Hebrews Lesson
56
June 1, 2006
NKJ Proverbs 3:5-6 Trust in the LORD with all
your heart, And lean not on your own understanding; In all your ways
acknowledge Him, And He shall direct your paths.
Hebrews 5:12
We are in Hebrews 5. I want you
to go back to verse 12. We have been skirting around the basic message and
application of this section from verse 10 down through verse 14 for the last
two months. This is lesson 56 and I started this in lesson 45. This
is about 11 weeks of this. We spent a lot of time dealing with what I would
call applicational issues in relationship to discernment which is a major part of this particular
passage. We got started because we were looking at the mechanics of
becoming dull believers, those who are lazy, those who
regress in their spiritual lives back in our study of verses 10 and 11. I
only did a peripheral look at 12-14, but it is important to understand what is
going on in 12-14 in order to understand what happens in chapter 6:1-8. Chapter
6:1-8 (specifically verses 4-8) are some of the most
controversial verses in the Bible. They are difficult to understand and
related to eternal security. Some people think that these verses refer to
believers who lose their salvation, which isn’t true. We have to look at
this because it is foundational. The warning is serious. That’s the
core of the warning of this particular exhortation section that begins in 5:11
and extends through 6:20. The warning section is specifically in verses 4-8 of
chapter 6. So what we do in the last three verses of chapter 5 sets up our
understanding of these difficult passages in chapter 6.
So we will look at verse 12.
NKJ Hebrews 5:12 For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you
need someone to teach you again the
first principles of the oracles of God; and you have come to need milk and not
solid food.
We could translate this
“even”. It is a concessive clause.
He is addressing his listeners, his
audience. Remember they are Jews probably priests who had trusted Christ
as the Messiah and had grown to a certain level of maturity and then they had
come under pressure, adversity, persecution, hostility and opposition and began
to doubt their faith. They began to regress spiritually so that now they
are characterized as being dull and lazy. He uses even more condemning language
in these verses.
When he uses the word “teachers” he
is not talking about a spiritual gift. He is just talking about the fact that
any believer at a certain point ought to be teachers. Let me get through
the whole verse then we will come back and deal with the details.
We start off with the verb, “you
ought to be teachers.” This is a powerful concept in the Christian
life. You ought to. As a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ there is
an expectation that something ought to be present in your life. It is not
a matter of I am saved and I can live however I want
to and if I sin and am out of fellowship I can just confess my sin. There
is an obligation that is placed upon each one of us as believers in the Lord
Jesus Christ because of what Christ did for us and because we are now members
of the royal family of God. God has provided all of this for us and inherent
with the grace gift of salvation is responsibility.
The verb here is the Greek verb opheilo which means an obligation to perform a duty. It is not
legalism. We are not obligated in the sense that we are trying to gain the
approval of God. We are not obligated in the sense that we are trying to merit
salvation. It is not a works type of system. It is just the inherent
responsibility or obligation of having something and of ownership of this new
Christian life. If you have a house whether you bought it or whether you
were given it or whether you rent it from somebody, there is an inherent
obligation or responsibility to take care of the property. If you own a
car you have an obligation to take care of it. If you don’t, it will fall
apart and it won’t be of any value to you. That is what is true about the
Christian life. If you don’t live up to the obligations or inherent
responsibilities in the Christian life to utilize the assets that God has given
us, then we become a rusty old hulk and it doesn’t do us any good.
By this time we ought to be
teachers. The idea here is anyone who can instruct someone else regarding
the Word of God. Anybody ought to be able to do that a certain level of
maturity - sitting around the kitchen table, talking to a co-worker at lunch,
discussing it with your children. At a certain level of maturity you ought to
be able to teach other people what you have learned in the Christian
life.
I have a lady in my class this
semester at the college and she said everyday after she leaves the class she
goes and has lunch with a friend of hers and tells her everything she learned
in class that day. So anybody ought to be able to grow to a certain level
and communicate what they are learning to other
people. But if you are still a spiritual infant you can’t do that because
you don’t know enough to say anything. That is the problem. They have
regressed from the high water mark of their spiritual growth to a point where
they even though chronologically they are 10 or 12 or 15 years old in their
spiritual life; in terms of they way the act, they are acting like
babies. We will see that concept brought out in a minute.
