Review of the NIV Study Bible

In September of 2019 I was asked to review the Quest Study Bible.  This last fall I was asked to Review the NIV Study Bible, Fully Revised Edition.  I am invited to do so and provided a review copy because I am a member of the Bible Gateway Blogger Grid.  I was supposed to have this done by the end of October, but the effects of chemo did not allow that to happen.  So this is late along with two other reviews that will be published here shortly.  As with the Quest review, I will address the good and the things I consider not so good about this work.

The Good
There is much to recommend this Bible.  Much of that is the front and back matter.  For any Bible you use you should read the preface.  Why?  The preface explains the reason for the version and the philosophy of translation.  Further, there is usually information about how the work is organized.  The committee will also point out which parts of the work of which they are especially proud.  

In the case of this work, the parts that are highlighted are very good.  There are several articles included that explain or expand parts of the Biblical text or story that are good.  There is a table of contents at the beginning of the book that is specific to those articles.  Reading through that table one would be inclined to read several of them.  The titles alone are instructive in the sense that they deal with questions or sections of the Bible about which many believers are curious.

The map section in the back is very good. Additionally, there are maps throughout the Bible showing the locations that are referenced in the text.  That gives one geographic orientation as one is dealing with a section without having to pull out an atlas.  In the front of the book there is an index of all the maps.  That index is presented by book of the Bible which is especially helpful.

There are also a number of helpful charts that would help the student synthesize or understand sections of scripture.  As with the articles and maps, there is a separate index for the charts which is also presented by book of the Bible.  Looking at the book of the Bible and seeing the charts related to that book is instructive.

The cross references are good and many.  The charts are informative and have their own table of contents.  The articles are adjacent to the Scripture to which they are most relevant, and they have a separate table of contents.  The notes have a topical index.

At the beginning of each book of the Bible there is an introduction and outline of the book.  These have helpful information about the author, date, and content of the book.  The outlines are detailed.  I would recommend that one do and overview of the book including one’s own outline before reading these.  The reason is that once you read their outline it will be difficult for you to see anything differently.  There are significant differences between the outlines published and the ones I have done for each book.  That is not to say either mine or the published outlines are wrong, it just means that this gives you a chance to compare what you see to what is published.

There is in the back several helpful tools.  First there is a topical index to all of the notes.  For instance, suppose you are studying Hebrews and you have a question about Melchizedek.  The index lists all the Biblical passages that have a note that mentions him.  

There is a good concordance in the back of the book.  The preface calls it the most complete concordance ever published in a Bible.  I would not dispute that.  It allows you to find a passage based on a word that you remember in that passage.

Lastly, and for me this is the most appealing thing about this work, there are center column cross references in this Bible.  They are extensive.  These give the student a means to study themes and or words throughout the Bible.  It is a good exercise for either study or devotions to chase a theme through these cross references.

The Not So Good
If you have read my review of the Quest Study Bible you will know that I am not a fan either of the NIV or study Bibles in general.  

I do not prefer the dynamic equivalence philosophy of translation.  I believe that there are too many choices made for the student.  Admittedly, this version of the NIV altered the passage that I found the most troubling, but their choices still do not reflect the Greek wording.  While the choices made by the committee may in fact be accurate, making the choice for the student eliminates the student’s investigation of the text and short circuits their coming to their own conclusion as to the point of the author.  It adds, I believe, an unnecessary layer of insulation between the student and the original.

This version of the NIV takes this further in that it changes the gender of many of the statements in order to align with the most common use of English.  The problem with this is that the Bible texts were not written in English.  Rather, they were written in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek.  Those languages have gender associated with pronouns and nouns.  It was by inspiration of the Holy Spirit that these languages, the vocabulary, and the associated grammar were used to reveal the nature and character of God and His redemption of His people.  As I have stated in the earlier review, it seems that choosing to accept the gender issues of the world is in violation of Romans 12:1 – 2.

Conclusion
Despite my aversion to the NIV, this work would be a good resource to use after one has done one’s own study.  The introductions, and outlines would be helpful for most students.  The articles would also be helpful, especially since they are indexed to the books of the Bible and are adjacent to the passages to which they refer.

I would use this as a commentary rather than a Bible.  I would use the tools to either further my personal study on a passage or a topic using the copious cross references, or else to compare my conclusions with those of the committee.  I would study a more literal version and use this as a supplement.  

