A Link to Mark 5 (ESV)

When Holiness Is Contagious (5:21–43)

The purity laws of the Torah work by contact. A woman with a discharge of blood beyond her menstrual cycle remained unclean for as long as the flow continued, and her uncleanness passed to whatever she touched:

“If a woman has a discharge of blood for many days, not at the time of her menstrual impurity... all the days of the discharge she shall continue in uncleanness... And whoever touches these things shall be unclean” (Lev 15:25–27).

Contact with a corpse carried the same logic.

“Whoever touches the dead body of any person shall be unclean seven days” (Num 19:11).

Uncleanness was the stronger force; it traveled from the unclean to the clean and never the other way.

Mark sets two such cases inside one scene. Jairus, a ruler of the synagogue, falls at Jesus’ feet because his daughter is dying. On the way to the house, the crowd presses in, and one woman carries a defilement the others would not have seen unless they knew her:

“And there was a woman who had had a discharge of blood for twelve years... She had heard the reports about Jesus and came up behind him in the crowd and touched his garment” (Mark 5:25–27).

The two are bound by a number. The woman had bled for twelve years; the girl was twelve years old. The bleeding began about the time the child was born, and both afflictions ended on the same afternoon.

By the law’s reckoning, her touch should make Jesus unclean, along with everyone she pressed past. But the contagion runs backward. Power leaves him, and the flow of blood dries up at its source (5:29–30). He turns, calls her “daughter,” and tells her that her faith has saved her. The verb is σῴζω (sōzō), which means both to heal and to save, and Mark intends both.

Word then spreads that Jairus’s daughter has died. Jesus takes her by the hand, an act that should make him unclean for seven days, and says, “Talitha cumi” (5:41). She gets up, and he refers to her death as sleep because in his hands, death is no more permanent than sleep.

Holiness turns out to be the more powerful thing. Where the kingdom lays hold of uncleanness and death, they are the ones that gives way.

The Real Enemy (5:1-20)

When Jesus and his disciples crossed the Sea of Galilee, they were doing more than navigating a body of water. For any first-century Jewish reader, a sea crossing immediately evoked one story above all others: the night God led Israel through the sea on dry ground while Pharaoh’s army was swallowed by the returning waters (Exod 14:26–28). Now, stepping onto the far shore, Jesus walks straight into one of the most dramatic confrontations of his ministry.

They came to the other side of the sea, to the country of the Gerasenes. And when Jesus had stepped out of the boat, immediately there met him out of the tombs a man with an unclean spirit (Mark 5:1–2).

The man who meets him is possessed by a force that has broken every chain his neighbors could fashion. When Jesus asks his name, the answer is:

“My name is Legion, for we are many” (5:9).

“Legion” is a Roman military term for a unit of roughly 6,000 soldiers. To people living under occupation, it meant one thing: an army.

But Mark’s point is precisely that Rome is not the real enemy. Jesus has crossed the sea not to overthrow Caesar but to confront the true occupying power — the spiritual forces opposed to God and his kingdom.

The demons beg not to be sent out of the region. Jesus grants their request to enter a herd of pigs, and what happens next is unmistakable:

“The herd, numbering about two thousand, rushed down the steep bank into the sea and drowned in the sea” (5:13).

An army is drowned in the sea. Israel’s God had done this before. The Exodus is happening again.

The people of the Decapolis were afraid when they saw the man “sitting there, clothed and in his right mind” (Mark 5:15). They had grown accustomed to the enemy’s power. The freedom Jesus brought was more frightening than the bondage they had known. But the man himself understood. He begged to go with Jesus, and when refused, went home and proclaimed “how much the Lord had done for him” (5:19–20).

Paul would later name the same truth plainly:

“For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness” (Eph 6:12).

Our neighbors are not our enemies. Our political opponents are not our enemies. The legion arrayed against the people of God is spiritual, and it has already met the one who drowned Pharaoh’s army in the sea. In Christ, the outcome is not in doubt.

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A Link to Mark 4 (ESV)

Who Then Is This? (4:35–41)

In the Hebrew Scriptures, mastery of the sea belongs to YHWH alone. He rules the raging of the sea and stills its waves (Ps 89:9). At creation, he set the limits of the deep, saying to its proud waves, “Thus far shall you come, and no farther” (Job 38:11).

One of the fullest portraits of YHWH and the stormy sea is in Psalm 107. Sailors go down to the sea in ships and see the deeds of the LORD in the deep. A stormy wind rises at his command. The waves lift them up to heaven and down to the depths, their courage melts, and in their distress, they cry out:

Then they cried to the LORD in their trouble, and he delivered them from their distress. He made the storm be still, and the waves of the sea were hushed. Then they were glad that the waters were quiet, and he brought them to their desired haven (Ps 107:28–30).

The pattern is consistent. Storms rise at YHWH’s command, and he alone can still them.

This is the world the disciples inhabit when Jesus tells them to cross to the other side. The storm that rises is no ordinary squall. The waves are breaking into the boat, and the fishermen among them, men who know this lake, are afraid for their lives.

Jesus is asleep in the stern, on the cushion. The detail recalls another sleeping figure in a sinking boat. In Jonah 1, the prophet sleeps below deck while the sailors panic above. The captain wakes him with an urgent plea: arise, call on your god, that we do not perish (Jonah 1:6). The LXX’s verb for "perish" here is the very one the disciples use when they wake Jesus (Mark 4:38). In Jonah's case, the storm was stilled only when the prophet was thrown overboard. The sea was calmed by his “death.” After the calming, the sailors "feared the LORD exceedingly" (Jonah 1:16).

Jesus answers differently. Ultimately, his death will calm the winds and waves of this world, but not right now. In this moment, he simply rises and rebukes the wind. To the sea he says, “Peace! Be still!” (4:39). The verb is the same one Mark used earlier to silence an unclean spirit (Mark 1:25). The sea is treated as a hostile power that obeys his command.

Mark then describes the disciples with the very phrase from Jonah. They “feared a great fear” (Mark 4:41). And they ask the question the whole passage has been driving toward:

“Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?” (Mark 4:41).

The Hebrew Scriptures have already given the answer time and time again. There is only one who stills the storm and calms the sea.

The Mystery of the Sower (4:1–20)

When Jesus shares the Parable of the Sower, he is not giving a timeless lesson about spiritual openness. He is describing a crisis. In Mark 3, the religious leaders accuse him of casting out demons by the power of Beelzebul (Mark 3:22), and his own family thinks he is out of his mind (Mark 3:21). The message is spreading, but the rejection in ch. 3 shows it faces hard soil. Why?

The weight Mark places on this parable is unmistakable. It is the first substantive parable in all three Synoptic Gospels, and in Mark’s Gospel, which contains only one major parable section (here in ch. 4) and then only one other significant parable (the Wicked Tenants in chapter 12), it is nothing less than load-bearing for the whole Gospel and ministry of Jesus. When Jesus asks his disciples, “Do you not understand this parable? How then will you understand all the parables?” (Mark 4:13), he means it. This parable, like the others, explains what is happening in the ministry of Jesus.

To make sense of this parable, Jesus reaches for a word his disciples would have recognized immediately. He says:

“To you has been given the mystery of the kingdom of God” (Mark 4:11, author’s own translation).1

The Greek word translated as “mystery” here is μυστήριον, the same word the Septuagint uses in Daniel 2 when Nebuchadnezzar has a dream no one can interpret, and Daniel alone receives its meaning from God (Dan 2:18–19, 27–30). Mark signals that this parable is apocalyptic. Like Nebuchadnezzar’s dream, it is a vision whose meaning must be revealed from outside, and it explains real events that are happening or will happen in human history. And just as Daniel’s mystery concerned the coming kingdom that would one day fill the whole earth (Dan 2:44), so Jesus’ mystery concerns the kingdom that is arriving now — silently, against all appearances, like seed falling on the ground.

The seed, Jesus explains, is the word (Mark 4:14). This takes us straight to Isaiah 55, where God promises that his word, like rain and snow falling on the earth, will give “seed to the sower” and will not return to him empty, but will accomplish its purpose. That purpose is the New Exodus, the end of Israel’s long exile, and the return of Yahweh to Zion (Isa 55:10–11). The teaching of Jesus is doing precisely this: scattering the word of return across the landscape of human hearts.

But the harvest is uneven, and this is the parable’s great burden. The problem is not the seed or the sower. The word will not return empty. The problem is the soil. John the Baptist had come before Jesus with one message: “Prepare the way of the Lord” (Mark 1:3, citing Isa 40:3). To prepare the way was to prepare the soil — to repent, to clear the ground of whatever would keep the word from taking root. Many in Israel had not done this. And so when the sower arrived and began to scatter the word, he found paths and rocks and thorns where there should have been good earth.

The parable invites us to ask a hard question — not simply which of the four soils describes us, but what has hardened us. What love, what fear, what idol has compacted the ground so that the word cannot go as deep as it should? John’s ancient call has not expired. We must prepare the way of the Lord.

A Link to Mark 3 (ESV)

Doing Good on the Sabbath (3:1–6)

When the Sabbath law is given in Deuteronomy, the Lord states that its purpose is to serve as a memorial of God’s liberating act.

“You shall remember that you were a slave in the land of Egypt, and the LORD your God brought you out from there with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm. Therefore the LORD your God commanded you to keep the Sabbath day” (Deut 5:15).

The Sabbath is meant to remind Israel of the God who unbinds and grants rest. Every seventh day, the people are to reenact, in their bodies and households, the deliverance that defines them.

The prophets emphasized this point even more. When Israel turned their observance into mere ritual obsession, Isaiah reproved them:

“Is not this the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of wickedness, to undo the straps of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke?” (Isa 58:6).

The chapter concludes with a vision of Sabbath joy connected to the same freeing activity (58:13–14). For Isaiah, observance and mercy are one and the same act.

Jesus shares the same view, as he clearly demonstrates when, on a Sabbath in a synagogue, he heals a man with a withered hand.

“And he said to them, ‘Is it lawful on the Sabbath to do good or to do harm, to save life or to kill?’ But they were silent” (Mark 3:4).

Jesus’s question echoes Isaiah’s and is aimed at those who have spent their lives carefully following rule after rule. The Sabbath was created to remind us of liberation from bonds. To deny this man’s release on this day is to invert what the Sabbath is all about

So, Jesus restores the hand, and as we might expect, the Pharisees go out and conspire with the Herodians about how to destroy him (3:6).

Jesus frequently pushes past the letter of the law, and especially past the letter of our manmade interpretations of the law. The Sabbath was given so that God’s people would remember what kind of God we serve, and become the kind of people who reflect his character back into the world. To stand in his presence and refuse the work of restoration, even on the Sabbath, is to forget our own deliverance and to deny the very reason the day exists.

Liar, Lunatic, or Lord (3:20–35)

One of Mark’s favorite literary techniques is called intercalation — or, more memorably, “sandwiching.” He begins one story, interrupts it with another, and then returns to finish the first, inviting the reader to interpret the two in light of each other. Mark 3:20–35 is a textbook example. The passage opens with Jesus’s family coming to seize him, convinced he has lost his mind. Mark then pivots to a confrontation with scribes who have traveled all the way from Jerusalem. Then he returns to the family. The sandwich is intentional, and the theme holding it together is rejection.

