Jeff v. Clementine, Ancient Leviticus Scroll, Colossians 2, A Little Abu Zakariya

Yeah, you sure we're here? Not really sure, been listening to very interesting things from the other room, uh, like, duh! Um, and a few other words. Not bad words. Just like, idiot. Things like that. What happened was, we started a minute early, and someone realized we were a minute early.

So they hit the button under the glass. We put it under glass for a reason. That's the same thing. Remember Galaxy Quest? You know, how they had to get through the chompers to get to... Yeah, that's what happened.

Technical Setup, Warp Core Humor, and Starting the Program

And so, uh, Warp Core shut down everything. We're gonna have a Warp Core in here, by the way. Did you know that? Yes. Someone's actually using... I don't... do not understand how these 3D printer things work.

That's sort of like a replicator to me. You know, Star Wars... Star Trek? Star Wars. Oh, good grief. I'll never hear the end of that without that, either. Uh, it's a Star Trek thing, but, uh, yeah, we're gonna have a Warp Core.

We'll probably put it up there someplace. And maybe we can put a remote control on it, so when I start getting excited, you know how the Warp Core and the Enterprise, at least the Enterprise-D, would start going faster and faster the faster they were going.

Maybe we can make it work that way. Anyway, got a lot to get to today. Most important thing right off the bat. Everybody has to see this debate, because I've never seen a Reformed apologist just so completely shut down as in this.

It's just, as a Reformed apologist myself, it's pretty amazing to, you know, have to look at something like this. It's very, very hard. But, you know, we need to be honest. When one of our own gets owned, we need to learn from what happened.

And so, for those of you who did not see Jeff Durbin next week, which is very confusing, because how could you see Jeff Durbin next week when it was only on Tuesday night, but it's the name of the program.

It's very confusing. It's almost like a time thing in Star Trek, where you, how can the Tribbles, you know, it gets very confusing. But anyway, there was a debate on, there Tuesday night. I'm really surprised that Jeff allowed it to go out, because it was just, wow.

It was really amazing. So I thought we'd take a quick look at it, see what we can learn from it. So here's, watch for a particular question where Jeff is just silenced. You know, if atheists pick up on this, listen to the question that was asked.

And have you seen this? You haven't had a chance to see this, okay. All right, so here we go. Here's, I need to move that over here. Here we go. Here's what happened.

I can do karate kick. Can you seriously do karate kick? Yes. Let me see. You sounded not very convincing in that one. So the two princes in Frozen are Olaf and Kristoff, right? Those are my favorite. Olaf and Kristoff.

He's not a prince. Olaf is a prince. No. Yes. No. Yes. No. Yes. No. Do you have a chin? You know what's going to happen? Your teeth are going to fall out. I know. But the song from Frozen, I think is actually a bad song.

It's kind of annoying. Let it snow. Let it snow.

No. Let it, let it go. What? It's called Let It Go? Yeah. Why do you think that? It is called Let It Go. I hear her sing it in the song.

It's, it's let it snow. Let it snow.

No. It's let it go.

Well, truth is all relative. So.

In my book, it says let it go.

Well, is your book the most important? Yes. This is why interfaith dialogues are so important.

So there you go. If the atheists pick up on that, and I can just, I can just see this happening someday in the future. I can see an atheist, you know, right in the middle of debate with, with Jeff going, do you have a chin?

There were a couple other, Summer told me there were a couple airlines that didn't make it into the final cut, which included your cheeks are short and your hair is dry. So it sounds like she pretty much went ad hominem.

And, you know, sometimes that's effective. How do you, how do you respond to something that cute when they go ad hom, you know? So she was obviously sort of sizing up her opposition and realized that, you know, that was, that was the direction to go.

So there's, there's Jeff Durbin getting owned by Clementine, who of course is my granddaughter. And that just had to be, had to be shown, had to, had to see that. I did not know about that. So that was, that was a bit of a surprise as I was on the program talking about atheism and culture and stuff like that.

And so there you go. There's, there's, there's, there's where you go. So anyway, something before I forget about it and go on to other things that I forgot to mention earlier, forgot to mention earlier program.

