Fresh Translation of John 10

I got from the Lord this morning that I was supposed to do a fresh translation of John 10 for my devotions today and post it. I don't know why, but, here it is.

 John 10

     “Amen amen I tell you, that person who doesn’t enter through the gate into the sheep pen, but climbs up from another place is a thief and pirate; yet the person entering through the gate is the shepherd of the sheep. The gatekeeper opens to this person, and the sheep hear his voice and he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out. When he tosses out all his own, he goes in front of them, and his sheep follow, because they know his voice. Yet they will absolutely not follow another, but will flee from him, because they don’t know the voice of others.” Yeshua told them this proverb, yet those didn’t recognize what it was he was saying to them.

     Yeshua then spoke again, “Amen amen I tell you that I Myself am the gate for the sheep. Everyone as many as came before Me are thieves and pirates, but the sheep didn’t listen to them. I Myself am the gate. If any person should enter through Me he will be rescued and will go in and go out and will find pasture. The thief doesn’t come except that he should steal, and slaughter, and destroy. I came so that they should posses life and should possess overflow. I Myself am the Very Best Shepherd. The Very Best Shepherd lays down His last breath on behalf of the sheep. The wage-worker also, not being the shepherd, of whom the sheep are not his own, watches the wolf coming and lets the sheep go and runs for it—and the wolf plunders and scatters them—because he is a wage-worker and it isn’t concerning to him about the sheep. I Myself am the Very Best Shepherd and I recognize what is Mine and what is Mine recognizes Me just like the Father is familiar with Me and I Myself am familiar with the Father, and I lay down My last breath on behalf of the sheep. But I also possess other sheep which aren’t from this sheep pen; and there is a need for Me to lead them and they will hear My voice, and they will be a single flock, there will be a single Shepherd. Because of this, My Father cares for and has compassion for Me because I am laying down My last breath, so that I should receive it again. No one takes it away from Me, but I lay it down from Myself. I hold the authority to lay it down, and I hold the authority to receive it again. I received this command while standing next to My Father.”

     A schism happened again among the Iudaeans because of these words. Yet a lot of them were saying, “He possesses a demon and is a raging lunatic; what are you listening to Him for?” Others were saying, “These aren’t the spoken words of one who is demonized; no demoniac can open the eyes of the blind, can he?”

     Then Chanukkah happened among the people of Hierosoluma, it was winter, and Yeshua was walking within the Temple among the colonnade of Solomon. The Iudaeans then circled Him and were telling Him, “Until what point in time will you take our breath? If you are the Christ, tell us openly.” Yeshua answered them, “I told you and you didn’t believe it. These deeds which I am doing in the name of My Father testify about Me, but you don’t believe it, because you aren’t from the sheep which are Mine. The sheep which are Mine listen to My voice, and I recognize them and they follow Me, and I am giving them the life of the Eternal One and they will absolutely not be destroyed into the eternal and not a single person will plunder them from My hand. My Father who gave them to Me is greater than everything, and no one can plunder anything from the hand of My Father. I and the Father are one thing.”

     The Iudaeans then carried stones again so that they would stone Him. Yeshua responded to them, “I showed you a lot of beautiful deeds from the Father; for which of these deeds are you stoning Me?” The Iudaeans answered Him, “We aren’t stoning You about a beautiful deed but about blasphemy, and that You, being a human being, are making Yourself a god.” Yeshua answered them, “Isn’t it written in your Torah that, “I said, you are gods”? If it said those to be gods to whom the message of God happened, and the Scripture can’t be unlaced, then to the one whom the Father consecrated and sent out into the universe you are saying that, “You are blaspheming,” because I said, “I am the Son of God”? If I don’t do the deeds of My Father, don’t believe Me; yet if I do, and you won’t believe Me, believe the deeds, so that you recognize and might recognize that the Father is inside of Me and I am inside of the Father.” They sought to grab Him again, and He went out of their hand.

     And He came out again to the other side of the Jordan into the place where Yohanan was first baptizing and stayed put there. And many came to Him and were saying that Yohanan on the one hand didn’t do a single sign, yet everything as much as Yohanan said about this guy was true. And many put their trust into Him there.

Fresh Translation of the Gospel of John 1-3

 Trying something a little different from my usual way of translating. Felt like the Lord wanted me to post it here:

1

     The Message was at the start, and the Message was facing God, and the Message was God. This Message was facing God at the start. Everything happened through Him, and not a single thing which has happened happened apart from Him. By means of Him was life, and that life was the light of human beings; and that life shines in the darkness, and the darkness didn’t seize it.

     A person happened, having been sent out from God, his name is Yohanan. This person came for a testimony so that he would testify about the light, so that everyone would believe by means of him. That person was not the light, but existed so he would testify about the light. The light was real coming into the world, which light illuminates every human being. He was within the universe, and the universe happened by means of Him, and the universe didn’t recognize Him. He came into His own things, and His own people didn’t take Him to themselves. Yet as many as got Him, He gave to them the authority to become children of God, to those who put their trust into His name, they weren’t born from blood neither out of a biological drive nor out of a man’s wish, but from God.

     And the Message became flesh and blood and camped out among us, and we watched the opinion everyone had of Him, a reputation like the One of a Kind at the side of the Father, full of charity and truth. Yohanan testifies about Him and had cried out saying, “This person was the one whom I said, ‘The person coming behind me has become in front of me, because He was first before me.’ Because from His sum we all also got charity in place of charity, because though the Torah was given through Moses, charity and truth happened through Yeshua the Christ. No one had seen God at any time, yet that one of a kind God who started off into the embrace of the Father has explained Him.

     And this is the testimony of Yohanan, when the Iudaeans sent priests and Levites out from Hierosoluma so that they would question him, “Who are you?” And he confessed and didn’t deny it, and confessed that “I am not the Christ.”And they questioned him, “What then? Are you Elijah?” And he says, “I am not.” “Are you the Prophet then?” And he answered, “No.” They say then to him, “Who are you? What are you saying about yourself then; so that we might give a response to those sending us?” He said, “I am a voice shouting in the desert, ‘Straighten the path of the Lord,’ just like Isaiah the Prophet said.” And they were on a mission from the Pharisees. And they questioned him and said to him, “What are you baptizing for then if you aren’t the Christ, nor Elijah, nor the Prophet?” Yohanan answered them saying, “I am baptizing with water, yet a person stood in the middle of you whom you don’t recognize; the one coming behind me of whom I’m not worthy so that I would untie His sandal straps.” These things happened in Bethany on the other side of the Jordan.

     By the next day, he looks at Yeshua coming towards him and he says, “Look, God's sacrificial lamb who removes the Hamartia Disorder from the Universe. This guy is about whom I said, ‘a man comes behind me who has become in front of me, because he was first before me.’ And I didn’t see Him, but I came baptizing with water so that He would be made visible to Israel for this reason.” And Yohanan testified saying that, “I have watched the Spirit descending like a pigeon out of the sky upon Him and making its home there. This person is the one baptizing with the Holy Spirit. And I have seen and have testified that this is the Son of God.”

     Again on the next day, Yohanan was standing there as well as two from among his disciples, and having looked at Yeshua walking he says to them, “Look, the lamb of God.” And the two disciples heard him talking and followed Yeshua. And turning around, Yeshua, also having watched them following, says, “What are you looking for?” And these guys said to Him, “Rabbi (which is translated, “Teacher”), where do you make your home?” He says to them, “Come and see.” They then came and saw where He makes His home and they made their home at His side that day. It was like the tenth hour from dawn. Andreas, one of the two who heard at Yohanan’s side and followed Him, was the brother of Shimon Petros. This guy finds his own brother Shimon first and says to him, “We found the Messiah,” (which is translated, “the Christ”). He led him to Yeshua. Having looked at him, Yeshua said, “You are Shimon Bar-Yonah. You will be called ‘Kefa’ (which is translated, ‘Petros’).”

