Video Transcript: Christianity Lecture 2

Next lecture on Christianity, and we're continuing now with the life and ministry  of Christ. I've done the theological stuff, oh, I should take that off the board, or  you'll be staring at it, you should already have this down in your notes. But this is pretty important stuff. On this, I have sided with the minority of theologians, that  is with the Eastern Orthodox, and the two great champions of the Reformation,  who were not followed on it by Protestantism, despite their status in that  tradition. But then we go back to the life of Christ. And we come to this person  who is the Son of God and God the Son the same time. And his ministry begins  when he sits down in the synagogue and reads. from Isaiah, The Spirit of the  Lord is upon Me, for He has consecrated me to preach the Good News to the  poor. He has sent me to announce to the prisoners, their relief, release and to  the blind, the recovery of their sight, to set the John the downtrodden at Liberty,  and proclaim the year of the Lord's favor. And he says them today this is fulfilled. I'm here. So the people are shocked, of course. But one writer has put what  follows this way. On this point, Jesus spoke with profound assurance. God was  the sovereign moral personality, ruling the universe, the moving spirit of the  course and the end of history, a transcendent, being sternly righteous, who  never departed from perfect justice in determining the course of events or the  destiny of an individual. This God drew near to anyone who bowed down in  prayer, he was forgiving and merciful, primarily occupied with human  redemption. In character in action, he was paternal and Jesus favorite name for  him was father or Father in heaven. It's implied in this teaching that though God  allows people to make their own decisions. And like the prodigal son in the  famous parable, to take the means at their disposal and waste them. He  continues to love them throughout the redemptive process that inevitably follows and will forgive them when they return to Him. God is therefore utterly good as  well as holy. People should trust him and regularly seek spiritual enlightenment  through prayer, especially private prayer in their rooms, or solitude, or in fields or hilltops. Not a bad description, but a couple of things. We should not let slide by  there without comment. One is the characterization that reads, God never  departs from perfect justice in determining the course of events, or the destiny of an individual. And this is true with respect to how God treats us. But we must not miss read it to say that God promises that nothing unjust will ever happen to  those who love Him. That's not the case. God's perfectly just in his dealings with us, other people may not be and and God does not say, No harm, no injustice,  no sorrow, no tragedy will ever befall Anyone who's one of my people, though,  that's not anywhere in Scripture. And then it's the end it also refers to God is  holy. And that's a term we haven't defined. And I've been trying to define terms  as we go. The way Bible writers use the word holy, it means set apart for special use to God, or by God. When it's used the people or things or places their holy if they're set aside for special use. So a place of worship is holy. Water can be  holy, if it's used for baptism, and for example, and when it's used of God, it 

means his worthiness to have things set aside for special use there, so the Holy  God is deserving of our prayer, our blessing our Thanksgiving, and of our  contrition when we wronged him. So I hope that I've clarified now, two of the the  Remarks in this section I just read, otherwise very good. So what how does  Jesus sum up this gospel message that he's been called to bring to all mankind? Well, he tells us very clearly, you've heard it said, by men of old, you must love  your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I tell you, love your enemies and pray  for those who persecute you. So that you may show yourselves true sons of  your Father in heaven, for he makes the sun to rise on good and bad alike. And  he makes rain fall on the upright and wrongdoers, you are to be perfect as your  heavenly father is. Now you see, on the view that that means Platonic  perfections. That would be the crazy statement that you must have the maximal  degree of power, wisdom might justice, mercy, and so on. All the Platonic  perfections because God has them. And if you did, that would make you God.  That's not what this means that all the Jewish meaning of perfect was complete,  complete fulfilled, Not a maximal degree of some quality that makes you better  to have it. So what this means is, you are to be completely faithful to your end of the covenant, as your Father in heaven is completely faithful to his end of the  covenant. Has nothing to do with platonic perfections. Or does it suggest at all  that God is a being that has all of them and only them? Jesus goes on, you must always treat other people as you would like to have them treat you this sums up  the law and the prophets. Here's what sums them up. You must love the Lord  your God with all your whole heart, your whole soul, your whole mind, that is the first great commandment. And there's a second like it, you must love your  neighbor as yourself. These two commands, sum up the whole of the law and  the prophets. There is Christian religion, in a nutshell. Love the Lord your God  with all your heart, soul and mind. No holds barred, nothing held back and love  your neighbor as yourself. Notice that that does have a condition on it. First, it  assumes that you are to love yourself. Because if you don't, you can't love your  neighbor, your to love your neighbor, in balance with yourself, you're to balance  your interests, with your neighbors interests. It the command is not to always  sacrifice yourself, for the other person. But a balance, there's no balance when it comes to God. That's total dedication. But with respect to others around us, we  owe them love. But on balance, it doesn't mean we have to harm ourselves to  do it. It doesn't mean that if we do something good for someone else out of love, and we benefit too that the fact that we benefit cancels the act of love. No, not at all. It's nonsense. The scripture says of Jesus himself, for the joy that was  before Him, He endured the shame, and the cross. So he got something out of  it, too. He became king of the universe. That doesn't mean it wasn't an act of  love. It doesn't mean it wasn't good. It was. So you have to avoid those  mistakes. When thinking about love, and the balance of that we're commanded  to strike between ourselves and our neighbors. Christ goes on through his 

