Friends: John Samples, born in Kentucky 93 years ago, surely had a Godly voice. He encouraged me greatly and is now home with our Lord. See the column – Bob

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Spirituality column #1041

October 27, 2026

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

John C. Samples, My Friend

By Bob Walters

“I am with you until the end of the age.” – Matthew 28:20.

The first thing you’d notice about John Samples was his voice: a beautiful, kindly, reassuring, drawling preacher’s baritone, smooth as a richly aged Kentucky bourbon.

One would not presume that spirited timbre to look at him. Already slightly-built and growing thinner as the years passed and health faltered, John’s steady resonance of faith in Jesus Christ was a mountain of encouragement for all who knew him.

Some preachers thunder; John’s tone was more like a pervasive, deep-cleaning, confident, comforting, and nurturing forest rain. The kind that presages God’s blessings, not His wrath.  It was natural. John prayed that way and expressed his heart that way.

John, 93, was my pastor and friend, and pastor and friend to all he might meet. He was a dominant presence in my faith life ever since the Lord found me 25 years ago. As I mentioned in recent columns, John died peacefully October 6. His celebration of life service will be next Sunday, November 1 at 4 p.m. in the Worship Center at East 91^st Street Christian Church in Indianapolis. Visitation is 2-4 p.m.

This is an impossible column to write, because life’s most difficult things to explain are often the things you love the most and understand the best. John has been that kind of presence as was his wife Joyce who went to the Lord October 15, 2022. My parents passed decades ago yet John and Joyce filled that generational void in my life.

We all thought we’d lose John before Joyce, as he was extremely ill in 2018. Joyce had various health issues in that same time frame, and while John got better, Joyce slipped into heaven first. What I’ve decided to do this week is to provide links to columns I’ve written regarding John and Joyce, with his official obit capping off the list.

275 LINK - Love, Endurance, and Prayer 2-14-12 – A Valentine’s Day tale for the ages, Joyce plus six siblings all celebrated 50^th wedding anniversaries. It’s my favorite story.

535 LINK - Directional Stability 2-14-17 – Joyce had plenty of observations about scripture and Christian life, and for several years wrote and texted daily “Ponders.”

678 LINK – Reasonable Faith 11-12-19 – My encouragers: Russ, Dave, George, John.

764 LINK - 'How About Tomorrow?' 7-6-21 – John married Pam and me in 2009; his pre-marital counseling was about 20 minutes long and consisted mostly of Kentucky jokes. (See also 763 LINK - Our Pastor's Funeral 6-29-21, and 765 LINK - 'That Summer Before He Died...' 7-13-21. It is our wedding story, my favorite series in 20 years of this column.)

831 LINK - She's No Angel 10-18-22 – Joyce went to heaven as an heir, not an angel.

908 LINK - This Exchange Doesn’t Change – ‘He is Here’ 4-9-24 – John's 2024 Easter communion message. It was always a divine treat when John led communion.

957 LINK - The Tie That Binds - 3-18-25 – John’s tale of a neck tie and Russ Blowers

105 LINK - When the Phone Rings Late at Night 11-11-08 – Pondering one year after the night John called at 1 a.m. to tell me of Russ Blowers' death. 

LINK Remembering John Chapman Samples – John’s obituary.

So many other stories. Over lunch, John and Joyce related to Pam and me when they were young and poor, driving home from a preaching gig. They had money for two hot dogs with four people (young sons Dain and John W.) in the car. Everyone got half a hot dog.  Their later affection for birthday and anniversary $1.50 hot dog meals at Costco makes sense. George Bebawi called John the “Cardinal” (Russ was “Pope,” I was “Archbishop”).

John’s rich life in Christ is proven in the wealth of faith, hope, and love he shared with all. We will miss him, but his memory will reside in joyful hearts for ages to come.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) follows up last week’s column with the good news that Pam’s nerve block injection in her leg has helped enormously. Pain largely abated, and walking … may be temporary, but likely found the culprit. Continued prayers, please.    

Friends: We don’t have to want something when we already have it … as a gift. Blessings, Bob

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Spirituality Column #1040

October 20, 2026

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

“… I Shall Not Want”

By Bob Walters

“Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life.” – Psalm 23:6 ESV

The structural center of David’s Psalm 23 (verse 4) reads, “for you are with me.”

