Psalms 23

I do not suppose that I was required to memorize the whole of the 23rd Psalm in Daily Vacation Bible School, but from the time I was a child, this hymn of Israel was as familiar to me as any passage of scripture. Someone has said that the King James version of the Bible is the greatest literary piece in the English language, the most beautiful ever to have been penned. If that is the case, then Psalms 23 is the gemstone in that literary crown. It is hard to imagine that anything could excel it.

During the last few years of my teaching career, I decided to create a series of Paraphrastic Studies (a term of my own devising) which was intended to be a broad, but accurate, translation from Greek into English, each of the Gospels and the Epistles of Paul. Inasmuch as Greek is a polysemous language (where single words may convey a multitude of meanings), this sort of translation seemed to correct a fault which almost all language translations suffer. Any attempt at word-for-word translation is doomed to failure because of the innumerable nuances that one language has which are difficult to equate in the target language. After completing that particular project, I turned to the Psalms of the Old Testament, creating three volumes of Paraphrastic Studies in the process of time. I cannot speak to their literary value, but I can speak with some authority as to the accuracy of the translation. I include below the Study that was written for Psalms 23, line by line.

1. A Psalm of David.

A mizmor or hymn, of David the King of Israel.

1. The LORD [is] my shepherd; I shall not want.

The Lord God of Heaven and of earth is my King, He who watches over me and tenderly attends to me as shepherd cares for His flock. He delights in me, and I in Him; and He holds me to His bosom, and speaks kindly to me. In His arms I will suffer no lack, but shall be in abundance all of my days.

2. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters.

In peace my Shepherd-King brings me into His safe place, to recline in His dwelling, a land of fresh and verdant meadows, grass and tender herbs. The Lord God of Israel sustains me, carefully watching over me, guiding me to gentle streams, deep, cool, and tranquil, the waters of Shiloah.

3. He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name's sake.

The Lord God has redeemed me from all ill, and has turned my heart from the ways of the wicked; I am freed from the bondage of death and hell. He has encouraged me, has urged me to follow after the faithful, whose course of life has been clearly marked by their righteous conduct, and my blessings are as theirs, for His path is one eternal round. For the work that He has taken upon Himself, and the glory with which He adorns Himself, brings me back into His presence so that I might dwell with Him forever.

4. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou [art] with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me.

Even though I am led through a lowland where the thick darknesses run together as a torrents of fear and tribulation, though pestilence and destruction surround me about, though I pass through the very jaws of hell into the realms of the dead, I will not lose my faith in thee, O Lord God of my fathers, for no inescapable calamity will befall me, for the covenant of thy lips will not let me fail while I am in thy keeping. Thou hast supported me through every difficulty and will continue to do so. The crook of the shepherd who is King will protect and preserve me, bring solace to my soul; the scepter of the King who is shepherd will ward off all oppression, taking revenge upon the wicked and the ungodly.

5. Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.

The altar of thy covenant is set in order, and I am placed in the midst thereof, and make an acceptable sacrifice before thee, while those who would have distressed me look upon me. Thou and I are bound together in the covenant of peace; they are bound over to the day of vengeance. Thou hast blessed me with the good things of the earth, and my joy is uncontainable. Thou hast ordained me to be first among my brethren, and hast made me to be strong, filled with the power of thy arm and hand, having poured upon me the oil of gladness. Thou hast made me to feel welcome in thy habitation, within the confines of thy holy house, and my happiness is full to overflowing.

6. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the LORD for ever.

I have no doubts, either in my mind or in my heart, that the blessings with which I have been blessed will continue, for my soul is merry forever, all that which is beautiful and pleasant thou hast promised me by thy own voice, therefore it will be my happy lot to enjoy thy benevolence toward me, thy kindness and zealous love that thou bearest for me, for the rest of my life. One day according to thy infinitely compassionate will, I will return into thy presence, O Lord God of Israel, to dwell by thy side for eternity.

