Some five hundred years ago, in 1517, Martin Luther nailed his list of 95 theses to the church door in Wittenberg. It was these “theses” or principles, of course, that triggered the Protestant Reformation, and in so doing changed the history of the modern world.
Most of Luther’s theses had to do with his rejection of the practice of selling “indulgencies” in the Catholic Church of his time – a means of raising money for the church which claimed that people might pay to have the souls of loved ones or others released from “purgatory.” Although this may seem like ancient history to most of us in the modern world, and most of us may not know what a single one of Luther’s 95 theses was, there are some timeless lessons to be found there.
In his very first thesis – which formed the basis of those that followed – Luther (citing Matthew 4:17) wrote: “Our Lord and Master Jesus Christ, when He said, ‘Repent’, willed that the whole life of believers should be repentance.” This statement was a remarkable one for its time. The Vulgate – the Latin version of the Bible used by the Catholic Church – translated the command to repent in Matthew 4:17 with the words paenitentiam agite, meaning “Go, and do penance.” But Luther found that in the Greek text of the New Testament the word for repentance used by the New Testament writers was metanoia, which has nothing to do with penance and means to change one’s heart and mind – to be changed or converted.
This deeper and more accurate understanding of the concept of repentance had a direct impact on Luther’s first thesis, for we obviously cannot constantly be doing penance throughout our whole lives; but as Luther stated, our lives as believers should be ones of ongoing repentance in the sense of continual change and ongoing conversion.
The truth that Luther had learned was that all of the Christian life is repentance. Certainly, the Bible speaks of a primary repentance when we first turn to God from our own sinfulness (Acts 2:38, 11:18), and we might call that “Repentance with a capital R.” But the Scriptures also show that our initial Repentance is followed by an ongoing repentance (with a small “r”) that is the continual mindset of the Christian. This does not mean constantly dwelling on our mistakes and failures, but continually and immediately repenting when we do find we have come short of God’s way.
We see this ongoing or additional repentance throughout the Bible. We see it frequently, for example, in the psalms of David where he expresses repentance on many occasions. We see it in the New Testament in scriptures such as Revelation 2:5 which commands members of the church to repent of errors into which they have fallen, and in 1 John 1:8-9 which tells us that: “If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.”
This is the ongoing reality that the apostle Paul had in mind when he wrote: “So then, just as you received Christ Jesus as Lord, continue to live your lives in him” (Colossians 2:16). Just as we begin our Christian lives with repentance and faith (Acts 2:38), so Paul says, we must continue – in repentance and faith.
We know that it is the Spirit of God that leads us to initial repentance (Romans 2:4), and as his Spirit continues to live in us (1 Corinthians 3:16) we are continually guided to repentance from ongoing mistakes and sins. The Scriptures are clear that this ongoing repentance is not done to try to earn salvation, but as a natural result of salvation occurring in our lives and our desire to become more and more like God. In other words, we are forgiven our sins through the occurrence of Repentance at the beginning of our Christian lives – but we continue to ask God to forgive us and spare us from the consequences of our sins after that point. Every small “repentance” reaffirms our original “Repentance.”
In reclaiming the concept of ongoing repentance Luther discovered something that every Christian must discover and act on also: that true repentance is not just an inaugural event in our Christian lives, it is also the very basis of our life in Christ from that time forward.
The concept of ongoing lifelong repentance is not a message that is commonly heard in many churches, but it is a message that we need to nail firmly to the doors of our hearts and minds.
Jesus was not the only messianic figure to appear in ancient Palestine. The Jewish people of the first century were waiting for a messiah who would rise up to free them from Roman rule – and a number of seeming messiahs did appear (Acts 5:37). Two of the most important of these supposed messiahs were Simon bar Giora and Simeon bar Kosevah. You may not have heard of these individuals, but for many they were of life and death importance in their day, and their stories carry a message we can all learn from.
Simon bar Giora (died AD 70/71) was probably born during the later life of Jesus or only a few years after Jesus’s death. He was one of the many patriot leaders who emerged in Judea as a result of Roman oppression and misrule, and he eventually rose to prominence as the head of one of the major Judean factions during the First Jewish-Roman War. These patriot leaders gathered large followings and attacked both the Romans and those seen as Roman sympathizers. They appear to have been motivated by religious as well as political concerns and Simon apparently proclaimed liberty for slaves and the oppressed, very likely following Isaiah’s message (Isaiah 61:1) of the Lord’s Anointed who would bring good tidings to the humble and proclaim liberty to the captives – just as Jesus had done (Luke 4:18). But while Jesus did not claim to go beyond this point at his first coming, Simon embraced the following words of the prophecy which were that the anointed would also “proclaim … the day of vengeance of our God” (Isaiah 61:2).
