison doors flew open, and everyone’s chains came loose. The jailer woke up, and when he saw the prison doors open, he drew his sword and was about to kill himself because he thought the prisoners had escaped. But Paul shouted, “Don’t harm yourself! We are all here!” (Acts 16:25-28)

The other day I was writing about the merciless nature of the zeal of Saul (Paul), James, and John. Paul was going from house to house actually going inside, dragging out men and women, and putting them in prison for the crime of preaching and following a Messiah that was not to his liking. That was zealous for certain, but certainly a rash and merciless zeal that punished people for, frankly, not being enough like him and the high priest and counsil of elders who gave him the authority.

But read the passage above again, carefully. Paul was no longer imprisoning people, but imprisoned himself for the sake of Yeshua/Jesus. He wasn’t terrorizing, he was praising God so movingly that when the chains came off everyone and the prison doors opened, that not one man rushed for his freedom. As for himself, he could have run (he and Silas) for the hills, but a man’s life was at stake and this same Paul who once watched the clothing of those who killed Stephen, a fellow Jew, was not willing to escape at the cost of a heathen’s life.

The Savior, of course, was the difference. Paul became a cherisher of life, all lives–both Jew and Gentile. The Paul of years past–well, I doubt he would have given that poor man a second thought. He who was willing to persecute his own people over a difference in opinion that was later tolerated (even when not entirely welcomed) in the synagogues came to care about his own jailer.

We know from Paul’s own words that he kept Torah (the commandments of God) flawlessly, even according to the rulings of the Pharisees–but it didn’t stop him from being merciless. Talmud Bavli Yoma 9b describes the first century as a time of gratuitous hatred:

However, considering that the people during the Second Temple period were engaged in Torah study, observance of mitzvot, and acts of kindness, and that they did not perform the sinful acts that were performed in the First Temple, why was the Second Temple destroyed? It was destroyed due to the fact that there was wanton hatred during that period. This comes to teach you that the sin of wanton hatred is equivalent to the three severe transgressions: Idol worship, forbidden sexual relations and bloodshed.

You can hate within your heart and keep the commandments on the outside, towards those you love and in the sight of others for the sake of being seen or even out of guilt, and still be merciless in your thoughts. Acts of kindness are not the same as merciful thoughts towards others. Bible study is not the same as becoming an image-bearer inside and out. Keeping the commandments as external rules (no matter how diligently) is not automatically the same thing as loving God–it can simply boil down to a cultural way of living if done for the wrong reasons.

Paul was very much a man of his times, a time when there was a great hatred of Jewish sects for one another (this would not include the people of the land, who had no time for such elitist nonsense), and certainly between Jews and Romans (pagans). That a first-century, Torah observant Jew would stay where he was when an obvious act of God was freeing him (a natural disaster could shake open the doors but not everyone’s chains), it is stunning, It wasn’t how anyone thought in those days–neither Jew nor pagan.

Messiah changed that. He transformed people into souls who care not only in their external acts, but within their heart so that they really did care for, love, one another. Religion can’t do that. Only the power of God can change someone in this way.

Twenty-two years ago yesterday I had the bad stroke that profoundly changed my life for the worse and sent me into a two-year cycle of depravity that God eventually used to draw me to Himself. Twenty years ago, I gave my life to Jesus Christ after a four-day struggle to shut His voice out of my mind. He just wouldn’t give up on me. I was an angry, wounded, careless, sinner–and He was insisting that I acknowledge Him as Lord and Master. I never prayed any sinner’s prayer because we both knew what a sinner I was.

“Okay, okay, I give up. Jesus Christ is the Son of God. I give up. You’re the boss. Not me. Not anymore.”

And that’s the day everything started to change. Merciless to merciful–I am walking that same path as Paul. I pray we all are, because if we are not becoming more merciful then who exactly are we following? Certainly not the Divine Savior who died for a world that didn’t even want Him.