Another use would be to check a literal translation (as NASB or ESV) with the NIV and where there are significant differences in the translations, this raises the appropriate question of what is happening in the text that is causing this difference.  That is where Bible Gateway can help.  One can look at the interlinear version to see what the original says and use a lexicon to look up different options for the meaning of the word or do a search on the word for other places it is used in the Bible to compare with the passage you are studying.

In Bible Gateway (https://www.biblegateway.com/) if you choose the interlinear, you can click on the anglicized Greek word and a box will open on the right giving you the word in Greek, it's Strong Number and Greek Number.  Clicking on the link "see everywhere apostolos appears..." takes you to Bill Mounce's  helpful website with a full list of where the word appears in the New Testament.

Should you choose to get a copy you can get one here.

Saved for Whom

When you consider your salvation, whose benefit, for what reason were you saved?  Do you ever think about that?  Sometimes it seems as if we accept Christ for what He can do for us.  Yes, we get eternal life, but we also expect Him to take care of us here.  In fact, He does.  But are we saved primarily for the good it does for us?

Ezekiel 36:22 (here @ Bible Gateway), seems to indicate that God intervenes in our lives to protect His name.  1 Corinthians 1:30 (here @ Bible Gateway) suggests that it is God who works to bring us to Christ.  That notion seems to be repeated in Philippians 2:12 – 13 (here @ Bible Gateway).  Further we cannot discount John 15:5 (here @ Bible Gateway), we can do nothing apart from Christ.  I would assume that that means, nothing.

So, He invades our lives to bring us to Himself.  He does it for His purposes.  Ephesians 2:4 – 10 (here @ Bible Gateway) underscores this and gives us the reason He chooses to engage in our lives.  We are His workmanship.  He has work for us to do for which He designed us.  Work that was prepared before we were.

What are the implications of all that for us?  How do those passages affect your thinking?

Gifts

We all like getting or giving gifts.  My wife and I have 9 grandchildren with the 10th on the way.  At Christmas, the area around our tree is covered with gifts for them.  It is fun to watch their excitement as they open them.

We read in scripture that God’s gifts are perfect, James 1:17 (here @ Bible Gateway).  In Matthew 7:11 (here @ Bible Gateway) and Luke 11:13 (here @ Bible Gateway) we are reminded that the Father gives good gifts to His children.

In Philippians 4:6 – 7 (here @ Bible Gateway) we are told to not be anxious but rather ask with thanksgiving for what we want.  In Hebrews 12:9 – 10 (here @ Bible Gateway) we see the same parallel that we saw in Matthew and Luke above, what the earthly father does compared and contrasted with what our heavenly Father does.  Our heavenly Father works in our lives to cause us to share His holiness.

In Romans 5:1 – 11 (here @ Bible Gateway) we are challenged to exalt in our tribulations, knowing that navigating those positively impacts our character and dependence on Him.

There are more passages that come to mind chief among them Psalm 139:3 (here @ Bible Gateway) and Psalm 119: 67, 71, 75, 107 (here @ Bible Gateway).

When we put all this together, perhaps a slightly different view of His gifts emerges.  Nothing comes into our lives without His direction and purpose.  He is intentional in developing us for the work He has for us.  So illness, financial challenges, family challenges, all that we encounter, all of life’s experiences He uses to shape us.  

We pray for healing from illness, for easing of the financial or family challenges, do we make those requests with thanksgiving?  I was challenged praying for one who was close to us for healing from cancer.  I was confronted with the challenge of being thankful for the cancer.  Was that really what the Lord was asking?  As I processed that with the individual, they were struggling with the same issue.

Paul penned much of what we read in the New Testament.  He gives help from his own life on this issue in 2 Corinthians 10:7 – 10 (here @ Bible Gateway).  He prayed for relief but came to the realization that the weakness made him dependent on Christ.  He then boasted about his weakness, embracing the power of Christ.

Our family has had lots of “gifts” in the past 4 years.  Personally, I have not consistently thanked the Lord for those struggles.  I have not always exalted in them.  I continue to struggle with what it means and how to live through the power of Christ.  However, I am slowly learning how to be well content with weakness, distress, and difficulties.

