Theology Thursday: Freedom from the Law
I'm often baffled at arcane bits of theology that seem to survive in spite of what I consider to be obvious scriptural cases against them. Case in point: The idea that Christians are somehow still obligated to follow the Law.
Yes, I understand that Paul and the other apostles apparently still went to the Temple (at least until it was destroyed) and offered sacrifices and kept festivals, but did they give any indication in their writings that keeping the Law was important, let alone mandatory, for Christians?
Galatians 5:2-4 (ESV, emphasis mine)
2 Look: I, Paul, say to you that if you accept circumcision, Christ will be of no advantage to you. 3 I testify again to every man who accepts circumcision that he is obligated to keep the whole law. 4 You are severed from Christ, you who would be justified by the law; you have fallen away from grace.
This looks like a pretty damning argument. Literally. Fallen away from grace? Strong words.
Of course, Paul doesn't throw the baby out with the bathwater. He points out that this doesn't mean that Christians should have no code of ethics or ignore the lessons of the law. In fact, he sums it all up:
Galatians 5:13-14 (ESV)
13 For you were called to freedom, brothers. Only do not use your freedom as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another. 14 For the whole law is fulfilled in one word: “You shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
I'm sure that those who believe we should keep the Law have an explanation for these verses, but it still seems pretty plain to me. What about you? Any theology out there that you think should go away?
Theology Thursday Lite: Be a man!
After reading Dave Murrow's Why Men Hate Going to Church, I became much more conscious of things in Christianity and the Church that might attract or repel men. For instance, I'm much more attracted to a song like Newsboys' "Strong Tower" then, say, "Jesus, Lover of my Soul." See if you can guess the reason…
So you can imagine how much I enjoy a verse like this one from Paul:
Be a man! Take some Pepto-Bismal, get over here and pick me up!
Okay, true, that's not exactly the quote I was going for. But you know I couldn't resist a movie quote. Anyone care to identify the film? Anyone? Anyone? (hint: that was a hint)
But seriously, here's the quote:
1 Corinthians 16:13 (ESV)
13 Be watchful, stand firm in the faith, act like men, be strong.
I love the idea of standing firm in the faith and being strong. I think the world somehow tends to look at Christians as weak. But I'm shooting for acting like a man, man.
(Yes, it's a really, really short post. Remove the errant quote, which by the way is driving me crazy because I suspect I didn't quite get it right, and it's a really, really, really short post. But I haven't done a Theology post in, what? Five weeks? Gotta get back in the groove, man.)
(Update: I did indeed shank the quote. The real one is: "Be a man! Take some Pepto-Bismal, get dressed and come on over here." Call it 55% correct.)
Theology Thursday: About Jesus’ Baptism
First off, thanks to JonV for the topic suggestion. And to clarify, under discussion today is the fact that Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist (as opposed to a post about the baptizing that Jesus’ disciples did).
It’s a puzzling question, really. Why was Jesus baptized by John? Recall that John’s was a baptism of repentance, and that when Jesus came to him to be baptized, John objected:
Matthew 3:13-17 (ESV)
13 Then Jesus came from Galilee to the Jordan to John, to be baptized by him. 14 John would have prevented him, saying, "I need to be baptized by you, and do you come to me?" 15 But Jesus answered him, "Let it be so now, for thus it is fitting for us to fulfill all righteousness." Then he consented. 16 And when Jesus was baptized, immediately he went up from the water, and behold, the heavens were opened to him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and coming to rest on him; 17 and behold, a voice from heaven said, "This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased."
It’s tempting to attempt to shove a bunch of doctrine into Jesus’ reply that it was “to fulfill all righteousness” that he was baptized. Does Jesus mean he needed to be baptized for some reason? Or was he just setting an example for Christians?
This latter theory is pretty popular, but I doubt anyone who espouses it thinks all Christians should be baptized into John’s baptism. Neither do they think that Jesus needed a baptism of repentance.
The long and the short of it is that we’re never really told why Jesus needed to be baptized or how it was righteous for him to do it. But John does give us a hint at a larger purpose behind the event:
John 1:33-34 (ESV)
32 And John bore witness: "I saw the Spirit descend from heaven like a dove, and it remained on him. 33 I myself did not know him, but he who sent me to baptize with water said to me, 'He on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain, this is he who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.' 34 And I have seen and have borne witness that this is the Son of God."
