On the Craft of Teaching

Teaching is demanding and sometimes frustrating work. But it offers the reward of great joy and fulfillment to those who have been called to it and who throw themselves into it with prayer, love, and vision. God bless all you teachers out there! 

For All the Saints (Best Version Ever!)

Watch this fabulous singing of the great hymn, "For All the Saints."

Look at the audience/choir as the camera passes over them. Music sung like this is surely enough to stop most mortals right in their tracks. Just watching this from home on my computer with my humble little speakers, I was able to feel the power and emotion of every note. I can only imagine what it must have been to be there and hear it live. I have never heard this hymn sung with such dedication and feeling before. I am in tears. Thank you, British evangelicals, for your magnificent rendition of the hymn I thought of the moment Becky went home to heaven. 

Why I Love the Anabaptists

They believed in:

• serving instead of ruling
• biblical authority instead of ecclesiastical tradition
• brotherhood instead of hierarchy
• the towel instead of the sword
• the headship of Christ instead of that of any pastor
• the church as a living organism rather than as a human institution
• the reign of God instead of a political kingdom
• the power of suffering instead of the cult of power

Michael Sattler, Anabaptist martyr.

Skinny Me!

There's really no purpose to this picture other than I wanted you to see that I once wore a tie while growing up in Hawaii. 

My guess is that it was Easter time. The other thing you'll notice is that I was on the skinny side. As in "skinny-as-a-rail" skinny. Now, the locals where I lived tended to be the opposite. Hefty would be an understatement. This meant that I was often made fun of because of my scrawny appearance. I remember once seeing a guy in Intermediate School who had these giant veins sticking out of his biceps. Man, that looked cool. Life, I guess you could say, turned competitive. "I can look like that, too," I said secretly. Of course, I never did. Luckily, I didn't care that much. I was skinny old me. Plus, who needed big muscles to paddle out to Flat Island? 

Reminiscing about this got me thinking about all the random stages of weight I've gone through during my 70 years on this planet. Oh man, how I "loved" seeing my love handles for the first time. You know how it goes. As time goes on you get careless about your diet and lack of exercise. In an effort to get fit, I began changing my eating habits. I never abstained from anything in particular. I just wanted to eat cleaner. Then I began running. Running to lose weight is all fine and dandy as long as you balance that with healthy eating and some very basic weight training. That's where things pretty much stand for me today about 58 years after that picture was taken. 

The truth is, we all have to look in the mirror. My body type is large, which means I will never look the same way I did when I was a kid. All I can try and do is model moderation, balanced eating, and moving your body in a way that makes you happy. For most of us, we only have ourselves to blame if we are overweight or obese. You may be sick of hearing me talk about it, but I believe we have a responsibility to take care of the temples God has entrusted to us. 

Major kudos to all of you out there who have quit making excuses and who wake up every morning thinking about how grateful you are that you get to move your body that day. Remember, what you do every day matters more than what you do every once in a while. Health is something to start caring about today. And maybe, just maybe, the only thing that needs to change is your way of thinking. 

"Missionaries" Or "Mission-Partners"?

A well-known evangelical church in London refuses to call their 46 members who have been sent abroad "missionaries." They prefer instead "mission-partners." They realize that the "mission field" is all around them, and they go out to make friends with them, not with any hidden motive but simply to share with them the love with which Jesus has loved us all. All -- sent and senders alike -- are partners in mission. 

The problem in using the term "missionaries," as in "This Sunday our guest speaker will be a missionary," is that it implies that we are not all missionaries. Such a mindset makes us oblivious to the field all around us and to our responsibility to share the Good News with others. 

I think I'll start using that wonderful expression from now on: mission-partners. 

Is It Spring Yet?

Ready for warmer weather. Brr. 

How Should We Translate Pros in John 1:1?

Ever get stuck in a rut? I do. But I don't mind because I actually enjoy the rut I'm in.

Bible study.

Workout.

Cardio. 

See? RUT!

If you inspect the first photo above, you'll see that I was in John 1 this morning. Here's why. Last night in Greek class, I had the joy of introducing my students to the most common prepositions in that language. Four of them can be rendered "with," including the one circled below. 

The main idea of pros is "to" or "toward." Only occasionally does it mean "with." You normally find meta or sun meaning "with." However, when John writes "and the word was with God" in verse 1, he uses the less common word pros. 

Why? 

Here are my thoughts, and they are guaranteed to bore you to tears. 

It seems that the Greek preposition pros implies something that neither meta nor sun do. You can't see this so much in English but you can in other European languages. All major English translations of John 1:1 stick with the conventional "with" in John 1:1. Likewise, most Spanish translations use the normal Spanish word for "with" ("con"), though I did find one that used "junto a" instead. French, you ask? French translations all use the normal word for "with" ("avec"). Finally, what did the Germans do? Now this is where things get really interesting. Every beginning student of German knows that the normal word for "with" in that language is "mit." But in John 1:1, all the German Bibles I was able to consult used "bei" instead. 

