Jonah and Jesus, Repentance and Resurrection

During an Ash Wednesday service last week, the pastor brought up the notion of signs in the Old Testament and spoke of Jonah. This got me thinking about Christ's discussion of Jonah's fish challenges as "the only sign given to this evil generation." Matthew saw this as important enough to mention two separate times. (Matthew 12:59, Matthew 16:4, and Luke provides it in Luke 11:29-30.) The relevance of Jonah may also be linked to Jesus' stress on Peter's lineage, which the gospel writers pass along "Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah." (Matthew 16:17, John 1:42, John 21:15-17.) Note how in Matthew's gospel this note on Peter follows nearly immediately the proclamation to the crowds about Jonah and Nineveh.

For decades I had assumed that the only relevance of this passage is that Jesus was in the ground and rose on the 3rd day as Jonah was in the "great fish" for the same length of time. It just seemed like Jesus was predicting His own resurrection and the gospel writers were providing evidence that this resurrection was a sign from God.

However, that seems now like a rather naive view. Jesus' resurrection would be recognized as a sign of God regardless of whether it was predicted to the masses, and there are plenty of other instances where the gospel writers indicate to their audiences that Jesus' resurrection was foretold. Also, the version given in Luke 11:30 suggests a closer connection between the sign of Jonah and the sign of Jesus.

As I thought about this, two separate points came to mind. If Jesus' resurrection is a sign like Jonah's, what would that mean, especially to a Jewish audience who fully understood Jonah's whole story?

The first connection is clear (though it was actually the second one I thought of). Jonah was sent to call Nineveh to repentance [c.f. Luke 11:32]. The story of Jonah is interesting because it shows that simple repentance has authentic value even when done by a people who have no notion of Christ whatsoever. Nineveh was not in Judah. They were neither cognizant of nor had any portion of the promised salvation for the Jews. The repentance they showed was based only on a belief that the God who sent Jonah was real and a hope that if they showed humility toward God and changed their ways to do works pleasing to God, then maybe God would relent.

This is important because most evangelists today suggest that repentance has no effectual value in itself. (Repentance is portrayed as a by-product and not directly dispositive toward how we are judged by God.) Similarly, it is highly suggested that it is impossible to do works pleasing to God without faith in Christ. The story of Jonah in Nineveh disproves both assertions.

The second way in which Jesus' resurrection is linked to Jonah is subtler. It is the first one that came to me, partially because of something the pastor had mentioned. The story of Jonah shows the value of repentance in two ways. One is the effect that Nineveh's repentance had on God. The second is the effect of Jonah's own repentance inside the fish, which led to his own deliverance.

What struck me about this aspect of the story is the possibility (perhaps tenuous) that one can draw a connection between resurrection and repentance. When the evangelists of the New Testament speak of the value of being in Christ, they speak of three things:

1. Being delivered from the physical wrath that will come against the world when Christ returns. (C.f. Matthew 24:22, which makes no sense at all if the Final Judgment were in view rather than deliverance from the physical destruction of the last days.)
2. The "baptism of repentance" (the holy spirit). (c.f. Acts 5:31, Acts 11:18, Acts 13:24, Acts 26:20 and many other places)
3. The resurrection of the body, which is their full inheritance when their "adoption is complete." (c.f. Romans 8:23)

Paul's letters show that these last two items are really just stages of a two-part glorification. We are given the spirit today that strengthens our will to do God's works, though our flesh still fights against this. Then, in the next age, we will receive a renewed body that no longer pushes us against God.

The specific repentance that we receive from Christ is a renewal of the spirit (c.f Hebrews 6:6) that Paul links to both Christ's own resurrection and our future one in Romans 6-8. That particular discussion is worthy of its own blog post.

The mundane Holy Spirit

I wanted to give air to an idea that has captured my thoughts from time to time. Today people talk blithely of the Holy Spirit and ascribe to it this wonder and that duty, but there is a decided lack of appreciation for its effect on early Christianity.

