Transcript
Okay, I’m here with Zane Hodges again, and I’m Bob Wilkin with Grace Evangelical Society, and we’re discussing John chapter two, verses 23 through 25, which has for some become a problem passage. But as I think we’re going to see, it’s not really a problem unless we don’t take the Bible for what it says.
Okay, let me read it and then make a couple of quick comments.
Now when He was in Jerusalem at the Passover, during the feast, many believed in His name when they saw the signs which He did. But Jesus did not commit Himself to them, because He knew all men, and had no need that anyone should testify of man, for He knew what was in man.
Now this passage, these three verses, are often explained this way. People say, “Well, look, they believed in His name when they saw the signs,” and they call this “sign faith,” which is somehow less than saving faith. And they say this faith, miracle faith, sign faith, whatever they want to call it, was believing that He had done something miraculous. And here’s someone that obviously has some special power, and so they were impressed with Him.
And then it said, “But Jesus did not commit Himself…” Well, actually in the Greek it’s often pointed out that this is the same Greek verb, “pisteuo,” that’s used in verse 23. Jesus did not believe or entrust Himself to them. “Commit Himself” is a fine translation, or “entrust Himself” to them. And it says, look, there is a play on words between “pisteuo” in verse 24 and “pisteuo” in verse 23.
So some people actually, almost comically, try to say that we should understand this, “They believed in His name, but Jesus didn’t believe in them.” And then they say, “Because He knew all men, and had no need that anyone should testify of man,” in other words, “He knew these people didn’t really believe in Him, for He knew what was in man.” So in other words, He knew instantly when people believed and when they didn’t, and He knew these people just had sign faith or miracle faith.
It’s interesting that when you read commentaries, for example, D. A. Carson in his commentary on John, when he comes to John 2:23 he will say “believing in His name” is referred to in the Prologue in John 1:12:
He came to His own, and His own received Him not. But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believed in His name
— same Greek as we have here. And yet Carson and others will say this should just show that the expression is being used differently here.
So where do we start with all this, Zane? Help us out.
Zane: We start with the observation, I think, that the interpretation you just mentioned by Carson is obviously investing the text with the theology you would like it to have, because there is no evidence anywhere in the Gospel of John that the expression “pisteuo eis” doesn’t mean believing in Him for eternal life.
If you draw that conclusion from some surrounding factor like Jesus didn’t respond to these people in the way we think He ought to respond to regenerate people, it’s you that’s doing the reinterpretation. Instead you ought to say, “Look, we’ve just been told that these people believed in Him, which means that they got eternal life, and yet we are surprisingly told that Jesus doesn’t entrust Himself to them. What could this mean?”
We don’t start by reinterpreting the fundamental term which introduces the whole discussion.
Bob: Yeah.
Zane: We don’t proceed by giving to this term a fluidity that cannot be shown or demonstrated anywhere in the Gospel of John. So first of all, I think it’s a firm point of departure that when the text says here that many believed in His name, that the text is saying, “Many got saved. Many, many were regenerated. Many received eternal life.”
Bob: Right.
Zane: Now what does emerge from this is that Jesus is not going to take these people into any kind of intimate relationship with Himself because of His knowledge of that. Let me pause here, because there’s a lot more to be said about this than that. But when it says, “He didn’t entrust Himself to them,” this would be tantamount to saying, “He didn’t disclose Himself. He didn’t give them intimacies that they might otherwise have thought they were entitled to.”
When I don’t entrust myself to somebody, I kind of hold off. I put up a little bit of a wall there. I don’t depend on them for anything. I don’t tell them anything more than necessary, right?
Bob: Okay, so, yeah I agree with that. But so what you’re saying is, in light of verses 24 and 25, there was something wrong with these new believers.
Zane: There was something definitely wrong. We haven’t gotten to the issue of what it was, but it’s clear from the statement of the text that something is wrong, because why wouldn’t Jesus entrust Himself to people who’d just received eternal life?
Bob: But your starting point is, what’s wrong is not they had the wrong kind of faith, as though there were different kinds of faith, or what’s wrong is they believed in His name, but it was the wrong kind of believing in His name, or some kind of special believing. They had something wrong, all right, but John is trying to tell us something that people miss when they go to that interpretation.