     On the next day, He wished to come out into the Galilee and find Filippos. And Yeshua says to him, “Follow Me.” And Philip was from Bethsaida, from the town of Andreas and Petros. Filippos finds Nathanael and says to him, “We found the guy whom Moses and the prophets wrote about in the Torah, Yeshua Bar-Yosef from Nazareth.”And Nathanael said to him, “Is anything good capable of being from Nazareth?” Filippos says to him, “Come and look.” Yeshua saw Nathanael coming to Him and says about him, “Look, a real Israeli within whom there isn’t any deceit.” Nathanael says to Him, “Where do you know me from?” Yeshua responded and said to him, “Before Filippos’ calling to you I saw you being under the fig tree.” Nathanael responded to Him, “Rabbi, you are the Son of God? You are the King of Israel?” Yeshua answered and said to him, “Do you believe it when I said to you I saw you underneath the fig tree? You will see bigger things than these.” And He says to him, “Amen, amen I’m telling you, you will see the sky having opened and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Adam.”

2

     And on the third day a wedding happened in Kana of the Galilee, and the mother of Yeshua was there; and both Yeshua and His disciples were invited into the wedding. And with them running short on wine the mother of Yeshua says to Him, “They don’t have wine.” Yeshua says to her, “What do you want Me to do about it, woman? My hour hasn’t come yet.” His mother says to the servants, “Do whatever He may tell you.” And there were six stone water jars, in line with the cleansing of the Iudaeans, lying there holding up to two or three measurements [between 20 and 30 gallons] worth of water. Yeshua says to them, “Fill the water jars with water.” And they filled them up to the top. And He says to them, “Draw some right now and bring it to the person presiding over the banquet.” And they brought some. And as the person presiding over the banquet tasted the water having become wine and didn’t know where it is from (yet the servants who had drawn the water knew), the person presiding over the banquet shouts to the groom and says to him, “Every sentient being places the good wine first, and when they are intoxicated the lesser quality stuff. You have kept the good wine until now.” Yeshua did this first of the signs in Kana of the Galilee and made His reputation visible, and His disciples put their trust into Him.

     After this, He went down into K’fer-Nahum and His mother and brothers and His disciples, and didn’t stay put there for many days.

     And the Passover of the Iudaeans was close, and Yeshua journeyed upwards into Hierosoluma. And He found sitting within the Temple those selling cattle and sheep and pigeons, as well as those exchanging currency. And having made a flagellum out of small ropes, He threw everyone out of the Temple along with the sheep and the cattle, and with those exchanging currency He poured out the coins and overturned the tables, and to those selling the pigeons He said, “Take these things away from here! Don’t make the house of My Father the home of a trading exchange!” His disciples were reminded that it had been written, “Jealousy for Your house consumes Me.” The Iudaeans responded then and said to Him, “What sign from God are you going to show us because You are doing these things?” Yeshua responded and said to them, “Undo this shrine and within three days I will raise it.” The Iudaeans then said, “It took forty six years to construct this shrine, and You would raise it within three days?” Yet that One was talking about His bodily shrine. When He was then raised from the dead, His disciples were reminded that He was saying this, and they believed the Scripture and the message which Yeshua said.

     And as He was among the people of Hierosoluma at the Passover during the holy day, many put their trust into His name watching His signs from God which he was doing. Yet Yeshua Himself didn’t trust Himself to them because of Him knowing everyone, and because He didn’t have a need for anyone to testify about the human being, because He recognized what was inside the human being.

3

And a person was from the Pharisees—Nikodemos is his name, a chieftain of the Jewish people—this guy came to Him by night and said to Him, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher having come from God, because no one can do these signs from God which you are doing should God not be with him.” Yeshua responded and said to him, “Amen amen I am telling you if someone hasn’t been born again from above, he can’t see the kingdom of God.” Nikodemos says to Him, “How is it possible for a human being to be born again being old and infirm? He can’t go into the belly of his mother a second time, is it?” Yeshua answered, “Amen amen I tell you, if someone isn’t born from water and wind, he can’t come into the kingdom of God. What has been born from the biological is biological, and what has been born from the wind is wind. Don’t be surprised that I said to you, ‘There is a need for you to be born again from above.’ The wind blows where it wills and you hear its sound, but you don’t know where it comes from, or where it’s going. So is every person having been born from the wind.” Nikodemos responded and said to Him, “How is it possible for these things to happen?” Yeshua answered and said to him, “You are the teacher of Israel and you don’t recognize these things? Amen amen I tell you that We talk what We know and We testify what We have seen, and you folks don’t accept Our testimony. If I told you folks about the things upon the earth and you don’t believe it, how would you folks believe it if I should tell you about the things occurring in the heavenly realm? And no one has gone up into the heavenly realm if not the person coming down from the heavenly realm, the Son of Adam who started off in the heavenly realm. And just like Moses raised the snake in the desert high, so there is a need for the Son of Adam to be raised high, so that every single person who puts their trust into Him would possess the life of the Eternal One. Because God cared about and had compassion on the universe in this way, as He also gave His One of a Kind Son, so that every single person who puts their trust into Him would not be destroyed but would have the life of the Eternal One. Because God hadn’t send out His Son into the universe so that He would judge the universe, but so that the universe would be rescued through Him. The person putting his trust into Him isn’t judged, yet the one not placing his trust into Him has already decided for himself, because he hasn’t put his trust into the name of the One of a Kind Son of God. And this is the decision, that the light had come into the universe and the sentient beings loved the darkness more than the light because the things they achieved were deranged. Because every person bringing about foul things hates the light and doesn’t come towards the light, so that the things they achieve won’t be brought into the light; yet the person engaging with the truth comes towards the light, so that the things he achieves would be made visible that they are having been accomplished by means of God.”

     With these things Yeshua and His disciples came into the country of Iudaea and passed the time there with them and He baptized them. And Yohanan was also baptizing in an Ayin [wellspring] close to Salim, because there was a lot of water there, and they were beside them and were baptizing, because Yohanan hadn’t yet been thrown into prison. An investigative debate happened then out of the disciples of Yohanan with those of the Iudaeans about cleansing. And they came to Yohanan and said to him, “Rabbi, the guy who was with you on the other side of the Jordan, about whom you had testified; look, this guy is baptizing and everyone is coming to Him.” Yohanan answered and said, “A human being can’t accept anything at all if it hasn’t been given to him from heaven. You yourselves bear witness to me that I said, ‘I am not the Christ,’ but that, ‘I have been sent out ahead of that one.’ The one possessing the bride is the groom, and the friend of the groom, having stood and hearing him, rejoices with joy because of the sound of the groom. This joy of mine then has been filled to the top. There is a need for that One to grow, and for me to shrink.

     “The person coming from above is above everything. The person who is from the earth is from the earth and talks from the earth. The person who comes from heaven is above everything. What He has seen and heard, this is what He bears witness to, and no one accepts His witness. The person who does accept His witness He stamps with a seal because God is honest. Because the person whom God sent out talks the speech of God, because He doesn’t just measure out the Spirit to Him [like He does with the prophets]. The Father loves the Son and has given everything into His hand. The person who puts his trust into the Son possesses the life of the Eternal One, yet the person unconvinced by the Son doesn’t see that life, but the mood God is in stays put against him.”

Complete Commentary on Galatians

 Taking a break from translating Acts for a bit. To be honest, I'm just kind of tired of Luke's Greek. I'm a lot more familiar and comfortable with Paul's way of speaking than with Luke's. So, I started on Galatians again this morning. This will probably be my sixth or seventh time translating through it.

