Lecture 16.docx

I'd like to give you just a little bit of thought about Monogamace. Since I have it, why not? And especially, you know, many of us, I assume, if there are New King James churches, I assume that there are going to be some that are associated with, you know, communities that might favor people coming...

I'd like to give you just a little bit of thought about Monogamace. Since I have it, why not? And especially, you know, many of us, I assume, if there are New King James churches, I assume that there are going to be some that are associated with, you know, communities that might favor people coming to the Master Seminary. So, again, this is not a case where if people do... Does anybody have a new... Does somebody look up New King James and just see if they still put Only Begotten? It is Only Begotten. Okay. NASB has it too. NASB has Only Begotten. Okay. And that reflects, you know, NASB is a fruit of evangelical scholarship of the 50s and the 60s. Unless you have an updated one, but they didn't update very much. Lexicography, you know, has moved forward. And I'll try to reflect this in my remarks here. Jesus is called Monogamace in five New Testament passages. Modern translations tend to render the word only or one and only. In any case, emphasis falls on his singular status. He's uniquely related to the Father so close to him as to be one with him. Yet as distinct from him as was necessary to allow for full identification with humanity through the incarnation. So you see the balancing act that is underway there. Monogamace is used in Luke 7. That should be italicized, but I think I lost something in the formatting when I switched from one computer to another. Monogamace is used in Luke to refer to the only child of the widow's son at Nain to Jairus' daughter and to an epileptic son respectively. This shows that in conventional usage the word connoted being the solitary child. A Monogamace child was an only child. It wasn't anything about the only begotten. It was just the only child. The one other New Testament occurrence of the word is Hebrews 11, 17 speaking of Abraham's near sacrifice of his one and only son Isaac. It has been suggested that for John as for the writer of Hebrews this incident serves as primary background for early Christian understanding of Jesus' sonship and sacrificial death. Understandably enough. I happened to read Genesis 22 today in my morning readings and immediately when you read the language going on between Abraham and God telling him to go to them or the angel of God telling him to go to the mountain and his son, I mean it's got Christology written all over it and atonement written all over it. Genesis 22 of the Septuagint translates the Hebrew Yahid only as Agapitas, beloved, rather than Monogamace. Recent translations correctly reflect that Jesus' status as only begotten underscores his uniqueness rather than his place or mode of origin. It does not for example directly refer to his virgin birth which is sometimes how it was understood in King James days. Both as unrivaled expression of the Father's glory and as distinct from any created human, he holds preeminence as Paul said. He is Monogamace, utterly unique in his person and saving role. The church father Jerome supplied the Vulgate's Unigenitus which does mean only begotten in Latin. To help counter the Aryan view that Jesus was a created being, Unigenitus permitted Jesus to be begotten of the Father in the sense implied in certain Bible passages while only Unii left room for affirmation of his divine nature though the Vulgate's influence or through the Vulgate's influence on early English versions of the Bible. The people who translated the King James probably knew Latin even better than they knew Greek and they probably knew the Vulgate, the Latin version at least as well as they knew the Greek version. Through the Vulgate's influence on early English versions of the Bible, the traditional translation only begotten still rings true for many today which is why it's still in the New King James Version. As far as what that means, all I'm saying is you're on firm ground if you say this is really pointing to the unique status of Jesus, the ultimate form of his person and the ultimate efficacy of his work, monogamase. And I don't think you're going to find any lexica today that say only begotten. Alright, so I have verses 14 to 18. So the numbers are 10, 3, 5, 10, 5, 10, 1, 2, 5, 1, 2, 2, 1, 2. Preliminary translation, we have seen and testified that the Father has sent the Son to be the Savior of the world. Let's skip over the cross references and commentary interaction. Stop points out that it is the Father who sent his Son into the world as Savior who also sent the Spirit who are hearts as witness. Thus he pointed out that Christian certainty rests on this combination of the objective and subjective, historical and experiential, the Son's mission and the Spirit's testimony. As for the Father's sending of his Son, this John writes we have seen. The verb is the same as in verse 12, God in himself no one has ever seen, but we have seen the Son whom he sent. Then Lou just points out that the title, Savior of the world, is only used in one of the places in the New Testament. That's where the Samaritans say we know this is the Savior of the world in John 4, 39 and 42. Don't need to read the rest of that. Final translation, we have seen and testified that the Father has sent the Son to be the Savior of the world. Grounded insight. Hang on just a minute. Sure. Do I read that right? That even though John writes this, that this is not a Johani way of understanding Jesus' world? Oh, actually yeah, I did want to comment on that. Yeah, that seems like, you know, that's Lou not really liking what would be typical Orthodox Christianity. Because again, like you said, she wants to read 1 John as if nothing else has ever been written. And that this isn't necessarily possible under the gospel. Okay. Okay, sorry. We'll take your word for it. Grounded insight. I'm going to start moving quickly because I know I'm crunching. He wants to get done with this course as quickly as possible. Not at all. Not at all. I just don't want to give him another chance. We live in a day when people want to define Christianity as entirely subjective and experiential or entirely objective and historical. But as Thoth points out, so while there is certainly an objective reality to the gospel, the Father sent his Son into the world of the Savior. This is historical fact. And on the other hand, Christianity is also experienced as indicated in the previous verse, 1 John 4.13, whereby the Apostle John explained that one component of assurance is the internal witness of the Spirit. So it's both, there's historical fact that I believe and also we have that internal witness from the Spirit. Verse 15. The numbers are 3, 10, 5. On should be an 