This is Eugene Peterson and this is the introduction to The Message New Testament.
Over the course of about 50 years, these writings added up to what later would be compiled by the followers of Jesus and designated the New Testament. Three kinds of writings; eye-witness stories, personal letters, and a visionary poem make up the book; 5 stories, 21 letters, one poem. And in the course of this this writing and reading, collecting and arranging with no one apparently in charge, the early Christians whose lives were being changed and shaped by what they were reading, arrived at the conviction that there was in fact someone in charge. God’s Holy Spirit was behind and in it all. In retrospect, they could see it was not at all random or haphazard, that every word worked with every other word, and that all the separate documents worked in intricate harmony. There was nothing accidental in any of this, nothing merely circumstantial. They were bold to call what had been written God’s Word, and trusted their lives to it. They accepted its authority over their lives and most of its readers since have been similarly convinced.
The arrival of Jesus signaled a beginning of a new era, God entered history in a personal way and made it unmistakably clear that He is on our side, doing everything possible to save us. It was all presented and worked out in a life, death, and resurrection of Jesus. It was and is hard to believe, seemingly too good to be true. But one by one, men and women did believe it, believed Jesus was God, alive among them and for them. Soon they would realize He also lived within them. To their great surprise, they found themselves living in a world where God called all the shots, had the first word on everything, had the last word on everything. That meant that everything, quite literally EVERYTHING had to be re–centered, re-imagined, and re-thought. They went at it with immense gusto, they told stories of Jesus, and arranged his teachings in memorable form. They wrote letters, they sang songs, they prayed. One of them wrote an extraordinary poem based on holy visions. There was no apparent organization to any of this, it was all more or less spontaneous, and to the eye of the casual observer, haphazard.
The striking feature in all this writing is that it was done in the street language of the day, the idiom of the playground and the marketplace. In the Greek speaking world of that day, there were two levels of language, formal and informal. Formal language was used to write philosophy and history, government decrees and epic poetry. If someone were to sit down and consciously write for future generations, it would of course be written in this formal language with its learned vocabulary and its precise diction.
But if the writing was routine; shopping lists, family letters, bills and receipts, it was written in the common informal idiom of everyday speech, street language. And this is the language used throughout the New Testament. Some people are taken back by this supposing the language meeting with a Holy God and holy things, should be elevated, stately and ceremonial. But one good look at Jesus, his preference for down to earth stories, and his easy association with common people, gets rid of that supposition. For Jesus, it is the descent of God to our lives just as they are, not the ascent of our lives to God, hoping that He might approve when He sees how hard we try.
And that is why the followers of Jesus and their witness and preaching, translating and teaching, have always done their best to get the message, the Good News, into the language of whatever streets they happened to be living on. In order to understand the message right, the language must be right, not a refined language that appeals to our aspirations after the best, but a rough and earthy language that reveals God’s presence and action where we least expect it catching us when we are up to our elbows in the soiled ordinariness of our lives, and God is the furthest thing from our minds.
This version of the New Testament in a contemporary idiom, keeps the language of the message current and fresh and understandable in the same language in which we do our shopping, talk with our friends, worry about world affairs, and teach our children their table manners. The goal is not to render a word for word conversion of Greek into English but rather to convert the tone, the rhythm, the events, the ideas, into the way we actually think and speak.
In the midst of doing this work I realize, that this is exactly what I’ve been doing all of my vocational life. For thirty five years as a pastor, I stood at the border between two languages, biblical Greek and everyday English, acting as a translator, providing the right phrases, getting the right words so that the men and women to whom I was pastor, could find their way around and get along in this world where God has spoken so decisively and clearly in Jesus. I did it from the pulpit, and in the kitchen, in hospitals and restaurants, on parking lots and at picnics, always looking for an English way to make the biblical text relevant to the conditions of the people. Eugene H Peterson.
The Message is a reading or listening Bible translated from the original Greek and Hebrew Scriptures. I am frequently surprised by how many believers in the non KJV congregations do not have access to The Message. I do realize for some of you translation/version is paramount. And for memorizing, study and teaching, I believe that to be valid. However, I’m not so convinced the Holy Spirit would not have us use other translations/version for such as when I desire to be “immersed and washed” in the essence of a chapter or even an entire book of Scripture to readily capture and absorb its perspective, instruction and wisdom in our street language today.
