Does Jesus ever call himself Messiah?

Short answer: Yes.

Way longer answer: He does, but he never states the specific words ἐγώ μεσσίας/égo messías, “I’m Messiah”; nor the words ἐγώ Χριστός/égo hristós, “I’m Christ,” in the bible. And doesn’t have to. This passage, fr’instance, shows he clearly identifies himself as Messiah.

John 4.25-26, 28-29 GNT

25The woman said to him, “I know that the Messiah will come, and when he comes, he will tell us everything.”

26Jesus answered, “I am he, I who am talking with you.”

28Then the woman left her water jar, went back to the town, and said to the people there, 29“Come and see the man who told me everything I have ever done. Could he be the Messiah?”

Jesus’s statement can either be translated “I’m the one talking to you” or “I am; the one talking to you.” But either way he clearly means he’s the Messiah of whom the Samaritan at the well was speaking. She expects Messiah to make things clear; well here he is, trying to do just that, if she’d listen.

Likewise when Jesus’s best student Simon Peter also identified him as Messiah:

Matthew 16.13-17, 20 GNT

13Jesus went to the territory near the town of Caesarea Philippi, where he asked his disciples, “Who do people say the Son of Man is?”

14“Some say John the Baptist,” they answered. “Others say Elijah, while others say Jeremiah or some other prophet.”

15“What about you?” he asked them. “Who do you say I am?”

16Simon Peter answered, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”

17“Good for you, Simon son of John!” answered Jesus. “For this truth did not come to you from any human being, but it was given to you directly by my Father in heaven.”

20 Then Jesus ordered his disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Messiah.

Again, Jesus doesn’t straight-up call himself Messiah, and doesn’t need to: Peter did. And Jesus praised him, and told him he got this knowledge from the Father; it’s true. He never tells his students Peter was wrong; in fact why would he say laudatory things about Peter if he were wrong?

But: Shut up about it. We’re keeping this info private for now.

But it certainly was no secret. Plenty of other people recognized Jesus is Messiah, and used all the usual biblical euphemisms for Messiah there was.

Messiah (Heb. מָשׁיִחַ/mašiyakh) literally means “anointed,” usually someone who’d had a liter of oil dumped over his head to signify the Holy Spirit had put them in a position of leadership. They did this to ancient Israeli kings; therefore all the kings were messiahs. Yep, even Saul ben Kish, which is why David regularly refused to harm him. Didn’t matter how messed-up Saul behaved; he’s the LORD’s messiah. 1Sa 24.6, 26.11, 2Sa 1.16 And it doesn’t matter what “messiah” literally means; it means king.

So Israelis would call Jesus “king.” Lk 19.38, Jn 1.49 And “son of David” Mt 22.42, Mk 12.35 —not because they actually knew Jesus’s ancestry, but because people widely understood the Messiah-like-David would be David’s successor, and therefore David’s descendant.

People also called Jesus “son of God.” Mt 26.63, Jn 20.31 Since we Christians know Jesus is the literal son of God, we regularly—and wrongly—miss what ancient Judeans meant by this: “Son of God” is also one of Messiah’s titles. Comes from Psalm 2, which declares:

Psalm 2.7-9 GNT

7“I will announce,” says the king, “what the Lord has declared.

He said to me: ‘You are my son;

today I have become your father.

8Ask, and I will give you all the nations;

the whole earth will be yours.

9You will break them with an iron rod;

you will shatter them in pieces like a clay pot.’ ”

Once you learn Messiah means king, and learn to recognize all this Messianic language, when you read the gospels you’ll see it everywhere. Doesn’t matter how much Jesus tried to keep it quiet.

Seeing Jesus for ourselves.

John 4.39-42.

After Jesus’s talk with the Samaritan at the well, she left her water jar, went to the nearby city of Sykhár, and told everyone there about him:

John 4.29 KWL

“Come! See a person who tells me everything I do.

Might this be the Christ?”

Well, it might be! So the Samaritans come to the well to see Jesus for themselves. And yeah, he’s not Samaritan, but he’s a prophet; he’s willing to talk God with them, and not shun them like Judeans typically do, and for all we know he cured a few sick people. (Yeah, John later describes “the second miracle that Jesus did,” Jn 4.54 but that’s the second miracle in the Galilee; John doesn’t bring up any miracles he did in Judea and Samaria.)

Anyway, everything Jesus says and does among the Samaritans convinces ’em.

John 4.39-42 KWL

39 Many of the Samaritans from this city believe in Jesus

because of the word of the woman,

testifying this: “He tells me everything I do.”

40 So when the Samaritans come to Jesus,

they ask him to stay with them.

He stays there two days,

41 and many more believe because of his word.

42 They’re saying this to the Samaritan woman:

“No longer do we believe because of your saying,

for we heard him

and knew this is truly {the Christ,} the one who saves the world.”

“The Christ” in braces isn’t in the original test of John; it was added in the fifth century, which is why it’s in the Majority Text and the Textus Receptus, and therefore the King James Version. Occasionally, paranoid Christians will insist present-day bibles are trying to make it sound like the Samaritans didn’t really believe Jesus is Messiah. But of course they did: They said he saves the world. Exactly as Messiah, or the Samaritans’ prophesied prophet-like-Moses whom they called the Tahéb (which, it turns out, is also Jesus), would do.

Most Christians commend the Samaritans for coming to check out Jesus for themselves. We like the idea it wasn’t enough for the Samaritans to only take the woman’s word for it—they needed to personally interact with Jesus, and base their belief in him on that. Not that the woman’s testimony is irrelevant!—it got ’em to the well. It’s just her testimony was now superseded by personal experience.

Funny thing, though: Even though we Christians go on and on about how good it was for the Samaritans to do this… many of us turn round and object when our fellow Christians try to get our own personal God-experiences. When we say, “Okay, I’ve heard other Christians’ testimonies; I’ve read the scriptures. But now I wanna hear the Holy Spirit’s voice myself. Now I wanna pray for sick people and watch ’em get cured. Now I want supernatural stuff to happen. If Jesus says these things will follow his followers, Mk 16.17-18 we should see ’em, right?”

I grew up hearing many a cessationist object strongly to this line of thinking: “Personal experience? No no no! Satan will trick you and lead you astray! Besides, personal experience is way too subjective, too insubstantial, too open to interpretation. We can’t base our faith on that. It’s gotta be the bible. Only the scriptures are concrete and safe. We can’t trust personal experience.”

You know… the opposite of what we commend the Samaritans for doing.

Jesus harvests the Samaritans.

John 4.31-38.

Gonna rewind a little to a verse I dealt with previously, in which Jesus’s students come back, see him talking to a Samaritan, and say nothing.

John 4.27 KWL

At this time, Jesus’s students come,

and are wondering why he’s speaking with a woman.

Yet no one says, “Whom do you seek?”

nor “Why do you speak with her?”

The Samaritan leaves, and tells the nearby town she’s encountered a prophet who might be Messiah—as Samaritans understood Messiah. They decide to have a look at Jesus for themselves. Meanwhile Jesus’s students now decide to question him.

John 4.31-34 KWL

31 Meanwhile the students question Jesus,

saying, “Rabbi, eat.”

32 Jesus tells them, “I have food to eat,

which you didn’t know about.”

33 So the students are saying to one another,

“No one brought him food, did they?”

34 Jesus tells them, “My food

is that I might do the will of the One who sends me,

and might complete the work for him.”

Most interpreters figure when ἠρώτων/iróton, “they question,” the students are asking Jesus to eat, but nah; they’re urging him to eat at the same time they’re asking him stuff. Rabbinic students back then were trained in the Socratic-style method of questioning your teacher what you wanted to learn. When the Samaritan was there, the students kept their mouths shut and asked nothing. Once she was gone, now the questions came.

