If You're Going to Quote the Greek...

This article was originally published on TheBeerean.com. I made the decision to leave the article intact including references to TheBeerean.com.

I love my wife. I do! She’s fiercely loyal, stubborn in all the good ways, has a deep, abiding love for the Lord, and can attract all sorts of controversy with an innocuous Facebook post. I’m not kidding.

We had a date night, as all you men should have with your wives, and she said on her Facebook something to the effect of, “Had a glass of wine with my hubby; it’s okay, Jesus made it,” in a double reference to John 2 and Psalm 104:15.  Some self-righteous young man posted on her wall that “This was going to be fun.”  You know, ‘cause it’s fun ripping into your brothers and sisters in Christ.

He then proceeded to deconstruct the Greek, which is amazingly fun as well, like watching the terrible sitcoms that were supposed to teach you German or Spanish or French or Swahili or the language with clicks.  This young man claimed that the “wine” in John 2 at the wedding in Cana wasn’t wine but that the Greek word oinos means some sort of unfermented juice, and that same word was never used anywhere to talk about anything fermented.

I know what you’re thinking: “I came to your website for the beer, not the wine, and the beer tips, not the exegeses or hermeneutics or whatever you kids are calling it these days.” And trust me, I feel you, so I won’t use the word “perspicuity” (fun to say though it is; seriously, try it out. Per-spi-cuity! Pure genius, that word.), but since I like beer and it is fermented hops, and I like the Bible and it says things about fermented stuff, I had to get this off my chest. Besides that, we’ll learn an important lesson about trying to make the Bible fit what you believe and how that’s bad. Then you can use it on your friends!

Now, I can read (English, not Greek) so I decided to read some books on Greek (in English). Unfortunately for our young man, I own William D. Mounce’s Complete Expository Dictionary of Old & New Testament Words, Spiro Zodhiates’ Complete Word Study Dictionary of the New Testament, and Warren Trenchard’s Complete Vocublary Guide to the Greek New Testament. These aren’t fringy documents; biblical scholars use them all the time. Looking up the word "wine" in Mounce, I found that he says that “Jesus, like most people, likely drank wine, as can be seen by the exaggerated accusation that he was a ‘glutton and drunkard,’ used by his opponents to mean that he did not fast nor abstain from wine.” Thanks, Dr. Mounce!

Trenchard offers some variations on the word, oinos, including paroinos, or drunkard. Now, I’ve been to some crazy Lord’s Suppers in my day, but I have never seen anybody go Corinthian and get drunk off of the Communion grape juice. Which reminds me, do NOT let me forget to tell you about my first experience with Communion wine at a Lutheran church in Lawrence, Kansas. Apparently, if you don’t know what’s coming, you don’t shotgun it.

Zodhiates pointed out something else to me. “Oinos” is used in Mt 9:17 with the bursting of the wineskins in that parable.  Here is the deal…they can’t burst unless there is fermentation. You know, wherein sugar is converted to alcohol, usually by the addition of yeast, resulting in tasty, tasty wine or beer. So yeah, I guess oinos does mean wine in other sections of the Bible, not Welch’s.

We don't try to make the Bible say something it doesn't to fit our agenda

As Christians, if we agree that Bible is true, we also have to make another agreement: we don’t try to make it say something it doesn’t to fit our agenda. Study the book, and repent when you find out you are wrong. I’ve had to do it. I had to apologize to a buddy of mine who stood quietly while I trampled all over his theology, only to study the Word and find out I was wrong about it. To be honest, another reason I love my wife is that she forgave me for being a legalistic tightwad like our young man when it came to how the Holy Spirit can and does work in our lives when I should have seen the Bible tell me I was wrong.

So repent of your self-righteousness; be humble, even when you disagree and maybe you to will see things differently than you had because you submitted to the Bible and didn’t try to make it submit to you. And if you are going to quote the Greek, you best be damned sure you are right!

Who Elects?

Let me start off on the right foot.  If you are a fan of free-will in salvation, I love you.  I was one of you.  I would have gladly sat with you in a public place and tore into “Calvinism” until we ran out of ways to tear into “Calvinism” and had to complain about how much we hate the Yankees.  But now, I can’t.  I did what my pastors hoped I’d never do and went – gasp! – Reformed!

Why do we hate Calvin, especially in places like Bible Belt Amarillo where I am from?  Some will say it is the pride of some Calvinists who engage in intellectual snobbery, and while there is some truth to that, let’s not push this off on other people.  The answer is simply our pride.  Calvinism, or Reformed Theology, says, simply that Jesus saves sinners from beginning to end.  He died on the cross, rose from the dead, and chose those who would follow him.  We don’t like that last part.  It interferes with our ideas about “democracy” and is designed to humble us.  We, in America especially, are the electors.  We don’t have a king!  So why would religion be any different from politics?  In fact, after the American Revolution, “Reformed” or “Calvinist” denominations such as Lutheranism and Presbyterianism took a huge hit while Methodism and non-Reformed Baptists surged. 

