This is an in-depth study of the morality of Jesus Christ as we can discern it through The Gospels. If you're new and would like to be completely up-to-date, return to the Introduction first, here.
As I said last time, the post subsequent to this one will introduce the words of Jesus Christ to this work for the first time. It's been three months of study and we're finally on the cusp of our subject. I can't tell you how excited I am for this.
I'm almost as excited, though, to be presently spending our time with Jesus' companion and possible teacher, John the Baptist. With The Baptist seems like the best place to be, as we prepare ourselves for the intricate and years long process of parsing and cross-referencing the recorded words of Joshua.
Last time, I was a little more personal with y'all. I broke away from our collective "we" for a bit to try to explain anew the reason for this endeavor. In the end, I feel that I did not pronounce my point very well. I would like to supplement that writing with a caveat.
I am a person who makes moral compromises all of the time. I am a person who has, in the past, made tremendous moral compromises that have had devastating results for my life, and the lives of those around me. I have been in the back of a cop car more times than I can count. I have had my head picked by more therapists and psychiatrists than I can remember. I have, at times, fully rejected any moral code, and allowed myself to be taken under by a torrent of alcohol, drugs, and primate instinct.
I mentioned that I knew, for a fact, from experience, that applying aspects of Christian morality would push me closer to being who I prefer to be as a human. This was a rather vague statement on my part. It will remain relatively vague, but I would like to augment it some.
Here's the caveat: Christian morality, or the "Christian Program," as I'm seeing it in my head lately, is a list of standards and prescriptions. That list includes items which vary in difficulty, for me, from super-easy to extremely-difficult. When I said that I knew that applying aspects of Christian morality in my life would change it for the better based on experience, I should have written "very limited experience." Because my experience with it is very limited. Working the Christian Program perfectly at once seems impossible. It likely is impossible. I don't claim to be anywhere near that state. As a percentage, maybe I hit 5% of the program on a good day. That might be pushing it.
Please keep in mind that I come to you from a place of moral degradation and, if you like, "sin," not from a place of elevation.
The question to me is begged, then: "how do you know that applying the program works, if you haven't done it with totality?"
Because the program works in increments like that, I guess; do none of the program, get none of the results. Do some of the program, get some of the results. Do all of the program and...
...no one knows this part, I suspect. Maybe we'll never know. Bear in mind that it is an ideal, something I am far, far beneath.
All this is to plead the following, dear reader: please understand that my fervor for The Gospel is about my desperation to save myself from myself, and that I would keep writing this even if I knew that no one else would ever read it.
I hesitate to say it before we've worked hard to define the term, but I say it honestly whenever I pray: "I am a sinner."
I hope that makes sense...
Let's get back to our Gospel.
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Matthew 3:11 through Matthew 3:12
11 I am baptizing you with water, for repentance, but the one who is coming after me is mightier than I. I am not worthy to carry his sandals. He will baptize you with the holy Spirit and fire.
12 His winnowing fan is in his hand. He will clear his threshing floor and gather his wheat into his barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”
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Remember, from last time, that John the Baptist is out in the desert by the Jordan, baptizing crowds of Jews who are coming out to him from all over the region. Some Sadducees and Pharisaic elites have appeared, and he is in the middle of a rant directed at them. He's accused them of being unworthy, and of philosophically hiding from obligation behind their Jewish heritage.
John says he is washing away sin with his baptism of water. (Recall that baptism comes from the Greek "to immerse" or "to dunk.") He says to the Pharisees and Sadducees: "I offer a cleansing from sin that is easy, in water. But there comes another, greater than I, who will immerse you in fire to cleanse your sins."
So what can we say John is anticipating in this one who "is mightier than [him]?" Verse 11 seems to have him saying "the one who is mightier than me will offer you respite from your sin, as I do, but his mechanism of freeing you from sin, you will find, is much more intense."
It seems within reason that John is still referring, albeit hyperbolically, to a coming Davidic King of the Jews that would usher in Jewish military triumph over the region and return the Jews to a sovereign and elevated state.
It is interesting and relevant that the word we have here translated as "spirit," in the original Greek of Matthew, was "pnevmati," which can be alternatively translated as a "blast of wind" or a "breeze" or a "current of air." Let's keep that in the back of our mind for a moment.
In verse 12, we have the metaphor of an ancient worker's tool representing, perhaps, the military triumph of the coming King over those who do not stay in line with the law and the prophets.
We can talk more about the metaphor in a moment, but we ought to briefly "geek-out" here on the literal meaning of "winnowing fan."
In grain agriculture, when preparing produce for consumption, one must separate the chaff, or the "hull," of the plant from the kernel or "seed" inside. The chaff, like the husk of an ear of corn, is not pleasant to eat and provides little nutritional value. It must be separated from the portion of the plant that is pleasant to eat, and does have good nutritional value.
Today, in developed nations, grain hulling is done primarily by machines. In ancient times, they had their own mechanisms, which are still used by many people today.
One way to separate chaff from seed on a small scale with only ancient technology is by the use of a "winnowing fan." After the grain has been "threshed," or beaten in order to loosen the hull around the grains, the winnowing fan is employed. The tool is nothing but a broad, shallowly concave "fan," made usually of woven plant materials. Threshed grain is gathered into the fan and then tossed repeatedly into the air in a rhythmic sifting motion. The wind in the air carries the light, broken, undesirable hull material away with each toss, while the heavier seeds fall back to the fan for easy recovery.
John says that the one who comes after him will separate the wheat from the chaff by a winnowing fan. One imagines that a Jewish eschatologist at this time could only have been referring to the gathering together of God's chosen people in a wonderful earthly Kingdom of God, and the expulsion of non Jews from said Kingdom.