So basically, the events of Jesus’ baptism were used as a sign to John so he could know who the Lord was. What’s really interesting to me is that John (in prison) later sends his disciples to Jesus asking if he’s really the one he’s been waiting for.
Feel free to chime in if you’ve got a better answer. Or any answer at all, actually.
Theology Thursday: What Must I Believe to Be Saved?
I had an interesting conversation with my Esteemed Partner in Pavement Pounding the other day. He’d been reading about the Jehovah’s Witnesses and asked if I’d ever done any such reading. (My answer was yes. Jason Evert’s excellent Answering Jehovah’s Witnesses. From a Catholic perspective, just for the record.)
As an aside, I noted that there was a lot of weird theology cropping up in the 1800s, including that of Charles Taze Russell (Jehovah’s Witnesses), Joseph Smith (Mormonism), Ellen G. White (Seventh-Day Adventism), and John Nelson Darby (Dispensationalism).
The larger discussion we had was the question about how much wrong theology a person can have and still be a Christian. Or, to put it another way: What Must I Believe to Be Saved?
If you ask me, that’s really not the right question. Didn’t the Philippian Jailer ask a very different question?
Acts 16:29-30 (ESV)
29 And the jailer called for lights and rushed in, and trembling with fear he fell down before Paul and Silas. 30 Then he brought them out and said, "Sirs, what must I do to be saved?"
Of course, we can’t make all that much of his question, given that his theology was certainly very influenced by his native Roman paganism. And perhaps Paul and Silas’s answer is informative:
Acts 16:31-32 (ESV)
31 And they said, "Believe in the Lord Jesus, and you will be saved, you and your household." 32 And they spoke the word of the Lord to him and to all who were in his house.
From everything else Paul wrote in the New Testament, we can pretty clearly say that salvation is by faith, not works. And since Paul and Silas apparently give the jailer the 411 on just what believing in the Lord Jesus means, salvation is by faith in something specific. Namely, “The Lord Jesus.”
So we have to believe in the Lord Jesus, but what does that mean? You’ll notice, I hope, that they didn’t say “Believe in the Three Spiritual Laws” or “Say the Sinner’s Prayer” or “Ask Jesus Into Your Heart.” So we’re not talking about a formula here. But they also didn’t say, “Believe in the correct conception of Jesus as the second part of the Triune God.”
That’s right, I’m putting it out there. I don’t see that belief in the Trinity is necessary for salvation. (However, I should probably point out that I do believe in the Trinity. I just don’t think it’s obvious from Scripture.)
There’s an additional passage in Acts that I find interesting, though perhaps not conclusive:
Acts 19:1-5 (ESV)
1 And it happened that while Apollos was at Corinth, Paul passed through the inland country and came to Ephesus. There he found some disciples. 2 And he said to them, "Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?" And they said, "No, we have not even heard that there is a Holy Spirit." 3 And he said, "Into what then were you baptized?" They said, "Into John’s baptism." 4 And Paul said, "John baptized with the baptism of repentance, telling the people to believe in the one who was to come after him, that is, Jesus." 5 On hearing this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus.
Notice that these men are referred to as “disciples.” Without any other qualification there (like “John’s disciples”), we’re left with the assumption (granted that it’s an assumption) that these are Christ-followers. Paul then asks them about what happened “when they believed,” drawing a nice parallel to Paul’s assertion of what one has to do to be saved. They believed, so they were saved.
Certainly, if these men didn’t even know about the Holy Spirit, they didn’t believe in the Trinity.
So where am I going with all this? Well, I think that Christians tend to be much too quick to label something as heresy, quick to put people in the “them” category. Outsiders. Heretics. Cultists. I’m not agitating for an uber-inclusive Christianity, but I think a little grace would be good.
Yes, it’s important to understand what the Bible says about Christ and God and the Church. But not everyone is at the same point on their journey of understanding. And not everyone will end up believing the same about everything.
True, there is probably a point at which different groups are worshipping a different God, or a different Jesus, though they may call him by the same name. I’m not suggesting that JWs and Mormons are necessarily Christians. But I’m not sure how far they are from the Kingdom. As always, this requires further study. Feel free to point me in the right direction.
Theology Thursday: Consistency and the Martian Chronicles
This is sort of half-book-review, half-theology. Just thought I’d warn you.
I've recently been listening to Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles. The work is a collection of stories detailing the exploits and misadventures of Earthmen who attempt to reach and explore Mars. Most of the stories end badly for the Earthmen, and Bradbury is quite creative in the bizarre twists and turns the plots take.
