"And if ye call on the
Father, who without respect of persons judgeth according to every
man's work, pass the time of your sojourning here in fear:
Forasmuch as ye know that ye were not redeemed with corruptible
things, as silver and gold, from your vain conversation received by
tradition from your fathers;
But with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish
and without spot:
Who verily was foreordained before the foundation of the world, but
was manifest in these last times for you,
Who by him do believe in God, that raised him up from the dead, and
gave him glory; that your faith and hope might be in God."
That is one sentence! Yikes!
How can we understand it if we just take it line by line? We
can't.
When I was in junior high we broke down sentences into parts.
We put the descriptive words under the words they described
(adjectives under the nouns, adverbs under the verbs, etc.) So
I figured I'd break down this sentence to find out what described
what.
Here's a diagram I made. After the diagram I'll explain what I
did.
The parts in blue are the main parts once the descriptive portions
are removed. It says:
"And if ye call on the Father, pass the
time of your sojourning here in fear: that your faith and hope
might be in God."
"Sojourning" comes from a word meaning foreign residence
meaning the earth is not our home. We are just "passing
through".
We need some of the descriptive parts to make more sense.
The most important part tells us why we should "pass the time of our
sojourning here in fear".
Let's look at the red text after that part:
"Forasmuch as ye know that ye were not redeemed
with corruptible things from your vain conversation but with the
precious blood of Christ."
"Conversation" comes from a root word meaning behavior.
This is emphasizing that we are only redeemed by the blood of Christ
and not by anything we do or say.
So, "pass the time of your sojourning [on earth] in fear" keeping in mind that, in
ourselves, we can fail. Let's go a little deeper.
The red text at the top:
"who judgeth according to every man's work"
refers to "the Father". So God judges us on our
works and we are reminded that it was Jesus and NOT our works that
redeemed us. We should pass our time in fear that our works
reflect God's will and not our own.
Are you still with me? Let's go deeper to the green parts:
"without respect of persons".
We are judged by God who does not judge us based on
whether we are male or female, black or white, green or orange, tall
or short, etc. He judges based on the works, not on who we are
or what we look like.
Examples of "corruptible things"
are:
"silver and gold".
The reason the word "as" is in parenthesis is because it was a word
that was added by the men who translated the King James Version of
the Bible. They added it to make the sentence sound more
complete.
Our "vain conversation" was:
"received by tradition from your fathers".
In other words, we learned a great deal of how we act and think from
our parents. We think things just because our parents thought
the same way. I could give lots of examples on this but let's
stay focused on the scriptures at hand. I'll give one example
that is fairly obvious and another that isn't.
Many prejudices that people hold are not because they came up with
the idea themselves. They often are prejudiced because their
parents were prejudiced. They take on that "tradition" from
their parents.
Many Christians believe things about God and about the Bible because
their parents, Sunday School teacher, or their pastor taught them it
was true. They never did the research on their own, they never
took it to God to ask if it was true, and they never even considered
that it might be a traditional thought passed down from generation
to generation.
So, not only should we "pass the time of
your sojourning [on earth] in fear" that our works
reflect God's will and not our own, but also reflecting on whether
or not our beliefs and actions are approved by God rather than just
assuming He approves because someone taught us He did.
Wow! How can one sentence be full of so much information??
Let's move on.
Let's see what descriptions there are in this sentence about
"Christ":
He is a "lamb without blemish and without
spot".
He "was foreordained before the foundation
of the world".
Most exciting for us, He "was manifest
(appeared) in these last times for you" !
This sentence goes just a little deeper into detail on the
"you" in He
"was manifest (appeared) in these last times
for you".
You, "who by him do believe in God".
Jesus is the "way, the
truth, and the life: no man
cometh unto the Father, but by [Him]."
Jo 14:6
The last
little bit takes the description of "God"
in "who by him do believe in God"
one last step further. God "that
raised him (Jesus) up from the dead, and gave him glory".
The most important thing this sentence is teaching us is why our
"faith and hope" needs to be
"in God" and how to make it so:
by calling "on the Father".
The rest is warning, instruction, and encouragement. |
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