11. Okay. Sorry about that. On is the purest particle that we'll see all week. By itself, it doesn't really mean anything, but it is a signal that this is somehow subjunctive or conditional or somehow theoretical. Yes? Just a quick question about the previous verse. The Savior of the world, half-positional versus supplying an Amy verb in there, is there a significant difference between the two? Maybe just say God sent Son, the Savior of the world. Is it essentially communicating the same thing? Well, I think the two neatest translation solutions would be either to assume that Aenei sent his son to be Savior of the world, or clearly there's some kind of ellipsis here. He's either leaving out Aenei or he might be leaving out hosts as Savior of the world. I think those both are very legal. They result in unobjectionable translations. And then you're not adding in something more that he didn't feel like he needed to convey his idea. The numbers are three 11. I forgot I put 10 there because I think the previous one, Aeon, to do his conjunction with On is definitely far-fetched. Yes. Because here Aeon can mean if, and so it functions as a conjunction. But here, On, it's not if. It tells you something about has. If On weren't there, it would say the one who confesses or he who confesses. But with the On, it's whoever confesses. It's subjunctive. So the On here is a subjunctive marker. It is not a, in a sense, it's not a part of speech. Although, in a sense, a particle is, it's an untranslatable marker. Yes, Robert? I think the reading put 10 is that the N A actually has Aeon as a variant. Okay, so if you have Aeon there, I would still in that case, they may have it there because it's more difficult reading. But in that case, I would still, here I would call it an 11 because it's not translating if. If it's post-positive, then it's still functioning as a particle. Okay. But if it's the first word, N Aeon, it would be more of a... Then it would probably be serving as a conjunction. It would be linking the prodesis with the apodesis. Okay. Okay, thanks. So 3, 11, 5, 10, 2, 5, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2, 9, 3, 5, 10, 3, 9, 1, 2. So, the first one is the filigree translation. If one confesses that Jesus is the son of God, then God abides in him and he in God. Skip over the cross references. Look at the one that's the mother love, the exclamation point, 1 John 3, 24. The one who keeps his commandments abides in him and he in him. We know by this that he abides in us by the spirit that he has given us. And it's just interesting here where it says that some of the abiding language, and in 1 John 3, 24 it says the one who keeps his commandments in 1 John 4, 15, it's talking about confessing Jesus as the son of God. But in a sense there it equates, at least on some level, keeping commandments and also confessing that Jesus is the son of God. Emphasizing that ethical but also the doctrinal importance of John. Commentary interaction. Stott says the erus sens homo aegese cannot be rendered precisely in English. John is referring neither to a future confession, shall confess, nor to a present and continuing confession. The one who confesses acknowledges, but to a single and decisive public confession, the time of which is unspecified. He also asks, but how do people come thus to acknowledge the divine human person of Jesus? The apostolic testimony is necessary, but it does not compel assent. It is only by the Spirit of God that anybody ever confesses that Jesus is the Christ come in the flesh. Chapter 4, verse 2. Or as he puts the same truth here, if anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the son of God, he thereby gives evidence of the fact that God lives in him and he in God. Again, the witness of the apostles must be supplemented by the witness of the Spirit. Luke says, hence the confession here is not an intrusive aside disrupting the flow of passage, concern of God and God's love, but is insufficient to predicate this interlocking divine indwelling only on the communal embodying of love. Verse 12, or on the felt presence of God's Spirit. Verse 13, these may be deceptive and the Spirit itself needs authenticate. The author never doubts the importance of what is believed. Forgiveness is activated through the Son. The annihilation of the activities of the devil has been achieved by the Son of God. God's love has become tangible in God's sending of his Son. All this can be affirmed to be the case only because Jesus, named and identified, is God's Son. And I actually thought Luke put that pretty well. The only thing, and she may say this somehow here, where she says it is in the middle. The author never doubts the importance of what is believed. In other words, she really heightens the Son, the identity of the Son, the sending of the Son. I'd want to push that one step further. Faith in these things about the Son. And this is John guarding himself about the anti-contextual use that we were talking about a while ago. That you could pull the love part out. He very quickly goes back and talks about the faith part in his own discourse. To make it clear that although he's just said love is the only thing. Now he's going to say faith is the necessary thing. So at no time when we talk about one is John unaware that these others are just as essential. So final translation. Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him and he in God. A ground of insight while John puts an emphasis on the need for believers to love one another. And the importance of the internal witness of the Holy Spirit. You ever talk to the possession of those two assurances. Assurances gave to individual past and unright doctrine. That Jesus is the Son of God is an essential non-negotiable truth that must be believed. I'm going to quit giving many lectures because they always turn up in the grounded insight. Why don't you just skip the grounded insight in that case. Sorry about that. No. It's good to hear it twice. First John 416. The numbers are 10, 3, 5, 10, 5, 1, 2, 3, 5, 1, 2, 9, 3, 1, 2, 2, 5, 10, 1, 6, 9, 1, 5, 2. 