Marinating in Messiah for a Year–Day 9–no verse

I am too mean to live right now. Just am.

When God is doing something new with us, some of the old has to go. This is part of a normal Christian life in that, when God grows us in a new area, certain pockets of resistance need to be boiled away and generally ones we aren’t even aware of having.

This started yesterday late in the morning. I started getting really super hostile. From experience, I know the hostility will remain until God raises the temperature in my life to the point where I will become aware of the specific impurity being targeted, because it will become quite obvious, and I start fighting against it as His ally. Right now, in some way, I am not His ally. It isn’t on purpose–probably some grudge or defense mechanism, some wall I have up that I have lived with so long that it seems good and normal–but all the same, on some level I am harboring something unfruitful that needs to be boiled off and pruned away.

This happens every once in a while and when it does, I have to avoid people and especially social media. I have to bite my tongue and not tell people what I am thinking because my thoughts are tainted with hostility. In essence, I am not thinking clearly enough to be trusted to talk to anyone right now without maybe taking some of that aggression out on them. We have to come to a point of maturity where we realize that not every thought needs to be spoken, and most irritations should not be voiced.

Read the book of Romans yesterday and hopefully I will talk about it tomorrow. Romans is one of those “list” books where Paul reminds us of the kinds of thought sins that we are susceptible to and are the antithesis of God’s character. I like those lists, and I hate them. They make me confront my flesh. You just can’t hide from Paul, he nails us when we stop thinking about how difficult he is to understand. He (like Yeshua/Jesus) tells us that we aren’t really as awesome about keeping the commandments as we think we are by reminding us that our innermost thoughts can transgress the Law just as much as our flesh can–and far worse, because we all think things that we would never do.

Today I will just hunker down and read I Corinthians and continue with my studies in Matthew 12.

Hostility happens. The important thing is to recognize it for what it is and not use it as an excuse to do harm.

Marinating in Messiah for a Year–Day 10–Romans 10:4

For Messiah is the goal of the Torah as a means to righteousness for everyone who keeps trusting. (Ro 10:4, TLV)

How ironic that when the whole point of the Torah came down among men, it would be to tell us all that we weren’t really keeping it perfectly, and no amount of fences and legalities could ever change that. You can imagine what a relief it would have been to those who were looked down on by the Judean elites, who didn’t even trust simple, faithful farmers to properly tithe their own produce, and what an offense it was to the aforementioned elites who felt that they could keep the law perfectly–if only.

If only they built enough fences around God’s laws.

If only they explored and debated every possible situation so they would always have the right answers.

If only they brought Temple standards of purity into the homes.

But here comes this young upstart (young by my standards, thirty was pretty old in first-century Israel), telling them that unless they had their thoughts in order and unless their motives were purely driven by love and not just obedience, that they were missing the goal of Torah entirely–radically set-apart lives inside and out, which necessitated an honesty between thoughts and actions.

It wasn’t enough not to ravish or seduce a woman–you couldn’t even think about it. (Matt 5:27-28)

It wasn’t enough not to murder your brother–you couldn’t hate him, be angry at him, or slander him either. (Matt 5:21-22)

It wasn’t enough to say you are sorry to God unless you also made things right with the people you have hurt. (Matt 5:23-24 and the heart of the “twelve-step” programs)

And He went on and on telling people that they weren’t really as law-abiding as they thought they were, yet encouraging them all the same. And He knew, because He was the goal of the Torah–He was the perfection that went above and beyond words on paper into perfection of motive and perfect love. He kept the Laws of God inside and out, as they were meant to be kept, and He wasn’t just fooling Himself that He was Torah observant, as the rest of us are prone to do–He actually was the living embodiment of Torah observance in both Spirit and Truth. We can try to be blameless on the outside, but on the inside we are transgressors.