And there are a few reasons why this might be so:

• POLITENESS. Jesus was busy talking with her; don’t interrupt your master. Listen to what he’s doing or saying. Ask your questions afterward.
• SHYNESS. Jesus was cool with them asking him absolutely anything, but they didn’t know nor trust her to not judge ’em for what they were gonna ask.
• SHAME. This one’s popular with certain commentators, who presume the students were embarrassed by Jesus once again ignoring Pharisee custom. I would think they’d’ve known their master by now.
• HUMILITY. Y’notice Pharisees would object to Jesus’s behavior whenever he interacted with “sinners.” Mk 2.16 Not to ask legit questions; frequently to accuse him of stuff, and rant about the things which personally offended them. But Jesus’s students knew him well enough to know he always had good reasons. And good character; he didn’t sin, He 4.15 so you never had to police him to make sure he wasn’t backsliding. They knew better than to presume he’d sin.
• PATIENCE. And because they knew their master, they knew whenever he violated Pharisee custom, he was trying to teach them something, and expected the kids to ask him about it afterward. So they took time to come up with questions.
• TIRED. This one’s also popular with certain commentators: They’d been walking, they were hungry, they didn’t wanna get another lesson right then. They wanted to sit, drink some water, eat some falafel, take a big fat nap till the heat died down, then get back on the road to Galilee. If they realized a lesson was coming, they possibly thought—as kids will—“If we just keep quiet, maybe he’ll drop it, and we’ll get out of it.” Yeah right.

Anyway, the questions began, and Jesus’s lesson followed.

The first time Jesus called himself Messiah.

John 4.25-30.

After meeting Jesus and realizing he’s a prophet, this Samaritan woman he met at Jacob’s well tried to get him to settle which temple was the correct one— the one at Shechem or the one at Jerusalem. Jn 4.20 Jesus pointed out it’s neither. Jn 4.21 God wants worshipers “in spirit and truth,” Jn 4.22-23 who can worship him anywhere. In temple, out of temple; in church, out of church.

But since Jesus didn’t give her the answer she was expecting, and kinda appeared to side with the Judeans, Jn 4.22 the Samaritan did the intellectual equivalent of shrugging her shoulders:

John 4.25 KWL

The woman tells Jesus, “I know Messiah” (i.e. Christ) “comes;

when this man comes, he’ll explain everything.”

“Yeah, you don’t know. But Messiah will know. And when he arrives, he’ll tell us which temple is the right one.”

As I’ve said previously, Samaritans didn’t believe in a Judean-style Messiah. Their bible only went up to Deuteronomy, so there were no actual Messianic prophecies. They believed in the Tahéb, a prophet-like-Moses Dt 18.15 who’d come at the End Times and sort everything out. And since the Tahéb was sorta anointed by God, the word “anointed” (ܡܫܺܝܚܳܐ/mešíkha in Syriac, χριστός/hristós in Greek) would be a valid synonym for Tahéb. Maybe the Samaritan did say Mešíkha, which is why John rendered it μεσσίας/messías, “Messiah.” Maybe she said Tahéb and John translated it. Doesn’t matter. After all, Jesus is the prophet-like-Moses; Ac 3.22-26 he is the Tahéb. So we’re fine either way.

Hence Jesus’s response to her apathetic statement. When Messiah arrives, he’ll tell you which temple is the right one? Well Messiah has arrived.

John 4.26 KWL

Jesus tells her, “I’m him.

I’m speaking to you.”

Mic drop.

Yeah, various skeptics insist Jesus never actually called himself Messiah. They insist Jesus never made any such claim about himself, never even hinted he might be Messiah; that it’s an idea added to Christianity decades later by overzealous apostles. Probably Paul. They really like to blame Paul for all the parts of Christianity they don’t like.

Thing is, Paul wrote his letters before his fellow apostles wrote the gospels. He wrote ’em in the 40s and 50s CE; the gospels were written in the 60s. The circulation of Paul’s teachings were simultaneous with the circulation of Jesus’s teachings; they still are, ’cause they usually get bound together in the New Testament. But when the ancient Christians first heard about Jesus, it was usually in the context of something Paul taught or wrote. Because they go together. It’s not “Jesus said this, but Paul said that”; it’s “Jesus said this, and here’s Paul’s commentary”—they uphold each other. Can’t have Christ without his Christians.

Okay yes, Jesus never literally says the words, “I’m Messiah” (or ἐγώ Μεσσίας, or ܐ݈ܢܳܐ ܡܫܝܚܐ) in the gospels. Largely because if he did say that, he could get arrested and killed for treason against Rome. But he functionally says the very same thing: “I’m him. I’m speaking to you.” It’s as close to “I’m Messiah” as we’re gonna get from Jesus, and the Samaritan clearly understood him—and ran with it.

Literally ran with it: She abandoned her water jar, went into the Samaritan city which she had been deliberately avoiding all this time, and told everyone.

Worship God in spirit and truth.

John 4.19-24.

Since Jesus is a prophet, the Samaritan at the well figured she’d grill him on a then-current Samaritan/Jewish controversy: Which temple is the real temple? Which religion is the true religion? Where’s the one-and-only-one place to serve God? ’Cause Judeans said Jerusalem, and Samaritans said Shechem. Can’t both be right. Right?

John 4.19-20 KWL

19 The woman tells Jesus, “Sir, I see you’re a prophet.

20 Our ancestors worshipped on this mountain.

You Judeans say in Jerusalem

is the place where we have to worship.”

You might remember the Judeans had a temple. Originally it was a tent, “the tabernacle,” the LORD’s sacred portable temple which traveled with the Hebrews after the Exodus, and stayed at a few different locations for nearly five centuries… till Solomon ben David built the LORD a permanent, gold-covered cedar shrine at some point round 1000BC. This remained standing till the neo-Babylonians burnt it to the ground in 586BC.

But it was rebuilt twice: First in 516BC under Babylonian governor (and descendant of Solomon) Zerubbabel bar Shealtiel; then renovated top to bottom by the Herod family during Jesus’s lifetime, from 20BC to 64CE. Completed just in time to be destroyed six years later by the Romans.

The Samaritans opposed Zerubbabel’s first rebuilding. Eventually they decided to build their own temple, round 432BC. They built it on Mt. Gerizim in Shechem, the hill where Moses had the Hebrews proclaim God’s blessings. Dt 11.29 Since God’s name was proclaimed from there, the Samaritans figured this was the perfect place for the LORD’s name to dwell. Not Moriah, where King David had originally purchased a threshing floor to put an altar. 1Ch 21.28, 22.1 David, the Samaritans figured, picked the wrong site. Moses had picked Gerizim, so Gerizim it was.

You might not know these weren’t the only temples of the LORD in the ancient world. Jeroboam ben Navat, after he became king of the 11 northern Israeli tribes, built two temples—one at Dan in the north, Bethel near the southernmost part of his kingdom. This was so his people wouldn’t visit the Jerusalem temple for worship… and maybe get swayed by the kings of Jerusalem, and become a political problem for him later. Nope; now northern Israel had temples, so they could worship at home! Problem was, Jeroboam also included gold calves to represent God, 1Ki 12.26-29 which you might recall is a huge no-no. Dt 5.8-10 As far as the scriptures are concerned, these temples were heretic, and ultimately destroyed when the Assyrians invaded.

And in Egypt, Israeli communities there also created temples to the LORD, in Elephantine and Leontopolis. Both Judeans and Samaritans knew of them, and Flavius Josephus wrote about ’em. But both considered these Egyptian temples heretic, insisting there’s only one place where God would establish his name. Dt 12.11 And they ran that one place. Or figured they did.

So… which temple was the right one? (Yep, you betcha this was an orthodoxy test. Better answer correctly, Jesus!)

John 4.21 KWL

Jesus tells her, “Trust me, ma’am, the hour is come

when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem

will you worship the Father.”

Wait, neither? Yep.

Jesus prophesies to the Samaritan.

John 4.13-19.

