Hebrews
Lesson 37 December 15, 2005
NKJ John 10:28 "And I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish;
neither shall anyone snatch them out of My hand.
Hebrews
4
I want to go back and pick up a couple of verses that
we got to at the end of last time. Chapter 4:1-10 has one focus. That is a
challenge that begins in verse 1.
NKJ Hebrews 4:1 Therefore, since a promise remains of entering His rest, let us fear
lest any of you seem to have come short of it.
There is a challenge there that we need to take this
seriously. There is a yet future rest that is distinct from the Promised Land
rest that was mentioned earlier. That is the point of the analogy. So the focus
of the passage we saw last time is on rest. There are 3 different rests
mentioned.
The first is creation rest that has to do with the 7th
day rest after the Lord created the heavens and earth. Then we have the second
rest that is the Promised Land rest. The foundation of this analogy is
important to understand. You have God working for 6 days and then He ceases His
work. That is the main idea of rest – to cease the labor. Now the labor
of those first 6 days is a good labor. We have such a knee jerk reaction
whenever we see the word “works” in the Scripture to ascribe it to human good -
man’s attempt to try to do things that please God or gain approval with God. But
the term works itself is a neutral term. You have to pick up its meaning from
the context. There is work that is good because it is done in obedience to God.
It is done under the power of the Holy Spirit and it produces divine good. We
use that term to distinguish it from human good. That is the morality, the
religious works, and the efforts that are simply produced in our life by the
old sin nature done apart from dependence on God. The sin nature not only
produces those acts that we think of as sin but also produces morality -
anything we think of as good but is done apart from dependence upon God. So we
have to look at that context. So God worked for 6 days and ceases His work on
the 7th day. It doesn’t have the idea with God of rest from labor as
if He were tired or weary.
Then there is Promised Land rest that God promised
Israel. The foundation of that is based on the Sabbath rest of God in the
creation week. Israel’s entry into the Promised Land is built on an analogy to
the creation rest. They have been in slavery. They have gone through the
wilderness. Finally they come into the land of opportunity, the land of
prosperity, the Promised Land, the land flowing of milk and honey where they
can rest from this labor that has gone of before. That doesn’t mean that there
wouldn’t be responsibility after that any more than God’s rest is cessation
from the labor of the first 6 days of creation meant that God stopped doing
anything or that He stopped taking care of His creation.
Then the third category of rest that is introduced in
this passage is millennial rest. You have the ages culminating in a period of
perfect environment in Millennial Kingdom that is described as the Messianic
Kingdom, the Kingdom of God, or the Period of His Rest. That is what we are
moving toward. That is yet future. Verse one clearly indicates the future
orientation of the passage to this rest that is in the future. We would connect
it back to 2:5
NKJ Hebrews 2:5 For He has not put the world to come, of which we speak, in subjection
to angels.
The whole orientation of this passage from 2:5 down
through 3:6 which is the didactic section sets the stage of an orientation to
the future – an orientation to that world to come. The rest, the His rest
spoken of in chapter 4, is fulfilled in the Millennial Kingdom. We haven’t entered it yet. That is why
there are these warnings in verse 1 to be afraid. We could translate that third
person imperative as “we should fear”. The same way when we come to 4:11. That
idea is picked up again.
NKJ Hebrews 4:11 Let us therefore be diligent to enter that rest, lest anyone fall
according to the same example of disobedience.
So the rest is viewed as something future. What is
important here is identifying the concept of rest. As I went through various
commentaries and various discussions on this passage and the meaning, what you
will typically find is that theologians will identify that rest as heaven. It
is simply entering heaven and being face-to-face with the Lord. You have
serious problems with this passage if the rest is heaven or being face-to-face
with the Lord. Then we you come to verse 11 you have a mandate to be diligent
to enter that rest. The idea of the passage is that entering the rest is contingent
upon being diligent. That would be a works salvation if entering the rest is
equivalent to the idea of being in heaven or being face to face with the Lord. So
we have to be very careful with these terms.
That is often how you will typically find that
Lordship salvation people interpret Hebrews. They will go to the passage and
say, “See entering the rest is contingent upon being diligent and being
diligent is the normal fruit of truly being saved. If you are not diligent you
are not truly saved.”
The Armenian position (that argues that you can lose
the salvation that you once had) would say, “See if you’re not continuously
diligent then you lose your salvation.”
The hyper Calvinist position is a 5 point lordship
perseverance position. Remember Calvinism is built on a 5 point acronym - TULIP. (You
have to learn your flowers if you are going to be a theologian!)
