Luke 6: A Verse (or Two) at a Time

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jimkenney12 said:
Blessed you who are hungry for you will be filled.
This might be about food and is an assurance they will be fed. It might be about the hunger he will fill with his words.

Blessed are you who weep... As long as we persevere, there almost always comes a time for laughter.
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Jesus might have been inspired by Ecclesiastes when he spoke of blessings and woes. There is a time for everything, right?
 
paradox3 said:
Jesus might have been inspired by Ecclesiastes when he spoke of blessings and woes. There is a time for everything, right?
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Interesting thought. I keep wanting to do Ecclesiastes for BPoTW but never seem to get there. We haven't had one in a while so maybe I'll try for next weekend. Though this thread is kind of filling that role for now and I hate to distract too much from it.
 
"Blessed are the poor" probably reflects the self-identification of the Jesus community rather than an economically deprived segment of it. The Jerusalem apostles asked Paul to "remember the poor" (Gal. 2:10--i. e. the Jerusalem church as a whole, not just the poor within it, and Paul complied by raising a large collection from his Gentile churches. That is the view of many NT scholars. Why?

The label "Christian" is first applied by outsiders at Antioch. Apart from that, Jesus followers are labelled 'Nazarenes," "the Way" (Acts 9:2; 19:8, 23), and the Poor, better known as "the Ebionites (from the Hebrew ebionim," which means "the poor.") This early Christian movement was probably given their name by Jesus because His greatest pool of followers came from the poor. The label probably stuck because the early Jerusalem church was forced to live as a shared commune, because of all the transplanted Galileans who migrated to Jerusalem without jobs to be part of the Jerusalem church. In the early 2nd century one of "the poor" wrote a Jewish Christian Gospel, called the Gospel of the Poor ("Ebionites"), which has survived only in fragments.

Many of the later Ebionites rejected the divinity and virgin birth of Jesus and instead revered Him as "The Prophet like Moses" prophesied in Deut.18:15-20. They believed that Jesus was "adopted" as God's son by His baptism. As vegetarians, they taught that Jesus rejected all animal sacrifices and they rejected Jesus' substitutionary atoning sacrifice. So they considered Paul "the enemy." Instead they insisted that Jesus died as a martyr to move Israel to repentance. Dismissed as heretics by other Christians and Jews, they died out by the end of the 4th century.
 
Mendalla said:
Interesting thought. I keep wanting to do Ecclesiastes for BPoTW but never seem to get there. We haven't had one in a while so maybe I'll try for next weekend. Though this thread is kind of filling that role for now and I hate to distract too much from it.
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We could probably handle both :)

I am not sure how long this thread will run but I don't think it will go all the way to Easter. I have been doubling up on some of the verses when it makes sense content-wise.
 
paradox3 said:
He doesn't specify who he means by the poor (v20). We think of the financially impoverished but Jesus might be using a broader definition.
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verse 20 --my view

Matthew 5:3–123 Blessed are the poor in spirit:

I think he is repeating the Beatitudes ----so the poor here are the poor in Spirit -----which are thoses who are empty of arrogance and those who regard themselves as insignificance ----the kingdom of God is theirs ----

paradox3 said:
Nor does Jesus tell us what he means by the kingdom of God. Does it exist in another dimension at the present time? Is it a utopian view of the future?
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I think it refers to both present and the future -----as the Kingdom of God is at hand for those who want it -----and those who have the the present Christ indwelling in them --they will be receive in the Future Kingdom of God -----which is heaven ----


verse 21 my view

Blessed are you who hunger now,
for you will be satisfied.

The hunger is the Hunger for Righteousness ----

Matthew 5:6
NIV
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.

This is actively seeking right standing with God and you will be completely satisfied ---your sin burden will be erased and you are refreshed in God's Grace ------and God's Blessings are open to you -----

NIV
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.
 
Hi everyone. We have a doozie for today! Here is Luke 6: 22-23
www.biblegateway.com

Bible Gateway passage: Luke 6:22-23 - New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition

“Blessed are you when people hate you and when they exclude you, revile you, and defame you on account of the Son of Man. Rejoice on that day and leap for joy, for surely your reward is great in heaven, for that is how their ancestors treated the prophets.
www.biblegateway.com www.biblegateway.com
Jesus is warning his followers about the cost of discipleship. But they are to feel blessed when they are hated, reviled, excluded and defamed. Wow!!! They will get their reward in heaven.

What has put this in Jesus's mind, do you think? Is he more of an extremist than Luke's Gospel has revealed so far? Quite frankly, he is sounding more like a cult leader than a religious Jew.

Did Jesus really say these words? Or did the author of Luke/ Acts put them in his mouth? Is the writer using a literary device to forecast the persecution of the early Christians we will see in Acts?

Any guesses on who the prophets of old might be?
 
It kind of makes sense. He also talks about causing conflict with his teachings in Matthew 10: 34-36 and that would mean that being faithful to him could bring on hate. Or maybe it's a way of encouraging his followers, knowing that they will face hatred, with a 1st century CE version of Taylor's Swift's "Haters gonna hate, hate, hate, hate, hate."
 
paradox3 said:
The verse in Matthew about not bringing peace but a sword has always puzzled me.
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I read it as being about Jesus stirring up s***. His teachings cannot be followed without creating conflict with those who reject them. Or he is coming to radically change the world and that will create conflict, not peace, at least at the beginning. And the hatred kind of aligns with that, too. Following me and trying to change the world my way will attract hatred (and did).
 
Against this backdrop, it's interesting to consider I grew up in a time and place where Christianity was the default faith position. It was practiced at least culturally by everyone I knew.
 
OTOH, the process of Christianity becoming that default faith position certainly had it's share of conflict and hatred, though Christianity ended up being guilty of a fair bit of the latter.
 
Yup
To say nothing of conflict between different branches of Christianity.

I was just reflecting that I have never personally experienced hatred based on my faith. These days it might be perceived as a bit of an oddity but that's all.
 
paradox3 said:
Yup
To say nothing of conflict between different branches of Christianity.

I was just reflecting that I have never personally experienced hatred based on my faith. These days it might be perceived as a bit of an oddity but that's all.
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Nor have I. And, to be honest, much of the alleged "hatred of Christianity" we hear certain segments b****ing about is really just them grieving and fighting against the end of Christianity's dominance. While there are certainly some non-Christians who express hate of Christianity, a lot more are just seeking a more level playing field in society.
 
Mystic said:
A disrespectful comment about early Christians who paid the ultimate price for their faith! Like Stephen (who took care of widows) and Jesus' brother James who were both stoned to death and John's brother James who was beheaded.
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I wasn't talking about those early Christians at all. I was talking about the statement Jesus makes in the Sermon on The Plain. It is early in His ministry and he has just settled on the twelve disciples.

The question for me is why he taking about his followers being hated, excluded reviled and defamed at this point?

It could be a prophecy, of course. That is one possibility.
 
paradox3 said:
I wasn't talking about those early Christians at all. I was talking about the statement Jesus makes in the Sermon on The Plain. It is early in His ministry and he has just settled on the twelve disciples.

The question for me is why he taking about his followers being hated, excluded reviled and defamed at this point?

It could be a prophecy, of course. That is one possibility.
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Of course, it was a prophecy because Jesus was a prophet, who even prophesied the martyrdom of James and John.
So why did you disrespect Jesus and His followers for being willing to pay the ultimate price for their faith?
btw, The Jewish work "The Lives of the Prophets" from the first century documents the martyrdom of most of the OT prophets.
So Jesus hardly stands in the tradition of a "cult."
 
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