Simon was a physically powerful man, and his victories against the Romans exhibited good leadership and strategic thinking as well. Even the Jewish historian and Roman collaborator Josephus – who clearly hated Simon – was forced to admit that the leader “was regarded with reverence and awe, and such was the esteem in which he was held by all under his command, that each man was prepared even to take his own life had he given the order.” In fact, Simon was acclaimed by the people as their messianic savior, yet when the tide of war turned and the Romans eventually defeated Simon, he was taken to Rome and executed there. In Judea, in the wake of the brutal Roman victory and resulting destruction of the Jewish temple in AD 70, Simon was soon forgotten.
Simeon bar Kosevah – also called bar Kochba – (died AD 135) achieved even greater fame with the Jewish people, convincing them of his anointed status at the time of the Second Jewish-Roman War. This second Jewish rebellion took place sixty years after the first and lasted approximately three years. During that time Bar Kosevah tried to revive the Hebrew language (by then largely replaced by Aramaic and Greek) and to make Hebrew the official language of the Jews as part of his messianic ideology. Although he was widely accepted by many Jews as the messiah who would free them from Roman misrule (he was even said to be the messiah by Akiva, the most famous rabbi of the time), Bar Kosevah also made many enemies. He did not unify the people, and according to the early Christian writer Eusebius, he executed many Christians for their refusal to fight against the Romans.
Bar Kosevah was also not a great military strategist or leader and despite many early victories achieved with an army of over 200,000, his downfall to the Romans was inevitable. After his defeat and death, most Jews soon forgot his messianic status and later Rabbis changed his name – calling him “Bar Koziba,” meaning “Son of the Lie.”
After the disastrous Second Jewish-Roman War, messianic hopes and claims diminished, but when the Jewish Talmud was composed, it made several predictions for the arrival of the messiah, including the year 440 (Sanhedrin 97b) and 471 (Avodah Zarah 9b). Around this time a Jew named Moses of Crete claimed that he was the one the Talmud had predicted. Promising that, like his biblical namesake, he would lead his followers through the water and back to the Promised Land, Moses convinced many of his fellow Jews to leave behind their belongings and march directly into the sea. Moses himself disappeared, but many of his followers drowned. He too was soon forgotten.
But these and other claimed messiahs all teach us something important about the Christian faith. While the death and resurrection of Jesus is often disparaged by cynics and disbelievers as just another messiah story, perpetrated by those who did not want to give up their messianic hopes, it is clearly different. Despite the expectations and whipped up emotions of the followers of the many supposed messiahs, not a single one was believed to have been raised from the dead. The followers of each of these pseudo- messiahs simply accepted their leader had been killed, and their movements disappeared almost overnight. This was not so, of course, with the early Christians who, had they not believed that Jesus had been resurrected, would have simply done the same as the followers of every messianic figure before and after him, and given up.
That the early Christians did not give up their hopes is obviously based on the great many individuals the New Testament tells us were witnesses to the resurrection. As N. T. Wright has written: “We are forced to … account for the fact that a group of first-century Jews, who had cherished messianic hopes and centered them on Jesus of Nazareth, claimed after his death that he really was the Messiah despite the crushing evidence to the contrary” (The Resurrection of the Son of God, p. 562). The followers of no other messiah claimed anything like that. The good news of Christianity is that Christianity is not just another messiah story.
The Bible clearly teaches that sin causes suffering (Deuteronomy 11:26-28; etc.), but does that mean all suffering is caused by sin – as some claim? Even sincere people who are committed to doing what is right can sometimes wonder if they are at fault when things do not go well for them – or even judge others who are experiencing ongoing problems.
There is no question that we do often bring suffering upon ourselves. We all recognize that if we break certain health principles, for example, we will probably suffer as a result. First Peter 4:15 also tells us, “If you suffer, it should not be as a murderer or thief or any other kind of criminal, or even as a meddler” – showing that wrongful behavior of many types can lead to self-induced suffering.
However, that’s not the whole picture. It was the limited understanding of Job’s friends in this regard that caused them to presume he must have done something wrong to be experiencing such pain and misery. But the conclusion of the book of Job shows God’s displeasure with those friends and that Job’s suffering was not really caused by wrongdoing at all (Job 42:7-9).
There is, in fact, a great deal of biblical evidence to show that individuals can and often do suffer as a result of circumstances beyond their control that have nothing to do with their righteousness or lack thereof. Sometimes we suffer as a result of sheer chance. Jesus himself confirmed this in what he told his disciples when they asked about people who had suffered because of political upheaval or physical accidents:
“Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans because they suffered this way? I tell you, no! … Or those eighteen who died when the tower in Siloam fell on them—do you think they were more guilty than all the others living in Jerusalem? I tell you, no!” (Luke 13:2-4).
