Do I understand Greek and Hebrew? Otherwise, how can I undertake, (as every Minister does,) not only to explain books which are written therein, but to defend them against all opponents? Am I not at the mercy of every one who does understand, or even pretends to understand, the original? For which way can I confute his pretence? Do I understand the language of the Old Testament? critically? at all? Can I read into English one of David’s Psalms; or even the first chapter of Genesis? Do I understand the language of the New Testament? Am I a critical master of it? Have I enough of it even to read into English the first chapter of St. Luke? If not, how many years did I spend at school? How many at the University? And what was I doing all those years? Ought not shame to cover my face?

-John Wesley, An Address to the Clergy

Languages are the scabbard that contains the sword of the Spirit;
they are the casket which contains the priceless jewels of antique thought;
they are the vessel that holds the wine;
and as the gospel says, they are the baskets
in which the loaves and fishes are kept to feed the multitude. . . .
As dear as the gospel is to us all,
let us as hard contend with its language.

-Martin Luther

I have become increasingly frustrated as of late with the unabashed ignorance of many clergy men and women when it comes to the knowledge which is absolutely necessary to interpret and teach Scripture properly. Within this category fall such things as the cultural, social, and literary backgrounds of the Jewish and Greco-Roman worlds; however, the most important skill for proper interpretation is without a doubt the ability to read the Scriptures in their original languages, namely Greek and Hebrew. Indeed, it is the inability to read the Scriptures in their original languages that lead to exegetical blunders like this one and this one, and far worse.

David Alan Black, a well known author and professor of New Testament Greek, has rightly said:

Consider … the alternative-pastors who do not know Greek are forced to borrow their ideas from others. They are slaves to the commentators, but have no means to check their accuracy. The best tools of interpretation are beyond their reach. Not even the English translations they use are completely trustworthy. Worst of all, without thorough training in Greek they may discover that they are passing on in the name of God their own ignorance, based upon erroneous interpretations.

-David Alan Black, Using New Testament Greek in Ministry: A Practical Guide for Students and Pastors(Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker, 1993)

Unfortunately, this appears to be a problem especially in evangelical Protestant churches. I had classmates both in college and in seminary who, because of a variety of factors including laziness, disinterest, and lack of diligence, barely made it through their required original language courses with a passing grade. I had other classmates who dropped their original language courses or transferred to a different degree program or school which didn’t require them simply because learning to read the Scriptures in their original languages was “too hard.” Most of these former classmates of mine are now pastors.

It is true; learning Greek and Hebrew is hard. I will readily admit that I still struggle with properly understanding the Scriptures in their original languages (and I will doubtless continue to struggle with it until the day I die!), and I read Greek and Hebrew every single day. Indeed, it takes a great deal of time, commitment, and self-control, not to mention a great sense of calling, in order to endure the pain and frustration that often accompany learning Greek and Hebrew. But aren’t these character qualities that ordained clergy should possess anyway? Should those who lack the self-control even to acquire the skills necessary to properly interpret the living Word of God really be ordained clergy? To put it another way, Do pastors who can’t even read the Scriptures in their original languages-and therefore must rely on what others say about them-have any business teaching them to their congregations who regard their teaching as authoritative? Moreover, how can they authoritatively proclaim and exposit Scripture if they haven’t acquired the skills necessary to do so?

While I have some strong disagreements with the über-Calvinism to which John Piper subscribes, I appreciate his enthusiasm for Scripture and his commitment to reading them in their original languages. Following is an article by John Piper (used by permission) about the topic at hand, and it is well worth reading (and perhaps passing on to your pastor!).

_______________

Brothers, Bitzer Was a Banker!

by John Piper, The Standard, June 1983, 18-19. Used by permission.
A slightly revised version of this article now also appears in Piper’s book, Brothers, We Are Not Professionals (Broadman & Holman, 2002).