Ephesians 2:8-9, Part 3

For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast.

From the time I was a boy, I was taught that no amount of action or good conduct on my part would enhance my prospects in the eternities, other than to accept, verbally, the Lord Jesus Christ as my personal Savior. I was not averse to saying the words, but even as a child I sensed that that event alone could not prepare me for the presence of God. Someone may say, “Well, that is simply a manifestation of your lack of faith, so you cannot be saved anyhow”. I protest! I did not want for belief; I simply wanted the whole process to make sense to me. Another observer could state, “Well, you can’t get to Heaven with a Ph.D.!” That may very well be true, but I am quite certain that you can get there dumb as a box of rocks either.

Jesus taught his disciples in prayer, thusly, “This is life eternal, that they might know thee the only true God and Jesus Christ, whom thou hast sent” (John 17:3). Can one come to know God intellectually? Is it possible to intellectually perceive that He exists? Can it be reasoned out? Is there any external evidence that there is a supreme being? Perhaps not in an iron-clad objective manner, but there is sufficient evidence in the Scriptures of the world, in the religions of men, in the fundamental nature of the human psyche to suggest that there is a good chance that that is the case.

Once a person has accepted the intellectual possibility of a God, is there any way to find out what He is like? It would seem reasonable that a divine being who thought it was in the best interests of His creations to have them worship Him would provide at least a little information about what constitutes godliness. Those, of course, who reject the notion that God is prepared to communicate directly with men are left pretty much in the dark.

Once the existence of God is acknowledged and something is known of His character, is the worshipper expected to do anything other than adore? What is it exactly that would please God and should we be willing to do it? In conjunction with all of these questions is the most important one of all: What is the point of creation? What is the point of my own personal existence? If there is indeed a point to mortal life, it seems clear that there should be a bit of a divine agenda. Life eternal consists in knowing God. How well do we need to know Him? Should we assume that a passing acquaintance is sufficient? Does not the consummate knowledge of God occur when we do those things which He does? Hence, the commandments. Clearly, something is expected, upon which our salvation from death and hell depend.

Given that something is expected of us by God, can we ever do enough to justify our own salvation? The answer must be a resounding “No!”, or the ministry of the Lord Jesus Christ makes no sense at all.

There is no other name given under Heaven whereby a man can receive salvation; only in Jesus Christ is there any hope for immortality and eternal life. No man has the power to bring himself back to life once his spirit has fled his mortal body. No man has the power or the means to satisfy the demands of justice, insofar as his redemption from sin is concerned. Faith in Jesus Christ creates a desire to be as he is, to follow his example as a dutiful disciple. Thus, repentance from all ungodly conduct is a direct product of our love for the Lord. When invited to become a part of his eternal family, to reap the blessings which he has provided through his atoning sacrifice, we willing do all that is required of us in a formal way. Hence, the ordinances of the priesthood represent the outward tokens of our faith in Jesus, our response to his tender love and concern for our welfare.

In terms of personal salvation, anything that a man might do to promote his own eternal welfare is insignificant, even adherence to the requirements incumbent upon a true disciple of Jesus Christ. Thus, baptism by immersion could have no efficacy at all without the realities for which the ordinance stands. The bestowal of the Gift of the Holy Ghost by the laying on of hands would be in vain if there were no redemption wrought by the Lord Jesus Christ which may prepare a man to be a worthy vessel for that spiritual gift. Man may achieve great things in his own eyes, but when compared to the ministry of the Son of God, any mortal achievement looks like ashes and smells like smoke.

When we are born again, the nature of any obedient act changes. We keep the commandments, observe the statutes, and live by every word that proceeds forth from the mouth of God. A man who professes to be a disciple of Jesus Christ and yet is not the purveyor of good works, does not express love for his fellow men as manifested in his daily walk and talk, then that man most surely walks in the paths of the hypocrite and will not find salvation.