Jesus promises, “I am with you always, even to the end of the age” (Matt 28:20).

Jump to Romans 8:31, Paul writes, “If God is for us, who can be against us?”

Here in God’s Word, we see the faith of David, the love of Jesus, and the hope of Paul. God, we can be assured, is with us: He follows us, He leads us, He pursues us.

All we have to do is look to see if God is there.  He is … and He is Jesus.

And He has been very close to us – personally – lately.

My wife Pam and I have been going through a bit of a health “season” these past five months. Well, her more than me, but we are in it together. And Jesus is, too.

Pam woke up May 27^th with upper left leg nerve pain so severe she was unable to walk. The emergency room doctor said it was sciatica. The chiropractor said “I can’t help you, go get an MRI.” The spine PA said, “it has to be a spine issue.” The pain specialist ordered, and sensing danger then cancelled, a spinal pain block. Two different neurology offices declared Pam’s case as “interesting.” Five MRI’s and a spinal surgery later (plus draconian physical therapy, two epidurals, a hip steroid shot, various pills, and blood work), we have ideas but no diagnosis and a train of baffled doctors and providers.

Throughout, Pam has been able to stand for short periods, take a few, slow, halting, painful steps, and blessedly, sleeps soundly, albeit in a pillow-laden reclining chair. She teaches, planted in a tall seat, and gets around school on a red scooter we named “Mario” (as in Andretti, not Kart). The MCA staff and students are amazing: caring, helpful, prayerful, and good-humored about Pam’s current mobility challenges.

I’m saying all this not as a plea for pity but as a witness to God’s closeness and Pam’s faithful steadfastness. Perfectly timed, Psalm 23 popped up this week in my Ray Stedman devotional emails. “Goodness and mercy ... follow[ing] me” got me to thinking.

We all have our “default” setting of how we read scripture and what various verses mean.  It is the strength of the Bible that it can be so all-encompassing and at the same time be so personal.  I have always read “follow me all the days of my life” as though it meant God would stay with me as I aged.  Well, I am old, I guess (so is Pam), but the abiding presence of Jesus is not about our latter days; it is about every day.

This challenging season has emphasized closeness to and trust in Jesus, not distance or disappointment. Hebrew literary structure often locates the main point in the middle of a passage, not at its beginning or end. Knowing that structure dramatically expands our understanding, for example, of Paul’s letters. In the 23^rd Psalm, the important Hebrew middle reads, “for you are with me.” God sent Jesus to “be with us.”

I’m not sure I had previously noticed that this “Psalm of David” models exactly the presence of Jesus in humanity and our salvation in His sacrifice. Jesus gives us what we need, and we know it, as long as we are at his side. We may “want” only healing; but Jesus strengthens our faith and assures our hope. It is not always easy.

This is indeed the “age” of Jesus, all 2,000 years so far. And despite that which is demonstrably against us in this world – sickness, sin, despair, disappointment, whatever – trusting the divine presence of our Creator, our Savior, and the Lord of all truth and goodness, molds the daily, sustaining strength and courage of seasons such as these.

We don’t have to “want” it because in His grace, we already have it.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) (Pam) notes the on-going power of prayer, as the best medical efforts, so far, have been generally ineffective while the prayer of friends and family has sustained her – and us – massively. Nerve block this week … we’ll see.

 

 

Special note ... our dear friend and pastor John Samples passed away peacefully Tuesday morning, October 6. Pam and I visited John Monday and are thankful we had the chance to say goodbye (John married us in 2009). John’s Celebration of Life will be at 4 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 1, at East 91^st Street Christian Church, Indianapolis. Visitation 2-4 p.m. – Bob

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Friends: Ask a simple question, get a simple answer. Some questions appear harder than they are.  Blessings, Bob

Spirituality Column #1039

October 13, 2026

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

The Simple Stuff, Part 2   

By Bob Walters

“I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth … and in one Lord, Jesus Christ … who for us men and our salvation came down from heaven …” – from the Apostle’s Creed, Book of Common Prayer, Episcopal Church, 1789

Here is where we ended last week: “…it is the simple stuff of Christianity – the orthodoxy and doctrines – that our students need to have on hand without hesitation or confusion.”

Mission Christian Academy in Fishers, Ind., where Pam and I teach high school English (her) and history/civics (me), is a highly biblically literate environment.  Faculty and staff all sign Christian faith statements, while the students (and their parents) who are drawn to that environment don’t have to sign anything; they just know what – and Who – is there.

