Questions and Answers with Andrew Rappaport

Q&A Format, Bandwidth Issues, and Live Questions

Well, welcome to the Striving for Eternity Academy's Q &A session. That stands for questions and answers. I have questions and you are going to provide the answers. No, I guess that doesn't quite work well, does it?

No. Okay, well then I guess you'll have to ask the questions, but only if you are live in the chat room. And then I hope to find someone else that is smarter than me that can answer questions. Anyone?

Anyone? Buehler? Buehler? Okay, I just dated myself, I know. Some of you got that joke. All right, so we are doing the format a little bit different, don't know if you guys noticed, but the edges are cut off.

Basically we're going to try to cut down some of the bandwidth that we push, still keeping it high def, but not widescreen. I guess I'm wide enough, I understand. But we do know that there's been some issues and so because of that we are going to be doing this in a kind of a thinner broadcast so that we push less bandwidth through and hopefully that will prevent us from losing the signal.

We'll see. We'll see if Ryan complains or gets upset, but he may not actually be watching yet so we may be off the hook. But we are looking for any questions that you may have. If you are joining us live and are in the chat room, you can shoot us any questions that you might have.

We would appreciate it and that way we would be able to answer those questions. That would be the goal that we have of being able to answer the questions and so if you do have questions though and you're not watching live, you're watching on YouTube, you can always email us at academyatstrivingforeternity .org.

That is the email address that you can contact us, email us, and we will try to answer your questions. So we have a couple of questions that did come in previously that we're going to look to answer and then we're going to take some of the ones in the chat room.

Why a Good and All-Powerful God Allows Evil

The first question that we were asked is one that actually I think a lot of people get if they read Richard Dawkins or any of the New Atheists, this question that people phrase it this way, how could a good, all-powerful God allow evil in the world?

Now I want to take that question and break that down. There's a couple of things that people are doing in this. They're setting a kind of a scenario that they think is going to lock the Christian into having a difficulty with because their definition of good and all-powerful means that they're saying if God is all-good and all-powerful, He cannot allow evil.

That's basically their argument. Now can God be good and all-powerful and still allow evil? You know, if God didn't allow evil, if He just made us puppets, those same people that phrase these questions would complain because they'd say, well God made me a puppet and I don't have a choice.

You see, they would never be happy. But the real issue is that there is a thing of looking at God's attributes that we have to look at. God is good. He's all-good. In fact, we wouldn't know what goodness is apart from the nature of God.

God is what defines good. So without God, we couldn't even know what good and evil is. Evil is the absence of good. Now God is good, but it doesn't mean that because He's good that He cannot allow evil.

Now, it also means that when they say, well He's all-powerful, as if, well if He's really good, but maybe He wasn't strong enough to keep the devil from sinning. And He wasn't strong enough to keep evil out.

Now, both of those definitions of good and all-powerful are wrong definitions. God is good because of His nature. It's not that God is good from some outside source. God is good because that's who God is.

Goodness is defined by God. You see, we know what good is because we know who God is. So the attribute of goodness comes from the nature of God. Not the other way around. The issue with His omnipotence, the fact that He is all-powerful.

God is all-powerful and can do all things within His nature. In other words, when we look at His goodness and His all-powerfulness, it is part of His nature. So questions like, how could God make a stone so big that He can't move it?

Or so heavy that He can't move it? He can't do things outside of His nature. So, He is all-powerful and He allows evil. Now, in Romans chapter 9 it says He allows evil to put His attributes on display.

We wouldn't know His goodness if He did not allow evil. Now, did God cause evil? That becomes an interesting question because there are some verses that do seem to say that God caused evil. But yet, there's other verses that say God cannot tempt nor cause people to tempt.

God couldn't have done that. So, it seems like then you have a difficulty. Well, actually not. God is sovereign. It means He's in control of all things. Nothing happens. There's not a single atom that is out of God's control in the universe.

Therefore, God being sovereign, yes, He did cause evil in the sense that He allowed Satan, because that's where evil first occurred, He allowed Satan to rebel. And Satan did rebel. And so, God allowed that.

Now, did He directly cause it? Well, He allowed Satan to have a choice, just like Adam and Eve. And if you think about it, Satan and the demons and Adam and Eve were the only ones with a free will choice.