Loose End – Part 3

Yesterday we continued to think through the issue that Wilberforce and Osborne both wrote about 206 years apart.  An issue that persisted throughout those 206 years and seems to persist today.  That is the seeming apathy to the Lord’s exhortation to abide in His Word.

Yesterday I shared the idea that reading books about the Bible, listening to messages about the Bible, watching programs, going to classes about the Bible, is not the same as being in the Bible.  I have done and still do all those things.  I have a ThM, which was 128 hours of class and untold hours outside of class, and that does not count the courses I took in Greek and Hebrew before I got to seminary.  I’m sitting in an office that has every available wall lined with full bookcases and there are 20 or so boxes of books in storage.  All of those things, books, programs, classes are helpful, but they cannot and are not supposed to be the major input of our Biblical lives.

All of those, as good as they are, are filtered through the study and experience of others.  As good as those others are, their work is not inspired.  We need to be in the Word of God ourselves, before we pick up a book – say we are studying Ephesians.  We need to do an overview, analyze each section, and then summarize what we studied.  Then and only then we are ready to look at some secondary source.  If we engage in the secondary source first, what we see will be channeled toward what the teacher, author, or speaker saw.

There is another challenge though.  For the most part, churches regardless of their tradition, have not done a good job of equipping those in the community with the skills needed to study the Word for themselves.  Ephesians 4:11 – 16 (here @ Bible Gateway), outlines succinctly what the ministry of a local church is to be.  The leaders are tasked to equip those in the church to do the work of the ministry.  Did you catch that?  The leaders are not supposed to do the work they are to equip the saints to do so.

That may be the source of the problem.  Seminaries, at least the ones I am aware of, do not focus on training pastors to equip.  They are focused on exegesis, hermeneutics, exposition, and homiletics.  That is, in a normal person’s words, technical study, interpretation, explanation, and proclamation.  Thus, most pastors do not equip, they proclaim.  Again, that is good.  I have listened to thousands of messages and have benefited from them.  But the primary input, the most help I have gotten, has been from personal study, personal engagement, wrestling with the text of the Bible.

I learned how to do that, not from classes – while there were some classes that helped in the sense that they suggested methods or tools of which I was not familiar.  Rather, it was from individuals who showed me how to do the work and gave me feedback on what I saw and how I explained it.  It is that interaction, that back and forth, what Paul refers to in Ephesians 4:16 (here @ Bible Gateway), as “being fitted and held together by what every joint supplies, according to the proper working of each individual part, causes the growth of the body…”  Classes do not equip.  Practicing what a class teaches, under observation by someone who knows and is mastering or has mastered the content and gives feedback and constructive criticism – that is what equips.

It seems to me that is what we need in our churches.  I have heard there are some that are doing this.  I am working at doing so in my church.

Loose End – Part 2

Yesterday we started to probe the issue that both Wilberforce and Osbourne spoke to around 206 years apart.  Today we will consider some of the implications of what we examined yesterday.

The conclusion yesterday was that if one does not engage in the activity that Christ exhorts, the implications are dire.  That conclusion is driven, in part, by John 8:31 (here @ Bible Gateway).  As we saw, if one is to be a disciple of Christ, one must abide in His Word.  The import of that is if one is not abiding in the Word, then one is not a disciple.  

In an earlier post we examined 1 Peter 2:1 – 3 (here @ Bible Gateway).  The passage is a complex conditional statement.  Essentially it says that if one has tasted the kindness of the Lord, that is has fully experienced His kindness, then that one will long for, hunger for, not be satisfied without the Word of God.  Would it not be the case then that if a person does not have a hunger for the Word of God, if they are not pursuing learning it, studying it, reading it, would it not be reasonable to conclude that they have not tasted the kindness of the Lord?

In Luke 6:46 (here @ Bible Gateway), Jesus asks a rather penetrating question.  “If you call me Lord, why do you not do what I say?”  Isn’t the implication there that if one is not doing what Christ says, He is not their Lord?  

I have been engaged with more than one church’s small group project.  One of the consistent challenges is getting the groups to engage personally, individually in the Word of God.  Many are quick to read “Christian” books, or watch “Christian” videos, or focus on fellowship, but to read secondary sources is not the same as reading the Bible.  