So that's the raw data. Let's unpack it. 

Let's begin with Spanish. This morning at the gym there were three ladies speaking Spanish with each other. They were happy to answer a very simple question I posed to them: "Cuál es la diferencia entre 'con' y 'junto a'?" Here's basically what they said. See all these people in the gym? We are "con" them. But you and I? We are "junto a" each other. The idiom "junto a," they said, implies "next to," "beside," "alongside," or "near." Here's an example:

• "Fabiola siempre se sienta junto a Lorenzo cuando hay examen para poder copiarse de él."
• "Fabiola always sits with (= next to) Lorenzo when there's a test so she can copy from him." 

This is the same concept you find in German between "mit" (again, the usual word for "with") and "bei." In German, you use "bei" when 

1. Stating that something is nearby:

• "Die Tankstelle ist bei dem Einkaufszentrum." 
• "The gas station is next to (right by) the shopping center."

2. Stating that something or someone is at a place or an event:

• "Sie lebt bei ihrer Tante."
• "She lives with her aunt."

3. During an event while one is doing something:

• "Sie ist beim Rennen hingefallen."
• "She fell while running."

With both the Spanish "junto a" and German "bei," the emphasis seems to be on the physical proximity of something. Oddly enough, this is precisely the same distinction in Latin between its normal word for with ("cum") and the word the Vulgate uses in John 1:1 ("apud"). This idea is completely lacking in the English word "with"! 

So what to do in John 1:1? I don't really know. There are so many subtle nuances in the Greek that maybe it's simply impossible to transfer all of them into English. But in my opinion, anything is better than a simple "with." Let me grab Williams' and Wuest's paraphrases from my shelves and see what they do with John 1:1. Here's the Williams New Testament:

"In the beginning the Word existed; and the Word was face to face with God; yea, the Word was God Himself."

And here's Kenneth Wuest's The New Testament: An Expanded Translation:

"In the beginning the Word was existing. And the Word was in fellowship with God the Father. And the Word was as to His essence absolute deity." 

Notice that Wuest adds "the Father," no doubt echoing the thought of verse 18 that Jesus is "in the bosom of the Father," meaning that Jesus and the Father have always enjoyed the closest possible intimacy. My own paraphrase might sound something like this:

"Before anything else existed, there was the Word. He has always enjoyed intimate fellowship with God the Father. In fact, the Word himself was God."

Much more could be said about John 1:1 but I've got to clean the house. There are depths in this verse which we will never plumb. All I've done is to paddle in the shallows. I can say I'm still glad I tried. Digging deeper like this is very rewarding to me personally. John 1:1 is symbolic for me of the careful attention to detail God paid when introducing his Son to us. 

So ... your turn. How would you render John 1:1? 

Van Bruggen's The Ancient Text of the New Testament

I'm in Wake Forest for my sports massage and my Greek class and lookie here what I found on my shelf:

I bought it in 1976, the year I began teaching. Most people have never heard of Jakob van Bruggen but he was a leading textual scholar in his day. The book is about the rejection of the Byzantine text -- as well as its value, age, and nature. Can it ever be rehabilitated? he asks. Great question! 

You can get a copy of the book here. 

That Dastardly Word "The"

My poor Greek students. Recently I had them learn the word for "the" in Greek. 

It has 24 forms. Yes, 24! I had to explain to them that, well, European languages seem to have a fetish for articles, unlike, say, Mandarin, which has none. Now, if you've ever studied German, all of this will be familiar to you. German, like Greek, has three genders, which means that articles can be masculine, feminine, or neuter. They can also be singular or plural, and they either be in one of the four so-called "cases": nominative, genitive, dative, and accusative. Moreover, in German, all the other words you use with the article have these things as well. 

Believe it or not, at one time English had different forms of "the" for the three genders. How, then, did all of these forms become simply "the"? Nobody knows for sure. The most popular theory is that it happened during the Middle English period (1100-1400). People in Britain then had two languages around  -- Old English and Old Norse. Both of these languages had genders, but quite often the genders didn't match up. It's sort of like "apple" is masculine German but feminine in French. It's thought that this confusion was enough for people to stop bothering about gender at all. I recall a similar phenomenon while traveling in northern Germany, where "Plattdeutsch" (Low German) is spoken. Plattdeutsch is kind of a cross between German and English. As a result, you might expect it to handle the word "the" a bit uniquely. This is, in fact, the case. Plattdeutsch has just one article for both masculine and feminine words. It is de. If something is neuter, you say dat, though you can also say de. So it's de Appel, de Beer, and dat/de Water. (High German: Der Apfel, die Birne, das Wasser.) 