The two groups reject Jesus in different ways. His family concludes he has gone mad.

“He is out of his mind” (Mark 3:21).

The scribes reach a different but equally damning verdict:

“He is possessed by Beelzebul, and by the prince of demons he casts out the demons” (Mark 3:22).

C. S. Lewis famously argued that these are the only live options for someone who says the kinds of things Jesus said. You cannot call someone merely a good moral teacher when they speak and behave like Jesus. According to Lewis, he is either a liar, a lunatic, or the Lord. Mark’s sandwich presents us with people who have chosen the first two options.

Jesus’s reply to the scribes exposes the incoherence of their charge. A kingdom divided against itself cannot stand; Satan would hardly be in the business of casting out his own (Mark 3:23–26). The real explanation is simpler and more alarming: someone has entered the strong man’s house and bound him (Mark 3:27). The exorcisms are not evidence of demonic collusion — they are evidence of conquest, specifically the New Exodus conquest. To look at that conquest and call it the work of Satan is the unforgivable sin. It is not a moment of doubt or confusion. It is a heart so hardened that it can no longer distinguish the work of God from the work of the devil (Mark 3:28–30).

Then Mark returns to the family waiting outside. Jesus does not go to them. Instead, looking at those seated around him, he redefines the category of family entirely:

“Whoever does the will of God, he is my brother and sister and mother” (Mark 3:35).

These words are not a warm sentiment about community. They are Jesus’s answer to rejection. Those who will not receive him are outside. Those who do the will of God (and thereby recognize that the will of God is being done through Jesus) are inside, gathered around him, constituting a new family defined not by blood but by allegiance.

A Link to Mark 2 (ESV)

The Bridegroom (2:18–22)

The question put to Jesus is straightforward. John’s disciples fast. The Pharisees’ disciples fast. Why don’t yours? Jesus’ answer must have been surprising to his original audience.

“Can the wedding guests fast while the bridegroom is with them? As long as they have the bridegroom with them, they cannot fast. The days will come when the bridegroom is taken away from them, and then they will fast in that day” (Mark 2:19–20).

Jesus’ answer reorients fasting around a single criterion: his own bodily presence. The guests at a wedding do not fast while the bridegroom is among them, and now the bridegroom has come.

But this assertion is no mere analogy. Jesus is claiming to be the bridegroom Israel had been waiting for. By using this term, Jesus alludes to prophetic tradition in which Yahweh is described as the husband of Israel. Isaiah states the relationship directly:

“For your Maker is your husband, the LORD of hosts is his name” (Isa 54:5).

Later in the same book:

“As the bridegroom rejoices over the bride, so shall your God rejoice over you” (Isa 62:5).

Hosea sees the renewal of the covenant as Israel’s recognition of God in these very terms:

“And in that day, declares the LORD, you will call me ‘My Husband’” (Hos 2:16).

When Jesus calls himself the bridegroom, he takes on the role of Yahweh in this tradition. He doesn't explicitly state the claim. Instead, he embeds it in his words, as Mark does in the opening quote (1:1–3). In those verses, a claim to divine identity is hidden within a combined Old Testament quotation.

The point about the presence of the bridegroom does not make the fasting of the Pharisees’ disciples or John’s invalid or corrupt. Jesus isn’t making a judgment about them in and of themselves. He’s commenting on the redemptive-historical moment. Fasting isn’t problematic, but the bridegroom has arrived, and this is no longer the time to fast. When the new comes, the old must give way.

The two sayings that follow Jesus’ discussion of the bridegroom point in the same direction. No one sews a new patch onto an old cloak; no one pours new wine into old skins. Old practices, like the fasting of the Pharisees’ disciples or John’s, aren’t wrong, but they aren’t suitable containers for the new thing that is happening with the arrival of the bridegroom. This might explain why Luke softens the language here by adding a line about the value of the old (Luke 5:39). Mark has no such softening. What has arrived in Jesus cannot be patched onto what came before.

The temptation is always to try anyway, to accept Jesus on the terms we already understand. We want to fit him into our system, but that’s not how the Gospel works. The bridegroom has arrived, and the old must give way to the new.

The Lord of the Sabbath (2:23–28)

The Sabbath dates back to the beginning of the story. On the seventh day, God rested from all His works, and He invited Adam and all of creation to share in that rest (Gen 2:2–3). The command to honor the Sabbath and keep it holy is part of the Ten Commandments — not as a burden placed on people but as an invitation to enter into the rest that God Himself was already enjoying (Exod 20:8–11; Deut 5:12–15).

By the time of Jesus, the Pharisees had developed an elaborate hedge of laws around that command to make sure it was not broken. But when they saw his disciples plucking heads of grain as they walked through the fields on a Sabbath, they confronted Jesus directly (Mark 2:23–24).

His response first pointed to David, who entered God’s house and ate the bread of the Presence when he and his men were hungry (1 Sam 21:1–6)—bread reserved by the law solely for the priests (Lev 24:5–9). The principle: when people are starving, human needs override the command. Then he drew the conclusion:

“The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath. So the Son of Man is lord even of the Sabbath” (Mark 2:27–28).

The Sabbath was created for the benefit of humanity. Humanity was not created for the benefit of the Sabbath. This truth applies to any commandment: the commandment is meant to serve the good of people; people were not created to serve the commandment. This idea should make us question ever treating the rule of law as something sacred while watching people suffer.

But Jesus does not stop there. He goes a step further and says that the Son of Man is lord even of the Sabbath. This passage is only the second time in Mark’s Gospel that Jesus has called himself the Son of Man. The first was earlier in this same chapter:

“that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins” (Mark 2:10).

Now the claim expands — the Son of Man has authority even over the Sabbath.

In Dan 7:13–14, the Son of Man appears before the Ancient of Days, to whom is given dominion, glory, and a kingdom, so that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him. Jesus claims to be this figure. If that is who he is, then his authority goes beyond kingdoms, nations, and languages. It includes forgiving sins and redefining what Sabbath keeping looks like.

The logic is clear: if the Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath, then the one who truly embodies what it means to be human has authority over what was created for humanity. The author of Hebrews will later explore the full implications of this, arguing that the rest God has always invited his people into is fulfilled not in a day but in a person (Heb 4:1–11). Right now, we are only seeing signposts, but they are pointing us toward something extraordinary.

A Link to Mark 1 (ESV)

The Torn Heavens (1:9–11)

When Jesus comes up out of the water, Mark describes what follows with a word no other evangelist uses:

Immediately he saw the heavens being torn open and the Spirit descending on him like a dove. And a voice came from heaven, “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased” (Mark 1:10–11).

Matthew and Luke both say the heavens were “opened” (ἀνοίγω). Mark says they were “torn” (σχίζω). All three Gospels are alluding to the same text, but Mark’s allusion is more accurate to the Hebrew.

At the end of Isaiah 63, Israel has concluded that God has abandoned them entirely. The final words of the chapter land like a statement of resignation:

We have become like those over whom you have never ruled, like those who are not called by your name (63:19).

Then the prayer breaks open:

Oh that you would rend the heavens and come down, that the mountains might quake at your presence (64:1).

The Hebrew verb is qāra’ — to tear, to rend. The Greek translators rendered it with ἀνοίγω, which may be why Matthew and Luke read as they do, or they may be flattening Mark’s dramatic verb choice. Either way, Mark clearly appears to be reaching back to the Hebrew when he uses σχίζω. The heavens are torn open. Isaiah’s prayer has been answered.

The Spirit descends like a dove, and then the voice from heaven speaks in a composite citation. “You are my Son” draws from Psalm 2:7, the coronation language spoken to the Davidic king on the day of his installation. “With you I am well pleased” (ἐν σοὶ εὐδόκησα) echoes Isaiah 42:1, where the servant is identified as the one on whom God’s Spirit rests and in whom God delights. The royal king and the Isaianic servant are identified as the same person: Jesus of Nazareth.

σχίζω will appear only once more in Mark. At the crucifixion, the temple veil is torn (15:38). The word frames the entire Gospel: the heavens torn at the baptism, the veil torn at the cross. What the baptism announces, the cross delivers.

January 10, 2026 (The Baptism of Christ)

Because today is the First Sunday of Epiphany, which is the traditional Sunday in the West for celebrating the baptism of Jesus, we will take a break from our usual reading sequence. Today, I want us to look at an account of Jesus’ baptism. Mark is my favorite Gospel, so today’s reading is from Mark 1. Since I previously preached on the baptism of Christ (though not specifically from Mark’s Gospel), I’ll link to the sermon here rather than repeat what I already discussed.

On the Way

The Beloved, Baptized Son

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5 months ago · Fr. J. Michael Strachan, PhD

Still, I want to share something with you, so here’s an interesting fact. In the Western Church, the Feast of Epiphany emphasizes the revelation of Christ to the Magi from the East. However, in the Eastern Church, the focus is on the revelation of Jesus Christ as the Son of God during his baptism. In fact, in the East, Epiphany is sometimes called “Theophany.” On one hand, we have the revelation to the Gentiles; on the other, the revelation of Jesus’s divinity.

The Western tradition treats this difference by always celebrating the baptism of Christ on the first Sunday after Epiphany, keeping the two closely linked. Both events are explicitly mentioned (along with the miracle at Cana) in our eucharistic prayer during the season of Epiphany. Essentially, instead of choosing one over the other, we celebrate both!

A Link to Matthew 28 (ESV)

Emmanuel through the Spirit (28:20)

Matthew’s Gospel ends with a promise that creates an obvious problem. Jesus stands before his disciples on a Galilean mountain, commissions them to make disciples of all nations, and closes with this:

“And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.” (28:20)

Then the narrative ends.

Matthew has no account of the Ascension nor a description of the Spirit’s descent. If you knew the story of Jesus only from the Gospel of Matthew, you would have the impression that the resurrected Christ remained with his disciples on earth forever. That is, after all, what Jesus says at the end of the book.

But of course, that’s not what happened. Jesus said, “I am with you always,” and then he left.

Jesus ascended to the right hand of God, and he left his disciples behind.

That fact would be a theological problem if it weren’t for Pentecost. Pentecost is the answer to the question, “How is Christ with us always if he’s in heaven and we’re still here on earth?”

When Jesus ascended to the right hand of God, he poured out the Holy Spirit on his disciples (Acts 2:1-4). And while we rightly say that the Holy Spirit is a Person of the Trinity distinct from God the Son, we also confess (using the filioque clause) that the Spirit “proceeds from the Father and the Son.” The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of the Father, yes, but he is also the Spirit of the Son. He proceeds from both of them, and this is consistent with the witness of the New Testament.

Paul identifies the Spirit as “the Spirit of his Son” by whom we cry, “Abba, Father” (Gal 4:6). He also refers to “the Spirit of Jesus Christ” (Phil 1:19), while Luke calls him “the Spirit of Jesus” (Acts 16:7). The Spirit is the Spirit of Christ just as much as he is the Spirit of the Father.

When Jesus says, “I will be with you always” and then leaves, he doesn’t abandon us forever. Ten days after the Ascension, Jesus poured out his own Spirit on his people. This is how Christ chose to be with us always, not by remaining bodily and keeping the Spirit to himself, but by ascending to heaven and pouring out his Holy Spirit into the life of every believer.