Also mentioned last week in Part 1 was that teaching western culture, literature, history, civics, and economics becomes a much more complete experience when the foundation of western culture, i.e., Jesus Christ (we’ll get to the Greeks, Romans, and Jews in a minute) and the Bible, are not ignored, pre-empted, or outright banned as they have been in American public education since the early 1960s. (U.S. Supreme Court refresher:  Engle v. Vitale, 1962, vigorously restricted public prayer; Abington School District v. Schempp, 1963, banned mandated daily Bible readings and recitation in public schools.)

Twenty-first century anti-Christian sensitivities and atheistic liberalism have made cultural things worse, spiraling into the Woke, DEI, gender fluid, critical race theory, globalist morass that now defines universities, the media, entertainment, public school, much industry, and government bureaucracies. It is called “Progressive,” but I see no progress toward truth.

I see zero progress, in the public academic square, toward Jesus.

Anyway, back to my MCA students.  A few weeks ago, in both U.S. history and American government, we were studying pre-Revolutionary War colonial society including the Great Awakening of the mid-1700s. The Awakening developed a spiritual cohesion among the not-always-copacetic Christian denominations that coalesced into a common cause for developing a free nation independent from the British king.

In the discussion of how these 13 separate colonies – separate nations, really, each with a dominant local denomination – united in a religious sense toward becoming one nation, words like “doctrine” and “orthodoxy” came up.

If I ask almost any of my students simply “what do you believe,” they would effortlessly answer that they believe in God, that Jesus is Lord and Savior, and that one day they will go to heaven, forgiven of their sins. And most would add flourishes beyond that. 

But, ask them to name one orthodox Christian belief, or to explain any part of Christian doctrine, every student in every class clammed up. They didn’t realize they already knew the answers.

The problem was the words, “orthodox” and “doctrine.” These are simply descriptors for articles of faith that remain the same across all Christian denominations. Things like the Trinity: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. That Jesus, the Son of God, was fully human and fully God. That Jesus was born of the virgin Mary, lived, taught, was crucified, was dead, buried and resurrected. That his death was a perfect sacrifice that frees us from our sins and restores our relationship with God the Father.

That, forgiven, we will spend eternity in a new life in heaven with Jesus and the communion of saints.  That the Bible is Spirit-inspired and carries God’s authority. That the Old Testament prophesizes about Christ.

Every one of these is an orthodox Christian belief; each is a bit of universal Christian doctrine.  Christians have fought to defend them since the time of Christ. Depart from any, and you may have a religion but it is heretical in relation to Christianity.

The miracle of America’s founding had help and inspiration from the pre-Christian Greek and Roman republics, and of course the Jewish laws, scripture, and commandments. Even the more modern Enlightenment asked many right questions about man’s sovereignty vs. government.

Our job is not to freeze up when asked about our faith; the basics are pretty simple.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) notes that the phrase “Judeo-Christian” came into modern parlance in a 1939 book review by George Orwell; the phrase wasn’t known at America’s founding.     

 

(Special note ... our dear friend and pastor John Samples is in hospice. I just found out this afternoon.  I have no more details, but please keep him, his son John W. and wife Bobbi in your prayers.  I spoke with Amy B. from E91 a few minutes ago. May we all be at peace. – Bob)

Friends: What are the basics of what you believe as a Christian? Creeds are an answer, but what is your heart telling you?  It’s kids’ stuff, really. See Part 1 of the column below. Have a great week!

Blessings, Bob

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October 6, 2026

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

The Simple Stuff, Part 1

By Bob Walters

“I believe in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth … and in one Lord, Jesus Christ … who for us men and our salvation came down from heaven …” – from the Apostle’s Creed, Book of Common Prayer, Episcopal Church, 1789

I am going to talk about the faith and witness of Christian high school students, not the history and esoterics of creedal Christian faith, but let’s review some basics.

Basics of the faith, I mean, along with some post-Reformation church history.

Bible-based evangelical Christianity, by and large, does not depend on the ancient creeds (list of beliefs) for its understanding of Jesus, church, or scripture. We read the Bible, study the Bible, pray with the Bible, and we ingest all the preaching and teaching and Christian church fellowship we can consume. Ideally, we live daily and perpetually, with faith in Jesus Christ, love for God, love for others, reliance on the Holy Spirit, and the imperfectly understood but absolute truth and authority of the Bible. Sola scriptura.

