The difference between Mark and John is not only that Jesus speaks about himself in John and identifies himself as divine but also that Jesus does not teach what he teaches in Mark, about the coming kingdom of God. The idea that there would be a future kingdom on earth in which God would rule supreme and all the forces of evil would be destroyed is no part of Jesus’ proclamation in John. Instead he teaches that people need to have eternal life, in heaven above, by achieving a heavenly birth (3:3–5). That’s what the “kingdom of God” means in John, the very few times it occurs: it means life in heaven, above, with God—not a new heaven and new earth down here below. Faith in Jesus is what gives eternal life. Those who believe in Jesus will live with God forever; those who do not will be condemned (3:36).
For many historical critics it makes sense that John, the Gospel that was written last, no longer speaks about the imminent appearance on earth of the Son of Man to sit in judgment on the earth, to usher in the utopian kingdom. In Mark, Jesus predicts that the end will come right away, during his own generation, while his disciples are still alive (Mark 9:1; 13:30). By the time John was written, probably from 90 to 95 CE, that earlier generation had died out and most if not all the disciples were already dead. That is, they died before the coming of the kingdom. What does one do with the teaching about an eternal kingdom here on earth if it never comes? One reinterprets the teaching. The way John reinterprets it is by altering the basic conceptualization.
An apocalyptic worldview like that found in Mark involves a kind of historical dualism in which there is the present evil age and the future kingdom of God. This age, and the age to come: they can be drawn almost like a time line, horizontally across the page. The Gospel of John rotates the horizontal dualism of apocalyptic thinking so that it becomes a vertical dualism. It is no longer a dualism of this age on earth and the one that has yet to come, also on earth; instead, it is a dualism of life down here and the life above. We are down here, God is above. Jesus as God’s Word comes down from above, precisely so we can ourselves experience a birth “from above” (the literal meaning of John 3:3—not that “you must be born a second time,” but that “you must be born from above”).5 When we experience this new birth by believing in Christ, the one who comes from above, then we, too, will have eternal life (John 3:16). And when we die, we will then ascend to the heavenly realm to live with God (John 14:1–6).
No longer is the kingdom coming to earth. The kingdom is in heaven. And we can get there by believing in the one who came from there to teach us the way. This is a very different teaching from what you find in Mark.
The Miracles of Jesus
Why did Jesus perform miracles? Most people would probably say that it was because he felt compassion for people and wanted to relieve their suffering. And that answer holds true for the Synoptic Gospels. But even more than that, the miracles in the Synoptics indicate that in Jesus the long-awaited kingdom has already begun to arrive:
The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
Because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
And recovery of sight to the blind….
Today [says Jesus] this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.
(Luke 4:18–21)
In another passage the followers of John the Baptist come to Jesus wanting to know if he is the one to appear at the end of the age, or if they are to expect someone else. Jesus tells them, “Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them. And blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me” (Matthew 11:2–6). In the Synoptic Gospels, Jesus is the long-expected one who will usher in the kingdom.
And yet in these earlier Gospels, Jesus quite explicitly refuses to perform miracles in order to prove who he is to people who do not believe. In Matthew some of the Jewish leaders ask Jesus, “Teacher, we wish to see a sign from you” (Matthew 12:38). They want proof that his authority comes from God. Instead of complying, Jesus states forcefully, “An evil and adulterous generation asks for a sign, but no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah” (Matthew 12:38). He goes on to explain that just as Jonah was in effect dead for three days and nights in the belly of the great fish, so, too, would “the Son of Man” be “in the heart of the earth” for three days and nights.
This is a reference to the Hebrew Bible book of Jonah, which recounts how God sent the prophet Jonah to the dreaded enemies of Israel, the Assyrians in the city of Nineveh, in order to get them to repent. Jonah refused and set sail in the other direction. God raised a storm that swamped the boat; the sailors found that it was because of Jonah’s disobedience, and threw him overboard. He was swallowed by a great fish, but after three days he was vomited up on the land. Rather than incur further wrath, Jonah went to Nineveh, preached his message, and converted the city.
Jesus contrasts his own situation with that of Jonah. He, Jesus, is preaching to a recalcitrant people, but they don’t repent. He refuses, however, to perform a miracle to establish his divine credentials. The only proof the people will be given will be the “sign of Jonah,” which in the context of Matthew’s Gospel means the sign of the resurrection. Jesus will be dead for three days and will then reappear. This event, not something he does in his public ministry, will need to convince people of the truth he proclaims.
This is Matthew’s view throughout his Gospel, and it helps us makes sense of one of his most puzzling stories. Before Jesus begins his public ministry he goes out into the wilderness and is tempted by the Devil (Matthew 4:1–11). Matthew mentions three specific temptations, but only two of them make obvious sense. For the first, after Jesus goes without food for forty days, the Devil tempts him to turn the stones into bread. Jesus refuses: his miracles are not meant for himself but for others. The third temptation is for Jesus to worship Satan and be given, as a reward, the kingdoms of earth. The temptation is obvious—who wouldn’t want to rule the world? But it has a particular twist for Matthew, who knows that Jesus will rule the world eventually. First, though, Jesus has to die on the cross. This temptation is to bypass the Passion. Jesus again refuses: God alone is to be worshipped.