Jesus was Emmanuel bodily. He is now Emmanuel through his Holy Spirit.

All Authority Has Been Given to Me (28:16–20)

Matthew does not end quietly. The final scene of his Gospel takes place on a mountain in Galilee, where the risen Jesus stands before his disciples and makes a declaration that would have stopped any Jewish reader in their tracks:

“All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me” (Matt 28:18).

Those words echo a vision from the book of Daniel, where the prophet sees “one like a son of man” approaching the Ancient of Days on the clouds of heaven:

And to him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him; his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away. (Dan 7:14)

Matthew has been building toward this moment. Throughout the Gospel, Jesus refers to himself as the Son of Man — the figure Daniel saw receiving cosmic authority from God himself. Now, standing on the other side of the cross and empty tomb, Jesus declares that the vision has been fulfilled. The dominion has been given. The enthronement has occurred. What Daniel saw in a night vision, the disciples are witnessing in a Galilean morning.

This truth is crucial for understanding what comes next. The claim of authority isn’t just an introduction — it’s the basis. Since all authority has been bestowed upon him, Jesus proceeds:

Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you (Matt 28:19–20a).

The “therefore” carries significant theological weight. Jesus doesn’t present the Great Commission as a hurried plea or a moral duty hanging in the air. Instead, he presents it as the result of a completed reality—mission springs from enthronement.

It also influences how we understand authority itself. Notice what Jesus does not say. He does not say all authority has been given to the Scriptures his followers will write or to the Church they will build.

Whatever authority the Bible or the Church has is real, but it is secondary — derived from Jesus, accountable to Jesus, and subject to correction by Jesus.

The Great Commission, then, is not an errand we embark on based on our own initiative. It is participation in the ongoing reign of the one to whom all authority has already been granted. We do not go because the need is urgent, although it is. We go because the King has spoken.

When I started thinking about the relation between the Bible, theology, and my personal weight loss journey, I had a friend say to me:

“Just don’t say, ‘Your body is a temple.’ Everyone’s done that angle to death.”

Fair enough. But what if the same idea turns out to be far stranger and more interesting than is usually let on?

What if, instead of stopping with Paul’s “Your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit” (1 Cor 6:19), we followed the thread all the way to Revelation — and found you and your Spirit-filled body described there as part of the New Jerusalem, the heavenly city coming down out of heaven within God’s new creation (Rev 21–22)? How might that change how we think about our bodies?

Intrigued? Read on.

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A Link to Matthew 27 (ESV)

When the Graves Were Opened (27:51–53)

Ezekiel saw a valley full of bones. Dry, scattered, lifeless: Israel in exile, the covenant people cut off from their land and from their God. The vision was not primarily about individual survival after death; it was about the end of exile. “These bones are the whole house of Israel,” God tells the prophet. “They say, ‘Our bones are dried up, and our hope is lost; we are indeed cut off’” (37:11). And then Yahweh speaks:

“Behold, I will open your graves and raise you from your graves, O my people. And I will bring you into the land of Israel” (37:12).

The Septuagint is precise: “I will open your graves” (ἀνοίγω... τὰ μνήματα) and bring you up from them. Opening the graves and returning the people to the land are one and the same act. Resurrection, in Ezekiel’s vision, is the end of exile.

Matthew 27 brings that promise into sudden focus. When Jesus breathed his last, the earth shook, the rocks split, and the tombs were opened: τὰ μνημεῖα ἀνεῴχθησαν (27:52). The language and imagery are Ezekiel’s, now unfolding in Jerusalem at the foot of the cross.

Matthew is precise about the timing. The tombs opened at the moment of Jesus’s death, but “many bodies of the saints who had fallen asleep were raised, and coming out of the tombs after his resurrection they went into the holy city and appeared to many” (27:52–53). The cross opens the graves; the resurrection is the moment they emerge. Death is broken at Golgotha, but the new creation begins to move through the empty tomb three days later.

The “saints” (οἱ ἅγιοι, “the holy ones”) who appear in Jerusalem are the firstfruits of Ezekiel’s promise: faithful Israel raised, returned, walking in the city. Their appearance to “many” (ἐνεφανίσθησαν πολλοῖς) carries the vocabulary Matthew uses elsewhere for resurrection appearances. They are witnesses to what has begun.

We tend to treat resurrection as a distant promise, a consolation reserved for the future. Matthew 27 will not allow that. The bones have already been breathed into. The exile has ended. The tomb that opened at Golgotha is the fissure through which the new creation has already begun to pour. To live in Christ is to live already on the other side of that opening.

Remorse is Not Repentance (27:3–10)

Judas realized something had gone terribly wrong. When he saw that Jesus had been condemned, Matthew tells us he “changed his mind” and returned the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and elders, saying:

“I have sinned by betraying innocent blood” (Matt 27:4).

It’s a confession, of sorts. It’s grief, of sorts. But Matthew’s word choice reveals something important about what it is not.

The word Matthew uses for Judas’s response is μεταμέλομαι (metamelomai) — a word that means to regret, to feel remorse, to wish things had gone differently. It is not the word μετανοέω (metanoeō), which appears throughout the New Testament for genuine repentance — a turning of the whole self away from sin and toward God. Judas feels the weight of what he has done. He even speaks the truth about Jesus’s innocence. But his grief turns inward rather than outward, toward despair rather than toward the one he has betrayed.

The contrast with Peter is revealing. Peter also fails Jesus terribly in the previous chapter, denying him three times with curses and oaths (26:69–75). Matthew does not use metanoeō for Peter here either. But Peter’s story does not end in a field bought with blood money. Something in Peter reaches outward, toward grace, toward restoration — the path that metanoeō describes.

Lent is a season meant to encourage this kind of self-examination. It doesn’t ask whether we feel guilty about our sins — most of us do, at least at times. It questions whether our sorrow over sin leads us toward God or turns inward on itself. Remorse alone can become a kind of prison, a fixation on our failure that, paradoxically, keeps us focused on ourselves rather than on the one who forgives.

The difference between Judas and Peter is not the severity of their sin but the direction of their sorrow

A Link to Matthew 26 (ESV)

The Sword and the Servant (26:47–56)

Isaiah 53 depicts a figure who has every reason to resist but chooses not to.

“He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth; like a lamb that is led to the slaughter... so he opened not his mouth” (Isa 53:7).

The servant’s silence reflects not helplessness but vocation. Yahweh himself designs the servant’s journey.

“It was the will of the LORD to crush him” (53:10).

Matthew has already linked Jesus to this servant before the passion begins. At 8:17, citing Isaiah 53:4 in a direct fulfillment formula, Matthew provides his readers with the interpretive key: the servant’s surrender, when it happens, will be chosen rather than forced.

When the crowd arrives in Gethsemane with swords and clubs, the other Evangelists mention the sword, the severed ear, and a brief response from Jesus. Matthew includes all of this and goes further. Only Matthew preserves the three-part argument Jesus gives for why he does not resist, and it provides the most theologically clear statement of the passion’s logic among the four Gospels.

First:

“All who take the sword will perish by the sword” (v. 52).

Violence perpetuates itself; it solves nothing. Second:

“Do you think that I cannot appeal to my Father, and he will at once send me more than twelve legions of angels?” (v. 53).

A Roman legion numbered about 6,000 soldiers, and a single angel defeated 185,000 Assyrian troops in one night (2 Kgs 19:35). What Jesus describes is an overwhelming force, which is available but intentionally not used. Third:

“But how then should the Scriptures be fulfilled, that it must be so?” (v. 54).

The Greek δεῖ (dei, “it must”) indicates divine necessity. The servant’s journey demands his surrender.

Peter draws his sword in a fundamental misunderstanding of the servant’s vocation. When the disciples run away and Matthew records that “all this has taken place that the Scriptures of the prophets might be fulfilled” (v. 56), he is not just noting an incidental detail. He is completing the interpretive loop that started at 8:17.

The church has not stopped reaching for Peter’s sword. We reach for it whenever we imagine the kingdom advances by force, whether political, social, or physical. Jesus had the power to prevent his arrest and chose not to use it. The sword is never the way of the cross.

Promise Kept (26:26-29)

Matthew has been working toward this moment since the first chapter. When the angel announced the birth of Jesus, he declared:

“You shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins” (Matt. 1:21).

Twenty-six chapters later, Jesus himself gathers with his disciples in an upper room, takes the cup, and says something found in no other account of the Last Supper — not in Mark, not in Luke, and not in Paul’s independent tradition in 1 Cor. 11:23–25.

“For this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins” (Matt. 26:28).

Mark and Luke include the words of institution, but neither Evangelist adds “for the forgiveness of sins.” Neither does Paul. Matthew alone includes those four words — and they are not accidental. They close a loop that has been open since the angel’s announcement before Jesus’ birth. The name and the mission have finally converged at the table.

The phrase also carries the weight of Israel’s deepest hope. When Jeremiah described the coming new covenant, he did not end with law written on hearts or the knowledge of God spreading among the people — though he promised both. He ended with this: “For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more” (Jer. 31:34). Forgiveness was the covenant’s goal. Matthew presents Jesus as the one who arrives there, and the language Jesus uses is intentionally sacrificial. Blood poured out for many echoes the Levitical offerings and the suffering servant of Isaiah 53. Forgiveness comes not despite sacrifice but through it, and here Jesus himself is both the priest and the offering (Heb. 7:27).

This scene is one of those moments where Matthew’s careful structure becomes clear to an attentive reader. The Gospel isn’t just a collection of Jesus’s teachings and miracles loosely arranged around a passion narrative. Matthew is making a case. He presents Jesus as the one who will save his people from their sins, and he makes sure the reader doesn’t forget it. At the table, on the night before the crucifixion, Jesus explains what his death achieves. The forgiveness of sins isn’t a side note to the passion — it is its main purpose.

As you approach the Lord’s Table, reflect on what it means to receive the cup that Jesus himself explained. He did not leave the meaning unclear. The blood of the covenant is poured out for the forgiveness of your sins. The promise made before his birth is kept in the upper room.

A Link to Matthew 25 (ESV)

Entrusted with Talents (25:14–30)

The parable of the talents follows immediately after the parable of the ten virgins, and the two are meant to be read together. The first parable raised the question of who would be ready when the bridegroom arrived; this one asks what the servants will have done in the meantime. The delay that shaped the first parable reappears here as a journey, and the same question is asked from a different perspective.

The departure in verse 14 (ἀποδημῶν, “going on a journey”) reflects a tradition deeply rooted in Second Temple Jewish memory. Since Ezekiel’s visions of the divine glory leaving the temple at the start of the exile (Ezek 10–11), Israel had been waiting for YHWH’s return to Zion. The parable is set in that context: the master has entrusted his property to his servants and will return to settle accounts.

The distribution in verse 15 is uneven but proportional. Each servant gets according to their own ability. The first two servants trade and double what they received. The third digs a hole and hides (ἔκρυψεν) his talent in the ground.

That verb is important. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus told these same disciples: “A city set on a hill cannot be hidden (κρυβῆναι)” (5:14). What God had entrusted to Israel, and now to the disciples, was never meant to be concealed. Isaiah had framed the mandate generations earlier:

“I will make you a light for the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth” (Isa 49:6).

The lamp belongs on the stand. The talent belongs in the world. The third servant’s act of preservation is, by the logic of the calling, an act of sabotage.

