Believe, to
expect or hope with confidence; to trust (Webster's 1828 Dictionary).
Faith
Faith is a living, joyful, bold trust based on a personal relationship,
not an intellectual persuasion, nor an inner feeling.
It is a measure of our response to God's work in us. It
appears to observers as a smiling insanity, yet is in fact a glorious gamble
with a clear perception both of what the odds appear to be on the surface and
what they really are (John White, The Fight).
True faith is a steady and certain knowledge of God's
benevolence toward us, founded upon the truth of the gratuitous (free and
unwarranted) promise in Christ, revealed to our minds and sealed in our hearts
by the Holy Spirit (John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion,
III.2.vii).
The gift of faith (1 Corinthians 12:9) is the ability to see
something that needs to be done and to believe that God will effect it even
though it seems impossible (Ray Stedman, Body Life, p.43).
Hope
True hope is an expectation mingled with longing, founded not
on what is but on what could be; not on appearances, but on trust.
With respect to salvation, it is joyful and confident (NT Greek Lexicon).
'What is hope? An expectation of good, which though
uncertain has some foundation in what is known?' 'That is one thing that Men
call "hope". Amdir we call it, "looking up". But there is
another which is founded deeper. Estel we call it, that is "trust".
It is not defeated by the ways of the world, for it does not come from
experience, but from our nature and first being (J.R.R. Tolkien, The History of
Middle Earth Volume X: Morgoth's Ring, Part 4).
Love
In the NT, two different Greek words are translated love:
Αγαπαο (Agápao), the more common, is used in just as many different ways as we
use 'love' today. Φιλεο (Phileo) seems to be restricted to a feeling of personal
preference or instinctive friendship.
In English, different aspects of love are often
distinguished by different Greek words:
Αγαπη (Agápe) is sacrificial, objective love.
Φιλια (Philia) is true friendship: virtuous, mutual, and
familiar.
Ερος (Éros) is intimate, passionate, or sensual love.
Στοργη (Storge) is natural (usually familial) affection.
Φιλαδελφια (Philadelphia) is brotherly kindness – rough
& ready.
I think there is yet another kind of love – a feeling of heart-kinship, if not hand-kinship; perhaps partly a longing
for one of the other kinds. This may be what Plato meant when he defined
friendship as ‘that bond between human beings which is based on the rational
apprehension of the virtues of the other’.
The love which we are required to have for our neighbors is
not an affectionate feeling, but a steady wish for the loved person's ultimate
good as far as it can be obtained (C.S. Lewis, Answers to Questions on
Christianity #1).
God's love for us is unwarranted, sacrificial, personal,
effective, eternal, and unchangeable. Our loves should not (or can not) be all
of these.
Mercy is free and
undeserved compassion and forgiveness.
Mercy is not treating someone the way they deserve.
Grace is free and
undeserved good favor.
Grace is treating someone better than they deserve, in order
to make them deserve it.
Grace is used of the merciful kindness by which God,
exerting His holy influence upon souls, turns them to Christ; keeps,
strengthens, increases them in Christian faith, knowledge, affection; and
kindles them to the exercise of the Christian virtues (Thayer's Greek
Dictionary, Charis).
Forgiveness is
primarily an action, not a feeling (Matthew 18:21-35).
True forgiveness consists not in accepting the reparations
of the guilty party—it is paying the debt ourselves (Fodale).
Peace "is
God's gift to the human race, achieved by him at the cross of Christ"
(Boice).
Joy
In Hebrew, joy comes in many guises:
Simchah, shining joy, Masos or Sason, leaping joy, Rinnah,
shouting joy, and Gil, dancing joy.
In Greek, the differentiation is between the emotion and its
expression:
Χαρά,
εὐφροσύνη, and ἀγαλλιάωiς
are the nouns joy, exultation, and gladness, while χαίρω, εὐφραίνω,
and ἀγαλλιάω,
are the verbs rejoice, exult, and be glad.
Joy is associated etymologically with χάρις
(charis, grace), εὐχαριστία (eucharistia, thankfulness), and χαίρω
(chairō, glad greetings). Joy is said to be brought, filled, and made complete.
Today, joy is commonly equated with pleasure, contentment, satisfaction,
happiness, delight, or elation. But in the NT, joy refers to either an
assurance that a certain longing will be fulfilled, or to an response to its
fulfillment. The difference is that happiness is dependent on what ‘happens’ to
one externally while joy is the response of faith. Joy is hope fulfilled in
anticipation; it is sehnsucht
realized.
Joy proclaims, "You want—I myself am your want of –– something
other, outside, not you nor any state of you." The very nature of joy makes
nonsense of our common distinction between having and wanting (C.S. Lewis,
Surprised by Joy).
