Lecture 13.docx

Robert Candlish from 1806 to 1873 was a Scottish preacher and a professor in the 19th century. He proved to be a leading figure in the disruption of 1843 and thus in the Free Church of Scotland. After receiving his doctorate from Princeton, he became the principal of New College, Edinburgh. His firs...

Robert Candlish from 1806 to 1873 was a Scottish preacher and a professor in the 19th century. He proved to be a leading figure in the disruption of 1843 and thus in the Free Church of Scotland. After receiving his doctorate from Princeton, he became the principal of New College, Edinburgh. His first John Cometary was among many, was one among many of his works published. It first went to print in 1870, just a few years before his death. We will review this book, this work, by first examining its contents and structure and secondly by considering its contribution. The value of the work lies primarily in its thoroughness and pastoral emphasis. Spurgeon commended the work as being, quote, devout, candid, prudent, and forceful, end quote. The commentary consists of 46 chapters, most of which cover only two or three verses at a time. Can you remind us how many pages this commentary is? 540 maybe? A few of the chapters also overlap verses. He roughly outlines each chapter, but the outlines are more homiletical than exegetical. This stems from Candlish's purpose in writing the volume. In the preface, he states that the commentary began as a series of lectures given over a number of years, and the work reflects that lecture style. Candlish admits he did not intend to write, quote, anything like a critical commentary. I do not quote authors or discuss their views or opinions. I attempt to know my new analysis of text, nor an elaborate verbal and grammatical constrain of them, end quote. Rather, he simply wanted to, quote, bring out the general scope and tenor of the Apostle's teaching as simply and clearly as I can, end quote. The work begins with two chapters which cover the first four verses of the epistle. Candleish elaborates on John's purpose and goal for writing. John declares that all may have fellowship with the Father and with his Son, and that their joy would be complete in this fellowship. Candlest explains how John then gives three conditions or elements of this fellowship. The first condition for fellowship is light, found in 1-5-228. The second condition is righteousness in 2-29-46. The third condition is love, 4-7-51. Each of these elements of fellowship are founded on the declarations of God's character. For John writes that God is light, 1, 5, God is righteous, 2, 29, and God is love, 4, 8. Candlish emphasizes the need for our lives to align with God's character if we are to have fellowship with Him. He writes, quote, For it is an indispensable condition of this fellowship with God, that we realize in ourselves and in our doings what is in accordance with His nature. Therefore, these three conditions constitute the first three of four major sections in the book. Candlest sees the final section of the book, 5-2-31, that should be 21, as showing how the three elements of fellowship overcome the world and the devil. Candlest offers many valuable insights to the study of 1 John. Because of the sermon style of the work, Candlest thinks like a pastor. He does not so much bring out specific applications from the text, as he regularly writes from the position of the average believer wrestling with the truth in the text. For example, he writes on page 55, commenting on 1 John 1-9, quote, I may think that when I go to commune with God my Father, with my God and Father. I am to leave all my cares and troubles behind me on the threshold and meet Him in some lofty region of spiritual peace where sorrow and sin are to find no place. But I am deceiving myself. Let me rather, taking Him at His word, try the more excellent way of caring with me always in the full confidence of loving fellowship into the secret place of my God and all that is upon my mind, my conscience, my heart. He also writes with a personal feel that is easy to relate to and often including himself as he explains the outworking of the truth. This work was strengthened by the author's regular return to the theme of the book. He does not let the reader forget that all that John writes is for the purpose of his fellowship with the father and the son. This gives the work continuity and helps the reader see the forest in the midst of the trees. Candlestick's use of language is interesting. On the one hand, his 19th century vocabulary and style make it hard to read in places. On the other hand, he frequently uses word pictures and puts matters simply so his point is easily grasped. It was encouraging to see that even though this work is older, he is not completely dependent on the King James Version. Although the KJV is the textual basis of the commentary, he is not afraid to correct it according to the critical evidence of earlier manuscripts. This is seen most clearly in his rejection of 1 John 5, 7, which is in the KJV but understood by all scholars as a late addition to the original. The theology of Candlestand within the reformed tradition and provides a richness to his observations and exposition. His Trinitarianism is not merely confessional for it streams from the pages. He also sets forth a high view of God in his holiness, purity, and sovereignty. His commentary is recommended as a robust theological and pastoral contribution to 1 John 6. So would you be likely to use it in sermon preparation? Most definitely. Do you own it? I do. Did you buy it for this class? I actually had it for this class. My pastor recommended it to me when I was taught in my youth. And when you say his Trinitarianism is not merely confessional, what do you mean by that? Meaning it's not just something that he says, yeah, I believe in the Trinity, but that