“How can I follow Christ?” A question asked often. Since the time of Jesus, people have been drawn to him. These people glare at scripture for direction. Often, they become misguided and will abandon scripture’s special revelation. This exegetical paper will discover the constant power of scripture. The saying of Jesus within Matthew 16:24-28 will be studied. The literary and historical contexts of the passage will be deduced. Finally, exegesis on all five verses will be done. How does one follow Christ? Will the literary context of this passage affect its interpretation? These questions and more will be answered below.
Literary Context
In order to properly interpret the cost of discipleship addressed in Matthew 16:24-28, a look into the literary context of the passage is a must. All three synoptic Gospels contain this similar passage. The differences in the synoptics will be discussed briefly to identify the purpose of including this passage in each context. Also, the surrounding context of the book of Matthew will be provided so as to correctly exegete the passage.
First, who does Jesus address while saying these things? In Matthew, Jesus is speaking to his disciples as stated in 16:24. In Luke, the narrative opens with Jesus speaking ‘to all.’ Glancing back will show that Jesus was talking to his disciples from 9:18. Mark’s Gospel suggests the presence of a crowd along with Jesus’ disciples in 8:34. There is a significant difference between Jesus addressing a crowd versus merely his disciples. Each of the three Gospels articulates the Messianic secret. In each one, Jesus has just finished commanding his disciples to tell no one of him being the Christ. It is unclear why Mark would have Jesus also talking to a crowd. This ...
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For the sake of this study, Luke’s Gospel plays an important role in establishing the identity of the members of the community. Indeed, “without Luke’s Gospel our visual images of the Christian story would be impoverished” because “Luke’s Gospel [can be considered] the aesthetic teacher of Christian senses in hearing and speech through story and song and in sight through the many artistic renderings of his stories.” Luke accomplishes this feat by using cultural conventions surrounding hospitality and banqueting to “illustrate such important facets of Jesus’ teaching as generosity to the poor, forgiveness of sinners, humility rather than social power, and the priority given to the word of God.”
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The book consists of three parts. The first part has five chapters of which focuses on explaining what the key questions are and why we find them difficult to answer. The second part has nine chapters explaining in detail what N.T. Wright considers Jesus’ public career and the approach he had in first century Palestine. The third part of the book, the last chapter, challenges readers to wrestle with the questions of Jesus’ life and ministry.
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Matthew directed this passage toward the Matthean reader for it supplies instruction and a sense of warning to those who wish to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. “Matthew uses tension and surprise, in both form and content, to address this situation, while affirming that Jesus Christ, “God is with us,” is the defining figure around which the community’s self-understanding, imagination, and social relations are to be formed” (Saunders 871). By presenting the text in the form of a parable, the message of God’s will is omitted in a historical and cultural context that enables society to comprehend the meaning behind the words chosen by Matthew.
The Gospel of Matthew is an eyewitness story written for an audience of believers, under great stress, and persecution. Matthew develops a theological plot incorporating genealogy, speeches, parables, inter and intra textual references, common vocabulary, and fulfillment quotations, with a tension that builds as we are invited into the story. The crucifixion and resurrection bring us to a Christological climax that symbolically points beyond its conclusion to God’s Kingdom, bringing atonement, salvation and the ushering in the Eschaton. The extraordinary events surrounding the crucifixion act as commentary, adding important details concerning the death of Jesus.1
N.T Wright (2008) stated that “When we read the scriptures as Christians, we read it precisely as people of the new covenant and of the new creation” (p.281). In this statement, the author reveals a paradigm of scriptural interpretation that exists for him as a Christian, theologian, and profession and Bishop. When one surveys the entirety of modern Christendom, one finds a variety of methods and perspectives on biblical interpretation, and indeed on the how one defines the meaning in the parables of Jesus. Capon (2002) and Snodgrass (2008) offer differing perspectives on how one should approach the scriptures and how the true sense of meaning should be extracted. This paper will serve as a brief examination of the methodologies presented by these two authors. Let us begin, with an
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