Back to Jesus talking with the Samaritan at the well. He tells her about the water of life, and since they’re at a literal well, it’s fair to say she might not wholly understand he’s speaking in metaphor, as he tends to do. Because her focus isn’t a future kingdom of God; it’s on the here and now, and right now she’s at the well fetching water.

John 4.13-15 KWL

13 In reply Jesus tells her, “All who drink of this water

will thirst again.

14 Whoever might drink of the water I give them,

will never thirst in the age to come,

but the water I’ll give them

will become a spring of water within them,

gushing with eternal life.”

15 The woman tells Jesus, “Sir, give me this water!—

so I might not thirst,

nor travel to this place to get water.”

A number of interpreters take this statement the Samaritan made—“Give me this water”—at face value. I don’t. You’ll see why in a moment. But at this point, she’s treating Jesus as if he’s some weirdo… because to her mind, he is some weirdo. Judeans never talk to Samaritans. Yet here’s some rogue Judean who’s talking to her about installing a spring inside her. “Uh-huh. Sure. Yeah, you have water. If you do, I’d like some; fetching water is a pain.”

Ironic answers aren’t actually honest answers, and Jesus realized she didn’t really believe him, and that’s why he decided to “read her mail,” as prophets call it nowadays.

John 4.16-19 KWL

16 {Jesus} tells her, “Go;

call for your man,

and come back to this place.”

17 In reply the Samaritan tells him, “I have no man.”

Jesus tells her, “Well said, ‘I have no man’;

18 you had five men,

and the one you now have isn’t your man.

You said this truthfully.”

19 The woman tells Jesus, “Sir, I see you’re a prophet.”

And now he has her attention. “I see you’re a prophet”? Well duh Jesus is a prophet.

Christian evangelists should be taking notes about now. Too often we try to share Jesus with skeptical people, who think all our claims about who Jesus is and what he does are ridiculous, and aren’t receptive to it whatsoever. Rocky soil. And too often, these evangelists will try platitude after platitude, proof text after proof text, and the person will shrug it all off like Superman does with bullets.

But tell them something we can’t possibly know about them, and suddenly they go, “Wait—who told you that?” The Holy Spirit. He’s real; he’s been getting you ready for this conversation your entire life; you finally wanna hear what he has to say?

So when you’re sharing Jesus, pay attention to the Spirit! He’ll tell you whether this person is receptive or not—and if he tells you something completely random, like “She’s had five men,” don’t just dismiss it as too weird to share: Tell her that, and watch the reaction. (Although, a word of advice? Don’t bring up her relationship history when other people are around. Be discreet like Jesus.)

Anyway that’s why I figure her previous statement, “Give me this water,” was ironic: It wasn’t a truthful response. “I have no man”—now that’s a truthful response.

And from here on out, you’ll notice the Samaritan takes Jesus seriously.

The Samaritan at the well.

John 4.1-14.

Just to remind you: Ancient Israelis (i.e. Judeans and Galileans) and Samaritans did not get along. Same as Israelis and Palestinians don’t get along; same as white nationalists and black nationalists don’t get along; same as cats and birds don’t get along. There was a lot of paranoia, fear, and dangerous old grudges between those two groups.

That’s why it was just dumbfounding for one Samaritan woman, one day, to find a man of Judean descent striking up a conversation with her. Asking her for water, of all things. As if he actually trusted her not to spit in it.

John 4.1-10 KWL

1 Once {the Lord} Jesus knows

the Pharisees hear Jesus makes and baptizes more students than John—

2 though Jesus himself isn’t baptizing,

but his students are—

3 Jesus leaves Judea,

and again goes off to the Galilee,

5 and he has to travel through Samaria.

So Jesus comes to a Samaritan city called Sychár,

which is near the field Jacob gave to his son Joseph.

6 Jacob’s spring is there.

Jesus, fatigued by his long walk, is therefore sitting at the spring.

It was about the sixth hour after sunrise [i.e. noon].

 

7 A woman from Samaria comes to get water.

Jesus tells her, “Give me some to drink”—

8 for his students went into the city

so they might buy food.

9 So the Samaritan woman tells Jesus,

“How can you even be near me, Judean, and ask for a drink?

—me being a Samaritan woman?

For Judeans have no interaction with Samaritans.”

10 In reply Jesus tells her, “If you knew God’s gift,

and knew who’s telling you, ‘Give me some to drink,’

you could ask him,

and he could give you living water.”

Most translations of John have “For Judeans have no interaction with Samaritans” not as something the Samaritan said, but as John’s commentary on the situation. The word συγχρῶνται/synchrónte also means “work together with,” or “have use of”—the two people-groups really did have nothing to do with one another. Each did their own thing… or, of course, fought.

Obviously this woman didn’t recognize Jesus’s accent, or she’d’ve known he was Galilean, not Judean. Not that it would make any difference. Samaritans and Galileans didn’t interact either.

But as we already know about Jesus, he does interact with Samaritans. He came to save everybody, y’know; not just the people of his homeland! Samaritans too. Jesus doesn’t do nationalism or racism, and those who claim to follow him should likewise have no interaction whatsoever with those things—even less interaction than Judeans had with Samaritans.

Samaritans.

To give you a better sense of how ancient Israelis felt about Samaritans, you gotta think about how the average conservative Evangelical in the United States feels… about Muslims.

Yeah, there y’go. Distrust. Uncertainty. Irrational fear. Their common claim is all Muslims believe the same as certain warped terrorists do—that their strict interpretations of the Quran and Hadith authorize them to violently fight and oppress the people they consider pagan. And that they wanna implement their customs (i.e. sharia law) in this country, as if it were even legal. (Nevermind the fact a number of Christian nationalists among them are plotting to do precisely the same thing to Americans with their messed-up interpretations of the Old Testament.)

Samaritans had a similar reputation in ancient Judea. The Judeans figured they were right, and Samaritans wrong. Really wrong. Dangerously wrong. They considered them heretics, pagans, and foreigners who shouldn’t even be in their land; and had nothing to do with them.

And Samaritans believed precisely the same thing right back at Judeans. They considered themselves the actual descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; the real successors and keepers of Moses’s commands, the true servants of God. To Samaritans, the Judeans were the heretics and foreigners; a bunch of Babylonians who moved to Jerusalem, built a temple, and started worshiping God weirdly. Pharisees added all these extra books to the bible (the books from Joshua to Chronicles—or if we’re following the Christian book-order of the Old Testament, from Joshua to Malachi), plus a whole bunch of rabbinical loopholes which the Samaritans found hypocritical and offensive. Worse, the Judeans had all this wealth and political might—and heretics with power is frightening innit?

Samaritans still exist, by the way. They never went anywhere. Lots became Christian, but many stayed Samaritan, stayed in the land, and survived the Romans, Rashiduns, Ummayads, Abbasids, Fatimids, Crusaders, Ayyubids, Mamluks, Mongols, Ottomans, Brits, and Israelis. Still think Jews and Christians are heretics.

Oh, there are parallels aplenty between Judeans and Samaritans back then, and Christians and Muslims today. And let’s not forget the hate crimes: Some Judean would get a little political power, and decide to go into Samaria and slaughter a bunch of Samaritans. Some Samaritan would get vengeful and attack Judeans as they traveled through Samaritan territory. Not for any good reason; solely because of old grudges. By Jesus’s day this behavior had been going on for the past 400 years. Like the Israeli-Palestinian situation, but without explosions.

Gotta remember that animosity, fear, and rage they had towards one another, whenever we read about Jesus visiting Samaria.

John the baptist’s shrinking ministry.

John 3.26-36.

When John and his students were baptizing in Enon-by-Saleim, the students came to John to tattle on Jesus:

John 3.26 KWL

The students come to John and tell him, “Rabbi,

‘the one who comes after you,’ Jn 1.15

of whom you testified beyond the Jordan:

Look, he’s baptizing.

And everyone is coming to him.”

