From Priestly Servants to Kingly Sons – Part 3

“Godly dominion can only result from patient endurance and obedience, and, post-fall, this will always entail suffering.”

A guest post by Robert Martinez

Read Part 1 here. Read Part 2 here.

Still buzzing from his confessional high point, Peter finds the turn of events that Jesus now predicts totally unacceptable. But we must ask, ‘Is the kingdom of this new community that Jesus creates via obedient suffering, and the new world that is born through Jesus’ life, death and resurrection, and the life of His ekklesia, in any real sense a triumphal enterprise? A conquest?’ Is there a positive linear correlation between time and conquest, between history and the discipleship of the nations?

In an overall sense, I think we must answer ‘yes!’ The correlation will not be straightforwardly linear, but I believe that, notwithstanding the many historical highs and lows, an overall trend line will, from the vantage point of the end, become clear with an undeniable linear regression, perhaps even exponential regression as history unfolds. I am a convinced postmillennialist and reject the idea that ‘things’ will get worse and worse, for this is not the late, great planet earth! The earth is ‘great’, but I do not believe it is ‘late.’

However, the nations can only be discipled and the world transformed via the Church’s faithful obedience to Christ’s mandate. This requires maturity, and maturity comes through testing and suffering. Remember Noah? Abraham? Joseph? Moses? Job? David? It is this most fundamental aspect of discipleship that now takes centre stage between Jesus and His disciples, and particularly the disciple who has just been pronounced ‘makarios’ (‘blessed’) by the Anointed One.  

Peter’s crescendo of divine illumination quickly turns into a diminuendo of rebuke from Jesus, but not before he tries to set the Son of God straight. For the Messiah of Israel to suffer is unthinkable for this disciple, let alone death at the hands of the Jewish ruling class; so, he attempts to take charge of the situation by castigating his Lord for His apparent muddled thinking! After pulling Jesus aside, Peter rebuked Him, saying, ‘Far be it from you, Lord; this shall not happen to You!’ (Matthew 16:22). ‘Far be it’ translates the Greek word ‘hileos’ found only here and in Hebrews 8:12, where it is translated as ‘merciful,’ referring to God forgiving and forgetting sins. The word seems to carry the idea of ‘putting away’ or ‘expiating.’ Peter, then, is likely suggesting that Jesus is in need of ‘mercy,’ and must immediately do away with this kind of thinking. 

The irony, of course, is that Jesus has come not to receive mercy but to show it to sinners as the very expression of God’s love. Having been aligned with Jesus’ heavenly Father through his confession of Jesus’ identity, Jesus now reveals to Peter that, in seeking to avert His suffering, Peter is in fact in league with Satan! The Father’s revelation to Peter of Jesus’ identity was a prelude to a test, a test designed to prove if Peter and the others truly understood what kind of king Jesus was and what kind of kingdom He was inaugurating. Peter’s well-intentioned efforts to eliminate suffering from Jesus’ tour-of-duty revealed, ironically, a ‘Lamechian’ tendency to violence by inverting priesthood and kingdom. Deviating Jesus from His ordained path of suffering would only serve to perpetuate the ages-long impulse of dealing with sin and conflict with violence. Jesus came not to avoid suffering but to face it head-on and absorb it in toto in Himself. On the cross, Jesus would bring a legal, covenantal and, eventually, historical end to the endless cycle of violence and vengeance as a modus operandi that had characterised the world since Cain and Lamech.  

Peter’s attempt to rebuke his Lord boomerangs on him in a most penetrating way, and Jesus’ language to Peter takes us back to the tempter in the wilderness. Just as Jesus banished Satan from His presence, ‘Away with you, Satan!’ (Matthew 4:10), so now He banishes Peter, identifying him directly with the tempter, ‘Get behind Me, Satan!’ (Matthew 16:23). Peter stands in Jesus’ way as a ‘skandalon,’ an offence, an obstacle, a stumbling block, and shows himself to be totally out of step with the purposes of God. Lacking – for now – the necessary kingly discernment of a true priest-king, Peter is not savouring, testing, and discerning what is necessary at this juncture. He needs to have his mind renewed since he is viewing Jesus from the perspective of men only (Romans 8:5). Instead of constituting, as his name suggests, a foundation stone in God’s new Temple, Peter is now being a rock of offence to his Lord, standing in His way. Following Jesus’ resurrection and subsequent outpouring of the Spirit, Peter and the other disciples would come to reconfigure their whole perception of who Jesus is and how His work and mission were, in fact, the outworking of God’s salvific purposes for Israel and for the world. The disciples must now come to the sober realisation that the glorious revelation of both who Jesus is and what the Church is and is to be must be grounded in the suffering of the Messiah (see Isaiah 52:13-53:12).