The Clementine Clip and Why It Matters for Apologetics

And that was a story that came out not to, it's been less than two weeks. So I figure it's still probably, you know, worthwhile. You may wonder what, what I'm doing. I have the, I have the ability to adjust the air conditioning on my phone.

And sometimes I forget to, to get it going a little bit better because once you close that door, it starts getting rather warm in here. So I just cooled it off a degree. Anyway, story came out. Let me see.

This is August 3rd. It's only a week ago today. Scientists have finally read the oldest biblical text ever found. And we mentioned this once before. This was in the Qumran scrolls and in other locations.

There have been manuscripts found that are in such a condition because they're scrolls that any attempt to unwind them is utterly destructive of them. They just, it just, it can't be done because they've been in that position.

They've basically fossilized in that position and the writings on the inside. And so they've just been preserved in the hopes that someone might be able to figure out how to do something with it in the future.

Well, someone came up with this brilliant idea that ink, the ancient ink would have a different basically x-ray signature than the papyrus or manual, whatever. It didn't have to be papyrus. It could be animal skin, whatever, whatever writing material it was written on.

And so if you scan a scroll, even though it may be, you know, it may be wrapped around itself, what, 10, 20 times. If you scan that scroll and then are able to, and of course you do it from different directions, stuff like that.

But, and then are able to map the differences where the ink is versus paper. It's not paper, but parchment, whatever it is. Then using computers, of course, you can basically unroll the scroll. And it is astounding the accuracy with which they've been able to do this.

Basically, the computer can unroll the scroll and reproduce exactly what's on the scroll without ever physically unrolling anything. It'll just, it'll stay in that rolled position forever, but we can read what's in it and read it very accurately.

And, you know, there is a wonderful example of the use of modern technology to provide us with something awesome. And so this is a scroll that is from the book of Leviticus. And remember, we spent, don't know how many months, maybe over a year of study in the holiness code, Leviticus 18 through 20, 21.

And then we did a bunch of other sections, Leviticus, Deuteronomy, tackling all the tough law code sections. And it was tough work, but we did. And it is fascinating to recognize how central the book of Leviticus is to New Testament theology.

I mean, you go to the book of Hebrews, Hebrews assumes that you have a knowledge of what is found in the Levitical text. You just, you have to have it. There's no other way to even be able to begin to understand the discussions of the day of atonement and the high priest and everything else if you don't know Leviticus.

So what did they find? Well, you'll notice the mainstream media didn't say almost anything about it. I mean, there's, you know, there's some, you know, the independents in the UK had a little story on it.

But if they had found massive changes, if they had found a whole new version of the book of Leviticus with completely different kinds of laws and stuff like that, that would have been all over the place.

It would have been front page news. They would have had Bart Ehrman and John Dominic Crossan and everybody would have been on your TV and computer screens and your iPhones and iPads and everything else.

But the fact that you didn't see any of that probably is explainable by the fact that what you have in this pre-Christian scroll is a excellent example of the Masoretic text stream with almost no variation whatsoever.

It's similar to the Isaiah scroll in being right there in the middle of the Masoretic, what becomes the Masoretic. It's anachronistic, obviously, to think of a first century BC manuscript as Masoretic because that's 900 years AD.

But the point is the, oh, someone in channel. Did you see it? You see it? Okay, someone needs to explain to Disc Golf. Does James White think Revelations was written before 70 AD? Disc Golf, it's...

I think that's cross purgatory worthy. I'm sorry? I think that's cross purgatory worthy.

It might be. It might be. Yeah. It's the book of... It's not Revelations any more than it's Psalms 106. It's Psalm 106. It's the book of Revelations. What are we talking about? Moses was in the bull rushes and he wrote the book of Leviticus.

And 1 ,400 years later, 1 ,300 years later, somebody wrote a copy, rolled it up. And 2 ,000 years after that, we're reading it with computers. And it demonstrates that there is no inherent necessary process of corruption in the transmission of the ancient biblical text.