John’s response was to remind them what he had always taught: His job is to prepare people for Messiah—and here’s Messiah! Why on earth weren’t they rejoicing? He was.

John 3.27-30 KWL

27 In reply John says, “A person can’t receive anything

unless it had been given to him out of heaven.

28 You yourselves witnessed me say this:

‘I’m not Messiah.’

But I’m the one sent before this person—

29 the one who has the bride.

He’s the groom.

The groom’s friend, who stood and hears him with joy,

rejoices at the sound of the groom.

So this is my joy, fulfilled.

30 This person must grow larger.

And I must shrink.”

I once heard a commentator claim there are no parables in the gospel of John. I don’t know what book he was reading; John has plenty of parables and analogies in it. John uses one right here, to compare himself and Jesus to a groomsman and a groom. (The KJV uses “bridegroom,” because back in 1611, a “groom” meant a caretaker; usually the employee who fed and brushed your horse.)

In our culture, a wedding is the bride’s party; less so (sometimes far less so) the groom’s. Ancient middle easterners did it just the opposite: It was the groom’s party. It was at his house; he hosted it; he bought the food and drinks. And God’s kingdom is not John’s party; it’s the king’s. John’s a groomsman, and happy to see his friend so happy.

This was always John’s role. And goal! Unlike most ministers, who die long before their work ever gets fulfilled, John got to see the fruits of his labors: He got to see the Messiah he’d been proclaiming for years. And his first thought isn’t, “Well now what do I do with my life?” It’s kinda obvious, isn’t it? It’s to celebrate!

No, John didn’t disband his ministry and start traveling with Jesus himself. That wasn’t his duty. He was to keep doing as he was doing, and keep pointing people to Messiah. But people would stop following him, and start following Jesus, as was always the plan. Not only was John fine with this, he deliberately sent his own students to follow Jesus instead. Follow the king, not the king’s herald.

Few Christians nowadays are as fine with this as John was. When another ministry grows larger than ours, or supersedes what we’re doing by doing it better, we don’t always respond, “Wonderful! This’ll do so much more for the kingdom than I could.” More often: “Who the hell are they? Who do they think they are? We were the ones toiling in the heat of the day, and they just swoop in and have this huge success? Oh no. They need to respect us. They need to get in line. This is our territory. These are our sheep.”

No it’s not, and they’re not. Everything belongs to Jesus. Either we’re working for him, and always have been; or we aren’t, and were always really working for ourselves. If our beloved boss promotes someone else, either we trust he knows best—like we’ve been claiming he does all this time!—or we never really did trust him; it was all hypocrisy.

Basically whenever Christians get jealous fellow Christians, we’re never being jealous for Jesus. We’re actually being jealous of Jesus. We want the success—not for his sake, but for our own. If it’s for his sake, we’ll be thrilled when any fellow Christian, any sister church, any Christian ministry, is doing well. Their successes are our successes, for we’re all on the same team.

Unless we’re not. Unless, instead of groomsmen, we’re there to compete with the groom for his bride.

Jesus and John go baptizing.

John 3.22-26.

After the discourse with Nicodemus, Jesus and his students went traveling around Judea, baptizing.

Yes, baptizing. You know, like John the baptist had. Really. It’s in the gospel of John:

John 3.22 KWL

After these things,

Jesus and his students go into the Judean countryside.

They’re staying there with the Judeans,

and are baptizing.

I use “countryside” to translate γῆν/yín, “earth.” Basically it’s everywhere in Judea that’s not Jerusalem. The gospel of John spends a lot of time in Judea, because John was trying to correct the misconception we might get from the other gospels, that Jesus spent all his time in the Galilee and Dekapolis, and never went to Judea till Holy Week. Nope; he was in Jerusalem for all the festivals, same as any devout Jew. And sometimes longer, visiting friends.

Here John says they were baptizing. Now, John makes it clear a bit later that it’s Jesus’s students actually doing the baptizing, not Jesus himself. Jn 4.2 But don’t you get the idea Jesus didn’t approve of it! He absolutely did. He got baptized, by John. You recall he also told his students much later: When you make new students, baptize ’em in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Mt 28.19 And they did. Ac 2.38 And still do.

Now, the other thing to be aware of is we’re not yet talking about Christian baptism; this isn’t our sacrament where a new Christian declares they’ve renounced sin and trust Jesus and intend to follow him. This is still John-style baptism. These were people who’d likewise renounced sin, and intended to now follow the Law of Moses. Likely the students doing all the baptizing were former John students, who were simply doing as the prophet had taught ’em: Whenever somebody repents, put ’em in the water and ritually cleanse them. Give ’em an experience, which’ll help ’em remember the new commitment they made.

On occasion you’ll find a Christian who gets dismissive of John’s baptism. Mostly because they figure Jesus, or Christian baptism, supersedes it. Which yeah, it kinda does… but it kinda doesn’t. It’s still valid to turn away from sin and follow God; it’s just we now know the way to follow God is by following Jesus, not the Law. Follow a person, not a text… one we can way too easily poke loopholes into.

“You’re leading me to stumble.”

STUMBLE 'stəm.bəl verb. Trip, almost fall, or lose one’s balance.

2. Make a mistake, or repeated mistakes [in speaking].

3. [“stumble upon”] Discover or encounter by chance.

4. [noun] An act of stumbling.

5. [In bible] Get offended.

6. [Among Christians] Sin, or trespass.

[Stumbler 'stəm.b(ə.)lər noun]

Romans 14.21 KJV

It is good neither to eat flesh, nor to drink wine, nor any thing whereby thy brother stumbleth, or is offended, or is made weak.

“Stumbleth” in this verse translates προσκόπτει/proskóptei, “one strikes against [an object],” a word ancient Greeks used to describe a boat smacking the waves, or a foot tripping over a rock, or the rattling one makes while breathing. Aristotle of Athens used it to describe friction. “Stumble” and “trip” are good ways to translate it.

But the Greeks also used proskópto—namely the friction idea—as a metaphor to describe someone who’s taken offense. It’s why Paul immediately wrote after it, ἢ σκανδαλίζεται/i skandalídzete, “or is scandalized,” or as the KJV put it, “or is offended.” Means the same thing.

And actually means the same thing in ancient Hebrew:

Malachi 2.8 KJV

But ye are departed out of the way; ye have caused many to stumble at the law; ye have corrupted the covenant of Levi, saith the LORD of hosts.

The ancient Hebrews used that word—found here in the verb-form הִכְשַׁלְתֶּ֥ם/hikšeltém, “y’all make [one] stagger,”—to likewise describe people who took offense. In this particular case, God’s critiquing his priests for the sloppy and inconsistent way they follow him, which is actually causing other people to take offense at his Law.

So when you come across stumbling and stumbling-blocks in the bible, unless the passage is about literal roadblocks and booby traps, it typically has to do with offense. Someone doesn’t wanna follow God because they’re bothered by what he wants ’em to do… or they just don’t care to do it, are looking for excuses not to, and have found something which offends them. I know various pagans and ex-Christians who love to use the excuse, “But God could’ve stopped bad stuff from happening and didn’t,” or “Lookit all the messed-up stuff God had the Hebrews do in Joshua and Judges,” and that’s become their handy excuse for not following Jesus.

Funny thing is, in my experience Christians tend to use “stumble,” not to describe how they personally take offense, but to describe sin. When they talk about stumbling, they talk about sinning. When they talk about making other people stumble, they don’t mean offending them; they mean making ’em sin.

Worse, they’re reading this definition back into the bible, and they’re misinterpreting all the verses which refer to stumbling. So, heads up: Don’t you do that.

“What If I Stumble?”