But what is the second temptation about? The Devil takes Jesus to the top of the Jewish Temple and urges him to jump off: if he does, the angels of God will swoop down and catch him before he scrapes a toe. What exactly is tempting about taking a plunge from a building ten stories high? One needs to understand where this is taking place: in Jerusalem, the heart of Judaism, in the Temple, the center for the worship of God. Lots of Jews would be milling around the place. Jesus is tempted to jump off, in full view, so that the angels will appear and catch him. In other words, this is a temptation for Jesus to provide a public, miraculous proof to the crowds that he really is the Son of God. Jesus spurns this as a Satanic temptation: “You shall not put the Lord your God to the test.”
In Matthew, Jesus will perform no sign to prove himself. That is why his miracles are called miracles, not signs in this Gospel. They are demonstrations of power meant to help those in need and to show that the kingdom of God is soon to appear.
What about John? In John’s Gospel, Jesus’ spectacular deeds are called signs, not miracles. And they are performed precisely to prove who Jesus is, to convince people to believe in him. Claiming to be the “Bread of Life,” he performs the sign of the loaves to feed the crowds (John 6); claiming to be the “Light of the World,” he does the sign of healing the man born blind (John 9); claiming to be the “Resurrection and the Life,” he does the sign of raising Lazarus from the dead (John 11).
It is striking that Matthew’s story of Jesus refusing to give the Jewish leaders a sign, except for the sign of Jonah, cannot be found in John. But why would it be? For John, Jesus spends his ministry giving signs. John also does not tell the story of the three temptations in the wilderness. Again, how cou
ld he? For him, Jesus’ proving his identity through miraculous signs is not a satanic temptation; it is his divine calling.
These signs in John are meant to promote faith in Jesus. As Jesus himself tells a royal official who has asked Jesus to heal his son: “Unless you see signs and wonders, you will not believe” (John 4:48). Jesus heals the boy, and the man comes to believe (4:53). So, too, the author of John thought that it was the signs that proved Jesus’ identity and led people to faith: “Jesus did many other signs in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. But these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that through believing you may have life in his name” (20:30–31). Whereas supernatural proofs of Jesus’ identity were strictly off limits in Matthew, in John they are the principal reason for Jesus’ miraculous acts.
SOME KEY DIFFERENCES BETWEEN PAUL AND THE GOSPEL WRITERS
Major differences among the New Testament writers can be found not only in the four Gospels but also among many of the other books of the New Testament, such as the writings of the apostle Paul.
Paul was writing before any of the Gospels were written. Most of his letters were composed in the fifties of the Christian Era, about ten or fifteen years before our earliest Gospel, Mark. Paul and the Gospel writers all were writing after Jesus’ death, and the Gospel writers were not simply recording for all posterity the things Jesus “really” said and did. They told the stories of Jesus’ words and deeds in light of their own theological understandings, as we have seen time and again. Paul also wrote from his own theological perspective. But many of the views that one finds in Paul are at odds with what one can find in the Gospels, as well as in the book of Acts, written by the author of the Gospel of Luke.
Paul and Matthew on Salvation and the Law
One important aspect of Paul’s teaching is the question of how a person can have a right standing before God. At least since the Reformation, some theologians have argued that this was Paul’s main concern. Today most Pauline scholars recognize that this is an oversimplification that bypasses a good deal of what comes to us in the seven undisputed Pauline letters mentioned in chapter 2. But certainly Paul was concerned with how persons—those he was trying to convert, for example—could be put into a right relationship with God, and he was convinced this could happen only through trusting in the death and resurrection of Jesus, not by following the requirements of the Jewish law.
This teaching stands somewhat at odds with other views in the New Testament, including those set forth in the Gospel of Matthew. Do followers of Jesus need to keep the Jewish law if they are to be saved? It depends on which author you ask. Does a right standing before God depend completely on faith in Jesus’ death and resurrection? At least one key story in Matthew’s Gospel differs from Paul on this point.
Paul’s View of “Justification”
Paul uses the word “justification” to refer to a person’s having a right standing before God. Paul’s view of justification can be found principally in his letters to the Galatians and the Romans. In these letters he had various ways of explaining how a person could have a right standing before God. His best-known and arguably most pervasive view (which is found in his other letters as well) is that a person is “justified by faith” in Christ’s death and resurrection, not by observing the works of the Jewish law.
One way to make sense of Paul’s theology of justification is to try to think through his logic. This requires starting at the beginning, when Paul was not yet a follower of Jesus, but rather someone who saw faith in Christ as a blasphemy deserving of violent apposition. Writing some twenty years after his persecuting days, Paul never tells us what he had originally found to be so reprehensible about the Christians’ belief, but there are some suggestions scattered throughout his letters. It may well be that he was offended by the very claim that Jesus was the Messiah.