Godly dominion can only result from patient endurance and obedience, and, post-fall, this will always entail suffering. It is no accident that at the very heart of Matthew’s Gospel, when Jesus’ identity has been made explicit to His disciples, the indispensability of attaining maturity and glory through priestly obedience becomes a focal point. The book of Hebrews bears this out most clearly in relation to Jesus, who, ‘…in the days of His flesh…was heard because of His godly fear, though He was a Son, yet He learned obedience by the things which He suffered. And having been perfected, He became the author of eternal salvation to all who obey Him…’ (Hebrews 5:7-9). If so for the Son of God, then a fortiori, how much more for His followers! ‘For it was fitting for Him [God]…in bringing many sons to glory, to make the captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings’ (Hebrews 2:10).

Jesus fulfills God’s calling of submissive obedience in a unique way. Yet, the path to be trod by Jesus’ disciples must be patterned on the path He treads, as Jesus now makes clear to His disciples: ‘If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me’ (Matthew 16:24). The paradox of the kingdom of heaven, and of Jesus’ life, is the paradox that must mark the life of every disciple. The glory of kingship is granted only after the necessary suffering endured under priestly obedience. One’s life must be lost before it can be truly found. It must be surrendered in priestly submission before it can be gifted back in kingly glory.

Following Jesus requires ‘denying’ oneself; precisely what Adam and Eve failed to do in the Garden. The word ‘aparnesastho’ (‘let him deny’) is used in this verse and parallel passages in the synoptic Gospels (Mark 8:34; Luke 9:23), and in all four Gospels of Peter’s denial of Jesus (Matthew 26:34-35, 75; Mark 14:30-31, 72; Luke 22:61; John 13:38). Irony follows once more when one considers that Peter, the ‘rock,’ the most forthcoming of all the disciples, will be the one who, instead of denying himself, will ‘deny’ his Lord, not once but thrice. The flip side of denial is confession, and both constitute covenantal acts. Confession of Jesus, in word and deed, is a declaration of allegiance and entails covenantal blessing (Romans 10:9-10; 1 Timothy 6:12), whereas denial of Jesus, in word and deed, constitutes apostasy or blasphemy and always entails covenantal cursing. Earlier in the Gospel, Jesus had already made it clear that whoever puts familial ties ahead of Him ‘is not worthy of [Him]’ (10:34-39), and in Luke’s Gospel Jesus was unambiguous, ‘…whoever confesses Me before men, him the Son of Man also will confess before the angels of God. But he who denies Me before men will be denied before the angels of God’ (Luke 12:8-9). In Matthew, it is confession/denial before men that results in confession/denial ‘before My Father who is in heaven’ (Matthew 10:32-33).

Discipleship, the path of following Jesus from priesthood to become priest-kings, requires that one die to self and follow Jesus into the suffering that His Gospel calls for. The suffering of the cross must be embraced not bypassed. To be completed, matured, the disciples had to be willing to surrender, to lose, that which is most instinctively precious – their lives. The apostle Paul echoes Jesus’ teaching and probably has it in mind when he declares this faithful saying – ‘For if we died with Him (‘whoever loses his life for My sake’), We shall also live with Him (‘will find it’). If we endure (‘let him deny himself, and take up his cross’), We shall also reign (kingship) with Him. If we deny Him (compare Peter’s temporary denials), He also will deny us. If we are faithless, He remains faithful; He cannot deny Himself’ (2 Timothy 2:11-13).

Matthew 16:25	2 Timothy 2:11
‘Whoever loses his life for My sake’	‘If we died with Him’
‘Will find it (his life)’	‘We shall also live with Him’

In John’s heavenly scene, the Lamb (Jesus) is found to be worthy to receive the fullness of kingly blessings: ‘power and riches and wisdom, and strength and honour and glory and blessing!’ (Revelation 5:9, 12) precisely because He was a slain Lamb who had redeemed people to God by [His] blood out of ‘every tribe and tongue and people and nation,’ with the result that those He redeems have been made ‘kings and priests to our God; and these ‘shall reign on the earth’ (Revelation 5:10). Jesus’ complete priestly submission to God, then, not only establishes Him as the true and rightful ‘King of kings and Lord of lords,’ but also creates an ekklesia that is a royal ‘priesthood’ (1 Peter 2:9).