The Savior set the perfect example for us. He willingly submitted himself to the demands of justice for our sakes, because we could not do so on our own. He laid down his life that we might live again in his presence. He gave all that he was that we might dwell with him in eternity if we so chose. All this he did because of his personal love for us, a love that came in large measure because of what he accomplished in our behalf. Those things by which we can emulate his conduct toward our fellow men, we ought to do because of our love and gratitude for him. We love as much as we can, as much as our imperfections will allow us to love, and then his love makes up the difference. That is the meaning of the scriptures.

Ephesians 2:8-9, Part 2

For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast.

What does it mean to be a disciple of Christ? How does one become a disciple of Christ? Need a person only say “Hey! I am a disciple of Christ!” and then immediately find himself one of the faithful? Perhaps we ought to know what the word means first, and then we can move on to application. The English word “disciple” derives from two separate Latin roots, “dis-” and “cipere” that mean “two-” and “grasp” respectively. A disciple is literally one who hangs on with both hands. What does the disciple hang on to? Simply put, for dear life. In the fourteenth chapter of the Gospel according to John, Jesus observes, “If ye love me, keep my commandments” (John 14:15). The first act of a disciple is to allow himself to be “disciplined” by his Master, to do the things that the Teacher instructs. Knowing what to do under any given set of circumstances is the first product of discipleship. This peculiar awareness is not acquired in a day, but it can be facilitated as the disciple increases his determination to be obedient.

We may spend a great deal of time quibbling about those things which we are expected to do as Christians, but the sum and substance of the whole matter was circumscribed by the Lord Jesus Christ himself in the Sermon on the Mount. “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect” (Matthew 5:48). There is no escaping that mandate. The ultimate goal of discipleship to the Savior is perfection. Peter teaches much in this same vein:

“Grace and peace be multiplied unto you through the knowledge of God, and of Jesus our Lord, According as his divine power hath given unto us all things that pertain unto life and godliness, through the knowledge of him that hath called us to glory and virtue: Whereby are given unto us exceeding great and precious promises: that by these ye might be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world through lust. And beside this, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue; and to virtue knowledge; And to knowledge temperance; and to temperance patience; and to patience godliness; And to godliness brotherly kindness; and to brotherly kindness charity. For if these things be in you, and abound, they make you that ye shall neither be barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. But he that lacketh these things is blind, and cannot see afar off, and hath forgotten that he was purged from his old sins. Wherefore the rather, brethren, give diligence to make your calling and election sure: for if ye do these things, ye shall never fall” (2 Peter 1:2-10).

Can anything be clearer than that? Certainly the disciple is expected to be proactive, adding each divine attribute to the others previously acquired. Is this accomplished in a trice? Are we to be passive recipients? The answers are obvious.

John the Beloved taught the saints much the same, especially when it came to the time when the promised blessings would be bestowed:

“Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God: therefore the world knoweth us not, because it knew him not. Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is. And every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as he is pure” (1 John 3:1-3).

What is it that a disciple, a son of God, must do in order to “purify” himself? Can this be transacted in a moment? How much time has been given to the children of men to achieve purification? How much time would be required for a lost and fallen man to become as God the Father is? Is this something that a man on his own could accomplish? Has the Father of All given any tools, provisions, or accommodations by which His children might partake of the divine nature? Surely this must be the case or He would not have required this of His children at all. What we will discover, however, is that the price of discipleship is miniscule in comparison to the investment that the Father and the Son have made in bringing about our salvation and redemption from death and hell.

At the heart of the matter is our relationship with God the eternal Father. We call Him Father; we are encouraged to address Him as such. Were all to be revealed to our minds and hearts, we would discover that our kinship with the God of Heaven is not metaphorical, but literal. As His literal spirit offspring, we are capable, with a great deal of help, to become as He is, just as an infant has the potential to become grown adult. This potential takes nothing away from the character of God, any more than any infant takes away from the adulthood of his parents. Just as loving mortal parents nourish, protect, and instruct their little children, so also God the Father nourishes, protects, and instructs His children, preparing and providing for their eventual exaltation, their own coming of age in the eternities. Therefore, we cannot dismiss perfection as something beyond human capacity. The truth is, there is no other acceptable destiny for the children of God save that of being perfected in Jesus Christ.

