Paper 169 Overview: Last Teaching at Pella

During his final week at the Pella encampment from March 6 onward, Jesus conducted an intensive ministry of teaching, addressing the multitudes each afternoon and engaging in profound discussions with the apostles and advanced disciples each evening. The encampment was energized by reports of Lazarus's resurrection, which had reached them two days prior to the Master's arrival. This period represented the zenith of the second phase of Jesus' public ministry of the kingdom, occurring just before his fateful journey through southern Perea toward Jerusalem.

The religious authorities were formalizing their opposition to Jesus on four principal grounds: his association with publicans and sinners, his supposed blasphemy in claiming equality with God, his alleged violations of Sabbath laws, and his purported collusion with demonic powers to perform miracles. These accusations crystallized the growing antagonism of the establishment that would culminate in the events in Jerusalem. Throughout this contentious period, Jesus continued to teach with authority and clarity, delivering several of his most significant parables that illuminated the nature of divine grace, spiritual wisdom, and the true character of the heavenly Father whom he had come to reveal.

Late on Monday evening, March 6, Jesus and the ten apostles arrived at the Pella camp to begin what would be Jesus' final week of teaching there. During this pivotal week, Jesus maintained an exceptionally active schedule, delivering public sermons to the multitudes every afternoon and conducting intensive question-and-answer sessions with the apostles and more advanced disciples throughout each evening. His presence galvanized the community of followers who had gathered at this sanctuary east of the Jordan.

The news regarding the resurrection of Lazarus had spread to the encampment two days before the Master's arrival, generating unprecedented excitement among his followers—enthusiasm unmatched since the miraculous feeding of the five thousand. This dramatic demonstration of divine power coincided with the pinnacle of the second phase of Jesus' public ministry of the kingdom. The Master strategically planned to dedicate only this one week to teaching at Pella before embarking on a tour through southern Perea, a journey that would inexorably lead to the culminating and tragic experiences of his final week in Jerusalem.

On Thursday afternoon, Jesus addressed the multitude on the profound theme of the "Grace of Salvation," a discourse in which he sequentially narrated the parable of the lost sheep, the parable of the lost coin, and culminated with his favorite teaching story—the parable of the prodigal son. Jesus prefaced these interconnected narratives by contrasting traditional religious instruction, which urged people to seek for God as taught by prophets from Samuel to John, with his revolutionary revelation that God actively seeks to find humanity. He emphasized that divine acceptance precedes human repentance, declaring, "The Father accepts you even before you have repented and sends the Son and his associates to find you and bring you, with rejoicing, back to the fold."

The parable detailed a younger son who requested his inheritance prematurely, departed for a distant country, and squandered his wealth in reckless living before experiencing destitution that prompted his humbled return home. The father, rather than condemning his wayward son, ran to embrace him and organized a celebratory feast, provoking the resentment of the elder son who had remained dutifully at home. When confronted by his elder son's complaint, the father explained the appropriateness of celebration because the one who was lost had been found, who was dead had been restored to life. Jesus frequently presented these three stories in sequence to illustrate the multifaceted nature of divine seeking—God searches for those who unintentionally stray like sheep, those who are obscured by material concerns like the lost coin, and those who deliberately rebel like the prodigal son, only to be fully restored upon their return to the Father's house and heart.

Jesus told and retold this story of the prodigal son many times throughout his years of teaching. This parable, along with the story of the good Samaritan, constituted his preferred method for teaching about the Father's love and the principle of loving one's neighbor. These narratives effectively communicated the essence of his gospel message through approachable stories that resonated deeply with his listeners, illustrating theological concepts through familiar human scenarios.

One evening, Simon Zelotes sought clarification regarding Jesus' statement that "many of the children of the world are wiser in their generation than are the children of the kingdom since they are skillful in making friends with the mammon of unrighteousness." In response, Jesus acknowledged that some of his followers had, before entering the kingdom, demonstrated considerable shrewdness in business dealings—sometimes even employing unjust or unfair tactics with prudent foresight. He encouraged them to now apply comparable diligence to ordering their spiritual lives and gaining souls for the kingdom.

To illuminate this principle, Jesus narrated the parable of an unjust steward who, upon learning of his imminent dismissal for mismanagement, strategically reduced the debts of his master's debtors to curry their favor for his post-employment future. Jesus observed that even the master in the parable had to acknowledge the sagacity of this dishonest servant in preparing for days of adversity. The Master then drew the spiritual parallel: "I say to you who profess to be acquiring treasure in heaven: Take lessons from those who make friends with the mammon of unrighteousness, and likewise so conduct your lives that you make eternal friendship with the forces of righteousness." Jesus emphasized the principle that faithfulness in small matters presages faithfulness in greater responsibilities, while unfaithfulness in handling others' possessions disqualifies one from receiving greater treasures. He concluded with the categorical declaration that no person can serve two masters, as they will inevitably love one and hate the other.

When the Pharisees present heard these teachings, they responded with contempt and derision, being themselves inclined toward the accumulation of wealth. These antagonistic hearers attempted to draw Jesus into fruitless argumentation, but he wisely declined to engage with his opponents. As the Pharisees fell to quarreling among themselves, their vociferous debate attracted many from the encampment, prompting Jesus to withdraw to his tent for the night rather than participate in their contentious discourse.