Zane: That’s right. If we had only read as far as verse 23 — that’s saying we’ve never read the Gospel of John before, we’ve read as far as verse 23 — we would have said, on the basis of usage in the Gospel of John, supported by all the usage in the rest of it, we would have said, “Oh, well, they got eternal life because that’s the condition for eternal life.” But then when I read verse 24, I should not say, “My first impression of verse 23 was wrong.” I should say, “Something is wrong with my comprehension of verse 24.”
Bob: Or my theology.
Zane: That’s right.
Bob: I may need to adjust my theology because John’s telling me something here — that there can be defective new believers. There’s something wrong with new believers or even people who’ve been believers for a long time. It’s not necessarily true that everyone who’s a believer, Jesus entrusts more truth to them.
Zane: That’s true, and I actually intended to include that in the idea that, if I come to this text and I say, “Oh well, this could not be a way that He responds to people who’d just been born again,” I have misunderstood the text. I have really not faced the fact that it’s telling me there was something wrong. But your elaboration is useful and helpful because, yes, the theology that underlies this is that believers are not automatically perfect.
And the assumption that they are perfect in some abstract way, or that they always respond properly to God or to Christ, you know, these things are very nebulous sometimes because, when you really get down to it, nobody fits any of the examples.
Bob: Right!
Zane: But we ought to come to this with the assumption that we’ve got normal human beings here that just had believed in Christ, and for some reason or other which is not immediately explained here, for some reason or other, Jesus won’t commit Himself to them, He won’t entrust Himself to them. The reason that is stated here is because He knew them from the inside out.
Bob: Yeah.
Zane: All right, John has whetted our appetite. Unfortunately, the traditional Bibles that we use have a chapter break here, because in the Greek, it’s very obvious that 3:1 ought to follow on from 2:25. “Jesus knew all men,” and in 25, “and He did not have need that anyone should testify concerning” — here the Greek word is “tou anthropou” and we could translate the “tou” here “concerning a man” meaning “any particular man.” “He did not have need that anyone should testify concerning a man, for He Himself knew what was in the man.”
And the closing words of the chapter, “to anthropo,” and then in 3:1, the opening Greek words are “en de anthropos” — “There was a man.”
Bob: Clear link.
Zane: Clear link. Clear link. And so really what we should understand here is that John is beginning to tell us something that relates to the man who follows in the discourse. And of course, we have the famous salvation discourse. And at the end of this discourse...
Bob: With Nicodemus.
Zane: ...with Nicodemus, right, I should have said that. At the end of this discourse we have the interesting statement in verses 20 and 21:
Everyone who does what is bad hates the light and does not come to the light, so that his deeds may not be reproved. But the one who does the truth comes to the light, that his works may be made manifest, that they are accomplished in God.
Okay, the one who does the truth comes to the light. This has often been taken incorrectly as a statement about coming to Christ in saving faith. But the person who comes to Christ in saving faith is not coming because he’s doing the truth, you know. This obviously referred to someone who knows the truth and is acting on it.
Bob: Is already regenerate.
Zane: That’s right. “Now if he’s doing the truth,” says Jesus, “if he’s really doing the truth, he’s going to come to the light. He’s going to come out into the open and stand with the light whatever...” In other words, this is not a question of believing in the light, but coming to the light. I’m over here in the darkness doing what’s bad. But if I’m doing the truth, I’m not gonna stay over here. I’m gonna go over there. All right, that crystallizes precisely the problem with Nicodemus.
Bob: And before we go back there...
Zane: Yes, okay...
Bob: ...this then opens up into John the Baptist.
Zane: Right.
Bob: Who’s the, who’s a prime example of someone who’s doing the truth and who’s an open testimony, testifier, or witness of Jesus.
Zane: Exactly. And when people will give him an opportunity to deny the importance of Jesus — “That Man over there, everybody’s coming to Him, you know.” — John says, “Great! You know, He’s gotta increase, I’m gonna decrease. I’m just the friend of the Bridegroom. That’s the Bridegroom.” So what John does is stand there with the light, right?
Bob: But we’ve got two people contrasted.
Zane: Absolutely.
Bob: Nicodemus and John the Baptist.
