G.K. Beale on Living “In the Likeness of His Resurrection”

As we think on Christ’s resurrection, this Easter, I wanted to bring attention to the fact that we are not mere bystanders, watching Christ’s resurrection. We are not just waiting to be resurrected only in the future. Christ’s resurrection does and should have a big impact in our lives now.

G.K. Beale in his massive New Testament biblical theology, argues that resurrection is perhaps the key theme in the New Testament. Resurrection involves a new-creation, and is simultaneous with Christ’s kingdom. His kingdom brings new creation, undoing the sin and brokenness of our lives and all of this world we live in. Believers have begun to experience new creation life and kingdom living, but one day we will experience it far more fully than now — physically as well as spiritually — in the ultimate New Kingdom of Christ Jesus.

Let me quote Beale on the importance the Resurrection should have for Christian living:

In Romans, Christ’s resurrection is sometimes viewed as the basis for believers’ resurrection existence that begins in this life (6:4-5, 8-9, which could be taken to indicate the saints’ future resurrection). That present resurrection existence is in mind is apparent, since in 6:11, 13 Paul understands the references in 6:4-10 to form the basis for concluding that believers presently should be “alive to God in Christ Jesus” (6:11) and should “present [themselves] to God as those alive from the dead” (6:13).

Consequently, Paul’s affirmation of believers’ possession of “eternal life” (6:22-23) is likely an already-not yet reality. Hence, saints are not merely like resurrected beings; rather, they actually have begun to experience the end-time resurrection that Christ experienced because they are identified with him by faith…

That [Paul] intends to refer to literal resurrection is apparent from observing that he parallels it with being in “the likeness of his death” in 6:5a, which refers to real identification with his death, such that “our old man was crucified with Him” (6:6) and believers have really “died” (6:7-8). Paul does not refer to identification with Christ’s death in a metaphorical manner. So likewise believers are in the “likeness” of Christ’s resurrection because they actually have begun to be identified with it and participate in it…

If saints are only like Christ’s resurrection, then Paul’s exhortation to them to live as resurrected beings is emptied of its force: if Christians have begun to be end-time resurrected creatures, then they have resurrection power not to “let sin reign in [their mortal bodies]… but present [themselves] to God as those alive from the dead” (6:12-13).

The relation of the “indicative” to the “imperative” in Paul’s writings has been an issue of some debate. But if the above is a correct analysis of the saints’ resurrection life, then the basis of Paul issuing commands to people is that such people have the ability to obey the commands because they have been raised from the dead, are regenerated, and are new creatures who have the power to obey. In fact, in 6:4 Paul refers to this resurrection life with new-creational language: “newness [kainotes] of life” ( or “new life”), a cognate of the word kainos found in 2 Cor. 5:17: Gal. 6:15 in the well-known inaugurated eschatological expression “new creation,” where in both cases it refers to resurrection life….

Thus, Paul does not give commands to live righteously to those outside the community of faith. This is because they do not have this power of the inbreaking age of the new creation, but are still part of the old age (the “old man” [6:6]), in which they are dominated by sin, Satan, and the influence of the world (so Eph. 2:1-3).

Not taking seriously enough the resurrection language applied to the Christian’s present experience to designate real reschatological resurrection existence, albeit on the spiritual level, has unintentionally eviscerated the ethical power of church teaching and preaching, since Christians must be aware that they presently have resurrection power to please and obey God. This is why in Rom. 6 and elsewhere Paul employs Christ’s latter-day resurrection as the basis for believers’ resurrection identity and for his exhortation that they rule over sin. (G.K. Beale, A New Testament Biblical Theology: The Unfolding of the Old Testament in the New, [Baker Academic, 2011], p. 250-251)

Sermon Download: We Are the Temple of the Living God

Recently I had another opportunity to preach on a Sunday morning. I took the opportunity to preach again on the Temple theme in Scripture, using 2 Cor. 6:14-7:1 as my text. I had preached on the Temple before, but this time I wanted to flesh out what it means that the church is the Temple today.