Jesus continued to explain that such extreme cases should remind us of the uncertain nature of life and the need to repent, if we have not already done so; but he was adamant in stressing that such suffering may be the result of chance rather than sin.
In other cases, the Bible makes it clear that illnesses and other difficulties come upon us and are used by God to ultimately help us – as in the case of the apostle Paul’s “thorn in the flesh” (2 Corinthians 12:7-9) – so this suffering can hardly be seen as being the result of failure on the part of others or ourselves.
There is another section of Scripture, not so well known, that can also encourage us that suffering need not be equated with God’s displeasure. The prophet Jeremiah was given a vision by God regarding the people of Judah – both those who had been carried into captivity in Babylon, and those who had not. In this vision, the people in captivity were symbolized as a basket of good figs, and those who were not taken captive as a basket of bad figs. God then told Jeremiah:
This is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says: ‘Like these good figs, I regard as good the exiles from Judah, whom I sent away from this place to the land of the Babylonians. My eyes will watch over them for their good, and I will bring them back to this land. I will build them up and not tear them down; I will plant them and not uproot them. I will give them a heart to know me, that I am the LORD. They will be my people, and I will be their God, for they will return to me with all their heart.
‘But like the bad figs, which are so bad they cannot be eaten,’ says the LORD, ‘so will I deal with Zedekiah king of Judah, his officials and the survivors from Jerusalem, whether they remain in this land or live in Egypt. I will make them abhorrent and an offense to all the kingdoms of the earth, a reproach and a byword, a curse and an object of ridicule, wherever I banish them. I will send the sword, famine and plague against them until they are destroyed from the land I gave to them and their ancestors.’ (Jeremiah 24:5-10)
From the perspective of those who had escaped captivity, it may have been natural to think that those who had been deported and were now suffering captivity were still the objects of God’s displeasure. In actuality, the opposite was true. Those who had suffered deportation were spared a later, more thorough, destruction and – despite their present suffering – were now closer to God and his favor than those who had not suffered, but who would eventually be punished.
We find scriptures such as these throughout the Bible – showing time and again that suffering is not a sure sign of God’s displeasure. Suffering that comes upon us may happen as a result of time and chance, the actions of others, or simply genetics. The Scriptures warn us to be sure, whenever possible, that we do not suffer as a result of our own foolishness (Psalm 107:17, etc.), and if we find ourselves experiencing ongoing problems, it is always a good idea to reflect on our lives to see if some of those problems are self-induced (Ecclesiastes 7:14). But we should never simply presume that suffering experienced by us or by others is self-caused.
If suffering does come, we should strive, like Job, to trust that God has a purpose in what he allows us to experience. As the apostle Peter assures us: “the God of all grace, who called you to his eternal glory in Christ, after you have suffered a little while, will himself restore you and make you strong, firm and steadfast” (1 Peter 5:10).
You need only compare a color TV with a black and white TV, or an old black and white movie with a more recent color film, to know how much color can add to our visual experience. Now the same can be said of Bibles!
Although “red letter” Bibles – where the words of Jesus are printed in red type – have been made for some time and may be somewhat helpful, they are a bit like black and white TV’s with only one extra color. In the past year or two, however, the world of Bible publishing has been revolutionized by the offering of color-coded Bibles – Bibles in which the text is printed with colored highlighting – in the same way that our Bibles look if we use colored pencils or markers to highlight different scripture topics.
The great advantage of a printed Bible that already has color-coded text, of course, is that the color coding is complete throughout the whole Bible. It saves the reader countless hours of carefully marking up verses – time that can often be better spent reading and reflecting on the word – not to mention the fact that printed colors invariably look better than hand marked ones!
Color-coded Bibles have many other advantages: they help us better understand the organization and key subjects of the biblical text, and they can be especially useful for topical study – reading all the texts highlighted in a single color that marks the theme we are studying. On a passage-by-passage basis this can be important – we often see that there was more to what we read than we had previously thought. Seeing the color-differentiated blocks of text can be a wonderful advantage. It provides a built-in analysis of each passage and helps us to follow the message that is being developed in a given biblical book.
About the only drawback of printed color-coded Bibles (and it is a minor one) is that we must use the color categories that the publisher has chosen. Perhaps we would have chosen different categories or themes. On the other hand, modern color-coded Bibles are produced with up to a dozen or so well-thought-out themes. Additionally, using a slightly different color-coding system than we are used to or might have chosen ourselves can often stimulate us to see things in ways we would not otherwise have done.
