Bible Difficulties (71 page)

[
palin
] the Devil takes Him along to a very high mountain and shows Him all the Kingdoms." These two adverbs
tote
and
palin
, seem to be quite specific indeed--so specific that if the second and third temptations did
not
take place in that order, then Matthew would definitely have been in error.

In Luke's case however, a simple
kai
("and") is all that introduces the second temptation mentioned (the offer of a world empire). Likewise the third temptation (the jump from the pinnacle) is led into a mere
de
("and" or "but"). This account is by no means so 323

emphatic in regard to sequence as are Matthew's
tote
and
palin
. It is much like the report of the little girl who said, "Do you know what we had for Thanksgiving yesterday? We had apple pie and turkey and everything!" The chances are that a more careful interrogation would reveal that she had been served the turkey
before
she had her apple pie. But she mentioned the pie first because she thought of it first, no doubt preferring the dessert to the main course. Could her report be faulted as erroneous under these circumstances? Hardly! No more should Luke be reproached for reversing the order from the chronological standpoint so as to keep to an ideational order--if indeed it was he who reversed the order rather than Matthew.

From the evidence of the two adverbs mentioned above, we may reasonably deduce that Matthew adhered to the historical sequence in putting the pinnacle before the mountain top. But for Luke, there may have been a more logical order in putting the temptation of taking an immediate shortcut to world power as an appropriate middle stage in the ascending order of testings, rather than the climactic display of supernatural powers before the great throng worshiping at the Jerusalem temple.

That Luke should be less exact than Matthew in matters of chronological order may seem surprising, since Luke normally is the most careful of all the Synoptists in regard to correct sequence. But in this particular chapter he seems to have preferred a proleptic order in the interest of dramatic effect. This is very clearly brought out by the ensuing episode: Jesus' visit to His hometown of Nazareth. It was a very striking development that right after He had passed through the gauntlet of spiritual battle with Satan (vv. 1-13), and thus proved His mettle as Messiah, Jesus should have made His way first of all back to His own people in Nazareth. But there He met with incredulity and rejection and even had His life threatened before He finally departed for Capernaum.

Very significantly in the course of His sermon, at the Nazareth synagogue, Jesus quoted the people as murmuring against Him, "Physician, heal yourself! Those great things that we heard took place in Capernaum, perform them here as well, in your own hometown!"

(v.23). But the interesting thing about this remark is that up until this point Luke had made no mention of Capernaum at all, and yet Jesus' audience had already heard about the miracles He had performed there. Not until after He escaped from the riot His sermon evoked does our Lord make His way back to Capernaum, which He had begun to use as His headquarters. His reception there was far more cordial and appreciative than at Nazareth (4:31-32), and it was there that He performed the notable miracles of healing the demoniac in the synagogue (vv. 33-37) and instantaneously curing Peter's mother-in-law as she lay at death's door with a high fever (vv. 38-39). It may have been that these particular cures were performed after His visit to Nazareth; but there can be no doubt (on the basis of v.23) that Jesus had already been to Capernaum and had done some notable miracles there
before
He went over to Nazareth (cf. vv. 14-15). Yet Luke does not mention Capernaum by name until
after
Nazareth. The advantage he gained from the heightened contrast between the two cities may have prompted him in this case also to depart from strict chronological sequence.

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When the centurion's servant was ill, who actually came to Jesus, the centurion
(Matt. 8:5-13) or the servant himself (Luke 7:2-11)?

Matthew 8:5 states: "Now when he entered Capernaum, a centurion came to Him, beseeching Him." This states very explicitly that it was the centurion who came to Jesus; the servant himself was paralyzed and confined to his bed, suffering great pain. It would obviously have been impossible for him to come to Jesus in person.