You see, after Adam and Eve sinned, we no longer have a free will. We have a will. We have a will that is enslaved to sin. And that's an important thing to remember. When we look at this, when we talk about these things, God gave us an ability to have a volition, a will.

But it's not free. It's controlled. It's influenced by our sin nature. So, can God be all good and all powerful and still allow evil? Of course. Why? Because His goodness is not something that God attributes to, but it's attributed to God.

In other words, goodness is defined by God. So, everything God does is good. He is strong enough to have prevented it, but He chose not to for reasons that He knows best. And the real issue is you and I are not in a place to question God and challenge Him.

So, that is the question of can an all-powerful, all-good, loving God allow evil in the world? Yes, He does. So, let's take a look at some of the questions. We're going to get to a question later on, on baptism.

We see that Ryan is in the room because he wants to know how much wood can a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood. The answer to that, Ryan, would be that a woodchuck would chuck as much wood as a woodchuck could chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood.

And if you need that slowed down, you'll have to just watch it on YouTube later. All right. So, we have a question in here saying, Who sends people to hell? That's actually kind of, when we look at what we just talked about with evil, that's actually an interesting question.

Who sends people to hell? Well, ultimately God does because God is in control of all things. And so, when we look at who sends someone to hell, well, is it the human person's responsibility, their sinfulness that sends them to hell?

Well, yes. They broke God's law. And in breaking God's law, they violated the law of God, guilty by His standard, and rightly deserve the punishment of hell temporarily. Wait, you mean it's not eternal?

No, no, no, no, stop, stop. I'm not believing in, like, soul sleep and that it's, you know, the... No, but hell actually is a temporary place. Most people don't pick up on that. If you look at the end of the book of Revelation, it says that hell is actually thrown into the lake of fire.

The lake of fire is the eternal resting place. So, those that go to hell go there temporarily until they are thrown into the lake of fire. So, who sends people to hell? Well, the people deserve it based on their violating of God's law, but it's God who judges them as guilty and will sentence them to eternity in the lake of fire by His judgment.

So, that is something that it seems to people like there can only be one answer to some of these questions. But with God, God works through people and works through things so that people might think there's only one answer.

When really, it's God is sovereignly working behind the scenes doing things. Take, for example, the writing of Scripture. Who wrote the book of Romans? Well, Paul wrote the book of Romans. Are you sure?

Because God wrote the book of Romans. Would it be right to say that God wrote Romans? Yes. Is it right to say that Paul wrote Romans? Yes, because they both wrote it. God worked through him so that what he wrote was exactly what God intended.

God is sovereign. That's why though Satan chose to fall, God is still sovereign. So, let's see. We have another question. This is a question being asked on behalf of Syed Ten Brunke. His favorite question.

If you ask him to ask a question, does light have mass? I'm just going to answer it because I don't know. Some people actually don't know the answer. And some people wonder why he asks it. It's actually a trick question because light does and does not have mass.

Light is a very special element that is both a photon and a wave. Now, as a wave, it does not have any mass. But as a photon, it does. Someone wants to know if I can quote the book of Romans. Yes. Romans.

Okay. The whole book. We don't have enough time. It would be good. I haven't memorized the entire book of Romans. I have memorized at different times the book of Titus. Full, word for word. 1 Timothy, I memorized word for word.

The book of James, I memorized word for word. Now, one thing I find when you do that kind of memory, it's really great to do. And you get a good idea of the book. And you really get a good handle on the outline of the book.

Something like when we talk about hermeneutics. It's really good to try to do that. Actually, when I preach a sermon, when I'm working on a sermon, and I'm preaching verse by verse, I am actually working on memorizing the book that I preach through.

And the reason I do that is so that I understand basically the layout. I've read it so many times. But then I actually print out the book. I slip it in my pocket because I'm one of those nerdy kind of guys.

I have the shirt pocket where you put a pocket protector. Okay, I don't have the pocket protector. But I put the verse there. And when I'm walking around, when I walk to my car, different places, I pull it out and I read it.

And what I would do is actually memorize the book that I'm preaching through. So, Philippians I have memorized. That's what, like four or five books that I memorized word for word. 1 John is the other one.

And so, I would do that. And it's really good. But I've also found that if you don't keep up on that, you forget it. But what I don't forget, what I do have is by doing that memorization, a really good outline.