“As dear as the gospel is to us all, let us as hard contend with its language”

Last year Baker Book House reissued a 1969 book of daily Scripture readings in Hebrew and Greek called Light on the Path. The readings are quite short, and vocabulary helps are given with the Hebrew verses. The aim of the editor, who died in 1980, was to help pastors preserve and improve their ability to interpret the Bible from the original languages.

His name was Heinrich Bitzer, and he was a banker.

A banker! Brothers, must we be admonished by the sheep what our responsibility is as shepherds? Evidently so. For we are surely not admonishing and encouraging each other to press on in Greek and Hebrew. And most seminaries-evangelical as well as liberal-have communicated by their curriculum emphases that learning Greek and Hebrew well is merely optional for the pastoral ministry.

I have a debt to pay to Heinrich Bitzer, and I would like to discharge it by exhorting all of us to ponder his thesis: “The more a theologian detaches himself from the basic Hebrew and Greek text of Holy Scripture, the more he detaches himself from the source of real theology! And real theology is the foundation of a fruitful and blessed ministry! (p.10).

A Plague of Uncertainty

What happens to a denomination where a useful knowledge of Greek and Hebrew is not cherished and promoted as crucial for the pastoral office? (I don’t mean offered and admired. I mean cherished, promoted and sought.)

Several things happen as the original languages fall into disuse among pastors. First, the confidence of pastors to determine the precise meaning of biblical texts diminishes. And with the confidence to interpret rigorously goes the confidence to preach powerfully. You can’t preach week in and week out over the whole range of God’s revelation with depth and power if you are plagued with uncertainty when you venture beyond basic gospel generalities.

Second, the uncertainty of having to depend on differing human translations (which always involve much interpretation) will tend to discourage careful textual analysis in sermon preparation. For as soon as you start attending to crucial details (like tenses, conjunctions and vocabulary repetitions), you realize the translations are too diverse to provide a sure basis for such analysis.

So the preacher often contents himself with the general focus or flavor of the text, and his exposition lacks the precision and clarity which excite a congregation with the Word of God.

Expository preaching, therefore, falls into disuse and disfavor. I say disfavor because we often tend to protect ourselves from difficult tasks by belittling or ignoring their importance. So what we find in groups where Greek and Hebrew are not cherished and pursued and promoted is that expository preaching (which devotes a good bit of the sermon to explaining the original meaning of the texts) is not much esteemed by the clergy or taught in the seminaries.

Sometimes this is evident in outright denunciation of schoolish exposition. More often there is simply a benign neglect; and the emphasis on valuable sermonic features (like order, diction, illustration and relevance) crowds out the need for careful textual exposition.

Another result when pastors do not study the Bible in Greek and Hebrew is that they (and their churches with them) tend to become second-handers. The harder it is for us to get at the original meaning of the Bible, the more we will revert to the secondary literature. For one thing, it is easier to read. It also gives us a superficial glow that we are “keeping up” on things. And it provides us with ideas and insights which we can’t dig out of the original for ourselves.

We may impress one another for a while by dropping the name of the latest book, but second-hand food will not sustain and deepen our people’s faith and holiness.

The Mother of Liberalism

Weakness in Greek and Hebrew also gives rise to exegetical imprecision and carelessness. And exegetical imprecision is the mother of liberal theology.

Where pastors by and large can no longer articulate and defend doctrine by a reasonable and careful appeal to the original meaning of biblical texts, they will tend to become close-minded traditionalists who clutch their inherited ideas, or open-ended relativists who don’t put much stock in doctrinal formulations. In both cases the succeeding generations will be theologically impoverished and susceptible to error.

Further, when we fail to stress the use of Greek and Hebrew as crucial in the pastoral office we create an eldership of professional academicians. We surrender to the seminaries and universities essential dimensions of our responsibility as elders and overseers of the churches.

