To inherit eternal life Jesus wanted people to do something, but Paul wanted people to believe something

And, behold, one came and said unto him, Good Master, what good thing shall I do, that I may have eternal life? ... Jesus said unto him, If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come and follow me.

-- Matthew 19:16, 21

And when he was gone forth into the way, there came one running, and kneeled to him, and asked him, Good Master, what shall I do that I may inherit eternal life? ... Then Jesus beholding him loved him, and said unto him, One thing thou lackest: go thy way, sell whatsoever thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come, take up the cross, and follow me.

-- Mark 10:17, 21

And a certain ruler asked him, saying, Good Master, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?... Now when Jesus heard these things, he said unto him, Yet lackest thou one thing: sell all that thou hast, and distribute unto the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come, follow me.

-- Luke 18:18, 22

Then he called for a light, and sprang in, and came trembling, and fell down before Paul and Silas, And brought them out, and said, Sirs, what must I do to be saved? And they said, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house.

-- Acts 16:29ff.

That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.

-- Romans 10:9

. . . it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe.

-- 1 Corinthians 1:21

By which also ye are saved, if ye keep in memory what I preached unto you, unless ye have believed in vain.

-- 1 Corinthians 15:2

He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned.

-- Mark 16:16 (from the longer ending verses 9-20, clearly not original but in keeping with the apostolic emphasis)

Those by the way side are they that hear; then cometh the devil, and taketh away the word out of their hearts, lest they should believe and be saved.

-- Luke 8:12 (the last clause is missing in the versions by Matthew and Mark and is perhaps evidence of the influence of Paul et alia upon Luke)

Lawrence Reed is still trying to convince himself that Jesus was a capitalist for whom private property was inviolable

Here:

"What about the reference, in the Book of Acts, to the early Christians selling their worldly goods and sharing communally in the proceeds? That sounds like a progressive utopia. On closer inspection, however, it turns out that those early Christians did not sell everything they had and were not commanded or expected to do so. ... It may disappoint progressives to learn that Christ's words and deeds repeatedly upheld such critically-important, capitalist virtues as contract, profit and private property."

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Reed cherry picks his evidence, of course, leaving examples such as these still on the tree because they contradict his claims, all the while arguing against a straw man named the redistributionist state which is equally anachronistic:

And all who believed were together and had all things in common; and they sold their possessions and goods and distributed them to all, as any had need.

-- Acts 2:44f.

Jesus said unto him, If thou wilt be perfect, go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come and follow me.

-- Matthew 19:21 

Then Jesus beholding him loved him, and said unto him, One thing thou lackest: go thy way, sell whatsoever thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come, take up the cross, and follow me.

-- Mark 10:21

Now when Jesus heard these things, he said unto him, Yet lackest thou one thing: sell all that thou hast, and distribute unto the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come, follow me.

-- Luke 18:22

Sell that ye have, and give alms; provide yourselves bags which wax not old, a treasure in the heavens that faileth not, where no thief approacheth, neither moth corrupteth.

-- Luke 12:33

So then, none of you can be My disciple who does not give up all his own possessions.

-- Luke 14:33

Then Peter said, Lo, we have left all, and followed thee.

-- Luke 18:28

Then Peter began to say unto him, Lo, we have left all, and have followed thee.

-- Mark 10:28

Then Peter said to Him, Behold, we have left everything and followed You.

-- Matthew 19:27

Immediately they left their nets and followed Him. ... Immediately they left the boat and their father, and followed Him.

-- Matthew 4:20, 22

When they had brought their boats to land, they left everything and followed Him.

-- Luke 5:11

And he left everything behind, and got up and began to follow Him.

-- Luke 5:28

Sorry Kevin Shrum, But St. Paul, Like Jesus, Demoted Marriage By Exalting The Single State

St. Paul exalted the single state above the married state because he believed, like Jesus and in keeping with Jesus' teaching about marriage (Matthew 19:10ff., Luke 20:34ff.), that the world was coming to a sudden end:

Now concerning the matters about which you wrote. It is well for a man not to touch a woman. ... I wish that all were as I myself am. But each has his own special gift from God, one of one kind and one of another. To the unmarried and the widows I say that it is well for them to remain single as I do. ... I mean, brethren, the appointed time has grown very short; from now on, let those who have wives live as though they had none . . . But whoever is firmly established in his heart, being under no necessity but having his desire under control, and has determined this in his heart, to keep her as his betrothed, he will do well. So that he who marries his betrothed does well; and he who refrains from marriage will do better.

-- 1 Corinthians 7, passim

And Jesus answering said unto them, The children of this world marry, and are given in marriage: But they which shall be accounted worthy to obtain that world, and the resurrection from the dead, neither marry, nor are given in marriage: Neither can they die any more: for they are equal unto the angels; and are the children of God, being the children of the resurrection.

-- Luke 20:34ff.

Paul would not have agreed in his own time with this from ours, by one Kevin Shrum, here:

'If marriage implodes then so, too, does a civil, productive society. Any culture that demotes, demeans, demoralizes, diminishes, denigrates, or re-defines marriage does so at its own peril. Cultures that eviscerate marriage will survive, but those same cultures will be, as Plato would argue, mere shadows of the "real thing," of the "real idea." How can we help our neighbors see and hear the truth in this matter of marriage?'