We live in a faith tradition where the Holy Spirit is a commonplace article. We are familiar with it as one of the many gifts of God. What we don't take into account is that the people of God did not always have it. We read our New Testaments as though they were textbooks describing this or that function of the Spirit without fully realizing how profound of a change the advent of the Spirit was to the earliest Christians.

For centuries prior to Christ, the "Spirit of God" was said to have been silent. The idea of being "in the Spirit" referred to occasional divine revelation or provocation to do or say something. Christ refers to David speaking while "in the Spirit" in Matthew 22:43. Other examples are presented in Luke 2:27 and Acts 19:21. It was exceptionally rare both in terms of possessing people very rarely and in terms of only possessing people for a limited amount of time.

It had to be shocking, utterly shocking, then for early Christians to find out that, in the new covenant, EVERYONE could have the Spirit ALL THE TIME. I don't think we really appreciate how significant a change this was to their views on God's providence. I further believe that the more we realize this, the more we can find in the Bible indication that the sending of the Spirit was considered the gift obtained by Christ's work.

Christ refers to it as "what was promised," and that term "promise" is used several times in Acts to refer to the Spirit. The term "gift" is practically synonymous with Holy Spirit throughout the teachings of the apostles in Acts. John's account has Jesus saying that the Spirit's advent was contingent on his death. Once your eyes are open to it, these types of allusions show up all over the place.

The Word, the eternal life, and the spirit

I'm going through my book again, looking for things I should revise, and the study I did yesterday on John 1:1 made me see something I don't know that I would seen normally.

In my book I make the claim that John and other NT writers us the term aiōnios zōē to refer to the "Holy Spirit" or the indwelling thereof. In our bibles that term is translated "eternal life," but a better expression would be "boundless life" or "life in the age to come."

Anyways, I showed in Who Really Goes to Hell three linkages between the way NT writers spoke of the Spirit and the way they spoke of "eternal life."

What floored me last night was a linkage between "the eternal life" and "the Word." [Yes, there are many places where the "the" is there in the Greek...yet another reason why translating aiōnios zōē as "eternal life" should be considered a bit odd.

Anyways, check this out:

John 1:1b "The Word was with/toward/near/related to God"
John 1:14a "And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among us,"

Now, compare that with

1st John 1:2 "...and the life was manifested, and we have seen and testify and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was manifested to us"

the eternal life was "with the father" and the life was "manifested to us."

What's my point, John uses the same language to talk about "The Word" [an abstract concept] as he does to refer to "the eternal life" [another abstract concept]. They are both seen as being "with" God and being sent and manifest to us.

This makes perfect sense if we see (as I do) "the eternal life" as a reference to the Spirit (or its indwelling). Jesus speaks of the Spirit as another helper God will send after Jesus "goes away" (John 16:7) and could only come when Jesus had died (John 7:39 as well as the John 16:7 again).

Furthermore, we are told that "God has life in Himself and has granted that the son could as well...almost certain a reference to Jesus' baptism by the holy spirit [one of the few items that occurs in every Gospel. The early church focused on this far more than we do today.] (John 1:4, John 5:26)

Anyways, I just thought it was interesting that John treats "The Word" and "The 'eternal life'" in similar ways, as abstract principles that became manifest in the agents of Jesus and the Holy Spirit.

The Gift, The Hope, and the Promised Promise

The evangelism of the apostles revolved about three main notions: The Gift, The Hope, and the Promise. To often Christians see these as merely vague terms [or they assume they all mean "life in heaven after I die."]

Putting a fine point on these terms allows not only to interpret individual passages better, but also grants a richer understanding of what apostolic evangelism was about.

Christian Hope

When the apostles speak of "Hope," they do not refer exactly to "eternal life in heaven for believers." The hope they refer to is the idea that what God had done to Jesus already [bodily resurrection], the Almighty would do to everyone later.
To understand why this Hope is so exclusively Christian, you have to understand the culture of 1st century AD. Some Jews believed in a bodily resurrection that would occur far in the future, and many Jews did not. Those outside Judaism generally did not believe in a bodily resurrection at all.