Acts 20:27 charges us with the proclamation of “the whole counsel of God.” But we look more and more to the professional academicians for books which fit the jagged pieces of revelation into a unified whole. Acts 20:28 charges us to take heed for the flock and guard it from wolves who rise up in the church and speak perverse things. But we look more and more to the linguistic and historical specialists to fight our battles for us in books and articles. We have, by and large, lost the biblical vision of a pastor as one who is mighty in the Scriptures, apt to teach, competent to confute opponents and able to penetrate to the unity of the whole counsel of God.

Is it healthy or biblical for the church to cultivate an eldership of pastors (weak in the Word) and an eldership of professors (strong in the Word)?

The Pastor Debased

One of the greatest tragedies in the church today is the debasement of the pastoral office. From the seminaries to the denominational headquarters, the prevalent mood and theme is managerial, organizational and psychological. And we think thereby to heighten our professional self-esteem! Hundreds of teachers and leaders put the mastery of the Word first with their lips, but by their curriculums, conferences, seminars and personal example show that it is anything but foremost.

One glaring example is the nature of the Doctor of Ministry programs across the country.

The theory is good: continuing education makes for better ministers. But where can you do a D.Min. in Hebrew language and exegesis? Yet what is more important and more deeply practical for the pastoral office than advancing in Greek and Hebrew exegesis by which we mine God’s treasures?

Why then do hundreds of young and middle-aged pastors devote years of effort to everything but the languages when pursuing continuing education? And why do seminaries not offer incentives and degrees to help pastors maintain the most important pastoral skill-exegesis of the original meanings of Scripture?

No matter what we say about the inerrancy of the Bible, our actions reveal our true convictions about its centrality and power.

We need to recover our vision of the pastoral office which embraces, if nothing else, the passion and power to understand the original revelation of God. We need to pray for the day when pastors can carry their Greek Testaments to conferences and seminars without being greeted with one-liners. The day when the esteem for God’s Word and its careful exposition is so high among pastors that the few who neglect to bring their Testaments will go home to study. The day when prayer and grammar will meet each other with great spiritual combustion.

Never Too Late

In 1829 the 24-year-old George Muller wrote, “I now studied much, about 12 hours a day, chiefly Hebrew … [and] committed portions of the Hebrew Old Testament to memory; and this I did with prayer, often falling on my knees…. I looked up to the Lord even whilst turning over the leaves of my Hebrew dictionary” (Autobiography, p. 31).

In the Methodist Archives of Manchester you can see the two-volume Greek Testament of the evangelist George Whitefield liberally furnished with notes on the interleaved paper. He wrote of his time at Oxford, “Though weak, I often spent two hours in my evening retirements and prayed over my Greek Testament, and Bishop Hall’s most excellent Contemplations, every hour that my health would permit” (Dallimore, Whitefield, I, p. 77).

Brothers, perhaps the vision can grow with your help. It is never too late to learn the languages. There are men who began after retirement! It is not a question of time but of values.

Continuing education is being pursued everywhere. Let’s give heed to the word of Martin Luther: “As dear as the gospel is to us all, let us as hard contend with its language.” Bitzer did. And Bitzer was a banker!

The Bible reveals to us five areas of the overall atoning work of the Lord Jesus Christ. All five areas are vital and essential, with none being greater or more important than the other. Each area of the atonement is effectual to its particular aspect of required need and each specifically accomplished that for which God intended it to accomplish. Those five areas are: Obedience, Sacrifice, Propitiation, Reconciliation, and Redemption.

Today I will discuss the second area of the overall atoning work of Christ which is sacrifice. The Scripture speak of the atoning sacrifice of Christ in a number of places. Ephesians 5:2 says, And walk in love, just as Christ also loved you and gave Himself up for us, an offering and sacrifice to God as a fragrant aroma. Hebrews 7:26-27 says, For it is fitting for us to have such a high priest, holy, innocent, undefiled, separated from sinners and exalted above the heavens, who does not need daily, like those high priests (Old Testament Aaronic priests), to offer up sacrifices, first for his own sins and then for the sins of the people, because this He did once for all when He offered up Himself. And Hebrews 10:11-14 states, Every (Old Testament) priest stands daily ministering and offering time after time the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. But He, having offered one sacrifice for sins for all time, sat down at the right hand of God.