This servant’s explanation in verse 25 is revealing. He did not squander the talent; he kept it intact. His stated reason is fear. He said the master was a hard man, harvesting where he had not planted, and so he hid the talent rather than risk losing it. The master does not dispute the characterization. He turns it back on the servant: if you knew I was that demanding, that is all the more reason to have done something. The judgment falls not on a wrong theology but on the inaction that theology was used to justify.

The talent taken from him is given to the one who already has ten. What is hoarded does not last; it is redistributed to those who multiply what they are given. To hide what the master entrusts is not caution; it is loss.

The parable does not focus on how much you have been given. The servant who doubled two talents received the same praise as the one who doubled five. What it emphasizes is simpler and more serious: the talents given by the master were meant to be used in the world, and burying them is not wise. The servant who buried his talents was cast into outer darkness. What he feared most happened to him, and the talent he refused to take a risk with was taken away.

As we once again wait for God, let’s make sure we aren’t burying the gifts he’s given us, but instead investing them in the world for the good and growth of his kingdom.

The Hidden Christ (25:31–46)

Matthew’s Gospel begins with a name: Immanuel, “God with us” (1:23). It ends with a promise: “I am with you always, to the end of the age” (28:20). Between these two statements, Matthew 25 presents a question that every reader must answer — where, exactly, is Jesus present in the world right now?

The parable of the sheep and the goats provides a startling answer. When the Son of Man sits on his throne and separates the nations, the standard of judgment turns out to be surprisingly ordinary: food for the hungry, water for the thirsty, hospitality for the stranger, clothing for the naked, companionship for the sick and imprisoned. The righteous are confused. “Lord, when did we see you?” (v. 37). The guilty ask the same question (v. 44). Neither group realized what they were doing — or failing to do.

That double surprise is the key to understanding verse 40. Some scholars argue that “the least of these my brothers” (τῶν ἀδελφῶν μου τῶν ἐλαχίστων) specifically refers to Jesus’s disciples—missionaries who spread the gospel into hostile territory and relied entirely on the hospitality of strangers. Matthew does use ἀδελφοί this way elsewhere, and the mission discourse of chapter 10 makes receiving Jesus’s messengers the same as receiving Jesus himself. That is a consistent interpretation. But it clashes with the scene Matthew actually describes. If the nations were being judged by how they treated identifiable Christian missionaries, the universal shock of both groups wouldn’t make much sense. They would know exactly who those missionaries were and what was at stake in accepting or rejecting them.

The better reading takes that surprise seriously. Jesus identifies himself with the poor and suffering of the world in a way that goes beyond the community of disciples. The hidden presence of Christ in the vulnerable neighbor is not a metaphor. It is the logic of the Incarnation extended to every encounter with human suffering. Immanuel did not come to be with us in comfort and then depart. He came to dwell where human beings are most exposed — in hunger, in exile, in illness, in chains — and he remains there.

This reality changes the texture of ordinary life. Every act of mercy is an encounter with the living Christ, whether the giver knows it or not. The question Matthew 25 presses upon the reader is not whether you have said the right words or held the right beliefs, but whether you have learned to see Christ in the needy and vulnerable.

A Link to Matthew 24 (ESV)

The Coming of the Son of Man (24:30)

The source of Jesus’s language in Matthew 24:30 is the night vision in Daniel 7. Four beasts emerge from the sea; four empires have oppressed God's people. Then the scene shifts:

“I saw in the night visions, and behold, with the clouds of heaven there came one like a son of man, and he came to the Ancient of Days and was presented before him” (Dan 7:13).

The direction of the movement matters. In Daniel, the one like a son of man does not descend to earth; he ascends to the divine throne room. The movement is upward, and the outcome is enthronement: dominion, glory, and an everlasting kingdom are given to him before the Ancient of Days (7:14). When the angel interprets the vision (7:26–27), the transfer of power is complete: the fourth beast is destroyed, and the kingdom passes to the people of the Most High.

Matthew 24:30 places Jesus squarely inside this vision:

“Then will appear in heaven the sign of the Son of Man, and then all the tribes of the earth will mourn, and they will see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of heaven with power and great glory” (Matt 24:30).

The Danielic background makes it clear that the coming of the Son of Man does not depict Jesus descending through the sky. The sign appears in heaven because it symbolizes a heavenly event: the condemned prophet's vindication before God’s own tribunal. The phrase “coming on the clouds” is Daniel’s way of describing the transfer of dominion from the empire to the Son of Man, and Jesus uses it in the same way.

But who is the “they” who will see? Matthew’s passion narrative provides the audience. At his trial, Jesus directly tells the high priest:

“From now on you will see the Son of Man seated at the right hand of Power and coming on the clouds of heaven” (Matt 26:64).

Jesus here conflates Daniel 7:13 with Psalm 110:1 (”Sit at my right hand, until I make your enemies your footstool”). The Psalm sits at the center of the argument, and its logic governs the entire passage: the coming of the Son of Man is the act by which God puts Jesus’s enemies under his feet. The “they” who will see the Son of Man coming in 24:30 are not the disciples; they are those who condemned Jesus, like the high priest.

The mourning that follows in 24:30 echoes Zechariah 12:10–12, where the tribes of the land mourn when they look on the one they have pierced. That is not the mourning of those awaiting rescue. It is the recognition of the guilty.

Matthew 24:30 is not, despite the numerous claims to the contrary, but about the second coming. It is about a heavenly verdict rendered in space and time within the generation standing before him.

This Generation Will Not Pass Away (ch. 24)

Matthew describes the disciples asking Jesus a question that reveals much more about their expectations than they realize.

“Tell us, when will these things be, and what will be the sign of your coming and of the end of the age?” (Matt 24:3).

For centuries, readers have believed the disciples were asking about two separate events: the temple’s destruction and Jesus’s distant second coming. However, this misreads their question badly, as the parallel passages in Mark and Luke show.

The Greek word translated as “coming” is parousia, which means “presence” or “arrival.” Paul uses it throughout his letters in exactly this common sense. He mentions the parousia of Stephanas, Fortunatus, and Achaicus (1 Cor 16:17). He rejoices at the parousia of Titus (2 Cor 7:6–7). He compares his bodily parousia with his letters (2 Cor 10:10). The word did not have mystical overtones. It was the standard term for someone’s arrival, especially for the visit of a royal or official personage.

The disciples weren’t asking about Jesus floating down on a cloud at the end of time. They wanted to know when he would become king in Jerusalem. They had followed him to the holy city, expecting his coronation. Now he had just predicted that not one stone of the temple would be left upon another (Matt 24:2). Their question was simple: When will you actually take power?

More importantly, they believed all these events would occur simultaneously. In Second Temple Judaism, the destruction of the temple was linked to the end of the age (note: not the end of the world). The temple was viewed as the center of the cosmos, the place where heaven and earth met. How could it fall and the age continue as it had? The disciples thought that temple destruction, Jesus’s royal installation, and the end of the current evil age were all part of the same catastrophic event.

Jesus’s answer confirms the temple’s fall within their generation:

“Truly, I say to you, this generation will not pass away until all these things take place” (Matt 24:34).

The apocalyptic imagery that follows—“the sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will fall from heaven” (Matt 24:29)—is not about the collapse of the space-time universe. This imagery is standard Old Testament language for massive political upheaval and the fall of great powers. When Isaiah and Ezekiel spoke of cosmic signs, they meant Babylon’s fall and Egypt’s defeat (Isa 13:10; Ezek 32:7–8). Jesus is using the same prophetic vocabulary. Jerusalem’s destruction will be an earth-shattering event in Israel’s story, the vindication of Jesus as the true prophet and Israel’s representative.

The disciples wanted to know when Jesus would come to power. His answer is both immediate and delayed in ways they could not imagine. The temple would fall within a generation, vindicating his prophetic ministry. But his true enthronement, his real parousia, would mean something far stranger than a military coup in Jerusalem. The question reveals how much they still had to learn about the kingdom they thought they understood.

A Link to Matthew 23 (ESV)

From Abel to Zechariah (23:29–36)

The Hebrew Bible doesn’t end with Malachi. In the Jewish canonical order, the Ketuvim (the Writings) concludes with 2 Chronicles. That order is important for what Jesus says in v. 35.

The woe in verse 29 begins with an accusation that, on the surface, appears to be misplaced praise. The scribes and Pharisees build tombs for the prophets and decorate the monuments of the righteous. They claim that if they had lived in their ancestors’ time, they would not have shed the prophets’ blood. Jesus turns their own words against them.

“Thus you witness against yourselves that you are sons of those who murdered the prophets. Fill up, then, the measure of your fathers” (23:31–32).

The verb πληρόω (plēroō), which is usually translated as “fulfill,” is correctly rendered here as “fill up.” I’ve previously discussed Jesus “filling full” the OT. Now it’s the scribes’ and the Pharisees’ turn. They also have a role in the story to “fill up” or “fill full” as well.

The indictment then reaches its full scope:

“...so that on you may come all the righteous blood shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah the son of Barachiah, whom you murdered between the sanctuary and the altar” (23:35).

Abel’s blood is the first in Scripture crying out for justice. When Cain killed his brother, Yahweh told him:

“The voice of your brother’s blood is crying to me from the ground” (Gen 4:10).

Innocent blood does not simply disappear. It calls out to God for justice.

Zechariah marks the other end of the span. The Zechariah killed between the sanctuary and the altar is almost certainly the one described in 2 Chronicles 24:20–21: a priest who stood in the court of the temple and rebuked Israel for forsaking Yahweh, only to be stoned at the king’s command in that same court. His dying words were:

“May the LORD see and avenge!” (2 Chr 24:22).

Again, Righteous blood, once shed, does not go silent. (That’s a sobering thought for another time.)

Since Chronicles closes the Hebrew canon, “from Abel to Zechariah” covers the entire biblical story. Jesus is making a canonical point: the history of Scripture, from beginning to end, is about those who spoke for God being silenced by those claiming to represent him. The scribes and Pharisees standing before him bring that history to its tragic climax.

Every generation honors the prophets it did not have to live with. We build memorials to voices we would have rejected at the moment. The question Matthew 23 raises is not whether we venerate the prophets of the past, but whether we are willing to hear the living Word that challenges us now.

When Yahweh Returns to His Temple (23:1–39)

Israel’s prophets promised that Yahweh would one day return to Zion. Malachi envisioned the Lord suddenly coming to his temple, but warned that his arrival would bring judgment:

“Who can endure the day of his coming, and who can stand when he appears?” (Mal 3:2).

Ezekiel foresaw the glory of the Lord returning to a purified temple (Ezek 43:1-5). The hope sustained Israel through exile and occupation. One day, God would come back to his city and his house.

Matthew presents Jesus as the fulfillment of this hope, but the homecoming is not what Israel’s leaders expected. Yahweh has returned to Zion, entered his temple, and now renders his verdict. Matthew 23 records the divine audit. The seven woes against the scribes and Pharisees echo the covenant curse formulas of Deuteronomy 28 and later prophetic indictments. Jesus speaks with authority that transcends even Moses. He prosecutes those who were supposed to shepherd his people.