you see it come out in the outworking of his explanation of the text as he explains the role of the Father, the Son, and the Spirit. Okay, it's a slightly unusual use of the word confessional because it makes it sound sort of pejorative. As if you are a confessional Trinitarian, there's a problem. So I don't know, I'd probably cast about for a different way of saying that. Because it makes it sound like you've got something against people that are confessional Trinitarians. That's a dangerous place to be just to be a confessional Trinitarian. Any comments or questions that you might have? Nineteenth Center Resource. I'm going to guess it's one of those things you can probably go online and go on Amazon and get cheap used. Just guessing. Yes? Free on Monarchism. Free on Monarchism. There we go. So don't waste your money. Thank you. Alright, so the numbers that I had. For 322, are 10, 3, 11, 5, 5, 9, 3, 10, 1, 2, 3, 5, 10, 1, 4, 9, 3, and 5. Any questions on the numbers? about the r-estat, so it has an adjective, can it also be considered as an noun? Because it's a, so it could be a four-ed adjective. If you end up translating it, we do the things that are pleasing, which it looks like you do in your preliminary, because of your things, right? Then you've made r-estat a substantive, so you need a two after the four. Any other number issues? By the way, somebody brought up a question on the labeling and you know, I hope....... you appreciate that it breaks the sentence down and you know, makes you account for every word. If you do it at least this week and maybe do it through some months or a few years ahead, obviously when you read the New Testament and you're preparing for a sermon, you wouldn't necessarily have to put all the numbers down because once you've done this for a while, you simply recognize each word's part of speech as you go through. It helps you with sight reading, it helps you with recognition, so on and so forth. The reason I have you do underlining, which Mike, which Mike elected not to do in this particular version, is if you underline the verbs twice and you underline the subject nominative once and if you put parentheses around prepositional phrases, that in conjunction with the numbers it pretty much breaks the sentence down into edible bites, And by edible I mean there's this magical process of moving in any language from a bunch of symbols in one direction or the other and one set of characters or another and you have some level of understanding those characters or you wouldn't be messing with them but you're going to move into another language. And often there are major differences in sentence structure and in logical processes between languages. And while Greek is an Indo-European language and it functions pretty much like English, at the micro level a lot of phrases don't function like English at all. And so what students tend to do is they translate by memory. They know the English Bible. Or I suppose if you know Korean or you know French or whatever you know, and now you're moving into English, you still cheat. You just go through your native language and then you put that over into English. And when you underline the subjects and the verbs, and you know that in English the basic English structure is subject, verb, object. Subject, verb, object. Or subject, verb, complement if it's a be verb. You can take, if you have double underlined, can you double underline Lombardymen there? Okay, and we know that he mace is the implied subject. Let's just say you really didn't have a clue as to how to translate that first clause ending with a pao tu. Then you could just make a little template, and let me just defile your page here. You can go subject, verb, object, and you can say, subject, we for the implied himes And then you can say receive. And then you recognize that this is, well actually there's two clauses. Let me do this. I picked a bad sense to do this. Whatever we request, we receive from him. So we receive, and this is not an object but a prepositional phrase, from him. We receive something from him. And whatever we ask. So itoman is a basic idea. Again, it's an implied subject. We ask or we request and the ha'an gives it its subjunctive flavor and feel. Of course, we should do this too. And then we're going to do this here and we're going to do this. And we're going to do this. And we're going to do this because this is an improper preposition before him. We're in his presence. So what I'm saying is once you analyze things not only with the numbers but also with the underlining with the, those aren't prepositional phrase brackets. Those are just training wheels for another purpose. Then you can move into subject-verb-object structures in English. that enable you in a very concrete way to move what you have nailed down physically into English logical sentence structure. And I mean this is very primitive here and you can tamper with it. But that's why I have you do the underlining. Again I know some of you don't underline because you don't need to. First John's pretty simple. You didn't need to do that underlining. No, I'm not, I'm not, no I didn't, I literally didn't do this to ridicule you, although it's having that effect, isn't it? But the reason, the reason I have students do it, just for, you know, some of you might end up teaching Greek sometime, and you're going to find students, and you had it happen to yourself, you, you, you look up in the lexicon every word in the verse, you know what every word means, you have no idea what it means. You just have a bunch of words. How do I move into an English sentence? And this is the key, subject-verb-object, or subject-verb-compliment. And then, of course, you have to know what a clause is. You have to know that this is the clause, and this is the clause, and because, and you have to have some primitive knowledge of independent clauses