If you don’t have time to listen to the entire sermon (37 minutes), please do look over my notes. May God bless this sermon to all who hear it, for His glory and by His grace.

          Place: The Heights Church, St. Paul
          Date: Feb. 2, 2014
          Title: We Are the Temple of the Living God
          Text: 2 Cor. 6:14-7:1
          Notes: Download PDF
          Audio Link: Click to listen (right click to download)

Meditation on Isaiah 40:1-11 by Alec Motyer

Isaiah by the Day: A New Devotional Translation by Alec MotyerI have been making my way through Alec Motyer’s book Isaiah by the Day: A New Devotional Translation. This hardcover, wide margin book presents Motyer’s fresh translation of Isaiah and includes textual notes as well as introductory material and a devotional thought for each of the 71 readings in the book. It is very well done. Written with the heart of a pastor and the care of a scholar, this volume brings the book of Isaiah alive, and the devotions help the reader apply the text personally.

I want to share an excerpt from this book, from the passage covering Isaiah 40:1-11 (day #43 in the book). I trust you will be blessed by reading this passage as I was. You may also want to go out and pick up a copy of this book for your own devotional reading in the future.


Day 43 ~ Isaiah 40:1-11

The consolation of the world (40:1-42:17)

Astonishingly, no sooner has Isaiah pronounced judgement on Hezekiah’s sin than he is directed to organise messengers of comfort. But (maybe because exile to Babylon prompts thoughts of the wider world) the comfort-message covers all the earth, Israel and the Gentiles.

Consolation for the Lord’s people: Voices of consolation

40:1. Console, console my people,1
      your God keeps saying.
2.    Speak lovingly to Jerusalem,2
      and call out to her,
      that her time of duress has been fulfilled,
      that the punishment of her iniquity has been accepted,
      that she has received from Yahweh’s hand
      the exact payment for3 all her sins.

The first voice: Yahweh coming; worldwide revelation
3.    A voice!4 Someone is calling out:
      In the desert,
      clear a road for Yahweh,
      make straight through the open plain
      a highway for our God.
4.    Every valley must be raised,
      and every mountain and hill lowered,
      and the rough ground must become flat,
      and the mountain chain a pass.
5.    And the glory of Yahweh will be revealed,
      and all flesh will see it together:
      for it is Yahweh’s mouth that has spoken.

The second voice: Human transicence and the permanent Word
6.    A Voice! Someone is saying, Call out,
      and someone is saying, What am I to call out?
      All flesh is grass,
      and all its reliability like a flower of the field.
7.    Grass withers, flower wilts,
      for Yahweh’s Spirit has breathed on it.
      Ah, surely, the people are grass!
8.    Grass withers, flower wilts,
      and the word of our God rises up5 for ever.

The third voice: Good news for Zion
9.    To a lofty moutain, up with you,
      Zion, bearer of good news!
      With strength raise your voice,
      Jerusalem, bearer of good news.
      Raise your voice: do not fear.
      Say to the cities of Judah:
      Behold! Your God!
10.   Behold —
      as a strong one,
      the Sovereign Yahweh will come,
      his arm6 ruling for him.
      Behold!
      the wage he has earned7 is with him,
      and his work is in front of him.
11.   Like a sheperd who shepherds his flock,
      in his arm he gathers the lambs,
      and in his bosom carries them;
      those with young he guides along.

1Plural imperatives. Against the background of the dire prediction of exile and loss, the Lord has such a full message of consolation that not just Isaiah but unnamed others are summoned to bring the consoling word. Far from judgment having the last word (39:6-7) consolation has the first word!

2 Lit., ‘Speak to the heart of’ — as of an ardent lover wooing his beloved, Gen. 34:3.

3 Lit., ‘the double’, referring to one thing exactly matching another. The preposition ‘for’ (The Hebrew prefixed preposition be) expresses ‘price/value/payment’.

4 See 13:4.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
5 The literal meaning of qum. Used to express not just the continuance of the Word while all else wilts but its certainty of fulfilment and its capacity for active intervention — ‘so stand up and be counted’.