lifetime teaching and preaching and healing people, which is why they came to  see him. Until, of course, the events that we celebrate in Holy Week when he's  arrested and taken into custody, and then tried and executed. This is those  things are, I think, well known to you all. So I didn't want to over stress take too  much time with it. But here's the way, Paul, writing after Jesus has ascended  into heaven, described this message of his. He says For I delivered to you as of  first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins in accordance  with the Scriptures that He was buried that he was raised on the third day,  according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, that's Peter, and  then to the 12, the disciples, then he appeared to more than 500 brothers at  once. Most of whom are still alive, though some have died. And then he  appeared to James, and to all the apostles. And last of all, as to one untimely  born, he appeared also to me. Paul speaking there of the vision of Christ that he had on the road to Damascus, when he saw Christ, and Christ asked him, why  are you persecuting me? So here's the, the gospel message, the message of  Jesus Christ in a nutshell. And the account in includes Christ, both not only his  crucifixion, and death, but his resurrection. And here, he defeats death, which  the scripture says is the last of his enemies to be defeated. The Roman Empire  thought they had nailed him. They thought they had gotten rid of him. They  executed him. That's the end, right? And he comes back. And it seems that just  about nothing else would have convinced his disciples that they hadn't made a  mistake. When he appears to them on the road to Emmaus, they, they don't  recognize him. And they say, we thought we had the Messiah, we thought he  had come. And then to our great disappointment, the Romans took him and  executed him. And now he's not going to set up the kingdom that we're looking  for. And I guess we just made a huge mistake. But then they finally do recognize him, I take it, that it's like seeing someone you haven't seen in a long time. At  first you don't recognize them and then suddenly, it all falls into place that you  do. And, yes, it's my old friend. And that's how they realized when they sat down to eat with him that, yes, it was Jesus all along. And the kingdom that he's going  to set up wasn't an Israeli empire, that defeats the Roman Empire and takes  over the world. It's, it's his heavenly kingdom, one that will have no end. And so  they were, they became convinced that he was alive again. That's why they  risked their lives to preach that gospel. It's why they went, spent the rest of their  lives preaching it everywhere they could go, it's why they risked being fed to  lions and executed, because they had seen him. And they knew that he had  risen again. Of course, Jesus comments on that himself when he says, Blessed  are those who have never seen me, but still believe. And I want to suggest to  you that the grounds in which the New Testament gives for that belief, is a kind  of seeing in Ephesians 1, Paul's talking to the people at that church. And he  says, Before you believed you were without God without hope. But now that the  Holy Spirit has removed the blindness of your hearts, He says, you see the truth