What no one believed was that the Messiah would come, die, and be resurrected before everyone else. Not even Jesus' disciples understood that [which is why they deserted Him... the Messiah was supposed to lead the Jews to victory over the Romans [and everyone else who had oppressed them: Luke 1:71 ] How could He do that if He were dead??

This is why they wonder in Mark 9:10 what Jesus means, since He cannot possibly mean He is going to literally die. It also comes through loud and clear in Luke 24:20-21, they had hoped (but no longer)...and what did they hope for, that the Christ would redeem Israel. Like David, they were waiting for Jesus to take His position as true King. Having Jesus die crushed these beliefs, for they did not understand He had to die [John 20:9, Luke 24:25-27]

So, the resurrection not only proves that the Christian God lives, but gave hope in their own resurrection later. Note the wording of Acts 4:2 and Acts 17:32 --- this was the central message of their evangelism (as well as Jesus as the Christ and Jesus as Judge, see post on evangelism in Acts.) Paul also avers that belief in resurrection of the dead is absolutely required of believers [1st Corinthians 15:12-14].

This Hope in the resurrection of the dead was the main reason Paul was in so much hot water in Acts. It was, after all, directly opposed to the beliefs of the ruling sect of Judaism. [Acts 23:6, Acts 24:15, Acts 24:21, Acts 26:6-8.]

The Gift
People use the term "a free gift" often in evangelism today, but for Paul and the other apostles, the term had a different meaning. The Gift is nothing other than the Holy Spirit.

Jesus uses this to refer to the Holy Spirit in John 4:10, Peter refers to the Spirit as "The Gift" three times: Acts 2:38, Acts 8:20, and Acts 11:17. Luke uses the term in this way in Acts 10:45, and Paul does so in 1st Timothy 4:14, and 2nd Timothy 1:6. The writer of Hebrews follows suit in Hebrews 6:4.

[Note it is important to separate "The Gift" (with the "the") from situations where there is no "the," also there are 3 words for "gift" common in the NT, and only 2 of them appear to be used in this way, the other is more of a term for "offering."]

The (Promised) Promise

And now we come to an interesting term. "The Promise." We know that God promised Abraham to bless the world through his seed, but how was God going to do that? Peter answers this question for us as well, in Acts 2:33. This is the promise Jesus refers to in Luke 24:49, and in Acts 3:26, we find that it is, in fact, the fulfillment of the promise to Abraham.

The Holy Spirit is further referred to as "The Promise" in Acts 2:39, Galatians 3:14, Ephesians 1:13, Ephesians 3:6, Hebrews 9:15-(The writer views us as receiving the Holy Spirit as an inheritance from Christ. Note this is definitely referring to the Holy Spirit available now that was not available earlier before Christ died: see Hebrews 9:16, Hebrews 9:8, and, most notably Hebrews 11:39-40, where the Spirit is once again referred to as what was "promised.")

But, the Holy Spirit is not only the fulfillment of a promise, it also acts as a promise...a reminder of the full salvation available when our bodies are transformed and New Jerusalem arrives [ Revelation 21:2]. The Holy Spirit, in granting us power over the desires of a flesh set against God [Romans 6:6] grants us a slice of our transformed future. It allows us to already begin living the life of the next era today. Indeed, it calls us to do so, for we are no longer to live for ourselves, but rather live for Christ.

In this way, the Holy Spirit is then a Promise itself. Not on an individual basis wherein we "know we are going to heaven because we have the Spirit." The Spirit allowed those in Matthew 7:22-23 throw out demons and prophesy in Christ's name, but it did not see them through the Judgment, and Hebrews 6:4-6, Hebrews 10:26-27, and 2nd Peter 2:20-21 all describe that the Spirit is not a personal guarantee but a global one. God will not be mocked.

Understanding "The Promise" is crucial to getting a handle on Paul's letters to the Galatians and Romans, where the term is used very often.