As for Luke 14:26 - We need to
understand that God is not double minded, nor does He contradict Himself. How
is one to honor their parents (which is the only Commandment with promise) and
hate them ATST? The Amplified Bible puts it this way "If any one comes
to Me (Jesus) and does not hate his (own) father and mother (that is in
the sense of indifference to or relative disregard for them in comparison with
his attitude toward God) and (likewise) his wife and children and brothers and
sisters, (yes) and even his own life also, he cannot be my disciple."
BT: Yes, Judy. I am aware of this
translation. I think it is connotatively on the mark (Terry said something
quite similar in his response a couple days ago). I do not think, however,
that this calls for a redefinition of hate. The point is, this is hyperbole.
Jesus is not attempting to add new meaning to hate; he is setting up a
contrast by way of exaggeration.
jt: My dictionary defines
hyperbole in rhetoric as 'a figure of speech which expresses much more or less
than the truth, or which represents things much greater or less, better or
worse than they really are; an object uncommon in size either great or small
strikes us with surprise, and this emotion produces a momentary conviction
that the object is greater or less than it is in reality. this same effect
attends figurative grandeur or littleness and hence the use of hyperbole which
expresses this momentary conviction' .... Jesus also said it is impossible to
serve two masters because we will hate the one and cleave to the other; I
don't believe He was into hype. This is just "how it is" and that's the way He
said it.
IF we will allow that Jesus was fully
given to using literary conventions, then a lot of redefining will go by the
wayside. IF we do not allow ourselves to think that Jesus would use hyperbole
(for example) to make a point, then we will be forced to redefine certain
words to make them make sense with other words that he
spoke.
jt: I don't think it
necessary to strain over words and word meanings, (in fact I believe Paul
warned against doing this see 1 Timothy 6:4) because only the Holy
Spirit give the correct understanding which He does when our
motivation (heart attitude) is right.
In a similar situation a
disciple who had been called by Jesus wanted to go and bury his father before
following Him and Jesus told this man to "let the (spiritually) dead bury
their own dead, but you come and follow Me" (see Matt 8:21 and Luke
9:59,60)
BT: Judy, I would like to challenge you
to show me one verse in the Bible that sets forth in explicit language your
concept of spiritual death. This dualism is absent in Hebrew thought.
jt: This concept is all
through the Bible Bill, from Genesis on. A&E died the day they ate
from the forbidden tree but they did not die physically that day they died
spiritually (Genesis 2:17) - (the serpent deceived Eve with an exact
contradiction of the Word of God Genesis 3:4). There are two kinds of
wisdom. The wisdom or Word of God brings life; the lie or wisdom from the
father of lies produces spiritual death in a person's life.
Life and death are spiritual conditions that lead to eternal
life or eternal death. The mouth speaks from the abundance that fills
the heart so both are evident by the power of the tongue (Proverbs 18:21)
and we are speaking one or the other continually ie: 'A man shall be
satisfied with good by the fruit of his mouth (Proverbs 12:14). By your
words you are either justified or condemned (Matthew 12:37). An evil man is
snared by the transgression of his lips (Proverbs 12:13). The one holding the
power of death is the devil (Hebrews 2:14) and Jesus told the apostle Paul he
was "sending him to the Gentiles (us) to open their eyes and to turn them
from darkness to light and from the power of Satan unto God, that they may
receive forgiveness of sins and inheritance among them which are sanctified by
faith that is in Me"
BT: The idea was introduced into
Christianity through Augustine, who was deeply influenced by Greek philosophy
and religious Manichaeism. It was later picked up and reinforced by the
Federal Calvinists. It is only in the last century or so that the
church has begun to shed itself of this dichotomous harangue and get back to
speaking in holistic \ biblical terms of
personhood.
jt: I've never ever read
Augustine, Greek or any other philosophy, or religious Manichaeism Bill,
neither do I approve of any type of Calvinism. I see the juxtaposition between
darkness and light, life and death, good and evil all through scripture and I
have no idea what you are speaking of when you refer to "holistic
personhood" - could you explain further please?
What you did with this verse is a good
example of what I was just cautioning about. Why add to Scripture?
Why not let the first reference to "dead" be a metaphor for the futility of
human activities when those activities are given priority status over
following Jesus?
jt: I'm not adding to
anything, or reading another meaning into scripture. Jesus is the Way,
the Truth, and the Life. He was born and ministered under the law of
Moses. Old Covenant people had not yet received the promise so they had
a Covenant with God but they were not born again so they were spiritually
dead. He was calling disciples to come to the Light, and follow Lifeby
learning from Him. How do you read Matt 8:21 and Luke
9:59,60?