The charges are devastating. The religious leaders shut the kingdom of heaven in people’s faces (Matt 23:13). They strain out gnats while swallowing camels (23:24). They clean the outside of the cup while remaining full of greed and self-indulgence (23:25). They are whitewashed tombs, beautiful on the exterior but full of dead bones within (23:27). These are not merely ethical failures. They represent a fundamental betrayal of Israel’s covenant calling.

What makes this passage uniquely powerful is how the divine prosecutor’s voice breaks with grief.

“O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stones those who are sent to it! How often would I have gathered your children together as a hen gathers her brood under her wings, and you were not willing!” (23:37).

Yahweh himself laments over his beloved city. The maternal imagery reveals the depth of divine longing. God came to gather his people, but they refused his embrace.

The pronouncement that follows is therefore both judgment and heartbreak.

“See, your house is left to you desolate” (23:38).

The house is the temple, the dwelling place God chose for his name. But now the Lord who has returned to his house will depart from it. The glory is leaving, echoing Ezekiel’s vision of God’s presence abandoning the first temple before its destruction (Ezek 10–11). Jesus then quotes Psalm 118:26:

“You will not see me again, until you say, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord’” (Matt 23:39).

The crowds shouted these words at his triumphal entry (21:9), but now they point to a future moment of judgment when all will acknowledge who he truly is.

His departure sets the stage for Matthew 24. As Jesus leaves the temple, his disciples marvel at the buildings. His response confirms what the lament implied:

“There will not be left here one stone upon another that will not be thrown down” (Matt. 24:2).

Yahweh returned to Zion, found it wanting, and now withdraws his presence again. The consequences will be catastrophic.

A Link to Matthew 22 (ESV)

The Things That Are God’s (22:15–22)

Genesis begins with a statement that sets Israel apart from all surrounding cultures: human beings are created in the image of God (Gen 1:26–27). The Hebrew word is tselem (“image, likeness”), and the LXX translates it as εἰκών (eikōn). In the ancient Near East, images of gods and kings were not just decoration; they symbolized the presence and authority of deities and rulers. Egypt and Mesopotamia viewed the king as the image of the deity, carrying divine authority in the world. Israel’s scriptures democratize this idea: not just the king, but every human being bears that image.

That tradition stands behind one of the questions Jesus asks in the Temple.

The Pharisees and Herodians, enemies united by their goal of trapping him, pose what seems to be an unanswerable question: is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar or not? If he answers yes, he risks alienating Jewish nationalists; if he answers no, he risks arrest. Jesus calls them hypocrites (ὑποκριταί) before giving any answer, which is Matthew’s unique touch. Then he asks them to produce the coin used for the tax. They bring a denarius, the Roman tribute coin bearing Caesar’s image.

Jesus asks a question of his own:

“Whose image and inscription is this?” They said, “Caesar’s.” Then he said to them, “Therefore render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, and to God the things that are God’s” (22:20–21).

The Greek word for “image” is εἰκών, the same term used in Genesis 1:26–27 in the LXX. The coin bears Caesar’s εἰκών and belongs to Caesar. Human beings bear God’s εἰκών. This logic goes beyond the coin: give Caesar what bears his image, and give God what bears his, which is the total human being.

Jesus completely reframes the question. The Pharisees asked about tribute, but he responds with a more probing question: to whom do you belong?

We often pay close attention to the first half of Jesus’s reply while giving the second half much less thought. We understand what to render to Caesar. The more important question is whether we are offering our full selves to God as his image bearers. It’s possible to structure your entire life around earthly responsibilities, ambitions, and approval, and call it responsible living. But the coin belongs to Caesar because it bears Caesar’s image. Everything that bears God’s image rightfully and completely belongs to God.

David’s Lord (22:41–46)

Matthew carefully arranges the final days of Jesus’s Jerusalem ministry as a series of confrontations. The religious authorities try to trap him with questions about taxes, resurrection, and the law. Jesus answers each challenge skillfully. Then he asks his own question, leaving them completely silent.

The question involves Psalm 110. This detail is more important than most people realize. Psalm 110 is the most quoted or alluded to Old Testament chapter in the entire New Testament. The early church repeatedly turned to this psalm to understand who Jesus is and what he is doing now.

Jesus quotes the opening verse:

The LORD said to my Lord, “Sit at my right hand, until I put your enemies under your feet” (Matt. 22:44).

Then he asks:

“If David calls him Lord, how is he his son?” (Matt. 22:45).

The riddle compels its listeners to understand what the psalm reveals. Yahweh speaks to someone whom David addresses as “my Lord.” If this psalm is messianic, and Jesus and his contemporaries interpreted it as such, then David acknowledges the Messiah as his Lord. A king does not call his descendant Lord. The opposite happens: sons honor their fathers, and descendants honor their ancestors. Yet here is David, the greatest king in Israel’s history, calling the Messiah his Lord.

The riddle shows that the Messiah goes beyond human lineage. Yes, he is from David’s line. Matthew has carefully traced that genealogy in his opening chapter. But David’s son is also David’s Lord. He has an authority and status that surpasses royal inheritance.

The image from Psalm 110 depicts enthronement. Yahweh invites this Lord to sit at his right hand, the position of ultimate authority. He waits while God defeats his enemies. He rules from the heavenly throne.

Matthew returns to this image at the very end of his Gospel. The crucified and risen Jesus declares:

“All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me” (Matt. 28:18).

The person who posed the riddle now says it has been fulfilled. He sits enthroned at God’s right hand.

The answer to the riddle changes how we interpret everything that follows in Matthew’s Gospel. Jesus does not go to the cross as a defeated prophet. He goes as the enthroned Lord whose enemies will be put under his feet. The passion is not the end of his authority but the journey through which that authority is revealed and exercised.

No one could answer the riddle (Matt. 22:46). The answer stood before them. David’s Lord had come.

A Link to Matthew 21 (ESV)

In the Temple (21:12–17)

When Jesus enters the temple, it’s a divine act. Israel’s God has arrived at his temple, and he is executing his judgment. The buyers and sellers are driven out, the money changers’ tables are overturned, and the dove sellers’ seats are knocked over.

His verdict on what the temple has become draws from two prophets. Isaiah said that the temple should be “a house of prayer” (Isa 56:7); Jeremiah warned that it had become “a den of robbers” (Jer 7:11), meaning a hiding place for those exploiting the vulnerable before retreating into religious routine. Together, the two quotations form a single criticism: the temple exists to encounter God, but it has become a place of escape into empty religious ceremony instead.

What follows after this moment is unique to Matthew. Mark and Luke move directly from the cleansing to the confrontation with the religious leaders. Matthew inserts something neither of them records:

“And the blind and the lame came to him in the temple, and he healed them” (21:14).

Earlier in the Gospel, when John the Baptist sent from prison asking whether Jesus was the one to come, Jesus answered by pointing to what was happening: the blind are receiving their sight, the lame are walking (11:5). These were echoes of Isaiah’s new-exodus hope (Isa 35:5–6). Now those healings move into the temple itself, and they happen not because the temple is functioning properly (he has made sure it isn’t) but because the true temple was there in person.

The children see what’s happening, and they begin crying, “Hosanna to the Son of David. But the chief priests and scribes are indignant:

“Do you hear what these are saying?” (21:16).

Jesus does not quiet the children. He asks whether the leaders have ever read Psalm 8.

The Hebrew of Psalm 8:2 says that from the mouths of infants and nursing babies God has established ʿōz (strength) “because of your foes, to still the enemy and the avenger.” The LXX renders ʿōz not as strength but as αἶνον (ainon), “praise.” Matthew quotes the Greek:

“Out of the mouth of infants and nursing babies you have prepared praise” (21:16).

The praise that silences God’s enemies doesn’t come from those with credentials. It comes from the mouths of the vulnerable. In Psalm 8, the “foes” who are silenced by this praise are those opposing what God is doing. Jesus directs this psalm at leaders who are, at that moment, doing just that. They have just witnessed the blind and lame healed in the temple. They have seen that the New Exodus is finally happening. But their main concern is whether Jesus deserves the praise he is getting. The psalm answers that question and reveals their position.

We reproduce this failure more easily than we might think. The temptation isn’t always to deny what God is doing; sometimes it’s to be outraged that the credit is going to someone we didn’t authorize or someone outside our camp. These leaders wanted to control the temple and the people’s holiness, but something they couldn’t control or did not sanction was happening right in front of them. By week’s end, they would try to take permanent control by silencing Jesus for good. For now, God’s praise was being spoken by the vulnerable, and no outrage from the powerful could silence it.

Palm Sunday and Psalm 118 (21:1–11)

When Jesus enters Jerusalem, the crowds lay their cloaks on the road and cut branches from the trees. What they shout is (in part) directly from Psalm 118:

“Hosanna to the Son of David! Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord! Hosanna in the highest!” (Matt. 21:9, quoting Ps 118:26).

The crowds are not improvising. Psalm 118 was the final psalm of the Egyptian Hallel (Pss 113–118), the sequence of psalms sung at the Passover seder.1 As Jesus entered Jerusalem in the days before Passover, every Jewish pilgrim who had ever celebrated the feast would have recognized these words. The question the crowds are answering, perhaps without fully realizing it, is who is the one for whom these songs have always been waiting.

But notice what they add. They call Jesus “Son of David.” To hail David’s Son in the first century was not an act of gentle piety. It carries the weight of the Davidic warrior tradition, the hope for a king who would defeat their enemies and restore Israel’s sovereignty. The crowd wants a conqueror riding into Jerusalem. What they get instead is the fulfillment of Zech. 9:9: a king who is “humble” (πραΰς), riding a donkey, a figure the prophet explicitly links with peace rather than war. The crowds are singing the right psalm about the wrong kind of king, at least from their point of view.

“Hosanna” captures this exactly. When the crowd shouts “Hosanna” (ὡσαννά), they are quoting Ps. 118:25 directly, transliterating the Hebrew הוֹשִׁיעָה נָּא, meaning “Save us, we pray.” The crowds intended it as a plea for military rescue, the kind Israel had longed for under Roman rule. Jesus accepts the cry but will spend the rest of the week reinterpreting what salvation truly means.

The crowds shout, “Hosanna to the Son of David!”, meaning one thing. Jesus enters Jerusalem with a completely different purpose. This contrast will carry through all of Holy Week.

The Way of Righteousness (21:28–32)

Matthew 21:28–32

Just before Jesus shares the parable of the two sons, the chief priests and elders confront him in the temple with a pointed question.

“By what authority are you doing these things, and who gave you this authority?” (Matt. 21:23).

Jesus avoids giving a direct answer, but he doesn’t leave them without a response. The parable of the two sons is his reply and is unique to the Gospel of Matthew.

The parable is simple. A father asks his two sons to work in the vineyard. One agrees but doesn’t go. The other says no, but later changes his mind and goes. When Jesus asks which son did the father’s will, the religious leaders correctly answer: the second son. But then comes Jesus’s explanation, and this is where most people miss the point.

Jesus says:

“Truly, I say to you, the tax collectors and the prostitutes go into the kingdom of God before you. For John came to you in the way of righteousness, and you did not believe him, but the tax collectors and the prostitutes believed him. And even when you saw it, you did not afterward change your minds and believe him” (Matt. 21:31–32).

