Your new life with Jesus

 If you have entrusted your life to Jesus, you have begun an entirely new life. .

Whoever is a believer in Christ is a new creation. The old way of living has disappeared. A new way of living has come into existence. 2 Co 5:17 GW

You are no longer the same person. You are a son or daughter of the Father in heaven. You have eternal life.

    Your eternal life has already begun and will never end.

    You are already a citizen of the eternal kingdom of heaven, the kingdom of God.

Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not have life. 1 Jn 5:12 NIV

Jesus is the eternal Son of God. His life belongs to you and your life belongs to him.

    You have an eternal love relationship with God.
    You are IN Christ and the Spirit of God is in you.

Because Jesus died on the cross for your sins, you no longer have to die for your sins.

And if the Spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead is living in you, he who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies because of his Spirit who lives in you. Ro 8:11 NIV

Because you are in Christ, God will not only provide for your needs. He will also bless you with amazing gifts of love.

What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us?

He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things? Ro 8:31–32 NKJV

God's abundant grace has not been given to us to be selfish like spoiled children.

God gives us His heavenly power, wisdom, healing and love to save the world, to bless our fellow human beings, to rescue people from darkness and hell.

For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. Jn 3:16 NKJV

Jesus rose from the dead, but he did not remain on earth, but returned to his Father in heaven.

Now we are his representatives on earth.

    Jesus has no hands on earth except your hands.   

Now a leper came to Him, imploring Him, kneeling down to Him and saying to Him, “If You are willing, You can make me clean.” 

Then Jesus, moved with compassion, stretched out His hand and touched him, and said to him, “I am willing; be cleansed.”

As soon as He had spoken, immediately the leprosy left him, and he was cleansed. Mk 1:40–42 NKJV

What Jesus began, God wants us to continue.

And these signs will follow those who believe: In My name they will cast out demons; they will speak with new tongues;

... they will lay hands on the sick, and they will recover.” Mk 16:17–18 NKJV

Jesus' wounded feet are now healed, but you can still see the scars in the sky. Jesus is now walking on streets of gold.

Jesus now has no feet on this earth but your feet. Will you go now to those who need eternal life?

Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit,

teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” Amen. Mt 28:19–20 NKJV

Gender Bias in Bible Translations

Different Christians read different Bible translations. Some believe that only one translation is right and condemn other translations as allegedly wrong.

Luther and the translators of the King James Bible included John 8:1-11. They also recognised and translated Mark 16:9-20 as Scripture.

Many modern translators claim that both passages are questionable because they are not found in the supposedly best manuscripts. In some modern translations, the two passages are included but a footnote warns readers that they are not found in some of the best manuscripts. Otherwise they may be omitted but added as footnotes.

I am not a Bible scholar. I studied literature at university. I am interested in the thematic structure of texts.

What are the important ideas in both of these two controversial passages?

In both passages, women are not taken seriously by the spiritual leaders. In both passages, sexist men are rebuked by Jesus himself.

In John 8, pious Jewish men brought to Jesus a woman they had caught committing a sexual sin. They wanted Jesus to order her stoned to death, because the Old Testament law required it.

Jesus was outraged that these men were so unjust. Where was the man who had sinned with this woman?

Jesus exposed this hypocritical injustice, forgave the woman, and saved her life.

Mark 16 tells us that the first witness to Jesus' resurrection was not one of the apostles but a woman, Mary Magdalene. This was certainly no accident. God himself had chosen this woman to be a witness.

Now when He rose early on the first day of the week, He appeared first to Mary Magdalene, out of whom He had cast seven demons.

She went and told those who had been with Him, as they mourned and wept.

And when they heard that He was alive and had been seen by her, they did not believe. Mk 16:9–11 NKJV

In John 8 the unrighteous leaders were religious Jews. In Mark 16, the unrighteous men were the apostles whom Jesus himself had appointed as his leaders!

Later He appeared to the eleven as they sat at the table; and He rebuked their unbelief and hardness of heart, because they did not believe those who had seen Him after He had risen. Mk 16:14 NKJV

In the first centuries after the apostles, who compiled the supposedly best manuscripts of the Bible? The scribes and church fathers. 

