About Blue Collar Commentary

Jeff Harrington

My path has always been the path less traveled. I felt the call to preach as a young boy. It terrified me. I vividly remember wrestling with God over this call one night because I did not want to become a preacher. In my college freshmen year, I became the student leader of the church youth ministry. Surprisingly, I enjoyed this and later assisted the regional youth director for the Southern Baptist churches in Kern County. The regional director later had a nervous breakdown. I then became the default regional youth director until I went away to California Baptist College (now California Baptist University) for my junior and senior years.

I went to Cal Baptist to become a youth pastor. I thought I had worked out a wonderful compromise with the Lord. I would agree to become a youth pastor but not a preaching pastor. It seemed like a good compromise as neither I nor the Lord got what we wanted entirely. Unfortunately, almost immediately upon arrival at Cal Baptist, I began to have doubts about the deal, so I started taking psychology courses, figuring a bachelor’s degree in religion would not assist me in finding employment in the secular world.

Nevertheless, I graduated with a Bachelor’s Degree in Religion (I only needed one more class credit to earn a Bachelor’s Degree in Psychology). However, I did not stay another semester to earn that credit because I already had a full-time job waiting for me back in Bakersfield with the Kern County Probation Department, which decided I was close enough to a Psychology Degree to justify hiring me.

I graduated from Cal Baptist in May 1980 and started working for the Kern County Probation Department in June 1980 as a group counselor for juvenile delinquents. In 1981, I was promoted to probation officer and assigned to the Adult Division, where I worked as a felony investigator. Felony investigators wrote sentencing reports and recommendations for Superior Court judges.

In that position, the Lord began to train me to become a preaching pastor, although I was utterly ignorant of that plan then. When I became a probation officer, the State of California had recently switched from Indeterminate Sentencing to Determinate Sentencing. Most judges were slow to adopt the new sentencing guidelines, which meant someone needed to explain how the new guidelines affected sentencing. The probation department's sole focus in investigations was on sentencing. The courts, the prosecution, and the defense counsel had to be more well-rounded, but we could focus on becoming the experts in this one area.

As a new probation officer, I was selected to train in Determinate Sentencing Law because I would not be confused with the transition from Indeterminate to Determinate Sentencing like older probation officers might be…I would only know Determinate Sentencing Law without the baggage of having to unlearn Indeterminate Sentencing Law.

As I mentioned, I was unaware at the time that it was through this process that the Lord trained me to become a preacher. How so? For one thing, I learned how to research something objectively. Unlike the prosecution and the defense in a criminal case, I was not an advocate for or against the defendant. Later, as a preacher, I had the same mindset. I did not advocate Reformed or Arminian theology nor charismatic versus non-charismatic perspectives. I had no horse in the race, as it were.

In sentencing, I was supposed to be an objective third party whose only interest was in justice being served. So, I was trained in Determinate Sentencing guidelines and had to read case law to see how it was applied. Furthermore, there were legal journals and annotated penal codes (equivalent to commentaries on the law and legal procedure).

After all that research, I was required to appear in court and make a persuasive case for why the court should follow my recommendations over the prosecutor’s and defense counsel’s. The skills I developed translated nicely into researching a text for a sermon and presenting a persuasive argument for my position.

The main benefit of my training when I finally became a preacher was maintaining objectivity while researching a passage, just like I had as a felony investigator. I kept a healthy skepticism when researching passages in commentaries and theological journals. Someone would have to prove their case to me rather than me simply towing a particular theological perspective’s line of reasoning. My thinking was not being channeled through what my seminary professors told me the passage meant or upholding the traditional treatment of a passage through the grid of a seminary bias. I'm not disparaging those things; I’m just saying I went to the passage without a preconceived bias.

In this commentary, I present several alternatives from different theological perspectives rather than merely explaining what makes the best sense to me. I acknowledge that my understanding of the text might be wrong, so I will make you aware of other perspectives. You will need to decide for yourself who makes the best case.