with the eyes of your heart. That's a kind of expression that had long been used  to describe as truth, that self evident are always visual metaphors. You can just  see that one on one makes two, well not with your eyes. I mean, you can see  the numerals on the page. But you grasp intellectually, intuitively that That's  right. And it can't not be just as you grasp things equal to the same thing or  equal to each other. You we say you just see that it's just a vicious, you kept.  The axioms are used to prove things they don't get proven. They've just  intuitively right. And that's the way he spoke there of our recognition of the  gospel as the truth about God from God. It's self evident. And that's the way they use the word faith. The word faith is used by New Testament writers to mean  trust the way we normally use it, trust in somebody's report. Maybe they  reported auto accident that we didn't see. And well this is a reliable person I'll  take their word. We can do that. Do we know for certain, that's the way the  accident took place? No, but we're, we're taking them at their word. The  testament does use the word faith that way. but it also uses it in two other ways  that were brand new, and not had no precedent in the Greek language. One is  to use it as the whole of the Christian faith, the faith once delivered to the saints. It's that an all encompassing collective noun that includes all of the Christian  religion. And the third way that they use it with a brand new was to mean faith  that is, sure and certain knowledge. And we don't use the word that way at all. In our common, in common English today. But that's the way they used it. Who do  men say I am? Jesus says to Peter, oh, some say, you're this and that the other  one who do you say I am? We believe we have faith and know that you are the  Christ, the Son of God. Believe and know not mere belief, not belief, hoping that  it's right. But believe and know. And that term faith is used that way, constantly  by Paul, and by Luke. And by the author of Hebrews. We find it consistent  certainty, through knowledge, just as you know, for sure, if you see the thing  happen yourself, just that certainly, you come to see that the gospel is the truth  about God from God. It's God's love letter to the world, his message of  redemption, forgiveness. So Faith is not something that means. That is that is  less than knowledge. It's trusting in something because it's experienced to be  the certainly be the truth. That's the grounds of it. A lot of people are scared off  of that. They propose faith as meaning. Well, it's just blind trust. No New  Testament writer ever uses the word faith that way, it's never blind. It's always a  matter of seeing the truth, the way Paul puts it, see, with the eyes of your heart,  it's usually translated see with the eyes of your mind. But his what he wrote is  actually more powerful than that. The term heart is used by Bible writers to  mean the very central unity of a human self. When I was a senior in seminary, I  did my senior thesis on the use of the words heart, soul, and spirit, by Bible  writers and I investigated every occurrence of them in Hebrew and Greek, in the scriptures, and found that the Bible writers mostly used heart for the central  unity of the human being, they use spirit for the diversity of the human, gifts, 

inclinations, dispositions, capacities, and they use soul to mean the embodiment of heart and spirit. Its expression through a living body, that is metabolically  alive, biologically alive. So in their terminology, the soul is exactly what does die  of the person, the body dies, but not the heart and spirit. In common usage,  we've we use the term soul for that. It's very confusing. But the heart is the  central unity of human being from which scripture says, come all the issues of  life. So that's the that's the self. And it's something then that we see not just with  the intellect, but also welcome, emotionally, we love the truth, and we will want  to obey God. So it includes the whole person. It's seeing truth and loving God  and wanting to please Him. And all of those are wrapped up in that idea of the  heart, human heart. So these are all important points that need to be stressed,  and taken into consideration as you do your reading. Again, I remind you read,  watch the lectures read again, is the best way to get the most out of this. I want  to make one final comment here, because it will carry over into the lectures on  Islam. The book of Hebrews is translated roughly this way in most English  translations have. I've got 18 Bibles at home and so if, if the quote I give you  isn't exactly any one of them, but it's a mixture of them all God, who in past  times began to continue to speak to our ancestors by prophets, as in this these  last days spoken in son whom he is appointed heir of all things. That's that's  what I read in most English translations. Here is what the Greek says, Now I'm  going to bring out the force of the, the verb tenses. God, who in the past began  and continued to talk to our ancestors by prophets, has in these last days  finished talking in his son. I don't know of an English translation that that renders it that way that brings out the force of this but the first verb to talk is imperfect.  It's an action begun and continued. And the second occurrence of the verb to  talk is past completed action. It's over, finished talking in his son. And so the new the writings that we accept as the New Testament, were all of them. A criterion  for being included in the testament is that all of them had to be been written by  an apostle of Jesus, one who was taught by Him sent by him and wrote down  his word. And we don't accept that there is any revelation from God after that.  That's the the significance of that text. There's no revelation, direct revelation  from God. God's Spirit may apply his word to our hearts. Yes, sure. We may  pray for guidance and receive it and so on. But there's no new covenantal word  to be added to the New Testament as the New Testament was added to the old  it's cut off and ended.