And that the book of Leviticus read the same way in the days of Jesus that it reads today. Now, Christians have assumed this. But remember, Christians were assuming this before we had any evidence of it.

For a long time, the oldest manuscripts we had of the Old Testament went only back to about 900 years after Christ. The Dead Sea Scrolls launched us 1 ,000 years earlier. And here is just further examination of that.

And validation of the reality that we have the same text that was possessed in the days of Christ. Now, this, of course, is relevant very much to the accusations of fraudulent change, editing, alteration that are constantly presented against the text of the Bible.

Both Old and New Testament, even though those who launched those attacks are rarely overly detailed in telling us what they think has been changed or how it's been changed. But it was very fascinating to read about how they've done this.

And how the computer can just basically functionally unroll these scrolls that physically we aren't able to do it. But through the use of x-rays, we're able to actually accomplish this. I think that's absolutely fantastic.

I'm sure there's going to be more of that coming. Because I know there are other manuscripts. And we look forward to that. We invite that. We have confidence. We're not going to find something where you have some completely different kind of text.

Because if those texts actually existed, they would have left some kind of trace in the manuscript tradition. If they don't, then there's absolutely no reason to believe they ever existed. So, I think it's pretty cool.

I think it's really neat. And I think we'll see more of that kind of stuff in the future. So, pretty exciting stuff. Next, I would like to talk with you a little bit about... Well, we haven't nailed down the exact order of speaking and time.

And exactly how everything's going to work. But I'm getting pretty excited about the topics for the two Islamic discussions that we're going to be having. One in England. And one in South Africa. And, ah!

The Ancient Leviticus Scroll and the Reliability of the Text

Skyman came back. So, Book will now have to crawl on hands and knees and offer some type of gift to Skyman for having sent him off to Pras Purgatory this morning. He says it was accidental. He said he hit tab to fill in.

And it was really a likely story. I didn't believe it for a second. But, you know, Skyman might be very kind, generous, merciful. Oh, yeah, you've got nothing to talk about. You killed the entire program for ten minutes.

But, then again, he might just be Skyman. A little bit like the Southern rebels. I mentioned, because Book lives in Pennsylvania. And I said, you know, the Georgians invaded Pennsylvania once before. They're looking for round two.

Well, we'll take those hills the first day this time. And the rest of the battle will be different. If you don't know what I'm talking about, don't worry about it. It's channel stuff. And that was in Skyman's honor.

War of Northern Aggression history there. So, anyway, back to the trip coming up. I leave Sunday. Next Tuesday night, I posted a graphic. Did we get that? Has that been posted on our website anywhere?

Not yet? Okay. Zakir Hussain's folks there in Birmingham did a really nice job. When Micah says that the graphic is really good, that is impressive. Because Micah is a little bit on the picky side. So, when Micah says, hey, that was well done, then y 'all did good.

And so, we posted the information about the debate next Tuesday evening. Zakir Hussain and I are going to be debating the crucifixion. Of course, Zakir is a follower of Islam. He is a Muslim. And so, I can tell you right now, we're going to be talking about the historical evidence regarding the crucifixion.

We'll be talking about who's using a consistent historiographical methodology. Who's handling history because 40 Arabic words, Ptolemy has to do it that way. I'm sure it's going to come up. It has to come up.

But I will most definitely be raising the issue of the nature of atonement. The prophetic witness of the scriptures to the atoning work of Christ. It will be a wonderful opportunity for interaction for a number of hours between myself and Zakir Hussain in public with a mixed audience.

I would assume a majority Muslim audience. At least, I hope that's actually how it turns out. We'll see. This was put together fairly quickly. Zakir has probably had to be doing a lot of extra work to do that.

There's a lot of details and things like that to be able to do this. I'm very appreciative of his doing so. But then I got in touch with Yusuf Ismail concerning our get together in Durban, South Africa.

Later on, I think the week after that. And when I asked him, so what's been discussed? We need to talk about topics and things like that. What he wrote back, I hadn't remembered suggesting. But if I didn't, now that I think about it, I think I did.