Ephesians 2:8-9, Part 1

For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God: Not of works, lest any man should boast.

I do not recall precisely how much of this passage of scripture we were required to memorize in Daily Vacation Bible School, but I am quite certain that that the first phrase was committed to memory. I do not believe that verse 9 was part of the memorization package, but I do know that when verse 8 was discussed, the subsequent verse was always in tow.

Regardless of what may be the standard interpretation in any given Protestant church today, in the 1950s in my little non-denominational church, the gift of God was eternal life for anyone who confessed Christ. It did not matter much when or where this confession took place, so long as it was direct and unequivocal. Failure to confess Jesus as your personal Savior before death, however, brought about an instantaneous thrusting down of one’s soul into hell. I remember reading countless tracts, most of them illustrated in fine detail, where the horrors of the Inferno were made quite vivid and undesirable. The confession seemed to be all; once those words fell from one’s lips, one’s personal destiny was changed forever. In conjunction with the power of the confession was the absurdity of any “works” that any one might do in order to ingratiate oneself with the God of Heaven. “Works” were meaningless when contrasted with the grace and mercy of God. As a result, no one of my teachers in that country church ever suggested to me that I needed to do anything to improve my eternal lot, save to say the providential words, “I believe in the Lord Jesus Christ as my personal Savior”. Thus, I learned more about personal morality and integrity from the Boy Scouts of America than I did from my theological teachers. I do not say this to condemn the good people who taught me, but to demonstrate that that for them, entrance into the presence of God required little more than an abiding belief in Him and His Son.

As I grew older, the rhetoric became more and more strident about the importance of confessing Christ. At some point I came across another pamphlet which treated this subject in some detail. The storyline of the narrative involved two men, both terrible reprobates who between them had committed just about every sin known to man. They lived out their outrageous lives until they were quite old. As a happenstance, one of the men was taught regarding the love of God as manifested in the life and ministry of Jesus Christ just prior to his passing away. He confessed his Savior and at the moment of death was whisked away by the angels to dwell with God for eternity. The other man, unfortunately, had no such opportunity, or was momentarily distracted when the good news became available, and at the moment of death found himself hauled mercilessly down to hell by Satan’s minions. The message was plain: no matter how vile you may have been in your life, confessing Jesus before death made all ills go away. That singular act made it possible for you to abide in the eternal glory. I knew that I was supposed to understand that the mercy of God, His grace and compassion, was sufficient to redeem any man, no matter how sin-laden he may be. I was enough of a Christian at the time to believe that the power of God and the sacrifice of Jesus Christ were sufficient to bring such a man into salvation, but I had some difficulty that the process was really that easy. I had some trouble with the reasoning, doubting that that two-man scenario had actually been spelled out anywhere in the New Testament.

Many years later I came across a similar story that was far more poignant to my mind. The narrative again involved two men, both of whom were honest in their dealings with their fellow men, living by the light which had been afforded them to the best of their ability. Neither of them, however, had ever been introduced to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. As the time drew near to their departure from this life, one of the men hears of the redemption of Christ, and confesses the Savior with all of his heart. The other man dies without ever knowing anything of Jesus of Nazareth. The narrator of the story posed an interesting question: Why should the one good man be brought into the presence of God and the other good man be thrust down to hell simply because the first was momentarily exposed to true principles by the action of a third party? This was a stunning observation to me. It brought into focus another troubling notion that had been tacitly taught in that little church. What has happened to the hundreds of millions of people who lived before the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ in the flesh? I have heard that question posed to ministers of the sectarian world and the answer has been definitive: all those who lived out their lives without confessing the Lord Jesus Christ as their personal Savior are utterly lost and damned for eternity. Even if they had no opportunity to know anything of Jesus because of where or when they were born? Yes, they are miserably condemned forever. I thought this doctrine just a little starchy, and one which made God to seem a little capricious. If it was He who determined before the foundations of the earth were laid, the bounds and limitations of the nations (see Acts 17:26), who then could be condemned for not receiving the Gospel if it were not being taught in those particular nations while they lived out their mortal lives? A minimum of four thousand years transpired from the days of Adam and Eve to the time of John the Baptist. What has happened to all those people? Since the days of Jesus and the Apostles, how many of the earth’s inhabitants have actually been in the presence of a minister of Jesus Christ? What may we say of the eternal lot of those who have not been able to choose for themselves whether or not they will accept Christ? I have since learned for myself that there is scriptural evidence that explicitly testifies that provisions have been made for all of them, that every man, woman, and child will have an equal opportunity to accept or reject the atoning sacrifice of the Lord Jesus Christ.