The Glory of God (as the end of all
God's works) signifies God's fullness (inherent excellence and great
worthiness) and the emanation (diffusion and communication, or outflowing and
manifestation) of this fullness (both generally to creation and specifically to
us as moral creatures) in the form of his truth and grace. This means that: God
communicates his knowledge, by enabling us to know him; his virtue, by enabling
us to love him; and his happiness, by enabling us to rejoice in him; all in
increasing fullness and perfection and unity, and directly and primarily and
inherently abounding to his honor and glory and praise (Jonathan Edwards, The
End for which God Created the World).
Covenant, Hebrew בּרית
(beriyt), Greek διαθήκη (diatheke).
Both breiyt in the HOT and
diatheke in the LXX and GNT properly mean disposition
or setting in order.
[The Greek word συνθήκη
(sunthēkē) meaning a
two-way covenant or compact is never used.]
God's covenant is neither a
compact between two parties in such a sense that one party would be at liberty
to reject the terms proposed, nor is it a testament or will, as if God had left
a legacy to man. The simple idea is that God has made an 'arrangement' by which
his worship may be celebrated and souls saved. (Barnes' Notes on the Bible).
Law
Mosaic Law, institutional law, or the law of the conscience.
To Sin is to miss
the mark, or to stray from the right path. The word sin comprehends
An act, contrary to God's revealed will, whether by commission
or omission.
A state, or a lifestyle contravening God's law. Sin is
lawlessness (1 John 3:4).
A nature, our disposition to evil. Those who are in the
flesh cannot please God (Rom 8:8).
A power, enslaving and consuming. It is no longer I who do
it, but sin that dwells within me (Rom 7:17).
Original sin, the guilt and perversion that everyone
inherits from Adam.
Shame is feeling
bad about what you are. The answer to shame is hiding or covering.
Guilt is feeling
bad about what you do. The answer to guilt is forgiveness or pardon.
Holy, morally
whole.
Holy is primarily used to describe God or that which is
particularly God's; it is sometimes specifically morally pure and righteous, or
consecrated (of places). There are different Greek words translated holy:
Αγιος (Hagios) means morally pure and righteous: "Be
holy for I am holy", 1 Peter 1:16 (most common).
Οσιος (Hosios) is God's or Godlike (notably in 1 Tim. 2:8,
Titus 1:8, and Rev. 15:4 "You alone are holy").
Διχαιος (Dikaios) means just or right by human standards
(usually translated righteous).
Ιερος (Hieros) means formally consecrated or hallowed (as in
the temple or the scriptures).
Cf. Strong's
Dictionary, G3741.
The holy ones are the saints, God's elect.
The Holy One is Jesus Christ.
The Holy Spirit is the Comforter, the third person of the
trinity.
Righteous
Morally, to be righteous is to be just, or to always deal
rightly with others.
Legally, it is a right standing before God and His law,
without stain or fault.
In the New Testament, righteousness is often specifically
the result of justification.
Justification is
being declared righteous.
A man is justified in God's sight who is both reckoned righteous in God's judgment and accepted on the basis of that righteousness. Christ was justified by his works; we are justified by the remission of our sins and the imputation of Christ's righteousness. (John Calvin, Institutes of the
Christian Religion, III. xi. 2).
Imputation is
setting to one's account before God.
Atonement is being
made 'at one' – reconciliation.
In the Old Testament, offerings were given to Lord so as to
make atonement for their souls (Ex 30:16).
By the atonement of Christ we generally mean his work by
which he expiated our sins. But in New Testament usage it denotes the
reconciliation itself, and not the means by which it is effected. In general, Christ's
satisfaction is his vicarious suffering and obedience, given to satisfy the
justice of God on our behalf. Our guilt is expiated by the punishment which our
vicar bore, and thus God is rendered propitious, i.e., it is now consistent
with his justice to love transgressors. Christ's mediatorial work and
sufferings are the ground or efficient cause of our reconciliation with God.
The reconciliation is mutual, both of sinners toward God, and preeminently of
God toward sinners, as effected by the sin-offering he himself provided, so
that consistent with his entire character his love might flow forth in all its
fullness of blessing to men (Easton's Bible Dictionary).
Expiation is the
covering made for sin when Christ took our place and bore our punishment.
Propitiation is
an atoning sacrifice: 'making favorable' by the shedding of blood.
Propitiation is God's act of satisfying His own just wrath
by imputing responsibility and punishment for believers' guilt to Jesus. It is
the solution for sin, not the sinful nature.
Sanctification is
the act of making holy.
Sanctification is the work of the Holy Spirit in setting
apart a person for God which continues throughout his life.