The above quoted bit of the Apostle’s Creed, dating from the second century AD, and it’s slightly longer and younger cousin, the Nicene Creed, fourth century, have differences but say pretty much the same thing. If you’re inspired to do so, Google both and enjoy the deep dive.

I grew up in the Episcopal Church, where Bible literacy among the congregation was far subordinate to a congregant’s trust in the church, its priests, its traditions, and its authority.  Prior to its arrival in the American colonies, it was the Anglican Church, founded in 1534 by Britain’s King Henry VIII. This followed a tiff with Roman Catholic Pope Clement VII regarding Henry divorcing his wife, Anne Boleyn. You can Google that one, too. The upshot? England gained a church; Boleyn lost her head.

Like the Catholic Church, the Anglican and then Episcopal Church in its worship practices is creedal, with established liturgies (weekly worship plans), litany (prayers), and hierarchies (leadership). That big book on a Catholic or Episcopal Altar is not a Bible, it is a Missal, or what I grew up knowing as the Book of Common Prayer. While the Bible is a direct conversation with God, in my experience, the Book of Common Prayer is more of a training-wheels version of what church is supposed to be like.

Meaning, it contains the curated basics of the church, including much scripture, prayers, Psalms, and rituals (e.g. baptisms, weddings, funerals, etc.). My point is that knowing Church basics is not necessarily knowing Christ. And here’s where I wanted to share something about my Christian teenage students and “the basics.”

Our Mission Christian Academy in Fishers, Ind., where my wife Pam and I teach high school English (her) and history / civics (me), have plenty of students who know the Bible pretty well.  Many of them can cite all 66 books from memory, know the Old Testament from the New, know the Gospels from the Pauline letters, and attend weekly extracurricular Bible studies and church youth groups. By and large, the students know Christ.

That makes teaching Western literature and civics a more complete enterprise because Christianity is the foundation of Western culture the past 2,000 years.  We can include the reality of God, the truth of Jesus, the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, the authority of scripture, and the communion of the saints (church), Were there other influences? Of course – Greek, Roman, and Jewish philosophy before Christ, and the Enlightenment and modernism that has tried to re-define God the past 400 years or so.

Plus Islam, since the seventh century, which has tried to erase the whole thing.

But it is the simple stuff of Christianity – the orthodoxy and doctrines – that our students need to have on hand without hesitation or confusion. More next week.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) still has his mangled Book of Common Prayer from his Episcopal confirmation in 1965, which his dog Kramer Too chewed up 15 years ago.

 

Friends: We always love talking about Jesus, but that doesn’t mean we can always be sheep. Blessings, Bob

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Spirituality Column #1037

September 29, 2026

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Gentleness, Respect, and Tenacity

By Bob Walters

“… Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect.” – 1 Peter 3:15

This is among my favorite Bible verses for a couple of reasons.

First, it is calming; I only have to explain why I, personally, have hope. I can do that all day long. I can always explain Jesus to my own satisfaction, but whether I can explain Him adequately to someone else is a more daunting challenge. We find Jesus in our own hearts; that is why we know Him as a personal Lord and Savior. He is everyone’s, as well as ours alone. That is why everyone’s testimony is unique.

I envy, in a good way, the natural evangelists; but my gifts lie elsewhere.      

Second, the verse instructs us not to be a jerk about Jesus; to have “gentleness and respect.” Jesus was kind, but also direct with the truth and creatively vivid with His illustrations (swallowing a camel, plank in the eye, brood of vipers etc.). People will argue about whether Jesus ever laughed (the Bible doesn’t tell us), but it takes an educated, period-specific, cultural sense of Jewish humor to cull the humorous bits from the Gospels. My erudite Bible mentor George Bebawi, who grew up Jewish (in Egypt of all places) before finding Christ in his late teens, thought Jesus was hilarious.

Anyway, we should fearlessly share about Jesus, live in confident hope, be kind to others, show our faith by virtue of a caring and intelligent demeanor, love – but do not bow to – our enemies, and pray mightily for guidance, discernment, and the right words.

Jesus knew how to temper his language. He spoke kindly to the lost, softly and confidently to the demons who knew who He was and feared Him, but was often harsh and condemning – and cunning – with the Pharisees who refused to recognize Him.