This is the Greek noun stoicheion. This was an important word in Greek vocabulary. It had a
rich heritage in philosophy. It is used in a more general sense, not in a
technical philosophical sense, in the New Testament. It has to do with the
basic parts of something, the rudiments, the elements or the basic components
of something. We might say that it refers to the ABC’s of oracles of God. The basic
doctrines of Scripture as it were. So he is reprimanding them.
“We have to go to basic doctrine all
over again because you have obviously forgotten what those basics are and their
implications for your spiritual life.”
The word stoicheion is used in a couple of other interesting passages in the New Testament.
NKJ 2 Peter 3:10-12 But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the
night, in which the heavens will pass away with a great noise, and the elements
will melt with fervent heat; both the earth and the works that are in it will
be burned up. 11 Therefore, since all these things will be
dissolved, what manner of persons ought
you to be in holy conduct and godliness, 12 looking for and
hastening the coming of the day of God, because of which the heavens will be
dissolved, being on fire, and the elements will melt with fervent heat?
Elements is stoicheion, the core basic elements, the basic chemical structure of the present
universe will melt away with a great noise.
This is an example of how stoicheion refers to the basic chemical elements that make up the universe, that
table of elements that you were supposed to have memorized when you took
chemistry in high school.
Galatians 4:3 uses
it in a different sense. There Paul says…
NKJ Galatians 4:3 Even so we, when we were children, were in bondage
under the elements of the world.
This is the basic thinking in the
world system, whatever that pagan system was, the culture out of which we
come. Paul is saying that it put us in bondage. In this situation he
is talking about as Jews they were in bondage under the law. The law
communicated basic elements.
In Colossians 2:8 he deals with the
basic principles of the Greek cosmic system.
NKJ Colossians 2:8 Beware lest anyone cheat you through philosophy and
empty deceit, according to the tradition of men, according to the basic
principles of the world, and not according to Christ.
That would refer to the basic norms
and standards are of cosmic thinking, the basic metaphysical approach, their
ethical epistemology of the world, which would be rationalism or empiricism or
mysticism. Don’t be taken captive through those basic principles that are
in opposition to Christ. That is the structure there.
So we see that there is 180-degree
opposition between the basic principles of how the culture based on human
viewpoint wants us to think, to live, to make decisions and values judgments
and that related to Christ.
In Christianity there are also
basics. That is the problem with these Jewish believers. They have to
go back and relearn the basic doctrines of Christianity. Understanding
that term will help us understand a few other things that come along as we go
through this passage.
NKJ Hebrews 5:12 For though by this time you ought to be teachers, you
need someone to teach you again the
first principles of the oracles of God; and you have come to need milk and not
solid food.
This idea of coming to need milk
instead of solid food is a perfect active indicative of the verb ginomai which means to become something that you were not
before. It indicates that they had grown to a state where they didn’t need
milk. They were pushing into the deep things of God in the
Scripture. They understood the more advanced doctrines in Scripture. But
as a result of carnality in their lives and because they began to question and
reject the teaching of grace in the New Testament, they began to reverse course
in their spiritual lives. They became something that they weren’t. First
of all they started as new believers and they became something they weren’t
then. They were worldly, carnal. They were just barely saved and they
became something they were not. That is advanced mature believers. Then
when they became advance mature believers understanding doctrine and living on
divine viewpoint then they went negative to doctrine. Then again they
became something they weren’t at that point which is carnal believers operating
on human viewpoint instead of divine viewpoint. They became something that
they were not and they began to need milk instead of solid food.
Now this concept of milk is one that
we find in a number of important passages of Scripture. It is an analogy
where the Scripture, the Word of God, is compared to food because the Word of
God is what nourishes and strengthens our souls just as physical food and drink
provide the nutrients we need to keep our bodies healthy and strong producing
growth. The analogy is developed in I Peter 2:2 that just as newborn babes
we are...
NKJ 1 Peter 2:2 as newborn babes, desire the pure milk of the word,
that you may grow thereby,
That word desire is a command. In
English it doesn’t come across as an imperative. In the Greek it is an
imperative. It is a command.
I think if I were to translate this
I would switch the word order and say, “Desire the pure milk of the Word like a
newborn baby.”
If you have ever heard a newborn
baby scream for milk, then you have some idea of what that is saying. It
is saying that you as a newborn believer should be demanding to be fed. You
should be throwing a little temper tantrum as a new baby demanding that
somebody feed you.