6 ‘Arm’ symbolises personal strength. cf., 33:2; 52:10. In 51:9-10 (cf. 53:1) the Lord’s arm is personified, and one is therefore tempted to use the upper case here, ‘Arm’.

7 Lit., ‘his wage’, but a pronoun with ‘wage’ always points to the wage-earner. In ways Isaiah has yet to explain the Lord has worked and earned a wage. The ‘work’ he has accomplished lies in front of him, i.e., the people who are his flock.

Thought for the day: Isaiah 40:1-11

The most wonderful thing about these verses is not the beauty of their expression (though that in itself would have been enough), nor the attractiveness of what they reveal (though, again, that would suffice), but the place where they come. Doom has been pronounced on Hezekiah (39:6-7), and with it the death knell seems to have been sounded for all Isaiah’s glittering predictions of a coming king. At this darkest of moments, the call goes out to speak the word of comfort (v. 1), to proclaim hardship finished and sins forgiven (v. 2), to announce that Yahweh himself is on his way with worldwide significance (vv. 3-5), that his word and promises can never fail (vv. 6-8), and that Zion’s people are the flock he has worked for and now holds in his tender care (vv. 9-11). This is the Lord undefeated even by our most grievous sin; the Lord who never calls back the word he has spoken, and who cannot be deflected from its fulfilment! It will all become even more wonderful as Isaiah develops his message in these chapters. We will learn what the Lord’s ‘arm ruling’ means, that it is in truth his ‘arm’ — the Lord Jesus anticipated in his executive might; we will discover what ‘work’ he has done to earn the ‘wages’ he desired — his people, his flock. So much wonder lies ahead, but let us never lose sight of this initial wonder or fail to stand in awe of it. It is what he is towards us as sinners and failures: it is the way his intentions triumph over our frailties. The Sovereign God is never more sovereign than in the work of mercy and salvation, and it is those who know they have most signally erred and strayed from his ways, who, within the blessed arena of salvation, feel most gently the warmth of his shepherding arms around them, and know themselves for sure to be the lambs of his flock.

~ Taken from Isaiah by the Day: A New Devotional Translation, by Alec Motyer, (Christian Focus: 2011), pg. 188-190.


Pick up a copy of this book at any of the following online retailers: Amazon, Westminster Bookstore, ChristianBook.com, or direct from Christian Focus.

Disclaimer: This book was provided by Christian Focus. The reviewer was under no obligation to offer a positive review.

“Greek for the Rest of Us: The Essentials of Biblical Greek” by William D. Mounce

Greek for the Rest of Us by William D. MounceBook Details:
  • Author: William D. Mounce
  • Category: Biblical Language
  • Book Publisher: Zondervan (2013)
  • Format: softcover
  • Page Count: 320
  • ISBN#: 9780310277101
  • List Price: $29.99
  • Rating: Highly Recommended

Review:
Have you ever wanted to learn Greek? A good number of Bible students and faithful church attenders have given a yes to this question. But these same people are often perplexed as to how they can actually learn Greek, Some may find themselves overwhelmed in a introductory Greek class and conclude that it will have to always be “just Greek to me.”

Bill Mounce, perhaps more than anyone else, has made it his mission to make the study of biblical Greek accessible to everyone. Not content to be the author of the most widely used introductory Greek textbook (Basics of Biblical Greek), Mounce has provided a wonderful resource for those of a less scholastic bent with his excellent book Greek for the Rest of Us: The Essentials of Biblical Greek. Now in its second edition, Greek for the Rest of Us is more useful than ever and comes complete with a host of online and additional resources to guide the reader into a greater understanding of biblical Greek.

Why study Greek?