The problem is, this same word is used a couple
hundred other places too, always translated as "hate." Friberg's
Lexicon says it may be a Hebraism in Lk 14.26, but if it is, it's
not used as such elsewhere in the NT or LXX, not at least that I can
tell. And so, while I'm sure you checked your trusty Strongs, this love-em-less-than definition is woefully
without supportive precedent. What it is, is a
theologically infused interpretive opinion, one made with the greatest
of intentions, I'm sure -- but not much more than that.
jt: Oh? Can you tell me then what
kind of theology this interpretive opinion is infused with
Bill?
BT: It is the very theology that you are
espousing (and if there's any solace, you're not alone). It's the kind that
wants desperately to make sense of tough sayings, so it can set
forth a consistent presentation of Scripture, but in the process it misses the
simpler \ obvious linguistic-type explanations.
jt: I don't believe
that Faith is ever desperate Bill. I come to the scriptures to take His
yoke upon me and to learn from Him. In my own life I have had the
most problems and things appeared so much more complicated when I
attempted to understand spiritual truth through a traditional grid
so over the years I have had to lay a lot of men's teachings on the
shelf.
I trust your absence has reinvigorated you and
hope your little granddaughter is responding well to her
treatments.
jt: Jenna is responding well to her
treatments and this week she had no blastocytes in her bone marrow which
is a good sign only what she has to go through at four years old to reach this
point would break your heart. She is sadder and wiser, no longer the
carefree happy little girl who loved for us to call her Anastasia in her
pretend world (which aggravated her brother no end). Thank you for
remembering.
BT: We are all deeply grieved over this
situation. We are praying for Jenna that she will be healed. I also pray for
her siblings (I am thinking you said there was more that just her brother?);
it is so hard on them too: nothing in their world makes sense right
now.
jt: This is much
appreciated Bill. Jenna has two sisters and a brother. She is the
third child in a family with four children.
Grace and Peace to you and
yours, judyt
Greetings Bill, glad to
see you were able to get back online...
Yes, I have come across this verse on occasion.
Psalm 5.4-6 is a another passage with equally strong language. I must tell
you that these passages are unsettling to me: I do not like to think that
our God hates anyone. Nevertheless I must be willing to take them under
consideration and seek God's heart in trying to understand them.
I think first I would like to tell you what I
do not think this is saying about God. God does not will to hate certain
people, while at the same time will to love others...
jt: Right and we can know this
because "God wills for all men to be saved and to come to the knowledge of
truth" (1 Timothy 2:3,4) ATST in His omnipotence He knows they won't
be. When Paul wrote this letter to Timothy in 62/67AD he was encouraging the
infant Church to pray for the evil Nero who God already knew would die
insane.
bt: and this in an indiscriminate way that
can only be described from our perspective in terms that appear
arbitrary at best, as if he created ABCs to love and XYZs to hate. If
you happen to be from the first group, great, God loves you and will call
you to himself; if you are from the latter group, too bad, God hates you and
you're toast, and this because he has created you for a different end.
This sort of theology forces a dichotomy within the Godhead, dueling wills,
if you will -- a split personality. A condition like this should not be
considered anything other than the deep psychosis it is.
jt: The above concept is
Calvinistic theology which distorts the sovereignty of God, it is not the
teaching of scripture.
bt: Why would a sane God
command us to love our enemies when he himself does not? and more to the
point, from where would the goodness and persuasion come to love our enemies
if not from him whose wondrous love compels us to love even those who hate
us?
jt: Our enemies are primarily the
principalities, powers, and wicked spirits in the heavenlies who blind the
minds of people and compel them to act in certain ways. To walk in
love toward these people we must separate them from what controls
them. It is possible for us by the grace of God to hate the sin that
binds them yet love the sinner.
bt: Jesus tells us we must "hate" our
father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, even our own
life, or we cannot be his disciples (Luk 14.26).
jt: The word hate here means
(love them less than) for if we put them ahead of God we are making idols
out of them and unbelieving family members can certainly exert a lot of
pressure at times.
bt: When we read passages that say God
hates certain people -- whether evil, or violent and wicked --
does this mean that he does not love them? Is his hate for them anti-love,
or is it some other kind of hate that he holds for those people, maybe
something similar to the hate we are to have for ourselves, and mom and
dad?
jt: I don't believe we are
supposed to hate ourselves because Jesus taught that we are to love our
neighbor as ourself and He is not double minded and unstable. In Luke
14:26 it is our own life outside of God that we are to hate..
bt: Let me tell you what I do think. Love is
the heart of God. It speaks to that eternal relationship between the
Father and the Son in the Holy Spirit. When we talk about the "essence"
of God, love is in the center of it. "God is love." Everything else,
whether it be his holiness or justice or whatever, everything else that is
essence must be understood only as it relates to his love, as disclosed by
the incarnate Word himself.
jt: I'm not trying to be smart
Bill but "essence?" I've heard that word used to describe perfume but
never God.
bt: There are other things that God does that
are not things which describe him in his essence. Forgiveness, for example,
is something that springs from his essence, but is not itself of his
essence. I say this because there was nothing to forgive when all there was
was God -- Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Wrath is not of the essence of God;
there was nothing to be wrathful about until there was sin.