The key phrase here is “the way of righteousness” (ἐν ὁδῷ δικαιοσύνης). This phrase is not just a nice way of talking about living a moral life. As N. T. Wright has shown, dikaiosynē in biblical thought often refers to God’s covenant faithfulness—his righteousness in the sense of God acting to set things right and fulfill his promises to Israel. John the Baptist came “in the way of righteousness,” meaning he announced that God was now acting to restore his people and fulfill his covenant promises.

When the tax collectors and prostitutes heard John’s preaching, they recognized that God was at work fulfilling his promises. They saw that God’s saving justice was breaking into the world, and they responded with repentance. When the religious leaders heard John, they missed it entirely. These were the very people who were supposed to be custodians of Israel’s hope for God’s covenant faithfulness. Yet, they could not recognize it when God was actually delivering on it.

This parable is Jesus’s response to the authority question. The same covenant faithfulness of God that validated John the Baptist’s ministry also validates Jesus’s ministry. Those who saw God’s saving work in John naturally saw it in Jesus too. The religious leaders, who agreed with God’s covenant promises through their religious practices but rejected John’s call to repentance, showed they could not see God’s righteousness when it was right before their eyes.

Matthew shares this parable to help his readers grasp an essential point. The key question isn’t whether we verbally agree to God’s covenant promises but whether we recognize when God is actively fulfilling them. When God’s saving justice enters the world, do we notice it? Or, like the first son and the religious leaders, do we say yes with our words while remaining blind to what God is truly doing?

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A Link to Matthew 20 (ESV)

A Ransom for Many (20:20–28)

The mother of James and John approaches Jesus with a specific request. She wants seats of honor for her sons at his right hand and left in his kingdom. The other ten disciples’ indignation at the question (v. 24) suggests they shared the same idea; they were simply annoyed someone else asked first. Jesus recognizes that they all need to understand the true way to greatness.

“You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. It shall not be so among you. But whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be your slave, even as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (20:25–28).

The climax of that teaching goes back to Isaiah. In the fourth Servant Song (Isa 52:13–53:12), Yahweh’s Servant suffers not for his own wrongdoings but for the sake of “the many.”

“He poured out his soul to death and was numbered with the transgressors; yet he bore the sin of many, and makes intercession for the transgressors” (53:12).

“His soul” (נֶפֶשׁ, nefesh) and “the many” (רַבִּים, rabbim) are the key terms. The LXX translates nefesh as ψυχή and rabbim as πολλῶν — and these are precisely the words Matthew uses in 20:28: δοῦναι τὴν ψυχὴν αὐτοῦ λύτρον ἀντὶ πολλῶν, “to give his soul as a ransom for many.” Jesus references Isa 53:12 to frame his coming death in the exact language Isaiah used for the Servant’s vicarious self-giving.

That identification redefines the entire passage. Servant leadership in the kingdom is not a management philosophy or style; it is a cruciform pattern modeled after the Servant who gave his ψυχή as λύτρον for the πολλοί. The call to be “slave of all” follows the example of the one who fully embodied Isaiah’s Servant. In this kingdom, seats of honor are not taken. Their mother had asked for places at Jesus’ right and left. By week’s end, those seats were occupied (27:38), and no disciple had claimed them.

“What Then Will We Have?” (20:1–16)

At the end of ch. 19, Peter asks a question that lurks inside many disciples’ hearts.

“See, we have left everything and followed you. What then will we have?” (Matt 19:27, ESV).

Jesus told the rich young man to sell everything and give to the poor, and the man walked away. That interaction causes Peter, who has actually left everything to follow Jesus, to wonder what his reward will be for doing what the rich young man could not. Jesus promises rewards—thrones, hundredfold returns, eternal life—but then adds a jarring qualification: “But many who are first will be last, and the last first” (19:30).

The following parable (Matthew’s “for” in 20:1 connects it directly to this statement) explains why Jesus issues this warning just as Peter begins calculating his heavenly portfolio. A landowner hires workers at different times throughout the day, then pays everyone the same wage, starting with the last hired. The workers who work all day, expecting more, receive exactly what they agreed to. Their complaint reveals the problem:

“These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us who have borne the burden of the day and the scorching heat” (20:12).

This is also Peter’s problem. He has carried the burden. He has sacrificed. He believes he deserves more than most. The landowner’s response gets straight to the core of the issue:

“Am I not allowed to do what I choose with what belongs to me? Or do you begrudge my generosity?” (20:15).

We cannot be the arbiters of God’s grace. We cannot control when God calls someone or how much grace he dispenses. Some enter the vineyard as children; others arrive minutes before the workday ends. Some appear to us as deserving; others seem like questionable candidates for divine favor. God’s grace operates according to his equity, not ours, and it is offered freely to all without our input or approval.

The danger Jesus warns against here is viewing discipleship as a transaction and service as a way to earn heavenly rewards. Peter’s question—“What then will we have?”—exposes a heart still linked to following Jesus for “what’s in it for me.” Jesus does offer rewards, but he refuses to let his disciples serve mainly for those rewards. The call is to faithfulness, service, and sacrifice that mirrors his own coming death. We trust that God will settle the account on the last day, when many who seem last by our standards will be first by his, and vice versa. Until then, we serve without resenting the very generosity and mercy that is our only hope.

A Link to Matthew 19 (ESV)

If You Would Be Perfect (19:16–22)

A young man approaches Jesus and asks what good deed he must do to have eternal life. Jesus directs him to the commandments: the second table of the Decalogue (Exod 20:12–16; Deut 5:16–20) and the summary command from Leviticus (19:18):

“You shall not murder, You shall not commit adultery, You shall not steal, You shall not bear false witness, Honor your father and mother, and, You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (19:18–19).

The man claims to have kept all of them, and then asks, “What do I still lack?” Jesus answers:

“If you would be perfect (τέλειος), go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me” (19:21).

Mark's parallel (10:21) simply states "you lack one thing." Matthew's use of τέλειος is a deliberate addition. In the Septuagint, τέλειος occasionally renders the Hebrew tamim, which means “complete”. Israel is called, for example, to be tamim:

“You shall be tamim before the Lord your God, for these nations, which you are about to dispossess, listen to fortune-tellers and to diviners. But as for you, the Lord your God has not allowed you to do this” (Deut 18:13–14).

Israel was to listen to God alone and not have divided loyalty. They were to be whole with Yahweh.

The tamim background potentially shifts the reading of τέλειος away from moral achievement toward something more fundamental: wholeness of person, an undivided giving of oneself. Matthew has already used this word at the end of the Sermon on the Mount's antitheses:

“Be perfect (τέλειος), therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect (τέλειος)” (5:48).

In this section, Jesus is pressing beneath the surface of law-keeping toward the condition of the heart. τέλειος in Matthew, I think, has more to do with the wholeness of an undivided heart than perfectly keeping rules.

The young man has kept every commandment. Jesus does not deny that. The issue is not a lack of adherence but a split in his loyalty. His wealth divides his heart, and a divided heart cannot be tamim. The commandments he has obeyed are about restraint; the one he cannot fulfill demands that he give himself completely.

He goes away sorrowful, and Jesus does not call after him. The sorrow confirms he understood. He was being asked to be tamim: complete, whole, with nothing held back. The commandments can be kept from a distance. Following cannot. Following requires tamim. 

Eunuchs and the Kingdom of Heaven (19:10–12)

Jesus has just given a challenging teaching on marriage and divorce (Matt 19:3–9). The disciples’ reaction is revealing and somewhat unsettling.

The disciples said to him, “If such is the case of a man with his wife, it is better not to marry” (Matt 19:10).

Their reasoning reveals a deeply cynical perspective on marriage. They have become used to a culture where men can divorce their wives for minor reasons, leaving women vulnerable and abandoned. The concept of lifelong commitment is so unfamiliar, so restrictive, that they would prefer to avoid marriage altogether rather than accept such binding terms. Their complaint shows they view marriage mainly as an arrangement they can leave at any time.

Jesus doesn’t directly rebuke them but instead redefines the entire conversation. He talks about eunuchs.

But he said to them, “Not everyone can receive this saying, but only those to whom it is given. For there are eunuchs who have been so from birth, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by men, and there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. Let the one who is able to receive this receive it” (Matt 19:10–12).

In the ancient world, eunuchs held a complex social position. Deuteronomy 23:1 clearly excluded them from the Lord’s assembly. The law was straightforward.

No one whose testicles are crushed or whose male organ is cut off shall enter the assembly of the Lord.

But consider the context in Matthew 19. Earlier in this same conversation, Jesus explained that Moses allowed divorce “because of your hardness of heart, but from the beginning it was not so” (Matt. 19:8). If the permission for divorce was a concession to Israel’s spiritual state rather than God’s original plan, then some other laws, like the exclusion of eunuchs, might also have been accommodations that can be reconsidered.

The prophet Isaiah seems to think so.

Let not the foreigner who has joined himself to the Lord say, “The Lord will surely separate me from his people”; and let not the eunuch say, “Behold, I am a dry tree.” For thus says the Lord: “To the eunuchs who keep my Sabbaths, who choose the things that please me and hold fast my covenant, I will give in my house and within my walls a monument and a name better than sons and daughters; I will give them an everlasting name that shall not be cut off (Isa 56:3–5).

The eunuch is told not to say, “I am a dry tree” because God promises to give faithful eunuchs “a monument and a name better than sons and daughters.”1 What Moses excluded, Isaiah envisions God embracing.

Jesus takes this trajectory to its fulfillment. He identifies three categories of eunuchs, but the third is revolutionary. These are the “eunuchs” who have made themselves so for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. This phrase appears nowhere else in Scripture and is unique to Matthew’s Gospel. Jesus is not merely reversing an old exclusion or affirming a prophetic promise. He is reframing social categories entirely in terms of kingdom purpose. Voluntary celibacy becomes an honored vocation when undertaken for God’s reign. The kingdom does not simply tolerate those who cannot marry. The kingdom elevates renunciation itself to the level of devotion.

This teaching finds its narrative fulfillment in Acts 8:26–40, when Philip encounters an Ethiopian eunuch reading Isaiah. The man is baptized without hesitation. The one whom Deuteronomy excluded is welcomed into the messianic community. Isaiah’s promise of a name better than sons and daughters is realized in the name of Jesus.

Jesus concludes with a warning. Not everyone can receive this saying. But for those who can, the kingdom opens a path the world considers barren and finds it fruitful beyond measure.

Happy Ascension Day! Today, the church celebrates one of its most neglected and most theologically rich feasts, and I wanted to mark it by writing a special post for my closest partners in this Substack. If you have ever struggled to know what the ascension actually means, or if you have quietly suspected that the church's language about Jesus “going up to heaven” was more embarrassing than illuminating, this post is for you. I hope it is worth your time, and if it is, I hope you will pass it along to someone who might find it useful.

I can’t be the only one who finds preaching on Ascension Day challenging. What exactly is this day all about? Are we celebrating that Jesus flew away from Earth like Superman flying off to Krypton? If not, then what’s this ascension language all about? And if Jesus did fly away, where does that leave us now, except waiting for the day he’ll return? Why did he leave in the first place? And how does any of this relate to the human body?

We’re going to take the scenic route to get there, but here’s my answer upfront: Jesus Christ, who is irreversibly human, has ascended bodily into heaven to exalt human nature to the right hand of God and reign there as Lord and King over all the earth. As Lord and King, he is in the process of bringing all things under his feet, and that includes your body and mine.