The irony of such statements is that despite the radical teachings of Jesus and Paul about marriage, Christianity went on to conquer the West and recreate its culture in its own image . . . and flourish.

Luke The Historian Preserves Jesus' Apocalyptic Expectation As Paul's Own

Eduard Meyer

 

 The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed; and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.

-- Acts 17:30f.

Say what you will about Luke's accuracy in other matters, or about his identity, he preserves an eschatolgical expectation which comes from the core of Jesus' teaching, transcending the decades and faithfully adhered to by Paul, however anachronistic that expectation may have become with the failure of the parousia.

Jesus Never Imagined Paul's Gentile Mission

You can never have too many "Ns" in Phoenicia, I always say

"But when they persecute you in this city, flee ye into another: for verily I say unto you, Ye shall not have gone over the cities of Israel, till the Son of man be come." (Matthew 10:23)

Radical? You Can't Handle The Radical

 

 

And neither could they, which is why only a faint glimmer of the real man peeks out of the literary remains.

The New Testament is a box into which they stuffed the earnest Jewish boy who took himself a little too seriously and got himself killed. A nice neat little box where God can be kept and put safely on a shelf, where he no longer causes any embarrassment, or any trouble.

There are no authentic followers of Jesus today, just as there were none then.

Following, repentance, being a disciple, pick your favorite locution. They are all predicated on the imminent end of the world, without which there is no urgency:

to abandon customary human decency and let the dead bury the dead,

to subsume traditional family relationships under a wider set of mothers, sisters and brothers,

to say goodbye to everything that you own . . . without fanfare,

to risk making the members of your own household your enemies,

to preach so desperately quickly that Ye shall not have gone over the cities of Israel, till the Son of man be come.

Even in the Passion Narrative, which retools him from the later perspective of a sacrifice for sins, the inadequacy of his followers "following" is yet remembered: They fall asleep while he is sweating bullets. More remarkably, the memory of the faith of the fanatic remains unshaken: You will see the son of man, he told his judges at his trial, coming on the clouds of glory.

Has anyone seen those clouds? Is life really different now?

Jesus died a singularity, he whose mighty criticism of his own religion managed to outlive his failed prediction of the consummation of everything. The moral force of that prophetic career, stretching back to Isaiah and the living God of the patriarchs, lives on still and inspires people everywhere, some of whom however wrongly imagine that it is a virtue to take themselves as seriously as he took himself.

Well, go right ahead. It's a free country . . . for a little while longer.

But while you do, consider that your hero, Paul, thought that one man dying for the sins of the people was quite enough, thank you very much. Instead, Paul would tell all you idealists out there something you don't want to hear. He'd tell you to live quietly, mind your own business, and maybe pick the weeds and mow the grass. Maybe lots of grass, just to keep you out of trouble.

You'll understand when you're older, with a little luck, if you should live so long.

Dissing the Mother: Jesus' Attempt to Redefine the Family

The sermon this day (Immanuel, 2 Michigan Street NE, Grand Rapids) was only loosely based on Mark 3:30-35, for to follow it honestly and strictly, one would have had to come to a far different conclusion than that Jesus intended to bless some conception of the traditional family, by which he supposedly encouraged people to marry and have children for an indefinite future as part of God's plan for the human race from the foundation of the world.

On the contrary, Jesus' teaching that his real brother, sister and mother is "whosoever shall do the will of God" is posited over and against the news announced in the pericope that "thy mother and thy brethren without seek for thee."

"They're not my real family," he might have said in so many words.

No wonder people close to him, and perhaps members of his own family, said, "He is beside himself" (Mark 3: 21). That opinion was much debated among "the Jews" according to John 10, some of whom contended that possession by a demon had driven him mad (vs. 20).

Well, why not? Jesus' outrageous message of repentance meant repudiating one's entire life as it existed at the time of the call, to the extent that the most basic societal obligations had to go. "Let the dead bury their own dead." "Say goodbye to everything you have." "Come, follow me." Only a madman would ask you to quit your job, stop supporting your family, not "be there" for your sons and daughters, and follow some cult leader around the country.

It is remarkable that the evidence for this world-renouncing ethic yet remains buried in the stuff of the gospels when you consider how much the eschatological worldview which presupposes it has been scrubbed and re-interpreted in the interests of the Pauline gospel of salvation based on Jesus' crucifixion and resurrection. But its ugly head pops up all over the place, ever to be massaged and explained away in this church and that, or simply avoided, while attempting otherwise to make the Bible relevant to the people in the pew, and to maintain the status quo.

But however that may be, it does seem ever less relevant. The desperation of the circumstances of the denomination of church I visited this day was plain enough. The average age in the denomination is now 67, we were told. 67! This church is not only not making converts among the young, it long ago failed to reproduce itself in sufficient quantities by adhering to the conception of "the traditional family." Such children as they have had have not stayed, or have not been large enough in number to affect this perilous signpost of coming extinction. 

It's as if these people have somehow taken Jesus all too seriously after all, even though they have not.

Crazy indeed.