When the gathering became excessively tumultuous after Jesus' departure, Simon Peter authoritatively took charge, admonishing the crowd: "Men and brethren, it is not seemly thus to dispute among yourselves. The Master has spoken, and you do well to ponder his words." Peter then redirected their attention to an instructive allegory previously taught by John the Baptist concerning a rich man and a beggar. He prefaced the narrative by acknowledging that while this parable differed somewhat from the gospel they now proclaimed, its lessons remained valuable until they could fully comprehend the new light of the kingdom of heaven.

The allegory recounted the contrasting fates of Dives, a wealthy man who "lived in mirth and splendor every day," and Lazarus, an impoverished beggar covered with sores who lay at the rich man's gate hoping for mere crumbs. Following their deaths, Lazarus found comfort "in Abraham's bosom" while the rich man awoke in torment. When the suffering Dives pleaded for Lazarus to bring water to cool his tongue and later to warn his five brothers of this fate, Abraham explained that an insurmountable gulf prevented passage between their realms and that those who rejected the teachings of Moses and the prophets would remain unmoved even by the testimony of one returned from the dead. After Peter's recitation, Andrew adjourned the assembly for the night. Notably, although both apostles and disciples frequently questioned Jesus about this parable in subsequent conversations, he never consented to provide explicit commentary on its meaning.

Jesus consistently encountered difficulty in conveying to his apostles that while they proclaimed the establishment of the kingdom of God, the Father in heaven should not be conceptualized as a king. The cultural context of Jesus' time, dominated by the political structures of kings and emperors, coupled with the long-standing Jewish anticipation of God's kingdom, presented significant cognitive barriers to understanding. For these and other contextual reasons, Jesus strategically chose to designate the spiritual brotherhood of humanity as the "kingdom of heaven" and its spiritual head as the "Father in heaven," deliberately avoiding royal terminology in reference to God.

Jesus never provided systematic instruction on the personality and attributes of the heavenly Father, as he presumed existing belief in God rather than attempting to prove divine existence. His teaching about the Father centered on the declaration of their essential unity: "He who has seen the Son has seen the Father." Jesus asserted that he and the Father shared omniscience, that only the Son truly knows the Father, and that the Father can be known by those to whom the Son reveals him. Jesus rarely made pronouncements about the Father except to the Samaritan woman at Jacob's well, to whom he stated simply, "God is spirit." Rather than depending on theological formulations, Jesus taught that the divine nature is best apprehended through observation of his own life—the measure of one's capacity to perceive spiritual realities is found in assimilating the concept of God demonstrated in the Master's living example.

Jesus recognized that God can be genuinely known only through experiential realities, never fully understood through intellectual teachings. He instructed his apostles that while they could never completely comprehend God, they could certainly know him as they had known the Son of Man. Jesus himself constituted a revelation of God; one knows God not by understanding Jesus' words but by knowing his life and character. Except when quoting Hebrew scriptures, Jesus referred to Deity by only two designations: God and Father. When using "God," he typically employed the Hebrew word signifying the plural God (the Trinity) rather than Yahweh, which represented the progressive tribal conception of Deity among the Jews.

During the initial centuries of Christian evangelization, the concept of the kingdom of heaven was profoundly influenced by Greek idealism, particularly its philosophical doctrine of the natural world as a shadow of spiritual reality. However, the most transformative development occurred when the kingdom's Messiah became recast as the Redeemer of the church—a religious and social organization that emerged from Paul's activities and his successors. This ecclesiastical structure was founded on Jesus' teachings but significantly modified by incorporation of ideas from Philo and Persian doctrines regarding cosmic dualism.

The authentic teachings of Jesus concerning the kingdom faced near-eclipse as his followers progressively altered his proclamations through two predominant tendencies. Jewish believers persisted in regarding Jesus as the Messiah who would imminently return to establish a world-wide, semi-material kingdom. Simultaneously, gentile Christians increasingly embraced Pauline doctrines that positioned Jesus as the Redeemer of the church's members rather than as the proclaimer of a spiritual brotherhood. The institutional church that developed as a social consequence of the kingdom would have constituted a natural and even desirable development; its problematic aspect was not its existence but its virtual replacement of Jesus' kingdom concept. Paul's institutionalized church effectively became a substitute for the spiritual kingdom that Jesus had proclaimed.

The church that emerged could be understood as the larval stage of the thwarted spiritual kingdom, destined to carry Jesus' teachings through the material age until a more spiritual dispensation would permit fuller development of the Master's concept. As Jesus taught, the kingdom of heaven exists within the hearts of believers, representing a personal experience of relationship with the Father and spiritual fellowship with other believers. This internal reality of divine sonship and human brotherhood constituted the essential kingdom that Jesus proclaimed, a concept that would eventually emerge from its historical cocoon: "The kingdom of the divine brotherhood is still alive and will eventually and certainly come forth from this long submergence, just as surely as the butterfly eventually emerges as the beautiful unfolding of its less attractive creature of metamorphic development."