Got it? Good! Now let’s unpack this.

Ascended?

Most people don’t believe that heaven is “up there” in any literal sense, so what does it mean to say that Jesus “ascended,” as the creeds and some New Testament passages do? How are we supposed to preach and teach about this day when we no longer accept an ancient view of the cosmos, with heaven above, earth in the middle, and the realm of the dead below?

The honest answer is that the writers of the New Testament are much more focused on where Jesus went than on how he got there, and none of them tries to give a detailed account of the process. When Luke describes the ascension, he writes that Jesus “was carried up (ἀναφέρω) into heaven” (Luke 24:51), and then in Acts, he says that Jesus “was lifted up, and a cloud took him out of their sight” (Acts 1:9).

The cloud likely represents divine presence, similar to the pillar of cloud during Israel’s wilderness journey and the cloud that filled the tabernacle and temple. The reference to the Son of Man coming on the clouds in Daniel 7:13–14 is probably also in mind. Notably, in Daniel 7, the Son of Man approaches the Ancient of Days rather than coming from heaven to earth.

The verb Luke chooses in 24:51 is significant. ἀναφέρω is the standard verb in the LXX for bringing a sacrifice or offering to God. It appears frequently in Leviticus and Numbers in the context of the priestly act of presenting offerings at the altar. Hebrews 7:27 uses it of Jesus offering himself, and 1 Peter 2:24 uses it of Jesus bearing our sins on the cross.

When Luke uses this word to describe Jesus being “carried up,” it refers not to movement but to the presentation of a priestly offering. The one who was offered is now being presented. There is a progression from sacrifice to sanctuary that the verb itself signifies, and it directly mirrors what Hebrews states happened at the ascension: the great High Priest entered the heavenly sanctuary with his own blood (Heb 9:12).

In describing the ascension, Luke hints at an event that human language can only express through metaphor, rather than describing the event itself. The “up” symbolizes the ancient idea that the divine realm is above us. It is not a statement about heaven’s exact location or what physically happened on Ascension Day. In short, when Jesus ascended, it was nothing like Superman flying into outer space. That’s simply not how the New Testament describes this important event, so let’s get that out of our minds from the start.

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A Link to Matthew 17 (ESV)

Listen to Him (17:1–8)

Matthew 17 begins with the words“And after six days” (17:1). In Exodus 24, the cloud of God covered Sinai for six days before the divine voice called to Moses on the seventh (Exod 24:16). The mention of the number of days here at the beginning of the chapter is an intentional allusion to Sinai.

In this new Sinai event, Jesus takes Peter, James, and John up a high mountain, and there he is transfigured before them. His face shines like the sun, and his clothes become white as light. Moses and Elijah appear with Jesus.

Peter’s impulse is to build three booths, one for each of them. The word Matthew uses for ‘booths’ is σκηνάς, which is the same word the Greek Old Testament uses for the tabernacle, the tent of God’s dwelling. Peter wants to enshrine the moment. He does not yet understand what the moment means.

A bright cloud, the visible presence of God, overshadows them, and from within the cloud comes a voice:

“This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him” (17:5).

The first part of the declaration echoes the baptism (Matt 3:17). The last three words reach even further back. In Deuteronomy 18, as Moses prepared Israel to enter the land without him, he promised that God would raise up another prophet like himself, and he gave Israel a single instruction about that prophet: “it is to him you shall listen” (Deut 18:15). Moses added that this prophet would speak everything God commands, and whoever refused to hear him would be held accountable (18:18–19). Israel’s task, after Moses, was to recognize this figure when he came.

The voice from the cloud is performing that identification. The disciples fall on their faces, terrified. When they look up, they see no one but Jesus only. Moses and Elijah, the Law and the Prophets, have served their purpose and withdrawn. The one they pointed to stands alone on the mountain. The time of listening to the Law and the Prophets as the ultimate authority has come to an end. Now that authority rests on Jesus.

That’s why Walking with Jesus exists: to help us listen to Jesus.

The Son and the Temple Tax (17:24–27)

The unusual story in Matthew 17:24-27, found only in Matthew’s Gospel, reveals something important about Jesus’s identity. The tax mentioned is not a Roman civil tax but the yearly half-shekel temple tax that all Jewish males paid to support the upkeep and operations of the Jerusalem temple. This religious duty traces back to Exodus 30:11-16, where God commanded a census tax to support the tabernacle. By the first century, collectors gathered this tax across the Jewish world to pay for temple repairs, sacrificial supplies, and the daily functions of Israel’s main place of worship.

Jesus’s reasoning is powerful. Kings don’t tax their own sons; they tax others. If the temple is God’s house, and Jesus is God’s Son, then he doesn’t need to pay to support his Father’s house. Jesus makes a striking claim to divine sonship, spoken quietly during a personal conversation with Peter. He is claiming his special connection to the God of the temple and his authority over the very institution that shapes Jewish religious life.

Yet Jesus chooses to pay the tax anyway. He exercises his freedom by limiting it, refusing to cause offense even when he has every right to cling to his privilege. Jesus demonstrates pastoral wisdom worth reflecting on. There are times when insisting on our rights does more harm than good, and when accommodation serves the gospel better than assertion. Jesus models a kind of freedom that is expressed not in defiance but in voluntary submission for the sake of others.

The payment method is also important. Jesus doesn’t just reach into a purse. Instead, he tells Peter to go fishing and promises a miraculous coin in the first fish’s mouth. The amount is precisely right—one stater, worth four drachmas—enough for both of them. This miracle demonstrates Jesus’s authority over creation while exemplifying an act of humble obedience. God provides for obedience, even when that obedience is voluntary in nature.

The short story reveals something fundamental about Jesus. He is the Son with authority over the temple itself, yet he submits to its rules. He is free, but he chooses humility and service instead of confrontation. The King pays taxes in his own kingdom, and he does so through a miracle that hints at his true identity to those who have ears to hear.

A Prayer of Thanksgiving for our Mothers:

Thank you God for the love of our mothers:
thank you God for their care and concern;
thank you God for the joys they have shared with us;
thank you God for the pains they have borne for us;
thank you God for all that they give us;
through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.

There is a line in Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians that many readers overlook. Paul is in the midst of a complex argument about worship, gender, and the order of creation, and he pauses to say:

For as woman was made from man, so man is now born of woman. And all things are from God (1 Cor 11:12).

The verse is almost like a parenthetical aside to Paul’s argument, yet it carries the weight of the entirety of human history. The first woman came from the first man. Every man since then has come from a woman, which means that behind every great man who has played a prominent role in the story of redemption stands a mother who carried, bore, nursed, and loved him long before the world knew his name. When we tell the story of redemption, the tale is, for reasons appropriate to the story, very male-centric. Men take the predominant role in the story, at least as we normally tell it, so, in honor of Mother’s Day, what follows is an attempt to tell the story of redemption with a special focus on the women and mothers who play key roles in it.

In the Beginning

The story begins in a garden with the first mother. Adam names his wife Eve, which means “living” or “life,” because she was “the mother of all living” (Gen 3:20). Eve’s name comes after the fall, which means it is a defiant act of hope on Adam’s part. The ground has just been cursed. Death has entered the world. But Eve is Life.

Life will continue because of her, and one day, one of her descendants will be life itself (John 14:6). That offspring of Eve will finally crush the serpent’s head (Gen 3:15), and the curse will at last be undone. Motherhood, from the very beginning, is not a comfortable, domestic role. It is a calling that God has woven into the fabric of redemptive history so that life can flourish even in the face of death.

Dead Wombs and Living Promises

As the story unfolds, Eve’s descendants quickly experience a recurring issue: barrenness. Sarah’s womb is described later by Paul to be “as good as dead” (Rom 4:19), and Rachel exclaims, “Give me children, or I shall die” (Gen 30:1). The pattern is clear: God often works through wombs that are unlikely to produce life. The path of redemption does not follow fertility and abundance; instead, it moves through barrenness and sorrow.

God does not promise that every barren womb will be filled, but he does declare that he is the God who gives life where there is no life, sometimes through the womb, sometimes through the beauty of adoption, and sometimes through filling our lives with sons and daughters of a different sort. In every case, the point is the same. God brings life where there was no life, which is exactly what the empty tomb on Easter Sunday was all about.

Courage Against Empire

The story continues in Egypt. Pharaoh has issued a death sentence against every newborn male Hebrew child (Exod 1:15). The empire has activated its machinery of death, and the people of God seem to have no answer.

But two mothers do.

The mother of Moses hides her child for three months (Exod 2:2). When she can no longer keep him hidden, she makes a basket, places him in the Nile, and trusts God with what she can no longer protect, as mothers must often do. Pharaoh’s daughter finds the child, takes pity on him, and raises him as her own son, unwittingly hiring his mother to nurse him (Exod 2:9). The man who will lead the exodus from Egypt survives because two women, two mothers, one Hebrew and one Egyptian, decided that a child’s life was more important than the empire’s decree. They chose life in the face of death.

Notice that Exodus doesn’t try to explain their behavior with a lengthy speech from either woman. There’s no extended discourse about the ethics of civil disobedience or God’s providence. The text simply shows them acting as mothers do, and their actions carry the full weight of the argument. Motherhood here isn’t passive. It’s resistance. It’s the subversion of empire through love.

A Mother Who Would Not Stop Praying

As the story progresses, we come to the hill country of Ephraim, where a woman named Hannah prays desperately. She’s barren, just like Sarah and Rachel had been before her. Year after year, she goes to Shiloh weeping and fasting because the LORD had closed her womb (1 Sam 1:5–6). Her prayer is so intense, so silent and trembling, that Eli the priest thinks she is drunk.

But she’s not. She’s praying fervently, and God hears her. She bears a son, names him Samuel, meaning “heard by God,” and then does something that only makes sense for a woman who means every word of her prayer: she gives her son back to God. She tells Eli:

For this child I prayed, and the LORD has granted me my petition that I made to him. Therefore I have lent him to the LORD. As long as he lives, he is lent to the LORD (1 Sam 1:27–28).

The same God who opened her womb now receives back the child he had given her. This again is what faith looks like in a mother, trusting God to provide for, take care of, support, and protect the life that she had held in her womb.

Hannah’s song would echo through Israel’s story for centuries, until another young woman in desperate circumstances opened her mouth and sang Hannah’s melody again.

A Revolution in a Song

In Galilee, an angel appears to a young woman named Mary. She is unmarried, poor, living under Roman occupation, and by any worldly measure, a nobody. And yet God chooses her to be his mother.

She reaches back to Hannah’s song, back to the themes of empire and resistance, and sings:

He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts; he has brought down the mighty from their thrones and exalted those of humble estate; he has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent away empty (Luke 1:51–53).

Her song is no lullaby. It is a manifesto. Mary is not singing about her feelings as a mother. She is announcing what God is doing in history through her. She uses Hannah’s words because she knows the story she has been placed into and all the mothers who have brought the story to this climactic moment. Hannah sang it first. Now Mary sings it over the child in her womb, whom she will carry, deliver, nurse, raise, and one day watch die.

The Sword

When Mary and Joseph bring the infant Jesus to the temple, an old man named Simeon takes the child in his arms and blesses God. Then he turns to Mary and plainly tells her what it will cost her to be this child’s mother.