Zane: Right. Now, we don’t realize the full force of this contrast until we read later in the Gospel of John. What we do find however is that Nicodemus falls silent in this. You know, he asked some opening questions, and Jesus gives him maybe the best or nearly the best of all His expositions of eternal salvation. And at the end of this, what does Nicodemus say? Absolutely nothing. Nothing, nothing, nothing. That’s significant because the next thing we find is that when the rulers are talking about Jesus, Nicodemus is there, “the one who came...
Bob: Chapter seven.
Zane: Yes, in chapter seven — “the one who came to Jesus by night,” and he says:
Does our law judge a man until it hears him?
Bob: Yeah, 7:51.
Zane: Yeah and go ahead and read what you have after 7:51.
Bob: Okay:
Then he answered and said to him, ‘Are you also from Galilee? Search and look, for no prophet has arisen out of Galilee.’
Zane: Yes, uh-huh. And so they say, you know, “You’re just a Galilean.” That’s a slur here, you know.
Bob: Yeah.
Zane: So, has anybody... I was really looking for the preceding verse in 7:47. I’m sorry I’ve got the wrong passage, Bob.
Bob: Ok.
Zane: In 7:47, there the attendants who were to arrest Him are reporting back. And the Pharisees answered them saying,
You’re not also deceived? None of the rulers have believed in Him, or of the Pharisees, have they?
That’s where Nicodemus pops up.
Bob: That’s John saying, “Yeah, there’s at least one. His name is Nic.”
Zane: Yeah! But Nick is not saying it.
Bob: No.
Zane: Nic doesn’t say, “Oh, here I am. I’m one of the rulers who has believed in Him.”
Bob: Yeah!
Zane: Okay, what Nicodemus says is, “Are we prejudging this?” See how that moves out of the central circle there? They’re saying, “Have any of the rulers or of the Pharisees believed in Him?” and Nicodemus says, “Does our law judge a man before it hears him?”
Bob: So it was a perfect place for him to say, “Yes, I have.”
Zane: Yeah. But on the other hand, he doesn’t just totally stay silent. So it’s kind of an improvement on a bad situation.
Zane: That’s right. That’s right. But he’s still over here in the darkness. He hasn’t come to the light yet. Here is his opportunity to come to the light and say, “Yeah, I’m a believer in Him. I might stand with Him.” Right?
Bob: Right.
Zane: But he doesn’t do that.
Bob: He drops the ball.
Zane: He drops the ball. Now fortunately, we know that when Jesus died, that Nicodemus accompanies Joseph of Arimathea to get the body. Right?
Bob: Right.
Zane: So he comes out into the open after the death of Christ, but during this interim period, he’s an example of a Jewish ruler — a Pharisee — who has apparently believed in Jesus but is not willing to confess Him.
Bob: And we’ll look at John 12:42 and 43 later, because that talks about such people.
Zane: That’s right. And actually, the thematic note — that there are people who believe in Jesus but, because of their wrong inner motivations, they’re not willing to associate with Him or acknowledge Him — that theme is begun in 2:23 to 25, where we’re looking at it. Nicodemus becomes the prototype of that. We watch him make this faint effort at defending Jesus without identifying with Him, and then we see him eventually coming out. But in the meanwhile, we are told about the large number of rulers who are exactly like him.
Bob: That’s good.
Zane: Many believed in Him. They didn’t confess Him lest they should be cast out of the synagogue. They loved the praises of men more than the praises of God. So what we do is John skillfully introduces this note in chapter 2, and it’s a kind of a sub-theme that goes below the surface, crops up when Nicodemus appeared, goes below the surface again, crops up again in chapter 12, where it becomes an explicit problem among the believers in the ruling circle.
Bob: Okay, so this is another example of, because people impose their theology on the text, rather than the text speaking for itself, they completely miss the fact that you can be a secret believer.
Zane: That’s right. But unfortunately, John comes as close to saying that as it’s possible to say it in chapter 12, right?
Bob: Yes. Or you could...
Zane: Yeah, so there’s really no excuse for this, and if a person has read and studied the whole book and to reach the conclusion that these people are not saved because somehow or other there’s something wrong with them, is to turn your back on the obvious testimony of chapter 12.
Bob: Yeah. Yeah, well, or 1:12 and 13...
Zane: Yeah.
Bob: 3:16, you know — on and on. By the way, when would you say that Nicodemus was born again? Would your implication be that after we get this discussion leading up to verses 16, 17, 18, he believes what Jesus says and then, even though John doesn’t tell us this, but would that be the best inference?