I don’t know if any of you have had
the opportunity to go on a real fast for any length of time. I don’t mean some
of the silly fasts that you have today where they are going to go on a
vegetable fast or they are going to go on a cookie fast or something where they
take one thing and they aren’t going to do that for two or three days. A
real fast is where all you have is water for several days. When I was
young (I was about 27 years old) I had one course left to take at Dallas
Seminary. It was one I had dreaded taking. We were required to take a
Christian Education elective. Those of us who were more doctrinally
oriented and theologically astute (more oriented to the languages) just
despised the Christian Education Department. These were the guys who walked
around with a pocket full of colored pencils and they were doing all of this
color- coding in their Bibles. They couldn’t think their way out of a wet
theological bag if they had to. But they learned all of these gimmicks for
teaching and everything. So I found out that I could take the course
somewhere else and have it transferred in. Wheaton College, which is up in
Chicago, has a huge camping program that they run in the upper part of
Wisconsin and into the upper peninsula of Michigan. They ran a program for
two or three weeks that was like an outward-bound program. You went out
and you backpacked and you canoed. It was a wilderness leadership-training
course. I found out I could take that and transfer that back for a credit for
my CE class.
I thought, “This is great. I
get to get a two hour credit for doing what I love to do – camping and
backpacking and canoeing white water.”
So we did that. What I didn’t
know was the last three days of this trip they put everyone out on the shore of
Lake Superior in a solo and you were isolated about 200 yards from the nearest
person. You had your shelter half. You could drink all the water you
wanted out of Lake Superior. The mean temperature is 32-33 degrees. It
is very cold. Nothing bad can live there. So you have all the water
you want. But they warned us not to sneak food. At 27 and I have been
back packing for three days I could eat horses – hoof, tail,
everything. Raw, it wouldn’t matter. We were told not to take
anything.
I would think, “Maybe I’ll sneak
something.”
The problem is that the bears can smell
it a half a mile away and if you have anything in your pack that smells like
food or has touched food then the bears will come in and tear up your
pack. They have had it happen. Even that week when the
leadership team had put all of their packs together where the food was three or
four bears got in and tore the heck out of those packs during the three-day
solo that we had. So that was my one and only experiencing of fasting and
trying to go 2 or 3 days without food. I had read this before but it was
purely academic knowledge. Now it became epignosis knowledge.
After about 36 hours your appetite
truly does go away. At first you are very hungry. That first day I
thought I was going to eat the bark off the trees. By the afternoon of the
second day the appetite diminished. I had been told that as you go through
a true fast for 30 or 40 days (The Lord wasn’t using His omnipotence to be able
to go without food for 30-40 days and 40 nights. Any human being can do
that) at about 40 days your appetite comes back with a vengeance because if you
go much longer you will create serious health problems for yourself, if not
die. I had been told that you can go all of that time
and not have an appetite. All I can attest to from my own experience is
that from about the middle of the second afternoon until the morning of the
fourth day when I got to see food again, I didn’t have an appetite. It
just went away.
I often thought when I teach on this
passage that what happens when baby believers don’t demand to be fed is they
don’t get fed. What happens when you don’t get fed is that your appetite
goes away. So you don’t have an appetite for doctrine anymore and are happy with
praise and worship music. You feel real good about feel good
sermons. You feel real good about motivational church. It has been so
long since you have had any real biblical food that you are living on nothing
and your appetite has gone away. That happens.
Afterwards when you start eating
again that appetite comes back with a vengeance. I think the day after I
got off of that fast, (Incidentally, the fast ended
with a 12 mile run—that was a lot of fun—on no fuel) I think I
had 6 meals in the next 8 hours. I got up the next morning at 5 o’clock
with a friend of mine and we drove into town and had breakfast. We got to
the airport and had breakfast again. There was an airplane problem so I
got bumped up to first class coming out of O’Hare. They gave me a first
class full breakfast again. So within 3 hours I had three full breakfasts and I
was still hungry. Your appetite comes back with a vengeance.
I think that what happens is that
young believers (new believers) who do not get fed so they lose their appetite
for the Word. But if they get taught the Word somebody comes along and teaches
them the Word then that appetite will come back and they will get hungry if
there ever was a real interest in the Word.
I Peter 2:2 is
a command that newborn babies should desire the pure milk of the Word so that
they can grow. It is the milk of the Word that provides the nourishment to
grow. It is not the singing. It is not prayer. It isn’t
fellowship. It is learning the Word of God that provides the mechanics,
the tools, and the content that the Holy Spirit uses to produce growth.