and subordinate clauses and that kind of thing. I can't do everything this week. But you will have to do everything for people when you teach them beginning Greek. Or if you yourself need to go back from scratch and rethink something, this is a physical process in which everything in Greek is identified and you have a basic template to move over into an English sentence structure. And you can use it in other languages too, I suppose. I've only moved from Greek into other European languages. I haven't tried to take this into Arabic. It does work in Romanian. because Romanian is another Indo-European language and Romanian students have used this very well as they've struggled with this. Although Romanian is a highly inflected language just like Greek is, so they cheat. They kind of think like the Greeks thought. More than we do. So let us forge ahead a little bit. Thank you. So the parallels are very straightforward with both references. For the commentary, comments stopped. John does not simply mean to imply that God hears and answers our prayers merely for the subjective reason that we have a clear conscience and an unquenchable heart. There is an objective moral reason, namely because we obey his commands and more generally do what pleases him. Obedience is the indispensable condition, not the meritorious cause, of answered prayer. Sometimes the promise of an answer appears to be made without qualification, but more often, as is surely implicit elsewhere, conformity of the request or of the person making it to the will of God is a necessary condition. Do you want to push up your sheet a little bit? Thus, both commentators agree that the answer of prayer that John mentions here is limited to those living in obedience to God and is furthermore qualified by other parts of Scripture, particularly 1 John 5 14, and this is the confidence that we have for him, that if we ask anything according to his will, he hears us. Does he hear us or does he do what we ask him to do? Yeah, he hears us and he can answer both affirmatively and negatively. Whatever we request, we receive from him. That doesn't sound like... a no answer. Yeah, that's a good point that you bring up. Look, you know Greek, so you should be able to explain that. Yeah, I would say that in our prayer to God, as those who are submitted to Him, living towards the will of God, God conforms our will to His will, and we act according to His will, and that we are conformed to that will. So then are you saying that in the long run taking the fuller range of what even John says about this that the whatever we ask it's kind of implied in keeping with his will? Am I putting words in your mouth or is that really what you thought? Right now I don't know exactly what I thought you asked. You ask such good questions. Laughter I'm just thinking what your church people are going to ask you when you teach 1st John or maybe they'll come to you and say, you know, I read this verse and you've been gushing about 1st John and I've been praying for this for 10 years. I prayed for somebody to be saved and they died and they were never saved that I know of. So I'm just wondering what your hermeneutical pastoral strategy is for dealing with this verse. And I mean it's an unfair question. I preached through this last semester and I'm glad no one asked me that question. But it is kind of an unfair question because it does tempt you to load John's whole theology of prayer into that verse. And it kind of handcuffs you. It keeps you from going to the cross references. Because... The additional light is shed on John's theology of prayer. This is not the only thing he says about it. That's the first refuge I would seek. Before we press this verse for an answer, let's look and see if the same writer says other things about prayer that might help us understand his view of prayer. Because maybe every time he mentions prayer, he doesn't give us everything he thinks about it. Maybe there are other parts of how he views prayer that would inform that. And then I think everything you said pretty much can be located in John's theology of prayer. The two other observations I think, of course when we get to chapter 5, we get into this more intensely. I don't know, somebody is already sweating bullets about that, thinking about when they get to chapter 5. But... The first consideration is, in terms of the foundation, it's Jesus teaching to his disciples. And again, on the one hand I don't want to make the disciples into superhumans. On the other hand, I do want to be careful about forgetting... the contexts in which we see Jesus giving his followers assurances of answered prayer. And if we talk about John in the upper room, to say to the eleven who are being commissioned really in those verses, whatever you guys ask, I'm gonna do, that's a little different you know from me in my fleshliness deciding I want a new pickup which I do need and you know claiming and I need it in the next three months and then really working very hard to obey everything he tells me to do and then getting my nose out of joint because he doesn't answer my prayer in three months when I fulfilled all the conditions in my opinion you know for him to do this thing. In other words you can come to God with requests that are pretty trivial this goes back to you know what's in the will of God and I think you can argue that when Jesus gives these assurances Jesus himself who taught thy will be done when you pray say he he would never have counseled people to forget that in their prayers whatever they ask it's gotta be in keeping with God's will that's just it's you know a no-brainer if you understand the bigger context of Jesus prayer life and his teaching. As far as prayer life, and this is my second point all theologies of prayer have to pass the Gethsemane test And Jesus and Gethsemane prayed for something that the Father denied