If you mention something that's in Titus or Timothy or Philippians or James or 1 John, I may not know exactly chapter and verse, but I kind of have an idea where it is in proportion to the book and kind of where it is in the outline of the book.

I actually found 1 John to be a little bit harder because I guess I like Paul's writings because he makes point upon point, where John's kind of more circular. So, it was kind of, I was getting lost. Like, wait, was this from earlier in the chapter?

I kept getting myself confused. I know. It's not hard for me to get confused. Yeah, I know. So, one of the things that we also got a question in on the subject of evil was, why does God allow evil? And I kind of answered this already.

The answer to that is really because God decided to. I mean, that's really the answer. And are you and I something, we're just the clay. We are, in the hands of the potter, we are clay for him to use and for him to mold in any way that he chooses to.

So, he can do what he sees fit and it is purely up to him to choose to do what he wants to do. And so, what we want to do there is we want to look at things in light of that. But there are other answers that we can look at.

God allowed the Pharaoh in Romans 9, he allowed Pharaoh to do what he did to put his attributes on display. And so, one could say that God allowed sin so that he can display his attributes. But ultimately, the answer lies within the mind of God.

And you and I may never know and we should be okay with that. We should be able to look at things and realize that God is greater than you and I. And so, this is the thing that we always have to keep in mind.

I think that was all the questions on evil. We have some questions that I'm sure will get us in a great amount of trouble with some of our covenantal friends. But we had the question of why baptize by immersion?

Baptism, Covenant Theology, and Immersion

Okay, the question there is, it's really an issue that is broader than just the baptism question. In other words, baptism is actually kind of a surface level thing. And really what you have behind it is an approach to how you interpret scripture.

Now, when we get into the lessons on the study of the Bible, we will look into differences between what's called Dispensational Theology and Covenantal Theology. Now, we're also going to look at some changes that have been occurring within both of those groups.

Progressive Dispensationalism and what's called New Covenant Theology. So, there's been kind of a coming together, shall we say. But really what it comes down to is how you interpret the Bible. Now, if you interpret the Bible with Covenant Theology, you're going to see things with Israel that are going to be tied to the Church.

In other words, there's going to be a continuity, a continuousness, between Old Testament Israel and New Testament Church. And therefore, things that were true of Old Testament Israel apply to the Church.

So, you had a covenant that was seen in the sign of circumcision. The idea would be that that is carried over into the New Testament Church Age as being the sign of baptism that enters you into the covenant relationship.

Now, that's important to understand. A Covenant theologian would not believe, well, a good Covenant theologian, would not believe that baptism saves a person. It might surprise some people, but Covenant theologians, people that believe in infant baptism, believe also in believer's baptism.

In other words, if an adult becomes a believer as an adult, they'll baptize them. That's a believer's baptism. But the real question is, why do they baptize infants and why do they sprinkle? The baptism of infants would be because that's entering the child into a covenant relationship with God as a member of a family, a believing family that is a covenant family.

That does not mean the child is saved. It doesn't mean they're going to heaven. Now, some covenantalists would believe that because the child is before an age of accountability and was baptized because they're in a covenant family, that then they would go to heaven.

I don't really see any scripture to support that, and so I'll leave that aside for the moment. But really what we get down to is you have to understand it in the mindset of the covenants. Now, one argument I would have against it being a Baptist and a dispensationalist, I would say that we would see a difference between Israel and the church, and so the rules and things that apply to Israel wouldn't apply to the church.

But if we were to say that the sign of the covenant, because Israel is the church, then why would the sign have to change? The sign for Old Testament Israel was circumcision. Why change it then? I mean, come on, I was circumcised at eight days old.

I just don't remember it. Got over it. But the reality is that there is a change there. If nothing else, there's a change in the covenant. When we look at that, when we look historically, I think that there's two things we get to.

One would be this. The fact is that historically we see baptism, which the Greek word for baptize, baptismo, means to dip or to plunge, to be immersed in water. The idea of what was a Jewish baptism was when a Gentile became a Jewish person, became Jewish, they actually had a baptism in the temple that had a bath of water, and they would be fully submerged.

That's the reason why John the Baptist went in the Jordan where there was much water. That's why when you see in Acts 6 when Stephen is up with, shares the gospel with the eunuch, the eunuch gets saved and he goes, can we get baptized?

And he says they go down into the water to where there's much water. For sprinkling, you wouldn't need that. Historically, in the Didache, which is a very early book, kind of a book of instruction for the church, and you see in there baptism by immersion.