But I think it's great. I think it's awesome. And it's going to be something totally new. I've not had this discussion ever before. And so the reason I'm mentioning all this is it's going to lead us into a little bit of a study of a scriptural passage here in a moment.

I really would encourage those of you, because I realize there are certain people watching this program that do not support what we're doing. And do not support debates, let alone dialogues of any kind.

And so I recognize that I can't simply assume that Christians will be supportive of outreach to Muslims in this way. But those who do, I would truly request your prayers for these encounters. Yusuf Ismail and I are going to be comparing and contrasting his understanding of the Islamic concept of Qadr over against a Christian understanding, my understanding, of the concept of predestination and election.

And we've never done that before. And it's obviously a challenging subject, but with so many really important ramifications. When I think of Norman Geisler's book, The Cross and the Crescent, what's the first thing I think of is the comparison of the Islamic view of God and the concept of Qadr with Calvinism.

Because, of course, Norm's strongly anti-reformed. And how many times I've addressed the differences that exist. Well, this will give us an opportunity to really do that to a new level of depth. Not that I'm going to have a whole lot of reading time between now and then.

But it's going to be a really, I think, really important subject. I've mentioned before what we're trying to do is to create a whole body of work that will be useful to Christians all around the world long after I'm gone.

And as a result, we want to address all sorts of different topics. And both of these debates, I think, will fill in areas. Yes, we've done crucifixion before, but from different perspectives and not with Zakir.

So, pray for these encounters. Pray for the people that I am debating. Pray for clarity of expression on both sides. If either side is not clear in expressing their perspectives, it lowers the value of the debate.

You want both sides to be very clear, to be very focused so that those listening have a really strong idea of what is being said, what is being argued. And so, please pray for these encounters as well as everything else I'm doing.

I mean, those aren't the only two things that I'm doing. I've obviously got a lot of teaching to be doing down in South Africa. I'm going to be at Antioch Bible Church again. Those poor folks just can't seem to get rid of me.

But I appreciate their allowing me to come. And also teaching at a new church I've not taught at before in the Durban area. So, it's good to be making new connections there as well. And as always, prayer for health.

Because, man, there is nothing worse than coming down with some horrible infection when you're far, far, far away from home. When the only place you want to be is in your own bed. Because if I'm sick, the only place I want to be is my own bed.

So, that's coming up. So, I leave on Sunday. I think it's a 15-day trip. And then next month is a trip to Germany. So, as I was thinking about next Tuesday evening's debate with Zakir Hussain, my mind turned to a subject that I address a lot.

I address a lot. Right as I turn the other direction, then we change which camera we're looking into. At least you didn't hit the button under the glass. That would be bad. We'll probably put the warp core right up with the tribbles.

Well, that's scary. Because if you put tribbles near a warp core, do they become giant tribbles? That's the question. We'll have to check that. The warp core next to the Borg cube. There's only so much room up there, though.

We're going to have to start swapping stuff out. So, I got a hint that I might have an Enterprise D headed my direction in the not-too-distant future, too. So, we might just have to put a table over in the corner and just sort of swap stuff out on a regular basis.

So, Rich just left, which makes me wonder what's going on out there. Anyway, I was on focus. I was on focus until he threw me off with the camera change. And then it's just like, squirrel, and off you go.

What were we talking about? Moses was in the bulrushes. That was something that old D .C. Martin used to always say. Whenever he'd get distracted, then he'd default back to Moses in the bulrushes. I've often utilized the illustration.

Well, I've told the story. I remember years and years ago, staying in the parking lot at PRBC. And, oh, package arrived today? I can't see it from here. Oh, yes, yes, good, good, good. That's for the trip, actually.

When you put covers on your computers, all the original ones they came out with don't work anymore. They don't fit. So, that one just has a straight plug-in. So, anyway, explaining why a package came and why I've got yet another USB-C port.

Dongle life. Those of you who have the new MacBook or the MacBook Pro or the MacBook know what I'm talking about. You have to have all these different dongles. I've often told the story of staying in the parking lot.