The Pharisees, you see, had inherited the “world,” i.e., status, wealth, power, pride, and jealousy of their position. They forgot there was a Messiah with whom they could inherit the Kingdom of God. They lost sight of the truth, and could not see Jesus.

And that’s today’s lesson for today’s Christians: let’s keep clear sight of Jesus.

Jesus was tenacious and wise. By his truth and authority, believers were drawn to Him then and are still drawn to Him today. Hebrew scripture, i.e., the Old Testament, was replete with prophesies of His coming, His person, His purpose, His providence, and His destiny. The Pharisees of His time were willfully blind to the scrolls, but John the Baptist, the Disciples, and many others saw the divine in Jesus’s person.

Today, we have the whole New Testament to explain prophecy to us and we wonder how anyone, ever, could be in the presence of Jesus, whatever he looked like, and not sense the glory of His person, relationship with God, and love for mankind.

But … folks make those errors all the time.  In our current age, in a rapidly deteriorating post-Christian American culture, our mission becomes not just personal reflection and prayer, but the tenacity of Jesus and of Jude 1:3-4, “to contend for the faith that was once for all entrusted to God’s holy people. … [against] ungodly people who pervert the grace of our Lord.” How do we contend for the faith … our faith?

One way is simple: vote. Get to the polls this fall. Don’t lay back. Be tenacious against threats. In a nation slipping from its Christian underpinnings, whether by the ignorant secular culture or heretical progressive Christians – e.g., “Islam is just another religion,” “Jesus was non-binary”– sane Christian citizens must pick up the mantle of tenacity defending our nation from those who attack truth and seek to remove our freedom to worship.

The ungodly, freedom-squashing left will be at the polls. Will we?

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) asserts the current American faith and political contest is not between Christianity and Islam; it is between a Constitutional Republic and Sharia Law.

Friends: Jesus sits at the right hand of the Father in eternal Heaven and occupies space in our hearts here below. When does He have time to love us? Blessings, Bob

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Spirituality Column #1036

September 22, 2026

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Never a Time  

By Bob Walters

“And now, Father, glorify me in your presence with the glory I had with you before the world began.” – Jesus praying for himself in the Priestly Prayer, John 17:5

“… before the world began.” For all the discussion in Sunday school and Bible study about “who” and “what” Jesus was, here we’re confronted with “when” Jesus was.

Christian orthodoxy – the basics of the faith, not the capital “O” Eastern church – tells us that Jesus was fully God and fully man. That’s a mystery I can’t define or explain, other than to say that the Almighty trinitarian God – Father, Son, and Spirit – reached down into history and in the person of Jesus, saved us from our sin.

Salvation means our curse and separation from God is resolved by the sacrificial work of Christ on the cross. From His seat in eternity, Christ entered humanity as Jesus of Nazareth, born of the virgin Mary and the seed of the Holy Spirit. Jesus lives, laughs, and suffers among humanity, is baptized, preaches God’s truth, rebukes Israel’s leadership, is crucified by the Romans, died, is buried, resurrected, and returned to his heavenly seat beside God. Then, the Spirit arrives to live in the hearts of the faithful. Our faith, trust, and love of Christ express our acceptance of eternity’s grace.

That’s “who” Jesus was, and is. As to “what” Jesus was and is, meaning His essence in the Trinity of being “from God” or “of God” – topics deep in the theological fabric of Christian truth, opinions, and heresies for 2,000 years – I go with the eternal, uncreated reality of God as a society, community, and relationship of goodness and glory that allows John to say “God is love.” Humanity is an expression of that love, and Jesus the Messiah Christ is Who rescues and heals humanity. He is the Word of God.

What anchors my faith, recognizes this truth, and cements my trust is that the story of Jesus has been discussed, challenged, and protected constantly for 2,000 years.  The fact that smart people have disagreed – and still disagree – on various doctrinal points does not tell me that the story is wrong. That the core Christian beliefs of Jesus’s life, death, burial, and resurrection have endured tells me it is safe to weather any storm, or celebrate any joy, in the name of Jesus.  He is the real deal; done deal.

So, Who Christ is and What Christ does isn’t screaming for further definition in my faith life.  God’s love – for me and others proven through Christ – is truth enough. My love for God and others, thankfully, “covers over a multitude of sins” (1 Peter 4:8).