Fascinating. 

I tried to reassure my dear students that learning the gender of words in Greek (or any other language) is not necessarily a nightmare but just something you do as you go along. Your brain can handle it. My native English has no genders, but the other languages I know either have three (Greek, Latin, German, Dutch) or two (French, Spanish). Currently, I'm teaching myself Hawaiian. In Hawaiian, you use both ke and ka to translate "the." Ka is the most commonly used form (about 80 percent of words). This means that if you have to guess which form to use, guess ka. Ke is used before words that begin with these letters:

• k
• a
• e
• o

All other words take ka (with very few exceptions). Here are some examples:

• ke akua (the god)
• ke kanaka (the man, human)
• ke lani (the heaven)
• ka wahine (the woman)
• ka 'ohana (the family)
• ke kupuna (the grandparent)
• ka makua (the parent)
• ke keiki (the child)
• ke aloha (the love)
• ke kula (the school) 
• ka aina (the land)
• ke eia (the life)
• ke kai (the sea)
• ka mokupuni (the island)
• ka pono (the righteousness) 
• ka hale (the house)

Our state motto is (as kids we could recite this by heart):

Ua mau ke eia o ka aina i ka pono. 

Literally: "Is perpetuated the life of the land in the righteousness" = "The life of the land is perpetuated in righteousness." Lovely, don't you think? 

So how do you make Hawaiian nouns plural? Interestingly, while English nouns change their form to make a plural, Hawaiian nouns do not. Instead, both ke and ka change to nā. Thus ke keiki (the child) becomes nā keiki (the children). Otherwise, you can't tell whether a noun is singular or plural in Hawaiian except by the context. When I was growing up, I sometimes heard someone say in church, "Now the keikis will be dismissed to children's church." But that's not exactly correct. You just need to say, "Now the keiki will be dismissed to children's church." Here's another example that you might be familiar with if you've ever been to Kauai. "The Nā Pali overlook is one of the most visited sights on that island." Pali is the Hawaiian word for "cliff." So what would Nā Pali mean? That's right! You akamai! 

Okay, that will have to do for now. Gotta go and check up on the sheep -- or is it nā hipa/ta probata/die Schafe/las ovejas/het schaap/les moutons?????

Baa bye! 

A Simple Hack for Studying Greek

Establishing a regular schedule of study can be even more important than having a lot of time. Without discipline, time can easily be wasted. With a regular routine of study, even small swaths of time can produce great results. 

Fellow Teachers, Do We Love Our Students?

It's snowing today and so I will be indoors all day, examining some of the most important textual variants in the New Testament, including this one in 1 Thess. 2:7. 

The question is, did Paul write "gentle" or "babies"? However, what started out as a study in textual criticism quickly morphed into something perhaps much more important. For as I pondered Paul's words, I was struck by his use of the metaphors "mother" and "father" to describe his work among the Thessalonians. Since I too am a teacher, I think his point is very well taken. As a mother and father to our students, we are to be gentle, affectionate, encouraging, and nurturing. As Paul writes (verse 8), "We loved you so much that we were delighted to impart to you not only the gospel of God but ourselves as well, because you had become so dear to us." The Bible tells us that, as teachers, this is how we are to be regarded by our pupils. Do we truly love them? They know whether we do or not. You cannot fake love. 

Without love, trust erodes. 

Without love, respect withers away. 

Without love, I am ultimately a failure as a teacher.

Teacher friend, do your students know you love them? Pastor friend, do your people know you love them?

In the 19th century, a Scottish pastor wrote these words:

When I was first settled in a church, I discovered a thing which nobody had told me and which I had not anticipated. I fell in love with my congregation. I do not know how otherwise to express it. It was as genuine a blossoming of the heart as any which I've ever experienced. And it made it easy for me to do anything for my people.

As with the church, so with the seminary. Our classrooms should never be places where love is absent. Let's remember that, fellow teachers, when we return to campus tomorrow. 

"My Soul Magnifies the Lord"

Loving me some Gabrieli tonight. 

The Magnificat is one of the most ancient Christian hymns. It derives its name from the first word of the Latin Vulgate text (Luke 1:46-55): Magnificat anima mea, Dominum, "My soul magnifies the Lord." It is a paean of praise for the Lord's mercy upon Israel and for the fulfillment of the promise made to Abraham and the patriarchs. The best part about this performance is that it is all Scripture. This is clearly the best interpretation out there of one of the world's most beautiful sacred pieces. Gloria Deo. 