Total depravity
Unconditional election
Limited atonement
Irresistible grace
Perseverance of the saints
What they mean by perseverance of the saints is that
the person who is truly saved will persevere though they will sin and may sin
grievously. They won’t ultimately deny Christ. They won’t fall into permanent sin
and will recover because they will always persevere and will always recover and
advance to the end of their life. That’s lordship salvation. It is a back door
works system because you know you are saved not by faith plus works at the
beginning of your Christian life, but the works demonstrate that the faith was
real. What they will say is that if you don’t have works that are consistent
with your profession of faith, then you have a false faith. You have a
non-saving faith. It was not a real faith. It was a false faith. It is a subtle
system that is dominant across the country. You’ll hear it leak in if you
listen to folks on the radio or if you read any books on Biblical exposition. People
say that in everyday conversations. You will be talking to someone and they
will say, “I don’t know how they can be a Christian. Look at what they did.” The
hidden assumption is that if you are really saved, if you had genuine faith
then you wouldn’t do that. But since you did that (whatever that is) then you
must not have had genuine saving faith. It is a back door introduction of works
into the system. So it is very
important to identify this concept of rest. It also helps us to unpack the
meaning of the Scripture.
Let’s go back to verse 8 for a minute because I want
to redo some of my closing exegesis from last week from verse 10.
NKJ Hebrews 4:8 For if Joshua had given them rest, then He would not afterward have
spoken of another day.
The “them” refers to the Exodus generation and then in
this passage with Joshua the conquest generation. You have this analogy between
the Exodus generation and the present generation which under girds this whole
section. The Exodus generation failed to mix faith with promises. They failed
to mix faith with God’s promise so they didn’t enter into the Promised Land and
they didn’t experience the rest of God. They were still justified. They were
still individual believers who failed to realize the promises, the blessings,
the future inheritance that God had for them. They jeopardized it by their lack
of faith and it eventually culminated in such serious divine discipline that
they lost the opportunity to experience the inheritance that God had promised
them. So the writer of Hebrews is saying that we who have believed have the
same potential to enter into rest. That is to enjoy at a fuller degree the
reign of Christ during the Millennial Kingdom and to rule and reign with Him. Yet
we can fail to appropriate that and fail to fully realize those millennial
blessings and responsibilities by failing to believe the promises of God and
advance in our spiritual life.
Then the writer in the thrust of his argument is
showing that the rest that of all of this pictures in the future is for the
people of God.
Then we have an interesting construction in verse 10.
NKJ Hebrews 4:10 For he who has entered His rest has himself also ceased from his works
as God did from His.
Now this verse begins with a somewhat ambiguous Greek
construction. I remember when I first went to seminary and started studying
Greek I thought this would solve all of the problems. Somehow folks get that
idea that if “I just learned the original languages then some of the things
that come up when they read the Bible would be solved because I could read it
in the original.” In some sense, some things are resolved. There is clarity
just as if you read the original language you get a clearer understanding of
what the author is saying. But no language is perfect. All languages have a
certain amount of ambiguity in the way they express things. Knowing Greek and
Hebrew solves some problems but then it opens up a whole new area of problems
that you have to deal with. Just because you can read the Greek and Hebrew
doesn’t mean that it resolves everything.
There is an ambiguous phrase at the beginning of 4:10.
I went back and I rethought this again last week so I want to change my
interpretation of the passage from the end of last week.
Who is the “he” here? That is what is important to
identify. It is difficult because there is no specific third person singular
pronoun in the original. What you have at the beginning of this verse is the
articular aorist active participle of eiserchomai.
Now the article with the participle means that is going to be handled like a
noun. A basic rule of grammar is a participle is called verbal adjective. That means that sometimes it is going
to act like a verb. Running - that is how we form participles in English
– with an “ing”. Sometimes
it is going to act like a verb. Sometimes it is going to act like an adjective
or a noun. When it is going to function like an adjective or a noun it has the
article with it. It is easy to identify at that point. After that it gets
somewhat confusing.
Certain authors of Scripture, for example in the
Gospel of John, John uses an articular participle like a noun. That is where
people get confused. He will talk about he who believes. The Lordship crowd
comes along and says that the present is durative action. “He who continues to
believe.” But if you understand John and how he uses grammar, he is using it as
a noun, the believer. That is the best way to translate it. It is not
emphasizing ongoing action. He is using the participle as a noun. So you
translate it as “the believer” and it avoids all those weird interpretations
that Lordship salvation advocates come up with. This verse begins with that
same kind of construction. It is an aorist participle here.
