Paper 169 Overview: Last Teaching at Pella

Jesus and the ten apostles arrived at the Pella camp on March 6 for Jesus' final week of teaching there. He maintained an active schedule, preaching to the multitudes each afternoon and conducting question-and-answer sessions with the apostles and advanced disciples each evening. News of Lazarus's resurrection had already reached the camp and had created tremendous excitement among the followers, marking the height of the second phase of Jesus' public ministry.

The Pharisees and chief priests were formalizing their accusations against Jesus on four main grounds: his association with sinners, his supposed blasphemy in claiming equality with God, his violations of Sabbath laws through healing, and his alleged alliance with devils to perform miracles. Despite this growing opposition, Jesus continued his powerful teaching at Pella before beginning the tour of southern Perea that would ultimately lead to his final experiences in Jerusalem.

On Monday evening, March 6, Jesus and the ten apostles arrived at the Pella camp for what would be his last week there. During this week, Jesus maintained a rigorous schedule of teaching activities, preaching to the multitudes each afternoon and answering questions from the apostles and more advanced disciples each night. His presence and teachings attracted significant attention and interest among the camp's residents.

News about Lazarus's resurrection had reached the camp two days before Jesus arrived, creating a wave of excitement unmatched since the feeding of the five thousand. This miracle heightened public interest in Jesus' ministry, occurring at the peak of the second phase of his public proclamation of the kingdom. Jesus planned to spend just one week teaching at Pella before embarking on a tour of southern Perea that would lead directly to the tragic final week in Jerusalem.

On Thursday afternoon, Jesus addressed the multitude on the "Grace of Salvation," incorporating the stories of the lost sheep and the lost coin, and culminating with his favorite parable of the prodigal son. He began by explaining how prophets had always instructed people to seek God, but his mission revealed that God was actively seeking humanity. Jesus described divine acceptance as preceding human repentance, emphasizing that the Father sends the Son to find those who are lost and bring them back with rejoicing.

The parable described a younger son who requested his inheritance early, left home, and squandered everything in riotous living before experiencing poverty and hunger. Upon returning home in humility, he was welcomed with celebration by his father, much to the dismay of his dutiful older brother who had never left. When the older son complained about this seemingly unfair treatment, the father explained that rejoicing was appropriate because "this my son was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found." Jesus frequently used these three stories together to illustrate how divine love seeks the lost, whether those who unintentionally stray like sheep, become obscured by life's accumulations like lost coins, or deliberately rebel like the prodigal son.

One evening, Simon Zelotes asked Jesus to explain his statement that worldly people are sometimes wiser in their generation than kingdom believers, particularly in making friends with "mammon of unrighteousness." Jesus responded by noting that before entering the kingdom, some of them had been shrewd in business dealings, and they should now apply similar diligence to their spiritual lives and the gaining of souls. He illustrated this with a parable about an unjust steward who, when faced with losing his position, reduced what his master's debtors owed to gain their favor for his future security.

Jesus used this parable to emphasize that foresight in spiritual matters is as important as foresight in worldly affairs. He taught that faithfulness in small matters indicates faithfulness in greater responsibilities, and unfaithfulness in handling others' possessions makes one unworthy of receiving greater treasures. Jesus concluded with the stark reminder that no one can serve two masters - you will either love one and hate the other, or be devoted to one and despise the other, making it impossible to serve both God and wealth. This teaching provoked scorn from the wealth-loving Pharisees present, leading to arguments that attracted a crowd, prompting Jesus to withdraw to his tent for the night.

When the crowd became too noisy after Jesus departed, Simon Peter took charge and rebuked them for their unseemly disputes. He reminded them to carefully consider Jesus' words instead of arguing, and then shared an allegory previously taught by John the Baptist concerning a rich man and a beggar. Peter acknowledged that this parable didn't fully align with their new gospel teaching but suggested it still contained valuable lessons worth heeding until they fully understood the kingdom's new light.

The parable described a wealthy man named Dives who lived luxuriously while a beggar named Lazarus suffered at his gate, covered with sores and longing for table scraps. After both died, Lazarus was carried to "Abraham's bosom" while the rich man found himself in torment. When the rich man begged Abraham to send Lazarus to cool his tongue and warn his brothers, Abraham replied that a great gulf prevented passage between them, and that those who wouldn't listen to Moses and the prophets wouldn't be persuaded even by someone rising from the dead. After Peter recited this parable, Andrew dismissed the crowd for the night, though the apostles and disciples often questioned Jesus about this story, he never offered commentary on it.

Jesus consistently struggled to help his apostles understand that while they proclaimed the kingdom of God, the Father in heaven was not a king in the conventional sense. The people of that time were familiar primarily with kings and emperors in governmental structures, and Jews had long anticipated the coming of God's kingdom. For these reasons, Jesus thought it best to designate the spiritual brotherhood as the "kingdom of heaven" and its spiritual head as the "Father in heaven," never referring to his Father as a king.

Jesus never provided systematic instruction about the Father's personality and attributes, taking it for granted that people already believed in him. His teachings about the Father centered on the declaration that he and the Father are one - that seeing the Son means seeing the Father, that they know all things, and that only the Son truly knows the Father and can reveal him to others. Jesus taught that God is best known through observing the divinity in his own life rather than through formal teachings. The finite human mind can only comprehend the infinite through Jesus' human life experience, where the infinite was focused in time-space personality.

Throughout the first centuries of Christian evangelization, the concept of the kingdom of heaven was profoundly influenced by Greek idealism, particularly the notion of the natural world as a shadow of spiritual reality. However, the most significant transformation occurred when the Messiah of the kingdom became the Redeemer of the church - a social and religious organization that developed from Paul's activities and his followers, based on Jesus' teachings but supplemented with ideas from Philo and Persian doctrines about good and evil.

The Master's original concept of the kingdom faced significant distortion through two major tendencies: Jewish believers continued to view Jesus as the Messiah who would soon return to establish a material worldwide kingdom, while gentile Christians increasingly accepted Paul's depiction of Jesus as the Redeemer of church members rather than of a spiritual brotherhood. The church itself was a natural social development, but it unfortunately almost completely replaced Jesus' concept of the kingdom. Paul's institutionalized church effectively became a substitute for the kingdom of heaven that Jesus had proclaimed, shifting focus from the spiritual ideal of individual righteousness and divine fellowship to the mystic conception of Jesus as Redeemer and head of a formal religious community.