Good Friday and God's Covenant-Fulfilling Righteousness

 

Good Friday and God's Covenant-Fulfilling Righteousness

Good Friday and Easter are certainly the high water mark of the Christian ecclesiastical calendar, in that they celebrate the events that determine Christian identity and guarantee Christian hope. These do so because they constitute, as N. T. Wright so aptly put it more than thirty years ago, "the climax of the covenant" God made with Abraham and his “seed” to bless the entire world through him/them (Genesis 12, 15, 17).

Perhaps the greatest statement of the significance of the cross for manifesting God's saving covenant faithfulness (“righteousness”) was articulated, not surprisingly, by Paul the Apostle, in one of the most profound passages in his greatest letter:

But now, quite independently of the Law, though with the Law and prophets bearing witness to it, the righteousness of God has been manifested; it is effective through faith in Christ for all who have such faith—all, Jew and Gentile, without distinction. For all alike have sinned and fall short of God's glory, and are justified freely by his grace through his act of liberation in the person of Christ Jesus. For God publicly displayed him as the place of propitiation at his death, effective through faith. God meant by this to demonstrate his righteousness, because in his forbearance he had passed over the sins of the past—to demonstrate his righteousness now in the present, so that he would be both just and the justifier of anyone who places faith in Jesus (Romans 3:21-26, Revised English Bible [revised JRM]).

For once, I am not interested in theological controversy. For that, consult the vast scholarly literature and the commentaries of, inter alia, Doug Moo, Tom Wright, Jimmy Dunn, and Beverly Gaventa. I simply want to focus all too briefly on what this text says about the salvation-historical and personal significance of the cross. First, with reference to salvation history, the cross was the means by which God “now” definitively enacted his “righteousness” by fulfilling his ancient covenant promise to bless the world despite the sinfulness and “faithlessness” (Romans 3:3) of the covenantally-designated rescuers, i.e., Abraham and his progeny. They, no less than the English, Irish, Chinese, or Indians, sinned and thus were in a state of declension from the divine "glory" humans were created to reflect (Genesis 1; Psalm 8). God's solution to this conundrum was to solve it himself through the vicarious, expiatory, propitiatory death of his Son, Jesus Messiah, the “seed of David” (Romans 1:3) and thus the ultimate Abrahamic "seed" and true Israelite (Galatians 3), who on the cross took sin's consequences upon himself, exhausting them and thereby enabling the blessings of the "age to come" to flow to all, Jew and Gentile alike, who place their faith in him.

Second—and here is where I personally have a stake in what Paul writes—at the cross Jesus bore the penal consequences of sin and suffered the effects of his Father's “wrath” ("propitiation" [much more needs to be said here in clarification, but that time is not now]) so that I could be liberated from sin ("redemption") and stand acquitted—justly!—before his judgment seat with the status as one of his covenant people ("justified").* This is a status to which I, a Scots-Irish American, have no ethnic, inherited right (cf. Ephesians 2:11-13) and, it goes without saying, could never earn through my own moral effort, but which is granted to me "freely" through faith in Christ alone. And that, as Martin Luther emphasized more than 500 years ago, means it is only through the unmerited, indeed incongruous (John Barclay) grace of God alone. Soli Deo Gloria!

May those of us who know Christ reflect worshipfully on these truths this Good Friday. And if anyone reads this who does not know him, consider the lengths God went to rescue humanity from its self-imposed plight, and bend your knee at the foot of the cross in thankful faith in him.

The Feast of Epiphany and Gentile Christianity

[Note: This is a revision of a post first published on 6 January 2021.]

                                      

                             (Botticelli, The Adoration of the Magi, The Uffizi, Florence, 1475) 

Today marks the traditional date for the Feast of the Epiphany (though, as in the Anglican Church, usually celebrated on the Sunday between 2-8 January), which commemorates the visit of the Magi bearing their gifts to the baby Jesus narrated in Matthew 2:1-12. This feast has special significance to the vast majority of present-day Christians who, like me, are Gentile in their origin. 

Matthew begins his Gospel by identifying the subject of his biographical work as “Jesus Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham” (Matt 1:1, trans. JRM). These titles, as well as the order in which he lists them, provide an essential clue for how to understand the narrative that follows. Both of them allude to covenant promises found in the Hebrew Bible, and implicitly assert God's faithfulness to those promises, despite the people's unfaithfulness ("exile:" Matt 1:11, 17). Matthew is making the claim that this Jesus of Nazareth, about whom he is writing, was the long-awaited heir to the promise of a Davidide who would finally bring the nation's exile to an end and inaugurate the hoped-for everlasting kingdom (2 Samuel 7:4-17; Psalm 89; cf. Psalms of Solomon 17:21). Simply put, Jesus was the rightful heir to Israel's throne occupied, at the time of his birth (ca. 5-4 BCE), by the Idumean Roman puppet, Herod the Great.  

Jesus, the “son of David,” was also, according to Matthew, the “son of Abraham,” the status Jewish people proudly saw themselves to have (e.g., Matt 3:9; 8:11-12; 4 Macc 6:17, 22: 18:1; t.Ned. 2.5; Sifre Deut 311.1.1 et al.; cf. the Apostle Paul's letter to the Galatians). By this designation Matthew alludes back to Genesis 12:1-3 (reiterated and expanded in Genesis 15, 17, 22) and thereby identifies Jesus as the “seed” of Abraham in whom the promise of blessing for all the world is fulfilled. Jesus, in other words, was Israel's king for the whole world. How this blessing is extended and received is clear from the conclusion of the Gospel, where the resurrected Jesus commissions his disciples in Matthew 28:19: people from all nations—even Scots-Irish Americans like me!—receive the Abrahamic blessing when they respond to the gospel and become disciples (i.e., “followers”) of the “son of Abraham.” 