Some may wonder why all the fuss about Greek. If the English of the King James Bible was good enough for the Apostle Paul, why do we need to study Greek? In all seriousness, why exactly should we bother with the study of Greek? Mounce sees at least five benefits from the study of biblical Greek:

  • making sense of the information that Bible software shows
  • finding what the Greek words mean
  • seeing the author’s flow of thought and his cental message
  • understanding why translations are different
  • reading good commentaries and using other biblical tools that make use of Greek (p. viii)

Three books in one

Mounce’s plan of attack is to teach the reader just enough Greek for what they need. His book is divided into three sections which will teach the reader foundational Greek, church Greek, and finally functional Greek.  Those making it through the entire book, with the online homework assignments, will actually cover the equivalent of two years of Greek. But many will not need that level of detail. Here is how Mounce delineates what each level of Greek will cover:

  • Foundational Greek teaches you enough Greek so you can use the Bible study software, understand a Strong’s Bible, and do Greek word studies.
  • Church Greek teaches you more Greek so you can understand a reverse interlinear and use better reference works, especially commentaries.
  • Functional Greek teaches you even more Greek so you can be comfortable working with a traditional interlinear and go even deeper into the best commentaries. (p. viii)

Greek on the bottom shelf

Mounce is a teacher extraordinaire. He has a gift in bringing concepts down to the bottom shelf where anyone can understand them. Illustrations, charts, pictures and examples abound. In everything he stays very practical and helpful. The layout of the book is easy to read and clear. He gives sample entries in Greek dictionaries that are recommended for those in foundational Greek. He provides screenshots from a variety of Bible software programs (some accessible freely online) and explains how to use them. And he covers interlinears and references a host of Greek tools that would be a benefit for those aiming to keep their Greek. 

One of the best features of this book is his development of phrasing. He shows how to break down a passage of Scripture into meaningful phrases and examine how they are strung together in the text. As the level of Greek understanding grows, he returns again and again to the phrasing model adding more and more to the exegetical strategy he is teaching. Finally he provides a wonderful group of semantic tags for the functional Greek student to use in selecting which relationships different phrases have to each other in a given text. This method has immediate relevancy for Bible teachers, students and pastors.

Helpful cautions for the budding scholar

Along the way, Mounce offers careful cautions to those just stumbling into the stimulating world of Greek. He reins in the tendency to find meaning in a word’s etymology and make too much of word studies divorced from the actual context of a given passage. He also provides some helpful thoughts as he begins to expand on verb tenses:

[After covering this material,] does this mean you can look at a verb and decide for yourself what its nuance is? Probably not…. Does this mean you can argue with a commentary or translation based on your knowledge of Greek. Absolutely not. You just don’t know enough Greek…. Will you be able to see why translations are different and be able to follow the discussion in commentaries? Yes. (p. 126)

He also gives a thorough treatment of Bible translation differences and the differences between the different Greek text families (Byzantine manuscripts vs. Alexandrian, etc.). There again he cautions those who are not fluent in Greek from presuming to know more than they do when it comes to the realm of textual criticism. As a Bible translator himself, he explains how all Bible translations are interpretive by their very nature and highlights the difficulties inherent in translation. Even so, he does not recommend dynamic translations for serious Bible study (p. 268).

Mounce also details what to look for and how to use good Bible commentaries. In short, Mounce doesn’t leave you with Greek on the brain, but brings you to where you can apply the Greek you have in ongoing Bible study.

Evaluation

This book is the most helpful introduction to Greek I’ve seen. It can be used for a wide variety of contexts, and would make a perfect resource for a church-led Bible institute class. It would allow some to be exposed to Greek and give others the tools to pursue it at a greater level. There is also a nice laminated resource sheet with declensions and common vocabularly words that is available along with this title and would make a great learning aid suitable for such an institude class.

The book would also serve well as a reference tool in its own right for those trying to remember some Greek fact which has been muddied by the passage of time. There are online tools and even vidoe sessions that go along with the book, making it ideal for personal study, and it could even work for a homeschooling family aiming to introduce biblical Greek to their children.  

One point to bring out here, is that this book will highlight differences in Bible translations and while it doesn’t answer every question raised, his explanation does favor the modern scholarly consensus favoring the Alexandrian texts. It can still be used with great benefit by those favoring a Majority text view, in my opinion, however. There may be various points where one may disagree with Mounce’s approach, but in the whole he is to be thanked for giving the church such a useful resource.