The covenantal structure of Matthew’s Gospel, alluded to earlier, becomes explicit in chapter 16 with regard to the nature of true discipleship. This is manifested in the covenantal layout revealed in Matthew 16:24.

Notice that their ‘Joshua’ conquest is found in bearing Jesus’ cross. This training in discipleship, then, that hinges on transforming priestly subjects into kingly sons via a willingness to suffer, grounded in self-denial and emulation of the path trod by the Son of God, is the antidote, the antithesis, to the seizing and grasping of those ‘having a form of godliness but denying its power’ (2 Timothy 3:5); of those who ‘profess to know God, but in works they deny Him…’ (Titus 1:16). Kingly authority must be preceded by priestly submission; Jesus told His disciples, ‘If anyone desires to be first, he shall be last of all and servant of all’ (Mark 9:35). Jesus continues, ‘For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?’ (Matthew 16:26), almost certainly alluding to His final temptation at the hand of Satan, being offered ‘all the kingdoms of the world and their glory’ but renouncing the offer in preference to submission to His Father.

Jesus has now answered the question: ‘Who constitutes the true priesthood?’ The true priesthood, the ones who can truly be called God’s representatives, are those who have learned to wait on God and thus do not seize power; those who do not take matters into their own hands but rather operate on God’s calendar; those who will not only acknowledge that Jesus is God’s anointed King, but will also follow Him fully into the persevering suffering that His Gospel demands; those who will not put Him to the test, but will bend the knee in submission to all that He has commanded; the one who denies himself, takes up his cross, and follows Jesus.

Discipleship – the divine training that forms priests into priest-kings – is not so much about getting a list of do’s and don’t’s that you mechanically and mindlessly follow. No, discipleship, the movement from priesthood to kingship, is more like learning to ‘improvise’ on a musical instrument. It is having the wisdom, as the fruit of ethical/spiritual training, to instinctively know how to proceed in a new context, in a different situation, to discern what is a wise course of action from a foolish one; to sniff out good from evil, even when it is a subtle difference. In a sense, it is learning to fly by the seat of your pants, but not blindly, since a disciple’s choices will always flow from the apprenticeship and training that have preceded the moment. The confidence gained from past training is not arrogant but vulnerable, and ever more dependent on God – growing in trust, even as one grows in ethical/spiritual stature.

Circling back to the early chapters of Genesis, we find Lamech perverting God’s modus operandi by replacing atonement with vengeance. Heavenly wisdom is replaced with earthly, demonic wisdom. Vengeance subverts God’s program of transformative redemption by making ‘man’ the centre. Estranged from God, ‘man’ wants things his way and when he encounters resistance to his desires, he resorts to violence, which, pre-flood, escalated into vengeful murder and every sinful inclination imaginable (Genesis 6). This is always the pattern that develops when ‘man’ does not submit to heaven. He will not receive anything as a divine gift because his pride insists that he must seize now that which his heart desires. Because he does not ‘delight himself in the Lord’ (Psalm 37:4), his desires are skewed towards his own sinful ‘pleasures’. And so, even when he ‘asks’ he does not receive because he asks ‘amiss’ (James 4:3). Remember Saul asking for guidance from God and being met with divine silence?

Apart from God, man always seeks to deal with conflict, oppression, suffering, broken dreams, unfulfilled longings, strife, via some form of violence; some type of retaliation, both internal and external, that manifests both individually and socially. Individually, it may become evident in one’s speech, as with Job’s wife exhorting him to “Curse God and die!” (Job 2:9) in light of his suffering. A violent heart is usually first revealed in a serpentine tongue that is quick to curse (I know this is the case for me). Jesus said that it is out of the abundance of the heart that the mouth speaks (Luke 6:45), and James reminds us that one can pick out a perfect man (complete/mature) by the fact that he does not stumble in word (James 3:2).

Whether in speech or action or both, without prior submission and obedience to God’s heavenly law, every attempt at earthly dominion will be marked by sin, violence and vengeance. Acts of vengeance are a declaration that one has assumed the place of God: “Beloved, do not avenge yourselves, but rather give place to wrath; for it is written, ‘Vengeance is Mine, I will repay,’ says the Lord” (Romans 12:19; cf. Hebrews 10:30). Where there is vengeance there is no humility, for it is action in opposition to and in defiance of God. James made it clear that everyone must be swift to hear, slow to wrath; for the wrath of man does not produce the righteousness of God (James 3:19-20). The ‘righteousness of God’ is produced when one receives with meekness the implanted word (James 3:21). God’s program for man is one that begins with submission and humility: “…God resists the proud, But gives graced to the humble. Therefore submit to God…Humble yourselves in the sight of the Lord, and He will lift you up” (James 4:6-10).