There’s a DC Talk song from their 1995 Jesus Freak album titled “What If I Stumble?” which manages to mix up both definitions of “stumble”—the popular Christian interpretation and the biblical one. The chorus goes like so:

What if I stumble

What if I fall

What if I lose my step

And I make fools of us all

Will the love continue

When my walk becomes a crawl

What if I stumble

And what if I fall

The song’s about being worried “my trespasses / Will leave a deadly scar,” as the second verse puts it. That one’s misdeeds might lead pagans away from Jesus. That’s a common concern among Evangelicals, although if you talk to your average atheist they’ll say it’s really not. Christian hypocrisy is easy and fun to mock, but they don’t believe because they find the bible and Christianity unbelievable. But I digress.

Y’notice DC Talk uses “stumble” not to mean “take offense,” like the bible uses it. They don’t mean “What if I get offended,” but “What if I trespass.” What if I make a mistake, commit an error, say the wrong thing, do something awful, embarrass my fellow Christians? What if I screw up?

And yeah, we shouldn’t wanna screw up! But again: Using “stumble” in a way inconsistent with bible. Not inconsistent with the way other Christians do… but y’know, shouldn’t our Christianese really be consistent with bible?

I use DC Talk’s song as an example; they certainly weren’t the first to use “stumble” incorrectly. I’ve heard it used inconsistently all my life. They’re just doing the same thing as most of my fellow Evangelicals. Ask any of your fellow Christians what “What if I stumble?” means and they’re also gonna say “What if I sin?” If they’re any kind of biblical scholar, they might know the proper biblical definition. But then again, that might not be the first definition which pops into their minds either.

Christians who object to our behavior.

The one time Christians actually use the word correctly, weirdly enough, is when they talk about things which might cause them to stumble.

Years ago, years before the DC Talk song came out, a Fundamentalist acquaintance objected to something I did or said. I don’t remember what it was; certainly I wasn’t offended by it, nor did I think it was any kind of sin. Maybe I said “ass.” Back in high school I took advantage of the fact “ass” is in the King James Version, Ge 22.3, 44.13, 49.14, etc. and said it more than I ought’ve. And whenever people objected, show ’em what I call “ass proof texts.” Like this one.

Genesis 22.3 KJV

And Abraham rose up early in the morning, and saddled his ass…

It’s evidence that the bible uses this word profusely. So why can’t I?

Anyway dude took offense, and told, “You’re leading me to stumble.”

What he meant was, “You’re tempting me to do as you’re doing.” But then again, y’notice an awful lot of the Christians who object, “You’re leading me to stumble” aren’t really all that tempted to do as we’re doing. If they caught me smoking cigars, listening to heavy metal, or leaving flaming bags of poo on doorsteps, they aren’t always gonna think, “Oh I wanna do that.” I mean, sometimes they might, but usually not.

Nah; what they’re actually doing when they tell me, “You’re leading me to stumble,” is hypocrisy. They’re trying to get me to stop by warning me, “Your bad behavior might provoke more bad behavior. You don’t want that on your conscience, do you?” And really that’s a mighty ineffective warning: Most of the people who indulge in casual bad behavior really won’t mind when others join ’em! Hey, wanna have some more fun with the word “ass” with me?

2 Peter 2.16 KJV

But was rebuked for his iniquity: the dumb ass speaking with man’s voice forbad the madness of the prophet.

See, “dumb ass” is in the bible too!

And yeah, more than likely some Fundamentalist is gonna find this article, ignore everything I wrote about what stumbling means, and get all offended by my ass proof texts. His knee-jerk reaction is gonna be to object, “You’re leading people to stumble.” But more accurately I’m making him stumble—in the proper biblical sense. I’ve offended him. He doesn’t approve of mixing up the popular definition of “ass” with the KJV use of “ass,” and wishes I wouldn’t play with his favorite bible translation like that, and read vulgar ideas into the sacred text. I’ve made him stumble.

I haven’t made him sin though. That is, till he writes me a rude email and says some things he shouldn’t. But his carnal lack of emotional self-control and his poor choice of words: That’s on him. Not me. He’s supposed to follow the Holy Spirit, become inoculated from offense, and therefore not stumble over every little thing he comes across. To use a more recent metaphor, he’s not meant to be such a snowflake.

Like our Lord Jesus once put it:

John 11.9-10 KJV

9 Jesus answered, Are there not twelve hours in the day? If any man walk in the day, he stumbleth not, because he seeth the light of this world. 10 But if a man walk in the night, he stumbleth, because there is no light in him.

That passage make more sense to you, now that you know what Jesus actually means by “stumbleth”? If you’re following the light of the world, you shouldn’t offend as quickly and easily as your average snowflake. God’s granted you the emotional maturity to handle such things like an adult. Whereas if you’re not in the light, of course every little thing is gonna enrage you.

So while those people who are quick to say, “You’re making me stumble” mean our behavior might lead them astray, what they’re actually saying—what they’re unknowingly saying—is the truth. They’re offended.

And don’t be a dick; try not to offend ’em unnecessarily! But don’t stress out about it. I’ve unintentionally offended lots of people, and when I’ve actually tried to offend people I wasn’t that effective. Best to go through life trying to love everyone as best we can, be quick to apologize, and don’t take offense at snowflakes!

And be quick to laugh at ass proof texts. One more before I go!

Exodus 20.17 KJV

Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour’s.

Yep, “ass” is in the 10 Commandments—so don’t covet your neighbor’s ass! Oh, and “stumble” means “get offended”—gotta end with the proper takeaway. Bye.

Fundamentalists and legalism.

Fundamentalists have a reputation for being legalistic—and that reputation is entirely deserved. They’re totally legalistic. They have to be; it comes with the fundamentalism. If you’re gonna insist, as Fundies do, that there are certain doctrines all Christians have to believe, and if they don’t they’re not Christian—and if you’re gonna insist, as most Fundies do, you need to avoid and distrust people who aren’t truly Christian—then legalism is inevitable.

Now yes, there are such creatures as gracious Fundamentalists! I know many. I grew up with many. They believe in Fundamentalism, and believe it’s important; but they also believe in the Spirit’s fruit, which includes kindness and generosity and compassion and patience. And they strive to be those things, and do a really good job. Better than me!

But because they’re Fundamentalist, their strict demands for doctrinal purity are gonna butt heads with their good fruit. Again, inevitable. Because they follow the Spirit, they have to love their neighbors. But because they’re Fundamentalists, they have to tell these same neighbors, “Jesus expects you to believe what I do, and until you do, you’re not Christian; you’re going to hell.”

Because they’re Christian, and follow the scriptures, they’ll certainly tell people we’re saved by God’s grace. And totally believe it! But because they’re Fundamentalist, this grace only comes through faith—and by “faith” they don’t mean trusting in Jesus to save us regardless of our wayward beliefs. (In other words, actual saving faith.) By “faith” they mean the Christian faith. Specifically the Fundamentalist faith. When the scriptures say “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and thou shalt be saved,” Ac 16.31 they mentally insert “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ as described, and only described, in our doctrine; you cannot know him any other way, and thou shalt be saved.” You cannot pray, “I believe; help thou mine unbelief”; Mk 9.24 you have to sort out your unbeliefs first.

Don’t get me wrong: Doctrine is important. Theology and orthodoxy are important. We’re not gonna grow properly as Christians when we have a distorted understanding of who Jesus is, and what he teaches us about his Father. That’s why we spend the rest of our lives following him, getting to know him better, and unlearning all the junk we’ve picked up about him from pagans, Christianists, and intellectually lazy Christians who simply regurgitate what we’ve been told instead of doing our homework. (Including intellectually lazy Fundies.) But what makes us Christian? Following Jesus. Do we need to know everything about him first? Nah; his first students surely didn’t. But they knew he has the words of eternal life, Jn 6.68 and followed him anyway. As must we.

Legalism puts the cart before the horse: It insists we get sorted out before we can come to Jesus. And obviously it has to be the other way round! Come to Jesus, and he’ll sort us out.

So yeah, Fundies do legalism. Because while they’ll claim, “Come to Jesus and he’ll sort you out,” they tend to behave as though, if you’re not yet sorted out, you’re holding out; you’ve not yet come to Jesus; you’re not yet Christian. And if they’re the paranoid sort of Fundamentalist, they’ll suspect you have a devil in you, and that’s why you’re not sorted out yet. They might have to cast you out! Not the devil—you.

