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Paul tells Timothy that he must stay away from senseless controversies, not be quarrelsome but rather kind, patiently enduring evil. Paul is thinking specifically of how Timothy should deal with the false teachers at Ephesus, men that I have argued in my commentary are the Ephesian church leadership.

Paul follows up with this statement. “God may perhaps grant (δώῃ) them repentance leading to a knowledge of the truth, and they may escape from the snare of the devil, after being captured by him to do his will” (2 Tim 2:25-26). Paul had already warned him that church leadership must be above reproach else they might fall into the power of Satan (1 Tim 3:6-7). It would appear that this had in fact happened in the Ephesian church, and that the wolves among the flock predicted in Acts 20:29-30 were in fact within the current leadership.

The phrase “granted them repentance” always struck me as a somewhat strange expression. Don’t we repent when we come under the conviction of the Holy Spirit, see our error, and repent? Perhaps, some of the time; but it appears that the Ephesian church leadership had gone considerably beyond this point. The only repentance they were going to experience was if God gave it to them. What does this mean?

I went in to see the doctor a while back and he said that I had, well, I didn’t know the word he used. It was too long and Latin based. I asked him what that meant, and he said, a cold (I think it was).

“If it is just a cold,” I asked, “then why not call it a cold?”

“Because we can’t charge you a lot of money to diagnose a cold,” he responded.

“No, really, why use a long complicated term when a short one would do?”

My doctor is a long-term personal friend, so we have lots of fun conversations. Honestly, part of the answer is to sound esoteric he said, but part of it is to be medically specific. “Cold” is a pretty large category, and I had a specific form.

But before we start blaming the medical profession for something, we should look at our own discipline and ask if we do the same thing. I snicker sometimes when I use the word “lexicon” to describe a dictionary. Why do we call it a “lexicon”? Perhaps there is an historically specific reason, but perhaps we like to sound especially learned.

I was reminded the other day how meaning is conveyed not only by individual words but also by the larger context of those words. It is easy to hang on to a particular word and forget to check the overall context, but it is equally easy to miss the meaning of a particular word by not looking at its context.

1 Tim 3:2 says that “an overseer must be (δει) above reproach.” δει is a strong word; it leaves no wiggle room. This is supported by its use throughout the Pastorals, throughout Paul, and throughout the NT (see my commentary, pp 169f). If a person is to be in a position of church leadership, then they must meet the overall standard of being “above reproach.”

I remember a discussion with a former elder when we were working on a elder position paper (available under the Publications tab near the bottom of the page). The goal was to define what we understood to be the biblical instructions for recognizing official church leadership. When we were done he commented that he thought the whole process was unnecessary, and all we needed to do was elect good men who could make decisions. Wow. Such a blatant willingness to ignore the clear and unequivocal teaching of Scripture, and to replace the Word of God with the word of a man. (And he claimed to be an inerrantist. Ah, the intersection of belief and practice.)

That is the question of Galatians 3:24. I was reminded of this question this morning as I listen to my nephew preach a good sermon on Galatians 3.

Dave preaches from the NIV, so in v 24 he read, “So the law was put in charge to lead us to Christ that we might be justified by faith.” “Put in charge” is a colorless phrase that conveys a very basic meaning of authority, but it does convey meaning to almost any reader.

The NASB (also NKJV and ASV) has “become our tutor,” which defines a little more closely what the NIV means by “charge.” It is probably meant to reflect the KJV “schoolteacher.” The problem is that the Greek term παιδαγωγος evidently does not contain the sense of “teacher.” BDAG defines the word as, “the man, usu. a slave … whose duty it was to conduct a boy or youth … to and from school and to superintend his conduct.” They offer the gloss “one who has responsibility for someone who needs guidance, guardian, leader, guide” and specifically states that the word does not include the nuance of “teacher.”

Paul tells the Ephesians that “we are his workmanship (ποιημα), created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them” (ESV). ποιημα (related to the verb ποιεω) means “that which is made,” hence work, creation” (BDAG).

It is etymologically connected to poème (Middle French), poema (Latin), and ποιημα (Greek).

Because of this, you often hear the idea of the English “poem” creeping back through the centuries and used to define the nuance of ποιημα. And so we hear assertions such as:

“Poiema emphasizes God as the master Designer, the universe as His creation” (Rom 1:20).

“As the artist seeks to express himself in his work, so God expresses Himself in us.”

“You are His work, you are His poem. A poem is a thing of grace. A thing of beauty, God wants your life to be a thing of grace and of beauty and as God works in your life it will become a thing of grace and of beauty; you are His poem.”

“But the beauty of God’s workmanship is not displayed in posing. That beauty can only he displayed when we are put to work fulfilling His purpose in us.”

These kinds of statement make picturesque sermon illustrations, but unfortunately have no basis in truth.

I was going to write a Greek blog in ποιημα, but I saw an interview on TV a couple days ago and I can’t stop thinking about it, and I need your input to help me understand.