9, 1, 2, 5, 10, 1, 2, 9, 3. It's in a prepositional phrase. That's a shame. All right. Preliminary translation. And we know and believe the love which God has for us. God is love and the one who abides in him, sorry, and the one who abides in love abides in God and God in him. We will skip over the cross-references, but I just want to highlight that again, First John 3.4 is the mother of the living, because again, the abiding language reciprocally between the believer and God is highlighted here. Again, commandments are stressed, obedience to commandments are stressed in 1 John 3.4. But here it's the fact that we know and believe the love which God has for us. Grammar or commentary interaction. Stoss says the historical mission of Jesus is evidence as much of the Father's love as of the Son's community. It tells us not only that God loved, but that God is love. It is one thing, however, to know and believe the love God has for us and that God is love is another to live and love ourselves. Lou, actually I think had some helpful things to say here. I'm going to skip down to, well, I'll read there. In the story to those translations in the Nesdaeil on 27th, but a paragraph break at this point midway through verse 16, the repetition of the second part of the verse of the cardinal affirmation, God is love, in verse 8, is an integral part of the declaration of the first part. It is only because of what we have known and are fully confident of that this statement about God's very nature can be made. At the same time, this is why to have known God's love is to know God and not just some incomplete aspect of God. I thought that was a really helpful point because it's not just knowing God's love, but because God is love, it's still knowing him fully. Final translation, and we have come to know and have believed the love which God has for us. God is love and the one who abides in love abides in God and God in him. This verse differs, grounded insight, this verse differs from what is most often taught concerning faith in the New Testament. We are called to believe in God or to believe in Jesus, but here John says that we have believed the love which God has for us. However, this is not stating that we merely have a sentimental faith that reduces God to love, for God is love. Therefore, to have known God's love is to know God, not just some incomplete aspect of God. Again, a point in the middle there. Dr. Erbron? In the end, Hameen, is that a more rare translation on that? Is that a typical translation? Yeah, just in the middle of the verse there, which God has for us. Well, it probably has to do, and I don't know, did you have a reason why you chose the love which God has for us with N, Hameen? I'm trying to remember here. I think I was taking it as... I can't remember this point. What complicates things here is echo, and the fact that we're saying God has love and Hameen. How would we say that in English? Is it God has love in us? Is it saying that somehow, like what God, like electricity that he's stored in us or he deposited in us, is it making some... It wouldn't be a weird statement, but it would be a strange statement. God has love in us. But then you want something more than echo. Echo wouldn't mean put. The idea is God has laid claim to us. He has. He possesses. He has love for us. I mean, we say in English, he has love for us. So it has to do with the problem of that... It's in with by default. If it has love with us, I mean, I don't know of a better way. Even if you say has love among us, then it's like, you know, it's flying around somewhere. So I... Did you look at other translations to see what they do? Love in us is a strange English phrase. So I can see why we would say it for us, because that's how we would express it. But I don't know if there's something else. John's trying to communicate the word glossing over just to... I think Anne is... I think I remember Murray Harris just published a new book on prepositions in the New Testament. In a way, it's got to be... It might be his magnum, over. He's written books on the divinity of Christ. He's written a great commentary on Colossians, verbal analysis, but for a lexical analysis, verbal analysis. I refer you to that book for Treatment of Man, because it's the most comprehensive book, and it does try to get at, say, theological uses of the Jesuit prepositions. I'm reminded of... I think it's at the end of Galatians, where Paul is sort of summarizing his earlier life and the havoc that he wreaked on the church. And he uses the preposition, N, and it's clicked and clocked at 1.24. I'll start with 23. But only they were hearing that the one who persecuted us formerly now is preaching the faith which he once tried to destroy. And they were glorifying, N, am I, tantan. They were glorifying God in me. What? Because of me, in my case. There's almost a four idea, in the sense of, as a result of this four, this reason, they were glorifying God. So it shows us kind of the rubbery nature of N and its margins of use. It can be put to uses that we wouldn't normally expect. But which, for a native Greek speaker like Paul, he can push it. Here, John may be pushing. And if he does, it's because he uses echo in a lot of different ways. And just like the English word have, it drives non-native speakers nuts. Look it up, it's got like 80 different definitions. And it's kind of that way of reading. That's how it's played by the rubberyness of echo. Okay. Alright, so 417. The numbers are 9, 3, 5, 1, 2, 9, 3, 10, 2, 5, 9, 1, 2, 1, 2, 10, 8, 3, 5, 10, 3, 5, 9, 1, 2, 3. In this, love has been perfected with us so that we would have blank, I couldn't remember, continents. I wasn't confident of that. In the day of, and I didn't get that one either, it was judgment, that just as he did, even we are in the world. Cross references, there's a couple of those mother loads. So I'll read those real quickly. But whoever keeps his word in him alone, God has truly been perfected. It's that idea of perfected and it has, here is relating to keeping of God's word. First John 3, 21, beloved, if our hearts not condemn us, we have confidence before God. Again, speaking of confidence here, that we would have confidence in the day of judgment, what 3, 21 would be in reference to. Commentary interaction. Scott says the apostle John is concerned with the completion not of God's love in us, but of our love for God. John is not suggesting that any Christian's love could in this life be flawlessly perfect, but rather developed and matured, set fixedly upon God. He describes two marks of such perfect love, namely confidence before God and love of our brothers and sisters. Lou adds this, by this point in the argument, the love that God offers is inseparable from the love experienced and shared in the community of love. This communal dimension is emphasized by the replacement of in us by among us with the preposition meta. Which may also remind the readers that they are not passive partners in this and perhaps recall the purpose of the letter, fellowship with or among meta us. Although meta, I may not be happy, obviously, for taking this among, it's an extension of with. When you learn meta, in the first place you learn with and properly so. It's a synonym of assume. So. This is really Emmanuel, God with us. This is the idea. And for that reason, I want to push back a little here. God, the love God offers is never inseparable from the love we experience. The God, the love God offers is always. Separable from because we are not God. It's always God, someone else with us, creatures. We do not want to blur the distinction between God and his gifts. And ourselves. And our community. And you know, however