     What stuck out to me in chapter 1 this time is really how much Paul is trying to stress that he didn't learn the Gospel from a human being. No one handed it down to him, but he learned it straight from Christ. What is also of note is that he was baptized by Ananias before he understood anything about the Gospel. This can be deduced in that after his conversion experience, he says he went into Arabia for three years, and didn't look for counsel from flesh and blood about it, yet from the book of Acts, it looks like Paul was baptized almost immediately after receiving his sight back. Paul believed in Jesus Christ based on his experience with Him on the road. He knew He'd been crucified and rose from the dead, but didn't know any more "theology" than those facts. And according to Paul, no human being taught it to him, not even Ananias. So just his experience with Jesus Christ on the road to Damascus, and conversion because of it, was enough in Ananias' mind to baptize Paul. No soteriology. No trinitarian theology. No understanding of the person of Christ. All Paul knew was that He had dumped him off his donkey and was lit up like the sun when He told him to knock it off and that Paul was getting a new job. That He had been crucified was public knowledge, and that He had risen from the dead was obvious to him at that point.

     And at that point Paul's foundational beliefs had been pulled out from underneath him. His teachers, the Pharisees whom he had trusted, were wrong, and worse either didn't know it or were deranged. He went into a crisis of faith trying to reconcile it, and spent three years in Arabia away from everyone, which was even then a harsh desert (Did he care if he lived or died at that point? Disillusionment on that scale can be devastating). To say that Paul had to deconstruct and reconstruct what he knew to be true was probably an understatement. And in those three years, Jesus Christ taught him the Gospel with which Paul would evangelize the entire Aegean. It took three years for Paul to integrate and accept it, letting go of the Pharisee's interpretation of the Torah.

     Notice too that Paul is clear that the only Apostle he met after that was Kefa (Peter), and James the Presbyter, the Lord's brother. He was there a total of fifteen days before they sent him home to Tarsus in Kilikia, someplace he hadn't even been since he was a child.

     Was Paul taught only by the Spirit of Christ in visions and revelations? Was Christ present in some bodily fashion with him for three years, teaching him in a similar fashion to how he taught the twelve for three years? Who knows? I'm inclined to think the former, but it just occurred to me that three years is exactly how long He taught the twelve for as well. What is interesting too is that Paul more or less quotes Jesus in his letters, and yet there were no Gospels written when he was in Arabia, and he didn't sit in on His lectures before the crucifixion. So the Spirit of Christ had to be doing some kind of serious rehash of everything He taught for three years. The twelve got in person classes. Paul got the online version with one on one tutoring, but the same material regardless.

     How much does someone need to know before we baptize them? I think the answer lies with Paul. They need to be fully convinced of the reality of Jesus Christ, and that He was crucified and rose from the dead. The rest can obviously be explained later.

Finished translating Galatians 2 just now. Verses 1-10 continue Paul's explanation that he didn't receive the Gospel he taught from any other human being. Even when he went up to Jerusalem with Barnabas to settle the question of circumcision, the Apostles there didn't contribute anything to what he taught, and actually put his apostolate on an equivalent level to Peter's. Peter would go to the circumcised and Paul to the foreskins (literal from Grk.). What's interesting in these verses as well is that Paul describes those causing the circumcision debate as "false brothers smuggled in." I have previously described (and if you're interested check my blog post on the topic) that the church in Jerusalem wasn't immune from Judean politics, and that the divisions within the church didn't start happening until after Peter and John spoke to the entire Sanhedrin, including members, Pharisee and Sadducee alike, who hadn't been present for Jesus' trial and crucifixion like Gamaliel. After that, it seems like there were indications that the membership of the church began to be infiltrated by Pharisees seeking to turn the disciples of Jesus to their side or advantage against the Sadducees, seeing the as natural allies in their belief in angels and the resurrection. It is my opinion that this is what Paul is describing. He's not bashing fellow disciples. He's calling out Pharisees who snuck in trying to subvert the church to their aims.

     The rest of the chapter from verse 11 to 21 is where Paul really starts in to his main theme of the letter which is that the disciple of Jesus Christ, properly functioning, is no longer subject to the Torah. and he is vehement about this.

     He demonstrates his vehemence by referring to an incident when Peter (Kefa) came to Antioch, and Paul had to get right up in his face (literally what the Greek describes). Paul explains that before some guys came from James (the Presbyter in Jerusalem), Kefa would sit and eat with the other, non-Jewish Christians without issue. But when they did, he withdrew and separated himself to eat only with the Judeans according to Jewish custom. And this mentality spread until even Barnabas, whom Paul had evangelized the non-Jews with across Asia Minor and Cyprus, fell in line. Paul calls them hypocrites, and uses a word in the Greek that describes Kefa's actions as criminal. Paul stands up to him, and to his face directly in front of him, and in front of everyone he says, "If YOU starting out a Judean live like a non-Jew and not like a Jew, how are YOU compelling the non-Jews to Judaize?"

    Paul then goes on to say, either as part of his tirade against Kefa (Peter) or just in the letter, "We Judeans by nature, and not malfunctioning people from the non-Jews, knowing that a human being isn't set right from the works of the Torah if not through the faith of Jesus Christ, we also entrusted Christ Jesus, so that we would be set right by the faith of Christ and not from the works of the Torah, because every soft-tissue of the body will not be made right from the works of the Torah. Yet if looking to be set right with Christ we have also ourselves been found malfunctioning people, then is Christ a servant of the malfunction? Absolutely not. Because if I again construct these things which I tore down [being the soft tissues of the body attemping to be set right by the works of the Torah], I myself am put together a violator. Because I died to the Torah through the Torah, so that I would live to God. I was crucified together with Christ; yet I am no longer alive, but Christ is alive within me; yet what I am now living within the soft tissues of my body, I am living with the trust which is of the Son of God who loved me and handed Himself over on my behalf. I am not setting aside the charity of God; because if being set right is through the Torah, then Christ died for no reason."

     Paul is absolutely clear where he stands on this issue. Those who seek to be set right by the faith of Christ should not be looking to keep the Torah. He and every other baptized disciple (see Romans 6) was crucified together with Jesus Christ, and as he wrote in Romans about the old human being crucified together with Him, Paul himself is no longer alive, but Jesus Christ is alive within him. And what life he is now living within the meat and soft tissues of his body, he is living by means of the trust or faith which belongs to Jesus Christ who loved him and handed Himself over on his behalf. And Paul gets explicit about it when he says that, if it was possible to be set right by obeying the Torah, then Jesus Christ died for no reason. If the Torah could fix the malfunction within the soft tissues of our body, then there was no reason for Christ to have been crucified.

     Paul's tirade against Torah keeping only gets more intense with chapter 3 where he starts off, "O IDIOT Galatians..." and it doesn't get any more friendly for Torah keeping or Torah keepers from there.

     It's important to understand that nowhere here is Paul talking about what we would consider initial justification, and this is where a lot of confusion comes in to Paul's writings. Initial justification has nothing to do with what we can do or have done. This was dealt with by Christ. No, Paul is actually talking about what we would call the process of sanctification here, the actual practice of discipleship and in the rest of the letter, and this becomes incredibly blatant in chapter 5.

     By succumbing to his fear of the guys sent from James, Peter (Kefa) began operating from his own natural responses and behaviors, that is, the soft tissues of his body, the flesh, was in control rather than the Spirit of Christ, and Paul wasn't having it. Not from anyone who knew Jesus and had been taught by Him, and especially not from Peter who himself had recognized in Jerusalem, which Paul was probably throwing back in his face, that even those who were born Jewish couldn't keep the requirements of the Torah and failed at it miserably. Paul was forcibly reminding Peter of his own words in Acts 15 where it was Peter himself who told the council to not put the burden of the Torah on the non-Jewish disciples.

     There are a lot of folks here that argue vehemently for Torah keeping in one form or another, and appear to have no understanding that any rule or law keeping results in more malfunctioning behaviors such as Paul described of the "works of the flesh" in Galatians 5, and the mechanics of which he described in Romans 7. Galatians is Paul's wake up call to them that you can't be set right, you can't please God, you can't be a disciple of Jesus Christ if you're still trying to follow laws and rules, especially the Torah. This only happens if you put your own responses and behaviors to death, and it is Jesus Christ who lives, acts, and responds through you. If you are trying to mitigate your own internal malfunction by keeping the Torah then you are saying Christ's death was meaningless.