And I was talking with a really sharp brother. Nose Greek, really sharp mind. And I've been doing some work with Jehovah's Witnesses. And he said, you know, they say that in this particular text that what's really going on is this interpretation.

He says, you know, I don't know how to respond to that because it could mean that. And I remember saying to him, yeah, it could mean that. And he was taken aback. I said, you know, just on the basis of the grammar, syntax, vocabulary.

Yeah, that's a possible interpretation of that isolated text. Well, then how do we respond to that? And I said, well, Christian truth is not derived from single isolated texts. Christian truth is derived from not just Sola Scriptura, but Tota Scriptura.

There is a wholeness to it. There is a fullness to it that simply is not to be found in a, well, an outline systematic theology form. If you know what I mean. There are some systematic theologies that are pretty much just a long outline.

And you can just sort of look things up. You go, well, I want to know about Doctrine of God, Deity of Christ, Types of Acuna. It's sort of like a flowchart type thing. You may have noticed that's not how God chose to make his revelation.

He didn't give us a flowchart. He didn't give us that kind of Western mindset engineering manual style revelation. And that bothers a lot of people. A lot of people, that's exactly what they want. They don't want any gray areas.

They don't want any progressive revelation. They want, you know, Muslims, for example, as a whole, really struggle with this idea of progressive revelation. They have the idea, anachronistically again, that, well, if you believe in the Trinity today, that means that Abraham had to have the exact same content of faith that you have today.

There can't be any progression. There cannot be any further revelation. You just have to have it all at once type of a situation. And so a lot of people are bothered when they look at the Bible and it's like, well, you know, there are certain things that are clearer in other parts of Scripture than in previous parts of Scripture.

And certainly there's all the discussion about the relationship of the Old and New Testaments and what's called intertextuality and promise and fulfillment and just all sorts of stuff like that. And so what do you do about that?

How do you handle that kind of a situation? And I have emphasized repeatedly the reality that Christian truth is found in its fullest, most beautiful form in the unity and harmony of each separate scriptural book.

The letters of the New Testament, the Gospels, Acts, when you can allow them all to be what they are, you don't have to. I am concerned about a lot of American evangelicals that try to turn the Bible into something that's not.

They try to turn Paul or Peter or John into people they were not. They try to turn, wow, everybody tries to turn poetic literature into systematic theology literature. And instead of allowing all these forms of literature to be exactly what God intended them to be and to have the part and the place in the revelation of God's truth that God has chosen them to have.

I mean, you know, you look at Jesus' statement about the Holy Spirit spoke by the mouth of David and he's quoting from poetic literature. And you then take that and compare quotations from the book of Leviticus we were just talking about in regards to the computer scanning and stuff like that.

Leviticus and many of the Psalms are very, very different in form, in original context. And yet they're all a part of this. I love the term tapestry, orchestra. You know, you could say that the poetic is the woodwinds and the prose is the string section.

And, you know, you could however you want to try to visualize it. The point is that an orchestra would be really boring if it was all made up of trombones. I mean, you may love the trombone, but there's just only so much you can do.

With 70 trombones. But if you allow for all the richness of the different kinds of instruments, then you can produce the beautiful, beautiful music. That is a part of a symphony, a Beethoven symphony or a Bach or Mozart or whoever it might be.

Rimsky-Korsakov, Scheherazade. There you go. I'm also going with my favorite. And when you keep that in mind, then when we talk about something like the atonement of Christ. The crucifixion of Christ and its theological accomplishment, atonement.

Unfortunately, very often in our day. Well, let's just put this way. Twitter theology stinks. Christian theology was never intended for Twitter. That doesn't mean that you cannot say true things in Twitter.

You can. The point is, sort of like when Doug Wilson said to that woman in the debate or the screaming match at the university. I often have thoughts that take more than two or three sentences to express.

In the same way, Christian truth very frequently suffers when it is artificially truncated. Especially when it's artificially truncated to fit modern man's sensibilities of brevity and shortness of attention span.