However, being in a desert area, there were places where there was no water, so it became in some areas common to pour water on people and then eventually to sprinkle. Now, if you believe in the covenants, there is a connection there.

If you're looking at a covenant theology and that view, you see the idea of sprinkling, the sprinkling of the blood on the altar with the idea of sprinkling the water. That may be that there's a sprinkling of the blood, but the question would end up being is, is that the atonement for sin, the baptism, sprinkling that water?

Well, no, that's not the atonement. It was what Christ did that was the atonement. So, I wouldn't see a clear connection there. I would argue that the word baptismo means to dip or to plunge, and it means to be submerged into water, and that's historically what we see.

And I would argue that we should baptize by immersion. Now, in my church, we did have someone that medically could not be baptized by immersion. And so, they poured water. Is that unbiblical? Well, we explained the reasons for it, and we had to then, you know, after explaining, say, what does it picture?

Baptism is something that is to picture, at least a believer's baptism, is an outward sign of an inward change. So, it's an outward sign of being cleansed. Therefore, what we have is it being a sign. It doesn't add grace as a sacrament, like the Catholic Church would argue.

It is an outward sign of something that happened inwardly. Now, in America, being baptized may not be as big of a deal, but you go to the Middle East, a Muslim country, where you are raised as a Muslim, and you get baptized, and now that's a death sentence, and you do it publicly?

Well, when you do that, what you have is you have baptism that's pretty serious. It's like a death sentence. That's actually what it was like in the first century. When a Jewish person got baptized, they were cut off from their family.

And keep in mind, this is in a culture where your family was everything. I mean, you lived with your family, even multiple generations. You worked with your family. All your friends were part of the family.

So, you lived in an area where everyone knew you. A Jewish funeral for someone that was baptized was basically that somebody would become a Christian, they'd get baptized publicly, and their family would actually bury an empty casket.

They'd bury an empty casket because of the fact they would treat them as dead. They wouldn't talk to the person, nobody in town. And often those believers ended up picking up and moving, and they would leave.

This is often how some think is some of the influence of the book of James to the scattered Jewish believers, some of it being Roman, some of it being family that may have been persecuting people. So, we have there is the idea that baptism had a more serious connotation, and that's why baptism was so important in the first century.

So, someone's asking in the chat room, did that almost happen to me? Yes, it did. For some who do know that I am from a Jewish background. Both my parents are Jewish. My father was raised Orthodox Jewish.

And it became a big deal when I became a Christian. And my father and my mother did discuss whether they were going to disown me. They were going to put me out of the house, and that was going to be that.

There were some things that went on within our family that at that exact time that my parents said, my dad had told me that was the reason that they did not, they chose not to do that. But they told me that they were very seriously considering that.

So, yes. Let me get to some of the other questions that we have in the chat room. We have two more questions in here. What conditions should a person, should cause a person to leave a church? You know, this one is one I think we do not take church unity and church membership serious enough.

We are to be members of a church, part of the body of Christ, the local visible body of Christ. And what we see a lot is people kind of treat church the same way they treat shopping. You know, like one store one day and go to another the other day.

You know, very loyal to, you know, one brand of clothes and then decide they tried something else and like that better. Church is not like that. Church is about you using the gifts that God has uniquely given to you for the body of Christ that God has put you into so that you can serve them.

Not them serve you. They will serve you because they are serving one another. But church is not about you. It is about church. It is about everyone else. So to leave a, to have an issue that would cause someone to leave a church, it should be pretty serious.

False doctrine would be one. But I mean real false doctrine. Not just you disagree with the pastor on something. I knew some people that were arguing because of the differences on divorce and remarriage.

I got to leave this church because the pastor is preaching, you know, false doctrine. Just because you disagree on something that may not be crystal clear or good people have differing views on it, does not mean that it's false doctrine.

Now if you argue that it's false doctrine because the pastor disagrees with you, what you're actually saying is that you're God. I mean you're saying that your doctrine is equal to God's doctrine. Now I often jokingly say that if you interpret the Bible consistently and correctly every time, you'll always agree with me.

And that's tongue in cheek. But the real issue is you and I still come to the Bible with presuppositions. And so what we have is we end up having the case where we have to learn to realize that you and I may interpret the Bible incorrectly at times.