Lloyd Ogilvie on the "Call to the Ministry"

Years ago, I published a study of Paul's letters to the Thessalonians. Imagine this scene: Your church is only a couple of months old and yet the apostle Paul can say that it has become a model congregation. In fact, as I noted yesterday, the gospel had echoed forth like a thunderclap from Thessalonica to all of Greece, both in the North (Macedonia) and in the South (Achaia). Becoming a Christian means just that -- that you simply can't keep quiet about the change that has happened in your life. Don't we see this in 1 Thess. 1:8-10? This passage is perhaps the most complete account of conversion in the New Testament. There are 3 steps:

1. The Thessalonians had "turned" to God from idols (God substitutes). 

2. They had begun a life of service to God, exchanging one form of slavery (to idols) for another (to God).

3. They had begun to look expectantly for the return of Christ, who would accomplish the final step in their salvation. 

Thus we see that from the very beginning of Paul's ministry in Europe his converts understood that they had been called to the service of God. They had been called into "full-time Christian service," if you will. We might even call this "every-member ministry." And it is all the more significant when you consider that the church at Thessalonica was still in its infancy.

For the life of me, I can't fathom why more churches today don't take this teaching more seriously. For it is God's will that every local church should be filled with faithful "ministers" from all walks of life. Indeed, as Paul makes clear elsewhere (Eph. 4:11-12), the responsibility of elders is not to monopolize but to multiply ministries. 

In this wonderful interview with Lloyd Ogilvie, we hear this great pastor say the following:

The Bible is very clear that anyone who believes in Christ is called into the ministry. So the church ought to be an equipping center for the ministry of the laity. It's what happened beyond the church. You know, I remember Dick Halverson, whom I mentioned earlier. He said you can't send people into the world to do the work of ministry. They're already there. And what a great insight that was.... God has deployed the laity to do the ministry. I remember, I always refused to call myself a "minister." I believe that every Christian in my congregation was a minister. So sometimes I put on the front of the bulletin: 4 pastors and 6,000 ministers. 

Friend, read that again. 

I have yet to see the following on a church marquee. Maybe yours will be the first. 

First Baptist Church _____________

Senior Pastor: Jesus Christ 

Ministers: Every Member

Assistants to the Ministers: The names of your pastors

This is what conversion looks like. Becoming a Christian is an acceptance of the fact that God has called you into full-time Christian service. And slowly you begin to notice that he is working on you from the inside out to give you a new purpose, new values, and a new pattern for life as a lifelong servant of Jesus Christ. 

Those So-Called "Cheat" Meals

I'm a cheater. Not only that, I advocate cheating. As in cheat meals. Even if you're trying to eat clean, you should probably forget about being a perfectionist. Personally, I allow for about 20% of my weekly meals to be so-called cheat meals from my favorite high fat, high-processed foods. Fitness is a lifelong endeavor, and trying to eat "clean" all the time is unrealistic and also totally unnecessary. As long as the majority of your diet is based on healthy, unprocessed foods, you will be able to easily meet your nutritional needs in terms of vitamins, minerals, and quality proteins. 

Here's my cheat meal for today. I had 3 tacos and a third of a glass of Pepsi. 

As you can see, I'm a Taco Bell aficionado. I not only love their tacos, I love their Doritos tacos. That's about as unhealthy as it gets. I call it "flexible" dieting, but it's actually cheating and, as I said, that's perfectly okay. 

The following pics will show you why I cheated today. Today's workout was the culmination of 5 days of intensive training at the gym. Workout intensity is the single most important factor in your entire workout plan and should be treated seriously if you want to optimize your gains. 

I always end my workouts with simple stretching exercises.

So there you have it. I cheated today because a little body pampering never hurts. Now it's back to the straight and narrow as I chase down my health and fitness goals for 2023. 

If you're a beginning bodybuilder, just understand that it's not a question of "If I put in the work I MIGHT succeed" but rather "If I put in the work I WILL succeed." (Greek students, take note!) 

Happy weekend, y'all!

Dave 

Men, Don't Forget: Your Wife Is Your Sister Too

Guys, are you married? If so, you have a sister-wife. You can read my thoughts on that subject here. 

The Thunderclap of the Gospel

One of my favorite Pauline letters is 1 Thessalonians, which I was reading this morning in my Bible time

I've taught the exegesis of this book some 20 times in my career. If you're anything like me, it's impossible to think of the apostle Paul without thinking about missions. It's almost as if that's all he thought about. Missions was serious business with Paul. He knew it would take blood, sweat, and tears. And the flame of the gospel, once it began to fan out into (and beyond) Europe, eventually ended up on an island in the Pacific where an 8-year old boy took a deep breath, steeped into the aisle, and went forward in church to surrender his life to Jesus Christ. 

How did the gospel get from Jerusalem to the ends of the earth? The answer is found in 1 Thess. 1:8. Today I was awestruck by the verb Paul uses to describe it. See that word I've circled? 