Zane: If I were guessing, that’s the guess that I would make. But the fact that John doesn’t tell us is very important because actually, first of all, the only way that a person can be known as a believer is to know what’s in his heart. So if a person believes in his heart and keeps it quiet, nobody can ever know that they’re a believer.
Bob: Except him.
Zane: Except him.
Bob: And God, of course.
Zane: That’s right. Yeah. Nobody outside himself will know that he’s a believer. So Nicodemus becomes the prototype of a person who won’t say anything on that subject.
Now, I think that the Holy Spirit certainly had in mind many places where the Gospel would go where confession was extremely difficult and where this could falsely become an issue that impinged on the doctrine of eternal salvation. For example, I was told one time by a former missionary to the Muslims that it’s not all that hard to get people to believe in Jesus. It’s hard to get them to confess Him in the Muslim community because that meant ostracism, rejection by your family. It could mean persecution and death.
Bob: In fact, I met at Dallas a guy who was one of my contemporaries, was from a Muslim country. He came to faith in Jesus. He told his family, and they said, “We’ll just forget that.” And he continued with the Christians that were talking with him, and they said, “Well, Jesus said you need to be baptized. You need to publicly confess your faith in Me,” and they showed various verses, and he was convinced from Scripture. So he told his parents he was going to be baptized and publicly identify himself as a Christian, and they said, “If you do that, we will conduct a funeral service for you, and you will be disinherited. There will be no inheritance for you, but on top of that, we will never speak to you again. To us, you will be a dead man.” He went ahead and was baptized, and they did what they said. They wrote him out of the will, they disinherited him, they really did have a funeral service for him. And when I knew him as a student in Dallas Seminary, it had been several years since his parents had had any communication whatsoever. Not his parents, but his whole family — brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, everybody. And he said, “Well, following Christ is more important to me than having the praise and approval of my family.”
Zane: So he was saying — that’s an impressive story — he was saying, “I love the praises of God more than the praises of men.”
Bob: Right. But he did not make this a salvation issue. He knew he was born again when he believed in Jesus, and he knew this was a discipleship issue for him.
Zane: Yes. And notice how skillfully John brings forward those two aspects. Remember that, you know, this is inspired Scripture — and I’m not reminding you, you know that — but I think we all need to remember that it’s inspired Scripture, that it is a document intended for evangelistic purposes throughout the Church Age, and that it has been written and prepared under the guidance of the Holy Spirit so that it serves that end.
Bob: Yes.
Zane: It would be very strange if — it might not be strange — but it would be surprising if the Holy Spirit did not anticipate the problems of confession that often have accompanied the spread of the Gospel, because the Gospel is going out, not into a Christian culture, but into a pagan culture. And the Holy Spirit looks down the centuries to see all of the circumstances in which the Gospel will be preached, like the friend you were talking about, where confession will be enormously costly.
What does John need to do to prepare for this? First of all, he needs to make it clear, which he does, that confession is not a part of the salvation experience. But secondly, he needs to make it clear that it’s a highly desirable and important thing to do. And he succeeds in doing both of those things. And he is saying, in essence, in chapter three, “Do not be like Nicodemus. Be like John the Baptist.” We all know where John the Baptist ended.
Bob: Yeah.
Zane: Right?
Bob: He lost his head.
Zane: That’s right. And Nicodemus lived on, as far as we know.
Bob: Yeah.
Zane: And so there’s a message here for the discerning convert, the person who has believed in Jesus Christ, and he realizes that Christ wants him to come to the light. If I’m doing the right thing, then I’m gonna come out there, and I’m gonna identify with Jesus Christ. I’m gonna stand with the light. I’m gonna confess it. And if I am persecuted — if I am, in fact, martyred — God will honor that because His choice servant, John the Baptist, had exactly that experience. And nobody confessed Christ more vocally or powerfully than John.
Bob: In fact, our word for “martyr” comes from the Greek word “martys” — being a witness or a testifier.
Zane: Yes, yes. Good.
Bob: Some people testified by death, but that’s really what martyrdom is.
Zane: Yes.
Bob: It’s just testimony.
Zane: That’s right.
