Author: Christopher R Smith

The Rev. Dr. Christopher R. Smith is an an ordained minister, a writer, and a biblical scholar. He was active in parish and student ministry for twenty-five years. He was a consulting editor to the International Bible Society (now Biblica) for The Books of the Bible, an edition of the New International Version (NIV) that presents the biblical books according to their natural literary outlines, without chapters and verses. His Understanding the Books of the Bible study guide series is keyed to this format. He was also a consultant to Tyndale House for the Immerse Bible, an edition of the New Living Translation (NLT) that similarly presents the Scriptures in their natural literary forms, without chapters and verses or section headings. He has a B.A. from Harvard in English and American Literature and Language, a Master of Arts in Theological Studies from Gordon-Conwell, and a Ph.D. in the History of Christian Life and Thought, with a minor concentration in Bible, from Boston College, in the joint program with Andover Newton Theological School.

How can believers in Jesus do even greater things than he did?

Q. If Jesus is God and is so powerful that he can even raise people from the dead, what does it mean when he says that people who believe in him will do “even greater” things than he does? (John 14:12, “Whoever believes in me will do … even greater things than these.”)

The works that believers in Jesus do are not greater in power than the works that Jesus did on earth, they are greater in glory. See the fuller context of the statement that Jesus made about this: “Very truly I tell you, whoever believes in me will do the works I have been doing, and they will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father. And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Father may be glorified in the Son.”

While Jesus was on earth, his glory was veiled. It was possible to witness his miracles and claim, as some of the Pharisees did (absurdly, as Jesus pointed out), that he was doing them by the power of Beelzebub, the prince of demons. And even those who recognized correctly that Jesus did his miracles by the power of God did not always understand who he was. Matthew tells us in his gospel, for example, that when Jesus healed a paralytic, “When the multitudes saw it, they marveled and glorified God, who had given such power to men.” They thought that Jesus was only a human being. (And it is true that Jesus did his miracles not as God omnipotent, but as someone who had emptied himself of such divine attributes when he became a human being. As such, he was completely dependent on God and yielded to God, and so a perfect channel for the Holy Spirit’s power.)

Nicodemus said to Jesus, “We know that you are a teacher who has come from God, for no one could perform the miraculous signs that you do unless God was with him.” So Jesus’ miracles attested that God had sent him and was empowering him. But these miracles did not necessarily disclose that Jesus was the Son of God, come to earth as the Savior.

However, when Jesus’ followers starting doing works in his name after his resurrection, people were amazed that someone whom they knew had died was nevertheless still doing miracles when people called upon him. The apostle Peter, for example, said to a paralyzed man named Aeneas in the city of Lydda, “Aeneas, Jesus Christ heals you,” and Aeneas got right up! So the miracles that Jesus’ followers did were greater in glory than the miracles Jesus did on earth because those later miracles attested to the fact that God had raised Jesus from the dead, beginning a new age in redemptive history, and that the resurrected Jesus was doing great works to confirm the message that his followers were proclaiming about him. So the miracles of Jesus’ followers glorified him in a way that Jesus’ own miracles on earth did not, and in that sense they were greater.

This is a challenge and an opportunity for all believers in Jesus to call upon him to do things in our lives today that will glorify him as the resurrected and exalted Son of God.

Will God really give us anything we ask for if we ask in Jesus’ name?

Q. Did Jesus give believers a “blank check” to ask for anything they want from God, so long as they ask it in Jesus’ name, when he said “You may ask me for anything in my name, and I will do it” in John 14:14?

When Jesus spoke of his “name,” he meant much more than the word by which he was called.

Jesus’ name means, for one thing, his reputation. So to ask for something in Jesus’ name means to ask for it in order to advance Jesus’ reputation and purposes in the world.

Jesus’ name also means his person. So to ask for something in Jesus’ name means to ask for what Jesus would ask for if he were in our situation.

I think that if our request meets those two tests, then we can be confident that God will grant it. Indeed, it will likely have been the Holy Spirit who will have given us the desire to seek something that would advance the cause of Jesus and reflect his character.

Suppose I told you that I was going to be dealing with a certain organization and you replied, “Oh, they know me well there, just mention my name.” If I did that, I could expect that the organization would treat me just as favorably as they would treat you, knowing you well. But I should not expect that I could ask them for something unreasonable or unfair or something that was inconsistent with your character. The use of your name would be a privilege that I should be careful not to abuse.

So what Jesus said was in one sense a blank check, in that God does want us to ask with godly ambition for things that will advance the reputation and purposes of Jesus and reflect his character. But we do not have a blank check simply to say the name “Jesus” and expect that God will give us anything and everything we ask for, particularly not things that we ask for out of selfish or vainglorious ambitions.