Just finished translating Galatians 3 this evening. Did the first half of it this morning, and finished it up after doing work in the barn this afternoon.

     Galatians 3 continues Paul's tirade concerning Torah keeping. As I wrote previously, he begins by calling the Galatians idiots, and asks them who bewitched them with the evil eye, because that's the only way he can fathom how they turned from the faith of Jesus Christ to keeping the Torah. 

     He then goes on to say, "I just want to learn this from you, did you get the Spirit [of Christ] from keeping the Torah or from listening to [in the sense of obeying] the faith of Christ? Are you such idiots, starting off by the Spirit [of Christ] are you now being matured by the soft tissues of your body? Were you suffering so much just for the heck of it? If at least it was even for the heck of it. The One then furnishing to you the Spirit [of Christ] and energizing powers within you, was this from keeping the Torah or from listening to the faith [of Christ]?" 

     Paul is here appealing to their own experiences and what they themselves had seen and heard. They started off by denying themselves, dying to themselves, and relying on the Spirit of Christ to act and speak through them, and suddenly, they're relying on their own natural responses and behaviors coming from their own brains and psychology. Why did they suffer persecution by the Judeans if keeping the Torah was the path that would make them right? The powers which they themselves demonstrated through the Spirit of Christ had nothing to do with keeping the Torah, as well they knew. And so Paul is essentially hitting them over the head with a metaphorical two by four of the things they themselves had undeniably experienced.

     The next part of his argument is that the promises made to Abraham weren't to any of his physical descendants except for one, Jesus Christ. Now, I did check in both the Hebrew and the Greek Septuagint. Paul is right, the word for seed or sperm is singular in both versions, that is, it doesn't refer to many, just a single "seed." So Paul's argument is that those who were supposed to inherit the promise weren't Abraham's biological descendants, that is, neither the blood descendants of Ishmael or the descendants of Isaac, much less Jacob. But rather only those joined to or made one with Jesus Christ would inherit the promises as He was the only real heir being spoken of. And the Torah which was written four hundred and thirty years later had neither authority nor power to nullify the contract God made with Abraham.

     So why was the Torah given? According to Paul, the Torah was given in order to mitigate the violations or trespasses. That is, it was given to be something like one of the old British governesses who oversaw the raising and education of a gentleman's or nobleman's children before the advent of public schools. In other words, it was given to watch over us and keep us from hurting one another or ourselves. But there was no way it could actually fix or bypass the problem within our malfunctioning brain, or flesh, which is what was actually needed. Paul goes on to say explicitly that the Torah was our governess into Christ, so that we would be set right by the faith; but with its coming we are no longer subject to the governess. That is, there is no longer any need for the Torah for those who are of Christ, any more than there is a need for the governess once the child has reached adulthood.

    He then closes the chapter with, "Because as many of you as were baptized into Christ, have clothed yourselves with Christ. There isn't Judean neither Greek, there isn't slave neither free person, there isn't male and female; because you are all a single person within Christ Jesus. And if you are of Christ, you are therefore the seed of Abraham, heirs in line with the promise."

     Like in Romans 6, Paul is here stating explicitly that those who are baptized into Jesus Christ are joined to Him and have become a single person with Him. Because we are joined to Him, a single person with Him, then like Him we too are the seed to whom the promises were made, and not those who are biologically Abraham's descendants or those who keep the Torah.

     Rather than just going off on those still trying to keep the Torah, Paul ups the ante by saying, and doubling down on it in the next chapter, that the promises God made to Abraham don't even apply to his blood descendants, but to Jesus Christ alone, and anyone joined into a single person with Him, literally throwing in the trash any hope a Jewish person may cling to by just being Jewish and keeping the Torah. Paul is telling those people there's nothing there to hope in. You're either joined to Jesus Christ, or you're left out in the cold where the promises are concerned.

Just finished translating Galatians 4 through 5:1. I stopped at the first verse of five because it really belongs with the previous paragraph and train of thought.

     Verses 1-7 are Paul continuing his train of thought from chapter three where he described the Torah as a governess over young children, watching over us until the faith of Christ came, and he ended the chapter with that those who belong to Christ, because they are joined to Christ and He is the rightful and only heir of the promise to Abraham, are also heirs being a single person with Him through their baptism into Him. He goes on with this train of thought describing an infant who happens to be the heir to an estate such as which is large enough to have real property, servants, slaves, and so forth. That heir, even though he legally owns everything is himself no better off than a slave in terms of authority because he has to listen to the governess, his legal guardians, and the household managers until he comes of age to have full and unrestricted access to his inheritance. And this is the situation with us being watched over by the Torah and the "basic components of the world," as he describes it. Yet when the day which had been fixed to inherit came, God sent His Son to buy up all those under the guardianship of the Torah in order for us to receive the adoption as sons.

     Roman adoption was a little different than the modern American concept. A Roman father had to adopt or declare his son as an heir legally. Just because you were biologically related to your father didn't mean much under Roman law, and it was a common Roman practice to adopt those not directly related to you as your heirs. A case in point was the Senator Gallio, the Roman governor of Achaia in Acts when Paul was in Corinth. Gallio was actually the biological son of Seneca the Elder and brother of Seneca the Younger, but had been adopted as the heir of one of his friends whose name was Gallio, even while Seneca the elder was still alive.

     Here as in Romans 8, Paul says that, "because you are sons, God sent out the Spirit of His Son into our hearts shrieking [lit.], Abba Father. So that you individually are no longer a slave but a son; and if a son, also and heir through God." It is very clear from here and in Romans 8 that the Spirit to which he is constantly referring, especially in contrast or opposition to "the flesh" (literally the soft tissues of our bodies) is the Spirit of Jesus Christ, the Son of God, being joined to and made one with Him.

     He then returns from explaining spiritual mechanics to addressing the Galatians more personally in 8-20 as he says, "But at that time on the one hand not knowing God you were enslaved to those by nature not being gods; yet currently recognizing God, yet more being recognized subject to God, how are you turning back again upon the weak and impoverished basic components to which you wish to again be enslaved once more?" Paul is again wanting to know "What are you thinking? What could possibly possess you to run back to the governess when being one with Jesus Christ you own the whole estate?" And here he gets specific wanting to know why they're trying to keep the holy days, months, and years prescribed by the Torah when they are joined to Jesus Christ. He then says dishearteningly, "I'm scared for you lest I had worn myself out for you just for the heck of it."

     12-20 is another more personal appeal talking about their personal history together, how they first received him not turning away in disgust at the physical problem he was having at the time. He asks them, after all they had been through together, "Did I become your enemy speaking truthfully to you?" In twenty, he says he's going to change his voice again because "I'm at a loss with you."

     21-5:1 Paul uses Hagar and Sarah as an allegory between the two contracts, the one God made with Abraham about the inheritance of his "seed" (sing.), and the one God made with Moses and Israel on Mount Sinai. The former is described aptly as the son of the free woman, and the latter in keeping with his description of being enslaved as a child under the Torah is described as the son of Sarah's handmaid or slave girl, Hagar. In line with Isaac, those of the faith of Christ, being joined to Christ, are the children of the promise, not those subject to the Torah who are in line with Ishmael, the product of the flesh and the son of the slave girl; legally a slave himself and not an heir. He then ends the train of thought in 5:1 saying, "Christ freed us for freedom; stand then and don't be held again in the yoke of slavery [to the flesh through the Torah]."

     With nearly every word in this letter, Paul is begging and pleading with the Galatians, fighting tooth and nail for them to not engage with or return to Torah keeping, because that is of the flesh, our own natural responses and behaviors, not the Spirit of Christ. He is explicit and adamant about the idiocy of it, continuing his fight against it by declaring in the next verse in chapter 5, "If you should be circumcised, Christ will benefit you nothing." And the warning really couldn't be clearer or more harsh. What he's telling them is that if they choose to be initiated into Judaism or return to Judaism and attempt to be set right through keeping the Torah, then they have blasphemed the Holy Spirit, essentially trashing everything they experienced with the Spirit of Christ and saying it's worthless as the author of Hebrews warns the Jewish Christians about not doing. This is why Paul is so desperate to put a stop to this immediately and turn them back to submission to and reliance on the Spirit of Christ within them.