The general rule of grammar is that an aorist
participle (because it is past tense and doesn’t have a time element when it’s
a participle) precedes the action of the main verb. Here is where you get into
some interesting stuff because main verb is katapauo
and its an aorist active indicative.
When you get into this who is the “he”? Is the “he”
who had entered (I pointed out last time I thought that it was the Lord Jesus
Christ because he has entered his rest.) I made a fundamental error there. (This
is a problem that moving brings. You get distracted with all the cares of life.
Do you ever run into that?) I was thinking in terms of His ascension and that
doesn’t fit with anything in the passage. The first thing to deal with is who
does the “he” refer to? Does it refer to the Lord Jesus Christ or does it refer
to some individual? The past tense is what can throw you off.
The first problem is that you have to avoid is
identifying this as something that has already happened. The past tenses
indicate that it is something that at first glance has already happened. But
this would then necessitate understanding the concept of rest in this verse as
equivalent of entering heaven or being face to face with the Lord. Because you
see the past tense - if that is talking about something already completed in the
past then somebody has already done this. So therefore the rest would have to
be understood as entering into heaven. We have already realized from our study
of the passage that rest can’t mean entering into heaven. So the past tense
here is not to be understood as something that has already actually occurred. So
we must conclude that if rest is equivalent to being face to face with the Lord
or entering heaven then entering heaven would be dependent on works because
that is where we go in the next verse. So the next option is to see if there is
another meaning for the aorist here. This is what is called a proleptic use of
the aorist. (How is that for a nice big fancy word? You can expand your
vocabulary a little bit.) Proleptic means that you use the past tense to refer
to something that hasn’t happened yet. It is referring to something that’s in
the future. It could be similar to what grammarians call a gnomic use which
means it is a general principle that is being articulated. That is how we should
understand this. It is not talking
about someone who has already entered his rest and has already ceased from
works, but it is stating a principle that the person “anyone (which would be a
better translation) who has entered His rest has himself also ceased from his
works as God did from His”.
So that is a grammatical possibility. When we plug in
a synonym for rest it opens the passage up. His rest refers to what? The future
Millennial Kingdom, the Messianic reign of Christ. Let’s do a simple word
substitution and instead of using the term His rest let’s substitute Millennial
Kingdom. The principle then is explained to be “for he who has entered the
Millennial Kingdom has himself also ceased from his work as God did from His.” See
how that opens it up. It makes it understandable as a gnomic principle. That is
that the rest is yet future and at the point in which anyone enters the
Millennial Kingdom (that is a place of rest) there is a cessation of current
works.
That is why we have to identify works in the passage
as the next element of interpretation. Works here doesn’t refer to attempts to
gain God’s approval. It is not human good here. It is simply Christian service.
It’s living the Christian life. It’s the labor of living in the angelic
conflict. That is work. If you haven’t realized that in your Christian experience
then something is wrong. Or, I am making some real mistakes.
Sometimes I think I live in the vortex of the angelic
conflict. I was talking to George Meissenger yesterday and George said that he
thought that demons inhabit all of the computers of all the pastors that he
knows. He may be right.
“For he who has entered the Millennial Kingdom has
himself also ceased from his work as God did from His.”
You enter first logically and then there is a recognition
of ceasing afterward. That is the logical construction of the passage.
Then there is the comparison – as God did from
His. When did God cease from His labor? At the end of the creation week. So
that is the foundational analogy to the all of this rest imagery in chapter 4. God
labored for 6 days. He ceased labor and enjoyed the results of it afterward. In
the same way the believer lives out his Christian life striving to please God
by studying the Word, confession of sin, walking by means of the Holy Spirit growing,
applying the Word, Christian service, the duties of our priesthood, the
responsibilities of our ambassadorship – all of this ties together. It is
work. It is not human good. It is divine good when we are walking by means of
the Spirit. But it is labor in this age.
When the Millennial Kingdom comes we enter that rest
of God – the Millennial Kingdom. We will cease from our labors. It will
no longer be laborious. Remember that the laborious aspect entered in as a
result of the fall. So verse 10 concludes with this general principle that the
person who enters the kingdom has himself also ceased from his works as God did
from His. Then we draw a conclusion,
NKJ Hebrews 4:11 Let us therefore be diligent to enter that rest, lest anyone fall
according to the same example of disobedience.