Luke 7:2 says, "A servant of a certain centurion was very sick and about to die, and he was highly esteemed by him." From the context, it was the servant who was highly esteemed by the centurion; therefore, the "by him" must refer to the centurion rather than the servant. This establishes the fact that the subject of the next sentence is necessarily the centurion also. In other words, when v.3 begins "And hearing of Jesus he sent to Him elders of the Jews, asking Him that he would come and heal his servant," it is perfectly evident that Luke also reports that it was not the servant who came to Jesus in person; rather, it was the centurion. The nearest eligible antecedent for the participle
akousas
("hearing") and for
apesteilen
("he sent") is
auto
("by him"), which was the last to be mentioned. Hence these two accounts are in perfect agreement.

Perhaps it should be added that Luke contributes the detail that the centurion sent on a committee of Jewish elders to intercede with Jesus on his behalf. Only after the elders had explained to Christ how deserving the centurion was of His favorable consideration did He enter into direct conversation with the Roman officer. He had come part way to the centurion's house before He met him in person, and there in the street He spoke with him.

Why did Jesus always speak of Himself as Son of Man?

Matthew 8:20 is the first occurrence of the title "Son of Man" applied by the Lord Jesus to Himself: "The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests; but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay His head" (NASB). (This title is used of Christ thirty-two times in Matthew, fourteen in Mark, twenty-six in Luke, and twelve in John.) Jesus never refused to accept the title "Son of God" when He was so addressed by God the Father at His baptism (Mark 1:11: "Thou art my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased") or on the Mount of Transfiguration (Mark 9:7). Nor did He refuse it when the demons so hailed Him as He cast them out of their victims (Mark 3:11: "you are the Son of God!"), or even when Satan challenged Him in the wilderness temptations (Luke 4:3: "If you are the Son of God, tell this stone to be become bread").

The disciples hailed Him as "truly the Son of God" after He had miraculously stilled the storm; and Peter came up with his identification of "the Son of Man" (Matt. 16:13) with the Spirit-taught recognition: "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God" (v.16, NASB). Jesus commended him for this confession of faith and conferred on him the

"keys of the kingdom." At His trial before Caiaphas (Matt. 26:64), Jesus affirmed the divine title when the high priest challenged Him "Tell us whether you are the Christ, the Son of God!" Jesus responded, "You have said it [yourself]; nevertheless I tell you, 325

hereafter you shall see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand of power and coming on the clouds of heaven." At this solemn moment, when He was on trial for the crime of blasphemy, Jesus of Nazareth appropriated the title of the divine human Messiah, the universal King, who was revealed to the prophet Daniel (Dan. 7:13).

Daniel 7:13-14 reads: "I kept looking in the night vision, and behold, with the clouds of heaven One like a Son of Man was coming, and He came up to the Ancient of Days [who was God Almighty on His throne] and was presented before Him. And to Him was given dominion, glory and a kingdom, that all the peoples, nations, and men of every language might serve Him" (NASB). It was this celestial figure with whom Jesus identified Himself at the dramatic moment of crisis, thereby announcing that there would be a future trial some day in which Caiaphas and all his cohorts would stand condemned before the bar of divine and eternal justice. Then sentence would be pronounced on them, and they would be led away into everlasting doom.

This raises the question of what the title "Son of Man" (
Bar 'enas
in the Aramaic of Dan. 7) signified. Why was the Messiah represented as a glorified human being rather than as the divine King of Glory? The answer is to be found in the necessity of the Incarnation as indispensable to man's redemption. The fallen, guilty race of Adam could not have their sins atoned for except by a Sin-Bearer who represented them as a true human being as He laid down His life for their sake. The Old Testament term for Redeemer is
go'el
which implies "kinsman-redeemer." He therefore had to be related by blood to the person whose cause he took over and whose need he supplied, whatever it was, whether to buy him back from slavery (Lev. 25:48), to redeem his forfeited property foreclosed on a mortgage (Lev. 25:25), to care for his childless widow (Ruth 3:13), or to avenge his blood on the murderer (Num. 35:19).