My partner, Aaron, insisted I leave my tongue-in-cheek sense of humor in the commentary as well. He believes this will make this commentary unique from other commentaries. I trust you will recognize when I speak tongue-in-cheek, sarcastically, or in a playful manner. This commentary is not meant for preachers, but rather, my target is the ordinary student of the Bible who sometimes wonders what a passage means or, at the very least, what the possible meanings are and would like it explained to them in plain language. I hope you will find it helpful for that purpose and that the Observations & Applications Section will help you apply what you learn.

Overall, you will find the commentary most supportive of grace-based theology free of guilt-driven legalism. Whom the Son sets free is free indeed!

Aaron Rhoten

I grew up in a small oil community immersed in Blue Collar and my parents were no exception. My dad, who was raised for all intents and purpose by a single depression era father, completed 8th grade but never finished high school mostly because he enlisted in the Navy during the II World War not long after his 17th birthday. My mother finished high school, she became pregnant early in life and for that reason waited until my oldest brother was attending our local junior college to go back to school and get a teaching credential and later a master’s in counselling. The irony there is she graduated junior college the same year my oldest brother did. Since I am the youngest of six, a lot of my experience in my younger years was with a dad who had worked himself up to management and thus left home early and stayed later at work and a mom who was working as a teacher at a school located about 30 miles from our house and likewise left early and got home later. I didn’t know it while I was being raised but society would have later come to describe my rearing as one of being a latch key child, which is the way I preferred it. I liked being outside and didn’t especially like homework, so it allowed me the freedom to roam.

Somewhere when I was about five my mother led me to salvation. If memory serves me correctly all I knew about it at the time is that I would get to spend eternity in Heaven, this great place, with this loving dude named Jesus avoiding Hell and agony in the process. Sounded like a good deal to me so I took it. As I progressed through my formative years, I became decent at sinning (like a lot of teenagers do) while still doing enough of the right things to not get caught and pay much of an outward price for the shame for those sins (or worse). Since I was a Christian, I experienced conviction and therefore was not a very happy sinner, but I was able to mostly keep my feelings of guilt and shame between myself, God and the handful of people who partook in those shameful acts with me. This seemed to be a pretty good compromise with me since I was a teenager which also made me good at compartmentalizing. At the same time, I attended church and youth groups faithfully (I literally was a pew baby) revered and loved God (except I wasn’t always great at showing it by that obedient part). I had a basement room in one of the houses we lived where I first read the entire Bible as an adolescent. I loved it. Especially the Old Testament stories where bugger heads like me became great men of valor and honor (or at least that was the way I saw it at the time). The type of men who “DID GREAT THINGS FOR GOD!”. However, when it came to those blasted epistles, I seemed pretty lost. I knew God loved me and the people in those epistles greatly, but it seemed to me I didn’t have a lot in common with many of them. These people were confusing and although I could better understand this live by faith part of the epistles all this walk in the Spirit thing meant to me was either being slain in the Spirit (which I witnessed many times in the Chinese church in Bakersfield, Ca) or speaking in tongues coupled with some weird sense of power that would help one to be bold in witnessing and helped one overcome sin that came with some second baptism which I witnessed and heard about many times in a Pentecostal church in Taft, CA.

Moving forward in the story I had grew up, got married to my high school sweetheart and went to College at UC Berkeley where I obtained a major in Mechanical engineering with an emphasis in Petroleum engineering. After that I set about making a life, having kids, providing for my family, continuing to attend church, all the while realizing a lot of what I heard preachers saying and teaching did not fully integrate with my knowledge of the Bible (which admittedly was limited to reading the Bible through a few times by then, lots of adult Sunday school classes and sporadic daily reading on my part). Most importantly, much of what was being taught didn’t work for me in the sense of experiencing an overcoming life. I didn’t know what would and to be honest I was either too lazy to find out or didn’t feel I had the tools to do so. I only knew something was wrong because I wasn’t experiencing great change. Change for sure but I still felt like I was in bondage to sin, some guilt and some shame and that I was surrounded by Christians who appeared to be in bondage with me even though they claimed to have the answer of that power of that second baptism discussed earlier. I would like to pause to say the problem was not so much with what the preachers were preaching, although some of it didn’t help, as it was with me, my ignorance and my attitude. For a Christian who had a few years under his belt I was still living a pretty “Self” life. Self-centered, self-directed, self-willed, self-righteous… At the time I was attending a church where having a difference of opinion to either what the preacher taught or what the doctrine of the denomination taught (in an honest way not maliciously) was frowned upon so I set about doing two things. One, I was determined not to forsake the assembling of the Saints and two, I distanced myself from other Christians in the church because I didn’t want to debate them or cause strife in the church body.