Paul is hard to read because he makes a point of reminding us of that over and over and over and over again in all his letters. He tells us to be like Messiah, like Christ. But our flesh wants to tell us that we are indeed like Christ when we do the outer things that He said weren’t enough. The most we can do is to become more and more like Christ, fighting for that goal–fighting like crazy against our flesh until the day we die. The fight never ends, and anyone who tells you otherwise is lying to you. Anyone who tells you that they don’t struggle with anything is either not being honest or has just stopped trying to be more like Messiah because the closer we get, the farther away His character seems to be from ours. The more we mature in goodness, the better we see Him and the further away that goal appears. Good fruit breeds humility in just that manner. We really and truly have no idea how inaccessible the goal truly is, and if we think that we are close enough to it to be a perfect example, then we are very poor examples indeed.

Yeshua/Jesus is the WAY. He is the TRUTH. He is the LIFE. He is the LIGHT OF THE WORLD. He is the divine Messiah, and not just some super good dude because no human could ever live perfectly, inside and out, while subject to our same temptations.

He is the LOVE that came to earth to do what we could not. Blessed be His holy Name. This is why He deserves our worship.

Marinating in Messiah for a Year–Day 11–I Cor 3:2-3

Who was jealous? Who argued? Messiah? Or His detractors?

“So I had to treat you like babies and feed you milk. You could not take solid food, and you still cannot, because you are not yet spiritual. You are jealous and argue with each other. This proves you are not spiritual and you are acting like the people of this world.” (CEV)

I like the way this verse is rendered in this version because it really describes how we are, as opposed to how we need to behave. I think of those among the Pharisees who were nitpicking at Yeshua, and trying to shame him with their arguments (as opposed to those Pharisees who did not, like Nicodemus). Whenever Paul calls out a certain behavior as carnal, bad fruit, a work of the flesh, worldly, etc. you can bet that it is the antithesis of how Messiah acted while He walked the earth.

In fact, the more I study the Gospels, the more I see that He didn’t pick fights (and especially not in the Galilee), he ended them with very short and clever answers. They were picking fights. They were jealous. They were arguing with Him, and one answer from Him generally shut their mouths quick. They were concerned with non-spiritual issues while talking about what ought to be spiritual. They were posturing for position, trying to shore up their reputations and standing among the people, trying to best the newcomer on the scene–but we aren’t to be concerned with such things. Yeshua/Jesus on the other hand–He kept telling people, over and over again, not to spread the word about the miracles. Yeshua was not greedy for a larger audience–He had a job to do and He did it. It was everyone around him who was concerned with worldly matters–including His own disciples who were repeatedly concerned with who among them was going to be the greatest!

But we have been warned against jealousy, and against fighting with one another. And yet, that is the reality of social media religion–where we reach no one and argue with everyone. We do it in order to be right, to make the other guy look wrong, to appear to be the greatest (or appear as though we are following the greatest teacher)–we are still worldly and ought to be drinking milk and yet how we long for the solid food that we publicly prove ourselves to be unready for. We desperately need to shore up our foundations so that we can represent our King without shaming Him.

Jealousy. Arguing with one another. These things prove that we are not spiritual. Let that sink in really deep and don’t just think of how it applies to someone else.

And we do it on the Sabbath out of one side of our mouths while saying “Shabbat Shalom” out of the other side.

No jealousy. No fighting amongst one another. Remember what Yeshua said:

The greatest among you shall be your servant. Whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted. (Matt 23:11-12, ESV)

Shabbat Shalom means Sabbath Peace–please don’t use that word like the Shiite Muslims do, as in a world conquered by force and bloodshed, and dare to call it peace. We ought to never make a mockery of God’s day of rest by making it a day of strife.

Marinating in Messiah for a Year–Day 12–Lord of the Sabbath

Sabbath is a safe haven for the believer, just as we should be a safe haven for our brothers and sisters–as well as for the lost.

“Strive for peace with everyone, and for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord.” Heb 12:14, ESV

It is when we live at peace with others that the way we live will cause others to truly see the Lord.