WE ARROGANTLY LIKE TO BE THE ONES WHO PICK OUR LEADERS

The Economist, a British newspaper, last year in an article titled “The New Calvins” if the Southern Baptists were going to go “Reformed” or not.  I asked the same question in a public forum and I received an angry response from a woman insisting Jesus had died for her sin not Calvin.  I found this interesting since the question wasn’t will the Baptists chose Calvin over against Jesus, but rather would they tolerate the idea that Jesus chose them over against them choosing Jesus.  But the anger was not unexpected.  What this woman was really saying was that she chose Jesus and would not tolerate a view that says Jesus chose her.  She is proud of her decision for Christ.  She democratically elected her ruler.  This idea is not unique; we arrogantly like to be the ones who pick our leaders.  If you didn’t vote for Obama, you are probably stewing until 2012 when you have a chance to drive him from office.  I don’t know how many “Impeach Bush” or “1-20-2009: Bush’s Last Day” bumper stickers I’ve seen.  If we aren’t in charge, it ticks us off!

Unfortunately, this concept is not well imported to biblical theology.  We don’t choose Jesus, the Bible says, because “God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (Ephesians 2:4-5 ESV, emphasis mine).”  Last I checked, unless some serious voter fraud is involved, dead people don’t get to vote!  They also can’t perform the heart transplant on themselves that God does when he “remove[s] the heart of stone from their flesh and give[s] them a heart of flesh” (Ezekiel 11:19 ESV).  Beat that Jarvik!  Jesus is a gracious God who storms into a burning building to save his people who have already choked on the flames of a fire they caused, drags their lifeless bodies away and trades his life for theirs as he pushes the Holy Spirit – who in Scripture is described beautifully as a wind or breath in the Hebrew or Greek – into their lungs in order to resuscitate them.

When we fail to see this picture and dwell on how we made and awesome decision for Christ, our pride begins to move beyond our decision-making abilities to how well we live our lives: how “perfect” our families are, how we don’t smoke or drink, how we never use curse words, and all the while we alienate a world that is hurting and broken and we drive them away with our arrogant “Culture Wars” rather than proclaiming a hero Jesus who doesn’t stand idly by waiting for his people to make decisions Romans 3:11 says they won’t make.  We have a hero King; let’s proclaim his saving grace from beginning to end even if we didn’t elect him.

The Exchange

There is a God. He is a just and fair and glorious God. He made a race of beings to act as a mirror of himself. This isn't egotism; if you are perfect even you recognize your perfection. Those beings, humans, however, didn't want to mirror their Creator. They wanted their Creator to mirror them. This was egotism. So they rebelled against God. The sinned against a perfect Creator God. They committed cosmic treason. They joined the Enemy of the God and sided with Satan. As a result they suffer from his wiles, the effects of death, and the consequences of sin against God and each other. The just God had to punish their treason; if he did not, he would not be just and would be stooping to the level of the rebels. Since the rebellion was pervasive the only choice was death, both physical and eternal.

But God was not willing to allow the Enemy free reign. He joined battle for the hearts of the rebels determined to win them back. Some came back. They weren't the creme of the crop; they were the weaklings, the jerks, the liars, the perverts, the murderers. God showed them their rebellion. He changed their hearts back to his. He forgave them their rebellion. But a price needed to be paid for their rebellion. Someone had to die. 

A person can't even pay for their own rebellion, it is so pervasive. No amount of time in hell, a terrible place of sin and separation from God, or resume of good works could cover the cost of the treason. But one person could pay for the sins of everyone else. He was perfect, just, holy, and righteous. He was God himself. God decided to come save his treasonous people by dying in their place to satisfy his own wrath. A third of the Tri-une Godhead that is God came to Earth. His name was Jesus and he lived among his people like a pauper, though he was a prince. He taught them many things. And at the end, he allowed the people most blinded to their treason to execute him for treason. He paid the bounty for the rebellion of the people.

Then three days later he rose from his execution to accomplish something else for his ill-deserving people; he provided his righteousness to them. One of the rebels, a man named Paul would later write down that "For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God" (2 Cor 5:21). Another rebel named Martin Luther would call this the Great Exchange. This rebel is writing this blog to talk about how God has permanently paid for his treason and is constantly making him less treasonous. Hopefully we will learn about Jesus saving us and come away from our treason together.