One of the stories, The Earth Men, had a particular impact on me. In it, astronauts from Earth arrive to a very blasé reception on Mars. In fact, nobody seems much interested in their story. They get pretty frustrated at being passed from one uninterested Martian to the next, but eventually find some interested people. In fact, these Martians seem *very* excited to see them. 
But these Martians also claim to be from Earth. And their descriptions of Earth don't ring true. The Earthmen soon realize they've been locked up in a Martian Funny Farm. They further realize that the insane Martians have the ability to project their delusions on others, complete with sights, smells, and sounds.
The Earthmen attempt to reason with the psychiatrist in charge of the Loony Bin (Mr. Xxx), but he believes that the Captain of the Earthmen is merely projecting his psychosis onto him, creating the images of his crew and ship.
After further examination of the Captain, Mr. Xxx diagnoses him as a hopeless case. Incurable. So he shoots him. When his crew doesn't immediately disappear, he shoots them. But the rocket is still there. Realizing that he's now obviously gone crazy with the same delusion, Mr. Xxx turns the gun on himself.
Crazy, right? Well, yes and no. Mr. Xxx behaves in an utterly consistent and rational way. He ended his own life because he was obviously incurably insane, a conclusion based on his former premise that the Captain was insane.
So the problem wasn’t so much Mr. Xxx’s consistency, but rather that he was acting on a faulty premise. Once Mr. Xxx decided the Captain was insane and that his appearance and that of his crew and ship were a result of psychosis, all the decisions followed logically. But he was just plain wrong from the start.
Now, at this point, you’re probably wondering how this ties in to a typical Theology Thursday post. Well, I’ll tell you. In a minute. First, I want to just point out that The Martian Chronicles is a decent audiobook, though the narrator isn’t my favorite (but not everyone can be Scott Brick). It’s not a typical short story collection, because all the stories are related and even refer to each other. Neither is it a typical novel. On the whole, I’ve enjoyed some of Bradbury’s other short fiction a bit more (R is for Rocket is a great collection). But I have to confess I haven’t finished the book yet.
Okay, now to the Theology part of this Thursday post.
I was reading in Acts this morning (Wednesday), and I came across this passage:
Acts 2:5-13 (ESV)
5 Now there were dwelling in Jerusalem Jews, devout men from every nation under heaven. 6 And at this sound the multitude came together, and they were bewildered, because each one was hearing them speak in his own language. 7 And they were amazed and astonished, saying, "Are not all these who are speaking Galileans? 8 And how is it that we hear, each of us in his own native language? 9 Parthians and Medes and Elamites and residents of Mesopotamia, Judea and Cappadocia, Pontus and Asia, 10 Phrygia and Pamphylia, Egypt and the parts of Libya belonging to Cyrene, and visitors from Rome, 11 both Jews and proselytes, Cretans and Arabians—we hear them telling in our own tongues the mighty works of God." 12 And all were amazed and perplexed, saying to one another, "What does this mean?" 13 But others mocking said, "They are filled with new wine."
In particular, I want to point out verse 5, and especially the last five words: from every nation under heaven.
Now, many Christians will tell you that you need to interpret the Bible in a consistently literal way. There’s that consistency thing again. And I’m fine with it, as far as it goes. But in this case, wouldn’t those last five words mean that on the day of Pentecost, people from the Pacific Islands and Australia and Ireland and America were there? That, in fact, people from every nation under heaven were there? If you’re going to take it literally, then yes. But there’s just no way that’s what it means. Remember that Acts was written to an audience living in the Roman Empire. Every nation probably meant something quite different to them than it does to us.
And of course, “literal” doesn’t have to mean that we leave our brains on the nightstand. In fact, another take on “literal” is “as the text is intended to be understood.”
Let’s take another example from the text above. Are we really to believe that someone in the crowd said exactly the words recorded in verses seven through twelve? I really, really, sincerely doubt it. I think, rather, that Luke summed up the general tenor of the crowd.
So I guess my point here is that it’s fine to be consistent in our approach to interpreting Scripture; We just need to make sure we’re starting from the right premise. Take the text for what it intends to convey. Cross-reference where necessary and compare Scripture with Scripture. Consider the genre. Consider the audience.
In short, be consistent, but make sure you start from the right place.