I have been asked to review two study Bibles.  I have done one, and the other is in the que.  Both are chock full of notes and reference material.  When I was new to the faith, the Scofield Reference Bible was the main Bible that people carried.  It too was chock full of notes and reference material.  Full disclosure I have at least four Study Bibles.  I don’t use any of them.  Why?  The notes and reference materials are the work of man.  They are not inspired.  The text of the Bible is inspired.  Hebrews 4:12 (here @ Bible Gateway) does not say, “For books about the Bible and the notes in your study Bible are living and active and sharper than any two edged sword…” you can fill in the rest.

It is confusing to me why the Lord allows this.  He states that His word will not return void, Isaiah 55:11 (here @ Bible Gateway).  It seems like, many, if not most, of those claiming to be in the Body, have chosen to abandon His Word.  Chosen not to abide instead to depend on proxies to apprehend the Word of God.  This seems to have resulted in an ineffective and anemic Body.  I don’t know why this persists.  But the quotes from Wilberforce and Osborne indicate that it has for the last couple of hundred years.

The Holy Spirit inspired His Word, all of it.  It reflects God’s nature and character, 2 Peter 1:1 – 4 (here @ Bible Gateway).  Peter in 2 Peter 1:16 – 21 (here @ Bible Gateway) compares having the Word of God to his experience seeing Jesus transformed on the Mount of Transfiguration.  But, we have trouble getting believers to engage personally in it?  Why?

I have some thoughts on that I will share in the next post.

Loose End

In June of last year, I shared two quotes, one by William Wilberforce, the other by Grant Osbourne.  As noted in the post, the quotes were 206ish years apart and yet essentially dealt with the same issue.  In that post I said I would share my thoughts on those two quotes.  In reviewing my journal and the blog just now, I realize I never did.  So here goes…

If I were to synthesize the two quotes the common issue seems to be that there is a tendency in the community of faith to not take the need to work at understanding or studying the Bible as necessary for every believer.  There seems to be a prevailing sentiment that after I come to Christ, I’m done with work in terms of knowing Him.  Sure, I will listen to the occasional message and may read the occasional Christian book, but actually dive into the Word of God for myself?  I wouldn’t know where to start.  Anyway, that is the job of the pastor and teachers.  They need to study and tell me what to think.

In the previous paragraph I referred to the community of faith.  Why?  This issue prevails from Genesis to Revelation.  The people of Israel abandoned the Word of God.  There were times of renewal.  Each time the Word was found and read to the people and the people tore their clothes and repented.  But abandoned the Word again in short order.

In Jeremiah 23 (here @ Bible Gateway) the Lord reveals His attitude toward this type of behavior.  The prophets were not sharing the Word of God with the nation.  Rather, they were sharing their own dreams and ideas.  God did not like that.  It is worth your time to read the chapter.

In the New Testament over and over the importance of the Word of God is emphasized.  Perhaps the section of Scripture that is most telling is John 15:1 – 16 (here @ Bible Gateway).  In that passage John repeats the Greek word μένω (meno) 11 times in those 16 verses.  The word is variously translated abide, remain, continue, dwell.  We are exhorted by the Lord to abide in Him and have His Words abide in us.  In John 8:31 (here @ Bible Gateway) the exhortation is to abide in His Word to be His disciple.  Both statements in John 8:31 (here @ Bible Gateway) and John 15:7 (here @ Bible Gateway) are conditional.  The construction of the sentences indicate that it is not certain that those who heard or read will actually fulfill the condition of having the Words abide in them or abide in His Word.  The implications of not doing what Christ exhorted are dire.

This is getting longer than I intended when I started.  So I will finish it in the next post or so.  Stay tuned.

The Job of Every Believer

A while back something I was reading caused me to chase a theme through the New Testament.  

Here are the passages that came to mind:

• 1 Corinthians 12:7, 24 – 27 (here @ Bible Gateway)
• Romans 12:4 – 5 (here @ Bible Gateway)
• Ephesians 4:1 – 3, 11 – 16 (here @ Bible Gateway)
• Hebrews 3:13 – 15 (here @ Bible Gateway)
• Hebrews 10:23 – 25 (here @ Bible Gateway)

As you see the passages deal mostly with gifting of each member of the body of Christ.  It occurred to me, while working through this, that the purpose of each individual in the body is to build up the other members.  Based on Hebrews 10 (here @ Bible Gateway) that is an intentional and thoughtful enterprise. 