exalted we may feel in the presence of God. He still remains God. You know, we're not demonized and he doesn't disappear into our experience. So. I'm telling you, when you're living in a world where the transcendence of God has been denied. People are very, very quick to sort of breathe a sigh of relief and sort of say, OK, we kind of know what God's about now. He's about us. He's about that exalted sense of his presence. And that's one reason why in some settings they work so hard every Sunday to conjure up that feeling. Because at the end of the day, that's what God's about. He's about the feeling we share. But then that really hamstrings God to be what he also is. You know, he is the stern father who whips every child he receives. Those whom the Lord loves, he scourges. He disciplines. Pideat. You know, and we want to leave God the flexibility to remain outside of our experience. So that, you know, he can come to our steer through the different doorways that he needs to. We like that affirming and exciting doorway. God the great assurer and placater of our anxieties. The therapeutic God. The life of the party God. That's the door we want to open all the time. But how about God the discipliner? How about, as my friend with the cancer victim, how about God the not present when we wish he were here? Why are you cast down within me, O my soul? How long, O Lord? You know, there are those times in our life and those seasons when he's not there. And you're a big hypocrite if you act like you're full of joy, the Lord. Because you know you don't feel it. And you'd be weird if you did. I mean, a lot of you are old enough now, you've been hit by things like grief. You know, somebody dies and it just, it shocks you. And you're outside of yourself. I mean, something has come into your existence. And it's like, you know, I've got tinnitus, and I'm always hearing this all the time. And that's how I, to myself, that's how I feel about grief in extreme cases. It just overwhelms you. You might not have an appetite. You might not have any urge at all to sleep for 24, 30, 40 hours. And it's not like, because you're worked up, it's just something has invaded your presence that is kind of waiting out. So something changes. And that's the way God is sometimes in his absence. You know, my wife had three miscarriages. What do you tell your wife? There's nothing to say. You could hug her. You might weep with her. Nothing you can say. It's just, it's imponderable. The Lord gives and the Lord takes away. And I suppose if you're, you know, if you're wise and mature, you can say, bless it be the name of the Lord. But you know, you may not feel it very deeply right after the DNC. And you go back to the recovery room. And especially if this were a big deal in your life. You know, sometimes miscarriages are cataclysmic because maybe they represent 10 years of infertility therapy and tens of thousands of dollars. And you know, church prayer chains. And then people rejoice and oh, thank you God for answering prayers. And then it might be the light of your life. It might be the hope of your marriage. And then it gets taken away. So where's God then? You got to leave, we got to leave room for God to be something outside of our experience. Because there's going to be times when he's not going to be in our experience in any positive way. By this is where faith is so important. We know by faith he hasn't abandoned us. But sometimes that is just a bare rational proposition in our minds, which by experience we've learned I'm not going to adopt rational propositions about God that I know are true. He is with his people. I can trust God's promise. Don't ask me to smile right now. Talk to me in a month. Final translation. By this love has been perfected among us so that we may have confidence in the day of judgment. Because just as he is, so also are we in this world. Grounded in sight. For the unbeliever, the day of judgment will be a dreadful event, full of fear, remorse, and dread. For the believer, however, the day of judgment can be faced with confidence because love has been perfected among them. This love must be for God, for fellow believers, otherwise it is not perfected, matured love. So meta is okay to translate as among us? It's okay. It's not the center of the depth. That's weird. First on 418, the numbers are 2, 8, 5, 9, 1, 2, 10, 1, 2, 3, 8, 5, 1, 2, 10, 1, 2, 2, 5, 1, 10, 6, 8, 5, 9, 1, 2. By the way, on that question, with or among or whatever else, this is where, number one, you're preaching a translation or you're teaching a translation in a church. First question, what is your translation? What are people going to have there? And then if you're going to propose a difference, a different translation than they have, and you're reading Lou, well that's an interesting idea. Then I would look and see if another public translation goes with among. Does anybody in the board of this class, anybody kind of check to see if any other translations do among? I think I looked briefly, I don't remember seeing one. And if I didn't find one, then while I might bring in the idea that among is true, Lou might take it that far to talk about the community presence of God, I would stick with the lexical meaning, which is most simple, which is with. And especially in a tradition where we have imanuele, imanu, with us. That almost begs to be related to the broader concept of God with his people. But the with idea threats to dissolve God into the people. And that's the downside of the among idea. And it's not such a problem with in because the end preposition, it implies there's a there and then there's a here. God is among us because he's in, he's entered in. But the among, taking out the idea of with, lends itself more to this dissolution idea. I guess the New Revised Standard does among. I think my brother was saying the NIV also. The New King James, yes. The New King James has among? Yeah, by the New Perfection. Whoa! Okay. Well, then you've got, you know, you've got lots of presence for among. Did any of them stay with? The English Standard, the AS, the Ormond. Okay, so, you know, we've got divided house on the Translators. I'm going to ask a question with regards to Ixo there. Is that a, you know, as an adverb, could it also be a proper preposition? Let's see. It can't be, it doesn't have an object. Wait, wait a minute. It doesn't, it doesn't have an object. So it is an adverb. Yes. Is it paleo, an adjective, or a question? Right there? Yes. Yes. It's what kind of perfect law? Here, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. Okay. Let's go to your, do you have a cross-reference that's important? No, not this one. I did have a question about, actually about Ixo and Balo. I know that ek-balo is a pretty common verb as well. Is there a difference in meaning or a nuance there between using the adverb or just using ek-balo? It's probably more intensive with the adverb. It's rather unusual. Yeah. Scott says the same truth is not stated negatively. The love that spells confidence vanishes fear. There is no fear, i.e. no servile fear in love. That is, there is no room for fear in love. Any B ends it that way. The two are incompatible as oil and water. We can love and reference God simultaneously, Hebrews 5-7, but we cannot approach him in love and hide from him in fear at the same time. Romans 8-14-15, 2 Timothy 1-17. Indeed, it is by love for God that a false, cringing fear of God is overcome. And Luke kind of chimes in as well. The opposite of bold confidence would be fear, but fear can only be present. The outcome is uncertain, and the attitude of the judge is unpredictable. For fear is prompted by the expectation of being punished, whether deservedly or not. I'll wait until you're grounded in sight to see what you do with this. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear because fear has to do with punishment. And the one who fears has not been perfected in love. Grounded in sight. While there is still a need for even believers to fear God, we are not to fear God in the sense of dreadful terror or punishment. This is the type of fear that John describes here. Therefore, if you love God, you will not fear punishment. But if you do not love God, you ought to fear punishment. So kind of the thing I was going with is, I know there's other scriptures that talk about the fear of God, but here it says, fear has to do with punishment. Contextually, how I was understanding John speaking of fear is kind of in line with what Lou was saying in terms of not being sure what the outcome is or expecting punishment or something along those lines. Yeah, I mean, I think your insight is good, and I think your translation works. Notice, you're going to see the problem of echo. That's a fear. If fear has punishment, what does that mean? I mean, your rendering works. But the only point I would want to make is, fearlessness doesn't necessarily mean perfection in the love of God. There are a lot of people who don't fear God, and it's not because they're perfected in God's love. And here's the formula I think that you have to ponder. When is no fear of God, which could be, you know, confidence, like stock rights about, you know, a complete open, we don't fear God, we don't, no servile fear, no clinging. Okay. When is that presumptuous? Because we run into presumptuous people. We run into no-fear type people, and you know, they're sleeping around, and they're in our church. You know, they're gossips on the parachain. They're doing porn. And they're, you know, they don't have any fear. They're very confident, and they're walking before the Lord. Is that what John's talking about? I like it in the Urchinagidae related to punishment. It's like eschatological wrath. Certainly we can say, you know, we shouldn't fear eschatological wrath insofar as we have the assurance of God's blessing through faith in Christ. So we've got a zone where we can know we're sinners, and we don't have to fear hell every night. But just like taking love out of context and reducing it all to love and promoting a sentimentalism, this can image where everybody wants to get rid of hell. This also can be taken too far. Yes? If fear would be defined similar to like the concept of punishment or condemnation with hell, in your commentary on page 259 after quoting Schnakenberg, say that he asserts the author knows that his readers have not yet attained a perfect love. And then he writes, has anyone in this life? No, except for Christ. Does that mean that no one is excluded from the realm of fear? Well, I'd want to read what I wrote in context too. Well, 18 does serve to banish fear from the Christian repertoire of feelings or convictions that should be haunting us. So I think he wants to heighten the confidence that we have with respect to the day of judgment. Remember, this is back close enough to the apostolic age that, and John I think is a Jewish writer, Jewish eschatology thought that there's this age, and then there's the day of the war. There is the eschatological judgment. And John the Baptist was taken to be an eschatological harbinger. And Jesus was endorsed by the guy in saying the kingdom of God is at hand. It was as good as saying the day of judgment is right at the doorstep. So the day of judgment I think was much less theoretical than it is typically in our church circles. And I think John here is allaying misplaced fears. The fear that no matter how right you get with God, you're never going to get free from the eschatological terror. And if you want an example of this, I mean good Catholics, really good Catholics should always be motivated by eschatological terror. And we may have a few Catholics here and you can endorse me or not on this, but the Catholic catechism, the big book that you can buy and read up on the teaching from the church, my wife, she was a Catholic when we got married, to believe that you know you're going to heaven is a mortal sin in Catholic theology. To this day it's a mortal sin. That's a Latin based way of saying a sin unto death. That in itself is a sin that will assure you of eschatological wrath if you claim that you know you will be in heaven. Any Catholics here that can... To the catechism. I'm not Catholic, my family was, but I was a missionary in Italy for seven years. So we ran into that all the time. You get out a mass and you know anything could happen in the next five minutes you could get hit by a bus and go right to hell. You probably sinned in those five minutes. That's why purgatory is such a treasured teaching because it gives you a zone of hope. I remember going to my mother-in-law's funeral. She was a very devout Catholic. Just the homily the priest gave made it clear how important it was that all of us are diligent in our prayers for her soul and in our own adherence to and faithfulness to the church because her being in purgatory, where she was going to end up had to do with how we come in and help her now. And same for us. It's a great chain of uncertainty about where our souls are going to end up and we can have a certain hope. But it really is, you know, what is just certain is also sort of uncertain. Also in Muslims. Now we have the doctor of jihad, which is controversial in Islam. The doctor of jihad says that the jihad warrior who dies in the cause will immediately be in paradise. Even some Muslims argue that that's overdoing what the Quran teaches. But that's an exception. Imam's, normal Muslims, no matter how devout, one reason you better stay devout, God is inscrutable and nobody knows, no Muslim knows when they die, what God is going to do with their soul. That's why you need to be as submitted as you can possibly be to have the best hope, the best angle you can get on this. Because there's no assurance