We would hope we don't, but we might. And so we have to keep that in mind. And so one person is saying if I'm the pastor of the church that might be good cause to leave. Might be. I would leave that church if I could, but you know, hey, I can't, no.

But the reality is this. When we look at the reasons, I mean if you're moving, that's a good reason to leave a church. If you're moving outside of an area where it's too far. If you're, you know, if there's really, you want to leave on good terms though.

Okay. But if you see sin, sin that's not being addressed, known sin. I mean something that is discussed, it's known, and they're turning the other way because leadership just doesn't want to address it.

That may be an issue because what they're really sacrificing is the purity of that church. And they're more concerned with themselves than God. God wants a pure church. Ephesians chapter 5 says that God wants husbands to keep their wives pure like Christ does the church.

Christ wants His body to be pure. Okay. And so we want to not leave too quickly. So moving, false doctrine. But if they don't agree with your view of evangelism, I know a lot of people, it's like, well, they don't agree with me on, you know, way of the master.

Well, okay. So what? I mean if the church doesn't go out and practice evangelism, maybe that's why you're there. I mean God gifted you to evangelize so that you could be the one to go out and do the evangelism.

I mean that's a thought. Try it. So next question that we have is, how would you address the issue of a woman teaching men and women in a Sunday school? In my church, it would never happen. So I don't have to worry about it.

I wouldn't allow it. I don't believe, and we have a video on this that goes through this, but I would not allow a woman to teach men. I do not believe that's biblical. Okay. The issue there becomes one that if you have a church that is letting a woman teach a Sunday school class with men present, you ask them how they interpret 1 Timothy 2 .12 and following, and get into it.

Now if they're going to argue that that is cultural, that in the first century women shouldn't teach, but in this time they could, then you have to address the issue that the argument Paul makes there is one of creation order.

Adam was created first, not Eve. So that's not cultural. That's God's creation order as an issue. Second reason he gives is that it is a sin order. The woman sinned first and then the man. So it's the creation order and the sin order.

Now I know a lot of people try to make arguments. Yeah, but what about Deborah? Okay. Well, Deborah did it, and she was acted as a leader, and she even said that that would be to the condemnation of Israel that she would act in such a way.

She knew it was wrong and a judgment on Barak that she would do that. Now if you want to argue that this is what women should do because Deborah did it, then also remember that Deborah also went into a tent and stuck a nail through the head of her enemies.

Is that what God is calling you to do? Just a thought. So be careful when you try to use the Bible in a way that wasn't meant. So these are some questions. I don't know if we have any more questions from the chat room.

I'm told that if you want to ask a question in the chat room, do a little Q colon, and that should supposedly make a big Q for the person who's kind of on the other side over there, to post in this side over here so I can see the questions.

And sometimes I get to see snide comments that you are making. Some of you don't actually know that I get to see all the comments later. Someone sends me all the comments so I get to read them. Insert evil laugh.

All right. Speaking of that, see my Genesis question. What was the Genesis question? Did I miss the Genesis question? I don't remember seeing a Genesis question. So whoever posted a Genesis question, someone's asking how to do the big Q.

The big Q is a Q and a colon. So I'm not sure. Speaking of that, see my Genesis question. I'm not sure which question. That may have missed the chat room master of all things and who gets very busy doing other things.

So if you could repost your question, that would be great. You're looking for a question that might have missed. I know the chat does kind of scroll off so we may have missed it. So one question that this wasn't put as a question, but some people ask at Sunday school.

OK. Yeah, I guess that wasn't it. OK. So did God tell Adam to eat the tree before he made Eve? Genesis chapter two. OK. So the question of did God tell Adam not to eat the tree before Eve did? So I think they were really not sure.

The way the text is laid out, it seems that God may have given Adam the instructions and then he created Eve afterwards. And so the thought is that Adam may have been the one to explain the instructions to Eve.

That could be. It could be that Adam and Eve both received the instructions directly from God. Not really sure. But what we are sure of is that Eve clearly knew that eating of the fruit was wrong. Now, in Genesis chapter two, we see that when the serpent tempts her, he says, did God surely say that you could not eat of the fruit?

She says, God said you can't eat it or touch it. Now, she added something that wasn't given to Adam, at least in Scripture. Now, this is one thing to keep in mind with interpretation. Adam probably got more instructions than are recorded in Genesis chapter one and two.

