New Testament Notes 100-102

Caravaggio's "Crucifixion of St. Peter" — “The Crucifixion of St. Peter” (Caravaggio) Wikimedia Commons public domain

Compare Mark 13:9-13; Luke 6:40; 12:11-12; 21:12-19; John 13:16; 14:26; 15:20; 16:2

What is notably absent from the litany of oppression and persecution given in these passages is any promise of this-worldly success. There’s nothing along the lines of “Just hold on, and your efforts will be crowned by success! Everybody will eventually honor and respect you, and the Church will triumph! Christendom will spread throughout the earth!” Instead, the message to the original apostles is “endure to the end, and you’ll be saved.”

That’s striking.

Bodarevsky's Paul before Agrippa — “Paul before King Agrippa” (1875) by Nikolai Bodarevsky

(Wikimedia Commons public domain image)

Matthew 10:26-33

Luke 12:2-9

Compare Mark 4:22; 8:38; Luke 8:17; 9:26

This is an exhortation to absolutely fearless discipleship.

Even those who can kill the body have no real power over the followers of Christ, who should, rather, fear spiritual death or damage to their souls.

They — we — are to proclaim the Gospel openly.

If his purported disciples deny him before men — which I take to mean not only flatly rejecting Christ but also failing to proclaim him — he will deny them, or fail to acknowledge them, to his Father. Which means that they will have no advocate, no mediator, at the judgment bar of God. But if we acknowledge him before men, he will step before the Father on our behalf, claiming us as his. It’s our only hope.

Sistine Ceiling detail — God divides the light from the darkness
(Detail from Michelangelos’s Sistine Ceiling, 1509, via Wikimedia CC)

Matthew 10:34-36

Luke 12:51-53

The fruit of the Gospel is peace. But the simple fact is that encounters between Zion and Babylon are often accompanied by friction — and that, unless and until one or the other surrenders, this is likely to continue. And Zion won’t surrender.

That said, we must do all that we can do, consistent with the principles of the Gospel and the commandments of God, to reduce friction, to proclaim peace, and to act in love.

And we have to remember that Babylon isn’t only “out there.”

I return to a favorite quotation from Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s 1973 Gulag Archipelago:

If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?

We must be sure, in the conflict between Babylon and Zion, and in our effort to build the Kingdom, that there’s no trace of Babylon within us.