It was an interview on the Mike Huckabee Report. He interviewed Gayle Haggard, the wife of pastor Ted Haggard and author of Why I Stayed: The Choices I Made in My Darkest Hour. Her husband was the founder of the 14,000-member New Life Church in Colorado Springs and was president of the National Association of Evangelicals. If you don’t already know, he admitted to an incident with a male prostitute.

Huckabee was talking to her mostly about forgiveness. He asked what was the most painful thing that happened. Her answer was fascinating. Certainly learning of the event was painful. Her children’s loss of dignity was hurtful. She said that she had received many kind and encouraging emails from homosexual men and Christians, and many cruel and hateful emails from homosexual men and Christians. Her conclusion: people are people.

But the event that hurt the most was their forced separation from the church and the people that they had loved for 22 years.

When we moved to Washougal a few months ago, my wife and I had to start the somewhat painful experience of making new friends. We were committed to having friends outside of a local church so that all of our friends are not Christians. That task is easier said than done.

Robin, my wife, is a good speaker and enjoys conferences with other women; so she wondered if she should take the new time she has and develop those gifts. Toastmasters, here she comes.

Toastmasters is an interesting organization (www.toastmasters.org). It is designed to help people, especially people in business, learn to verbally communicate, a skill that all people in business require. The different groups gather weekly, and the different members give speeches and are encouraged and critiqued.

I have found my wife’s experience with Toastmasters a more positive and encouraging experience than anything I have ever witnessed in a church, and I find myself wondering if every preaching pastor should not aggressively make Toastmaster part of his or her weekly experience. They would learn a lot about preaching, and they would foster positive relationships with non-believers. Where is the problem in this picture?

Have you ever thought about exegesis and theology in terms of the old chicken and egg conundrum? Following the inductive approach, exegesis insists on the prior role holding that theology is merely the organization of theological insights gained from the work of the exegete. But the theologian recognizes the need of the larger picture which in fact leads the exegete to a proper understanding of the individual verse.

The identification of the “seven spirits” in Revelation 1:4 presents such a problem. The theological oriented interpreter reasons deductively that in a passage that speaks of God (“him who is and who was and who is to come”) and “Jesus Christ” (v. 5), certainly the Holy Spirit is the one intended by “the seven spirits.” The doctrine of a triune God almost demands it. At this point the theologian then searches for support. The immediate reference is Isa 11:2 which lists three couplets of of two virtues each. But wait, Isn’t that six rather than seven? Well, Yes, in the MT but go to the LXX and you will find an additional virtue added (eusebeias) which adds up to seven.

The argument— that it would be improper to bracket anyone less than deity with the Father and the Son—loses weight in view of such verses as Luke 9:26 (the Son returns “in his glory and in the glory of the Father and of the holy angels” and 1 Tim 5:21 where Paul calls for obedience “in the presence of God and Christ Jesus and the elect angels.”

Acts 20:7 reads, “On the first day of the week (μια των σαββατων), when we were gathered together to break bread ….” (ESV).

There is an obvious question for the Greek newbie as to why μια is translated as “first” when we learned it as “one,“ and why σαββατων is translated as “week” when we learned it as “sabbaths”? Why “first day of the week” and not “one of the sabbaths”?

Part of the key is in the nature of the word σαββατον. It is not as straight forward as one might expect. A quick perusal of BDAG show these options.

1. “the seventh day of the week,” hence, the “Sabbath.” It can be used in the singular but also the plural, and here is the interesting part; in the plural it can refer to multiple days but it can also refer to a single day. Why, you say, would they do that? I have no idea. The attestation given in BDAG is significant and the point can’t really be debated. There is evidently something idiomatic in how the word is used such that a plural can refer to a single day.

2. “Week.” Again, it can be both singular (Lk 18:12; Mk 16:9; 1 Cor 16:2) and plural.

I find it interesting how things can often occupy Christians’ minds. Sometimes our preoccupations are healthy, when they are the very things that preoccupy Jesus. But other times we become so preoccupied with secondary things that, in essence, they become idols.

This doesn’t mean our preoccupations are necessarily wrong; many times the things that consume our thinking are good things, theological things, things of God. Just like the Pharisees. They were consumed with the minutia of the Law, but that consumption was a barrier that allowed them to neglect the heart of God. And that is the point.

In dealing with the adiaphora (“secondary things”), in working with “strong” and “weak” Christians (Romans 14), the difficult question is determining whether our particular theological or social preoccupation is of central significance, something all Christians must agree to, or whether our preoccupation belongs to the adiaphora, secondary things about which we can agree to disagree.

One of the topics that often surfaces in this context is the name of God. When the Bible says “at the name of Jesus every knee should bow” (Phil 2:10, ESV), is the power in the actual name “Jesus” (or more likely “Lord,” see later in the verse)? When Peter says that “there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12), do we all have to get the “name” right, and that means pronouncing it properly?