The death of Christ as a sacrifice for sins was the fulfillment of the Scriptures. His sacrifice was the one true, real and effectual sacrifice of which all of the Old Testament sacrifices were types, shadows, pictures and symbols. The very first place sacrifice for sin was instituted by God was in the Garden of Eden. We are told in Genesis 3:27 that immediately after Adam and Eve sinned, the Lord sacrificed animals, shedding their blood, and made their skins for a covering for Adam and Eve. This covering symbolized atonement for sin.  The Hebrew word for “atonement,” which is kippur, literally means “cover.” Every sacrifice in the Old Testament was a type or a prophetic illustration of the death of Christ. The Old Testament gave many prophetic pictures of the sacrifice of Christ, such as the offering of Isaac by Abraham in Genesis 22, the different kinds of Levitical sacrifices in Leviticus 1-7, and the sacrifice for the sins of the people on Day of Atonement, which is Hebrew is Yom Kippur in Leviticus 16.

This area of Christ’s work of atonement as a sacrifice for sins accomplished the expiation of our sins, which is the removal or cleansing of the guilt of our sin. Expiation has to do with our standing before God and His law and specifically the guilt of our sin before God because we have transgressed His law. It is because we will in an age of lawlessness that people do not believe that atonement for sin is necessary. The lawlessness of the age is fundamentally related to a corrupt view of God’s nature which believes that, because “God is love,” He simply overlooks and forgives sin and does not require the just penalty of sin. The Bible teaches, however, that the justice of God requires that the violation of His Law of God be punished.  Through the sacrifice of Christ, our sin is expiated. Because of this, our guilt is cleansed and removed and we are no longer liable to be punished for our sins of transgressing God’s law.

In this regard, the nature of Christ’s sacrifice is substitutionary, which means that Christ died in our place.  The substitutionary nature of Christ’s death was made known in the sacrifices of the Old Testament. A basic understanding of the offering of sacrifices for sin was that the sacrificial offering represented the one making the sacrifice and was thereby a substitute. This was most clearly demonstrated on the Day of Atonement On this day two goats were used. One was killed by the violent death of shedding its blood. Leviticus 16:20,22 states, When he finishes atoning for the holy place and the tent of meeting and the altar, he shall offer the live goat…The goat shall bear on itself all their iniquities to a solitary land; and he shall release the goat in the wilderness. The other goat was the scapegoat. The High Priest, representing the people of God, laid his hands on the goat and confessed the sin of Israel symbolizing the transfer of sin to the substitute. The goat was then sent away into the desert symbolizing that the sin had been taken away.

There are two fundamental principles that are basic to the concept of sacrifice for atonement for sins:

(1) Justice – The just penalty for sin is death. The Bible says, The wages of sin is death (Romans 6:23). By the violent death of the shedding of the blood of the substitute that was sacrificed, the just penalty of death for sin is carried out.

(2) Grace – This was demonstrated by the fact that something else could be substituted in the place of the one deserving the just penalty death. The guilt and punishment of sin were transferred to the substitute so that the guilty party could be forgiven.

Perhaps the clearest illustration of these two principles being expressed is sprinkling of the blood on the Ark of the Covenant. On the Day of Atonement, the blood of the sacrificed animal was sprinkled on the Ark of the Covenant that stood in the Holiest Place in the Tabernacle and Temple. This was where the very presence of God was manifested between the wings of the Cherubim, or the Angelic beings that guarded the glory and holiness of God. There was a large curtain that separated the very manifest presence of God from His people which represented that the sin separated God from His people. The Ark itself was a chest containing the tablets of the Ten Commandments of the Law of God. Being the covenant people of God, Israel was required to keep the Law of God. If the law was transgressed, God’s justice required that the sin be punished. The cover of the Ark was a pure gold lid over the tablets of the Law placed between the manifest presence of God above the Ark and the Law of God in the Ark. If there was no cover between God and His law, all that would be done would be the execution of the just wrath of God against sin for the transgression of His law. However, god provided that it was upon this cover that the High Priest would sprinkle the blood of the animal that was sacrificed to make atonement. The Hebrew word translated “atonement” is kopher literally means “cover.” It was the blood that made atonement and covered the sins of God’s people so that He could dwell in their midst. It was because of the transgression of God’s Law that the justice of God required atonement by a sacrifice for sins. It was because of the grace of God that provided the sacrifice for atonement so that the sins of God’s people would be covered.