That one word tells us exactly everything we need to know about what the great Roland Allen once called "the spontaneous expansion of the church." But here's the interesting thing. No one is quite sure about the best way to translate the word into English. The Greek verb comes from exēcheō. A shorter form of this verb is found two times in the New Testament, where we find both of its possible meanings:

1. to echo/sound/ring out = 1 Cor. 13:1 "resounding gong"
2. to make a loud noise = Luke 21:25 "roaring of the sea" 

Of course, I couldn't wait to see how various translations rendered the word. Here's a sampling:

• NIV = rang out
• ESV = sounded forth
• KJV = sounded out
• Luther = ist auserschollen
• Schlachter = ist ... erklungen
• LBLA = ha resonada
• DHH = se ha extendido
• LSG = a retenti
• Vulgate = diffamatus est

All of these translation mean virtually the same thing, namely that the word of the Lord sounded forth or rang out. Coverdale, however, went with "noysed out." Which leads me back to my original question: Which idea did Paul have in mind when he used this verb: echo or noise? The church fathers don't help us much here. Chrysostom felt that Paul was referring to a trumpet call. Jerome, on the other hand, preferred the idea of loud thunder. Maybe I should leave it at that. But I am not content. Deep inside me is a God-given urge to make the best of a confusing situation, at least in my own mind. So, without any further ado, allow me to give you my 10 suggestions for rendering Paul's verb into English, beginning with my least favorite and ending with my number 1 preferred translation. Ready?

10. echoed forth

9. noised abroad

8. rang out

7. sounded forth

6. trumpeted forth

5. resounded forth

4. reverberated forth

3. rumbled forth

2. roared forth

And my NUMBER 1 choice is ... 

1. thundered forth

Hence I might render the phrase as "For the word of the Lord has thundered forth from you ...." Turn this into a paraphrase, and we get: "For the word of the Lord has echoed forth from you like a thunderclap ...." The idea is similar, I think, to an editorial I read in the New York Times after Queen Elizabeth died. It appeared on Sept. 8, 2022 and the author was Mark Landler. He wrote:

But news of her death still landed like a thunderclap across the British realm, where the queen was a revered figure and an anchor of stability. 

How about you? What's your preference? 

I'll close with the words of John Stott in his Thessalonians commentary (p. 37). He says that "the gospel proclaimed by the Thessalonians made a loud noise, which seemed to reverberate through the hills and valleys of Greece." 

Yes, even to the shores of Kailua Beach. 

Thoughts on Weight Loss and Diet

I've been working out and eating healthy for about a year now and it has improved my quality of life more than I could ever have imagined. Here I am at the end of today's cardio session at the Y.

I feel like I'm finally shedding some of my unwanted fat and replacing it with muscle. There is nothing worse for a runner than to be slowed down and hampered by his own body weight, and that's how I feel I have been hampered for the past several years. I know that in the grand scheme of things the scales don't mean all that much because they can't distinguish between fat and muscle. But that doesn't mean we can just throw out the scales or that weight doesn't matter. The bottom line for fat loss is that you maintain a net calorie deficit over time. Just make sure you get the fundamentals down first -- eating healthy foods, getting enough protein and fiber in your diet, and getting enough rest and sleep for recovery. After my workout here is where I went. 

It's our local Mennonite bakery. It's full of interesting signs like this one. 

I grabbed a cup of coffee and did a little more Bible study before heading home to prepare lunch. What do I normally have for my mid-day meal? Well, today's a good example. Here are the ingredients that went into today's sandwich:

• avocado
• cheese
• lettuce
• tomato
• ham
• beets
• low calorie mayo
• sandwich bread

The result was a delicious meal accompanied by a tall glass of whole milk. 

This should tide me over until dinner, when I usually focus on stuffing myself with lean protein sources like chicken, beef, or fish. It is not necessary for you to maintain a perfectly consistent diet plan; it's more about what you do for a week on average. Remember that fat loss nutrition is all about how you eat in the long term, so going overboard with calories here and there is not a really big thing. Not only that, but if you're weight training, a certain number of those calories will go into muscle growth anyway. 

Well, sorry for this belabored blog post, but it sometimes helps me to verbalize my thoughts about diet and exercise so that I can better develop a bodybuilding diet plan that is efficient and sustainable in the long term. 

As always, thanks for reading.

Dave

Tonight's Walk

Are You Teaching and Encouraging Others?

When you run a marathon, everyone who signed up for the race participates. No one just stands there and spectates.

At the start of the 2019 Chicago Marathon. 