A number of color-marked Bibles are now available, but the difference in quality between them can be surprising. The most important aspect of these Bibles, of course, is how well they differentiate key subjects. Some color-coded versions of the Scriptures utilize only a few different colors and are not very helpful as they have to cram too many types of text into each color. Others fail because they do not choose subjects that are truly helpful for study.
The best color-coded versions we have found are the “Rainbow Study Bibles” produced by Holman Bibles. These Bibles are available in the excellent Christian Standard Bible* and also the King James Version and the New International Version at this time. The Rainbow Bibles utilize twelve colors, which allows for an effective differentiation of most types of text, and the subject categories covered by each color are clear and logical. The twelve colors represent: God, discipleship, love, faith, sin, evil, salvation, family, outreach, commandments, history, and prophecy.
As an added bonus, these study Bibles include maps, notes, over 100,000 cross-references, a concordance, a harmony of the Gospels, a reading plan, and other helps. The original translator’s notes are also included under the last verse on each page. They primarily consist of alternate Hebrew and Greek renderings. Refreshingly, the additional material in these Bibles focuses on background information rather than theological speculation.
Finally, the Rainbow Study Bibles are available in both printed and electronic forms, so they allow study of the Scriptures on either the page or the screen, according to preference and need. Overall, we rate them among the best Bibles for personal study available at this time – especially because color really does add to the experience of effective Bible study.
*Download our free E-Book Which Bible Should I Use? How to Choose the Best Translation for Your Needs, here
Earlier this Spring, the Associates for Biblical Research, an American archaeological research group, announced the discovery of a curse text discovered on a small, folded lead tablet that had been found in archaeological excavations in Israel in late 2019. The artifact is of particular interest to readers of the Bible not so much for what its inscribed text says, but for the fact that it contains the earliest instance of the Hebrew name for God – Yahweh – that has ever been found in an archaeological context, and also for its significance regarding the history of Hebrew writing and the Bible itself.
The tablet, which is barely larger than a postage stamp, contains an inscription that is believed to be centuries older than any known Hebrew inscription from ancient Israel. The small international team of scientists studying the artifact employed advanced tomographic scans to recover the text, slowly recovering one after another of the artifact’s written letters. When the text had been completely recovered, the textual specialists could tell that the text reads:
Cursed, cursed, cursed – cursed by the God YHW.
You will die cursed.
Cursed you will surely die.
Cursed by YHW – cursed, cursed, cursed.
This “curse text” was found in discarded material from an archaeological excavation on Mt. Ebal near modern Nablus. Significantly, this was the site, according to Deuteronomy 27 and Joshua 8, where the people of ancient Israel were instructed by God to recite curses on those who did not obey the Law of God. As a result, the site became associated with cursing, and numerous artifacts such as the newly translated tablet were left there in ancient times. Joshua 8:30 tells us that Joshua built an altar on Mt. Ebal and the curse tablet was found in the location where Joshua’s altar is believed to have stood and where its possible remains have been found.
But the new text is tremendously important as it may well represent both the oldest known example of written Hebrew, and also the oldest known example of the Hebrew YHW [or YHWH]– the name for God often transliterated as Yahweh. The find, which predates the famous Dead Sea Scrolls by more than a millennium, is so significant because the text seems to date to the Iron Age I or Late Bronze Age periods – around 1200 BC at the latest, and perhaps as early as 1400 BC or earlier. Either way, this is centuries before the oldest previously known Hebrew texts and instances of the name of God in Hebrew outside the Bible.
This fact strongly argues against those who attempt to date the Bible to much later centuries by claiming that the ancient Hebrews were not literate and that the biblical books were probably not written down till around 700 BC. And it is important to stress that the new text is not only Hebrew writing, but also that it is a sophisticated composition written in a carefully balanced “chiastic parallelism” or crossover style found in many of the biblical writings and often said to be a mark of “developed” writing characteristic of later dates.
The date of the earliest Hebrew inscriptions has, in fact, been continuously pushed back in recent years. A nearly 3,000-year-old inscription called the stele of Mesha in which the king of Moab boasts of his victories against the Kingdom of Israel and its god Yahweh, contained the earliest known extra-biblical mention of the God of the Bible for a number of years after its discovery in 1868.
Since then, even older inscriptions have been found. An inscription found in what is today Sudan, in the temple of Soleb dedicated to the Egyptian god Amon-Re and built by the Pharaoh Amenhotep III (1378-1348 BC), has more recently been seen as the oldest known reference to Yahweh, God of Israel.
The new discovery from Mt. Ebal may be older than even the very early Soleb inscription, and continuing study by a wide range of ancient textual specialists will doubtless help to narrow down its date more precisely.
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