him. Now he put an asterisk by his prayer. He said, if it be possible. And that's him not being hypocritical. He said, when you pray, pray. Thy will be done. And so even in Gethsemane, he's saying, Father, if it be your will. But then allowing for that, take this cup from me. And, you know, it couldn't be done. That's a mystery. It's another one of those fulfillments of almost an equal mystery. I think it's Hebrews 5, I want to say 8, could be 7. Although he was a son, he learned obedience through the things he suffered. You know, and sometimes we learn obedience in prayers, and we're thinking whatever we ask, we're going to get. You and we can take verses out of context and we can prove that's what the Bible says and we can create enormous difficulties for ourselves but this is where I mean this is where you need theological training, you need hermeneutical training you know you need time to to reflect on things like this because prayer is huge if God's people aren't praying we're in trouble and if we're not praying we're in trouble and we're always flirting with trouble because prayerlessness is probably our major besetting sin we're always in and out of really effective prayer and it doesn't work like you can twist the scriptures to make it sound like it works you know we all know here at Masters I don't have to stress you know name and inclaim it is not true but we also stress we believe in the word of God we believe it's inerrant so that kinda puts us in a tension if you don't read the Bible contextually you know if you just camp on certain phrases you can create the illusion that there was a carte blanche back there there is a carte blanche and if you hit the sweet spot a conformity to God's will and you meet all the conditions whatever you ask you'll get which I mean just logically that means if you don't get it you haven't met all the conditions and then you get a man-centered view of prayer but what's I think the main thing that keeps us from that is just going back to the Lord's prayer and thinking about it and combining that with how Jesus lived out his prayer life. You know there's also the Judas test. You know, Jesus prayed all night before he chose the twelve and one of them was Judas. Now, you know, it's easy to think, well, yeah, I mean, he was the son of perdition and it had to happen and there's something to that. But I think one of the things that Jesus must have wrestled with was, am I making a mistake here? Is this really you want me to choose somebody that He's gonna stab us in the back Choose a traitor Or maybe he didn't maybe it really hadn't become clear at this point who? Judas really was but maybe he had the intuition to know there's something fishy about this guy. I mean, I don't know But just this dynamic of Jesus getting up at night, you know, where is he? He's out praying somewhere. Does that sound like somebody who's really resting in the Father? Does it sound like he's abiding? You know, there's a time for everything. There's a time to abide and be at peace and sleep and there's a time to stay up all night agonizing before the Father. And if it was as simple as, say, whatever you ask, you'll get. He wouldn't have been up all night agonizing before the Father. Because there's this question of what should we be asking and what is the will of the Father? And how, back to you, how can I be aligning myself? And what do I even want? Sometimes as Paul says, and Romans say, we don't know how to pray. We don't know what we should ask for. So it's well and good to pray, pray, pray, but then what if you don't know what the best thing to pray for is? And yet, you gotta pray. So this verse is, you know, not a one-step solution. And we want to keep it in the context of John's theology of prayer and the theology of prayer of the one from whom he learned to pray. And never let yourself get boxed into the corner of one verse on prayer. You know, that's, it's bad hermeneutics. But it's happened to me more than once because along with assurance, being a question many people ask you over the years in ministry, another question they'll ask you is about prayer and unanswered prayer. And while it is true, I think, that sometimes God's answer to our prayers is no, I think that popular sort of trick answer. to say, well, he answers all prayer. Yes, no, and later. That's kind of infuriating. It's kind of an infuriating answer. And it trivializes a very real problem that sometimes people who've been mistaught. They really do think they're fulfilling... they really do think it's a... if I fulfill all the conditions, I can ask whatever I want and he'll do it. That's what they're taught and then they do it and it's a crisis of faith for them. And you come up with a glib answer. Well, he just told you no. I mean even if you don't sneer at him when you tell him. You know, that's not really intellectually satisfying. You know, it makes people think this is a hoax. This whole thing is sham. And the problem is, they're coming at it in a more simplistic way than life is. And then Jesus, then Jesus lived it. Jesus didn't live a simplistic life. You know, there's a blanket term for this approach to Christianity, and I find it very helpful. It's triumphalism. Triumphalism. You know, you just string together a bunch of slogans, we're more than conquerors, and whatever we ask we receive. And you sing victory in Jesus. You just harp on all the positive aspects. And especially, you know, if you're not, if you don't have cancer, and if you're living in a land of plenty, and if you're not unemployed... And if your kid isn't diagnosed with some incurable disease, and if you've got enough blessings in and around you, which a lot of people in North America do and have had for generations, this sells. It sells like hotcakes. And you can build mega churches on triumphalism and throw in the American flag, for good measure. And