Now another thing I want you to note
here is that this is addressed to babes. Babes need milk. The word
here for a babe is brephos. There are several words we are going to look at in a minute that
describe the different stages of growth in the Christian life. A brephos refers to a newborn child or a
slightly older infant. It describes a chronologically new believer. This
word is talking about somebody who just got saved. They are brand new
babies. They need the milk of the Word. If you grow on milk, what do
you need? Eventually you need to have that transferred to more solid
food. You get off of the milk and you need to get on to eating a good
steak or a good prime rib. You need to have all of your vegetables and
everything else. That is what happens when you come to Bible class here. You
get a bit of everything. Sometimes you get a tough steak and you have to
learn to set that aside because you aren’t ready to go through that doctrine
and understand what is being taught. The more you hear it the more it will
make sense. That is the growth process.
But this word brephos here is the positive word that is
used in the Word of God to describe a chronologically new believer. But
there are other words that are used as well. So here I have a little chart on
the growth nouns in the New Testament.
The first is brephos which we just looked at, a chronologically new believer.
The second word is teknon. Teknion is used for a little child. It is used in the New Testament.
It is used positively and affectionately for young believers. Brephos looks at them in terms of chronology. So does teknion. It is a very positive term.
A third word that is used is paidion. It can refer to a slightly older child coming out of
infancy. It can refer to a recently born child, baby or an infant. It
is also a positively used word referring to this chronologically new infant.
But then we have the word that we
run into in Hebrews. This is the noun nepios. It can in some contexts refer to a chronologically new
believer. That is rare in the New Testament. Usually in the New
Testament it is used in a negative way, a pejorative way, to describe believers
who have regressed in their spiritual lives and act like spiritual
babies. They should be spiritual adolescents. They should be
spiritual adults but they are acting like whiny babies again because they have
gotten off the Word of God. They have regressed spiritually. Or it is used
to refer to believers who are no longer recent believers chronologically. They
are no longer newborns but because they have refused to grow. They should be
mature but they are still acting like whiny babies. It is a term that is
used in several key passages to describe regressive carnal believers.
They should be mature, but they are
not. In some cases they were mature already. It is used this way in I
Corinthians 3:1-3.
There is a big debate whether you
know it or not whether or not there is a carnal believer. Lordship salvation
and certain forms of Calvinism insist that there is no such thing as a carnal
believer. If you are truly saved, you will persevere. That is the
fifth point in the acronym TULIP for Calvinism. P is for the perseverance of the
saints. But when we look at I Corinthians 3:1, it is a contrast that is
presented here between those who are living according to the flesh and those
who are spiritual. So let’s briefly examine it.
NKJ 1 Corinthians
3:1 And I, brethren, could not speak to
you as to spiritual people but as to
carnal, as to babes in Christ.
Paul addresses the Corinthian
believers as brethren. They are believers. Later on in the same
chapter he will tell them that they are temples for the Holy Spirit. They
are believers. There is no question about it. Are they acting like
it? Not at all. They are full of arrogance.
They are dividing themselves into factions.
One person says, “I was saved and
taught by Apollos.”
Another one says, “I was saved and
taught by Peter.”
Then the holiness crowd says, “I am
better than y’all. I was saved by Jesus.”
All of this division is going on and
everybody is aligning themselves with different groups. They are emphasizing
special knowledge about spiritual things coming out of some of the Gnostic-type
teaching that was already present in Greek culture at that
time.
Later on we find out a few chapters
later that they are putting up with a man in the church that has committed a
moral sin. It is not such a culture problem for us, but this guy had
married his stepmother. That is not as culturally offensive to us, but it
was so culturally offensive even to the unbelievers in Corinth that they could
not understand how this Christian church could let this guy be a part of their
assembly. So they are countenancing all manner of immorality. Plus
when they get mad at each other they are dragging each other into courts and
were suing one another. They were a lovely bunch of people! They had
all kinds of problems. They weren’t acting anything like a believer should
act, but they were genuine believers.
That is those who are operating according to the sin
nature, sarxz. The carnal
here is the sarkikos.
Then he qualifies that. He
doesn’t use brephos. He
doesn’t use teknion. These
would be positive terms of a newborn believer. They aren’t newborns. They
have been saved for at least 3 years.
This is an insult.
He is saying, “I have to address you
as a whiny baby who knows better, who has been taught better, and who should be
acting as if they are much older. You have regressed in your spiritual
life.”