     This is why I personally write so harshly against Torah keeping now. By returning to the Torah, or any law keeping, you're saying Christ's death, burial, and resurrection means nothing to you and you can be set right by your own efforts. This is what damns a person.

I finished translating Galatians 5 last night, but waited until now to write this. The truth is I was shaking a little after writing the commentary for Galatians 4-5:1, though it was really through 5:2, for a while. Paul's message here is forceful and to the point as he begs and pleads for the Galatians to turn around and not to go any farther down the road they're going.

    Paul starts Galatians 5 with a serious warning that he again doubles down on, "Look, I Paul am saying to you that if you should be circumcised, Christ will benefit you nothing. Yet again I testify to every circumcised human being that he is a debtor to do the whole Torah. You were nullified from Christ, such ones of you being set right with the Torah! You deprived yourselves of the charity [of God]!" The word I have here translated as "nullified" is "katargeo" in the Greek. Several possible translations for this word are "nullified, rendered inert, left unemployed, ruined, destroyed." A good image to illustrate this word is say one of the factories in Europe which had been bombed during World War II. Some of the walls or pieces of it may still be standing, but it's been rendered completely useless for its original purpose. The word I have translated as "deprived yourselves of" is "ekpipto." Strictly speaking, it means to "fall out of" a thing, or "fall off" a thing, such as "falling out of" a chariot, which would be a good picture illustration for what Paul's saying. But it can also mean "to be deprived of," to be "thrown ashore, shipwrecked," or also of actors, "to be booed off of a stage."

     The author of the letter to the Hebrews, writing under similar circumstances to Jewish Christians contemplating abandoning Christ to return to Judaism because of persecution against Christians, writes, "Because it's impossible those once having been enlightened, having also tasted of the gift of the high heaven and having become sharers of the Holy Spirit, and having tasted of the good spoken word of God and powers of the impending aeon, and having fallen aside to make those people new again into a change of mind, recrucifying the Son of God and making an example of Him. Because ground which drinks the rain frequently coming upon it and giving birth to a suitable plant for those by whom it is also cultivated, receives a share of praise from God; yet having brought out thorns and thistles, failure and curse are near, the end of that ground results in burning." And also, "Because with us erring deliberately after the receiving the observable knowledge of the truth, there is no longer a sacrifice left concerning those errors, but some terrifying expectation of judgment and jealous impending fire to eat those opposed. Someone having set aside the Torah of Moses dies without compassion upon two or three witnesses; by how much more worse punishments do you think will the person who has trampled the Son of God, and the blood of the contract with which he was consecrated, having been treated like dirt [lit. common, profane], and outraged the Spirit of charity, be worthy of? Because we know the One who said, 'Vengeance is for Me, I will pay back.' and again, 'The Lord judges His people.' Falling into the hands of the Living God is terrifying."

    This is why Paul is begging, pleading, and fighting tooth and nail against the Galatians abandoning the Spirit of Christ in order to be set right by keeping the Torah. Because doing this treats Jesus Christ and His death on the cross like dirt, like there was no point to it. It blasphemes the testimony which the Holy Spirit gave them about Christ through the powers He displayed through them, something which they experienced and couldn't deny the experience of. They tasted the gift of heaven, they tasted the Spirit of Christ, and they were trashing it by Torah keeping.

     Paul goes on to say that it doesn't matter if you're circumcised or not. Neither cutting the foreskin off nor leaving it on is physically capable of changing anything about our natural responses or behaviors. It's pointless and without any power to actually do anything. The only thing which has any power to do anything about this is the faith of Jesus Christ being energized and activated through love.

     Verses 7-12 Paul returns to his personal address to them, and gets really, really blunt about what he thinks of those causing these problems among them, expressing the wish, explicitly, that whoever they might be, those pushing the Galatians to be circumcised and follow the Torah wouldn't stop at removing the foreskin from themselves, but would go all the way and be castrated completely! How much more proof does anyone need to understand how Paul feels about this topic of Torah keeping? How much more blunt does he have to get?

     From verses 13 to the end of the chapter we come upon the base understanding of the roots of Christian practice and behavior which Paul had spoken of in Romans 6-8. Those who are of Christ are freed from the Torah, they're no longer under the governess. Being an adult means accepting the role of an adult with all of the responsibilities that go with it, as well as the privileges. And our first responsibility is to, through love, enslave ourselves to one another. Keeping the Torah, or following any moral code, isn't necessary because every single rule in the Torah is brought to fulfillment with the single, simple message, "love your neighbor [lit. the person next to you] like yourself." Do this and the Torah, or any moral code, isn't necessary at all. But by turning on one another, nipping and eating at one another we will expend and destroy each other.

     Immediately following his warning about nipping and eating at one another, he writes, "Yet I say, walk by the Spirit [of Christ] and you won't bring the desire of the "flesh" [the soft tissues of the body, brains, meat, organs] to completion. Because the flesh desires against the Spirit [of Christ], yet the Spirit of Christ against the the flesh, because these things lie opposite one another, so that you would do these things, not what things you would wish. Yet if you're led by the Spirit [of Christ], you aren't subject to the Torah."

     The Spirit Paul is speaking of here refers to the Spirit of Christ. This is obvious from not only his referring to "God sending the Spirit of His Son into our hearts" both in this letter and in Romans, but also referring directly to those having or not having the Spirit of Christ in Romans 8. As Paul stated earlier in this letter, and in the letter to the Romans, as many as were baptized into Christ were clothed with Christ.

     What Paul is saying here is that, rather than attempting to restrain the flesh with Torah keeping, which ends up failing miserably regardless and does nothing to address the underlying malfunction within the flesh, if we disengage from our own natural responses and behaviors produced by our malfunctioning flesh, and instead depend solely on the Spirit of Christ to respond and behave through us, then those responses and behaviors produced by the flesh, while they may still come to mind, they won't be expressed in actions or words. As long as we are engaged with the Spirit of Christ and disengaged from our own responses, then there's no way for the malfunctioning flesh to express itself. It gets completely bypassed as a point of origin for our behaviors. And if the Spirit of Christ is the point of origin for a person's behaviors, then they're a functioning adult and have no need to be subject to the governess, that is, the Torah.

      What follows after this are two lists Paul gives in order to determine whether or not a person's behaviors are originating from their own flesh, or from the Spirit of Christ. I'm not going to go into them individually, they're pretty self explanatory. But I will say this, each "work of the flesh" can ultimately be attributed to either a fear, aggression, feeding drive, or sexual drive response. This is why I tend to think that when Paul says "flesh," he literally means the meat of our brains where our natural behaviors originate. All of these responses are governed by the hypothalamus specifically, and the limbic system in general, as survival responses. In every other animal, these survival responses work to physically protect and propagate the animal in question. But in human beings, these responses have gone haywire, treating EVERYTHING as either a survival need or a survival threat whether it's physical or psychological, or even imaginary. That malfunction then presents as the works of the flesh which Paul describes here and in other lists in his other letters, which he gives frequently.

     The fruit of the Spirit of Christ is Jesus Christ acting and speaking through the person walking by the Spirit of Christ. The word fruit is singular in the Greek. It's not "fruits" but "fruit." It's a single kind of fruit presented by love, joy, peace, and so on. And he goes on to say that there is no law, no rule within the Torah, against anything which is produced by the Spirit of Christ.