jt: The Godhead has always been
Holy and His Holiness has always been there and is what we have to deal
with; sin causes a breach between Himself and us in spite of His
love.
bt: Just as those things that are of the
essence of God must be defined in relationship to love, so also must those
that are not. God is patient, and kind, and merciful, and gracious, and
forgiving, because he is love. These things flow forth from his love. The
same must be said about wrath. Wrath is God's love in action against
anything that sets itself to destroy his creation or diminish his
worth.
jt: God is love Bill but there
are other aspects to his Nature and Character. Love is not God.
bt: Hate is not of the essence of God. When all
there was was that triune relationship between the Father, Son, and Holy
Spirit, there was no hate (no matter how it is defined) in God. Yet we must
say that within the makeup of God (his essence) there is potential to hate,
just like there is potential to forgive. We find in Scripture in the verse
you mentioned and elsewhere that God does hate, and he hates not only
sin but in some cases (at least) the sinner too.
jt: Bill, I don't know where you
find your concept of "essence" I don't see it in scripture but I do
read that "the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom" and knowledge of the
holy is understanding" (Proverbs 9:10) and that "wisdom is better than
rubies; and all the things that may be desired are not to be compared to it"
"The fear of the Lord is to hate evil, pride, and arrogancy, and the evil
way, and the froward mouth (God hates). Then there are the six things the
Lord hates, no seven are an abomination to Him: a proud look, a lying
tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked
imaginations, feet that are swift in running to mischief, a false witness
that speaks lies and he that sows discord among brethren." (Proverbs
6:16)
bt: God is love; he wills to
hate.
jt: Upon what grounds do you make
the claim that God "wills" to hate?
bt: This gets back to my initial complaint. We
dare not stand the love of God side-by-side over against his hate, as
if he could go one way as willfully as the other. Whatever it
means to say that God hates, we must understand it as something that springs
forth out of love. I think people can become
so wicked and corrupt that all there is, as far as their works, is
evil. They have so sold themselves out to sin that they have become totally
depraved (cf. Rom 1. 28-32). These are those whom God hates. That said,
I do not believe that he ever stops loving them. He is not indifferent.
It is because he loves them that he hates them.
jt: I don't agree with the above.
God hates sin - If only we would hate it the same way He does. If only
we would be as tenacious in rooting out the sin in our lives as those Texan
oncologists are in hunting down the last leukocytic cell in my grandaughters
body... though the treatment is poison and almost kills her by itself it is
not as harmful as the disease. Sin is the same kind of disease and
will have the same outcome in our lives. Jesus died to set us free from
these bonds. Even Paul wrote that sin dwelled in him causing him to do
what he hates in Romans 7 (when he was a believer for 20yrs).
bt: This we must return to over and over again:
whatever the sin that ensnares these people, Christ carried it with him to
the cross. For their sins he died. And when he died, they died. And when he
rose again, they too rose with him. They are included in him, just like you
are and I am; this because God so loves them.
jt: If I remember correctly
- this teaching is called "Identification" or "Positional Truth" and it
originally came out of the Keswick Conventions held in the UK early in
the 20th Century. We can reckon these things so until we are blue
but if we fail to deal with our own sin on a daily basis we will stay
in our bonds and die in them being of no practical use to the Kingdom of
God.
bt: "And you He made alive, who were dead in
trespasses and sins, in which you once walked according to the course
of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit
who now works in the sons of disobedience, among whom also we all
once conducted ourselves in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the
desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath,
just as the others. But God, who is rich in mercy, because of
His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in
trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been
saved), and raised us up together, and made us sit
together in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus," (Eph 2.1-6).
jt: "Harden not your hearts as in the
provocation in the day of temptation in the wilderness when your fathers
tempted me, proved me, and saw my works forty years. Wherefore I was grieved
with that generation and said they do always err in their heart and they
have not known my ways, so I sware in my wrath, they shall not enter into my
rest. Take heed brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of
unbelief in departing from the living God - but exhort one another daily,
while it is called today lest any of you be hardened through the
deceitfulness of sin. For we are made partakers of Christ, IF we hold the
beginning of our confidence steadfast unto the end while it is said "Today
if ye will hear His voice harden not your hearts as in the
provocation. For some, when they had heard, did provoke, howbeit not
all that came out of Egypt by Moses; but with whom was he grieved forty
years? Was it not with them that had sinned whose carcasses fell in the
wilderness? And to whom sware he that they should not enter into his rest,
but to them that believed not? So we see that they could not enter in
because of unbelief.....
"The Word preached did not profit them,
not being mixed with faith in them that heard it" (Hebrews 4:2)
God did not hate Israel but He had to
judge them or violate His own Word.... This standard applies to us also
- Without or aside from faith it is impossible to please
God..
judyt