This is where the strong knock out punch comes for
many of us.
The “therefore” tells us that this is a conclusion
from the 10 previous verses that began with a warning to be afraid, to be
fearful, to be seriously concerned about our destiny. Then it’s reiterated in
verse 11.
Because of this, because the rest remains, because
there is this future potential let us be diligent to enter that rest. There is
a real analogy here that we can by not believing God, by not trusting in His
promises, by not advancing in the Christian life that we can lose this
potential rest.
The Greek word translated “be diligent” is the Greek
verb spoudazo. It is the aorist
active subjunctive that has in this case an imperatival mandate. There are
different ways that you can express a mandate in Hebrew. It is a first person
singular. Now we don’t really have a first person singular imperative in
English. It is normally translated “let us be diligent.” In that sense it is
called a hortatory subjunctive in the Greek, which merely means that it is a
challenge to all of us (the writer included) to be diligent. The writer doesn’t
see himself as having already arrived. The grammarians don’t think this is
always accurate, but I think it carries the punch for English speakers a lot
better if we translate it “we should therefore be diligent.” There is a mandate
here. There is not a sense of a back door out of this. “Let us be diligent”
doesn’t sound quite as strong as “we must be diligent”. It is that imperatival
sense. We must be diligent to enter that rest. The word translated diligent
means hard working, industrious, attentive to detail, constant in our work, striving
to grow, to advance and mature in the Christian life, hard driving. It is a
strong word. It is the same word translated (It’s not a great translation
though.) over in II Timothy.
KJV 2 Timothy 2:15 Study to shew thyself approved unto God, a workman that needeth not to
be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth.
The word that is translated study is spoudazao. It means to be diligent. It
means to put a tremendous effort into. The context shows that it is the study
of the Word. So we are all challenged by this verse. We must be diligent to
enter that rest. There is a condition stated here. If we want to experience all
that God has for us in that potential to rule and reign with Christ in the
Millennial Kingdom, then we have to be diligent about the Christian life. It
means that the study of God’s Word and walking by the Holy Spirit must have the
highest priority. This isn’t some game. We have all done this. We take grace
for granted. We have done that as spiritually immature believers. We think if
we do this or that we can just confess our sin and be right back in fellowship.
But there are consequences to those acts of disobedience. That is what this
passage has emphasized. When the Jews went through the wilderness there were
ten times that they disobedient to God and ten times they complained. They can
say, “We can get God’s forgiveness.”
Even after Kadesh Barnea when God said, “Okay that’s
it. I’ve had it. You have murmured, groaned and complained enough. You are not going into the land.” God
still forgave them. Forgiveness is not the same as removing consequences. We
get all confused about that in American culture. Because someone is forgiven
doesn’t mean that the consequences don’t continue. Now sometimes and frequently
in His grace when He forgives us He also removes the consequences. But there
are many times when God forgives us and the consequences remain. When David
committed his sin with Bathsheba and then conspired to have Uriah killed, he
covered it up. There was forgiveness but there were still divine discipline
consequences. There were the natural consequences that came from that type of
action as well as long term consequences.
In fact I was thinking about this the other day when I
taught it in my class at the college. I had looked at this years ago but I
don’t think I made the connection together. One of the consequences of that
four fold discipline that’s brought on David as a result of his sin with Bathsheba
is the Absolom rebellion. That is the fourth series of discipline that he had
to go through. When Absalom rebelled against David, David had to flee the city.
He took his advisors with him. The man that became Absolom’s right hand
counselor was a man named Ahithaphel who was one of David’s mighty men. Ahithophel
was Bathsheba’s grandfather. Doesn’t that tell you something about the family
dynamics that happened as a result of that affair with Bathsheba and killing
Uriah. Here is Bathsheba’s grandfather. Bathsheba is fleeing the city with David.
Yet her grandfather is so angry at what David had done and his failures that he
goes over to Absalom against his own granddaughter and her husband. So that
tells you that maybe that marriage between David and Bathsheba wasn’t a great
love story or a great marriage. It certainly had some consequences for David in
terms of the family dynamics with the in-laws. So we are challenged in verse
11.
We are warned about consequences and we are warned
about judgment. That is important to understand. Why? Because that is the
context of the next verse which is a very well known verse. It is one that many
of you have heard hundreds of times and perhaps have memorized.
NKJ Hebrews 4:12 For the word of God is living
and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the
division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of
the thoughts and intents of the heart.
