Thankful for Biblical Scholars

I thought I'd share a couple things I've learned recently from two Bible scholars I highly respect.

In Luke 9, when Jesus asks his disciples who they think he is, Peter answers that he is the "Messiah (Gk: Christ)." Now, I don't know how many times I've read this passage thinking, "Good job, Peter! You got the right answer, even though other people think he's Elijah or John the Baptist."

D.A. Carson, in his talk at the 2013 Gospel Coalition Conference, completely challenged my naive interpretation. Our understanding of the term "Messiah" is completely different from how Peter or any Jew at that time would have understand it. To Peter, the Messiah is the promised Davidic king, destined to take over the throne and rule. He was not thinking of our idea of Messiah, the one who died on the cross. When Matthew recounts the same story in his gospel, in chapter 16, Peter makes the same confession, but then when Jesus tells his disciples that he will suffer many things by the authorities and be killed, Peter rebukes him and says, "Far be it from you, Lord! This shall never happen to you." So clearly, Peter was not thinking of the crucified Messiah.

This explains why Jesus, in the very next verse, commands them not to tell anyone who he is. I've always wondered about that. Why doesn't he want them to tell people? I've always assumed that it was because word might spread to the chief priests and it would get him into trouble. However, if news spread to all the Jewish people that he was the "Messiah," everyone else would also have wrong expectations.

This also explains why the disciples were dejected and fled when Jesus was crucified. Even up to that point they still had not understood Jesus' repeated explanation that he must suffer and die and be raised from the dead.

So, one of the main themes in the Gospel of Luke is that Jesus is the misunderstood Messiah.

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On a different topic, I recently came across a recording of a talk by Tim Keller addressing the topic of suffering. It is one of the best 30-minute talks on suffering I've ever heard. At one point, he mentions Hebrews 12:2, one of the famous verses that anyone who has grown up in church has probably had to memorize: "...looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross..."

Here's another one of those passages I've read and heard quoted in many contexts again and again. Whenever I'd get to the phrase, "the joy that was set before him," I'd always understand it to mean that Jesus was looking forward to heaven and getting to be back with his Father, away from suffering and sinful humanity. Tim Keller, however, explained it this way:

"How did Jesus get through his furnace? Hebrews 12 says, 'For the joy that was set before him he endured the cross...' What was his living hope?... Maybe he was hoping for bliss in heaven with his father. But don't forget, this living hope is something that got him out of that. What could he possibly have been looking for that he didn't already have up there? Isaiah 53 says, "The results of his suffering he will see and be satisfied." What could make infinite suffering worth it? Isaiah says, "My righteous servant shall justify many." You are his living hope. That's the only thing he did not have in heaven, and that he had to come to earth and go to the cross and plunge himself into the fiery furnace for. You. That's what filled him with such joy, such inexorable and infallible resolve."