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 culture; my parents were no exception. My dad, who was raised for all intents and purposes 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 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. Ironically, 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 described my rearing as a latchkey child, which is why I preferred it. I liked being outside and disliked 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 then was that I would spend eternity in Heaven, this incredible 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 many teenagers do) while still doing enough of the right things to avoid suspicion. Of course, there was an outward price for the shame for those sins. Since I was a Christian, I experienced conviction and therefore was not a very happy sinner. Still, 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.

I first read the entire Bible as an adolescent. I loved it. Especially the Old Testament stories where boogerheads 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, I seemed pretty lost when it came to those blasted epistles. I knew God loved me, but the epistles were confusing. What did Paul mean exactly when he said we should walk in the Spirit and live by faith?

Moving forward in the story, I grew up, married my high school sweetheart, and went to UC Berkeley where I majored in Mechanical engineering with an emphasis in Petroleum engineering. After that, I set about making a life, having kids, providing for my family, and continuing to attend church while realizing that what I heard preachers saying and teaching seemed contrary to the grace I read about in the New Testament. According to them, much of my spiritual transformation depended on my efforts, and the motivation technique to get me to change seemed more tied to the guilt of conviction than the joy of the Lord.

Then, one day, God led me to a church to help me take the next step in my spiritual journey. This church called itself grace-based. As you probably already guessed, the pastor, Jeff, taught that the Lord Jesus didn’t want me to do anything for Him. Instead, Jesus wanted to do things through me. Furthermore, guilt and obligation were not sufficient motivators for obedience, but love and devotion were. 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 contradictory and/or confusing. It has truly been a next-step game changer in my scripture study, and I feel it will also be for others. 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 to the passages being studied in people’s everyday lives, which he shares in the observations and applications content on this website.