He goes on to say…
NKJ 1 Corinthians 3:2 I fed
you with milk and not with solid food; for until now you were not able to receive it, and even now you are
still not able;
This is a classification of those
who should have grown because they chronologically had the time to grow but
they hadn’t because they were still operating on the flesh.
Why? Because
they are walking according to the flesh which is what we studied the last two
or three weeks in Romans 8 and Galatians 5.
NKJ 1 Corinthians
3:3 for you are still carnal. For where
there are envy, strife, and divisions
among you, are you not carnal and behaving like mere men?
NKJ Galatians 5:17 For the flesh lusts against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh;
and these are contrary to one another, so that you do not do the things that
you wish.
NKJ Galatians 5:19 Now the works of the flesh are evident, which are: adultery, fornication,
uncleanness, lewdness,
That’s where you get your
hermeneutical key here. They are acting like mere men without the aid of the
Holy Spirit. They are still living on the basis of the sin nature and
trying to live the Christian life apart from being in right relationship to God
the Holy Spirit. So I Corinthians 3 sets up the same vocabulary that we
will run into in our passage in Hebrews 5 - the same vocabulary dealing with
milk and dealing with the nepios baby.
NKJ Hebrews 5:13 For everyone who partakes only of milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, for he is a babe.
That was the case with the
Corinthian believers. They were only partaking of milk. They weren’t
getting beyond the basics. If you look at this passage, the problem that
they have here is that they have to be taught again the first principles. They
have come to need milk. Stoicheion is related to milk.
NKJ Hebrews 5:14 But solid food belongs to those who are of full age, that is, those who by reason of use have
their senses exercised to discern both good and evil.
There is a contrast there.
NKJ Hebrews 6:1 Therefore, leaving the discussion of the elementary principles of Christ, let us go on to
perfection, not laying again the foundation of repentance from dead works and
of faith toward God,
Elementary is the word stoicheion again.
So the issue here is that they are
still acting like babies and they just want to hear basic doctrine, if
that. They want to have their ears tickled as
Paul would say. They just want to be entertained.
It is stated here as a universal
principle.
He is old enough chronologically to
have matured, but he hasn’t grown. So he is out of line. This nepios is a carnal believer who hasn’t grown.
Let’s look at a couple of key words
in verse 13.
What’s that word? Unskilled is
the Greek word apeiros meaning inexperienced. He doesn’t understand the skills that you
have to have to grow as a believer. We have talked about these many times
– the spiritual skills. We have to understand confession of sin. Whenever
we sin, we confess our sin. As soon as you confess your sin, the flip
side is that you are filled with the Spirit. You are in right relationship
with the Spirit. You are back in fellowship. You don’t do anything
else to be in fellowship. You just confess your sin and you are back in
fellowship. But that isn’t enough. That just restores you to a place
where growth can take place.
Then the second skill is walking by
the Holy Spirit, Galatians 5:16. That is an
imperative that is addressed to our volition. We have to walk by the Holy
Spirit. We have to develop that skill, learn what it means to walk by the
Spirit, to study the Word and apply it and be in moment-by-moment dependence on
the Holy Spirit.
Then we have the faith rest drill
where we learn to trust the promises, the principles, and the provision of God
in the Scripture. We have to learn what they are. We have to memorize
different promises and understand the difference between promises related to
Israel, promises related to Abraham, promises related to David, and promises related
to Church Age believers. We learn to claim promises. In that process
we are also orienting our thinking to the Word of God beginning to realize that
we aren’t oriented to the Word at all so we have to become doctrinally
oriented.
At the same time we have to be grace
oriented realizing that it is not based on who we are but on who God is and His
provision for us. Those are the basic skills. Very few people ever
learn about that. They learn about it in a general sense but it never
really categorized and systematized and provided for most believers. They think
all you need to do to grow as a Christian is go to church and be moral. That
isn’t good enough because Paul as we saw last time in Romans 7 was being
moral. He was following the Mosaic Law. He was being as moral as he
could.
He said, “Every time it ended up I
would discover that I was lusting. I was committing sin. I ended up
doing what I didn’t want to do and I didn’t do what I wanted to do. I was
a mess.”
He didn’t understand the
relationship of God the Holy Spirit as the key dynamic powerbase for the spiritual
life in the Church Age. So we have to learn those skills. As these
regressive believers who have become dull of hearing, lazy; they had lost the
skill in the Christian life.
So the writer of Hebrews makes this
universal statement.