of salvation in Islam. There is assurance. There is assurance of salvation in Christianity. And we're right at the sweet spot on it. Relative to God's eschatological wrath, John the Baptist came warning about it was the end of Malachi, warns of... And that's one reason the Jews thought when John appeared, it was an eschatological sign. And the resurrection of Jesus, it verifies the eschatological nature of the meaning of the coming of Christ. Because when the dead start rising, we're right at the doorstep of the age to come. So because of the nearness of the coming age, which has got to close the door on all hope of salvation, it would be easy to be fearful. And Greco-Roman religions typically had a sense of a terrible thing happening when you die. You might be savaged by the underworld. They didn't know what to do about that. So there's a lot of uncertainty. So John is here giving us a very strong platform beyond which we should not worry about descending. There's a level at which Christians should fear God. There's all kinds of ways in which it is healthy to have a very strong respect for God. I don't like being taken to the woodshed by God. To go back to Hebrews 12, I don't like God's divine discipline. Whether he just wants to make me better than I already am, or whether I've done something foolhardy and now I'm going to pay the consequences for it. I don't like that. And I'm afraid of that happening. But there is a legitimate necessary respect for God and fear of screwing up that I think is just good sense. In the same sense that I don't want to do foolhardy things that get my wife angry with me. I have large experience. Don't go there. And phabos I think is a word that describes that zone between me and my wife. I don't want, I fear my wife. But it's in a larger context, it's commitment to mutual acceptance. I'm not worried about our eschatological wrath. So I think there's the analogy. And here he's talking about the eschatological wrath dimension. And we have assurance that we're not going to face that. So based on what you wrote and what you're saying now, can I take the perfect... Were you a lawyer? No. The perfect love and the perfected in love, can I relate that then to Christ? Can I say that that perfect love is Christ, not my perfect love, but Christ's perfect love that then casts off my fear? Yes. Okay, I just want to make sure that... And that would go along with all of these paraphirastic constructions where the love of God has been perfected in us and above us. From God's side, from Christ's side, that is a finished work. It has totally done its job. I don't need to fear that somehow, because I fail to measure up in faith, ethics, or love, that the trap door might open and finally I suddenly find myself in the flames. That's what we're going to say. And that's a lot of assurance. It is. But it also is enough assurance that I can doubt myself. I can confess my sins. I don't have to come to God and try to show I'm perfected. Right. You know, that I have an assurance based on my conformity with all these conditions. And that's where my assurance is. Because then I'm right back in the same trap of not trusting Him anymore, trusting in myself. So there's no fear when we abide in that love. So Romans 8.1, no condemnation for those of us in Christ Jesus. Related to that, that's the catological clearance of the wrath of the Lord, the receive of God, same with 1 Thessalonians 5. But that doesn't necessarily mean that there can be a displeasure of God in our lives now. But that, we'd say that wouldn't fit under His wrath per se, but more an expression of His love. Sure. Again, if I could use Hebrews 12. Yeah. The displeasure of God. Okay. Yes, you can. I wanted to ask you about a couple of passages in Matthew, because I've been thinking about this a little bit. You know, Matthew, it's one of the non-Jesus says, you know, it's better to pluck out your eye and throw it from you than to suffer in hell, essentially. Same thing, you know, cut off your right hand, throw it through, cut it with one hand than to go to hell with both hands. There seems to be a use of fear as a motivation, or even, you know, when He says, don't fear man who can destroy body, but fear of him who can destroy body and soul and hell. So, I'm trying to wrestle with how those fit in here. Is that something different, because He's not necessarily speaking to believers? How do we make sense of that? And if so, then do we not use those verses in combating sin, and not as believers? Well, you know, I'm a great believer in the highest and noblest motivations. So, I think that's our default. But, sometimes we're not responsive to highest and noblest motivations. And it's better to do the right thing for the second or third best reason. Maybe the third best reason for not doing this is fear of the consequences. Okay? So, don't do it. Don't rationalize it by saying, you know, I know I shouldn't do this because God loves me and God loves me. I don't really feel that love that strongly. So, I'm going to go ahead and do it, because I don't feel that mad about doing it. Yeah, it's absurd reasoning. But, I know sometimes people do bad things because they're not motivated not to do them. So, yeah, I think fear is not the noblest motivator. But, if it takes fear to keep you from sinning, then fear the Lord. There is, in other words, put it another way, there is, within covenantal assurance, within the big picture assurance of God's staples to his purpose and staples to his people, there is a necessary trepidation. Can I use that word? There's a trepidation. Like Paul's saying, therefore, knowing the fear of the Lord, we persuade men. Woe be to me if I do not preach the Gospel. You know, you could imagine yourself, sometimes, not stepping up when you need to. Why not stepping up like to, like you should? And, you just don't want to go there. You know, when you think about that, you're filled with, what was Kierkegaard's word? Angst. You're filled with anxiety. You're filled with trepidation. So, it's a form of fear. But, there's context to it. I also think of Jeremiah. And, I think of a lot of the laments that we find in the Old Testament, in the Psalms, and so forth. You know, there's a broad range of illicit experience in the Bible that, you know, comes about from meditating on the excellence of God, or the holiness of God, or the perfection of God, and then the despair when we, it hits us what we've just done. You know, some of the penitential Psalms. There's a great despair there. And, I don't think that the psalm was in and out of covenantal redemption. I think he is within that zone. But, I think he's being honest with his feelings, and also being honest with the monstrosities. You know, Bathsheba was no small thing. Uriah was no small thing. And, as some of the penitential Psalms reflect David's remorse about those things, he retains a