that's churchianity. That's western churchianity. And the problem is, you know, when I go to Africa, one of the biggest things I have to fight is Trinity Broadcast Network. Because a lot of the Africans who are coming into the church, that's what they're getting. That's what they think it is. You know, they think it's a form of name-ending claimant. And it deeply infects our churches. And it's one reason why people don't pray, because it doesn't work. The false teachings of prayer they get, they don't produce the results that they want, so they're prayerless. But the real teaching on prayer, prayer is so much more fulfilling when it's part of the real struggle of the real world. It really is a primary means by which we connect with the true and living God. because he really is God and his ways are above our ways and his thoughts are beyond our thoughts and yet he says come let us reason together. We do that in prayer. We reason with God as best we can because we're informed by the word of God. So you know we're grounded we got something to work with like Jesus did he was grounded in the word of God. He had something to work with. He didn't go with you know flights of fancy to God the Father. Having said that he wrestled in prayer. because he wanted to know Lord what should I be asking if it's possible I don't want to overlook the possibility here that maybe there's a plan B that's really your plan A and I'm I'm just getting around to seeing it. If I were facing taking on the sins of the world I'd be I'd be grasping for straws too. But the Father just confirmed, no, you're right. This is your destiny. And so then he got up and found his disciples sleeping and didn't let that feel that he had been a failure as a teacher. That could kind of be a blow to your ego. The dramatic pinnacle of your ministry as... the founder of the church. And at that hour, your three hand-picked guys who are gonna help you, you know, be the prayer warrior at the great hour of need, you know, they're like asleep. What? You couldn't stay awake for an hour? Ah, gee, we blew it again. It's almost funny, you know, the juxtaposition of just the bumbling, stumbling disciples and, you know, Jesus and His pristine focus on His task, but it's such a script, you know, for us to keep before us as we think about prayer and Jesus' true victory in prayer, which, you know, true victory is in the Christian faith are always cruciform. We have a theology of a cross. We don't have a theology of glory. We're not triumphalists. We understand that there's a dark and there's a difficult side to the progress of God's reign in our lives. We're going to be paying prices. And the words of Stodd are good, you know, not prices of merit, but there are necessary entailments. You know, the devil's gonna take chunks out of us. He was taking some chunks out of Jesus that his sweat was like blood. I don't know what that means. It wouldn't feel good, I'll bet. But he hung in there. So, did you give your ground of insight yet? One must never expect to have his prayers answered by God He is living in disobedience to God. In general, God answers the prayers of those who seek to please him and live consistent lives will be hands Next verse So 3 23, 10, 3, 5, 1, 2, 3, 9, 5 Hold it Nina? It would be 10 There we go Um Toe is 1, 2, 1, 2, 3, 2, 2, 10, 5, 3, 8, 5, 2, and 3. If somebody wants to put a 10 for Cuthos, it is permitted. You gotta move your sheet up for us. Thanks for watching! Cross references, a new commandment I give to you that you love one another, just as I have loved you, you are also to love one another. John 6, 29, Jesus said to them, this is the work of God that you believe in him and he has sent. And John 15, 17, these things I command you so that you love one another. And it has the same theme of this is the commandment and that is loving one another. Commentary and grammar interaction. So that accepts the heiress variant, Piscu Soman, rather than the present Piscu Oman, which you can see on the number or so here. Which over this, this is the public domain version times the present. So the present was in the Byzantine tradition, and Vanessa Aulant has the heiress. Seeing a marked distinction between it and the presence of God Omen. He quotes there is a significant difference in the tense of the two verbs, faith in Christ being here regarded as a decisive act, and love for the brothers as a continuous attitude. Lue disagrees. Whether the tenses of the verb alone can sustain this distinction is debatable, and here even if the heiress were original it is unlikely that there is a distinction between the continuation of love present and the initiation of belief. Inasmuch as the letter is addressed to those already within the community, they are being urged to maintain the belief and love, this is properly its primary characteristic. Probably you meant that is properly its primary characteristic. Right. Did you cut and paste that? No, I haven't figured out how to cut and paste from a Kindle. Okay. Actually, I think I would agree with Lou that it's probably, it was probably stylistic on John's part. File translation, this is his commandment that we believe in the name of his son Jesus Christ and love one another just as he commanded us. This is the case where Hina acts like Hathi. It wouldn't make a lot of sense to translate in order that here. But this is just a Johanian feature. It's also in the gospel that he has henas that sometimes they function like hotties. Yes, Rich? Who would find it difficult to believe in Jesus? So, yeah, who would find it difficult? Is it rabbinical Jews who are still wondering whether or not Jesus was the Messiah? And John here is saying that you have to believe in Jesus or what? Well, he's relating it back to his prayer teaching. Notice the commandments, tas enta las in verse 20. Two. And he's talking about doing the things that are pleasing