The grace of God, the mercy of Christ, and the principles and ordinances of the Gospel are inexorably knitted together. That which is provided by God toward the salvation of men is far greater than anything a man or any group of men can do, but there is a price for discipleship; there is a requirement for those who profess to love the Lord. We will address these in future postings.

Romans 1:16, Part 4

For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek.

In order to understand how the Jews, or any other people for that matter, have become a favored or a select nation to God, we have to understand something about the nature of covenants. The English word “covenant” derives from the Latin roots “con” and “venire” that mean “gather together”, with the added sentiment of “doing so by invitation”. When Jesus beckoned to those about him and said, “Come, follow me”, he was inviting his disciples to enter into a formal covenant with him. These invitations to be reconciled with God the eternal Father through His Son, Jesus Christ, have been extended since the days of Adam and Eve. Needless to say, those who have accepted the invitation have been blessed beyond measure.

The culmination of all of the covenants that can be offered to the sons of men is that which involves the duration of the posterity of the covenanters. Adam and Eve were promised that no matter what else happened to their children, a remnant would be preserved alive through all trial and tribulation. This promise was spectacularly fulfilled during the great flood wherein all of the inhabitants of the earth save eight perished in the waters. Noah obtained the same blessing, as did Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Portions of their descendants would receive certain invariable blessings because their fathers had been faithful and true to the covenants into which they had entered.

Judah, one of the twelve sons of Jacob, was promised that through his loins would come the promised Messiah, the Son of God who would redeem the world. Thus, no matter what else happened to his vast posterity, no matter how much death and destruction prevailed against his children, there would be a remnant preserved who would eventually be the means by which salvation would come. This was literally fulfilled in the person of Mary, the mother of Jesus. Joseph, another one of the sons of Israel, received similar promises regarding the blessings that would come into the world,by means of his children, at the time just prior to the second coming of the Lord Jesus Christ, assuring him that his family line would not die out. Needless to say, in order to keep these covenant promises to His faithful servants, extraordinary measures would need to be taken to protect certain segments of the families of these men.

In any given dispensation, therefore, the first who were given an opportunity to receive the covenants received by their righteous fathers, were the surviving descendants of those servants of God. The Jews and the other remnants of the House of Israel were given the first opportunity to receive the Gospel of Jesus Christ at the time of the Savior’s mortal ministry because their faithful ancestors were promised by God that it would be so, as part of their eternal covenants with the Father and the Son. In the Dispensation of the Fullness of Times, the dispensation in which we live, the restored Gospel was first delivered to remnants of the family of Joseph, the son of Jacob, because that blessing had been promised to him while he dwelt in the land of Egypt.

Thus, people, kindreds, and tongues may receive preferential treatment from God, not because of any intrinsic worth or personal righteousness on their part, but because their ancestors had been faithful.