There may have been doubts about these passages for two reasons. One is that they may have been added to the original writings of Mark and John. This does not necessarily invalidate them. Deuteronomy was written by Moses, but the last section was added after Moses died.

The other reason is that both passages show how male leaders made unjust judgements against women, and Jesus rebuked the men.

The church fathers and scribes had the task of examining the manuscripts of John and Mark. They had to judge the different copies and decide which versions were authentic.

I think it was inconceivable to some of these men that Jesus would have respected women more than male spiritual leader. That could be precisely why these two passages were omitted from some highly respected manuscripts.

On the other hand, most of the scribes were probably men, and the passages were therefore probably included by men. Sexist distortion of Bible translations can be a problem, but not all male editors or translators twist the text.

The sexism of the early church fathers is not hard to find. In some of the writings of the church fathers, women were openly vilified because of Eve's first sin.

However, there is another reason to confirm the authenticity of these disputed passages, namely the thematic and literary structure of the Gospels of Mark and John. I will explain this in my next blog post.

Luther and the King James translators accepted this passage as authentic. I am not saying that these older translations are better than modern translations in every way. There are other places in the Bible where these old translations are gender biased, but that is not the subject of this post.

Unlikely Miracles in Hard Places

 1941 Paris under Nazi occupation. Jews had to wear a yellow star and were deported and murdered en masse.

A seven-year-old Jewish boy was visiting a Christian friend, but stayed too long. There was a curfew for Jews. After 6 pm, he risked being arrested in the street.

He turned his jacket inside out to hide the yellow star and made his way home.

But then his nightmare got worse. A German officer in a black SS uniform approached him.

It wasn't a dream, but then, as in a dream, the tables were turned.

The officer hugged him lovingly and spoke to him in a friendly way, even though the boy didn't understand German. Then he showed him a photograph of a boy, perhaps his son. And it got even better. He gave the astonished boy some banknotes and sent him home with more kind words.

The boy and his family survived the Nazi era, and they settled in Israel after the war. The boy never forgot the kind SS officer. Fascinated by the contradictions of human nature, he studied psychology.

He became a psychologist in the Israeli army and then went to America to do his doctorate.

He became a world-famous author and Nobel laureate.

Are you perhaps in an inhuman situation like this SS officer? But there is a good God who has good plans for you.

Oskar Schindler was a wealthy businessman and Nazi member. He used his position to save many Jews.  

I met a Russian woman. Her father was a communist, but her mother took the children to the church while her father was politically active.

A German concentration camp commandant used his position to save many Jews. He helped the Jews to build hiding places in the camp so that the SS could not find them.

As a young Christian, I was cruelly abused in an authoritarian church. I had a nervous breakdown and needed intensive psychiatric help. I spent a whole year in hospital, but God still had good plans for my life.

When I returned home, I visited other patients and encouraged them to trust in God.

The Apostle Paul was cruelly persecuted, flogged and sometimes imprisoned, but he used his imprisonment to pray for persecuted Christians. He also wrote letters to the churches. These letters are now books of the New Testament.

What is your situation like? Probably not ideal. Perhaps a nightmare.

Jesus wants to rescue you from your predicament, but perhaps not overnight.

Corrie ten Boom was a Dutch woman who ended up in a concentration camp in Germany because her family had been hiding Jews. She suffered terrible ordeals, but even in the concentration camp she served as a missionary.

Her sister was murdered in the camp, but she was released one day because of a clerical error by German officials.

After the war, she became a travelling evangelist, also in Germany.

Is your situation very difficult? If it's possible to escape a brutal marriage, it's probably all the better. Maternal care and the safety of the children outweigh the obligation to stay in the marriage.

If you are being victimised in a legalistic church, you may not be allowed to leave, but such rules do not come from God.

But even if you can't escape your situation, God can help you to be a blessing to others.

The apostle Paul vividly describes his trust in God in the midst of adversity.

We are hard-pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair;
persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed.

We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body. 2 Co 4:8–10 NIV