[The following comes from a Facebook comment thread as my response to a gentleman who took issue with how I defined what it means to believe and what faith is. He proceeded to quote the definitions from different popular Greek lexicons. I have omitted any identifying information as to the owner of the comment thread.]
I saw from your profile that you are an advocate of the "Free Grace" theology. That's awesome. I imagine that we agree on many things more than you realize, even if we use differing language to describe them. You have, in this comment thread, spent a lot of time an energy attempting to show me my error. I assume this was from the best of intentions, and this is to be appreciated. This being said, to be honest, you have spent a lot of time and effort, in my opinion, to be able to demonstrate why what Jesus taught can be ignored completely, something which, to my mind, is antithetical to the very idea of discipleship.
But, let's get to the real heart of what you're most concerned about, that forgiveness of sins and entry into heaven is not based on any kind of merit or "working for it." Fair enough. I wholeheartedly agree with you on this. In fact, I probably go a lot further than you do, because I believe that Jesus meant what He said when He said that "every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven human beings except one."
Every sin and blasphemy. Consider that statement for a second. I presume you know that the word in Greek means "all." As it does in fact presume "all," would this not include the sin of ignorance? That is, not knowing anything about Jesus Christ? The only sin which He said would not be forgiven, in context, was knowing something was of God, and rejecting it and calling it evil. This described the Pharisees perfectly.
According to Nicodemus in John 3, they knew, they knew, that Jesus had come from God because only someone from God could do what He was doing. They knew it, and rejected, attempted to discredit, attempted to arrest, defame, destroy, and kill Him anyway. They knew the Light, and willfully shut their eyes to it. They opted out intentionally and voluntarily. This is the "sin" which Jesus said wouldn't be forgive. So, everything else, according to Jesus Christ Himself, would be forgiven. Consider what everything else means again. So, in that respect, the Grace I believe in is a lot freer than you probably do.
As I wrote to my friend though, the salvation which Jesus Christ and His Apostles taught in the Scriptures wasn't really about forgiveness. That was actually a non-issue where God was concerned. The issue He was concerned with was the root problem itself which Paul described in Romans as both hereditary and biological or physiological in nature, and which clear affected human behavior so that, no matter how well-intentioned someone may be, they always end up causing harm. His concern was not with the afterlife consequences of this problem, but with the very immediate concern of the harm we cause in this life due to this problem.
And so the salvation the New Testament teaches is about being joined as one to Jesus Christ through His death and resurrection, and thus being grafted to Him so that His "breath," His Spirit resides within each one of us who is joined, so that we have the choice to either continue to be enslaved to our malfunctioning, physical neurology, or we could enslave ourselves to the Spirit of Christ through voluntary submission and handing ourselves over to Him with each decision, each moment. In so doing, our own malfunctioning neurology would be bypassed, and our responses and reactions would come, not from our survival responses of fear, aggression, feeding, and sexual desire, but from Jesus Christ Himself, and through Him, the Father, thus producing agape, peace, joy, self-control and so on as He lives His life through us in cooperation with us. This is something He Himself modeled throughout His life as He surrendered to His Father with whom He was one. And so with Him acting and speaking through us, we then would cease to cause harm and the problem would be solved.
This is where belief in Jesus Christ becomes a necessity as we must entrust ourselves to Him wholly and without reservation. And this is why belief cannot mean mere "opinion" or "mental assent." This is something one must actively engage in and practice, or it is still their own physiology, their own "flesh" which is reacting and responding. As Paul wrote, they would still be "in their sins."
So, this is the salvation which Jesus taught, practiced, and instructed His own immediate disciples in, and which Paul is consumed with in his letters and for which He continued to press towards the goal for the prize. Heaven, as is commonly understood, is not in view as the prize, but full conformity to the person of Jesus Christ.
As to your continued use of these lexicons. Have you ever asked yourself where they got their English definitions and translations from? Or who were the men who compiled them?
The Greek New Testament, and the common Greek language of the first and second century near east, were unknown in Western Europe until the fall of Constantinople in the mid 1400s. Until that point in time, the only Scriptures which anyone had was the Latin Vulgate, something which, like the KJV occasionally by the ignorant, was commonly assumed to be the original. After Constantinople fell, Orthodox scholars and priests fled west, taking their Greek manuscripts and lectionaries with them. These formed the basis of Erasmus' Greek New Testament. But the Greek of these texts was ancient, and didn't resemble the Greek spoken at the time. What do you think they compared the Greek text with in order to build a common lexicon to fill in the gaps?
The Latin Vulgate.
Except the Latin words aren't a 1:1 perfect rendering from the Greek. No translation ever is, even between languages as socio-culturally close as Greek and Latin were at the time. As a result, for dikaioo you have iustifico which was transliterated, not translated, into English as justify. And yet dikaioo in Greek literally means, "to make something right," and while it can be used in legal contexts, that is not necessarily its primary domain. And so the Greek to English lexicons were filled with such slightly inaccurate definitions which were not, at the time, compared with other Koine works much less the Classical Greek authors because they were almost unknown.
Furthermore, these words took on theological significance especially to those whose theology came from the Reformation. If you look to see who compiled the lexicons you have cited, you will see that they were all from men with a particular theological bias, and a stake in keeping those theological definitions and translations intact. It eventually becomes an academic echo chamber, as do most English translations, because the translators have an aversion to doing anything against what has come before, even if the translation is inaccurate. Most English translations today are still heavily influenced by Tyndale's work, even when his renderings weren't actually what was said, and Tyndale himself was influenced by his own theological bias as much as any modern translator. This is why I avoid such theological dictionaries and lexicons, and only use the BAGD for quick reference. It took me a long time of study and use to understand this, and so I understand why you would lean on them and quote them, but I respectfully decline to based on my own scholarship and experience.
Finally, I ask you the same question I asked my friend, how can someone claim belief in Jesus Christ, and ignore what He taught or said? How can someone claim to be a disciple and not follow the discipline which He taught? Even in the first and second century Church, a person was not considered a Christian if they didn't live as He taught; according to Justin Martyr in his at any rate.
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