Theology Thursday Lite: Some Standing Here Will Still Be Alive Next Week
This week, I don’t think I’m going to attempt to answer any questions. I’m just going to eliminate an answer. The question is raised in this quote:
Luke 9:27 (ESV)
27 But I tell you truly, there are some standing here who will not taste death until they see the kingdom of God.
Jesus was talking to his disciples, perhaps a subset of them, perhaps all of them. So the question is, “What did it mean to see the kingdom of God?”
One common answer to this question comes from the very next passage, what we refer to as the Transfiguration:
Luke 9:28-29 (ESV)
28 Now about eight days after these sayings he took with him Peter and John and James and went up on the mountain to pray. 29 And as he was praying, the appearance of his face was altered, and his clothing became dazzling white.
So, here we have “some” of those who were “standing here” who now see something cool. Might this be the fulfillment of Jesus’ prediction? I’m going with no. Because, the fact is, that if that’s what Jesus predicted, he may as well have said, “There are some standing here who will still be alive next week.” Not much of a prediction.
So what is Jesus referring to? I’m not answering it, because I’m honestly not certain. But I suspect it has something to do with Acts 2. Or something to do with the sack of Jerusalem in AD70. Or basically some time after one of “those standing” there had actually, you know, died. Either one will fit. Any other opinions?
Theology Thursday Lite: The Great Catch of Fish
I’m going to keep this brief this week. Seriously. I was reading in Luke 5, about the Great Catch of Fish. Allow me to sum up:
Jesus gets into Simon(Peter)’s boat and tells him to go out and let the nets down again. James and John are in another 
boat. Presumably, Andrew is in Peter’s boat. They fish and come up with such a large catch that it almost sinks the boat. Peter senses there’s something different about Jesus and confesses that he’s a sinful man. Jesus reassures him that He can still use him, and calls him and the sons of Zebedee to follow Him.
I’ve always wondered what the purpose of the Great Catch was. Certainly it alerted Peter to Jesus’ power, but might there have been something else at work? I wonder if it might have been Jesus’ way of compensating Zebedee (and Peter and Andrew’s business partners, whoever they were) for the loss of their four main fishermen.
Does that even make sense?
Theology Thursday: Perfect Through Suffering
Well, I asked for somebody to lob me a topic for Theology Thursday, and it happened! JonV, former little kid and now full-fledged adult, working as a Clean Water Engineer with the Mennonite Central Committee in Tete, Mozambique, filled out the Suggest a Topic! form, and now I’ll attempt to do his question justice.
The big news here, though, is that Jon referred to me in the email as “Seth” and not “Mr. Heasley.” Keep in mind I’ve known him since he was shorter than I am, back when The Fair Elaine and I were working with the youth in our old church. Back in the previous century, you know.
Jon’s question is from Hebrews 5:8 and following, which says:
Hebrews 5:8-10 (ESV)
8 Although he was a son, he learned obedience through what he suffered. 9 And being made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey him, 10 being designated by God a high priest after the order of Melchizedek.
This passage seems to imply that Jesus had some growing to do before he could be our High Priest. More than that, it seems to imply there was some perfection that Jesus lacked. This seems offensive to our “He’s the perfect man, he’s the Lord’s own son” sensibilities. And yes, that’s a classic Petra reference (The Coloring Song).
So there’s the question: What does it mean that Jesus learned obedience or became perfect?
Right off the top, I’d point out that there’s really only one question here. The two parts of the question, I believe, are a bit of parallelism. So “Christ learned obedience through suffering” = “He was made perfect.” I don’t think there’s a way to separate the two thoughts.
Of course, it’s tough to address a question from the Epistles without having the greater context of the letter in mind. So, being a reader, I read the book of Hebrews over the weekend. There are a couple of verses that stick out to most readers, but they’re on the Eternal Security question, and I think the emphasis on them distracts from the greater arc of the letter. I’ve read Hebrews probably ten times now, but the beauty of the letter really hit me this time.