It is when we refuse to be at peace, then that is all they will see–us, and they will tragically blame it on the Lord.

Yeshua/Jesus said that He brought the sword, but He never gave us permission to use it. He divides, not us–we lack the discernment to even begin to know how. That is why we have to learn how to love as He loves. He showed us to way, by giving His own life for those who hate Him, those who had never even heard of Him and frankly didn’t even care to.

We are not to be divisive, but we are instructed on how to treat those who are perennially and unrepentantly divisive within the Body, mistaking it for holiness:

“As for a person who stirs up division, after warning him once and then twice, have nothing more to do with him” Titus 3:10

What makes a person divisive? Demanding that everyone see what we see right now. Creating insider and outsider groups based on side beliefs that are pushed to the forefront while the Cross languishes somewhere unseen in the background.

“But what about…?”

Well, what about it? Did Messiah die so that we could cut people off over that? Really? Are we so enamored by what we see (or what we think we see) that we can really judge a person over this or that side issue for which Yeshua did not die? More importantly, do we really know what we think we know? Oftentimes we presume to be knowledgable where we are actually fools–lacking both information and wisdom yet assuming that we are guides to the blind! We assume this despite the great and overwhelming evidence that this is a universal brand of deception from which no one on this earth is immune. We are all blind. We are all fools. We are all unlearned. We allow the blind to guide us along. We listen to fools. We learn from the unlearned–and we don’t even know it because we were counting on them to teach us! We just assumed they had knowledge because they claimed to have it.

Humility is key. Perspective walks hand in hand with humility.

How glorious it would be if we all kept our mouths shut until mature enough in love that we could be trusted to speak with wisdom and discernment. It would also be wonderful if no one could speak on a subject about which they are actually unlearned. But each of us having mouths and keyboards is a severe test, one that we generally take great delight in failing–until the day that God opens our eyes and we would give our tongues and hands to take it all back. Then we call out to those who have not seen yet, but they don’t listen any more than we did–because their ears are not open and they do not have eyes to see that they do not love their neighbors, and especially those neighbors whom they cannot see at the other end of cyberspace.

We are no different than the Judean elites to whom Yeshua preached. And this is not me angry, this is me very sad.

Do we love Yeshua enough to pull back and consider whether we are the problem? And not the world around us? Not other believers? But us? Those of us who consider ourselves guides to the blind–do we hate, do we pass around gossip under the guise of news, do people hear endlessly about what we despise and nothing purely about what we love? When they hear us, do they hear about the Divine Messiah who came to save, or do they hear about someone being so angry with them that salvation seems to be entirely off the table? That the minimum requirements for salvation are for others who have their act together already, or who are more inherently worthy? Do those who listen to us feel too disgusting to lift their heads to heaven and cry out for forgiveness? Are we pushing people so far into despair that we have forgotten that the message of the Gospel is hope?

If I know about the love of God, and I personally shrink back at the posts I see that are purportedly reaching out but instead are creating a larger divide, then what about the lost? What do they see?

Probably just an elitist club that would never want them as a member until after they were perfect–and that’s exactly what I saw from certain individuals before I was saved. That it was hopeless, and that I was hopeless. Thank God for Ruthie Rayburn and for John Walton–staunch Christians who knew how to love and extend invitations that looked like a lifejacket when I was drowning. They knew how to stand against sin without ever standing against the sinner. They knew how to love me and allow the Holy Spirit to be the Holy Spirit.

Twenty years ago, God used them. He didn’t use the people I knew over the years who were stumbling blocks, even though they were zealous in their own way but also mean and contemptuous. They spoke hatefully and mockingly about people steeped in sins that many of them were born into accepting as absolutely normal. There is enough cruelty in the world, and when people are finally longing to escape, they will run towards love–if they can find it. And that’s why we need to be mature in love–for the sake of those who are on the brink, as well as for the sake of those who are still not even interested in God, but will be someday. They will need someone to run to, to tell them about the Gospel. We need to make the investment in order to be those people, and not the stumbling blocks they undoubtedly already know too many of.