Also, I see value in providing a seeker unfamiliar with biblical jargon Scriptural texts in a format such as The Message, that they more easily can understand. I concur the discussion ranks higher than merely prime rib or broccoli (14:6-9). Perhaps more like “milk vs. meat”(Heb 5:12, I Cor 3:2).
Below I have included selected texts from Romans Chapters 12-15 in The Message that I appreciate. Blessings as you read below challenging your “everyday ordinary life in Christ.” merlin
Romans 12: 1 – 21 (The Message)
Place Your Life Before God
So here’s what I want you to do, God helping you: Take your everyday, ordinary life, your sleeping, eating, going-to-work, and walking-around life – and place it before God as an offering. Embracing what God does for you is the best thing you can do for him. Don’t become so well adjusted to your culture that you fit into it without even thinking. Instead, fix your attention on God. You will be changed from the inside out. Readily recognize what he wants from you, and quickly respond to it. Unlike the culture around you, always dragging you down to its level of immaturity, God brings the best out of you, develops well formed maturity in you.
I’m speaking to you out of a deep gratitude for all that God has given me, and especially as I have responsibilities in relation to you. Living then, as every one of you does, in pure grace, it’s important that you not misinterpret yourselves as people who are bringing this goodness to God. No, God brings it all to you. The only accurate way to understand ourselves is by what God is and by what he does for us, not by what we are and what we do for him.
In this way we are like the various parts of a human body. Each part gets its meaning from the body as a whole, not the other way around. The body we are talking about is Christ’s body of chosen people. Each of us find our meaning and function as part of his body. But as a chopped-off finger or cut-off toe we wouldn’t amount to much, would we? So since we find ourselves fashioned and all these excellently formed and marvelously functioning parts in Christ’s body, let’s just go ahead and be what we are made to be, without enviously or pridefully comparing ourselves with each other, or trying to be something we aren’t.
If you preach, just preach God’s Message, nothing else; if you help, just help, don’t take over; if you teach, stick to your teaching; if you give encouraging guidance, be careful that you don’t get bossy; if you’re put in charge, don’t manipulate; if you’re called to give aid to people in distress, keep your eyes open and be quick to respond; if you work with the disadvantaged, don’t let yourself get irritated with them or depressed by them. Keep a smile on your face.
Love from the center of who you are; don’t fake it. Run for dear life from evil; hold on for dear life to good. Be good friends who love deeply; practice playing second fiddle.
Don’t burn out; keep yourself fueled and aflame. Be alert servants of the Master, cheerfully expectant. Don’t quit in hard times; pray all the harder. Help needy Christians; be inventive in hospitality.
Bless your enemy; no cursing under your breath. Laugh with your happy friends when they’re happy; share tears when they’re down. Get along with each other; don’t be stuck up. Make friends with nobodies; don’t be the great somebody.
Don’t hit back; discover beauty in everyone. If you got it in you, get along with everybody. Don’t insist on getting even; that’s not for you to do. “I’ll do the judging,“ says God. “I’ll take care of it.
Our Scriptures tell us that if you see your enemy hungry, go buy that person lunch, or if he’s thirsty, get him a drink. Your generosity will surprise him with goodness. Don’t let evil get the best of you; get the best of evil by doing good.
Romans 13: 8 – 14
Be a Responsible Citizen
Don’t run up debts except for the huge debt of love you owe each other. When you love others you complete what the law has been after all along. The law code, don’t sleep with another person’s spouse, don’t take someone’s life, don’t take what isn’t yours, don’t always be wanting what you don’t have, and any other “don’t” you can think of – finally adds up to this: love other people as well as you do yourself. You can’t go wrong when you love others. When you add up everything in the law code, the sum total is love.
But make sure that you don’t get so absorbed and exhausted in taking care of all your day-by-day obligations that you lose track of time and doze off, oblivious to God. The night is about over, dawn is about to break. Be up and awake to what God is doing! God is putting finishing touches on the salvation work he began when we first believed. We can’t afford to waste a minute, must not squander these precious daylight hours in frivolity and indulgence, in sleeping around and dissipation, in bickering and grabbing everything in sight. Get out of bed and get dressed! Don’t loiter and linger, waiting until the very last minute. Dress yourselves in Christ, and be up and about!