For those unfamiliar with it, the writer of Hebrews (Luke? Apollos? Titus?) makes a sustained argument about Christ’s role as the High Priest of the New Covenant, and addresses how his new role affects humans. An outline looks something like this: (and you can find something similar in most study Bibles)
- Chapter 1 – Christ superior to angels
- Chapter 2 – Christ made like us
- Chapter 3, 4 – Christ greater than Moses
- Chapter 5 – Christ as priest despite his non-Levitical lineage
- Chapter 6 – Warnings against apostasy
- Chapter 7 – Christ superior to the Levitical Priests
- Chapter 8 – Christ as the priest of a New Covenant
- Chapter 9 – The Earthly Temple was never anything but a copy of the Heavenly Temple
- Chapter 10 – Christ’s sacrifice superior to animal sacrifice
- Chapter 11 – How we access Christ’s work: Through Faith
- Chapter 12 – Our response: Faith and endurance through suffering
- Chapter 13 – The sacrifices God honors: Praise and Serving Others
I wanted to include this outline first to inspire someone to go and read Hebrews. As I wrote, it’s very easy to get freaked by the warnings against apostasy and to miss the greater points about how Christ accomplished our salvation.
It’s really impossible to answer Jon’s question without tracing it through the whole book, or at least a couple of the chapters. Because Chapter 5 isn’t the only place where Christ’s being perfected shows up. In fact, there’s a much earlier reference:
Hebrews 2:10 (ESV)
10 For it was fitting that he, for whom and by whom all things exist, in bringing many sons to glory, should make the founder of their salvation perfect through suffering.
Keep in mind that Chapter 2 discusses how Christ was made like us. Further down, we have this verse:
Hebrews 2:17 (ESV)
17 Therefore he had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people.
In this sense, we’re looking at how Christ was made perfect for his role. He had to be like us, and to suffer as we suffer, in order for him to truly represent us.
(BTW, I want to make it clear that this idea didn’t originate with me. I did some Googling and whatnot and this is the position I think is correct, or at least makes sense.)
So anyway, I’d sum up the writer’s argument this way: Christ was the mediator of a better covenant, was qualified to be its High Priest by being appointed to it by God, was made fitting for it by what he suffered, and further qualified by enduring suffering in obedience. Which brings me to Hebrews 7:
Hebrews 7:26 (ESV)
26 For it was indeed fitting that we should have such a high priest, holy, innocent, unstained, separated from sinners, and exalted above the heavens.
One more thing I’m going to throw in here. The Internet is a great tool for researching Bible Blogs. I looked up the word “to make perfect” ("teleioo", for the record) from 2:10 and 5:9, and in the range of definitions is “to be found perfect.” Going with that definition, we wouldn’t have to do any wordful wrangling. It would just be relating that Christ endured his sufferings perfectly, not that the sufferings somehow made him perfect.
Well, Jon, I hope that helps. I even managed to keep it under a thousand words! Feel free to weigh in in the comments.
Theology Thursday: Saints or Sinners?
I generally try to come to Theology Thursday with a well-thought-out idea, complete with Bible references. But today I just wanted to write about something I’ve been wondering about, but without most of the actual effort involved with making a Biblical case for it. Call it laziness if you want.
It seems that it’s the thing to do these days for Christians to call themselves sinners. Or to emphasis their sinfulness, by way of (perhaps?) trying not to look pompous or judgmental.
Certainly, it wouldn’t necessarily help my witness if I went around calling myself a saint, right? Or should I update my Facebook profile to say something like this:
“Seth: Husband, Father, Baseball Fan, Saint.”
But isn’t just a bit odd to insert “Sinner” there, too? Is that really part of who I am, any more than “Baseball Fan” is? Do I really need to emphasize my own sinfulness? And mightn’t I just as easily put “Human” for all the information it gives? Where does this emanate from?
I suspect there are a number of different motivations that feed this tendency for us to insist that we’re “just sinners, saved by grace.”
- It’s a defense against unbelievers who call Christians hypocrites. If we call ourselves sinners, then we can hardly be called hypocritical when we fail, right?
- It just looks pious.
- We feel, acutely, our own sinfulness and express our gratitude to God by emphasizing it.
- The word “saint” just doesn’t fly today.
I mainly want to write about #4, but I’ll take comments on any of them, or suggestions for other possible motivations. I do think that #3 is certainly a common reason, particularly among men, for going with the Sinner label. I could be off-base here, but I think the types of things men tend to struggle with get more attention, and therefore are felt more acutely. (Definitely generalizing here.)
But I definitely think that the reason we can’t really get away with '”saint” is that it’s not a well-understood word these days. The word itself conjures up, at least to Protestants, images of icons or statues in a Catholic or Orthodox church, and has an almost sterile, ivory tower connotation.
(This in spite of the fact that any treatment of the Lives of the Saints will normally have ample evidence that these saintly folks were awfully human, too.)