We have to understand this verse in its context. The
context is a warning that we have to be diligent. We have to work hard in terms
of the Christian life. I mean that in the sense that we have to pay attention
to it. It takes concentration. It takes focus. If we slip into neutral we would
go right back into carnality. We are reminded here that we need to be diligent.
Why? There is an explanation that comes with the word gar at the beginning of verse 12.
That’s the foundation. He builds a case in this verse.
The foundation is that the Word of God is living and powerful. Then it has a
function. It is sharper than any
two-edged sword. Typically what
you will hear, what many people will do is wax eloquent on the fact that the
sword mentioned here is the machaira.
It is the Roman short sword. That would miss the point of the passage. We could
spend a lot of time talking about the ramphia
the big broad sword that was more the hacking offensive weapon that the Roman
soldier carried or about the about
the shorter (18-24 inches) machaira;
but the focus the metaphor that is here is on function. It is a comparison that
the Word of God is sharper than any two- edged sword. The focus is not the
thing it is compared to, but what is being compared – sharpness. The
function of the machaira that sharp
sword as it was developed militarily down through the ages is that it was a
close-in fighting weapon. It was designed to pierce and stab the opponent. It
had both offensive and defensive qualities but it was primarily designed for
up-close action (not like the ramphia
that hacked) to pierce and to stab. That is the point of the analogy. If you
get into all kinds of historical and military details on the machaira, they are a lot of fun but you
miss the point. The point is that the Word of God is so sharp that it pierces
deeper, its cutting ability is more intense than that of the sharpest machaira that you have ever seen. That’s
the point. The Word of God has this ability to cut your soul to the quick. It
pierces down below all the layers of rationalizations and self-defense and scar
tissue and the callousness that we build up in our Christian life. The Word of
God has the ability to slice like the sharpest scalpel to the core of where we
live and where we think and to expose the human viewpoint and the sin and the
garbage that is there. That is the thrust of this passage. That is what we have
to be diligent about – that process that Paul talks about over in Romans
12:2.
NKJ Romans 12:2 And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the
renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.
How does that happen? The study of the Word of God
exposes. It cuts deep past all of the layers of resistance that we set up where
we are involved in arrogance and self-justification and self-deception. The
Word of God slices all of that away so that it exposes what is really going on
inside of our thinking and inside of our soul. The problem that we run into is
that most of us don’t have the courage to take a look at that. We don’t like
that. That is why it takes us so long to grow and advance in the Christian
life. We resist that continuously. That is part of our sin nature. This is the
struggle that we go through in the Christian life while there is always a
struggle between walking by the Spirit and walking in the flesh.
That first word “living” is the present active
participle of zao. It means that it
is alive. It is in the emphatic position. This is the first word in the
sentence in the Greek. It would be boldfaced. The words of God are life to us.
They are not just static words. This isn’t like studying Plato or Aristotle. It’s
not like reading a good history book. It’s not like reading good combative
editorials dealing with your favorite contemporary political issue. This is
something that is alive. This is something that has the quality of producing
real life in us as well.
Energes is where we get our word for energy. It’s active. It’s powerful. It has
an inherent power that is based on the fact that it is truth. That is why Jesus
said the truth would make you free.
NKJ John 8:32
"And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free."
It is the power of the Word of God. He prayed to the Father.
NKJ John 17:17 "Sanctify them by Your truth. Your word is
truth.
It is the fact that it is true that gives it power,
not because there is some inherent mystical power to the words of the Bible. It’s
not like some magical incantation where if you say the right words or say it
the right way then the right thing is going to happen. It is because it is
true. It is because it conforms to reality. That is where the power lies. It is
because it is true that is where the power lies. It expresses the thinking of God. The Word of God is living.
It imparts life. It is powerful.
That is the machaira.
It is sharper than any two edged sword. No matter how sharp any weapon is the
Bible is sharper.
It pierces. This is the Greek word diikneomai which means to pierce or to
penetrate. That is the quality that is being emphasized here in the metaphor. The
Bible penetrates to the core of our thinking. It reveals all of the selfish
strategies that we have that we rely on to make life work apart from God. We
try to find happiness, peace and stability without being totally being dependent
on God, trusting in His promises, and mixing faith with the promises of
God.
So the Word of God pierces even to the division. This
is the point of his analogy. The Word of God is so precise in its truth that it
can demonstrate the distinctiveness between things that are often thought not
to be easy to divide between – soul and spirit, joints and marrow,
thoughts and intentions and motivations of the heart. That is the thinking. The
heart here doesn’t have the idea of emotion. It has the idea of your
thinking. It reveals and
penetrates to the underlying motivations and intentions of our thinking.