And so what you really find, I think, the deepest, most satisfying evidences that I have of the inspiration of Scripture. Of the truthfulness and beauty of Christian doctrine. Come from seeing the harmony of the many parts as they come together to present the whole of Christian truth.

And it's very difficult at times to bring that kind of stuff together, even in a multi-hour debate. Let alone in a Twitter conversation or something along those lines. But the beauty of it is, once you understand this concept and you start realizing 40 different authors, 1500 years.

Think of all that had happened. The empires that had risen and fallen during that time period. Two and a quarter different languages. All these different people involved and yet each one contributes its own extremely vital part to the entirety of the symphony.

And the deepest, most satisfying rendition of Christian truth is to be found in allowing the whole of the parts to speak. We want our proof text lists and very often that's not all that satisfying. I think the Christian soul is primarily satisfied by a pan-canonical, all the way across the canon, testimony to the truthfulness of these things.

Now, what am I referring to? Well, in thinking on the atonement, there was some discussion this morning in channel about Colossians chapter 2. And as I was looking at that, I thought, you know, let's spend a few minutes on the dividing line.

Looking at Colossians chapter 2. I've got one other topic after this to look at. We got started 10 minutes late, so I figured I'd get a little more time. Because here in Colossians chapter 2, anytime that you look at a text of scripture, you always want to have in the back of your mind some of these.

It was the classes that I took in seminary that most everybody else found really boring and I found to be really important. Old Testament backgrounds, New Testament backgrounds, intertestamental period.

Man, most of my fellow seminary students were just like, who cares? I'm going to be pastoring a church. I don't need to know this stuff. But I was already involved and apologetic, so I was like, oh, this is good stuff.

This is important. And when you look at any book, one of the first thoughts across your mind needs to be, where does it sit in the canon and what's its relationship to other books? So in other words, if you're looking at Colossians, then you want to be thinking about Paul.

You want to be thinking about where this was in his ministry. And as you look at the epistle itself, what's really important to remember is there are parallels to each of the sections of the epistle to the Colossians.

Where? Ephesians. Ephesians and Colossians, from what we can tell, are written at the same time. They're sent out at the same time. There's all sorts of parallels between them. And in all probability, when in Colossians chapter 4, Paul says to the church there, read the epistle.

It's coming from Laodicea. That's probably Ephesians. Ephesians was probably a circular letter meant to be circulated around the churches of the Lycus River Valley. And that book would reinforce what Paul has been saying in Colossians.

So there are parallels. One of the important parallels between, I think it's what, Ephesians 1 .7 and Colossians 1 .14, I think, redemption through his blood. And there's a parallel corruption that comes in.

And so the King James only people are like, see the NIV is the bloodless Bible. And we've talked about that type of thing. So there are parallels to be found between these texts. So when you keep that in mind, you start looking at the subject of the book of Colossians and you see really important echoes of what is found in Ephesians.

What do we find in the first chapter of Ephesians? But one of the most in-depth discussions of God's overarching purposes to the praise of his glorious grace. Remember in the last program, I was explaining some of this from Ephesians chapter 1.

And the relationship of the Jews and the Gentiles and the one Christian church, so on and so forth. So there you have the strong emphasis upon God's sovereignty and upon the fact that God's doing these things and God's accomplishing these things.

And we look at the verbs in Ephesians 1, in Romans chapter 8, again, paralleling relevant passages from the same author. You see that God is doing these things. God's almost always the subject and man's the object.

It's not God has made potentialities and man is working these potentialities out. None of that kind of stuff. So with that in mind, if you look at Colossians chapter 2 and you want this. When you look at Colossians chapter 2, and I have to change over to it here.

There it is. Should have it now. Just these two verses for now. And you, and this is plural. We can make the application to each individual, but it's plural. You being dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh.

Here's the first real key term to look at. So this is one of those wonderful words. We just pack a bunch of stuff on to make a nice long word. Poieo, to do or to make. Zoe, life, soon, together. And so, to make alive, together with.

He made you alive together, soon, alto, with him. Now, when you look at that, you go, you see this epsilon right there. With the lengthening of the thematic vowel, this is an aorist. So it's a simple past action element.