To our knowledge, the Greeks derived from ancestors who at some point had rejected the fullness of the Gospel of Christ and therefore had no covenantal promise to protect or prefer them over any other body of men. Hence, we observe Paul’s practice of first preaching to the Jews of any city before turning to the Greeks and the Romans who lived there. The Greeks had every right to receive all of the blessings that God had prepared for His children, but they could not usurp the promises made to goodly men generations before by which the Jews had a right to hear the truth first.

The English word “Gentile” derives from Latin roots that mean “countryman, kindred, of the same family”. Ironically, the Jews referred to “Gentiles” as those who did not belong to their immediate family. Many other religious groups have come to use the word in a similar fashion, regardless of ethnicity or history. To the people of Workmen’s Circle, I was a Gentile boy; in the same spirit, I suppose I could have said the same of them. Thus are the vagaries of semantics.

As an addendum, I am reminded of an incident that took place in Israel when my wife and I visited there in 1982. Our main guide throughout the Holy Land was a young woman named Susie. As I recall she originally hailed from Boston, but had felt inspired to immigrate to Israel. At some point in our travels, she pulled me aside and said, “You know, you people are different from all of the other religious groups that I have taken on tour in Israel. I can’t figure it out.”

I replied, “Well, part of it may be that this is our ancestral homeland. To us, we have, in a very real way, come home.”

“Oh! Then you are Jews, too!”

“Not exactly. Jacob had twelve sons, two of whom were Judah and Joseph. You are descended from Judah, I and my friends are descended from Joseph, most from his son Ephraim.”

“Oh! Then you are Jews, too!”

We talked about this for some time; I am not certain that I ever made myself clear. For Susie, anyone who pertained to the House of Israel was part of the covenant family and, therefore, a Jew. That was a wonderful connection for me, notwithstanding her misunderstanding of the terminology. I have a deep and abiding affection for the Jews throughout the world, not because I washed dishes and scrubbed pots for them as a boy, but because they are my literal cousins, part of my family, part of an eternal covenant which God honors even at this hour.

Romans 1:16, Part 3

For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek.

I am as certain as I live and breathe that this last phrase was never part of the curriculum of my Daily Vacation Bible School course. I can remember no instance of direct anti-Semitism in the Canyon where I grew up, but what I do remember was the complete absence of any discussion whatsoever about the Jews in connection with the Old and New Testaments. I was in my late teens or early twenties before anyone of my acquaintance ever observed that Jesus was a Jew, or that the Apostles were Jews. For some odd reason, Judaism never was a topic in a religious discussion.

Racial bias was almost totally unknown in my childhood and I was practically clueless even as a young adult. In the Chino schools, I can only recall one black student, and he was well-liked. I spent the first through the eleventh grade in an academic community where half of the population was Mexican or of Hispanic descent. As a boy, I mingled with the brown kids as freely as I did with the white kids. I did not perceive that there was any difference between them. Later in high school, it became clear that there was animosity between the two groups, and even violence, but I was not involved in any of the hostilities and no one asked me to take sides. I cannot imagine anyone being more color-blind than I was as a child.

Religious bias, however, did exist. The Baptists and the other protestants who directed the affairs at the little non-denominational church in Sleepy Hollow were decidedly anti-Catholic, which on more than one occasion caused conflicts among the kids riding the bus to school. There were a couple of Catholic families in the Canyon who took umbrage at the anti-papist rhetoric, made their feelings known in no uncertain terms to the minister, and the furor subsided. When Jack Kennedy ran for the Presidency of the United States, his religious orientation became a short-lived issue much like the ones in the Canyon: it flared up and then quickly subsided.

There was another bias that existed in my childhood which was as real to me as anything I experienced as a boy: left-handedness. In the elementary school where I first learned my letters, left-handedness was persecuted. It was not allowed and the teachers went to great lengths to eradicate it from the classroom. My attention was particularly drawn to this issue because of my own writing problems. I wrote with a big hand; that is to say, I was so clumsy that I could not get the letters to fit inside the blue lines of our writing paper. My teacher fussed with me day after day, attempting to make me conform to the standard. The other aspiring writers who received her attention were the lefties. I have always have tried to blame my peculiar scrawl on that teacher and I have been sympathetic to every left-handed person I have ever met. What was wrong with being left-handed? I never understood the concern until I took Spanish. The right hand is the “la derecha”; the left hand is “la sinestre”. There was something “sinister” about being left-handed. Sixty years later, the sinister nature of left-handedness seems laughable, but in 1950 the teachers were in dead-earnest. The odd thing is that no one ever said to anyone that being left-handed was inherently evil.