The thrust of this passage is that there is a future
judgment coming. To prepare for that we have to let the Word of God fulfill its
function to penetrate, to pierce and reveal what is going on in our thinking so
that it can expose the human viewpoint. It can expose all the self justifying
self deceptive rationales that we have so we can exchange human viewpoint for
divine viewpoint in our souls.
This is what comes up in the 13th verse. There is not creature
hidden from His sight. That’s the point of verse 12 - exposure. That’s one
thing that the sinful creature doesn’t like is exposure. We don’t want to be
exposed before that piercing gaze of a holy God. That’s what Isaiah experienced in Isaiah 6.
NKJ Isaiah 6:5 So I said: "Woe is me,
for I am undone! Because I am a man
of unclean lips, And I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; For my
eyes have seen the King, The LORD of hosts."
When he sees God he falls on his face and cries out. He
comes into the presence of that brilliant exposing light of God he can’t do
anything other than to fall on his face and worship. He realizes how much of is
life is permeated by sin. He has to be cleansed before he can be in the
presence of God. Verse 13 reemphasizes this exposure metaphor.
NKJ Hebrews 4:13 And there is no creature hidden from His sight, but all things are naked and open to the eyes of Him to
whom we must give account.
Why are we to be diligent? Because we are going to
have to give an account. There is accountability in the Christian life. Accountability is not a contradiction
to grace. Grace means that we are not saved on the basis of our works. We don’t
have to gain God’s approval in order to get saved. Nevertheless in the
Christian life there are responsibilities and accountabilities and obligations
if we are going to advance. The result is going to be displayed at the Judgment
Seat of Christ. The result of that is going to determine what we do in the
Messianic Kingdom – the roles and responsibilities that we have to rule
and reign as kings and priests.
So verses 11-13 focus on the fact that we must be
diligent. We must make this a priority. We can’t just say, “I am tired tonight
or there’s a football game or we have Christmas coming up.” We have to keep the
study of the Word of God and its application the priority.
There is something else that goes on inside of verse 12
that is important to understand in light of what the Bible teaches about man
and man’s make up. That comes in the phrase “the division of the soul and
spirit.” The word for soul is the Greek word psuche meaning soul. Sometimes it means the life principle. Sometimes
it means self. These two words pseuche
for soul and pneuma for spirit are
words that are not necessarily rigid technical words. By that I mean that every
time you see the word pneuma you
can’t go to the concept of the soul anymore than you can go to the word pneuma and say here it means spirit and
there it means human spirit and there it means Holy Spirit. There are 10-12
different meanings for the word pneuma.
In I Corinthians 2 Paul uses it at least 4 different ways in 3 different
verses. You have to look at the context to understand what the thrust of these
words is. We get so used to thinking in terms of rigid categories that when we
are born we are spiritually dead and don’t have a human spirit. When we are
regenerate we gain a human spirit. We look at passages that talk about Pharaoh
being troubled in his spirit. How does that fit the other categories? Can you
say Pharaoh was saved? No you can’t say that Pharaoh was saved. The words have
a general sense. Then in some
passages they have a technical sense. In one sense you have to use your
theology in order to clarify what the words mean in questionable passages. So
you always have to go to passages where there is something specific and clear
that is stated and use that as a principle to interpret passages when passages
are less than clear.
Now we are going to get reeducation. Almost everybody
in this room has been taught wrong. Not everybody but most everybody has been
taught wrong. There are two views of the makeup of man. The first view is
called dichotomy from the Greek word meaning two parts or two divisions. The
second view is a view called trichotomy. These are terms that everybody here is
familiar with. This is where we are going to get reeducated. Dichotomy is two
parts. The two parts are not body and soul.
I want you to get that. The two parts are not body and soul. You can look this
up in any classic systematic theology from John Calvin to Martin Luther to
William G. T. Schedd. The two parts referred to in the dichotomous position are
material and immaterial. The three
parts in the trichotomy position are body,
soul, and spirit. Now most of you were taught that two parts refers to body
and soul and trichotomy is body, soul, and spirit. That is not how any
systematic theology expresses this.
There are two views. The dichotomy view says that
there are a variety of immaterial terms that are rough synonyms - heart, mind,
reins, emotion, soul, spirit - that are inter changeable in some passages. So
it is better to talk about the fact that man as a material physical body and
then he has an immaterial nature that is described by various different words
in the Scripture. That is the classic view of dichotomy.