And so he made you alive together with him. Well, the only real consistent way to understand that is we often talk about the reality of the fact that the elect are united with Christ. So that his death becomes their death.

And his resurrection becomes their resurrection. And so there is this odd word to make alive together. But who's doing it? We didn't make ourselves alive. This is an action of God. This is God's activity.

This is God's working. He did this. Not you did this. You didn't make yourself alive. You didn't actuate some kind of a process or utilize sacraments, grace that have been made available to you, whatever.

He made you alive together with him. Now, this is one of those situations where a lot of people will, a lot of preachers and teachers will look at a text like this. And rather than having the thought, well, this book is written at the same time, contains many parallels to what we have in Ephesians.

Instead of going over there and getting some light from Ephesians and you have the whole discussion of God's sovereignty and you were predestined in him and this constant emphasis upon in him, in him, in him and here now together with him.

Instead, most will just sort of look at it and just try to fit it into an already existing overarching theological scheme. Well, it can't really be meaning this or it can't really be meaning that. And when you do that, you end up missing the real heartbeat of the text.

Just as when you look at the golden chain of redemption, it's what God does here. Likewise, it is what God does. He made you alive together with him. And how could he do that? Well, he's working out the purpose to the praise of his glorious grace, Ephesians chapter one.

That's the parallel book, right? And so this would, in Ephesians, what else does it say? We have been seated together with him in the heavenly places, in Christ Jesus, union with Christ, his death, our death, his resurrection, our resurrection, that vital union continues to exist.

It's all right there. It's perfectly appropriate to let that light shine on this text as well. That is not an invalid bringing in of some external authority. This is appropriate exegesis. Now, I realize, I suppose I should mention this because somebody is going to run off and buy a commentary someplace and go, Hey, this guy said X, Y, and Z in this commentary.

Almost any modern commentary that you're going to pick up on Ephesians or Colossians is going to address the issue of authorship and the fact that there are many people who reject Pauline authorship of Ephesians and Colossians.

And when you ask why, it's because it addresses questions that they, in their theory, don't believe would have been relevant to the early church. And of course, then by arbitrarily creating word lists based upon presuppositional theories, you can try to say, and the vocabulary is different.

Always remember something. Almost any vocabulary argument is dependent upon the honesty of the person compiling the vocabulary list. Because as I've pointed out many times before, if you take Bart Ehrman's scholarly works and compare his popular level works on the basis of vocabulary, the same man didn't write all those books.

He will tell you because he gets the royalty checks for them that he did. But again, it's a rigged game as to what you get to choose as being the data set in regards to any of these types of things. So, he made you alive together with him.

And how could he do this? Here we have that beautiful word charis, grace. It's charis saminos, and hence, to forgive. Having forgiven us all the transgressions, or all our transgressions, translating the article in that particular fashion.

So, what's necessary for being made alive? How is it that God can justly make us alive together with him? Well, the impediment to so doing is penalty of sin. It's penalty of sin. So, if there is forgiveness of sin, then you can give and grant spiritual life, which is what God has done.

So, what do you see here? You see the necessary interrelatedness of all the different topics that we tend to spread out. And we put the verses about one topic over there, and over here, and over here.

And because they're all over the place, we don't really see the big picture. We don't see how they're related to one another. The justice of God's making us alive together with Christ is intimately related to Christ's perfection as Savior that brings about forgiveness of sins.

He couldn't make us alive if he didn't have a basis for the exercising of that grace. This is where, in talking with Muslims, we have a fundamental difference. From the Muslim perspective, he can do whatever he wants.

Justice doesn't matter. His law does not have to be fulfilled. It does not have to be atonement. But it's clear that in the inspired scriptures that were written long before Muhammad came along, there is an intimate relationship between making us alive together with him and having forgiven us all of our transgressions.

So, regeneration, being made alive, is directly related to the forgiveness of all of our transgressions. And, having canceled out, it could be to, in a construction sense, plaster over, to wash over, to wipe out, and hence, by extension, to cancel the against us handwriting twice dogma sin.