Marinating in Messiah for a Year–Day 13–Matt 18:21

When someone in your life has anger issues.

Then Peter came up and said to him, “Lord, how often will my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times?” (Matt 18:21)

In 2017, I taught a lot about radical forgiveness and one of the most challenging and basic forms of it is what I call “immediate forgiveness.” This is required when dealing with people who have anger issues, and especially with people who suffer from any form of brain damage. Not all of us naturally deal with outbursts of anger well, even when we know the other person can’t fully control himself, and that has been a problem of mine in particular–when someone gets in my face and yells at me, I haven’t ever been able to take it for very long before yelling back. That being said, I have been able to endure it for longer and longer periods of time over the years. Being 5’1″, I learned very early on the “need” to stand my ground and fight back in the workplace. Honestly, it worked out well in some circumstances, but it really isn’t godly behavior, losing control like that, and it turned me into a mercilessly defensive person when riled up–especially by really tall men.

So, in 2017, after reading Embodying Forgiveness by Miroslav Volf, and No Future Without Forgiveness by Desmond Tutu, I came to the understanding that this immediate forgiveness, manifested in a lack of retaliation, would make it easier for the offender to repent later when they cooled down. Think about it, if someone yells at us and we yell something nasty right back, they are going to probably feel justified instead of guilty. It’s a simple truth–their response to our retaliation is to believe we had it coming in the first place. Very few people are able to see themselves as oppressors and instigators, but that is the vital purpose of producing good fruit in the face of conflict–it removes our sin from the equation and when the aggressor looks back, they are more likely to feel the kind of shame that leads to repentance. By not returning sin for sin, we enable not their sin, but their restoration to God. What they did was still wrong, and we can tell them that, but that doesn’t require tit for tat and fighting. They can throw mud, but we don’t have to get in the mud with them.

Now, before anyone says anything, forgiveness in the face of actual violence doesn’t mean there are no consequences (some of which might require a physical separation), it just means no retaliation in kind, of the same kind. I am talking instead about the more common outbursts of anger in the form of words, tantrums, acting out and such. Although, with a special needs child, physical violence might happen as well, and in that case we really can’t afford to retaliate in kind.

I can’t go into details, but last night this finally bore some really beautiful fruit in my life, when someone who has really done this to me a lot, A LOT, came to me and needed to talk and really opened up about how unjustified they are, and how they realize now that their anger spewed out at me over all these years is not deserved and how they know that the way they have perceived me has been wrong. It’s been more than a decade of me dealing with this anger and it has been very difficult, but when I held this person in my arms and they cried it out and poured out their heart towards me, it was a healing balm for us both.

God touched this person’s heart, but I removed potential stumbling blocks by (usually) dealing with them in a calm and loving manner. This person has some brain damage, totally not their fault, and yet everyone needs to learn as much self-control as they possibly can and this person has yet to reach their full potential. The last year and a half of strokes and TIA’s has made me very appreciative of how incredibly easy it is to get frustrated and lose it when the brain isn’t operating on all cylinders. I have had to learn an exponentially greater level of self-control than was ever necessary before.

In every relationship in our lives, we can make it easier or harder for people to do the right thing. If we make it harder, then we are stumbling blocks in the Kingdom, if we make it easier, then we are more like guides to the blind. Think of the kindness of God in Messiah/Christ which leads us to repentance. Think of how He enables us to come to Him and doesn’t throw up impenetrable barriers. Yeshua/Jesus did all the work that we couldn’t do ourselves, and what He can do with a genuine grief over our sins is remarkable.

Ro 2:4 Or do you presume on the riches of his kindness and forbearance and patience, not knowing that God’s kindness is meant to lead you to repentance?