If success makes us feel that God loves us, does that mean God does not love those who fail?

Q. I am certain Jesus loves me, and I love Him. After all, I am His creation and He made the ultimate sacrifice for me. That said, have we taken that concept too far as Western Christians? Have we assumed too much when it comes to how much Jesus loves each of us “personally”? Have we become too arrogant or prideful in our assumption?

Frequently an athlete will say after a win,”I thank Jesus for this win,” which is great, but what about the losing competitor? Are we assuming that Jesus does not love them as much?

Some time ago I heard a lady tell the story of how she missed an airplane flight and she was glad the Lord had caused her to do so because the plane went down and all the passengers were killed. It appeared to me that she made the assumption that Jesus loved her more than the other 200-plus folks who made the connection.

Is this taking our understanding of Jesus’s love for each of us personally too far? In other words, have we in this day and age misinterpreted God’s love for us individually and become arrogant, like James and John who requested that they alone were loved so much that they should be seated on the throne next to Jesus?

I certainly agree with you that when good things happen to us or bad things don’t happen to us, we tend to feel gratitude toward God and a sense that God loves us. I also agree with you that there are the troubling implications that perhaps God does not love people as much for whom good things do not happen or bad things do happen.

So there is another way to look at it. We could say that the gratitude we feel towards God is actually a recognition of his character as a loving, gracious, generous, and merciful God, and that any success or mercy we might experience triggers this recognition in us. But the success is actually the result of the hard work and perseverance of someone to whom God has given talents and ambition (for which they should genuinely be grateful to God), while failure or tragedy are misfortunes that happen to people in a world that God has created with a moral framework but in which God does not determine every specific event. If a person is spared a misfortune, direct divine intervention may not have been involved, but that person should nevertheless take the experience to heart and resolve before God, with gratitude, to make the best use of the time they will still have in this life.

This would avoid the unfortunate implications of the first view. However, perhaps it removes God too much from the picture. So I would actually recommend a third view. It is generally the same as the second view, except it allows for the possibility of direct divine intervention in particular cases, for God’s sovereign purposes. In those cases, the recipient of the blessing or mercy could well recognize it as coming directly from God, but others looking on would not necessarily have the benefit of that insight. So in such cases I would recommend being just as careful as we would be under the second view. We would not say in public, “I’m convinced that God spared my life for a purpose,” if there were others who were not spared.

I think the principle that applies is, “What you believe about these things, keep between yourself and God.” So, for example, if you are a young athlete who wins an important tennis match, you could thank God for the gifts of health and strength. But also be sure to congratulate your opponent on his or her excellent play and say what a pleasure and privilege it was to compete with him or her. And do not attribute your victory to direct divine intervention!

How did the shepherds know where to find baby Jesus?

Q. A few years ago I browsed the internet with many questions surrounding the biblical accounts of the nativity. One question I had was “How did the shepherds know where to go to find the newborn Jesus?” It was then I came across the proposition that he was born at Migdal Eder, also called “The Tower of the Flock” in Micah 4:8. I found the concept compelling due to the history of special type of shepherding that took place in Bethlehem at the time of Jesus birth. What are your thoughts about the possibility of this being where Jesus was born?

You are referring to an interpretation that a commentator named Alfred Edersheim offered of Micah 4:8, “And you, O tower of the flock, hill of the daughter of Zion, to you shall it come, the former dominion shall come, kingship for the daughter of Jerusalem.” There is a “tower of the flock” mentioned in Genesis 35:21, and Edersheim assumed that it still existed in the time of Jesus. He inferred from a reference in the Mishnah that sheep destined for temple sacrifices were raised and tended there, and so he saw symbolic significance in the location and suggested that Jesus had been born there.

However, this interpretation is not accepted by most biblical scholars. It is unknown whether the tower mentioned in Genesis still existed in Jesus’ day. In any event, the Mishnah reference simply specifies the radius around Jerusalem within which found sheep were to be considered temple sacrifices, using Migdal Eder (the location, not necessarily a tower by that name) to specify the distance. We do not need to infer from this that this was a place where temple sheep were raised and kept.

For his part, Micah seems only to be describing Jerusalem figuratively as the “tower of the flock,” that is, the city that watches over the people of Israel as God’s flock. Micah is promising that the kingship will return to Jerusalem. Christians believe that this promise was fulfilled with the coming of Jesus. But we do not need to conclude from the prophecy that Jesus was born at or near a tower by that name that still existed in his day.