It was the same way with the Jews in the Canyon. I cannot recall anyone ever saying that Jews were inherently evil, but the prevailing sentiment was as if they were all left-handed. Not two miles from Sleepy Hollow was a facility called “Workmen’s Circle”. It was rather like a resort, established by American Jews of German extraction. I worked there as a dishwasher and pot scrubber in the kitchen. I think that I started out at fifty cents an hour. I learned a great number of Yiddish words, most of which I think are inappropriate for polite company. I liked being among the people there, even though the work was hard. I took to wearing white clothes on Fridays because that is what everyone there did. I knew nothing about the Jewish religion or why Saturday was so special to them. Once I started working there, however, I was treated a little differently than I had been before by the kids on the bus, like I was left-handed. The father of one of the girls who rode the bus to school was one of the caretakers of the place and I recall that she was considered left-handed, too, even though she had perfect right-handed penmanship.

As I grew older, I learned where this subtle notion about the Jews came from. Judas Iscariot was a Jew, the only disciple from Judea, or so the pundits taught. The betrayer of Jesus was presumed to be, of all of the Apostles, left-handed, inasmuch as he was the most sinister. As I studied world history, I learned of the great atrocities that had been committed against the Jews in the name of Christianity, justified in large measure because the Jews crucified Jesus. I had read the New Testament and knew that the Romans were also directly involved in the Savior’s demise. Why were not Italians treated as roughly as were the Jews? I knew that Jesus and the other eleven Apostles were also Jews by birth and nationality. Why had that not ever been a topic of discussion? Was there more than one kind of Jew? What did modern Jews have to do with the death of Jesus? Were they culpable for the sins of their fathers? If the Jews were so evil in the days of the Jesus and the Apostles, why then did Paul say that the Jews were first in line to have the power of God unto salvation? And who in the world were the Gentiles? These were issues that troubled me for a long time until I came to a knowledge of the truth. Understanding the significance of that final phrase in Romans 1:16 has made all the difference in the world to me. I will attempt to explain in Part 4.

Romans 1:16, Part 2

For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek.

I have to say at the outset that any quibbling about the difference between “faith” and “belief” is bootless. The English word “faith” derives from Latin roots, “belief” from Germanic ones. They mean essentially the same thing. To say that “belief” is “passive, while “faith” is "active" is a useful distinction for English speakers, under some circumstances, but there is no such clever distinction in the Greek.

I do not think that a Sunday ever passed by in my childhood when there was not someone saying to me that I ought to “believe”. I am certain that when I was attending Daily Vacation Bible School that the teachers reinforced that notion, that if I ever hoped to be “saved” I would have to “believe”. For a long time I was not altogether sure what was expected of me. Did I merely need to be intellectually aware of what it meant to be saved? Did I merely need to know something substantial about the life and ministry of Jesus Christ? Was knowing the facts of the matter the same thing as knowing the truth of those facts? If there was the difference, how was it possible for me to know what the truth was?

Intellectual inquiry is relative easy; I did that all the time in school. If my teacher was personable and engaging, I generally accepted what that man or woman taught without much fuss. Fussing the classroom would come later.