Titus 3:4-6 But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior

All I could think of last night, as I held this person was how I wished I had been even more kind,more merciful, and how badly I felt for every time I allowed their behavior to push me over the edge into snapping back and/or yelling myself.

Living without regrets in personal relationships is about love, patience, peace, kindness, gentleness, and self-control in the face of people who lack those things. Who knows whether or not your good behavior might serve as the midwife for a great harvest on their part? Today’s easily triggered individual might be the great saint of tomorrow–as long as we don’t get in their way with our own bad behavior. We all need to learn how to be firm and respond in love without making bad situations worse.

Social Media Bullying: Is “Christ” a pagan word?

While finding old articles to transfer from social media to my blog, I happened upon this one from two years ago. I am finally starting to really get feeling better and was able to read an actual scholarly article this morning without any confusion, so this is great progress and I have a lot of hope that I will soon be operating at pre-stroke mental capabilities soon! God is so good!

December 31, 2015

We need to stop being afraid of words and we need to stop being intimidated by those who label everything as pagan but without anything but wild stories backing it up – there are people out there who want to outlaw just about every word that has been associated with Christianity, sometimes making up preposterous stories about pagan origins – I covered “Amen” in my blog a couple of weeks back – how about “Christ.” I was looking at the Septuagint earlier in the week and found this in Habakkuk.

Habakkuk 3:13 in the Septuagint – referring to the Messiah as the ‘anointed’ – the word is christos. The Septuagint (translation began during 3rd century BCE and was completed roughly 132 BCE) was translated by a group of 70 (or 72) great Torah scholars who were fluent in Greek, and is an incredibly useful tool for the understanding of what words meant in context at the time. Many quotes from of the Tanack (OT) by the NT authors were actually taken from the Septuagint version, which is why they do not match up perfectly with the Hebrew. Evidently, the scholars saw no problem with using the word christos in Messianic verses so it cannot possibly be an inherently ‘pagan’ word. Just ask any Jewish friend of yours and they will readily admit that getting 70 Jewish scholars to agree on something is a miracle!

You came out for the deliverance of your people, to save your anointed; you threw death on the heads of the lawless; you lifted bonds to the neck. [1]

Psalms of Solomon 17:35-6 (Jewish Wisdom Literature – first or second century BCE)

…and to see the glory of the Lord that God glorified; and he is a righteous king over them, taught by God, and there is no injustice in his days among them; because they all are holy, and their king is the anointed Lord. ^[1]

There is nothing terrible going on here. Christos is obviously a completely legitimate non-pagan word. So, no more freaking out about the word Christ, please, it’s a title no different than Kyrios, Lord, God, El, Elohim, and even Ba’al—which Yahweh uses to describe Himself in Hosea. Semantic context always determines meaning. Always. Believe me, you do not even want to try living in a world where we can lift a word out of context and make it mean something entirely different. You just don’t. You don’t want to call your significant other a fox and have them accuse you of calling them an animal or, worse, comparing them to Herod Antipas because that is how Yeshua used it.

Demonizing words is a form of online terrorism, guys. Let it go. We have to stop policing each other and looking for things to hate, because it compromises our integrity.

Be sure to check out the related posts about the words Lord, Lord and God, Yahweh, IHS, and Amen.

^[1] Brannan, R., Penner, K. M., Loken, I., Aubrey, M., & Hoogendyk, I. (Eds.). (2012). The Lexham English Septuagint (Hab 3:13). Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press.

^[1] Brannan, R., Penner, K. M., Loken, I., Aubrey, M., & Hoogendyk, I. (Eds.). (2012). The Lexham English Septuagint (Ps Sol 17:35–36). Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press.

Developing Godly Character Pt 6: Passing the Division Test

So, back in 2006, YHVH told me something I have never forgotten, even if I have not understood it.

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“Do not suffer to be divided from anyone on the basis of anything other than Christ and Him crucified.”