They have lost the skills and it is
related specifically to something. The next phrase says “to the word of
righteousness.” What exactly is this word of righteousness? It is an
interesting phrase in the Greek. It is a basic genitive phrase. It
should be taken as a genitive of content - a word or message. Logos is a word that is translated word
here has a wide range of meaning; it can mean word, message, or thought. It
can mean reason. If you look it up in a lexicon it has a column or two of
different meanings and nuances to it. It is where we get our word logic. It
is where we get our root for study like the word biology, which is the study of
life or living things. We talk about zoology, which is the study of
animals. Psychology is the study of the soul. That “logy” ending comes
from the Greek word logos. So
here it should be translated the message related to or consisting of
righteousness.
The person who only partakes of milk
is unskilled in the message related to righteousness. This is a
foundational doctrine. That foundational doctrine relates to understanding
how we have righteousness and the significance of that. If you don’t
understand the imputation of righteousness and its implication for your
Christian life, then you are going to constantly going be dealing with
guilt. You are never going to fully understand grace. You are
constantly going to be trying to gain God’s approval. You are constantly
going to be slipping into legalistic activities because you do not understand
the source of righteousness. So we have to go back to the basic doctrine
related to imputation and righteousness. So we have to go back to some key
passages in Corinthians in order to understand this.
Remember what is happening with the
Hebrews. They have to rediscover in terms of their spiritual life the
significance and the impact of imputation of righteousness not just for
salvation, but what that means for their ongoing spiritual life. We find
our first reference to this in I Corinthians 1:30.
NKJ 1 Corinthians
1:30 But of Him you are in Christ Jesus,
who became for us wisdom from God -- and righteousness and sanctification and
redemption --
“Him” refers to God the Father who
is the ultimate source of all things including our salvation.
You as an individual believer are in
Christ. That is your position. At the instant of faith alone in Christ
alone, God the Holy Spirit took you and identified (Romans 6:3) you with the
death, burial and resurrection of Christ. At that instant that it happened
and you are identified with Christ, you are placed in Him. That is called
the baptism by means of the Holy Spirit – that identification with the
Holy Spirit that initiates you into your Christian life.
The “who” refers to Christ Jesus.
Now in the structure of the argument
in I Corinthians 1:30, Paul has been castigating the Corinthians because they
have been putting all of this emphasis on human viewpoint wisdom because of the
influence from Greek culture. They have intellectualized everything. They
have brought in all of their Aristotelian, Stoic and Platonic wisdom and are
making an issue out of that. So Paul is contrasting the divine viewpoint
wisdom of God as revealed in the Scripture versus all categories of human
wisdom. He says that real wisdom starts at the cross. It is Jesus
Christ who becomes for us wisdom from God. Then he expands on that.
So we can look at each one of these
in this way. He became for us wisdom from God. He became for us
righteousness. He became for us sanctification. He became for us
redemption. In this passage we learn that He became for us
righteousness.
Now the way that this is structured
in the language we have this phrase “wisdom from God.” That is the word sophia plus the Greek preposition apo and the genitive of God. The point that I am making is that you do
a word substitution here because these four nouns -wisdom, righteousness, sanctification,
and redemption - are interchangeable. Each one of them is from God. The
Greek preposition apo indicates the place of ultimate origin of these four things. The
ultimate origin for the wisdom is God. The origin of the righteousness is
God. The origin of the sanctification is God. The origin of the
redemption is God. He is the ultimate author. So righteousness comes
from God. Here is the Greek preposition apo plus the genitive indicating the place of origin. The reason I make an
issue of that is because when we come to this next verse we are going to see a
similar concept but a slightly different Greek preposition. Now sometimes
the Greek prepositions are interchangeable, but often when they are used in the
same kind of context they indicate a slightly different perspective. Apo indicates the place of origin and with the preposition ek, which we will find in Philippians 3:9, that is
that it comes from the source of God. So He is the place of
origin. He is also the source. So it covers all the bases in terms of
where that righteousness derives.
Let’s look at II Corinthians
5:21. II Corinthians 5:21expresses how this righteousness gets to
us.
NKJ 2 Corinthians
5:21 For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become
the righteousness of God in Him.
He is God the Father.
“Him” is Jesus Christ as
impeccable. He knew no sin. He did not ever sin in His
humanity.