To the extent that we do not build one another up, not consider, not encourage, not strengthen, not challenge, not exhort, not call to walk worthy, to that extent we weaken not only the body, but we diminish ourselves.  By not building up a member in Christ, we are choosing to not activate that person’s gift thus depriving the body and us of their ministry.

The argument will be made that it is the domain of the elite, the pastors, the leadership of a body to build up the members.  But, that flies in the face of the Lord’s command in Matthew 28:18 – 20 (here @ Bible Gateway).

Abundant, Overwhelming Grace

On May 12th last year I started chemo for the cancer I have, Waldenstrom Macroglobulinemia.  I had no idea how it was going to impact me.  The first infusion was two days, 3 hours on the 12th and 5 hours on the 13th.  

On the evening of the 13th my diaphragm began to spasm.  It was like having hiccups on steroids, which I had both days.  They calmed down by 10 PM but started back up again at 12:30 the morning of the 14th.  They kept me awake until 5 AM.

In my journal the evening of the 14th I recorded a passage that had really encouraged me, 2 Corinthians 12:7 – 10 (here @ Bible Gateway).  I was struck yet again by Paul’s attitude.  He was well content with weakness, with insults, with distress, with persecutions, with difficulties, for it made him dependent on Christ.

As mentioned in my last post part of my Quiet time for the past year or so has been to read and reflect on one of the entries in The Valley of Vision: A Collection of Puritan Prayers & Devotions (VOV).  This is what I read the morning of the 15th.

The voyage is long, the waves high, the storms pitiless, but my helm is held steady, thy word secures safe passage, thy grace wafts me on ward, my haven is guaranteed. (VOV, Voyage, page 202 - 203) 

Those words reminded me of what Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians 12:7 – 10 (here @ Bible Gateway).  However, that is not what was the greatest comfort.  I started reading VOV because of a conversation I had with one of the small group leaders in our church.  He mentioned that the men in his group spent some time looking at it and discussing some of the entries.

Out of curiosity, I got a copy and a few weeks later incorporated it into my time with God.  That was months before May 15, 2020.  Yet the timing of this sentence was perfect.  What stunned me, and I should know better by now, was the Lord using an off hand comment by a Christian brother months before, to supply encouragement to me when I was in need.

Psalm 139 (here @ Bible Gateway) tells us that He knows our path in detail, He encloses us behind and before and lays His hand on us.  He knows what I need before I need it and supplies it just in time.

Further, this morning before I started my time with Him, I prayed that He would meet me and in our time together, He would through His Spirit increase my love for Him.  But this morning nothing really stood out in what I read.  As I am writing this, I am overwhelmed with His love and care for me.  He answered the prayer in His own time.

His grace and kindness are overwhelmingly abundant.

Under Obligation

From time to time I read part of a devotional, The Valley of Vision: A Collection of Puritan Prayers & Devotions (VOV), during my personal devotions.  They are short; two pages.  But I tend to break them up into sentences and reflect on the message.  It seems that some of the Puritans thought when Paul commanded that we imitate him, that meant they were to write sentences like he did.  Some of their sentences are looooong.  I break those up.

Yesterday this was the sentence that I wrote out in my journal:

Send me forth to have compassion on the ignorant and miserable.

I was struck by the depth and simplicity of the thought.  Most of the time these excerpts bring to mind verses that support what I read.  This was no exception.  Five passages came to mind.  The first was Romans 1:14 (here @ Bible Gateway).  It is not my favorite verse.  I am ok with all of it but the last three words.  However, I know that I can’t pick and choose what I obey.  I have trouble with foolish people.  I have found that there are a lot of them.  Yet 1:14 (here @ Bible Gateway) tells me that as a believer I am under obligation to share the gospel with them.  The sentence in VOV, echoes Paul.

Then two passages in Ezekiel, 3:18 – 19 (here @ Bible Gateway) and 33:8 – 9 (here @ Bible Gateway).  When you read those you will see that our obligation extends to the wicked as well.  That the passages are virtually identical, indicates emphasis.  We are exhorted emphatically that we are obligated to share the good news with the wicked.

Then Jude 22 – 23 (here @ Bible Gateway) came to mind.  Jude speaks of the urgency of the matter.  We need to view the Greeks, barbarians, wise, foolish, and wicked as inside a burning building and we are the only one that can get them out.  Fun picture.