Romans 14
Cultivating Good Relationships
Welcome with open arms fellow believers who don’t see things the way you do. And don’t jump all over them every time they do or say something you don’t agree with – even when it seems that they are strong on opinions but weak in the faith department. Remember, they have their own history to deal with. Treat them gently.
For instance, the person who has been around for a while might well be convinced that he can eat anything on the table, while another, with a different background, might assume he should only be a vegetarian and eat accordingly. But since both are guests at Christ’s table, wouldn’t it be terrible rude if they fell to criticizing what the other ate or didn’t eat? God, after all, invited them both to the table. Do you have any business crossing people off the guest list or interfering with God’s welcome? If there are corrections to be made or manners to be learned, God can handle that without your help.
Or, say, one person thinks that some days should be set aside as holy and another thinks that each day is pretty much like any other. There are good reasons either way. So, each person is free to follow the convictions of conscience.
What’s important in all this is that if you keep a holy day, keep it for God’s sake; if you eat meat, eat it for the glory of God and thank God for prime rib; if you’re a vegetarian, eat vegetables to the glory of God and thank God for broccoli. None of us are permitted to insist on our own way in these matters. It’s God we are answerable to – all the way from life to death and everything in between – not each other. That’s why Jesus lived and died and then lived again: so that he could be our Master across the entire range of life and death, and free us from the petty tyrannies of each other.
So where does that leave you when you criticize a brother? And where does that leave you when you condescend to a sister? I’d say it leaves you looking pretty silly – or worse. Eventually, we are all going to end up kneeling side by side in the place of judgment, facing God. Your critical and condescending ways aren’t going to improve your position there one bit. Read it for yourself in Scripture:
“As I live and breathe,” God says, Every knee will bow before me; Every tongue will tell the honest truth that I and only I am God.”
So tend to your knitting. You’ve got your hands full just taking care of your own life before God.
Forget about deciding what’s right for each other. Here’s what you need to be concerned about: that you don’t get in the way of someone else, making life more difficult than it is already. I’m convinced – Jesus convinced me! – that everything as it is in itself is holy. We, of course, by the way we treat it or talk about it, can contaminate it.
If you confuse others by making a big issue over what they eat or don’t eat, you’re no longer a companion with them in love, are you? These, remember, are persons for whom Christ died. Would you risk sending them to hell over an item in their diet? Don’t you dare let a piece of God blessed – food become an occasion of soul-poisoning!
God‘s kingdom isn’t a matter of what you put in your stomach, for goodness sake. It’s what God does with your life as he sets it right, puts it together, and completes it with joy. Your task is to single-mindedly serve Christ. Do that and you kill two birds with one stone: pleasing the God above and improving your worth to the people around you.
So let’s agree to use all our energy in getting along with each other. Help others with encouraging words; don’t drag them down by finding fault. You’re certainly not going to permit an argument over what is served are not served at supper to wreck God’s work among you, are you? I said it before and I’ll say it again: All food is good, but it can turn bad if you use it badly, if you use it to trip others up and send them sprawling. When you sit down to a meal, your primary concern should not be to feed your own face but to share the life of Jesus. So be sensitive and courteous to the others who are eating. Don’t eat or say or do things that might interfere with the free exchange of love.
Cultivate your own relationship with God but don’t impose it on others. You’re fortunate if your behavior and your belief are coherent. But if you’re not sure, if you notice that you are acting in ways and inconsistent with what you believe – some days trying to impose your opinions on others, other days just trying to please them – then
you know that you’re out of line. If the way you live isn’t consistent with what you believe, then it’s wrong.
Romans 15:1-6
Those of us who are strong and able in the faith need to step in and lend a hand to those who falter, and not just do what is most convenient for us. Strength is for service, not status. Each one of us needs to look after the good of the people around us, asking ourselves, “How can I help?”
That’s exactly what Jesus did. He didn’t make it easy for himself by avoiding people’s struggles, but waded right in and helped out. “I took on the troubles of the troubled,” is the way the Scripture put it. Even if it was written in Scripture long ago, you can be sure it’s written for us. God wants the combination of his steady, constant calling and warm, personal counsel in Scripture to come to characterize us, keeping us alert for whatever he will do next. May our dependably steady and warmly personal God develop maturity in you so that you can get along with each other as well as Jesus gets along with us all. Then we will be a choir – not our voices only, but our very lives singing in harmony in a stunning anthem to the God and Father of our Master Jesus!