Author Info:
William D. Mounce (PhD, Aberdeen University) lives as a writer in Washougal, Washington. He is the President of BiblicalTraining.org, a non-profit organization offering world-class educational resources for discipleship in the local church. Formerly he was a preaching pastor, and prior to that a professor of New Testament and director of the Greek Program at Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary. He is the author of the bestselling Greek textbook, Basics of Biblical Greek, and many other resources. He was the New Testament chair of the English Standard Version translation of the Bible, and is serving on the NIV translation committee. See www.BillMounce.com for more information.

Where to Buy:
  • Amazon.com
  • Christianbook.com
  • Direct from Zondervan

Disclaimer:
This book was provided by Zondervan. The reviewer was under no obligation to offer a positive review.

Reformation Gems 6: Henry Airay on Confidence Only in Christ

Reformation Commentary on Scripture Series: Volume 11 (Philippians, Colossians)Reformation Gems are excerpts from selections contained in the Reformation Commentary on Scripture, a new commentary series from IVP which gathers the best Reformation-era comments on the text together all in one set. The volumes in this commentary series resurrect long-forgotten voices from the Reformation age and in so doing they recover the piety and vivacity of that era. I hope that by sharing some excerpts from this series, I will edify my readers and promote this important commentary series.
 _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _  _ 

Today’s selection comes from the latest volume in the Reformation Commentary on Scripture series: Volume XI (Philippians, Colossians). Henry Airay, was the author of “one of the seventeenth century’s most prominent commentaries on the book of Philippians in English” (p. xlix). In commenting on Phil. 3:4-6, Airay zeroes in on the importance of placing one’s confidence in nothing but Christ.

Here is the excerpt from Airay’s work originally published in 1613 (with key sentences bolded for emphasis):

Confidence in Nothing but Christ.

Henry Airay: Let this, then, teach us not to have confidence in any outward thing whatsoever without Christ. You are baptized; it is well: so was Simon Magus (Acts 8:13). [You partake of] the Lord’s Table; it is well: so, no doubt, did Judas. He who eats and drinks worthily is made one with Christ, and Christ with him. But “he that eats and drinks unworthily, eats and drinks his own damnation” (1 Cor. 11:29). You are born of holy and godly parents; it is well: so were Ishmael and Esau. “They which are the children of the flesh are not the children of God, but the children of the promise are counted for the seed” (Rom. 9:8). You are of a holy profession; it is well: so was Demas. Holiness of profession does not commend to God, but a heart purified by faith which works through love. You distribute to the poor and do many good things; it is well: so did the Pharisees, and the young man in the Gospel (Mt 19:20). “Though I feed the poor with all my goods, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not love, it profits me nothing” (1 Cor 13:3). In a word, there is nothing under heaven without Christ that does profit us, so that we should rejoice or have confidence in it. (pg. 75, words in brackets added in an attempt to capture the flow of Airay’s thought)

About the Reformation-era author: Henry Airay (c. 1560-1616). English Puritan professor and pastor. He was especially noted for his preaching, a blend of hostility toward Catholicism and articulate exposition of English Calvinism. He was promoted to provost of Queen’s College Oxford (1598) and then to vice chancellor of the university in 1606. He disputed with William Laud concerning Laud’s putative Catholicization of the Church of England, particularly over the practice of genuflection, which Airay vehemently opposed. He also opposed fellow Puritans who wished to separate from the Church of England. His lectures on Philippians were his only work published during his lifetime. (pg. 264)

Learn more about this commentary series at the Reformation Commentary page at IVPress.com, or check out this sampler (PDF). You can pick up a copy of Reformation Commentary on Scripture: Volume XI (Galatians, Ephesians) at any of the following online retailers: Westminster Bookstore, Amazon, Christianbook.com, or direct from IVP. You may want to consider becoming a member with IVP and getting the entire series on a subscription discount of more than 40% per volume.

Disclaimer: This book was provided by IVP. I was under no obligation to offer a favorable review.