The trichotomy position argues that the soul and the
spirit are different in make up and different in function. They are not
synonymous. They are distinct. The other terms such as heart or will or reins
or emotions or things like that describe components of the soul. I think that
is a more accurate position. Where I am correcting your thinking a little bit
is that you have to understand that dichotomy is never used in theological
literature to refer to just the body and the soul. It is never used that way. Dichotomous
refers to people who think that the parts of the body are the physical body and
ten the immaterial part that is referred to by a lot of rough synonyms in the
Scriptures.
Now let’s go through this and I will show you why I
think the trichotomy position is the more accurate position.
NKJ 1 Corinthians 2:14 But the natural man does not receive the things of the Spirit of God,
for they are foolishness to him; nor can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.
If you go through the exegesis of the passage the
things of the Spirit of God is a technical term used from verse 9 on to refer
to the content of revelation.
NKJ 1 Corinthians
2:9 But as it is written: "Eye has
not seen, nor ear heard, Nor have entered into the heart of man The things
which God has prepared for those who love Him."
It talks about the things that the spirit has revealed
to the mind of man. All the way through those verses 9-13 “the things” (which
is a neuter plural) always refers to the content of the Scripture. It doesn’t
refer to anything out there in the world. It doesn’t refer to your
understanding of physics. It doesn’t refer to your understanding of people. It
refers to the content of revelatory speech, the content of the canon of
Scripture.
We have the phrase “natural man.” It is the Greek word
psuchikos. We find it in another
important verse. That is in Jude 19.
NKJ Jude 1:19 These
are sensual persons, who cause divisions, not having the Spirit.
He is talking about nonbeliever false teachers. They
are devoid of the spirit. Notice that spirit is capitalized in the New American
Standard. It is capitalized in most English translations. But you don’t have
capitals in the Greek. It was all lower case. If it was a unshel manuscript it
was all upper case. But they don’t have a upper case P in pneuma to indicate one meaning one place and another meaning
somewhere else. So to capitalize it was a theological deduction made by the
translator. If the translator is not a dispensationalist and if the translator
is a dichotomos then he is going to automatically knee jerk reaction every time
you see pneuma to capitalize it. You
make it the Holy Spirit if you can. But the word translated worldly minded is
not cosmos; it is psuchikos. Psuchikos doesn’t have anything to do
with the world. It is a word rooted in the noun pseuche for soul. It means a soulish person. Literally in the Greek it says, “These
are the ones who cause divisions soulish not having (and there is no article)
spirit.” So the word is clearly defined by an appositional phrase. Psuchichos means they don’t have
something called spirit. They are devoid of it. They just have a soul. So if
you take that concept and you take psuchikos
as being absent something called spirit back to I Corinthians 2 you realize
that the author in I Corinthians 2 is pointing out the fact that the natural or
soulish man who doesn’t possess this thing called spirit can’t understand anything
about God. In that context he is clearly talking about some element apart from
the soul that without it you can’t understand God and with it you have the
potential to understand divine revelation. There is where people think it must
be the Holy Spirit. But in I Corinthians 2:9 the quote is from the Old
Testament. I Corinthians 2:10-14 is an exposition of a principle grounded in
the Old Testament. Were believers in the Old Testament indwelt with the Holy
Spirit? No. So whatever is said in I Corinthians 2:9-14 regarding the spirit
and possession of the spirit has to be able to be applied to both Old Testament
saints and New Testament saints. So you can’t understand the spirit in verse 14
as being related to the Holy Spirit.
Let’s go back to I Corinthians 2:12.
NKJ 1 Corinthians
2:12 Now we have received, not the
spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the
things that have been freely given to us by God.
See how he uses the word spirit there in a different
way? It is the thinking in that phrase.
Notice that the translator capitalized spirit there. But
what we receive at the instant of salvation is a human spirit because it talks
about something that gives us capacity to know the things freely given to us by
God. It would have to be true of an Old Testament believer as well. The Old
Testament believer didn’t get the Holy Spirit. He only got a human spirit.
That is the function of the Holy Spirit in revelation.
So this spirit is God the Holy Spirit combining spiritual thoughts with
spiritual words. But a soulish man who hasn’t received this thing called spirit
yet does not accept it.