Without God in the picture, individuals and societies take justice into their own hands, producing cities and kingdoms marked by violence: “Where do wars and fights come from among you? Do they not come from your desires for pleasure that war in your members?” (James 4:1). Violence and vengeance are but the outworking of the inner war that rages in the hearts of all those who will not submit to God.  

I often wondered why the disciples were so often portrayed as fumbling buffoons, not getting the point, even after much repetition and inculcation from Jesus. The more sceptical commentaries will suggest that the disciples are lampooned precisely to highlight and exalt Jesus. In other words, the obfuscated disciples constitute a literary foil that serves to highlight the moral and theological excellencies of the main protagonist, Jesus. This, however, misses the point both theologically and historically. Jesus does not need the disciples to falter so that He can shine. From a covenant-literary angle, the disciples find themselves on a historical-spiritual trajectory as ancient as the first book of the Bible. The disciples fumble and stumble along the way precisely because they are being formed and filled as priest-kings. They are on a road from spiritual childhood to spiritual maturity, from milk to solid food (Hebrews 5:12) – so they might become ‘…of full age, that is, those who by reason of use have their sense exercised to discern both good and evil’ (Hebrews 5:14). The few brief years the disciples trained under their Lord was a time of testing. And, as it was for them, so it must be for us.

An unbelieving world insists on having ‘understanding’ before it can ‘believe.’ It demands proof! ‘Show me the facts!’ it cries. ‘Give me the evidence!’ As if facts and evidence floated free of human interests and presuppositional frameworks. The ‘scientism’ (science-worship) of recent decades is but a secular example of the inversion of the priesthood/kinghood sequence we have been looking at. The biblical emphasis, however, championed by Augustine, is that it is faith/belief that seeks understanding and not vice versa: ‘blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe’ (John 20:29). Instead of viewing science as a divine gift that can expand our vistas of God’s creation, from the subatomic to the telescopic, furthering our reverence and wonder of God’s works, science has been absolutised and idolised to such an extent that it is considered to be practically the ‘only game in town’ when it comes to questions of knowledge (epistemology). Every knowledge claim, it is insisted, must be judged at the bar of scientific dogma. While claiming to be open and correctable, in practice, it proceeds more as a comprehensive worldview system that presupposes philosophical materialism and methodological naturalism. Consider, for example, the works of the ‘new atheists,’ now happily being dismantled by many and exposed as little more than godless reductionism. 

Another such inversion, animated by a similar hubris to that which characterises scientism, is the scepticism and lack of hermeneutical patience demonstrated by many in the biblical guild, whereby biblical texts are shoe-horned into pre-established or presupposed doctrinal/theological systems in the service of teachings and beliefs that may be quite skewed and unbiblical. A result of such impatience is the kind of scepticism that plagues biblical interpretation, often confusing intentional architectural artistry on the part of the author for clumsy editorial work on the part of the so-called redactor(s). 

As an example of such biblical reductionism, consider the feedings of the 5000 (Matthew 14:13-21) and then the 4000 (Matthew 15:32-38). Many interpreters see unnecessary duplication of what they consider to be two diverging accounts of the same event. In their estimation, the redactor(s) felt compelled to include both accounts since they didn’t want to leave anything out! So, some impromptu cutting-and-pasting was called for. Not so! A covenant-literary hermeneutic easily reveals these to be two distinct events, each theologically supplementing the unfolding narrative of Jesus’ mission and that of the emerging Church that developed from Jesus’ immediate disciples. 

Without delving into much detail, the two ‘feedings’ instantiate the double witness required by Mosaic law. The feeding of the 5000 focuses on Israel: there are five loaves and two fish – the five loaves recall David’s request for bread from Ahimelech the priest, while he and his men were on the run from King Saul (1 Samuel 21). David, a priest-king in development, asked for five loaves of bread to feed a persecuted ‘true Israel’ in miniature – himself and his merry band of faithful followers. Earlier in His ministry, Jesus Himself, being challenged by the Pharisees on account of His disciples’ plucking heads of grain to eat on the Sabbath, refers to the ‘David’ episode in 1 Samuel, not only to defend and render His disciples undefiled – just as David had done with his men – but also to declare that ‘One’ greater than the temple was here.