…Don’t we all have 𝘴𝘰𝘮𝘦 fundamental beliefs?

FUNDAMENTALIST fən.də'mɛn.(t)əl.ɪst adjective. Adheres to certain beliefs as necessary and foundational.

2. Theologically (and politically) conservative in their religion.

3. [capitalized] Related to the 20th-century movement which considers certain Christian beliefs mandatory.

[Fundamentalism fən.də'mɛn.(t)əl.ɪz.əm noun, Fundie 'fən.di adjective.]

I grew up Fundamentalist, and refer to Fundies a bunch. But I need to explain what I mean by the term. Too many people use it too, but use it wrong.

For most folks fundamentalist is a synonym for “super conservative.” If you’re a fundamentalist of any stripe—fundamentalist Christian, fundamentalist Muslim, fundamentalist Jew, fundamentalist Mormon, fundamentalist Republican—people assume you’re extremely conservative. Or at least more conservative than they are: “I may be conservative, but you’re fundamentalist.” It picked up this definition for good reason: Fundies typically are super conservative. And a number of ’em pride themselves on this. It often feels like they’re trying to play a game of conservative chicken: “You might claim to be prolife, but I’m willing to dynamite clinics. How prolife is that?” Um, not in the slightest. But let’s not go there today. (I wrote on the topic elsewhere.)

But Fundamentalist isn’t synonymous with conservative. Fr’instance my church has its Fundamentalists… who aren’t anywhere near as conservative as other Fundamentalists might demand they be. My church’s Fundies recognize women can be in church leadership. Recognize Jesus came to save everybody, not just Christians. Recognize miracles still happen… whereas other Fundamentalists are absolutely insistent they don’t; they stopped. Yet they’re still Fundamentalist.

’Cause properly any fundamentalist is someone who believes there are fundamentals—meaning non-negotiable doctrines which people have to adhere to. Christians in particular: At the very least, we gotta believe in God the Father, in Christ Jesus, in the Holy Spirit, and all the Nicene Creed stuff which spells out the basic stuff. We can’t do as those pagans who call themselves Christian yet don’t even believe in Christ. Or they’ve mangled his teachings so bad, they’ve nullified all of them. Or instead of Jesus, they believe in some form of Historical Jesus which ironically is total fiction. Or they like Jesus a whole lot, but in practice they follow Deepak Chopra or Ayn Rand more. Or assume they’re Christian because they were baptized Christian, but they’ve never followed Jesus. There are an awful lot of fake Christians out there, trying to blend in.

Fundamentalism is meant to be the antidote to all the fakery. Capital-F Fundamentalists believe plenty of churches and denominations don’t follow Jesus at all; don’t recognize him as Lord and God, don’t believe God’s a trinity, don’t trust bible, don’t expect Jesus to save ’em (they gotta earn it with good karma), don’t even try to be good and moral people. In contrast they, the Fundamentalists, have fundamental truths. And require ’em of all their members.

Which “fundamental truths?” Well, I pointed to the Nicene Creed—and nearly every Fundie believes everything we find in that creed. Thing is, nearly every Fundamentalist is anti-Catholic, wrongly believes the creed is “a Catholic thing,” and is automatically prejudiced against it. While agreeing with it. Go figure. But instead of the creed, they have their own creeds—their church’s faith statements, which contain all the things they consider vital to Christianity. All of ’em go further than the creed—obviously, because the creed never mentions bible, and Fundies definitely trust bible. (Sometimes too much, but I already wrote about that.) Some of ’em go way further than the creed, and some of ’em go overboard and are straight-up legalist.

Fundamentalists worry Christianity’s ground-floor ideas have been compromised in way too many churches, among too many Christians. They want no part of any Christianity which won’t defend ’em. Real Christians embrace the fundamentals. So it’s not wrong to say fundamentalism of any sort is conservative; the very definition of conservatism is to point backwards to the tried-and-true as our objective standards.

But here’s the catch; here’s why Christians and pagans alike are confused as to what a Fundamentalist is: Not every conservative is pointing back to the same past. Me, I point back to the first-century apostolic church of Christ Jesus, and to the creeds of ancient Christianity. Sometimes to the beginnings of my own denomination.

Whereas other Christians point back to “the way we’ve always done things.” Which really means the way they remember they’ve always done things; some of these traditions only go back 20 or 40 years. Or two generations. Or a century, like my denomination. The Pharisee “tradition of the elders” only extended back about 50 years before Jesus began to critique it. Some traditions are hardly that ancient.

And way too many conservative American traditions date back to the upper-class customs of the American South during slavery, or during the Jim Crow segregationist era. In other words, they’re not pointing to Christianity at all. Just a particularly heinous form of Christianism… which they remember fondly only because it wasn’t persecuting them.

That is the form of fundamentalism I object to most. Not the folks who wanna keep Christianity orthodox—who wanna make sure we follow Jesus, know our bibles, understand him to the best of our ability, and strive to do the good deeds God laid out for us to do. I’m all for that! What I’m not for, is the false religion of conforming to a social standard which only appears moral, but is really patriarchy, racism, political control, Mammonism, and hypocrisy.

Jesus’s resurrection: If he wasn’t raised, we’re boned.

Of Christianity’s two biggest holidays, Christmas is the easier one for pagans to swallow. ’Cause Jesus the Nazarene was born. That, they won’t debate. There are a few cranks who think Jesus’s life is entirely mythological, start to finish; but for the most part everyone agrees he was born. May not believe he was miraculously born, but certainly they agree he was born.

Easter’s way harder. ’Cause Jesus the Nazarene rose from the dead. And no, he didn’t just wake up in a tomb after a two-day coma following a brutal flogging and crucifixion. Wasn’t a spectral event either, where his ghost went visiting his loved ones to tell them everything’s all right; he’s on a higher plane now; in time they’ll join him. Nor was it a “spiritual” event, where people had visions or mass hallucinations of him, or missed him so hard they psyched themselves into believing they saw him.

Christians state Jesus is alive. In a body. A human body. An extraordinary body; apparently his new body can do things our current bodies can’t. But alive in a way people recognize as fully alive. Not some walking-dead zombie, nor some phantom. Jesus physically interacted with his students, family, and followers, for nearly a month and a half before physically going to heaven.

That, pagans struggle with. ’Cause they don’t believe in resurrection. Resuscitation, sure; CPR can keep a heart going till it can beat on its own, or doctors can revive frozen people. Returning from the dead happens all the time. But permanently? In a new body? Which he took with him to heaven? They’re not buying it. They’re more likely to believe in the Easter Bunny.

But that’s the deal we Christians proclaim on Easter: Christ is risen indeed.

It’s not the central belief of Christianity; God’s kingdom is. But if Jesus didn’t literally come back from the dead on the morning of 5 April 33, it means there’s no such kingdom, and Jesus is never coming back to set it up. And nobody’s coming back from death. There’s no eternal life; at best an eternal afterlife, which ain’t life. There’s no hope for the lost. The Sadducees were right. Christianity’s a sham. There’s no point in any of us being Christians.

No I’m not being hyperbolic. This is precisely what the apostles taught.

1 Corinthians 15.12-19 NRSVue

12Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say there is no resurrection of the dead? 13If there is no resurrection of the dead, then Christ has not been raised, 14and if Christ has not been raised, then our proclamation is in vain and your faith is in vain. 15We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified of God that he raised Christ—whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised. 16For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised. 17If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile, and you are still in your sins. 18Then those also who have died in Christ have perished. 19If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.

No resurrection, no kingdom, no Christianity. Period.

Vinegar to drink.