He can not understand it because it is spiritually
appraised. Pneumatikos has a lower
case here. It is not God the Holy Spirit that enables us to understand the
Scripture. It is having a human spirit. God the Holy Spirit does in terms of
teaching us as part of the package that we get as Church Age believers. But in
the Old Testament they were able to understand the revelation of God from
Genesis to Malachi or if you are looking at a Hebrew Bible from Genesis to II
Chronicles. They were able to understand God’s revelation because they had
become regenerate. What we get is an extra added teacher, God the Holy Spirit
who guides us, directs us and helps us to understand His word in terms of
illumination and guidance through the Scripture. So the natural man is a
soulish man in contrast to the believer who becomes a pneumatikos man. He gets something quantitative at salvation. He
gets something functional that he didn’t have before. This is the human spirit.
Back in Genesis 2 God warned Adam.
NKJ Genesis 2:17 "but of the tree of the knowledge of good and
evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall surely
die."
Something was lost. Some capacity was lost that gave
him the ability to relate to God and understand Him. When God came walking in
the garden after they ate, what did Adam and the woman do? They ran and they
hid. They couldn’t relate to God anymore. Now at regeneration we say that we
are born again. To be born, something has to come into existence. What is born?
What is birthed at regeneration? Some say that you get eternal life. No,
something has to be there to be birthed. It is not just the reception of
eternal life. There is something new that is added that gives the capacity
otherwise there isn’t any meaning to the word pseuchichos and pneumatikos in I Corinthians 2. I think
the best way to understand it is like this. You have the human body and then
you have the soul made up of elements such as self consciousness. You look in
the mirror and you see yourself. You dog looks in the mirror and he sees
another dog. A bird looks in the mirror and he sees another bird. But you look
in the mirror and you see yourself if it’s a good day and you’ve had a cup of
coffee. Then you have mentality. You are able to think. You have a conscience. You
know right from wrong. You have volition. When Adam was created he also had a
human spirit. I think of it this way. It is like a hand in a glove. They work
so closely together when a person is regenerate that you can’t always
distinguish between the two. When you put the hand in the glove, what is
holding the ball? The hand or the glove? They both are. They become an almost
indivisible unity. It’s the human spirit that allows the self consciousness to
have God consciousness – the mentality to think God’s thoughts, the
conscience to have a divine value system and volition to choose for God. When
Adam and the woman died spiritually they lost that element. They still have the
function of the soul. When they are regenerate, they get the human spirit that
allows the parts of the soul to function as they were intended toward God.
Let’s look at some other passages.
NKJ Titus 3:5 not by
works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved
us, through the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit,
Something is given birth to that wasn’t there before. That
is what we call the human spirit.
NKJ Hebrews 4:12 For the word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword,
piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and
is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart
Our passage makes it clear that the Word of God can
distinguish between and make a division between soul and spirit. Now that has
to mean that at some level there is a distinction between the two things. They
are not identical. In some passages the words are used interchangeably. That is
where the hand in the glove imagery comes to bear because they are so united in
a saved person that you can talk about the spirit and you are talking about
both. You can talk about the soul and you are talking about both. They do
become virtually synonymous.
Paul writes.
NKJ 1 Thessalonians 5:23 Now may the God of peace Himself sanctify you completely; and may your
whole spirit, soul, and body be preserved blameless at the coming of our Lord
Jesus Christ.
Now if these aren’t three distinct things in this
passage then the statement “spirit, soul and body” becomes virtually
meaningless.
So you have these two passages I Corinthians 5:23 and
Hebrews 4:12 make it clear and very precise statements that there is a
distinguishing characteristic between the soul and the spirit. God clearly
understands.
In other passages they are so intertwined that they
can be viewed as one. One word can refer to the other. It seems that they are
synonymous. So you have to use the clear passages to interpret the unclear
passages.
What about those in the Old Testament passages that
talk about the spirit of Pharaoh or the spirit of somebody else or that someone’s
spirit was troubled? That is where spirit has the general connotation in many
passages of the immaterial part of the man. It’s not a technical use of the word spirit. The word spirit
can mean wind, breathe, or soul. But in other passages it is clearly something
that is distinct from the soul. That’s where you have to come in and use those
clear passages to understand the unclear. Don’t make the mistake of thinking
that every time you see the word spirit of man that it is talking about what we
call the human spirit because that is a theologically nuanced category that is
only true in some passages. But it represents a true category.
Now everybody is looking so confused. We will cover this
some more as we go along. The point of the passage though is to warn us that we
need to be diligent in our study of the Word. If we are not, there are serious
consequences.
Let’s bow our heads in closing prayer.