“Saint” simply means “holy ones.” Well, that’s not much of an improvement, is it? “Holy” is another misunderstood word, because it doesn’t mean “perfect,” but rather “set apart.”
I know I said I wouldn’t get all Biblical on this topic, but go look at the salutations of the Epistles in the New Testament. A goodly percentage of them are addressed to “the saints” in a particular city. Certainly there was no implication of the people of the churches in those ancient cities being any less sinful than we are today.
At the risk of sounding like Stuart Smalley, isn’t there some value in positive affirmation? I’m not into the Word of Faith doctrine, in which faith is seen as a force and words as having some mystical power. But it seems to me that calling ourselves “sinners” is similar to a person who’s been sober twenty years calling himself an alcoholic. (And here I really step in it.)
Yes, we are sinners. But we’ve been bought with a price and set apart to be saints.
Thoughts?
Theology Thursday: Redeemed
Back on New Year’s Eve, I engaged in a short debate-ish thing with my Esteemed Partner in Pavement Pounding about Jephthah, and specifically about whether he sacrificed his daughter in Judges 11. (Whoa, I just totally pulled that chapter reference out of my head! Sweet!) I took the negative proposition, that Jephthah did not sacrifice his daughter, though the wording of the passage seems to indicate he did. (You can go read it if you want. I’ll wait.)
Mostly my position is based in logic. And it goes like this:
- God does not approve of human sacrifice
- God approved of Jephthah (Hebrews 11)
- Therefore, Jephthah did not engage in human sacrifice
But then, a couple of weeks ago, I came across an additional bit of support for my position. (By the way, you’d probably like to know what I think Jephthah did sacrifice, right? The short answer is something acceptable.)
My new evidence came from Exodus 13, when the Lord commanded the consecration of the firstborn. Here’s the passage:
Exodus 13:12-13 (ESV):
12 you shall set apart to the LORD all that first opens the womb. All the firstborn of your animals that are males shall be the LORD’s. 13 Every firstborn of a donkey you shall redeem with a lamb, or if you will not redeem it you shall break its neck. Every firstborn of man among your sons you shall redeem.
The “shall be the LORD’s” part seems to indicate that they would be sacrificed. But not all species would be sacrificed. Only clean animals. Others would be redeemed with a lamb. And firstborn sons, in particular, were consecrated to the service of the Lord (see Numbers 3), though later the tribe of Levi was taken for that service (but all firstborn sons of other tribes still had to be redeemed).
But my main point here is that an Israelite couldn’t offer just anything to God. Even when bringing a clean animal to sacrifice, it had to be spotless. God seemed to be very particular about what could be offered.
In this passage, the example of a donkey is given. Checking Leviticus 11 (a lot of 11th chapters in this post), we note that the donkey doesn’t have cloven hooves, so it’s unclean. It has to be redeemed (or throttled, apparently).
So, back to Jephthah’s case. He promised to offer what came out of his tent to the Lord. But he was an Israelite, and knew that he could only offer something clean. Anything unclean, he would have to redeem. But it would still belong to the Lord.
So, Jephthah’s daughter would have been redeemed, but would have been consecrated to the Lord. If this is so, and she was dedicated to service, she may not have been able to marry. This makes a good deal more sense when one considers that she lamented not her impending death, but rather her virginity. Jephthah’s grief would be explained by his knowledge that his line would end with her, since she was his only daughter.
This also seems to match the chronology of Judges 11, as one of the concluding verses says this:
Judges 11:39 (NKJV, just because it’s more word-for-word)
39 And it was so at the end of two months that she returned to her father, and he carried out his vow with her which he had vowed. She knew no man.
It might be stretching things a bit, it seems the “she knew no man” happened after Jephthah had fulfilled the vow.
BTW, I’m comfortably out of the mainstream with my interpretation here. Most commentators think that in the time of the Judges, the Law wasn’t observed particularly well, and so resorting to human sacrifice wasn’t be all that surprising, and Jephthah was honored for keeping a painful vow. But the writer of Hebrews doesn’t mention the sacrifice at all, so I think my explanation fits.
Now that we’re done with that, I’m shocked that my feeble little brain is just now really connecting the redemption of the firstborn with the fact that mankind was redeemed by the Lamb of God. The unclean redeemed by the clean. The broader idea of redemption by a lamb/bull is pretty well documented, but this specific idea is just now settling in for me. Guess I need to keep reading.