to him, but then he immediately reflects Jesus' teaching. I think it's in maybe John 6 where people say, what should, what work should we do? Or what should we do? Basically to please God. And he says, you should believe. That's the work of God that you believe. So I think he feels the possible distortion of what he's just said, that commandment keeping is the secret to answered prayer. And he wants to make sure that we understand that the first command is to be in a right relationship with God. Because if we're in a right relationship with God, then we're in a position to discern his will. And that sanctifies the second commandment. are acts of righteousness. For one thing it ensures that we're not going to be using them as a bribe. When you're in a union with God through faith in Christ, on paper you should understand that your righteousness is not leverage, your acts of heroic piety, your self-denial. You're gashing yourself with stones, you're fasting. It's not necessary for you to do those things to suffer enough to get God to do what you want. Now, you may need to fast as part of your spiritual discipline to help clear your mind so that you can discern the will of God. That's a different thing from doing meritorious things to pile up favor so God will do what you want. Which is, as you just implied Mike in your explanation, and as Stott was dealing with in his explanation of the previous verse, we want to make sure we don't link answers to prayer to meritorious acts. So he goes into the commandment right after that that we believe. And love one another. Yes. And that's bringing in the Z coordinate to make sure we don't distort the X coordinate. It's not just the X coordinate. And of course, the love one another is both the Z and the Y coordinate. It's both ethics and affection. Having stated that obedience is the key to answered prayer, John now defines what God's command to obedience truly is. Believing in Christ and loving other Christians. Doctrine, obedience and love are a package. One who is an expert in Christology but refuses to have compassion on people in need is without Christ. Similarly, one who is a Mormon and has great love for his family is still totally lost. And that really just confirms and flushes out what I just said. So, good insight. The numbers we have are 10, 1, 6, 1, 2, 3, 9, 3, 5, 10, 3, 9, 3, 10, 9, 3, 5, 10, 5, 9, 3, 9, 1, 2, 3, 3, 5. John 656 Notice the underlying in there. Which one? The ooh? I think it's relative pronoun. But that's worth pointing out that that is a rough reading mark, right? Yeah. Because it can be an adverb meaning where. But here it's not a negative, it's a relative pronoun. John 6 56, whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood and abides in me and I in him, Romans 8 9. You, however, are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, and in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him. And that's just kind of parallel with the reference to the Spirit towards the end of verse 24. Commentary grammar interaction. We need some elevation here. It may at first seem that this reference to the Holy Spirit within us introduces a subjective criterion of assurance which is inconsistent with what has gone forth, but this is not so. The Spirit whose presence is the test of Christ living in us manifests himself objectively in our life and conduct. It is he who inspires us to confess Jesus as the Christ come in the flesh as John immediately proceeds to show. Final translation, and the one who keeps his commandments abides in him and he in him, and we know by this that he abides in us by the spirits he has given us. Okay, go ahead, yeah. It is easy to confuse John's words here to mean that the Spirit is an additional proof of one's abiding, as it almost seems to say that at face value. However, this oft-used expression, chai and tuto, perhaps does not refer to what comes after, but to what precedes, specifically the abiding that goes hand in hand with the commandment-keeping that he just mentioned. Thus, the Spirit is not per se a proof that one is abiding, but the means by which God allows us to know that we are abiding through our obedience. In place of eck, with some license, one might use the English preposition through instead of by, i.e. and we know by this that he abides in us, through the Spirit whom he has given us. And actually I looked up at BDAG, I didn't find a gloss that said through, but, and obviously I wouldn't, that's why I didn't translate it that way, but I want to give that sense that this, this, having the spirit in this sense as, as Scott was talking, was saying that it was, it was not subjective at all, that the spirit would be an assurance of salvation. And on some level I, I don't know if I, either I don't understand them 100% correctly or I don't know if I agree with them 100% because it does seem somewhat subjective that someone would say, I know that I'm saved because I have the spirit, and you know, what does that mean? How do you prove that you have the spirit? It's not something objective. How do you even prove it to yourself? Exactly. And so I thought that the spirit here is not necessarily a proof of that assurance, but the spirit is what enables us to understand that we have that assurance as it's referring back to how the spirit shows us that we are obedient to God. I don't know if that totally made sense, that troubled mess. I should have written it down rather than trying to do it. articulated but... Well you should have capitalized in English, that's for sure. The English preposition? Oh yes, I should. So that's one problem with your explanation there. But as far as through, I would avoid that because you've got dia for that and you just use dia. However, when you think of ec, that does lend itself to understanding often as on the basis of or as a result of. Which comes then very close logically