     Those of Christ Jesus have been crucified with Him, and as such have also crucified the malfunctioning soft tissues of the body, with its passions and its desires, referring back to Romans 6 and here in chapter 2 of this letter regarding being crucified together with Christ by being baptized into His death. For this reason, if we live by the Spirit of Christ, we will also march in step [lit.] with the Spirit of Christ. If we live by the Spirit of Christ, we don't become conceited, provoking one another, or envying one another.

I just finished translating Galatians 6, the last chapter of the letter. This will be my last post here for at least a couple of days for personal reasons, but I wanted to finish what I started.

     Here, Paul switches back from explaining how things work at the end of chapter 5 to personally addressing and instructing the Galatians. In particular, he starts off addressing what steps should be taken if someone go off the deep end with some violation or overstepping. I think, in particular, he's thinking of those who started this mess in the Galatian church with the Torah to begin with. His instruction is that those who are walking in the Spirit of Christ, the spiritual ones not functioning from their flesh, fix or repair that person gently or softly. With this he says, "Carry one another's weight, and in this way you will pay in full the rule of Christ," that is, the rule He gave or laid down.

     He then begins to talk more specifically about they are to individually do to prevent this kind of heresy from happening again, "Because if someone thinks to be something, being nothing, he is delusionally deceiving himself. Yet let each person put his own work to the test, and then the bragging will arrive for just himself and not for a different person; because each person will carry his own load." In short, if one of them starts feeling like they're something special, they need to check themselves, examine their own responses and behaviors, and in this way the bragging will be contained to just that person bragging to himself and it won't spread like the poison their current problem did. He goes on to say, continuing to explain, "God is not sneered at." Literally, what he saying is that God will not stand for someone turning their nose up at Him and blowing Him off. "Because whatever seed a human being spreads, this he will also harvest; because the guy spreading seed for his own flesh [previously described in chapter five, and what started this whole mess] will harvest corruption from the flesh, yet the guy spreading seed for the Spirit [of Christ] will harvest the life of the Eternal One from the Spirit [of Christ]." I think this is pretty self explanatory, to be honest. If you indulge your own malfunctioning flesh, and operate from that, then you will harvest the works of the flesh and the corruption which follows. If you submit to the Spirit of Christ, with Him in control, then you will harvest God's own Eternal Life through you, that is, Jesus Christ living and expressing through you. " He then admonishes them not to give up or lose enthusiasm for walking in the Spirit and accomplishing the highest good in the period of time that they have. 

     Finally, addressing those causing the problems one last time, he says, "As much as they wish to put on a good face with the flesh, those folks compelling you to be circumcised, it's just so that they might not be persecuted for the cross of Christ." And this is what really started this whole problem. They got scared. Their fear survival response kicked in and the Spirit of Christ went out the window, and everything went downhill from there, harvesting massive damage and corruption among the Galatian disciples. "Because neither the circumcised themselves keep the Torah but they wish you to be circumcised so that they would brag about the flesh of yours." In other words, for as much as they talk the Torah up, they don't actually keep it either, but they want notches on their Torah scrolls to brag about with the number of circumcisions they can obtain.

     He then states, "Yet may it never happen to me to brag about anything except about the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom the cosmos had been crucified to me, and I to the cosmos." In this case, I have rendered "kosmos" in its original form rather than world, because he's referring essentially to the entire system of the universe. As far as he's concerned, as he wrote earlier, he was crucified with Christ, and he's no longer alive, but it's Christ who is alive within Him. The rest of the universe is dead to him, and he to it.

     He then says again, repeating himself, "Because neither circumcision means anything nor does a foreskin mean anything, but it's the new creation that means something." That is, it doesn't matter whether you cut on your man parts or not. It won't affect anything that matters. It's the new creation in Christ Jesus, the Spirit of Christ acting and speaking through you that matters. "And as many as march in line with this standard of measurement, peace will be upon them, and mercy and peace upon the Israel of God."

     He closes with, "Let no one offer me any more beatings; because am carrying the scars of Jesus within my body." This was both hard and personal for Paul. With as much as he had physically and emotionally suffered, his body carrying the scars of that suffering for Christ, he displayed Jesus Christ wherever he went. He no longer lived, but Christ lived in him. He didn't need delusional folks in the churches to start beating on him too.

Taking Another Look at Genesis 2-4 from an Evolutionary Perspective

      While I believe that the events in Genesis 1-4 happened, I don't necessarily think they happened exactly as written. That is, I don't think there is a 1:1 historical correspondence. This being said, I also don't think them to be metaphorical. Rather, I think these events to be an amalgam of historical events which Moses saw on high speed "fast forward." Before I explain further, let me say that I am not excluding the possibility of them being a 1:1 history, I just don't think they have to be.

     I think that at some point, based on evolutionary history, there were several different species of homo, or human which descended and branched off from a common ancestor. One of them happened to give birth to the ancestor of all homo sapiens. The problem here though was that this particular being was very different from his family group, and potentially reproductively incompatible with his own group. i don't think he would have survived on his own, and was likely outcast as they noticed the differences (as animals can sometimes do with an offspring they consider defective). Here, God took pity on him and raised the new human Himself, causing him to thrive. But he was still reproductively incompatible with the rest of his family group, and lonely as they had cast him out. For this reason, God did remove one of his ribs, or at least took DNA from that rib and built a female of his own species from it. From then on, God ensured that this new species of homo would survive and thrive, producing offspring. As Homo Sapiens were later reproductively compatible with species like Neanderthal and Denisovan, the original Adam was likely an earlier, more primitive hominid.

     Those offspring eventually went east out of Africa and into what is now Mesopotamia, at least one family group of them settling in what is now the Black Sea region (prior to its deluge circa 7,000 BCE), which also happens to be the region where the headwaters of the four ancient rivers mentioned in Genesis originate. There this family group was given instructions by God to simply leave one of the fruit trees, or one stand of fruit trees alone because its fruit contained a toxin. It was placed there in the first place because it happened to be a primary food source for another particular animal, and likely predated their arrival. Every other food source in the region was open to them, and they were hunter gatherers. Especially one particular tree or group of trees which was intended as this family group's primary food source. This nutrients and substances found in the fruit of this tree would clean and repair human DNA, essentially extending the human life span indefinitely. There were at least several generations of the family group which lived and stayed within the boundaries of this region.

      In order for herbivores to eat, plants have to die. In order for plants to grow, other plants and animals have to die and decay. In order for growth to occur in a complex organism, old cells have to die and be replaced by new cells. This is biology. In order for the biological creation to work, death already had to be operating because death, in its proper place, is a natural part of life. Where the text of Genesis is concerned, God didn't say "everything" would die or begin to die if the fruit was eaten, He says specifically to Adam, literally, "you will die death." Death, a function of the cycle of life, was introduced to our ancestors specifically, whom God had initially set up so that they would live indefinitely by using the Tree of Life as a primary food source. An assumption can be made that "Adam" understood what God was talking about, which he or they wouldn't have had death as a function of life not existed prior to this.

     At one point, while the men were out hunting, the women went out gathering fruit. One of the women happened to notice other animals eating from the tree or stand of trees they were told not to, possibly a kind of skink (which look very much like snakes with legs and can also be fruit eating; some of which are bronze colored referring back to the Hebrew word for "serpent" in Genesis, Nahash) and then had Satan whisper into her ear that the fruit would be fine to eat because the animals were eating it. The woman then picked fruit off the tree and added it to the fruit being brought back to the rest of the family group. The women then prepared the fruit and the meat which the men brought back, most not knowing what was in the food they were eating that evening. By the end of the evening, every member of the family group had eaten the toxic fruit and had their brain chemistry and DNA irrevocably altered. 

     The effects began to show by the next day when they, the men in particular, began to react to the presence of the naked appearance of the opposite sex in ways they hadn't before, guilt, embarrassment, jealousy, rape, and so on. And they started to cover up with anything they could find to mitigate the previously unknown problems. Eventually, God intervened, pulling them all away from their previous homeland and out into the open to get them away from their original, primary food source which would extend their physical lives indefinitely. This was done as a mercy because the limbic systems of their brains were now malfunctioning from their original intended purposes, and allowing them to die naturally would be kinder than allowing them to live forever like that. Still though, their original food source had done its job so thoroughly that the individuals of the family group continued to live for hundreds of years while still producing offspring. 