Now He doesn’t make Him
sinful. Jesus never became sinful. He never sinned. What God the
Father does is He imputes or credits to Jesus account our sins. Now I want
you to think about that a minute because somebody asked a question a while back
that was a good question.
“God doesn’t share His glory with
anybody. God doesn’t share His other attributes with anybody. How can
God share His righteousness with us?”
The key here is
understanding that imputation is not sharing. We don’t share our sin
with Jesus because He would become a sinner. It is legally credited to His
account. It is legal or an accounting transaction that occurs so that our
sin is credited to Him so that He can pay the penalty for it as our
substitute. That is brought out by the key “for
us.” He is a substitute for us.
Again we run into the same verb here
for “become” that I talked about earlier. Ginomai indicates to become something we were not. We were
unrighteous and now we have become something that we were not. Dikaiosune theou. God is in the genitive. That could mean a god-type of
righteousness. That would be using the genitive in an adjectival sense. It
can also be a genitive of possession - the righteousness that God
possesses. And it can mean a genitive of source - that God is the source
of the righteousness. Now when you look at this phraseology it is a little
bit ambiguous because it doesn’t have the more specific preposition
there. You can say the righteousness of God using a simple genitive or to
make it more clear you would substitute source or origin either apo or ek. Now we have apo in I Corinthians 1:30 then we have ek over here in Philippians 3:9.
NKJ Philippians 3:9 and be found in Him, not having my own righteousness,
which is from the law, but that which
is through faith in Christ, the
righteousness which is from God by faith;
It is never really my
righteousness. It is always Christ’s righteousness. It is imputed to
us legally.
His own righteousness would be
derived from the law - nothing more than human morality which
isn’t good enough.
That righteousness
which is through faith, not because of faith. It
never comes because of faith. We have the Greek preposition dia here. This is so important. I think I learned this in my
first year of seminary. It was such a mind blowing
concept that if God had wanted to say because of faith which would make faith
the cause of our salvation which would make faith efficacious or meritorious,
then the Scripture would have used the preposition dia with the accusative case for pistis. It would be dia pisten. It’s not accusative. It is genitive. Dia plus the genitive indicates means and not cause. It is a very
simple change in one or two letters and it would change the whole
concept. It is not saying that this is a righteousness that is because of
faith. It is a righteousness that is through faith. The merit isn’t
in the faith. The faith that saves isn’t a different kind of faith. The
only thing that makes it different is the object of faith, which is Jesus
Christ on the cross. The object of your faith is the work of Christ on the
cross. That is what makes is salvific. It
is not the kind of faith. Faith in and of itself is merely the channel
through which you appropriate something else. It is the object of faith
that is important.
The righteousness which is
what? From God by faith. The word
righteousness here is the word dikaiosune, a word that we have talked about many times. It is that quality of
absolute perfection in God. It is the standard of His character. Our
own righteousness that which relates to this standard is not adequate. It
is only that righteousness which is from God that comes by faith. There we
have the Greek phrase dia plus the genitive. Here it is epi plus the dative, which is on
the basis of faith. It never says because of faith. It is either
through faith or on the basis of faith. It is never because of
faith. The preposition here for “from” is ek. It is the other preposition for source. Apo and ek overlapped. When both words
are used in all of these contexts for righteousness, we understand that it is
God’s righteousness itself. The righteousness that is from God, that has
its source from God, is that which is imputed or credited to us. It is
never our righteousness. It never becomes our righteousness. It is
always His righteousness. It is that righteousness that saves us.
The same thing is stated in Titus
3:5.
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,
Notice that salvation once again has
a means. It is through regeneration and the renewal of the Holy
Spirit. These are synonymous concepts here. It is the Holy Spirit
that produces the regeneration and the rebirth at the time of faith in
Christ.
NKJ Galatians 2:16 "knowing that a man is not justified by the
works of the law but by faith in Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Christ
Jesus, that we might be justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of
the law; for by the works of the law no flesh shall be justified.
This is the foundational message of
justification. It is justification related to salvation. What does
that mean for your spiritual life? What it means for your spiritual life is
that after you are saved what you possess is perfect righteousness. God is
never looking at your experiential righteousness as the cause of His
blessing.
Here we have the righteousness and
justice of God. The righteousness is the standard. Justice is the
application of that standard to His creatures. But in the box we have every one
of us. We have minus R. We don’t meet that standard. We have the
cross of Christ. Christ is perfectly righteous. When He is crucified
on the cross, the Father imputes to Him our unrighteousness and Christ’s
perfect righteousness is imputed to us at salvation so that we are declared
righteous. That is everything that I have said up to this point.