very strong view of the nature of God. If you had just kept yucking it up, because, well, I'm a child of the covenant. Now, you can't say, well, that was the Old Testament, and this is new. But, I just don't, I don't see that. I'm sorry. I don't see us as, you know, being encouraged to have a sort of yucking up view of God. And, they had fears that we shouldn't have anymore. I've been called that for a long time. And, I don't see New Testament writers, like here. I don't see them saying, don't be like David, who felt like there was something to fear for sin. We don't have to fear when we sin anymore. We sin, we have an advocate, but that, precisely because we have an advocate, we better not presume. We better confess. We better get things right. We better let God deal with us. So, you know, your assurance is tied in with your doctrine of God. And, God is free to call us on the carpet. And, as my father used to say, turn us every way but loose. Robert, I'm going to turn you every way but loose, he used to say. And, I had great fear. And, it was well placed fear. And, I did not want to fall into the hands of God. But, you know, when David screwed up in the census, he had three choices. And, two of them involved human wrath and punishment. And, he said, God's merciful, I'm going to cast myself under God's punishment. Because, he'll stop at some point. And, he's the God who will bounce and test it. So, by the nature of God's law, by the nature of God, by the faithfulness of his promises, and the finished work of Christ, there's a floor to our fear. Our fear is redefined. It doesn't justify the cavalier attitude toward God or toward sin that is presumptuous. And, that's a tough distinction. You know, we see it in our children. This is where, you know, I've been talking about lives all week. You can also talk about child rearing. Where you're trying to teach your children in the war unconditional love. But, kids will try to take advantage of that. Ken, you and I were sort of talking. I did it myself as a kid. I can still remember when I learned, the first time I was told basically, you know, if you do something wrong and you come and tell us, they might have even made a mistake. They say, you won't get punished. Ooh. You know, new possibilities open up. Dude, you go ahead and do the thing you know you're not supposed to do. But then, before the consequence, then you go and you act, oh, I'm sorry I did that. You know, that worked maybe one time. And then my parents realized, you know, we're being taken for dupes here. So, then suddenly they went back on their promise. But you know, that was never the intent of their promise, to justify me in a duplicitous approach to that. But you see, this is what happens in churches, is people hear unconditional love, and there's no fear in love, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and they get the idea. I mean, a lot of process sort of is the worst of the stereotype of the Catholics, is that you sin, sin, sin, sin, sin, and then you go to church. And 1 John 1-9 is like a Christian gargling session. It's for sin, it's a sin management technique. Grace doesn't eradicate sin. It doesn't cleanse us and lift us to a higher level and teaches us to delight in defeating the flesh by the power of the Spirit and teaches us to sin with impunity, but then go to God and confess it and be cleansed. If we confess, we forgive. And it's like some sick addiction. It's the dog returning to its vomit in the name of Christ. And if we're doing that, we better bring fall-offs back in here. Because if that's our syndrome, do we really know God? I mean, that's what Paul says to the Corinthians, right, this is to your shame. There's some of you here who don't know God. 1 Corinthians 15. 2 Corinthians, test yourself to see if you're in the faith. You know, things could be so bad, the indicators might be, we've got to go back to square one here with some of you folks. And I don't doubt we have other regenerative people in the church. So it's an excellent question. And what did I mean by fear of God? I want to say in covenantal walk with God, we have a wide range of elicit emotions so that we can give that to the full extent of our perceptions, both joyous and grievous. I hope every day we're not grieving over profoundly wrong-headed behaviors and attitudes. We do all stumble in many ways. We fall short of God's glory. So we have scissors to confess probably most hours of the day. But those times do come, and especially in the lives of newer Christians. Remember when he wrote to the Thessalonians, and he's almost fawning. Your love and your faithfulness and oh, you're so commendable, and what you're doing, it's going on everywhere. The news of you receive the word that we preach not as a word of men, but the word of God, which does its work. And it's like, man, these people are at the top of their game, chapter one through three. I think it's chapter four. Now I want you to excel still more, because this is God's will, your sanctification, that you abstain from fornication. What? Abstain from fornication? You know, and it's obvious. And if you study the Grepper Road, what do you see that sleeping around in sexual immorality? Nothing unusual about that. In fact, I haven't said this this week, but most classes I teach, I make a point of this, because a lot of us are conditioned by Christianity, and we have an automatic tendency to relate God, the God that sent his son, we relate God to morality. That's just, we don't even think about that. But in the Greco-Roman world, as in much of the world today, there's no connection between religion and right and wrong. See, the Greeks didn't have gods and goddesses with commandments. These were gods of circumstances and experiences and domains. And actually, to get in touch with the gods, you might actually engage in activities that the God of Moses said was sinned. The God of Moses is the God who's holy, and in our terms he defines that in part by you should not commit adultery. You know, and then Jesus gives a little gloss on that to say, well, that's even like the lustful look. But that was totally foreign in the ancient times. It was born in the ancient world. And people like the Thessalonians would hear the gospel would come to Christ, and a month or two later, you know, just looking at the men as the run of guys in the church, they're still visiting prostitutes. And it would have been news to them that God would have something to do necessarily and rigorously with your sexual purity. Now Paul makes that point very, very quickly in their New Christian Instruction, that you've got to quit defrauding your brother. And you've got to get a grip on your skewos, which is probably what it sounds like it is. Skewos is a euphemism for the male sex organ. It's in verse Thessalonians 4, I don't know, 4 or 4 or 8, it's right in there somewhere. I think