John's meaning here is not immediately and obviously apparent, and certain people will read into these verses a reference to "hell" and to "eternity." I do not believe this is what was going on here, but that possibility is floating.
What we can see almost for certain is the Greekness of the author of Matthew shining through. Verse 11 and 12 are all about the Greek conception of "the elements." You remember the elements, right? Earth, wind, fire and water? We see every one of these ancient elements represented in these two verses.
He mentions "earth" in the "threshing floor." He mentions "wind" in the "holy spirit" which we saw could be alternatively translated as "holy wind." He mentions wind again, in the mechanism of the winnowing fan, blowing away the undesirable material. He mentions fire twice, once in regards to the coming baptism and once in regards to the fate of the chaff. And, of course, he mentions water when he refers to his own baptism.
These inclusions in the text indicate that the author is writing to an audience that is thoroughly Hellenized, in addition to Jewish, in makeup, and that he understands this well. The use of these physical elements, now that we've identified it, works to ground the fiery preaching of John. We can imagine that he is talking about things that will be physically real in the "there and then," not about intangible, metaphysical things.
These verses are mirrored almost exactly in Luke, and they appear in Mark in a reduced form. The interesting one to read will be Mark's, for comparison, but that is long, long in our future.
These verses are dense, and packed with meaning and possibility. We will not uncover all of it here and now. Rest assured that we will have ample opportunity to rehash this.
We'll take our leave of this here, today. Next time, some of the text we read will be in "red letter." That is to say that, as we've already repeated, we will be dealing with words that are ascribed directly to Jesus Christ!
I am ready for this. I hope you are too. Please share this writing.
Love
John says he is washing away sin with his baptism of water. (Recall that baptism comes from the Greek "to immerse" or "to dunk.") He says to the Pharisees and Sadducees: "I offer a cleansing from sin that is easy, in water. But there comes another, greater than I, who will immerse you in fire to cleanse your sins."
So what can we say John is anticipating in this one who "is mightier than [him]?" Verse 11 seems to have him saying "the one who is mightier than me will offer you respite from your sin, as I do, but his mechanism of freeing you from sin, you will find, is much more intense."
It seems within reason that John is still referring, albeit hyperbolically, to a coming Davidic King of the Jews that would usher in Jewish military triumph over the region and return the Jews to a sovereign and elevated state.
It is interesting and relevant that the word we have here translated as "spirit," in the original Greek of Matthew, was "pnevmati," which can be alternatively translated as a "blast of wind" or a "breeze" or a "current of air." Let's keep that in the back of our mind for a moment.
In verse 12, we have the metaphor of an ancient worker's tool representing, perhaps, the military triumph of the coming King over those who do not stay in line with the law and the prophets.
We can talk more about the metaphor in a moment, but we ought to briefly "geek-out" here on the literal meaning of "winnowing fan."
In grain agriculture, when preparing produce for consumption, one must separate the chaff, or the "hull," of the plant from the kernel or "seed" inside. The chaff, like the husk of an ear of corn, is not pleasant to eat and provides little nutritional value. It must be separated from the portion of the plant that is pleasant to eat, and does have good nutritional value.
Today, in developed nations, grain hulling is done primarily by machines. In ancient times, they had their own mechanisms, which are still used by many people today.
One way to separate chaff from seed on a small scale with only ancient technology is by the use of a "winnowing fan." After the grain has been "threshed," or beaten in order to loosen the hull around the grains, the winnowing fan is employed. The tool is nothing but a broad, shallowly concave "fan," made usually of woven plant materials. Threshed grain is gathered into the fan and then tossed repeatedly into the air in a rhythmic sifting motion. The wind in the air carries the light, broken, undesirable hull material away with each toss, while the heavier seeds fall back to the fan for easy recovery.
John says that the one who comes after him will separate the wheat from the chaff by a winnowing fan. One imagines that a Jewish eschatologist at this time could only have been referring to the gathering together of God's chosen people in a wonderful earthly Kingdom of God, and the expulsion of non Jews from said Kingdom.
John's meaning here is not immediately and obviously apparent, and certain people will read into these verses a reference to "hell" and to "eternity." I do not believe this is what was going on here, but that possibility is floating.
What we can see almost for certain is the Greekness of the author of Matthew shining through. Verse 11 and 12 are all about the Greek conception of "the elements." You remember the elements, right? Earth, wind, fire and water? We see every one of these ancient elements represented in these two verses.
He mentions "earth" in the "threshing floor." He mentions "wind" in the "holy spirit" which we saw could be alternatively translated as "holy wind." He mentions wind again, in the mechanism of the winnowing fan, blowing away the undesirable material. He mentions fire twice, once in regards to the coming baptism and once in regards to the fate of the chaff. And, of course, he mentions water when he refers to his own baptism.
These inclusions in the text indicate that the author is writing to an audience that is thoroughly Hellenized, in addition to Jewish, in makeup, and that he understands this well. The use of these physical elements, now that we've identified it, works to ground the fiery preaching of John. We can imagine that he is talking about things that will be physically real in the "there and then," not about intangible, metaphysical things.
These verses are mirrored almost exactly in Luke, and they appear in Mark in a reduced form. The interesting one to read will be Mark's, for comparison, but that is long, long in our future.
These verses are dense, and packed with meaning and possibility. We will not uncover all of it here and now. Rest assured that we will have ample opportunity to rehash this.
We'll take our leave of this here, today. Next time, some of the text we read will be in "red letter." That is to say that, as we've already repeated, we will be dealing with words that are ascribed directly to Jesus Christ!
I am ready for this. I hope you are too. Please share this writing.
Love
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