This is how the visit of the Magi must be understood in Matthew's story. These astrologers “from the east” (Parthia? Babylonia? Arabia?), having seen his “star” (the tailed comet recorded in the Spring of 5 BC?) deduced (because of the planetary massing of Jupiter, Saturn, and Mars in 7-6 BC?) that a baby had been “born” (τεχθεὶς) “King of the Jews” (Matt 2:2). Here Matthew's skill as a storyteller and narrative theologian becomes evident, as he tells the story of the Magi's visit to the baby Jesus by using the template provided by the story of the birth of Moses in the Torah. His basic theological point is obvious: just as Moses was the deliverer who led Israel out of captivity in Egypt, so this Jesus would be the deliverer who would effect the New Exodus promised in, inter alia, Isaiah 40-55.

In Matthew's narrative, Herod (thus implicitly viewed as a usurper to the throne) and “all Jerusalem” responded to news of the birth of the Jewish King the very paranoid way Pharaoh and the Egyptians were said to have done more than a millennium earlier in response to the Israelites' fecundity (Exodus 1): they were “terrified” (ἐταράχθη [Matt 2:3]; cf. Josephus, Ant. 2.206, 215; likewise, the response of Herod in ordering the massacre of the infants of Bethlehem [Matt 2:16] parallels that of Pharaoh in ordering the murder of all male Israelite infants [Exod 1:22]).* 

In contrast to this Jewish response (foreshadowing the passion narrative; cf. Matt 27:1, 25, 37), the Gentile Magi found Jesus and “prostrated themselves” (προσεκύνησαν) before him (Matt 2:11; i.e., they assumed the posture indicative of the worship due to God alone; cf. Matt 4:9-10). In Matthew's narrative, it becomes clear that this act of homage/prostration is a picture of the rightful act of worship due the one already described as "God with us" (Matt 1:23). More significantly, Matthew intends the Magi to be understood to be the firstfruits of the anticipated pilgrimage of the nations and their submission to the one true God (cf. Matt 8:11-12) The Evangelist does not, as he does a number of other times in the chapter, use a formula quotation to argue that this act "fulfilled" a biblical text or texts (cf. Matt 2:5-6, 15, 17-8, 23). But he didn't have to. Indeed, his narrative clearly echoes two texts. First, Psalm 72:10-11, 15, 17:

        The kings of Tarshish and of distant shores will bring tribute to him;
            the kings of Sheba and Seba will present him gifts.
        All kings will bow down to him
            and all nations will serve him ...
        Long may he live!
            May gold from Sheba be given him.
        May people ever pray for him
            and bless him all day long ...
        May his name endure forever;
            may it continue as long as the sun
        All nations will be blessed through him [cf. Matt 1:1!],
            and they will call him blessed."

Second, Isaiah 60:6, a text describing the nations' coming to Israel's light (Isa 60:3) when their exile is finally over:

        Herds of camels will cover your land,
            young camels of Midian and Ephah.
        And all from Sheba will come,
            bearing gold and frankincense
            and proclaiming the praise of the LORD.

Significantly, for the last line the LXX translation of Isaiah 60:6 reads, "ἥξουσιν φέροντες χρυσίον καὶ λίβανον οἴσουσιν καὶ τὸ σωτήριον κυρίου εὐαγγελιοῦνται" ("And they will come bearing gold, and they will bring frankincense, and they will proclaim the salvation of the Lord"). By implication, with this resounding echo Matthew declares that the Magi's prostration before the baby Jesus is eloquent testimony that this child would be the one to bring God's promised salvation to his people (Matt 1:21!).

All too often we Gentile Christians forget that the one we love and serve is, first and foremost, Israel's Messiah, and that it is by God's grace alone (cf. Rom 11:6) that we “wild branches” have been “grafted in” so as to replace the “natural branches” who have been broken off the olive tree because of their unbelief (Rom 11:17-24). Paul, the Jewish Apostle to the Pagans, however, sees this as a temporary strategic expedient to allow time for the Gentile mission he was spearheading: the natural branches will one day be grafted back on. Once the "fullness" (τὸ πλήρωμα) of the Gentiles has come in (cf. Gen 10; Isa 66:18), "all Israel" will be saved as God fully restores the twelve tribes (Rom 11:25-27; cf. Deut 32:43 [Rom 15:10]) to receive the eschatological blessing!** Thus we Gentile followers of Jesus Messiah ought to remember what Paul wrote in a later letter: “Therefore, remember that formerly you who are Gentiles by birth and called 'uncircumcised' by those who call themselves 'the circumcision' (that done in the body by the hands of men)—remember that at that time you were separate from Christ, excluded from citizenship in Israel and foreigners to the covenants of the promise, without hope and without God in the world. But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far away have been brought near through the blood of Christ” (Eph 2:11-13, NIV). Soli Deo Gloria! 

I will close by quoting the Collect for Epiphany from The Anglican Book of Common Prayer: 

O GOD, who by the leading of a star didst manifest thy only-begotten Son to the Gentiles; Mercifully grant that we, who know thee now by faith, may after this life have the fruition of thy glorious Godhead; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.