So how did the shepherds find the baby Jesus? The angel who appeared to them told them how. He said, “This will be a sign to you: You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.” The shepherds would have known where the various animal feeding locations were in Bethlehem, and they just had to go from one to another until they found a baby, wrapped up as a newborn, in one of the mangers.

What evidence is there for the divine inspiration of the New Testament?

Q. What solid evidence is there for the divine inspiration of the New Testament other than alleged statements by Peter and Paul? Who gave them the authority to make such a declaration of divinity?

The divine inspiration of the New Testament is something that Christians accept by faith. If we believe in Jesus, we believe in the writings that testify about Jesus. That does not require the same kind of evidence that something would that we wanted to accept by reason.

Nevertheless, something we accept by faith should be reasonable. Faith and reason are two complementary ways of knowing the truth. While each understands a different aspect of the truth, their findings should be compatible.

And we can observe that the New Testament provides a reasonable account of how the trajectory of God’s redemptive work traced in the Old Testament reaches an intrinsically appropriate culmination in the life, teachings, sacrificial death, and resurrection of Jesus and in the way of life of the community of his followers. In other words, the New Testament reasonably is what we would expect it to be if it were divinely inspired. That does not convince us that it is, it reassures us that it is, once we already accept that by faith.

We would also expect the New Testament writers to be aware of this inspiration, and they are, as you note. And if the New Testament is indeed inspired, then that is what gives the writers the authority to declare that it is. Admittedly that is circular. But as one of my theology professors once said, “The only way to do theology is in a circle. The issue is how you get onto the circle.”

For many people, the problem in getting onto the circle is recognizing that faith is indeed as legitimate a way of knowing as reason. Along those lines, I find the following quotation from Blaise Pascal helpful. He was one of the most brilliant mathematicians who ever lived, so he certainly knew how to think reasonably and logically. But his genius also gave him the insight to realize that, as he put it, “The ultimate task of reason is to recognize that there is an infinite number of things that surpass it.” Specifically, there are divine realities that surpass human reason but that we can nevertheless access through the faculty of faith.

Now the capacity for faith is also the capacity for doubt. Anything that must be known by faith can also be doubted. But that is not a bad thing. By working through our doubts, we strengthen our faith. There is a difference between doubt and skepticism. Skeptics begin with the stance that they are not inclined to believe. People who doubt want to believe.

Your question is certainly a legitimate one. I hope you will continue to pursue it, and I hope you will do so as a doubter, not as a skeptic.

Did David ever seek God’s guidance about marriage?

Q. King David sought the Lord consistently in battles. However, I don’t know of any time he sought the Lord about anything to do with his wives. Did he and I’m not finding it?

You’re right that David sought God’s guidance about how he should protect his people by fighting against their enemies. In fact, he did this in a way that is exemplary for us. In one instance, the Philistines attacked Israel and, with God’s guidance, David attacked them directly and defeated them and drove them off. Later the Philistines returned and attacked Israel at the very same place. Many of us would probably assume that if God wanted us to attack directly the last time, we should also do so this time. But David sought God’s guidance again, and God told him, “Do not go straight up, but circle around behind them.” Following this guidance, David once again defeated the Philistines, this time definitively.

It would be good if David had been just as diligent in seeking God’s guidance about marriage, but he was not. As you say, we cannot find any place in Scripture that describes David asking God about this. David married Michal, the daughter of King Saul, even though she appears to have been an idol-worshiper rather than someone devoted to God as David was. Michal later showed that she indeed did not share David’s devotion to God when she criticized him for dancing exuberantly before the Lord as he brought the tabernacle into Jerusalem.

In addition, before he became king, David married two other women, Abigail and Ahinoam, but there is no indication that he sought God about this. And after he became king, David married more wives, including at least one who was the daughter of another king, so he may have been making marriage alliances. But once again the Bible says nothing about David seeking God’s guidance. And we know from the rest of David’s story what great trouble came about because of the rivalry between the sons of David’s various wives. Some of this may have been due to the influence of the wives themselves, if they did not inculcate godly character and values in their sons.

The issue you raise is very important. My late wife and I ministered directly to college and university students for 25 years. We served churches next to schools, and then in our 50s we became front-line campus staff. (Lots of adventures to tell about there!) From our sad observations, we had to warn students that nothing was more likely to undermine their effectiveness in God’s service or even turn them away from the Lord than getting involved in a relationship with someone who was not devoted to God as they were. But the desire to love and be loved is so strong that many people are likely to get involved in such relationships unless they are committed to doing nothing except what God clearly directs them to do.

