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In looking again at Leviticus 8, I noticed that in the baptism>anointing sequence, only Aaron gets anointed at first. Then, after the sin offering and ascension offerings are completed, not only Aaron but also his sons are anointed.

That fascinates me in connection with the sequence of things in the Gospels and Acts. Jesus is baptized by John and immediately anointed by the Spirit. But while many others are baptized, both by John and by Jesus’ disciples, no one else gets anointed.

Jesus becomes the sin offering on the cross and completes His role of ascension offering when He ascends to heaven. It is only then, after the completion of the sin and ascension offerings, that He pours out the Spirit and the “sons” are anointed.

I suggest a moratorium on new Christmas hymns, until we all learn the Magnificat and the Benedictus and the Nunc Dimittis so much by heart that they seep out our fingers at the keyboard, until we instinctively sing of Jesus’ birth like Mary, like Zecharias, like Simeon.

Another gem from Leithart.

The links between David and Christmas are clear enough on the surface of the various texts. It is after all an event that happens in Bethlehem, the city of David, and Joseph and Mary are there precisely because Joseph is of David’s lineage (Lk 2.4).

But as well as what is quite explicit, there are also other undertones and overtones from the David story.

For overtones, we can simply note that just as God passed over the “obvious” choices among Jesse’s sons in favour of the shepherd boy, so too God passes over the “obvious” choices regarding whom will receive the proclamation of the birth of the Messiah, and sends His army to make the royal announcement to… a bunch of shepherds.

Undertones: In Matthew 2, we find Herod making the mothers of Bethlehem childless; in the few verses immediately preceding the record of David’s anointing, we find Samuel hacking Agag of Amalek to pieces with the words, “As your sword has made women childless, so shall your mother be childless among women” (1 Sam 15.33). The connection gives us a pretty good idea what is going to happen to Herod very shortly, and so we are not surprised to learn of his death not far down the road.

One of my favourite writers as far as his rhetorical approach (and a lot of his thoughts too) was G.K. Chesterton. One of his trademarks was to turn a common notion on its head. So I’m taking a page from his book(s) with the title here.

The first thing that needs to be said is that I’m not going “Word of Faith.” That was a group that claimed that whenever you claimed something in real faith, it happened. I was raised indie Pentecostal, and even I was never that extreme.

But there is nonetheless a real sense in which God never says “No” to the prayer of faith. (more…)

[Originally posted on my Rabbisaul blog April 22 2007]

On a forum recently, another Christian suggested that, in line with Jesus’ example, Christians ought to forgive the person who committed the killings at Virginia Tech, and pray that he could enter the kingdom of heaven.

FWIW, here’s my response….

I’d say that’s a somewhat simplistic application, for numerous reasons:

1) Jesus’ prayer (and Stephen’s later, in imitation) had to do with people who were sinning against Himself, not others. It is not my place to forgive somebody who harms you; that would be presumptuous on my part.

2) Jesus’ own prayer is not a plea that those who killed Him enter the kingdom of heaven.

3) It should be noted that the situation with Jesus Himself is considerably more complex than is often recognized. The Greek term translated “forgive” there literally has the idea of “leave alone” and is employed elsewhere in the Gospels in Jesus’ parable about the barren fig tree (Luke 13.6-9). The owner says “Look, for three years I have come seeking fruit on this fig tree and find none. Cut it down; why does it use up the ground?” (The cutting-down theme is an extension of John the Baptist’s earlier warning that the ax was already laid at the root of the trees, and those not bearing good fruit would be cut down and thrown into the fire; see e.g. Lk 3.9.) But the vinedresser begs the owner to “forgive” (leave alone, 13.8 ) the tree this year also, and he will dig around it, fertilize it etc; after that, if it doesn’t bear fruit, the owner can then cut it down (13.9). The forgiveness of the tree is not a dismissal of responsibility, but a temporary (but valuable!) reprieve.

The point with Jesus’ prayer of forgiveness is that, by rights, judgment should have descended immediately upon those who rejected and killed Him (and in particular, the official leadership of Jerusalem), but He grants them space for repentance. That space is a generation; Jesus Himself warns that Jerusalem will be destroyed because she did not recognize her visitation by her Messiah and Lord (Luke 19.43-44). (The city was destroyed by the Romans in A.D. 70.)

On a more general level, Jesus’ example is emphatically not one of dismissal of justice for the sake of universal forgiveness for all. By that standard, every evil man and Satan himself would all be ultimately forgiven. But the Bible doesn’t teach that; to the contrary, it warns that all will stand before God and receive recompense for what they have done in the body.

A complete biblical position therefore involves not just Jesus’ words on the cross (which are indeed very significant and important); it places those words in context, and also recognizes their harmony with other biblical passages (such as Rom 13, which says that the ruling authorities “bear the sword” for the purpose of executing justice).