Mark 15.23, 26, Matthew 27.33-34, 48, Luke 23.36, John 19.28-30

Back when David was in deep doo-doo, Ps 69.2 he wrote Psalm 69 to gripe about his enemies. But when he talked about his comforters, Ps 69.20 he commented,

Psalm 69.21 KWL

They gave me bitter food,

and for my thirst, they made me drink vinegar.

It’s a memorable idea, and one which no doubt the authors of the gospels thought of when Jesus was getting crucified. ’Cause Jesus didn’t wanna drink what they provided.

Our culture might be unaware: Back then, you didn’t drink the water. You never knew where it came from, and rarely was it pure. Fastest way to get dysentery or cholera. So the ancients drank wine, either full-strength or watered-down. (Or beer, if your culture made beer.) The alcohol killed any bacteria. Ignore all those teetotalers who claim “wine” back then was actually grape juice: Grape juice was as potentially harmful as water. It needed to be wine.

The gospels aren’t consistent in how they describe the wine Jesus was offered. Mark called it myrrh-wine and Matthew called it wine with χολῆς/holís, “bile.” For Luke and John, it was really old wine, which both of ’em straight-up called ὄξος/óxos, “vinegar.”

Mark 15.22-23 KWL

22 They bring Jesus to Gulgálta Place (i.e. Skull Place).

23 They’re giving Jesus myrrh-wine, which he doesn’t take.

 

Matthew 27.33-34 KWL

33 Coming to the place called Gulgálta, called Skull Place,

34 they give Jesus wine to drink—with bile mixed in,

and on tasting it he didn’t want to drink.

 

Luke 23.36 KWL

They mock him. The soldiers who came were bringing him vinegar…

John states they added hyssop, but the KJV changes John’s account to “[a branch] of hyssop,” Jn 19.29 KJV to sync it up with Mark and Matthew’s account of putting the wine in a sponge, putting the sponge on a reed (or a hyssop stick, I suppose), and offering it to Jesus. But hyssop is also a bitter extract, and may be what Matthew meant by bile. I dunno.

Mark 15.36 KWL

One of the runners, filling a sponge of vinegar,

putting it on a reed, gives Jesus a drink,

saying, “Let me do this;

we might see if Elijah comes to take him.”

 

Matthew 27.48 KWL

One runner quickly leaves them:

Taking a sponge full of vinegar,

putting it on a reed, he gives Jesus a drink.

 

John 19.28-30 KWL

28 After this Jesus, knowing everything was now finished,

says to fulfill the scripture, “I thirst.”

29 A full jar of vinegar is sitting there.

So a sponge full of vinegar, with hyssop put on it, is brought to Jesus’s mouth.

30 When he tastes the vinegar, Jesus says, “It’s finished.”

He bends his head and hands over his spirit.

Yeah, the soldiers and their runners offered Jesus vinegar more than once.

Certain commentators claim the myrrh in the wine was meant to be medicinal. Supposedly the Romans, feeling a little bad for their victims, wanted to numb them just a little to the excruciating pain of crucifixion. Man, is that optimistic of the commentators. Ask your local supplier of essential oils: Myrrh is no painkiller. It wasn’t even a folk-remedy painkiller. The ancients used it as perfume—to keep wounds and medicines from smelling bad. From there, moderns leap to the conclusion it was kind of an antiseptic—it kept wounds from getting infected and gangrenous, right? But it didn’t do that at all: It hid the smell of wounds which were getting septic. It made you worse, not better. Despite your favorite websites, myrrh has no proven purpose in medicine.

So what was it doing in the wine? Myrrh is bitter. (So’s hyssop.) It made the wine taste like bile. And when people taste bile, what do they do? They gag: It tastes like vomit. They’ll frequently even vomit.

Yep, it was the Romans’ sick little joke. The victims got thirsty and begged for wine… so you gave ’em myrrh-wine, and watched ’em freak out. Arguably that was why they put the vinegar in a sponge on a reed: It wasn’t because the crosses were impractically tall. It’s because the soldiers didn’t wanna get puked on.

What became of Judas Iscariot.

Matthew 27.3-10, Acts 1.15-26.

Technically Judas bar Simon of Kerioth, the renegade follower of Jesus whom we know as Judas Iscariot, isn’t part of the stations of the cross. Whether we’re using St. Francis or St. John Paul’s list, neither of ’em figured his situation is specifically worthy of meditation. Although we should study Judas some, ’cause he’s an example of an apostle gone wrong—an example we really don’t wanna follow. Nor repeat. But Jesus was too busy going through his own suffering to really focus on what was happening with Judas.

Judas came up when he handed Jesus over to the authorities… and in three of the gospels, that’s the last we ever hear of him. The exceptions are Matthew—and since the author of Luke also wrote Acts, it’s kinda in another gospel, ’cause Acts is about how the Holy Spirit and apostles started Jesus’s church. But that’s a whole other discussion.

Here’s the problem: For the most part, the Matthew and Acts stories contradict one another.

Not that inerrantists haven’t tried their darnedest to sync them up, and I’ll get to how they’ve tried it. But first things first: The passages.

Matthew 27.3-10 KWL

3Upon seeing Jesus is condemned,

a repentant Judas his betrayer returned the 30 silvers

to the head priests and elders,

4saying, “I sin by betraying innocent blood.”

They say, “What’s it have to do with us?

It’s your problem.”

5Throwing the silver into the temple, Judas leaves,

and goes off to hang himself.

6The head priests, taking the silver, say,

“We can’t put this in the treasury,

since it’s the value of blood.”

7Convening, they decide to buy with it the potter’s field,

for burying strangers.

8Thus that land is called Bloodfield to this day;

9then the saying of the prophet Jeremiah is fulfilled,

saying, “They take the 30 silvers,

the value of the one they valued,

who was valued by Israel’s sons.

10They give it for the potter’s field,

just as the Lord directed me.”

Acts 1.15-20 KWL

15In these days, Simon Peter gets up

in the middle of the family to say,

“The crowd is more than 120 people I can name.

16Men! Family!

We have to fulfill the scripture

the Holy Spirit foretold through David’s mouth

about Judas, who became the guide of those who arrested Jesus.

17Judas was counted among us.

He received a place in this ministry.

18He thus got himself a plot of land

from his unrighteous reward,

and was found face-down,

burst open, his innards all spilled out.

19All Jerusalem’s dwellers came to know it,

so the plot’s called in their dialect Khaqal-Dema,” i.e. Bloodfield.

20“It’s written in the book of Psalms:

‘Make his house desert, and don’t let settlers in it.’ Ps 69.25

And alternately, ‘Another person: Take his office.’” Ps 109.8

“Oh no! Easter is a pagan holiday!”

Whenever Easter approaches, you might run into Evangelicals who pointedly refer to the day as “Resurrection Sunday.” If not, don’t be surprised when you bump into ’em. And don’t be surprised when they comment, “Resurrection Sunday—not ‘Easter.’ I don’t do Easter. Easter is a pagan holiday.”

It is? According to these guys, it is. About a decade ago there was a meme claiming Easter was named for the Babylonian goddess Ishtar. (The name sounds so similar!) But more often you’re gonna hear the story of some northern European goddess of the spring named Eostre, and during the spring equinox, ancient pagans would worship her with symbols which represent fertility, like rabbits and eggs. And that’s where our secular Easter traditions came from: From pagans.

Okay. Those of us who know Christian history, know Jesus died the day before Passover in the year 33. The first Passover took place at some point in the 15th century BC, on 14 Nisan of whatever year that was. Nisan is the first month of spring, and Hebrew months begin at the new moon, so on the 14th the moon will be full. Christians swiped that holiday. Most of us still call it Passover! (Or some variant of Πάσχα/Páscha, the Greek word for Passover; only northern European languages call it something like Easter.)

So no, we didn’t adopt some pagan European equinox celebration. We swiped a Hebrew holiday which happens to take place the same time of year. And when European paganism was wiped out once European kings turned to Jesus, and ordered their subjects to turn to him too, the Europeans were left with all these unattached customs… with no god to connect ’em to anymore, because all they knew was Jesus.