In other words, a Christian should only marry someone as an act of obedience to God. Certainly, if things are as they should be, this will be joyful and enthusiastic obedience! But this must be the principle. If God says no, then the answer is no.

Remember the promise of Jesus: “Everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or wife or children or fields for my sake will receive a hundred times as much and will inherit eternal life.” In this context, I would take “leaving wife” to mean not marrying someone if God says no, and “a hundred times as much” to mean potentially finding a much better match later on if we obey God in that way.

To quote the apostle Paul, “I say this for your own benefit, not to lay any restraint upon you, but to secure your undivided devotion to the Lord.”

Is the house of David good, and how is Jesus a part of it?

Q. Is the house of David good, and how is Jesus a part of it?

The expression “house of David” has several figurative meanings in the Bible.

It can mean, first of all, the descendants of David. That is what the expression means when the Bible says that “Jonathan made a covenant with the house of David.” Jonathan, David’s friend, made a covenant with him that he would always help and protect his descendants, and David promised the same thing to Jonathan. That is also what the expression means when Luke uses it to describe Joseph as a descendant of David: He says that Joseph “belonged to the house and line of David.”

The “house of David” can also mean all the people over whom David ruled as king. That is how the Bible uses the expression as it describes how David and his supporters fought against Ish-Bosheth, the son of Saul, to see who would be confirmed as king: “The war between the house of Saul and the house of David lasted a long time.”

But most often the expression refers to the royal dynasty of David, that is, the line of kings descended from David who succeeded him on the throne of Israel and then Judah. For example, a prophet said at one point, “A son named Josiah will be born to the house of David.” This meant, “A son named Josiah will be born in the line of succession in David’s royal dynasty.” God himself used the word “house” to mean “dynasty” when he told David, “The Lord declares to you that the Lord himself will establish a house for you: When your days are over and you rest with your ancestors, I will raise up your offspring to succeed you.”

At a certain point the kingdom that David ruled ceased to exist on earth. However, since God had promised to David, “Your house and your kingdom will endure forever before me; your throne will be established forever,” the people of God expected that God would send a descendant of David—the Messiah—to re-establish his kingdom.

And Christians believe that Jesus is that Messiah. He is part of the “house of David” specifically by being a descendant of David (reckoned through his legal father Joseph) who came to claim the throne of David and re-establish his kingdom. The angel Gabriel told Mary, the mother of Jesus, “The Lord God will give him the throne of his father David.” The crowds on the first Palm Sunday greeted Jesus by saying, “Blessed is the coming kingdom of our father David!” They did not understand exactly how Jesus would renew David’s kingdom—Jesus did that in a spiritual sense, at least initially—but they understood correctly that he was the one would would do it.

So the house of David is good. It is ultimately the Messiah, the supreme successor of David’s dynasty, who will bring his rule of justice and peace to earth. And Jesus is part of the house of David by being that successor, the Messiah. He is already ruling in heaven with effects on earth, and we look forward to his return to establish justice and peace definitively throughout the earth.

Why did God let Saul keep ruling, and why did Saul’s army hunt an innocent man?

Q. Why did God allow King Saul’s rule to continue so long after He withdrew from Saul? Also, why would King Saul’s army willingly hunt to kill an innocent man?

We don’t know precisely how long Saul ruled after God’s Spirit withdrew from him, but it does seem to have been a period of some years. Perhaps the simple answer to the question of why God allowed Saul to continue to reign is that time was required to prepare David to be a better kind of king than Saul had been. During his years serving Saul, first as a court musician and then as an army commander, and during the years when he was  fleeing from Saul, David had the opportunity to gain much experience and learn many lessons that enabled him to be a better king. Unfortunately there seem to have been some lessons that David failed to learn or forgot, but overall he made Israel much more the kind of place God wanted it to be than Saul did.

This may be best illustrated by the answer to your second question. When Saul, out of jealousy, first told his son Jonathan (the crown prince) and his commanders to kill David, Jonathan defended David and so Saul agreed not to kill him. But Saul soon became jealous and murderous again. It seems that, without telling Jonathan, he wanted his commanders to kill David, but they did not cooperate. However, a foreigner named Doeg the Edomite told Saul that the priests at the city of Nob had helped David, and so Saul went there and had Doeg kill all the priests and their entire families.

This seems to have been the beginning of a reign of terror. The implication was that Saul would also kill the entire family of anyone else who helped David. (This might explain why Nabal, for example, would do nothing for David, although his bad character alone may be sufficient to explain that.) We learn later in the Bible that Saul had also killed many people from a tribe that the Israelites had sworn to leave peacefully alone. Saul did that in order to take their land.