Likewise, church was never meant to be the spiritual equivalent of a spectator sport, where we watch what's going on, sample a bit of this and that, and award performance ratings to a good show -- a sort of spiritual Olympics, where the elite athletes do their thing on the screen and the rest of the world watches on in amazement. If you don't believe me, read the strong exhortation in Heb. 10:24-25. There is something unique, irreplaceable even, about Christians getting together, teaching and encouraging and admonishing one another. Every member participating is of the utmost importance in God's eternal program for the church. Church is always a community process -- a point Paul clearly asserts in 1 Cor. 14:26. If that is true, then every time I go to church I should go to participate, not spectate. Being a Christian is by definition being like Jesus, who came not to be served but to serve. When we gather, we are to "teach and admonish one another with all wisdom," writes Paul in Col. 3:16. This isn't a call primarily to pastors. The ultimate work of the church has to be done by plain, ordinary Christians like you and me. That is what "every member ministry" looks like. That's why the corporate gathering matters.

Three thoughts as I close:

1. Be Scripture-saturated. Make it a habit to allow the Bible to percolate through your mind every day.

2. Be vocal. Let teaching and encouragement echo from your lips throughout the day as you go about your business.

3. Be intentional. Never underestimate the power of those ordinary, brief conversations you have with your fellow believers, be it on Sunday or another day of the week. Every Christian conversation can convey something of Jesus.

Gym Progress: Slow But Rewarding

What's up, guys. Today I want to take you with me to the gym for a workout. 

As a novice bodybuilder, my primary goal is building an overall foundation of muscle size and strength before worrying about weak points or lagging muscle groups. 

It's all about learning proper lifting technique with lighter weights and developing a good mind-muscle connection while gradually getting stronger on all the major key lifts. 

You want to get into a rhythm of training and staying consistent with your workout plan. 

As a bodybuilding beginner, your focus is on those initial muscle building stages and on developing your overall physique as a whole. 

It's blatantly obvious that I have a long ways to go. 

As a gym beginner there are a lot of things I've gotten wrong and many silly things I did throughout the initial stages of my fitness journey and so it's quite entertaining to look back and see how far I've come. If you yourself are a novice then keep in mind that it takes time to learn the ropes when it comes to building muscle and building strength. I wish you the best as you travel a similar road that I am on, and together let's make progress for the glory of God. 

The Power of Observation in Bible Study (Or, Be a Sponge)

A good Bible reader will notice, analyze, and remember details of the text. Read the passage multiple times. Let your gaze sweep over your field of vision. Pay attention to as many details as you can. Write down what you notice. Be as specific as possible. Avoid inattentional blindness. Be present. Minimize distractions. Be willing to research and learn. Compare the best translations. Ask good questions. Summarize your results. 

While reading John 20 this morning, two details in the text stood out to me. Both of them involved well-known Greek constructions. One of them is found in John 20:25. "I will not believe," says Thomas the Doubter. Please note that Greek has two words for "not": ou and mē. When these words are combined to form ou mē, the result is an intensified form of the negation. The idea is "not at all," or "by no means," or "certainly not." Attach this to the aorist tense, as we have here in John 20:25, and the idea is one of an absolute and unequivocal denial of the probability of an event ever happening.

Then, in John 20:27, I noticed Jesus' command to Thomas: "Do not doubt." Now, Greek imperatives have two basic forms: 

• Ongoing/Marked aspect = "Hold on to it!"
• Simple/Unmarked aspect = Take it!"

In Greek, this would read:

• lambane
• labe

Here in John 20:27, where Jesus says, "do not doubt," we've got the ongoing aspect along with the word "not." If the context allows for it, the construction will be understood as something like "stop doing it." 

It's now time to see how the various versions handle these two verses. 

For John 20:25, the ou mē in the Greek is nicely reflected in the ESV's "I will never believe," Schlachter's "werde ich es niemals glauben," and even the Hawaiian Pidgin's "no way I goin believe." As for John 20:27, what do you think of these renderings?

• NIV = stop doubting
• NLT = don't be faithless any longer
• NKJV = do not continue in disbelief 
• GNT = Stop your doubting
• Hoffnung für Alles = Zweifle nicht länger

These are just two of the many details that made me stop and think today. Bible reading has been called "the art of awareness." Robert Traina refers to it as "the absorbing process of a sponge when it is exposed to a liquid." Bible reading is not a privilege for the pious nor the art of a chosen few. It is simply welcoming God's word into your mind. As you read the words of Scripture, Jesus is tapping at the door of your heart. Open it. Welcome him in. Soak in his truth in all its beauty and grandeur. 

Lazified

Today I had one kicker of a cardio workout. It lasted for 75 minutes nonstop. 

Hirsute much? 

If I looked tired it's because I am.

I did not scream when my workout was over. Proud of myself. 

All the more reason to kick back and get some sun on the farm. 

They should make loafing an Olympic sport. I'd try out for it. 

Honestly, I don't know that I could ever live in the city again. My drive to campus on Mondays used to be a pleasant one. Back in the day, there was no traffic to speak of on Capital Blvd. -- in either direction. Now it's a parking lot. Raleigh Sprawleigh used to be one of the best places to move to in the South, but the population continues to grow faster than just about any other major city in America. There are genuine quality of life issues today that the city didn't have just 20 years ago. The result is a massive traffic problem. I read that some residents average up to 240 hours per year sitting in traffic during their morning and evening commute. 