     As they moved out into what is now Mesopotamia, Europe, Africa, and Asia they encountered other, unafflicted species of human. Some interactions were peaceful, many were not. Some were incredibly violent as the unafflicted males were slaughtered, along with their offspring, and their females taken as mates. Eventually, over the course of tens of thousands of years, there were no unafflicted humans left on Earth. Taking the natural course of life, their DNA began to multiply mutations by way of normal exposure to the environment, as well as interbreeding with those humans who had never been exposed to the original primary food source, and their lifespans began to shrink dramatically until what is now considered an average human lifespan.

     The word "'adam" in Hebrew means "human being," but it also refers to the human race in general as descendants of that first human being. When God says in Genesis that the day Adam eats of it "you will die death," He didn't mean Adam would drop dead in that moment, He meant 1) He would remove them from the food source that was extending their life indefinitely, and 2) it would eventually lead to the death of his race, himself and his progeny entirely.

     Y-Chromosomal Adam and Mitochondrial Eve both converge roughly between 70k-100k years ago. Human beings began wearing clothes roughly between 70k-100k years ago. One of the migrations of human beings out of Africa occurred roughly between 70-100k years ago followed by a migration back into Africa roughly about 60k years ago. The last neanderthals are though to have died out roughly about 30k-40k years ago in Gibraltar, and homo erectus and one or two other species between that 40k and 100k mark. For this reason, it can be reasonably assumed that the events between Genesis 2 and 3 occurred between 70k-100k years ago. There are other points from articles I have read which tend to support this narrative as well, though I think listing all of them would make this post ridiculously longer.

     It occurs to me also that the reason why this particular fruit affected our ancestors in this way and not the animals which were eating from it is because we were also eating from the other tree, the Tree of Life. There was a chemical interaction between the two which caused our neurological malfunction. The species of "tree of good and evil" may still exist today as a common fruit tree and we wouldn't know the difference because the substances from the tree of life have been completely removed from the human system. The species of the tree of life however was specifically barred from us, and probably no longer exists.

     I think I might have tracked down the type of fruit and compounds responsible for causing the malfunction known as hamartia. The fruit from the "tree of the knowledge of good and evil" was a stone fruit type tree, perhaps an ancestor species of the almond, peach, and nectarine. Its fruit held large amounts of cyanogenic glycosides which are toxic in large quantities even today. Our ancestors in the garden were already eating from the "tree of life" ( a currently unknown species whose fruit had properties of repairing and maintaining human cell structure and DNA thus potentially prolonging physical life indefinitely), and already had the compounds from that fruit in their systems on a regular basis. The substances from the two fruits reacted causing neurological damage to the limbic system (the hypothalamus specifically), and permanent damage to the DNA ensuring that every child born after would be afflicted with the same problem. Such fruit is harmless today, relatively speaking, because the species of fruit it interacted with is extinct (its remains probably still sitting under the Black Sea). Just some thoughts from some research I was doing today. I've potentially only got one half of the equation, but it's not terribly hard to imagine such a substance reacting in this way with another designed to directly affect cellular and DNA structure, and possibly designed to affect the limbic system of the brain as well, effectively delivering the cyanide toxin. 

     The question here though is, does it matter exactly how Genesis 1-4 happened? Not really. What matters is that it happened and the affects and consequences of those events still impact us today, necessitating the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ for us and for our final deliverance from our ancestors' mistakes as well as our own choices.

On Sacrament

What is Sacrament? 

     This is a concept that many from non-sacramental Christian traditions often find difficult to understand. Often, they mistake it for a kind of "magic," or as a kind of salvific (referring to justification) work to be done, and as such reject it outright and don't understand why the sacramental traditions put such an emphasis on it. Frequently, this misunderstanding is why those traditions are often accused of salvation by works. It does not help that those within the sacramental traditions themselves frequently don't understand the concept either.

     First, Sacrament is not magic. Magic (and not illusion) can be defined as the control of unseen forces by the manipulation of words, spell components, or incantations by a human being. The power and authority rests within the human being who is doing the incantations.

     Sacraments operate always by the priest or pastor requesting the Holy Spirit to effect them. Quite literally, the priest or pastor is asking for the Holy Spirit to perform a miracle. There is no personal power or authority residing in the person of the priest or pastor except for the Spirit of Christ who has been joined to them through their own baptisms. The priest acts, not from himself or herself, but "In Persona Christi," that is, "in the person of Christ." 

     In the liturgical rites involving Sacraments within the Catholic, Orthodox, and Anglican churches and their individual local divisions, there is always a prayer for the Holy Spirit to act and effect change, consecrate, bless, or seal (the Lutheran Church liturgies tend to omit this prayer, something with which I do not agree). The one possible exception to this is the Sacrament of Reconciliation, but even this involves prayer for forgiveness on the part of both the priest and the penitent, and the priest then pronounces a forgiveness and absolution which has already been effected by the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

     Theologically, a Sacrament is defined as "a visible expression of an invisible grace." In my humble theological opinion, this is no different from the Christian remaining in Christ and walking in the Spirit as the Christian in submission to Jesus Christ, and asking the Spirit of Christ to act and speak through him or her, becomes the visible manifestation of the invisible Spirit of Christ. They act and speak "In Persona Christi" for all those around them, allowing those around them to interact with and experience Jesus Christ through them. And this is the fundamental practice of genuine Christian discipleship.

     According to the Roman Catholic and Old Catholic Churches, there are seven recognized Sacraments. According to the Anglican and Lutheran churches there are two. But I personally tend towards the Eastern Orthodox view that there is no specific set number of Sacraments, but rather every action done in and by the Spirit of Christ through the Christian is a Sacramental action, and that the Christian life lived as Jesus and Paul taught is a holistically or wholly Sacramental life, asking the Spirit of Christ to act and speak through you, and disengaging from yourself. So, to act by the Spirit of Christ is to act Sacramentally. To speak by the Spirit of Christ is to speak Sacramentally. And to pray by the Spirit of Christ is to pray Sacramentally.

     The Sacramental life then, as I have described it, is not magic, but miracle. It is not superstitious, but empowered by the Holy Spirit. It is the life of Jesus Christ being experienced and being radiated by the disciple of Jesus Christ to all those around them.

Against Legalism

      Legalism and rigid rule following is about as demonic in origin of a doctrine as can be introduced among Christians as is possible. Legalism is all about depending on one's own natural responses and behaviors to be "good." It's about trying to force your own physical, biological, and neurological devices, that is, your flesh to obey a moral code of some kind, which it can't do in the first place and of which Paul writes those who are in the flesh cannot please God. 

     More insidious than this, and more subtle, it disengages us from the Spirit of Christ as it engages our own flesh, and amplifies the sin within us through the moral code until it is rampant and overflowing. It leaves the Christian vulnerable to attacks by their own fear, aggression, jealousies, sexual drives, as well as deceptions by quite literal demons and unclean spirits whispering lies and thoughts into your minds to exacerbate the problem and incite your flesh to riot even more, pushing you to more extreme presentations of sin such as substance abuse, violence, theft, adultery, and murder, and in the worst case scenario, leaves you open to oppression and control by them. Legalism and rule keeping appeals to the flesh, but leads only to one's own destruction. It is the direct opposite, and is in direct opposition to genuine discipleship to Jesus Christ. 

     The only way to protect yourself against these things, to protect your psyche, your soul, is to disengage from your own natural responses and behaviors, to disengage from your "flesh," and to ask and trust the Spirit of Christ to act and speak through you, producing the "fruit of the Spirit," aside and apart from any moral code the flesh might try to obey. It is the Spirit of Christ within us that such unclean spirits and demons tremble at. 