So we can imagine that Saul’s soldiers and commanders feared for their own lives and for the safety of their families and that is why they pursued David, even though they knew that he was innocent. When a person in power is bent on doing wrong, unfortunately that leads many people who are under that person’s power to do wrong as well.

While David was guilty of his own sins against Uriah and Bathsheba through the abuse of his kingly power, he certainly did not have a reign of terror as Saul did. For the most part the Israelites under his reign were free from oppression and enjoyed a time of peace and prosperity during which they worshiped the true God. That is why the Bible uses David as the standard by which it measures all subsequent kings. The book of Kings, recorded by the prophets in Israel, puts it this way: “David had done what was right in the eyes of the Lord and had not failed to keep any of the Lord’s commands all the days of his life—except in the case of Uriah the Hittite.” And as I said before, perhaps it was to give David time to develop into this kind of king that God allowed Saul to stay on the throne for several more years.

Did God agree to a suggestion to give Saul a depressing spirit?

Q. Is their a description of a meeting, presumably in heaven, in which King Saul is discussed? God’s present but is letting subordinates talk and make suggestions. None of the suggestions are acceptable to God until one participant declares that he would give Saul a depressing spirit. God likes this idea and the matter is settled.

I believe you are thinking of two Scripture passages at once. There is a passage in 1 Kings much like the one you describe, except that the discussion is about King Ahab. The prophet Micaiah tells Ahab:

“I saw the Lord sitting on his throne with all the multitudes of heaven standing around him on his right and on his left. And the Lord said, ‘Who will entice Ahab into attacking Ramoth Gilead and going to his death there?’

“One suggested this, and another that. Finally, a spirit came forward, stood before the Lord and said, ‘I will entice him.’

“‘By what means?’ the Lord asked.

“‘I will go out and be a deceiving spirit in the mouths of all his prophets,’ he said.

“‘You will succeed in enticing him,’ said the Lord. ‘Go and do it.’

“So now the Lord has put a deceiving spirit in the mouths of all these prophets of yours. The Lord has decreed disaster for you.”

There is another Scripture passage, in 1 Samuel, about the Lord sending a depressing spirit to Saul, but it says simply:

“Now the Spirit of the Lord had left Saul, and the Lord sent a tormenting spirit that filled him with depression and fear.”

So I hope that answers your question about whether there was a meeting in heaven about what to do about Saul, who had disobeyed God. The meeting was actually about Ahab, who had also disobeyed God and who was, in fact, one of the most wicked kings Israel ever had.

Each passage raises further questions, however. How could God make use of lying or deception? And how could God send someone depression? I discuss these questions in these other posts, which I invite you to read:

Does God let us use deception for a good cause? (Part 3)

Did God really send an evil spirit to torment Saul?

Should I stay in an “ungodly” relationship if the other person is learning about Christ through me?

Q. I’m conflicted about something. My spirit is torn about it—confused. So, I met this lady while I was still had the power of the world controlling my thoughts and and decision. But I have come to a place where I have a better and intimate relationship with God. She seems motivated my the steps I have been taking in getting closer to God and doing the same. Mind you, we started off as an ungodly relationship. I don’t know what to do, given that I’m more developed in the walk than she is. I teach her the gospel as well, which I really love doing. It helps keep me in check as well. I guess what I really want to know is do I end this relationship or continue. We’re both in our 20s and both learning about Christ in our way. Could someone speak on this?

Thank you for your question. To read between the lines a bit, if I’m not mistaken, when you say that you are in an “ungodly relationship,” I imagine this means you are living together.

If that is so, then it seems to me that you have more than two options. You don’t have to choose between continuing to live together or ending the relationship entirely. You could continue in a serious relationship but re-establish separate living arrangements. It seems to me that this would show the lady in your life that you are serious both about God and about her. But if you continue to stay in an “ungodly” arrangement, then that will suggest to her that you are not really serious about God, no matter what you might say about him, and that she doesn’t actually have to take God all that seriously either.

Indeed, if you truly love this woman (and it sounds as if you do), you will want the very best for her, which means wanting her to be able to love and obey God and live in a way that honors God. I believe that if you explained that to her, and made it very clear that by re-establishing separate living arrangements, you would not be breaking up with her, but rather working to put your relationship on a solid footing from which it could grow into a flourishing, God-honoring relationship, I would expect that she would be happy and encouraged about that. She would see that you really mean everything you have been saying about God, and it would give her joy to know that the gospel is so real that you are prepared to do something risky, difficult, and sacrificial to follow Jesus.

May God lead you and guide you as you take these steps forward. And please write back to let me know how things go! Thank you.