Lastly, Matthew 28:18 – 20 (here @ Bible Gateway) came to mind.  You have probably hear messages on this passage.  We are told – well the only imperative in the passage is make disciples.  The other verb forms, go, baptize, and teach are all participles.  Participles get their force from the main verb, make disciples, so they take on the imperative mood of make disciples.  The point of this, is that we are expected to make disciples.  The first step in making a disciple is to lead them to Jesus.

It is easy to justify why we are not sharing the gospel.  I have essentially been under house arrest since last March because of my compromised immune system due to the cancer and subsequent chemo.  But, even before that, much of what I have been called to do focuses me on equipping believers in their study of the Word of God.  So in a sense I am insulated from non-believers.  But I don’t find in Scripture any out.  I am still under obligation to our list of Greeks, et al.  I have to use every interaction with another person as an opportunity to share Christ.  To go forth, intentionally, with compassion.  I am not very good about that.

20210109 Training for Ministry? Part 2

Yesterday’s post ended asking you to consider two verses, 2 Timothy 2:24 – 25 (here @ Bible Gateway) and 2 Timothy 4:2 (here @ Bible Gateway).  Note that when you compare these passages to 2 Timothy 3:16 – 17 (here @ Bible Gateway) all three passages essentially have the same four actions. 

Consider this chart:

2 Timothy 2:24 - 25	2 Timothy 3:16	2 Timothy 4:2
Teach	Teaching	Proclaim
Correct	Reproof	Reprove
Repentance	Correction	Rebuke
Knowledge of the Truth	Training in Righteousness	Exhort

As you can see the four actions are similar if not identical.  

In 2 Timothy 2:24 – 25 (here @ Bible Gateway), Paul is challenging Timothy to confront false teachers, or in other words, those who do not have a relationship with the Lord, non-Christians.

In 2 Timothy 4:2 (here @ Bible Gateway), Paul is challenging Timothy to share truth with believers, Christians, those in his ministry in Ephesus. 

However, in 2 Timothy 3:16 – 17 (here @ Bible Gateway), Paul is challenging Timothy to be in the Word for himself, to follow Paul’s example, allowing the Word to teach him, reprove him, correct him, and train him.  This is also the ministry of the Word of God in our lives.

Further, note that 2 Timothy 2:24 – 25 (here @ Bible Gateway) and 2 Timothy 4:2 (here @ Bible Gateway) mirror 2 Timothy 3:16 – 17  (here @ Bible Gateway), the ministry of the Word of God in our lives.  The implication seems to be that our effectiveness in sharing with both non-believers and believers is dependent on our being in the Word first.

In Deuteronomy 6:6 – 7, 20 (here @ Bible Gateway), we are told that we are to always share the Word with our children.  In a sense we are helping them learn to process life through the grid of the Scripture.  In Ephesians 6:25 – 31 (here @ Bible Gateway), Paul outlines a husband’s responsibility for his wife.  It is a ministry to build her up and present her to the Lord with out spot or wrinkle, holy and blameless.

If what we read in 2 Timothy is true, then is seems that the prerequisite for our being successful in serving our wives and our children is for us as husbands and fathers to be consistently in the Word.

What do you think?

Training for Ministry?

A few years back I was asked to lead a seminar on how to study the Bible at the headquarters of a well know Christian organization.  It was essentially the same seminar that I have done in 10 weeks compressed into about 4 days.  During one of the last hours together one of the staff asked me if I thought that training staff was essentially Bible study.  I did not answer the question well.  About three years later I tracked down the staff member that asked the question and we talked through the issue.

Essentially, my answer was Bible study is the starting point and the foundation of all equipping for any Christian ministry.  

In this blog a reading plan has been mentioned several times.  The plan was put together by a Scottish minister, Robert Murray M’Cheyne.  It has been an enormous help to me.  So much so that I wanted to know more about this man whom the Lord took at the age of 30.  I got a copy of his biography and have been slowly reading it.  There is early in the book a key passage:

Mr. Alexander Somerville (afterwards minister of Anderston Church, Glasgow) was his familiar friend and companion in the gay scenes of his youth.  And he, too, about this time, having been brought to taste the powers of the world to come, they united their efforts for each other’s welfare.  They met together for the study of the Bible, and used to exercise themselves in the Septuagint Greek and the Hebrew original.  But oftener still they met for prayer and solemn converse; and carrying on all their studies in the same spirit, watched each other’s steps in the narrow way. (Memoir and Remains, Andrew A. Bonar)

Note that these two men who were struggling to walk with the Lord amid a world that was pulling at them, chose to fight by joining together to study God’s word.  This is a good example of Hebrews 3:13 (here @ Bible Gateway).  This is a key concept.  These men joined together to help each other excel in the Christian life.  What did they do?  They started by studying the Word of God together.