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Now, I thought that simply meant that whether I liked it or not, I was bound to all other believers in Yeshua the Messiah. But that wasn’t what He said. I know because this week He has been telling me exactly what He meant —

“Don’t you dare think you have the right to be divisive. Messiah is divisive, you don’t get to be, you don’t have the right to presumptuously divide the Body based on what you do and do not like, do and do not agree with.”

I had this dream a few days ago, and it really upset me. I had a test in my hand, and on it were long division problems that I knew were complicated, and I didn’t want to do them, and I in fact refused to do them. Well, I woke up quite upset and asked a friend — how can I pass a test that I refuse to take? I could have done all that division, why didn’t I just take the test? I love math tests!

Her response, “Sounds to me like you aren’t willing to be divisive.”

Oh. A pun. I was so determine to see the dream as an indictment of myself that I missed the pun, which is one of my first rules for interpreting dreams — look for puns and plays on words. Yes, it was a test, and I recognized that the situation was complicated and I refused to be divisive. It was after that, that the Word from YHVH came back to me and I finally understood it.

You see, there will be division in the Body, and people will divide from me based on this or that thing — and that’s on them. They might decide they disapprove of my saying Yehovah instead of Yahuah or Yahweh, and they might divide themselves from me even if only in their hearts, They might disapprove of my keeping the first sliver calendar, and they might divide from me, even if only in their heart. They might come up with reasons why they figure I do it and then judge me based on those reasons. And that’s on them. That is their choice, to be divisive. They may never say anything, but even if they put up an internal wall against me based on these issues, they have acted divisively.

Did you know that the second day of Creation was the only day where nothing was called good? On that day, only division happened. At the heart of any division problem is the denominator, which is not the number that is divided, but the number which divides. It has the same root word as the word “denomination” and it is not unique to Christianity. Judaism and the Messianic movement also have many denominations. Sadly, I have found that these denominations result because we do not want to focus on the major issues, but instead get hung up on the minors – generally the things we can’t prove, things that are either mentioned only once or eluded to or which are not based on scripture at all.

And that is the very heart of division at the personal level. If I want you to agree with me more than I want to find out how to agree with God, then that is simply a form of idolatry. Perhaps we could strive to humbly look at people and say, “I wonder why they believe that?” instead of “How can they believe that!” They believe because they believe — and as my dream said, it’s complicated.

I have spent too many years being wrong on things now to waste my time dividing over issues I may not fully understand. We have all been desperately wrong about so much, and we will always be wrong about things.

Matt 10:34 – 36 Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword. For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law. And a man’s foes shall be they of his own household.

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So we should not suffer to be divided from anyone based on anything other than Messiah, and Him crucified. Let Him create His own divisions. He brought the sword, and on that night in the garden, Messiah showed us what happens when we wield our own swords without waiting for His permission — He ends up having to fix the mess we create.
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Luke 22:49-51 When they which were about him saw what would follow, they said unto him, Lord, shall we smite with the sword? And one of them smote the servant of the high priest, and cut off his right ear. And Jesus answered and said, Suffer ye thus far. And he touched his ear, and healed him.

Division will come to us, it doesn’t need our invitation. There will always be plenty of people who bring it to the table — who say, “You can’t worship with us if you believe or say such and such.” And that’s fine, they brought the division, and we honor that division by acknowledging it and separating ourselves from them. But we are not to cause it ourselves.

Titus 3:9-11 But avoid foolish questions, and genealogies, and contentions, and strivings about the law; for they are unprofitable and vain. A man that is an heretick (aihretikos, meaning schismatic, divisive) after the first and second admonition reject; Knowing that he that is such is subverted, and sinneth, being condemned of himself.

At the end of the age, the wheat will be separated from the tares and the sheep from the goats, by Yeshua. Until then, we are to avoid divisive people and by definition, refuse to be divisive ourselves over this or that pet doctrine. Rejecting a divisive person is not causing division, it is quite simply acknowledging and protecting ourselves from the sin of it.