God revealed Himself to Israel as
go'el
of His covenant people (Exod. 6:6; 15:13; Isa 43:1, Ps. 19:14 [15 Heb.], et al.); but before God became Man by the miracle of the Incarnation and the Virgin Birth, it was a mystery to God's ancient people how He could ever qualify as their
go'el
. God was their Father by creation, to be sure, but
go'el
implies a blood relationship on a physical level. And so God had to become one of us in order to redeem us from guilt and penalty of our sin. "And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth" (John 1:14, NASB).

God as God could not forgive us for our sins unless our sins were fully paid for; otherwise He would have been a condoner and protector of the violation of His own holy law. It was only as man that God in Christ could furnish a satisfaction sufficient to atone for the sins of mankind; for only a man, a true human being, could properly represent the human race. But our Redeemer also had to be God, for only God could furnish a sacrifice of infinite value, to compensate for the penalty of eternal hell that our sin demands, according to the righteous claims of divine justice. Only God could have devised a way of salvation that made it possible for Him to remain just and at the same time become the Justifier of the ungodly (Rom. 4:5), instead of sending them to the everlasting perdition they deserved. But through the Cross the broken law was more fully satisfied than if all 326

mankind had gone to hell forever; for it was the perfect Man who was also infinite God that furnished an effectual sacrifice for all believers of every age.

The miracle of the Incarnation, which alone made possible the rescue of Adam's race, was perhaps the greatest miracle of all time. How could God remain God and yet also become man by assuming a human nature and by birth into the world from a human mother? And how could He become a single person in two distinct natures, one human and one divine? Other religions might speak of a godlike man or a manlike god, but only God the Son, the Second Person of the Trinity, could find a way to become a true human being--eligible to represent man at the Cross.

Lest Christians become confused about the divine-human elements in their Savior and fall into the Docetic error of supposing that He was really God in His essential being and that His human form and body were only a temporary disguise that He discarded at the Ascension, Jesus may have felt it best to emphasize that He was really and truly man, even though He was also God. For only as man could he serve as Messiah and redeem his people through His sacrificial death. And, of course, it was only as man--the Man who lived a completely sinless life--that He could be qualified to sit in judgment on the sins of men at His second coming. As the man who perfectly obeyed the law of God and never yielded to temptation, Christ is in a position to condemn those who have transgressed the moral law and who have in addition rejected His atonement and lordship for their lives.

The need to stress the genuineness of His humanity was therefore a contributing factor in leading Jesus to speak of Himself consistently as the Son of Man. Yet the principal reason was unquestionably the identification with the sublime figure of Daniel 7:13, who is destined to come in clouds of glory, sitting on the right hand of Power, and assuming absolute dominion over all the earth, after He has meted out justice to all who in this lifetime refused God's mercy.

What did Jesus mean by "Let the dead bury their dead" (Mt 8:22; Luke 9:60)?

The situation Jesus was dealing with at the time He gave this injunction involved an important decision a young follower of His had to face. The young man had to choose between remaining at home until his father died or leaving his home and family in order to follow the Master and enter into His service. Quite possibly the man's father was in poor health, and it was uncertain how long he would live. The basic issue at stake was which has the higher priority: God or family?

Jesus saw that the young man was ready for discipleship; therefore He said to him,

"Follow Me; and allow the dead to bury their own dead" (NASB). By this He meant that the rest of the young man's family would be on hand to care adequately for the ailing father and take care of the funeral services. They apparently were not believers in the Lord Jesus and therefore had not yet emerged from spiritual death into eternal life. That is to say, they were still "dead in trespasses and sins" (Eph. 2:1). As we read in John 3:36,

"He who believes in the Son has eternal life; but he who does not obey the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him" (NASB). From the standpoint of their 327

spiritual relationship to God, therefore, the other members of the family were dead; and they were perfectly suited to the responsibility of attending to the father's needs and his ultimate interment. Rather than waiting around for him to die and thus losing all opportunity for training under Christ's instruction, the young disciple was bidden to put first the call of God to Christian service. "He who loves father or mother more than Me,"