As a religious Jew, prior to believing in Jesus, Paul no doubt had ideas what the Messiah would be like. Before Christianity appeared, there weren’t any Jews who believed that the Messiah would suffer and die. Quite the contrary, whatever different Jews thought about the matter, they all agreed that the Messiah would be a figure of grandeur and power who would implement God’s purposes on earth in a forceful way. Jews did not understand the passages of Scripture that refer to the suffering of God’s righteous one as a reference to the Messiah. And none of these passages (Isaiah 53; Psalm 22) mentions the Messiah.
The Messiah stood under God’s special favor and was his forceful and powerful presence on earth. And who was Jesus? A little-known itinerant preacher who got on the wrong side of the law and was crucified for insurrection against the state. For most first-century Jews, to call Jesus the Messiah was ludicrous at best, blasphemous at worst. Nothing could be crazier, no one could be less messianic, than a crucified criminal (see 1 Corinthians 1:23). Evidently Paul thought so, too. But then something happened to Paul. Later he claimed that he had a vision of Jesus after Jesus’ death (1 Corinthians 15:8). This vision convinced him that Jesus was not dead. But how could he not be dead?
As an apocalyptic Jew before coming to faith in Jesus, Paul already believed in the idea that at the end of this evil age there would be a resurrection of the dead, that when God overthrew the forces of evil he would raise every human from the dead and all would face judgment, the good being given an eternal reward and the wicked eternal punishment. If Jesus was no longer dead, as Paul “knew,” because he had seen him alive (say, a year or two later), then it must be because God had raised him from the dead. But if God raised him from the dead, it must mean that he was the one who stood under God’s special favor. He must be the Messiah, not in the way any Jew previously thought but in some other way.
But if he was God’s chosen one, the Messiah, why did he die? This is where we start thinking with Paul—in reverse, as it were, starting from the end, the resurrection of Jesus, and moving back toward Jesus’ death and life. Paul reasoned that Jesus must not have died for anything wrong that he did if he was the Messiah, who stood under God’s special favor. He must not have died for his own sins. For what, then? Evidently for the sins of others. Like the sacrifices in the Jerusalem Temple, Jesus was a sacrifice for the sins that other people committed.
Why would God have Jesus die for others? Evidently because a human sacrifice was the only way a perfect sacrifice could be made. The Jewish sacrificial system must not be adequate to deal with sins. But does that mean God has changed his mind about how people are to be right with him? Didn’t he call the Jews to be his special people and give them the law so that they would be set apart from all other people as his chosen ones? Yes, reasoned Paul, he did. The law and the prophets must be pointing toward Christ, God’s ultimate solution to the human problem.
But what is the human problem? It appears to be that everyone—not just gentiles, but also Jews—has violated God’s laws and needs the perfect sacrifice for their sins. But this would mean that everyone—not just Jews, but also gentiles—must accept this sacrifice of God’s Messiah in order for their sins to be covered over, or atoned for, before God. Can’t people be right with God by doing what God instructed in the law? Evidently not. If they could be, there would have been no reason for the Messiah to be crucified. By being crucified, Jesus shed his blood for others and brought about an atoning sacrifice for sins. Those who believe in his death (and his resurrection, which demonstrated that Jesus’ death was part of God’s plan) will be right with God—justified. Those who don’t, cannot be justified.
All of this means that keeping the Jewish law can have no place in salvation. Even Jews who keep the law to the nth degree cannot be right with God through the law. What about gentiles: should they become Jews and try to keep the law once they have faith in Christ? For Paul the answer was absolutely not. Trying to keep the law would show that a person thought that it was possible to earn God’s favor—have boasting rights, as it were. Anyone who tries to be justified by keeping the
law will still be caught up in sin, and so it will be to no avail.
The only way to be justified is by having faith in the death and resurrection of Jesus. In Galatians 2:15, Paul says, “We have come to believe in Christ Jesus, so that we might be justified by faith in Christ, and not by doing the works of the law, because no one will be justified by the works of the law.”
This is Paul’s teaching throughout both Romans (1–3) and Galatians (1–3). Followers of Jesus are not to try to keep the law, except insofar as “loving your neighbor as yourself” and living a good ethical life is something that God still expects of his people. But following the precepts and requirements of the law—getting circumcised, keeping kosher, observing Sabbath and other Jewish festivals—none of this was necessary for salvation, and if you thought (and acted) otherwise, you were in danger of losing your salvation (Galatians 5:4).6
Paul’s and Matthew’s Views on the Law
I have often wondered what would have happened if Paul and Matthew had been locked up in a room together and told they could not come out until they had hammered out a consensus statement on how followers of Jesus were to deal with the Jewish law. Would they ever have emerged, or would they still be there, two skeletons locked in a death grip?
If Matthew, who wrote some twenty-five or thirty years after Paul, ever read any of Paul’s letters, he certainly did not find them inspiring, let alone inspired. Matthew has a different view of the law from Paul. Matthew thinks that the followers of Jesus need to keep the law. In fact, they need to keep it better even than the most religious Jews, the scribes, and the Pharisees. In Matthew, Jesus is recorded as saying:
Jesus, Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible (And Why We Don't Know About Them) Page 10