     It is His love manifest through us that makes rule keeping and legalism unnecessary, because what law or rule would love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, courtesy, and self-control break? Could you see the Spirit of Christ steal, murder, commit adultery, or do drugs through you? God forbid. If your practice consists of trying to keep rules, or God forbid the whole Torah (Paul dealt extensively on this), then you are only trying to do what Scripture says, and what the Apostles themselves recognized, could not be done, but would only lead to death, "For the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life." 

     Demons and unclean spirits want you to make yourself vulnerable by law keeping and rigidly following rules and moral codes. They want to keep you powerless, because there is only power and protection for us by being under the control and possession of the Spirit of Christ, and it can't be both. Either you are enslaved to your own flesh, or you are enslaved to the Spirit of Christ. Either you are being controlled by your own natural drives, or you are being voluntarily controlled by the Spirit of Christ, and He will not force you to submit to Him. 

     Finally, it is legalism which calls into question someone's salvation through Christ as though breaking a rule or law could damn someone to where Christ's blood won't cover it, which is a complete and utter lie. It is legalism, and not walking in the Spirit or remaining in Him, which says you haven't done enough to earn your salvation. The only thing which damns is willful and knowing rejection of Jesus Christ for one's own perceived benefit. 

     Don't let yourself be deceived. Legalism and law keeping is not a Christian teaching. It is not what Christ taught. It is not what Paul taught. It will make you vulnerable to fleshly temptations and demonic attacks, and ultimately its goal is your death. Only by submission to the Spirit of Christ, and voluntary cooperation with Him, will you be delivered from all of this.

Thoughts on the Necessity of Baptism

 Is Baptism necessary for salvation? 

      I think the problem is that when most Christians say the word "salvation," what they really mean is "justification," that is, the total forgiveness and acquittal of one's sins based solely on the finished work of Jesus Christ in His death, burial, and resurrection. This has nothing to do with anything we do or can do. Justification is totally out of our hands, and, I believe, is a blanket forgiveness upon all human beings everywhere which can only be thwarted by deliberately rejecting and blowing off Jesus Christ, knowing for certain who He is and what He's done.

     But baptism is necessary for that aspect of our salvation known as sanctification, that is, rendering our own natural behaviors inert and submitting to the Spirit of Christ acting and speaking through us. Baptism joins us to Jesus Christ and enables us to disengage from our own natural responses and behaviors and to engage with or be engaged by the Spirit of Christ and His responses and behaviors. Baptism enables discipleship as Jesus and Paul taught it, and is the point of no return as one is grafted to and united with Jesus Christ in His death, burial, and resurrection. Without baptism, we are stuck with only our natural psychological responses and behaviors, and are cut off from the control of the Spirit of Christ. We cannot truly be disciples of Jesus Christ without the first step, the initiation of baptism into Jesus Christ. No one can be a disciple of Jesus Christ unless they are possessed of the Spirit of Christ, because being a genuine disciple is to follow Jesus Christ in His submission to the Father to where He didn’t say or do anything which the Father didn’t say or do through Him. This requires that we be joined to Him and in submission to the control of the Spirit of Christ in the same way that Christ was joined to the Father and in submission to the control of His Spirit. This is what I believe the Scriptures refer to as entering or inheriting the kingdom of God, as well as walking in the Spirit and remaining in Christ.

     Can one be forgiven or justified without baptism? Absolutely. Can one begin the process of sanctification without it. Not in the slightest. That's like constantly trying to turn on your desktop computer without having it connected to the wall outlet. You can press the power button all you want, but it's not going to turn on.

     All proceeding translations are mine from the Greek text.

     Romans 6:3-14

     “Or are you ignorant that, as many of us as were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into His death? We were then buried together with Him through [that] baptism into [His] death, so that just like Christ was raised from the death through the glory of the Father, in the same way we also should walk with a freshness of life. Because if we had become grown together by the likeness of His death [being baptism], on the other hand we will also be of [His] resurrection; recognizing this that our old human being was crucified together with [Him]; so that the malfunctioning body would be rendered inert, for us to not be enslaved any longer to the malfunction; because the person having died had been set right from the malfunction. Yet if we died together with Christ, we trust that will will also be alive together with Him, knowing that Christ having been raised from the dead doesn’t die any longer, death doesn’t own Him any longer. Because the person who died, died to the malfunction once for all; yet the person who is alive, is alive to God. In this same way also you figure yourselves on the one hand to be dead bodies to the malfunction yet living to God by means of Christ Jesus.

     “Don’t then let the malfunction reign within your dying body with the result of obeying its drives, neither  offer the parts of your body to the malfunction weapons of wrong, but offer yourselves to God like alive from the dead and the parts of your bodies to God weapons of a right state of being. Because your malfunction will not have ownership of you; because you are not subject to the Torah, but subject to [the] charity [of God.”

     It’s clear in this passage that baptism is what joins the disciple to Jesus Christ according to Paul. It’s also clear as he continues on in this chapter and through chapters 7 and 8 that this joining to Him is what enables us to not be owned or enslaved by the malfunction present in our bodies.

     Mark 16:16

     “The person having believed and being baptized will be saved, yet the person having disbelieved will be judged against.”

     Here, there’s a clear demarcation it seems. On the one hand, those who believe AND are baptized will be saved (also delivered, rescued), yet those having disbelieved will be judged against. No mention of baptism is found in the second part of the sentence. What happens to those who believe, but haven’t been baptized? There doesn’t seem to be any indication of being judged against, yet no indication that “they will be saved.” Exactly what does Mark mean by “will be saved?”

     John 3:5-6

     “Jesus responded, ‘Amen, Amen I say to you, if someone wasn’t born from water and Spirit, he isn’t capable of entering into the kingdom of God. The thing having been born from the flesh is flesh, and the thing having been born from the Spirit is Spirit. Don’t be shocked that I said to you, it is necessary for you to be born from above.’”

     What does it mean to enter or inherit the kingdom of God? In my opinion, this is the same concept or idea as walking in the Spirit, or as John described it also, remaining in or “making your home in” Christ. According to Jesus, in order for that to happen one must be born from water (baptism or immersion, already a well established Jewish practice for initiating proselytes into Judaism) and Spirit (being possessed of the Spirit of Christ as Paul described in Romans 8:9). Jesus explains that there is a clear line between what is born from flesh and what is born from Spirit. In another place in the Gospels, He is also clear that a good tree can’t produce bad fruit, but a rotten tree can’t produce good fruit. The flesh, our natural physical biology and neurology, can’t produce behaviors of a Spiritual origin, and neither will the Spirit of Christ produce behaviors of a biological or neurological origin. In order for us, being physical and biological beings, to produce behaviors such as the fruit of the Spirit, what produces our own natural behaviors must be rendered inert and our body parts enslaved to the Spirit of Christ.

     Titus 3:5

     “He didn’t save us from achievements which are by means of a right state of being which we did, but down His mercy through the bath of rebirth and renewal of the Holy Spirit.”

Again, Paul connects a bath of water, that is, baptism, with salvation. And like with Jesus statement, he connects one being saved, or entering the kingdom of God, through both water and the Holy Spirit.

     John 2:2

     “And He is a satisfaction about our malfunctioning behaviors, yet not just about ours, but also about the whole world’s.”

     Who is the “our” that John is referring to? In context, it would be the people to whom John is writing. A cursory examination of the text of the letter will reveal that He is clearly writing to fellow disciples. So then, he states that Christ is a satisfaction for not only the malfunctioning behaviors of those who are disciples, but also for the whole world’s malfunctioning behaviors. That is, His sacrifice covers not just those who have committed to be His disciples, that is, Christians, but even every human being who hasn’t. As only His disciples are baptized, it means that He is a satisfaction for all those who aren’t as well.

     The Christian life, the life of Jesus Christ flowing through His disciple, is fundamentally a supernatural life. It is a life not meant to be lived with us left to our own devices as to how. It is a life meant to be lived by the Spirit of Christ through us and in cooperation with us.