it's translated, sometimes it's Vestal or something like that, but it's not the woman, it's you. And your sexual faculties now are under the worship of Christ, and they're purified into a fact for that reason. So what I'm saying is in our culture now, we're going to get people, and we get people in our counseling, in our, we evangelize, they come into the faith, and you start finding out, I mean, I don't know, they're dealing drugs or they're pimps, there's all kinds of things that people might continue to do, because it's just a part of their life. They did it from way back, like that guy who said he'd been doing porn since he was 11 years old. And they come to faith in Christ, but then they start realizing the implications, the house cleaning that God's going to start doing. And best case scenario, they start giving way to God's house cleaning, and they start growing in their conviction of the goodness of God, and because they see the progress that God is making, and they start to be nurtured by a sense of God's goodness and his ownership of their lives and affairs, the capacity and the need for fearing God, it withers because they're being upheld and moved out of that zone of potential fear, of physical behavior, by the work of God in their lives. So, here's the matter. But what about people who, for whatever reason, are making pretenses of confession of faith in God, but they've got a double life, they've got a secret life, and they're not turning loose of it. There's a lot of that. There's a lot of double deal. I mean, that's why the sin that Jesus condemned most frequently at most universities was hypocrisy, which is basically two face, two identities. The Pharisees had a public, open, religious face, but he said, inside your hearts are like graves, rotting bodies. You're rotten inside. And we have this problem. People that have learned to live exteriorly, a certain way, and they beat their wives at home. Or, as in the case of women that I've counseled in the years that I've been teaching, women who have, you know, who've said, my uncle raped me. He's still my uncle. He's still at the family reunions. He's still in leadership in his church. And now I'm 25 years old, and I can't get it out of my mind, and I don't know what to do. I mean, do I want to blow my family apart? And, you know, this woman struggled very, very seriously with, it's a miracle she was still at a Christian college. Because she couldn't help, especially at that age, saying, what's this church stuff? What's all this Jesus stuff? You know, and at her age, sort of like, somewhere very close, I mean, I think she was still a child emotionally. I don't think she had a category to even know what was happening to her. I mean, I hope you don't have that guy in your congregation, but if you have a very big congregation, you're going to have that guy in your congregation. Maybe he doesn't come to church. Maybe... But I'm just saying, it's an excellent question, you know, what's the place of the fear of God? We don't want to banish it from consideration. Because there's so much that goes on that is still subject to God's eschatological wrath, and it's still part of the experience of people in the church. So we want to be presenting the whole Council of God. And this is not a license to kick the wrath of God out of the rhetoric of the church. Certainly, we who know Christ in faith don't have to fear eschatological wrath. But in ministry, and I refer you to the end of Jude, had mercy on some with fear, hating even the garment polluted by the flesh. I'm close with, you know, this no, which doesn't need to be publicized everywhere, but it's not a secret that some years ago, where I was ministering in seminary, I won't even say where it is, it doesn't matter, but one well-known pastor in the area, who planted a church that's still going to church today, very well respected because of his diligence and of his commitment and his effectiveness, his skill, his love, his knowledge of the scriptures, and actually Rich, you know, he was single. So like you said, he had time that maybe other people didn't. And the one thing that looking back people said, that showed that I knew a little danger sign, was that nobody really knew him, because he was always doing things for other people. You know, but nobody really could say, I really felt, you know, he like opened up to me. And, to make a long story short, he committed suicide. His men went to his house six o'clock on a Monday morning, because they had a men's Bible study on Monday morning. One of them was a student in my Greek class. And he was the first one there actually. And it was a part of the city where they had, you know, bars on the windows and stuff and doors. They could see his feet in there on the couch, and they're knocking on the door, and they're going, ah, he fell asleep, and you know, it's going to be funny when he does wake up. But, you know, he wouldn't wake up. And he had asphyxiated himself. And, of course, the presbytery had an investigation, and blah, blah, blah, and it turned out that, in that part of the city, this was some years ago, an HIV AIDS ministry was really getting going at that point, and the church really wanted an outreach, because they were living in that part of that city, where there was a large gay population. So they were really doing outreach, and he compromised himself in that outreach. So he was having mercy, and it was an effective ministry, but somehow he lost his fear. This is where I think the fear of God, we need to fear God more than we might either fear the consequences of not doing what we want to do. Or if I don't do this, I'll be lonely, I won't have this pleasure. You know, we need a fear of God, at times, I think, to be the ultimate motivator against the behavior that's going to betray our own best conditions. And I do expect to see that man in heaven, just like it wasn't three years later, another man in that same city. The pastor of the church that, and why didn't I attend? He committed suicide. It was a public enough matter that the elders of the church decided that they would print his suicide letter in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, because it was more or less a public letter to his elders and to his congregation. A letter of apology, and a letter of, they had various things in the letter. These are pretty morbid things, and these are pretty troubling things. And it's the reality of the world we live in. The greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world, but greater is he that is in the world than you. It's not, you're greater than the one, so it's the one who's in you or among you is greater than the one who's in the world. So we don't want to turn loose of our consolation and our life jacket against fear is Christ. And there is an assurance from fear in the Bible there is an assurance from fear in Christ.