“Faith”, according to Paul, “is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen”, or as it is translated in another place, “the assurance of things hoped for” (Hebrews 11:1). I am certain that this verse in Hebrews was another one of the DVBS scriptures. I cannot imagine understanding this sublime passage at age eight or nine. How can one be “assured” or have “evidence”, if there is nothing to be seen or if there is nothing more than “hope” in the heart or mind? Science does not work that way. If I am in a chemistry laboratory, how can I “know” or be “assured” beforehand that the experiment is going to work just as it was outlined? Someone else may say to me, “Well, I have done this experiment a thousand times and I have never failed to get the proper result”. That is all very well and good, but someone else’s success is not necessarily mine, particularly if I have been a bungler of the first water in everything else I have ever done. I might be encouraged by an experienced party, but I cannot be “assured” success by a fellow student.

Can any man know the future as well as he knows the past, so that “assurance” can be complete? That question, actually, is at the heart of the matter. If I perform the chemistry experiment correctly, quantifying all of the results, I can say afterwards, “I know that this procedure works, for I have done it myself”. Can I know ahead of time that I am going to be successful in some endeavor, as certain as I am afterward? Yes! That is what constitutes true faith. It is substantive foreknowledge. The “evidence of things not seen” works essentially the same way. Can I see an event before it takes place? Yes! That is what constitutes the full weight and measure of the calling of a faithful prophet, seer, and revelator. The eye of faith sees in to the past and into the future with equal facility, and perceives the truth of any event, together with its connection with every other element of truth. A prophet living a thousand years before an event takes place can be as certain of all that would happen as if he had lived every second of the event. This is the power and effect of true faith. Is everyone equipped with this sort of faith? Apparently not, for there are multitudes who assert that it is not possible for any man to know the future.

What did Paul know and understand through faith that assured him of salvation. As far as the reality of the resurrection is concerned, Saul of Taurus had seen with his own eyes and heard with his own ears the personage and voice of the Lord Jesus Christ while on the road to Damascus. He therefore knew that resurrection was possible. How did he know that he himself would be resurrected? He certainly must have “hoped” to be resurrected. From whence came his personal “assurance”? Paul’s early life had been filled with deeds that would later bring him to grief. He had persecuted the Christian disciples, arresting them and hauling them off to prison, where some of them later died. Once he understood that his actions were offensive to God, he was struck with terrible guilt. When the prophet Ananias came to him and blessed him so that he could recover his eyesight, Paul learned for himself that it was possible to have one’s deepest guilt swept away through repentance and divine forgiveness. At what point did Paul know that all of his subsequent efforts were acceptable to the Lord. The forgiveness for his past sins was a fait accompli. How did he know that he would eventually find grace in the sight of God and be received into His presence with rejoicing? He saw in the future that it would be so, the Lord God of Israel testifying to him on the day of judgment that his life was in order. This eternal success could only be perceived by the eye of faith.

How does one acquire faith unto salvation? The formula is simple, though the experiment is somewhat lengthy.

First, a man must intellectually accept that there is such a being as God. This is usually a conscious decision, even though children generally are aware of the fact almost from birth. An atheist, by the way, has forced this default state of mind from his philosophy. With one’s temporal eyes open, with the acquisition of more and more awareness, even the most hardened unbeliever is persuaded that there is more going on in the universe other than his own self-awareness.

The second principle of faith unto salvation is a correct understanding the characteristics, attributes, and perfections of that God who had been intellectually allowed. Some of this knowledge comes through study, but most comes by obedience to the commandments given by God to His children. We learn for ourselves that His desires for us are not malignant, but rather are the product of an infinite and eternal love for us. We learn, too, that He is as His commandments suggest. He cautions us against immorality, perjury, and covetousness, because He exhibits nothing of these flaws in His own conduct.

The third principle of faith unto salvation is to know for ourselves that our course of life is acceptable unto Him. That can only come as a result of Him speaking with us, assuring us that we have found grace in His sight. There is no more poignant aspect of the need for personal revelation than in its contribution to our personal salvation.

Faith, in the end, is a gift of God that can be acquired in no other way than that which the Father of All has established. The first principle of the Gospel of Jesus Christ is faith. Without faith it is impossible to please God, for without it, repentance, forgiveness, and the redeeming covenants are impossible.