God the Father in His righteousness
looks at the righteousness that we have from Christ and declares us to be
righteous. Now He blesses us with eternal salvation. Why? Not
because of anything we have done but because we possess Christ’s
righteousness. As God the Father gives and distributes to us the blessings
that He has already decided upon, it is not because of our righteousness. It
never is. That would be legalism. We are good enough now that we are
going to get what God is giving us. God distributes it according to our
maturity not because of what we do. He is not going to give us blessings
that we can’t handle because we aren’t spiritually mature enough to handle
it. You won’t give some things to your 3 and 4 year old
children because you know that they can’t handle it. They would kill
themselves if they had those things. As you grow and mature you understand
in grace and as a result of justification what you have at salvation (that
imputation of righteousness) is the basis for every blessing that you get for
the rest of your life. It is not because you pray regularly. It is
not because you go to church regularly. It is not because you memorize 50
verses every year. That is great and we should do those things because it
is part of developing and maturing our priesthood. But, that is not the
cause of God’s blessing. We are never ever going to be able to produce the
kind of righteousness that we have from Jesus Christ. That is the basis of
our righteousness. If we skip ahead to Hebrews 6:1 we realize that this is
a fundamental issue for them, the Jews who are tempted to go back under the
Law. Galatians 2:16
It is not by the works of the law
that we are justified.
That is what most Christians are
trying to produce, works so that they can merit blessing from God. We have to
change our thinking. That is what the writer is talking about here. This
repentance from dead is works is trying to do good deeds in order to impress
God to get more blessing. That is what most people are trying to do. They
don’t understand that they have all that they need in Jesus Christ. You
just have to grow up a little bit so that those blessing can be
distributed.
Now we come to our last verse.
NKJ Hebrews 5:14 But solid food belongs to those who are of full age, that is, those who by reason of use have
their senses exercised to discern both good and evil.
The word there for full age is teleios, maturity – those who are of full age, those who are mature or
complete. They have grown up. That is where real life begins – in
maturity. That is where you really start enjoying all the privileges of
your priesthood and your ambassadorship and all of the assets that God gave
you. Once you get to maturity, you understand what they are and how to use
them.
The word hexis means skill, proficiency. That is the repetition and successful
practice of spiritual skills. It is the opposite of those who are
unskilled and haven’t been applying doctrine in their lives. The mature
are those who repeatedly and successfully practice the spiritual skills and
have their senses exercised or disciplined.
It is the Greek verb gumnazo, to train naked. That is to remove all distractions, everything
that would hinder you in your spiritual growth. It is the same word used
in I Timothy 4:7.
NKJ 1 Timothy 4:7 But reject profane and old wives' fables, and exercise
yourself toward godliness.
Fables are things like evolution and
all the kinds of motivational speaking that you get from most pulpits.
That is discipline yourself, gumnazo.
That is toward spiritual maturity.
Hebrews 12:11 says
the same thing in a slightly different way.
NKJ Hebrews 12:11 Now no chastening seems to be joyful for the present,
but painful; nevertheless, afterward it yields the peaceable fruit of righteousness
to those who have been trained by it.
Chastening is divine
discipline.
Afterward it yields that process of gumnazo.
As you go through this process you
are trained to discern the difference between that which is good (kalos) - the good constitutionally good - and that which is evil (kakos) - that which is worthless, bad and morally evil. So we learn to
discern the difference between good doctrine and false doctrine. You learn
to make good decisions from a position of strength. That position of
strength is because you have a reservoir of doctrine in your soul that produces
wisdom. It is on the basis of wisdom that you make good decisions. If
you regress, what happens? That wisdom gets lost. You lose the
advance of doctrine. You are no longer making good decisions and now there
is an accumulation of bad decisions and life begins to fall apart again. As a
result of this they are in that state. They have become dull of
hearing. They have regressed.
But there is still hope. That is the
hope that he challenges them with in verses 1-3 of chapter 6.
This we will do if God permits. There
is a hold out there because God may not permit it. That is the serious warning
of the next few verses. You can get so regressed is your spiritual life
that nothing is going to pull you back apart from an act from God. God can
still do it, but nothing else will. You can get yourself is such a
position of spiritual regression that there is no recovery and then you are
going to die the sin unto death. That is the warning of chapter 6. We
will get there next time.
Let’s close in prayer.