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Posted:

21st January, 2008


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The law and the prophets were until John

You would be a rich person if you were given a dollar for every article that has ever been written about one of Jesus' "hard sayings", Luke 16:16:

The law and the prophets were until John. Since that time the kingdom of God has been preached, and everyone is pressing into it (NKJV).

In light of the Greek word used, the RSV translates it a little differently:

The law and the prophets were until John; since then the good news of the kingdom of God is preached, and every one enters it violently.

What did Jesus mean? Was He saying that His listeners by and large received His message enthusiastically and were falling over themselves to "press into the kingdom"? Or was He instructing His listeners to be "violent", that is, proactive, if they wished to enter it? Or what? Well, let us throw our hat in the ring and consider this enigmatic passage.

Evidently Jesus envisaged a contrast of some kind between "then" before John and "now" after John. Some few see a reference to the annulment of both law and the call of the prophets to obey the law. However, few are willing to put such a spin on this passage in light of the words that immediately follow:

And it is easier for heaven and earth to pass away than for one tittle of the law to fail.

The law and the prophets gave their "prophetic and predictive witness to the coming of the kingdom" (David Stern, "Jewish New Testament Commentary") and since neither jot nor tittle can fail from either, then John's and Jesus' missions are stamped with the authority of God.

Many assume that Jews had no concept of a kingdom that the righteous would enter after death and that their hopes revolved exclusively around the coming of the Davidic Messiah to herald the Messianic Era and the restoration of Israel as God's chosen nation. Not so. Although every Jew hoped to live into the Messianic Age, in Jewish thought death ends all hope of personally entering that age. Their greater hope lay in entering the "higher" or "celestial" garden of Eden, "the habitation of righteous, immortal souls" which lies on the far side of the Messianic age, beyond history. In Jewish thought, the age to come takes the form of "life in the spirit", as seen in 4 Esdras:

But the day of judgment will be the end of this age and the beginning of the immortal age to come, in which corruption has passed away. and things that are future are for those who will live hereafter. it is for you that paradise is opened, the tree of life is planted, the age to come is prepared, plenty is provided. (7:113; 8:46, 52).

So Jesus' audience had no problem associating "eating meat in the kingdom of God" with the "resurrection of the just" (Luke 14:15-16). Though Jesus revealed unfamiliar new truths about the kingdom of God (Heb. 2:3), such as that the greatest joy for those "in it" is to be in His presence (John

14:1-2), and He couched those truths in parables that hid their plain meaning (Luke 8:10), the core concept of a resurrection life of bliss was not foreign to His audience.

So again, what did Jesus mean when He said that people either were "pressing into" the kingdom or "entering it violently"? First, let us note that the Greek does not contain the word "enter", as in the RSV translation. Second, that the word rendered "press into" (biazetai) does indeed connote violence, either to act violently or to suffer violence, depending on the verb's voice - whether it is active or passive. Here is where the interpretive problem lies; the verbal form can be taken either way. So the text means either that "all" must be violent to gain entry into the kingdom or that the same "all" are treating the kingdom violently. The early church fathers took the former view, making interpretive statements such as, "Every prudent man forces his way into the kingdom in resistance against worldly love and unbelief" (Danker, Luke 16:16 - an Opposition Logion, Journal of Biblical Literature, Sept. 1958). With some notable exceptions, most interpreters have followed this traditional view regarding Luke 16:16 and its counterpart in Matthew 11:12 ever since. The popular "The New Bible Commentary Revised" says Jesus' statement, "probably refers to ordinary people eager to enter the kingdom.".

But was Jesus really saying that those who wish to enter the kingdom must forcefully crash through its narrow but open door? No, that is not what He meant. As Danker continues, the Greek word "is almost always employed in malam partem"; that is, in a negative way. Jesus almost certainly meant that the kingdom of God "suffers violence" at the hands of "all", that is, the Pharisees in particular, to whom His words were directed. They presented themselves as custodians of godly righteousness, yet they were guilty of avarice (vs. 14) and adultery (vs. 18) through their cavalier attitude towards divorce. They felt that as good sons of Abraham they were a shoe-in to the kingdom, yet Jesus declared that anybody who wished to enter the kingdom must first repent (Matt. 3:2) and be "born again" (John 3:3), that is, start from scratch. Jesus' preaching cut them to the quick, showing not only that they were not fit for the kingdom of God (Matt. 21:43) but that they were less fit than tax collectors and harlots (Matt. 21:31)! Hence, they actively opposed His mission.

But let us not join the bands of those who love to bash Pharisees. The similar statement in Matthew suggests that "everybody" opposed Jesus' mission. There the hard saying is immediately followed by the question, "But to what shall I liken this generation?" followed by Jesus' scathing assessment of that generation; it zigged when God zagged and zagged when He zigged. It criticized John the Baptist for being a tea-totaller and criticized Jesus for drinking wine. In short, peoples' minds were set in opposition to everything John and Jesus stood for. True, many believed Jesus, but of weightier significance more did not. Perhaps they were incensed at the numerous hints Jesus dropped to the effect that the kingdom of God was open to all peoples, not just to Jews (Luke 4:16-29). Here was a notion that flew in the face of everything they clung to as the chosen people of God.

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For further background to the animosity felt by the people over Jesus' hints at the universality of the gospel, see the Dawn to Dusk book "Showdown in Jerusalem: Conflict in the Early Church"














 
 

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