Jesus proceeds to feed the multitude through the disciples. Mark has Jesus ‘group’ the multitude in ‘ranks, in hundreds and in fifties’ (Mark 6:39-40). This language of numbered ranks can be traced back to Exodus 18 and Deuteronomy 1, where Moses selects able and wise men to be rulers and judges over the people. In the feeding of the 5000, Jesus is the new Moses, not simply feeding a multitude of hungry folk but organising the people under Him as an assembly/army of sorts. The text is specific and deliberate in noting that ‘about 5000 men’ were fed ‘besides women and children.’ The text tells us that ‘twelve baskets full of fragments remained.’ The numbers are not insignificant. The typology indicates that Israel is in view—an Israelite army.

The multitude continued with Jesus for three days (a death and resurrection cycle), without food, and He had compassion on them. This was a time of testing. Mark lets us know that this second feeding takes place in the ‘Decapolis’ (Mark 7:31), so we are now in Gentile territory. Geography, again, is part of the theological message. Having fed the multitude in Jewish territory, Jesus now feeds a multitude in Gentile land to indicate that, through His followers, He will feed all nations. Here, again, we see a movement from land (Israel) to world (nations).

 The numbers, once more, are important. Seven baskets are collected to highlight the totality of the nations. If, as seems likely, the seven baskets provide the anti-typical hyperlink to Joshua’s seven Gentile nations when he entered the land, then we have here not only powerful symbolism of the gospel going out to all the world, but also an allusion to the conquest of the nations under Joshua: “When the Lord your God brings you into the land which you go to possess, and has cast out many nations before you, the Hittites and the Girgashites and the Amorites and the Canaanites and the Perizzites and the Hivites and the Jebusites, seven nations greater and mightier than you…” (Deuteronomy 7:1; cf. Acts 13:19). Fittingly, Matthew’s Gospel ends with the new and true Joshua (Jesus the Messiah) commissioning His emerging assembly/army to conquer the nations through the baptism and discipleship obligated by His gospel (Matthew 28:18-20).

And, so, far from displaying undisciplined editorialising that has turned a single event into two divergent and conflicting accounts, the two feeding stories reveal both literary-theological artistry and covenantal development in the unfolding drama of redemption. The two feedings anticipate and speak to a unified community under the King of kings and Lord of lords, who conquers and feeds the world with the bread that He Himself is (John 6:32-35).

The wise king knows that God has made everything beautiful in its time (Ecclesiastes 3:11). It is the glory of God to conceal a matter, but the glory of kings is to search out a matter (Proverbs 25:2). In our training as disciples of Jesus, God has put us in a sort of theological Easter egg hunt. The search requires patience and perseverance, and as we discover more theological eggs we begin to see a pattern in the architecture of where and how the eggs are placed, a pattern that inspires confidence and trust as one moves into an unknown future.

The psalmist(s), contemplating a seemingly bleak horizon, often throw themselves on God’s mercy, pleading His covenantal faithfulness (‘hesed’) in utter despair. Their desperate pleas are vitally connected to this essay’s central thesis: God will often bring us, as He did them, to the end of ourselves to fashion us into the faithful priests who are subsequently qualified to receive His gifts as wise priest-kings. It is only then that we will not misuse those gifts, avoiding the inevitable idolatry involved in premature grasping, and be able to exercise the kingly dominion that God always intended, and intends, for us. 

I once knew a good-looking, talented and capable, Christian young man who resented the fact that, seemingly everyone his age around him was finding marriage partners and he was not. His parents advised him, wisely I think, that while his desires were totally valid and commendable the need of the hour was to focus on others in priestly service while patiently waiting on God to provide his needs in His time. He, however, was convinced that he couldn’t really focus on others in this way – though he wanted to – until he had the marriage platform that he deemed necessary to focus on God’s kingdom. This young man’s modus operandi illustrates the subtle inversion that Scripture highlights and warns against through repeated examples, as we have seen, where one insists on partaking of the ‘fruit’ without the necessary ‘cultivation’ and preparatory work that must precede it. While we must, as Christians, strive to be pastorally sensitive to the legitimate needs and desires of God’s people, we must issue caution against using ministry and church life as a cover for prioritising one’s own personal aspirations at the expense of bending the knee to God and His kingdom. In short, we must all take care to not put the cart before the horse. As the saying goes, ‘No pain, no gain’ – so, too, ‘No priestly submission, no kingly dominion.’