Now, if the Lord should decide to pluck me up and move me to the middle of a city, I'll go of course. In the meantime, I'll stick with the Piedmont with its gentle inclines, light to non-existent traffic, gorgeous scenery, and, of course, its lovely farms. 

Speaking of being lazified, I jotted down some notes about the Greek text of John 20 that I wanted to share with you. Maybe after I check on the animals. :-) 

All Preaching Must Be ....

"All Scripture is God-breathed" (2 Tim. 3:16).

God has spoken. He has spoken in human language. He has spoken in words. When we open the Bible, we have God's word written. If you want to hear the voice of God, and if you want to be sure it is the voice of God, turn to Matthew. Or Deuteronomy. Or Philemon. Or Malachi. When we read the Bible, we hear the voice of God. It is God's word written.

As I said the other day, sermons must always be submitted to the discernment of the church. This is Paul's teaching (1 Cor. 14). The issue is not the degree of authority but discernment of what is authoritative. Thus, prophecy as revelatory speech directly inspired by God must always be carefully distinguished from ordinary preaching of the Scriptures. Any purported preaching of divine truth must meet the biblical pattern: 1) It must be judged by the community as harmonizing with canonical revelation; 2) it must be edifying to the church; and 3) it must be done in an orderly manner in accordance with Paul's instructions to the Corinthians. 

In the end, all preaching must be both authoritative and tentative (distinguishing between the infallible word and its fallible interpreters). 

Ah, Spring

"Nothing is so beautiful as Spring." -- Gerard Manley Hopkins. 

I agree. 

Do We Really Believe Greek Is Indispensable?

I happened to be on campus today for a meeting and ran into one of my favorite colleagues who has a new book about Zwingli coming out this year. I can't wait to read it. When I lived in Switzerland I decided to make a personal "Zwinglireise" (Zwingli tour) that included his birthplace in Wildhaus (pronounced Vild-hoose) and the battlefield in Kappel on which he died. 

Zwingli's "Geburtshaus." 

Like Zwingli, I am a graduate of the University of Basel, where we both learned to love New Testament Greek. I can honestly say that Greek is an indispensable tool for ministers of the word. I suspect that this statement will sound shocking, even outrageous, to leaders of ministerial education in our day. Why, in North American seminaries, one can take courses in biblical preaching and not know a single word of either Hebrew or Greek. But readers of Zwingli and other great preachers of the past such as John Calvin or Jonathan Edwards will easily see, if they know what they are looking for, how much use those ministers made of careful grammatical reasoning. We could say the same thing about writers of a later period such C. S. Lewis and Francis Schaeffer, at whose feet I had the privilege of sitting. They all made relentless use of Greek, and to good effect. With none of these men was it a matter of trusting in Greek rather than relying on the Holy Spirit. They understood that studying grammar and logic was simply meeting the conditions by which the Holy Spirit works. Wesley once asked himself, "Am I a tolerable master of the sciences? Have I gone through the very gate of them, logic? If not, I am not likely to go much farther when I stumble at the threshold."

Preacher friend, don't shortchange yourself, or your Lord. The issue here is: Have I done my very best to exegete a passage of Scripture before expounding upon it? Our efforts often fall short of what they should accomplish. After all, we are all frail human beings. Perhaps the deeper issue here is one of faithfulness. God has been faithful to preserve for us his inerrant, infallible, and perfect word. And now we must answer with our fidelity. The only question is: Will we? 

Zwingli's pulpit in Zurich. 

Been Fishing Lately?

I don't fish but I have stocked the pond. Guests love it. One day a visitor caught 15 fish in one hour -- brim, crappie, bass. He was delightfully proud of himself. I told him, "You need to thank Jesus. It was he who personally led each fish to your hook." 

After all, that's what John 21 teaches, isn't it? It's the story of a terrific haul of fish. But the disciples would have been fishless had not the Master been there. That's the irony of Jesus' words, "Bring me some of the fish you just caught." I can hear Peter saying, "Excuse me. We caught? What did we have to do with it?" That's the brilliance of Jesus. He wants us to offer him our talents and abilities so that he can use them to do wonderful things. None of these things are ours except as a gift he's given us. I mean, 153 fish, and still the net is not broken. If John 21 is about the recommissioning of Peter (and it is), it is also about the nature of Christ. Jesus is Lord of all creation. The disciples weren't exactly novice fishermen. They knew their catch wasn't normal. It was a miracle -- a sign of Jesus' complete authority over nature itself. As Paul says in Colossians, "All things were created in him and through him and for him." 

