“At thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore” (Ps. 16: 11) Growing Dominion, Part 136 “By humility and the fear of the Lord are riches, and honour, and life” (Prov. 22:4). Because we have all learned our Gnostic catechism responses, our tendency is to immediately spiritualize the lesson. By humility and the fear of …
Only God
Mark does not use the word hamartano, but he does use hamartia six times. He tells us that John the Baptist came and preached the baptism of repentance for the remission of sins (1:4). In the next verse, all of Judea came out to be baptized, confessing their sins (1:5). In the next chapter, Jesus …
In Which We Have All Majored
We come now to the words from which we derive the name of our little study — hamartiology, the study of sin, in which all of us have majored. Those words are hamartano and hamartia respectively. They are used so often in the New Testament that we will have to take our time in order …
When Ignorance Is a Sin
The word amathes means unlearned, and it is used once in the New Testament. Peter is talking about how the apostle Paul is sometimes difficult to understand. This means that there are things in his letters which unstable and unlearned people twist to their own destruction (2 Pet. 3:16). Here the problem is obviously not …
Anticipation as Wisdom
“At thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore” (Ps. 16: 11) Growing Dominion, Part 135 “A prudent man foreseeth the evil, and hideth himself: but the simple pass on, and are punished” (Prov. 22:3). Short term thinkers and long term thinkers are as apparent in the world of business as anywhere else. “What is …
Unprofitable Experiences
The New Testament describes sins of omission in different ways. One of them is found in Heb. 13:17, where the saints are told to avoid making their rulers’ assigned task a grief. They are to be the kind of parishioners that are a joy to serve, not a grief. When this is not done, the …
Let’s Be Reasonable
God created us as reasonable creatures. To adopt rationalism is to make an idol out of reason, but for all that, we should still seek to be reasonable. The word alogos represents a failure at this place. In one place it is translated as unreasonable (Acts. 25:27). This is in the mouth of the pagan …
Bishop Buttinski
The next word to consider is a mouthful — allotriepiskopos. It refers to someone who is a busybody in the affairs of others. In the latter half of the word we can see the word that is rendered elsewhere as overseer or bishop. This busybody, this renegade bishop, is engaged in looking over the shoulder …
Polluting Idols
The word for pollution is alisgema, and is used once. In Acts 15:20, the decision of the Jerusalem Council was that the Gentiles needed to abstain from certain basic things, among them the pollutions of idols. However much idolatry may appeal to that which is primitive, and therefore pure, the end result of all forms …
Triple Threat
The New Testament rejects boasters (Rom. 1:30; 2 Tim. 3:2), and so it is not surprising that it also condemns the sin of boasting. The word is aladzoneia, and is rendered as boasting once and as pride once. The man who thinks he controls his own life, and who is going to go here or …