Then one day God found me (as he has been known to do from time to time in my life) and continued the next step in the journey of my salvation by sanctification. At the time, I was part-owner of a small oil company and the properties we owned were located some 30-40 miles from where I lived. For a couple of years, I spent my time driving to and from work listening to one of those Christian radio stations where they primarily played famous pastor’s sermons and had those call-in programs where smart dudes would answer your questions about God, Faith and what a certain passage of scripture meant. During that time there were a couple of preachers I heard who started speaking about this whole Grace thing as something you not only needed for justification but as something that is meant to permeate your life as you live it out your salvation. That you have two choices, one is to either continue to walk in the law, which was fruitless because the law was powerless to save me from my weaknesses or to experience my salvation through the lens of freedom Grace has to offer. Over the course of that time listening to these pastors, reading the epistles more diligently and reading a book or two my life became transformed in the sense that the bonds were broken. I was set free, and I was free indeed. NEVER TO BECOME A SLAVE AGAIN. You see, until then I was still trying to live life to overcome sin with a little legalism and recognition that an element of grace was still necessary during the journey. It was a frustrating time that resulted in long periods of ambivalence coupled with short periods of motivation for improvement. After all I was a decent somewhat successful, hardworking man (and have been most my life) who didn’t commit those big sins, like murder, adultery, robbery, overt violence, drug addiction, alcoholism, etc. etc. My sins were much more mundane like a garden salad a little selfishness, stubbornness, bouts of anger, a tobacco chewing addiction, occasionally drinking too much alcohol and I’m sure a few more things that are alluding my mind right now to make the salad tasty and complete. So, I rationalized that since my sins were light and easy and not the main course type of sins, all that was necessary to overcome this occasional sense of guilt and shame was a little elbow grease. It wasn’t until I realized I could have all the elbow grease in the world, but it would never be enough to tame my sinning that I started becoming grounded in the understanding how I was to live this life and the role the Holy Spirit plays in helping me do so. I have since fallen in love with the epistles, understand what they are saying a lot better and am much better than I used to be at this walking in The Spirit thing. Amazingly it turns out that God wasn’t all that interested in what I could do to improve myself (flesh), or what I could do for him (flesh) but HE WANTED TO DO HIS WORK THROUGH ME and a Spirit lead, Spirit controlled life was how He was going to accomplish this work. The only thing I needed to do was to cooperate with His work and have patience and trust He would do the work. Finally, I could fully enter His Sabbath rest in Faith in the WHO that would accomplish the work he started in me. The results are not my responsibility but His. The responsibility for completing the work is not mine but His. As Larry Crabb would say, “The pressure is off” and with that realization the occasional guilt and shame I was feeling faded, and my sin frequency has diminished.

As it turns out one of the more influential grace-based pastor’s sermons I was listening to on the radio during that time was not really famous at all and lived in Bakersfield, CA, the same city I lived in. Through a weird series of events Me and My family came to know this man and his family. We have become great friends and my wife, children and I ended up attended the church he pastored for over 20 years until we moved to Lake Tahoe. That man, as you can now guess is Jeff Harrington, the man who has written the source material on this website. Words cannot express how grateful I am to God for Jeff’s faithfulness and patience in teaching me God’s word and concepts in a simple language that makes sense, is easily understood and clarifies many of those more difficult passages that seem to be contradictory and/or confusing. It has truly been a next step game changer in my study of scripture, and I feel it will be for others as well. That is why I partnered with Jeff to get these teachings to others. In addition, one of Jeff’s great gifts has been to provide insight and relevance of the passages being studied to people’s everyday life which he shares in the observations and applications content on this website.