to what we mean by through. So however you translate it, I mean I personally agree with your explanation and I don't agree with Stott's explanation here. Now I don't know what I said in my commentary, but today I don't agree with Stott on this. And so I think you've done a good job. Do I agree with you on this? I mean I think you've done a good job apparently because you're paraphrasing me. I was wondering whether I should put Yarborough in the middle. Do I suggest through? Surely. You didn't say through. I just pulled that out of the air. I'd slit my wrists if I'd done that. But you see, when you study Paul... Just a little parallelism here. Paul is religious about avoiding that we're saved diapain piston because of faith. He always uses diapistos through faith. Faith is never the cause of our salvation, it's the means. And sometimes it's piste with no article. Dative. Dative of means. I'm so glad, otherwise he'd be a semi-Pelagian. But for stylistic variation. A synonym in Paul for diatest pistoos is ek pistoos. And I don't think anybody translates ek pistoos as through faith, but it's synonymous with through faith. And so, you could translate it by faith. But, you know, when I teach Paul, I harp on the problem in English of bi, which is also a problem in Romanian with prin, and if you've got other languages, check your prepositions here. Because bi in English can either be semi-Pelagian or it can be Augustinian. If you say you're saved by faith and you mean my faith is what I bring to the table, and you're a synergist, then faith becomes part of... how you're saved. You're saved because of your faith. If you're Augustinian, then you understand by as dia, with the genitive, through faith. That's the reformation right there. The accusative or the genitive is the difference between Plagius and Augustine, or between Luther and Erasmus. So I think you're However we handle the translation, I would avoid through, but I think the explanation works. And it's not to deny that the Holy Spirit serves to give us assurance. But here, I think that's more of a Pauline idea. Or maybe an idea from something in Acts or something that's kind of brought in to help explain this verse. I don't think that's a good methodology here. 4-2, 11, 4, 2, 5, 10, 5, 1, 2, 10, 9, 1, 2, 5, 10, 4, 2, 5, 9, 1, 2. Any questions on the numbers? Okay. Cross-reference analysis. This first one is Matthew 24, 24. For false Christs and false prophets who arise and form great signs and wonders. So as to lead astray, if possible, even be elect. For Jesus warns his disciples that there will be false Christs and prophets who will lead people astray. And also Revelation 2.2, I know your works, your toil and your patient, your patient endurance, and how you cannot bear with those who are evil, but have tested those who call themselves apostles and are not, and found them to be false. So Jesus commends the Church for testing those who call themselves apostles. Okay, and I see that that's AP, right? Oh, yeah. It's not APOC, it's just AP. in Nestle, Iowa. And now for the commentary or grammar interaction. According to Liu, the false prophets are those who falsely claim prophetic authority and one who propounds lies. She develops this understanding from 1 John 2, 18 in Jeremiah 23, 20, 29. Stott agrees by calling them the mouthpiece of the spirit of error. He contrasts them to true prophets who are the mouth of spirit and truth. So here is my final translation. Beloved, do not believe in every spirit, but test the spirit if it is from God, because many false prophets have come out into the world. Is there a reason why he said believe in? Beloved, do not upset the spirits while external things come out. Why should you take it out? Oh, I mean... When you put it in, that's wondering why it's there. And if it's not there, why isn't it there? Oh. I cannot believe every spirit. I guess... I mean do you think that he's warning them about believing in spirits or believing spirits? It's two different things, right? One is like putting your faith in them and another is giving them credence. I think what you'll find if you do some work with Pistiro, that Pistiro with the dative normally means not the same thing as Pistiro, for example, in John with ace. When John uses believe, ace, say tani eizun, believe into Jesus. We just say believe in Jesus. That means put your trust in something. It's virtually novel in the New Testament. This was not a Hellenistic Greek expression to believe ace somebody. It's kind of coined for New Testament usage. But there are times in the New Testament where Pistil is used with the dative and it means to give credence to. In other words, don't believe every spirit. He's not warning them about putting their personal faith in spirits for salvation. He's warning them against thinking that what they say might be true. So in that case you don't want the in there. Do not believe every spirit, which would mean don't give them credence. I think we can do that mentally. If I can find my pen I'll lend it to you. In this circumstance. But don't everybody else think. I'm going to give you a pen. You're flustered. Which description examines false teachings? Alright, next verse. Okay. First two, nine, three, five, one, two, one, two, four, two, three, five, two, two, nine, two, six, nine, one, two, five. And what tense is the sixth there? Six, that was a perfect. From what verb? Er guh mai. Er guh mai, good. Cross-reference analysis. Matthew 10, 32. So everyone who acknowledges me before men, I also will acknowledge before my Father who is in heaven. Romans 10, 9. Because if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. 