It is relevant at this point to ask about how effective the Old Testament sacrifices were to take away sin and bring forgiveness of sin?  There are two important principles in this regard:

(1) The Old Testament sacrifices did not in and of themselves take away sin -   Although God instituted the Old Testament sacrifices, Hebrews 10:1-4 tells us that it was impossible for the blood of animal sacrifices to take away sin and that God had no enduring pleasure in those sacrifices as such. It says, For the Law, since it has only a shadow of the good things to come and not the very form of things, can never, by the same sacrifices which they offer continually year by year, make perfect those who draw near, Otherwise, would they not cease to be offered, because the worshippers, having once been cleansed, would no longer have had consciousness of sins? But in those sacrifices there is a reminder of sins year by year. For it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sin. The Old Testament makes clear in many places that the sacrifices did not have power to take away sin. For example, we read in the prophets in various places that God could not stand the sacrifices of the people which were merely empty external ritual. In Isaiah 1:11- the Lord says, What are your multitude of sacrifices to Me? says the Lord. I have had enough of burnt offerings of rams and the fat of fed cattle, and I take no pleasure in the blood of bulls, lambs or goats. When you come to appear before Me. Who requires of you this trampling of My courts? Bring your worthless offering no long. Incense is an abomination to Me. New moon and Sabbath, the calling of assemblies – I cannot endure iniquity and the solemn assembly. I hate your new moon festivals and your appointed feasts, they have become a burden to Me. I am weary of bearing them. Although it was the Lord Himself Who instituted all the sacrifices, as well as the appointed days of worship, that are mentioned here, He is not pleased with the barren exercise of them. They were not effective, in and of themselves, to take away. This is clearly stated by Paul in Romans 3:25 when, speaking about the effectiveness of the sacrifice of Christ to satisfy the justice of God, he alludes to God’s forbearance of the sins committed during the time before Christ, which includes the sins under the Old Testament sacrificial system. His justice requires that sin be punished or atoned, and although this did not actually take place during this time in history, He exercised patience with sinners until the true effectual sacrifice of Christ. Paul says, speaking of Christ, whom God displayed publicly as a propitiation in His blood through faith. This was to demonstrate His righteousness because in the forbearance of God He passed over the sins previously committed. While the Old Testament sacrifices were not effectual to take away sin, God derive a certain degree of pleasure from them. The pleasure God derived through the Old Testament sacrifices was by reason of the second principle.

      (2) It was through faith being expressed in obedience to the law of the Old Testament that the people of God looked forward to and participated in the sacrifice of Christ – The fundamental principle of salvation that was implicit in the Old Testament and made explicit in the New Testament is that salvation is by grace through faith. As Hebrews 11:6 tells us, faith is what pleases God. Faith is always expressed in obedience to God’s Word. In the Old Testament, God ordained the sacrifices to teach the people about the necessity of atonement for sin and be a prophetic picture of the one true sacrifice of Christ.  Those who were true believers expressed their faith in obedience to God’s word by their sacrifices. This faith was reckoned by God as righteousness that would come through Jesus Christ. Again, Romans 3:25 clearly states this saying that God provided propitiation His blood through faith. As the Old Testament believers presented their offerings through faith, God reckoned that they participated in the one true sacrifice of Christ and thereby took pleasure in those offerings.