I’ll gladly take it.

But this idea of “When” Jesus was, is currently occupying space in my brain. I heard a phrase this past week, regarding the Trinity as existing “before eternity.”  “Before” puts eternity in time, and I’m pretty sure that is not how eternity works. There is no “before eternity” or “after eternity.” Eternity, like the Trinity, was/is just always there. Our human minds, living as we do within the rhythms of God’s Creation of time, space, and matter, measure everything. The definable and measurable world is where we live.

Eternity – and it’s the same with God’s love, the sacrifice of Jesus, the indwelling of the Spirit, the authority of the Bible, the fellowship of the faithful, and probably many other things I’m forgetting – cannot be measured.  These are qualitative realities, not quantitative observations. Jesus on earth somehow had a foot in both camps.

My question: Jesus is in eternal heaven, but He is also in my earthly heart. Does that mean that Christ is there? Or here? Or both? And “when” am I in all this?

Fear not. I realize there is never a time Jesus doesn’t love every one of us.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) cites C.S. Lewis: “The present is where eternity touches time.” – The Screwtape Letters

 

Friends: Jesus came not to win a war against the Romans, but to bring victory to humanity.  Blessings, Bob

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Spirituality Column #1035

September 15, 2026

Common Christianity / Uncommon Commentary

Peace with God

By Bob Walters

 “For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him (Jesus), and through him to reconcile to himself (God) all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood shed on the cross.” – Colossians 1:19-20

The Jews of the first century made a huge mistake in their expectation and understanding of how to deal with the prophesied Messiah of ancient scripture.

This is a commentary, not a criticism, because I doubt I would have expected or thought any different. The Romans kept the peace and enforced civic order – often harshly – but were not the Jews’ idea of salvation. The Romans were a burden, and pagan: idolators with false gods and earthly deities. Fear and violence were their justice.

What the Jews – what Israel – had going for them was a defined relationship, albeit shaky, with the One True God. God wasn’t shaky, but the Jews were. They had laws and traditions to outline their divine relationship, but their practice of worshipping God had become infested with self-imposed legalities that masked God and elevated the human leaders of Israel.  The Jews and the Romans focused on conflict, not peace.

Jesus, the promised Messiah, came, I believe, not so much as a rebuke to Israel – although He was definitely that – but as the fulfillment and deliverer of God’s intent for all mankind. How, where, or when better to do that than in the center of God’s Israel where the world’s most powerful empire held earthly dominion?

Jesus came to address both problems: 1. the Jews’ mistaken idea of the Messiah, and 2. the Romans’ mistaken idea of manmade authority.

The Jews’ mistake was praying for a Messiah whose mission was to kill the Romans and exalt Israel to political and religious dominance over all the earth.

Whether or not the Romans thought much about the world beyond the Mediterranean, or say, from the British Isles to the west and Persia/India to the east, isn’t often discussed. But Rome’s wide dominance allowed only for Caesar, not Jesus.

Jesus came not to kill the Romans or elevate Israel. Jesus came to make peace between God and humanity. Peace was the goal; that was the victory on offer.

We think of “victory” as implying, of necessity, a “loser.” Victory as reward, victory as vanquishing an enemy, victory as gaining power. Leafing through the New Testament, whether the Gospels or epistles of Paul, Peter, James, John et al, we don’t see military or political dominance as God’s goal or Jesus’s mission.

What we see in Christ is endurance, patience, obedience, faithfulness, righteousness, truth, and love. When we in this life encounter “trials of many kinds” (James 1:2-4), our victory and goal in overcoming those trials is peace in knowing Jesus is Lord, Jesus is our Savior, and Jesus is with us always (Matthew 28:20). God cares.

Where the Jews saw war and persecution and the Romans saw empire and order, Jesus came to save mankind from our true enemy, sin, which brings death. Salvation is forgiveness, grace, and love. Jesus’s blood brings peace, not war.

We may be in a war with Satan and his earthly and spiritual “princes and principalities” (Ephesians 6:12), but our victory, and Satan’s defeat, is peace with Christ.

It is that peace, and our trusting faith in Jesus, that invites us lovingly into the Kingdom that overcomes the world, restores fellowship with God, and brings eternal life.

Walters (rlwcom@aol.com) paraphrases: Make peace, not war. God loves you.