1 Corinthians 12, 3. Therefore, I want you to understand that no one, speaking in the Spirit of God, ever says Jesus is a curse. And no one can say Jesus is Lord except in the Holy Spirit. These verses correlate with John's mention of confession. Jesus examines, explains in Matthew that those who confess... Christ will be acknowledged by the Father because of him. Paul says if we confess that Jesus is Lord we will be saved. In 1st Corinthians 12-3 if we confess Jesus is Lord we are in this place. To commentary, grammar, and interaction, what does it mean for Jesus to come in the flesh according to the way it does not signify a destination, but mode and location? Luke 1.6. Scott also mentions that the perfect tense seems to emphasize that the flesh assumed by the Son of God in the incarnation has become this permanent possession. And for my final translation, by this you know the Spirit of God. Every spirit who confesses Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God. Does this mean, to sort of visualize this, is he talking about say when Christians gathered and they shared that there would be people who would confess Christ, that He's come in the flesh and He's saying, when people confess that... that's because of a spirit, namely God's spirit. Is that what's going on there? Or is he talking about spirit possession in a way? How are these spirits confessing Jesus? I think that is exquibly, versus exactly what that confession is. So these aren't people in the spirit, these are actually spirits? I guess people. From people? Under the influence of spirits? If we're in Christ, then under the influence of the Holy Spirit. Then if we're not? Then not then in the influence of... Of course we become false prophets. Because we're influenced by spirits that are... Lies, liars. Okay, I'm just trying to put this, you know, into concrete focus. We're on insight. How do we know if someone is from God or not? If that person professes Jesus, the God-man came to flesh. If that person professes Jesus, the God-man came to flesh. It's not comments that this is the fundamental Christian doctrine which can never be compromised. Yes. Okay, next verse. So verse 3, 10. 4, 2, 3, 11, 5, 1, 2, 9, 1, 2, 11, 5, 10, 3, 5, 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 10, 5, 10, 8, 9, 1, 2, 5, 8. Questions on the numbering? Reference and analysis. 2 John 7, for many deceivers have gone out into the world, those who do not confess the coming of Jesus Christ in the flesh. Such a one is the deceiver and the antichrist. Here we see that the antichrist is also described as the deceiver. Matthew 10, 33, whoever denies me before men, I will also deny before the Father who is in heaven. If we deny Christ, he will deny us before his Father. And in John 8, 27, whoever is of God hears the word of God. The reason why we do not hear them is that they are not from God. So we see that those who are from God do not hear the words of God. That's the reason why there is a post-mortem. Finally, Scott observes that in chapter 2, 18 to 23, John teaches that on our confession or denial of the son depends on whether we possess the father or not. However, in this chapter, it depends on whether we have a spirit. Finally, every spirit who does not confess Jesus is not from God, and this one is the Antichrist, which you have heard that is coming even now is in the world already. Go back to your, yes, Rich. I had a question about what does anti-Christ mean? Does it mean one who opposes Christ? Or does it mean a substitute Christ? Both. I think that's the conclusion I come to that both those things are true about these figures. In your translation. Thank you. He makes something a little simpler than the Greek. You can just leave the translation in there because I think we're all looking at Greek texts ourselves. And if you look at the Greek text, middle of the verse, kaitutah esten ta tu antichristu. So it just doesn't say and this is the antichrist. It says this is the of the antichrist. antichrist. And there's an ellipsis there right? He leaves the word out. What does he leave out? He leaves out Numa. So for some reason you've translated this one is the antichrist and it says in Greek and this one is of the antichrist. Or you could say this one is the spirit of the antichrist. So this should be this one is of the spirit of the antichrist. You know probably the best thing would be to say this one is the spirit of the Antichrist because it's it's there by virtue of the Ta. He doesn't need to put numine because it would be pedantic to repeat it for him but this is the the benefit of an inflected language you know you can say more with fewer explicit words. So, are you saying maybe it should be a one-two? Yeah, you can say this is the spirit of the Antichrist. But you could go both ways with that. This one, because tuta is this thing, it's neuter. This thing, this spirit, this one is the spirit of the Antichrist. In English you could go both ways there, this or this one. I know it's true that that last card you translated is a... that you knock it as O, the junction. Yeah. Yeah, and you translate it as an and in your preliminary. Yeah. With my final translation, I was looking over there, like, oh, this is too redundant, so I changed it to T. OK. So make sure that your 8 or your 10 corresponds with your translation. Do it later, right. Grounded Insight? Since they are anti-Christ of the world already, we must be on our guard. We must test every spirit. If they do not confess Jesus is from God, we must not leave them. Of course there are spirits that confess that Jesus is from God. Joe Voenness says Jesus is from God. Mormons say Jesus is from God. So just because people say Jesus is from God, people can lie all day long. So just like an individual statement in John on Spirit and confessing in Jesus, you can't take that out of the broader context of other things he says on that. And just like on prayer. So I always love to hear people confess that Jesus is from God or from the Son of God or whatever, but... You can counterfeit Christian confession. You deserve a hand of applause too, Luke.