In 2 Timothy 3:14 – 4:4 (here @ Bible Gateway), Paul tells Timothy essentially the same thing.  Timothy is to continue in the Word of God.  All of us know 3:16 – 17 (here @ Bible Gateway), the four things the Word does, teach, reprove, correct, and train.  But have you noticed that Paul repeats those four impacts of the Word in two other places in 2 Timothy?  Consider 2 Timothy 2:24 – 25 (here @ Bible Gateway) and 4:2 (here @ Bible Gateway).

In the next post we will unpack these two passages, consider some of the implications of Paul’s statements, and catalog some ways they apply to men leading their families.

Digging Deeper, Part 2, Finally…

Tomorrow was more like next year…  Sorry, my wife had her right knee replaced and that has taken up a lot of bandwidth over the past weeks as well as two rounds of maintenance chemo for me.

So back to 1 Peter 2:1 – 3 (here @ Bible Gateway).  I mentioned that one of the things that looking at the passage suggested as a good step would be to investigate the usage of the word “tasted”.  Why?  Well, there are several reasons.  The implications of that verb have significant impact on how we understand what Peter is telling us.

Looking at the data, the word γεύομαι (geuomai) that is translated “tasted” in 1 Peter 2:3 (here @ Bible Gateway) shows up 15 times in the New Testament and 13 times in the Septuagint (LXX), the Greek Old Testament excluding the Apocrypha.  Looking at the way the word is used in the New Testament, Peter only uses “tasted” here.  So we do not get any direction from his other usage.  The next closest for us to consider would be other epistles.  We find “tasted” in both Colossians and Hebrews.  In Colossians (2:21) (here @ Bible Gateway) the usage is ambiguous.  It could mean either sample or eat.  In Hebrews we get some better help.  In Hebrews, the writer uses “tasted” three times twice it seems ambiguous (6:4, 5) (here @ Bible Gateway), but in one instance it seems to indicate consumption (2:9) (here @ Bible Gateway).

The other usages of “tasted” are in the gospels and Acts.  There we find clear usage of the term, in Matthew 16:28 (here @ Bible Gateway), Mark 9:1 (here @ Bible Gateway); Luke 9:27 (here @ Bible Gateway); and John 8:52 (here @ Bible Gateway), Jesus uses the phrase “taste death”.  It seems from that usage that it means to experience death, to die.  The implications would seem to be that one who “tastes” has entered into the experience completely.  The other two places the word appears are in Matthew 27:34 (here @ Bible Gateway) and John 2:9 (here @ Bible Gateway).  In both of these it deals with tasting or drinking a liquid.  Again, that is consumption.

The last three instances in the New Testament are in Acts 10:10 (here @ Bible Gateway); 20:11 (here @ Bible Gateway); and 23:14 (here @ Bible Gateway).  In each case the word is used to describe eating food.

In the LXX, our word is exclusively used to describe consuming food and beverages.

While there is more that we could do, do you see the pattern here?  The sense of γεύομαι, taste, is to consume something to take it into your body or to enter into an experience wholly.  

In 1 Peter 2:1 – 3 (here @ Bible Gateway), Peter uses this word in the first part, the if clause, of a conditional statement the structure of which indicates Peter assumes the reader has, in fact, tasted.  The then clause is complex.  It is the first part of the sentence.  It is also in contrast to the kindness of the Lord.  Putting this together, if we have fully consumed and entered into the kindness of the Lord, then we are to put away malice, deceit, hypocrisy, envy, and slander which things are the polar opposite of kindness.  Then we are to long for the pure milk of the Word.  Note that the word γεύομαι that Peter uses here suggests that we are consuming, tasting that milk.  Consuming, tasting that milk then becomes that which causes our growth in salvation.

In that paragraph we used what we found out about the use of the word γεύομαι and the structure of the sentence that Peter penned to unwrap what he wanted us to know.  There is more there, but that is enough for now.

Hope that makes sense and is helpful.