Sanctification is a continuous re-orienting ourselves to our
justification (Tim Keller Interview).
Regeneration is
new birth.
Regeneration is God's gift of a new nature, as the
first-fruits of His renewal of all things. (It is only found explicitly in
Matt. 19:28 and Titus 3:5.)
Redemption is
buying back what has been given up.
Christ, by paying the price our sins required before God,
redeemed us by His blood.
The day of redemption is the culmination and confirmation of
his story, when God will reclaim the earth and all His people on the basis of
Christ's death.
Wisdom is the
possession of a coherent and relevant worldview, and the perspicuity and
proclivity to apply it to one’s own life. In Proverbs, this worldview is
specifically the fear of the Lord.
Understanding is
the faculty to observe and identify relevance and meaning in one’s surroundings
and oneself.
Knowledge is the
accumulation and organization of data about something.
Pride is thinking
that you are greater than God.
Selfishness is thinking
you are God.
Jealousy is
wanting someone else not to have something.
Envy is wanting
to have something that someone else has.
The object of jealousy is a scarce resource. The object of
envy is not.
Compassion is to
enter into another's emotions and try to share them with him.
Pity is to enter
into another's emotions and try to remedy them for him.
Benevolence is a
generous disposition.
Beneficence is a
generous deed.
Benefaction is a
generous gift.
Amen means so be
it.
Selah is a
presentational note of unknown meaning.
Saints are holy
ones.
Apostle, Greek ἀπόστολος
(apóstolos), one who is sent forth as a messenger.
In Matthew, Mark, Luke, and Revelation, the apostles are the
twelve disciples.
In Acts and in Paul’s epistles, apostles are those who have
seen the risen Lord and who minister in his name, 1 Corinthians 9:1.
Those specifically named as apostles (other than the twelve)
include one who ‘is sent’ (John 13:16), Matthias (Acts 1:26), Barnabas (Acts
14:14), Paul (Romans 1:1) Andronicus and Junia (Romans 16:7), Apollos (1
Corinthians 4:6,9), the brothers of the Lord (1 Corinthians 9:5), Jesus
(Hebrews 3:1), Epaphroditus (Philippians 2:25), Silas and Timothy (1
Thessalonians 1:1; 2:6).
There are also false apostles, workers of deceit, 2
Corinthians 11:13.
Prophet
The Hebrew words chôzeh, ro-eh', nebı̂y', and nâbı̂y' are
variously translated as seer or prophet. Apparently the meanings of these words
changed and merged over time (1 Samuel 9:9), making context necessary to
determine what is meant in each case. Three of them are used as distinct
appellations in 1 Chronicles 29:29. Possible meanings include:
One who has the ear of God, Genesis 20:7; Amos 3:7.
The spokesman of God, Exodus 7:1; 1Kings 22:8.
One who receives words or visions from God, Numbers 12:6; 2
Kings 6:8-10.
One who can obtain answers from God, 1 Samuel 9:6; 1 Kings
14:1-5.
A musician or singer devoted to God, 1 Samuel 10:5; 1
Chronicles 25:1-3.
One who experiences the Spirit of God in a dramatic way, 1
Samuel 19:23-24; Numbers 11:25.
One who pretends to do one of the above, 1 Kings 22:10-12;
Jeremiah 14:14.
One who raves and cries out to false gods, 1 Kings 18:29.
In Greek …
Miracle,
literally power (dunamis), wonders (terata), works (erga), or signs (semeion).
A miracle is an act of God (sometimes by the agency of man)
whereby a phenomenon out of the normal course of nature is subsumed by and
becomes part of history. When given as a sign, it authenticates the commission
and message of the sign giver (Easton's Bible Dictionary).
Miracles have two purposes. They either prepare us for faith
or they confirm us in faith (John Calvin, Commentary on John 11:45). We must
remember that Satan has his (anti-)miracles too.
The simple and grand truth that the universe is not under
the exclusive control of physical forces, but that everywhere and always there
is above, separate from, and superior to all else, an infinite personal will,
not superseding, but directing and controlling all physical causes, acting with
or without them (Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology I. xii. 1.).
God, in ordinary providence making use of means, yet is free
to work without, above, or against them at pleasure (Westminster Confession).
Miracles are a retelling in small letters of the very same
story which is written across the whole world in letters too large for some of
us to see. Some are reminders and others prophecies (C.S. Lewis, God in the
Dock, Miracles).
"I'm exactly in the position of the man who said, 'I
can believe the impossible, but not the improbable.' ... It really is more
natural to believe a preternatural story, that deals with things we don't
understand, than a natural story that contradicts things we do understand"
(Father Brown, in G. K. Chesterton, The Curse of the Golden Cross).