All things. Even fish.

Think about it. Fish go exactly where Jesus tells them to go. Think of those spiritual fish you've caught for Jesus. In every instance, Jesus has gone before you. Think of the universality of the gospel today, of the billions of people who claim to follow Christ. All of those fish were fish Jesus led to the net. On my first visit to Korea I was astonished at the number of evangelical churches I saw. I'm told that one third of the population of South Korea is Christian. Christianity is no longer a "Western" thing if it ever was in the first place. The kingdom of God is truly vast, growing, and multinational. Surely this is what Jesus meant when he said, "Apart from me you can do nothing." It is the power of the risen Lord that makes our efforts successful. He's still the Lord who fills the net with fish, regardless of how inadequate we may feel. Little wonder the early church adopted the fish sign as an emblem of their Lord's saving work:

"Jesus Christ, God's Son, Savior." What a great reminder that all that we have comes from God's hand. We did not create the world or the food in it. We did not save that person we led to Christ. Behind all of this is the hand of God. He placed us at the right fishing hole. He leads us into situations or encounters we would otherwise never have designated for ourselves. The work of evangelism is always his work. 

What a marvelous picture of our risen Lord and his utterly breathtaking power!

The Best Greek Students

"Prepare your minds for action." --The apostle Peter.

The best Greek students have active minds. 

Imagine

Imagine a world where conservative university students aren't afraid to say out loud what that are actually thinking. 

Forthcoming Book

My latest book (with Abidan Shah) will be out this summer, Lord willing. It's called Can We Recover the Original Text of the New Testament? I am pleased and honored to report that Bill Warren has agreed to write the foreword. Bill is Professor of New Testament and Greek at New Orleans Seminary and the Director of the Haggard Center for New Testament Textual Studies. 

Don't Despise ... But Test (1 Thess. 5:20-22)

If you need proof that I'm scatterbrained, here ya go. My "desk" at Bo's is pretty much always a shambles. 

Which means my mind is going a mile per second. Today's distraction? A note I had written years ago in my Greek New Testament (left bottom). 

Why did I write that? What in the world does it have to do with anything? The note in question reads:

1 Tim. 1:3 Paul tells Timothy to "command" (not just urge) certain people to stop teaching false doctrine. But Timothy's not functioning as elder-pastor. He carries Paul's full authority.

Now, I suppose this note is in reference to the middle part of the photo (right side) -- 1 Thess. 5:20-22. This is an exhortation to listen to God's word, to be spiritually discerning, and to resist evil in every shape. "Do not despise prophecies," writes Paul. His warning here is specifically against ignoring messages that claim to come from God. 

Now, I need to be clear. The topic of New Testament "prophecy" as a gift of the Spirit is a hotly debated one. I can't discuss that topic here. What we do know with certainty is that before the New Testament was written, the word of God came to believers through the apostles and prophets, who were the living and infallible teachers of the church. Today things are obviously different. Today we have the written word of God. Just as there is no apostle like Paul alive today, so there can be no prophet like the biblical prophets. If there were, we'd have to add their words to Scripture. No, it's not like that today. Paul himself gives us a wonderful definition of prophecy in 1 Cor. 14:3 when he says that "the one who prophesies speaks to men for their edification, encouragement, and comfort." There can be no doubt that today the primary vehicle for these things is the written word of God. Of course, that word often comes to us through the word preached and applied. That's why biblical preaching is so important. Who of us hasn't left a sermon saying, "Yes, that was a word for me." We all need to listen to the preached word of God attentively and receptively and to value it. But we are not to be indiscriminate when it comes to preaching. We are not to put our brains in park or neutral when we come to church. We are to evaluate what is said against Scripture. "Test everything to see if it is true," says Paul, "and if it is, then accept it." As a well-known preacher once put it: "A pastor without a Bible is a pastor without authority." 

And so I come back to the comment I wrote in my Greek New Testament:

1 Tim. 1:3 Paul tells Timothy to "command" (not just urge) certain people to stop teaching false doctrine. But Timothy's not functioning as elder-pastor. He carries Paul's full authority.

I do not hesitate to say that blind adherence to the words of men and the filling of the Holy Spirit are mutually incompatible, because the Spirit is the Spirit of truth, and there is only one standard of truth. Again, I want to be clear. I am not saying that the Holy Spirit is the only teacher we need. But he is the most important one (1 John 2:27). And though we have no apostles or prophets in the technical sense of those words today, their teaching is found in the New Testament. To put this another way, the church and its leaders are not over the Holy Scriptures, but under them. Let, then, the first mark of a healthy church be an unqualified adherence to the written word of God. Even though we may be privileged to sit under the teaching of wonderful pastor-teachers, yet it is not their word that matters in the end; it is God's. None of us, neither preacher nor pew-sitter, has proprietary rights over it.