Is that a problem? Only if people are still worshiping Eostre. But no one’s worshiping Eostre. When Europeans ditched that religion, they stopped worshiping her so hard, today’s historians know next to nothing about her! Europeans abandoned the Eostre legends, the Eostre worship practices, everything. It didn’t even go underground, or get collected in books about bygone mythology, like the stories we still have about Wotan and Thor and Baldr. Eostre’s gone. So gone, some historians doubt she even existed.

It’s exactly the sort of victory over pagan idolatry Christians should be sharing, celebrating, and rejoicing over. Instead we have paranoid Christians who wanna bring Eostre back, solely for the purpose of telling one another we need to hate and fear her. You realize there are real evils in the world we oughta fight, not ridiculous distractions. But nope, we have people trying to play connect-the-dots with other pagan gods, hoping to find some kind of devilish conspiracy theory. Hoping to find something to fear. Hoping to find something with which they can spread fear. Which says all kinds of devilish things about them.

Hence their dire warnings: “Watch out for these secular Easter traditions! If you do ’em, you might unintentionally worship Eostre. And God will be very, very angry.” And smite you somehow. Or smite the whole country. Supposedly he’s petty like that.

Okay. Any depiction of God which doesn’t describe him as gracious, which claims he’s eagerly planning to punish his kids for our unwitting errors, clearly hasn’t been paying any attention to the way Jesus describes his loving Father. ’Cause God does grace. Whereas these fearful Christians, and the churches where they get or spread their ridiculous rubbish, do not. It’s why they’re so fearful.

Don’t mimic such godless, fruitless people. Follow the Spirit. And use your head!

Jesus prays at Gethsemane, in 𝘔𝘢𝘳𝘬.

Mark 14.32-41.

St. Francis’s stations of the cross begin with when Jesus is given his cross. (Duh; it is the stations of the cross.) But Jesus’s suffering actually began earlier, so St. John Paul’s list also begins earlier—with Gethsemane, the olive garden on Mt. Olivet, where Jesus prayed he might not go through the crucifixion. Yet in his same prayer, he prayed, rightly, God’s will be done.

Mark 14.32-41 KWL

32Jesus and his students come to a private property

whose name is Gad Smáni/“oil press.”

He tells his students, “Sit here while I pray.”

33Jesus takes Simon Peter

and James and John with him.

He begins to be distressed and troubled.

34Jesus tells his students, “My soul is intensely sad,

to the point of death.

Stay here and stay awake.”

35Going a little further,

Jesus is falling to the ground and is praying

that the hour might pass him by,

if it’s possible.

36Jesus is saying, “Abba! Father!

For you¹, everything is possible!

Take this cup away from me!

But it’s not what I will,

but what you¹ will.”

37Jesus comes and finds his students sleeping.

He tells Peter, “Simon, you’re¹ sleeping?

You¹ can’t stay awake one hour.

38Stay awake and pray!—

lest you² come to temptation.

You have a truly eager spirit—

and weak flesh.”

39Going away again, Jesus prays,

saying the same words.

40Coming back again, Jesus finds his students sleeping,

for their eyes are very heavy.

They didn’t know how to answer him.

41Jesus comes back a third time,

and tells his students, “Sleep the rest of the time.

Get your² rest.

It’s enough.

…The hour comes.

Look, the Son of Man is betrayed into sinners’ hands.”

This story comes up in the synoptic gospels. It’s not really in John, whose author had to do things his own way:

John 18.1-2 NRSVue

1After Jesus had spoken these words, he went out with his disciples across the Kidron Valley to a place where there was a garden, which he and his disciples entered. 2Now Judas, who betrayed him, also knew the place because Jesus often met there with his disciples.

John Paul recognized this is the beginning of Jesus’s passion, not when he was sentenced to death later that night. ’Cause that’s what the gospels depict: He went into the garden to pray, and suddenly it’s like he’s blindsided with emotion. It freaked him out a little. He wanted to pray; he wanted his kids to pray for him. But as people do when they’re up past their bedtime praying (and not just kids; don’t just blame this on their spiritual immaturity), they fell asleep on him. Three times.

Still, Jesus was really agitated, and John Paul recognized it’s this psychological trauma which marks where Jesus’s suffering began. Not just when he was taken away to die.

How much of the Nicodemus discourse did Jesus say?

John 3.1-21.

There’s a big debate among bible scholars, and you’ll see it reflected in various bible translations: How much of Jesus’s talk with Nicodemus consists of a direct quote from Jesus? Does Jesus stop talking in verse 15, and the rest is the apostle John’s commentary? Or is it all a Jesus quote?

You can see this when you compare bible translations. Some translations make it all a Jesus quote; some don’t. Check out the English Standard Version and the New International Version.

John 3.1-21 ESV 1 Now there was a man of the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews. 2 This man came to Jesus by night and said to him, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher come from God, for no one can do these signs that you do unless God is with him.” 3 Jesus answered him, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.” 4 Nicodemus said to him, “How can a man be born when he is old? Can he enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born?” 5 Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. 6 That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. 7 Do not marvel that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’ 8 The wind blows where it wishes, and you hear its sound, but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes. So it is with everyone who is born of the Spirit.” 9 Nicodemus said to him, “How can these things be?” 10 Jesus answered him, “Are you the teacher of Israel and yet you do not understand these things? 11 Truly, truly, I say to you, we speak of what we know, and bear witness to what we have seen, but you do not receive our testimony. 12 If I have told you earthly things and you do not believe, how can you believe if I tell you heavenly things? 13 No one has ascended into heaven except he who descended from heaven, the Son of Man. 14 And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, 15 that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. 16 “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. 17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. 18 Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God. 19 And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. 20 For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed. 21 But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God.”

John 3.1-21 NIV 1 Now there was a Pharisee, a man named Nicodemus who was a member of the Jewish ruling council. 2 He came to Jesus at night and said, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God. For no one could perform the signs you are doing if God were not with him.” 3 Jesus replied, “Very truly I tell you, no one can see the kingdom of God unless they are born again.” 4 “How can someone be born when they are old?” Nicodemus asked. “Surely they cannot enter a second time into their mother’s womb to be born!” 5 Jesus answered, “Very truly I tell you, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit. 6 Flesh gives birth to flesh, but the Spirit gives birth to spirit. 7 You should not be surprised at my saying, ‘You must be born again.’ 8 The wind blows wherever it pleases. You hear its sound, but you cannot tell where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.” 9 “How can this be?” Nicodemus asked. 10 “You are Israel’s teacher,” said Jesus, “and do you not understand these things? 11 Very truly I tell you, we speak of what we know, and we testify to what we have seen, but still you people do not accept our testimony. 12 I have spoken to you of earthly things and you do not believe; how then will you believe if I speak of heavenly things? 13 No one has ever gone into heaven except the one who came from heaven—the Son of Man. 14 Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, 15 that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him.” 16 For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. 17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. 18 Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son. 19 This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. 20 Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed. 21 But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what they have done has been done in the sight of God.

Heck, in the Word Biblical Commentary, commentator George R. Beasley-Murray ends Jesus’s statement with verse 12, and “Nobody’s risen up to heaven…” etc. Jn 3.13 is all John.

Why’s this a big deal? Honestly, it’s really not. Whether Jesus said it or John said it, it’s still Spirit-inspired bible, and just as valid. Doesn’t matter whether the Spirit moved John to write it, or Jesus personally taught it to Nicodemus. Ultimately the ideas originate with God.

But you know how Christians get sometimes: If it’s in the red letters, it’s extra important. Because Jesus said it. Since we need to especially pay attention to Jesus’s teachings, we need to exalt ’em far more highly than if some ordinary apostle wrote it, whether that apostle is John, Paul, George, Ringo, Luke, Matthew, Sosthenes, Mark, Peter, James, Timothy, Silas, Jude, or whoever wrote Hebrews.