A sword will pierce through your own soul also (Luke 2:35).

Some would argue that Mary is the first and greatest disciple, not because she is Jesus’s mother, but because she hears the word of God and keeps it (Luke 11:28), even though she knows from the very beginning just how much it will cost her.

At the cross, most of the men are gone. John is there, and so are the women, including Mary (John 19:25). As she watches her son die, the word Simeon predicted has finally come true. The sword has finally pierced her soul. Her grief is unimaginable to most, yet painfully familiar to too many. In the Stations of the Cross, as Jesus is laid in the arms of his mother, we link the words of Lamentations directly to Mary’s sorrow and say:

Is it nothing to you, all you who pass by? Look and see if there is any sorrow like my sorrow (Lam 1:12).

No explanation is given for why Mary is present at the cross when others are not. The text simply places her at the foot of the cross and leaves it at that. Whatever it cost her to be there, physically and emotionally, she paid it. The same love that sustained her as she carried her child in her womb carried her to that hill where the sword pierced her soul.

Not Only for the Biological

To be clear, the category of “mother” is larger than biology. It always has been. Pharaoh’s daughter adopted Moses, raised him, gave him a name, and placed herself between him and death. Centuries later, Paul greets an unnamed woman, identifying her as someone who “has been a mother to me as well” (Rom 16:13).

When we talk about the love of Christ and the Church, the New Testament points toward marriage and calls it a mystery. But right alongside that sign stands the sign of adoption. When Paul wants an image of just how much God loves his people and how much he has done for them, he reaches for the imagery of adoption. There are many examples, but one will stand for all:

You have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, “Abba! Father!” (Rom 8:15).

God chose us, took us in, gave us his name, and made us his heirs. When a family today opens their home to a child who has no one, they are acting in a way that resembles the gospel more than almost anything else in everyday life. That love is given freely, not out of obligation. It creates a new family that is not biological but chosen. Adoptive love is grace made visible in a spare bedroom and a new last name.

All Things From God

To circle back to where we began, Paul concludes his aside with a phrase that grounds everything:

All things are from God (1 Cor 11:12).

If you were raised by a mother who loved you, you benefited from something that God embedded into the fabric of creation itself. That love was not accidental. It was not merely the result of instinct or cultural habits. It was, even in a limited and imperfect form, a reflection of God’s love, who himself, in the words of Isaiah, comforts his people as a mother comforts her child (Isa 66:13).

If you had a mother who did not love you well, is gone, or whom you are grieving today, you are not outside this story. The ache you feel is a witness to what motherly love is meant to be. And the God who designed that love became the child of a woman so that he could become the Father of the fatherless and motherless and the comforter of all who mourn.

A Vocation, Not a Sentiment

What I take from this story, the story of motherhood and the redemption of the world, is that motherhood is not a Hallmark category. It is a vocation, a calling. It demands something from us. It takes courage. It challenges empires by refusing to let children perish. It stands at crosses when everyone else has fled. It opens homes to children who have no place of their own.

So this Mother’s Day, whether you are a biological mother, an adoptive mother, a spiritual mother, an aunt, a grandmother, or a mentor, please remember that you are part of something God has been doing since the garden. You are pushing back the curse. You are bringing life in the face of death. You are keeping the story going.

And for those who have been touched by a mother’s love, in whatever form it came, take a moment today to accept that love for what it truly is: not just kindness, not just instinct, but a costly and irreplaceable reflection of the love of the God who created you, redeemed you, and has adopted you as his own child.

Paul says that all things are from God, to which we say, “Yes, and especially our mothers.”

Amen.

Life Group Discussion Guide

Opening Prayer

Heavenly Father, we gather today with gratitude for the gift of mothers and the love they embody. As we open your Word together, we ask that you prepare our hearts to receive what you want to teach us through this discussion. Help us stay open to your Spirit’s guidance and to recognize your hand at work in the stories of the faithful women who came before us. May our time together strengthen our connection to you and to each other. In Jesus’ name, we pray. Amen.

Ice Breaker

What is one of your favorite memories involving your mother, grandmother, or a mother figure in your life?

Discussion Questions

1. Eve’s name is given after the fall, which means Adam names her “Life” at the very moment death has entered the world. How does reading her name as an act of defiant hope change your understanding of her role in the history of redemption?

2. Scripture returns repeatedly to the pattern of barren wombs and unexpected life—Sarah, Rachel, Hannah, and Elizabeth among them. Where else do you notice this pattern of God bringing life from barrenness, either in Scripture or in your own experience?

3. Moses’ mother and Pharaoh’s daughter defy Pharaoh’s order without giving any speech or detailed reasons. The text simply shows them acting. What does their example suggest about standing up for life, and what does the lack of explanation add to the strength of the story?

4. Hannah’s prayer is so intense and silent that Eli mistakes her for a drunk woman. What does her example teach us about fervent, desperate prayer? Have you ever experienced or witnessed that kind of earnest prayer?

5. Mary’s song echoes Hannah’s and reinterprets the birth of her son as a political and cosmic event rather than just a personal one. What does the Magnificat reveal about God’s character and the kind of work he does in history?

6. Mary stands at the cross when most of the disciples have fled. Simeon had warned her from the beginning that a sword would pierce her soul. What does her presence there say about the nature of love when it becomes costly, and how might that speak to your own life?

7. How does the concept of adoption—chosen family, given name, shared inheritance—deepen your understanding of what God has done for his people?

8. For those who have not experienced the warmth of good motherly love, what does it mean that God himself is described in Isaiah as one who comforts his people as a mother comforts her child? How does that promise go beyond just being sentimental?

Life Application

This week, reach out to a mother figure in your life—whether it’s your biological mother, adoptive mother, spiritual mentor, or someone who has shown you motherly care—and express specific gratitude for how their love has reflected God’s love to you. If that person is no longer living, spend time in prayer thanking God for their influence and asking him to help you show that same kind of life-giving love to others.

Key Takeaways

• Motherhood is woven into God’s redemptive plan from the very beginning, with Eve being called ‘life’ as an act of hope after the fall.

• God often works through unlikely situations, including barren wombs, to show his power to bring life where it appears there is none.

• Motherhood requires bravery and resilience against forces of death and empire, as exemplified by the actions of Moses’ mother, Pharaoh’s daughter, and Mary.

• The concept of motherhood goes beyond biology to include adoption and spiritual mothering, reflecting God’s own loving adoptive nature for his people.

• Motherly love is costly and doesn’t end when circumstances become difficult, as demonstrated by Mary standing at the cross where ‘a sword pierced her soul.’

Closing Prayer

Heavenly Father, we thank you for the gift of mothers and for all who have shown us motherly love. We praise you for including motherhood in your story of redemption, from Eve to Mary and beyond. Help us see your love reflected in the sacrificial love of mothers, and give us courage to be life-giving in our own spheres of influence. For those among us grieving the loss of a mother or carrying wounds from difficult relationships, we ask for your comfort and healing. Deepen in us all an understanding of your adopting love that makes us your children, through Christ our Lord. Amen.

A Link to Matthew 16 (ESV)

The Keys of the Kingdom (16:13–20)

Peter’s confession at Caesarea Philippi is the pivot of Matthew’s Gospel. Jesus has been asking who people say the Son of Man is; now he narrows the question to his own disciples. Peter answers:

“You are the Christ, the Son of the living God” (16:16).

Jesus pronounces Peter blessed, says that the insight came not from flesh and blood but from the Father, and then renames him. Simon becomes Peter, a name change in the pattern of Abram becoming Abraham and Jacob becoming Israel. Peter’s new name includes a new commission that has generated centuries of ecclesiological debate:

“And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven” (16:18–19).

Jesus is drawing on the language of Isaiah 22. In that oracle, God announces the removal of Shebna, the corrupt royal steward of Hezekiah’s palace, and his replacement by Eliakim, son of Hilkiah:

“I will place on his shoulder the key of the house of David; he shall open, and none shall shut; and he shall shut, and none shall open” (Isa 22:22).

The Eliakim typology clarifies what the ecclesiological debate has often obscured, but first, the debate itself needs sharpening. The Protestant argument that “this rock” refers to Peter’s confession rather than to Peter himself depends on a distinction between Πέτρος and πέτρα in 16:18. The distinction does not hold.

Greek grammar requires a man’s name to take the masculine form; when Jesus then says “on this rock,” the noun reverts to its natural feminine form, πέτρα. The gender shift is a grammatical necessity, not a semantic signal. The Aramaic underlying Jesus’s words would have used the same term both times, which is why Peter is called Cephas elsewhere in the New Testament. The rock on which Jesus builds his church and the man he has just renamed are the same referent.

With that established, the Eliakim typology can now do its work. The Catholic instinct is right that the authority Jesus gives here is real and personal. It belongs to Peter, not to an abstraction. But the authority is stewardship, not sovereignty. Peter holds the keys because the king has placed them on his shoulder, just as Eliakim held the key of the house of David.

The Protestant instinct is right that the keys cannot be detached from the confession in 16:16, since Eliakim receives the key precisely because he is the faithful steward rather than the corrupt one. The confession stripped of the office leaves the household without a governor.

Matthew 18:18 will extend binding and loosing to the disciples collectively, but the key in 16:19 is given to Peter specifically, as it was given to Eliakim, not to the household generally. We can have all kinds of debates about what this means, but what Jesus says is actually rather clear.

The church has a king, and that king has appointed a steward. The steward’s authority is real, personal, derived, and exercised within the household on the king’s behalf. That is the office Jesus establishes here, and the allusion to Isaiah 22 is the necessary context that the debates often miss.

The Messiah They Didn’t Expect (Feb 8, 2026)

One moment, Peter is blessed for confessing Jesus as the Christ, the Son of the living God. The next moment, he is called Satan. What happened?

From that time Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things from the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, saying, “Far be it from you, Lord! This shall never happen to you.” But he turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a hindrance to me. For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man” (Matt. 16:21–23).

Peter’s confession was true, but his understanding was incomplete. He recognized Jesus as the Messiah, but like most first-century Jews, he expected a Messiah who would overthrow Rome, restore Israel’s kingdom, and reign in glory. When Jesus started explaining that he must go to Jerusalem to suffer and die, Peter rebuked him. This was not the plan. Messiahs do not die. They conquer.

Jesus’s response is sharp. “Get behind me, Satan!” Peter’s well-intentioned rebuke echoes the temptation in the wilderness: take the kingdom without the cross, claim the crown without the suffering. But there is no other way. The Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinners. The temple will be destroyed and raised in three days. The grain of wheat must fall into the ground and die.

Then Jesus opens this path to everyone who chooses to follow him.

If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me (Matt. 16:24).

The cross is not a symbol for minor troubles or challenging times. In the first century, everyone understood what a cross represented. It was a tool of execution used on those who dared to rebel against the Roman Empire. To take up your cross meant walking the path toward your own death.

This is the Messiah we confess. Not one who promises comfort and success, but one who calls us to die. Not one who validates our ambitions, but one who demands we surrender them. We want a Jesus who blesses our plans. Jesus offers us a cross.

The question is whether we will follow the Messiah we want or the Messiah (and Lord!) that Jesus truly is. Will we confess Christ with our words while rejecting his path with our actions? Or will we take up our cross and follow him, even if it costs us everything?