OK. It's probably just not all recorded. So, could God, now I'm not saying he did, but could God have told Adam not to touch the fruit, but all we have recorded is do not eat the fruit? That could be.

That's not jump to conclusions. I know it's great for preachers to argue that, you know, Eve added to Scripture and see that's the problem. The reality is that we do see that that's a possible thing because we don't know if everything is clearly there.

So, the thing that you end up with there then is would you say that it has to be that Eve added to it? Well, we don't know. But what it does seem is that Eve clearly knew she should not eat of the fruit.

That we do know. And so, we have to keep that in mind. Christine is mentioning that Genesis 2, 15 to 17 states that he did. Then he saw Adam was alone. So, let's read that real quick. So, Genesis 2, I know you all brought Bibles to class.

Especially on stump the teacher day, you know. Alright, and the Lord God took the man and put him in the garden to work and keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man saying, You shall surely eat of every tree of the garden, but the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, you shall not eat of it.

For in that day that you eat of it, you will surely die. Then, that's time order then. Then the Lord said, it's not good that man should be alone. Understand your point there, Christine. But keep in mind, could God have given the instructions again to Eve after she was made?

It is possible. Okay. So, that is a possibility that God may have given the instructions both to Adam and Eve afterwards. That question you just posted, should I answer that? Okay. So, the question that came up in the chat room.

I'm just reading what says here. Would you accept it if Chris Holdworts wanted you to be a guest on Close Encounters Radio? Parenthesis, this is my own idea, close parenthesis. You made a good guest before.

So, the answer to that would be sure, Chris. If you're watching, I would love to be on again. It was great the last time. We had a lot of fun. So, anytime. I know Tony is away traveling. And lift up brother Tony in prayer this next few weeks.

I think he's in Scotland. I think it's for three whole weeks. I don't know if he's in Scotland that whole time. I think he's there for at least two of the weeks. So, lift him up. He's going to be doing a lot of ministering with brother Josh Williamson.

And so, they're going to be out on the streets. I'm sure they're going to be preaching in some churches as well. So, lift them up. But yeah, in the absence of the great Tony Miano who does a great job on Close Encounters Radio, I'd be happy to fill in.

But I'm sure that drives the numbers of listeners down into the gutter. You know, or just right to the dirt. So, someone's saying he's in Scotland and then going to Norway. Okay, that's what I had thought.

I thought that he wasn't going to be fully in Scotland the whole time. So, thank you. So, we could take maybe one or two other questions. One question I'm being asked here that just got tossed in is, why do I love Deuteronomy 29 .29?

Let me read Deuteronomy 29 .29. for you and then you'll know why I usually use this verse so often, especially when I teach systematic theology. Because when we go through systematic theology, we kind of get things that we just can't explain.

Some of the things even we went through today, where it's just really left up to God. God has the answer. Deuteronomy 29 .29, it's easy to remember where it is, says, the secret things belonging to the Lord are God, but the things that have been revealed belong to us and our children forever, and we are to do all the words of this law.

I love that because it says the reality that there's things you and I can't know. It talks about that God is greater than us. He's incomprehensible. If you remember in the systematic theology classes that we did, the very first lessons, the very first attribute of God that we looked at, was the question or the attribute that He is incomprehensible.

And so, when we look at that, when we see the verse there, we end up realizing that there are things you and I are not going to know, but those things that God has revealed to us are for us to obey. Alright?

So, and this may be the last question of the night, let's see, what would you say to someone who used Romans 14, 12 -14 as a rebuttal against judgment? Okay, as we always do when someone asks a question in Romans 14, let's open to Romans 14, and if we're going to be good students of Scripture, I hope that you realize that we won't read just Romans 14, 12 -14, but we're going to start a little earlier.

If we start, we'll start at verse 5, but we could even start earlier with the whole chapter. But one person esteems one day better than another, while another esteems all days alike. One should be fully convinced in his own mind.

The one who observes the day, observes it in honor of the Lord. The one who eats, eats in honor of the Lord, since he gives thanks to God. While the one who abstains, abstains in honor of the Lord, and gives thanks to God.

For none of us lives to himself, and none of us dies to himself. For if we live, we live to the Lord, and if we die, we die to the Lord. So then, whether we live or whether we die, we are the Lord's. For to this end Christ died and lived again, that he might be the Lord of both the dead and the living.