Bob: So what happens is then, in this passage, is ultimately, when people come up with an explanation that says, “Well, John says they believed in His name, but they really didn’t believe in His name,” they subvert the whole point of the passage. And then ultimately, they change being born again by faith in Jesus to being born again by faith plus confession.
Zane: That’s right.
Bob: And ultimately, it opens up the door to faith plus discipleship...
Zane: That’s right.
Bob: ...because confession is not a one-time thing; it’s an ongoing sort of thing. And so ultimately, by rejecting the clear meaning of the passage to start with...
Zane: Yes.
Bob: ...they end up, then, and are going to subvert all kinds of other passages of Scripture, too...
Zane: Yes.
Bob: ...like Romans 10:9 and 10. They’re gonna subvert Matthew 10:32 and 33, Second Timothy 2:12. Anything related to confession is gonna become a salvific issue now.
Zane: That’s right. And by placing it in the wrong category, they impede the salvation of people, they confuse people already saved, and they rob them of the value of these Scriptures as fortification for proper Christian conduct and true discipleship to Jesus Christ.
Bob: That’s great.
Zane: I want to point out one other thing, Bob. We started with 2:23...
Bob: Right.
Zane: ...and with the statement that many “episteusan eis to onoma autou” — “many believed in His name.” Now, some have come to this and said, “Yeah, but these particular ones were not saved.” But it’s interesting that in 3:16 in the statements He makes to Nicodemus:
God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that pas ho pisteuon eis auton
— “everyone who believes in Him.” So the statement is explicit here that every believer in Jesus Christ has eternal life.
Bob: Won’t perish, has everlasting life. Yeah.
Zane: Now it’s interesting — I don’t know that the combination of “pas” and “pisteuo” occurs for the first time there. But it’s appropriate there because Nicodemus is the man of whom we might say, “Oh well, he believed but he didn’t get eternal life because he didn’t confess.” And instead, in the message to Nicodemus, there’s an assurance imparted to Nicodemus that whoever you are, you — even you, Nicodemus, knowing all I know about you — even you, Nicodemus, are among the “everyone” who believes and who gets eternal life.
Bob: I used to be a Southern Baptist. And in fact, one year I was on staff at First Baptist Dallas when Dr. Criswell was still alive. And I still remember the famous song the Baptists used to sing a lot, “Whosoever Surely Meaneth Me.”
Zane: Uh-huh.
Bob: “Whosoever Surely Meaneth Me.” And I really like that, but what happens is, when a person takes the view that the people in John 2:23 who believed in His name didn’t really believe in His name, then “whosoever” no longer “surely meaneth me.”
Zane: That’s right.
Bob: I mean, now I need to know, “Well, do I believe, or do I really believe?”
Zane: Yeah.
Bob: You know.
Zane: Then “whosoever believing” believing believes. It says instead that “whoever believes.”
Bob: Well, yeah. And then in John 4, when He says, “You drink the water from Jacob’s well, you’ll thirst again. You drink this water, you’ll never thirst again,” that changes from one simple, “Forever quench your thirst,” to, “Glub, glub, glub, glub, glub, glub — I gotta keep continuously drinking because I gotta have continuous faith.” Right?
Zane: Right.
Bob: That’s another thing they mess up on, too.
Zane: Yeah, that’s true.
Bob: The “they” is the old commentator who is following a tradition. But unfortunately, this tradition really grows out of people who have problems with the Word of God and don’t take it at face value, and so in order to help God out —
Zane: Yeah.
Bob: ... quote, unquote — they come up with interpretations that allow for them to impose their theology on the text.
Zane: “Surely God wouldn’t save a person who didn’t confess Jesus.” “But Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners,” says Paul, “of which I’m number one.” So it’s a misperception of what salvation is all about. Once I begin to qualify the certified recipients of this salvation, I’ve destroyed the Gospel, because the Gospel is that whoever believes in Him does have everlasting life, even if, after believing in Him, Jesus can’t entrust Himself to me.
Bob: Yeah. Even if they don’t confess it.
Zane: That’s right.
Bob: And so going back to 24 and 25, the problem with these new believers, which we learn from 3:1 and following is — although it’s not directly stated here — the discerning reader knows it’s because they won’t confess Him. They’re unwilling. These new believers have not yet made a commitment to tell other people they believe in Jesus.
Zane: I think a first-time reader of this passage will hold his understanding of the passage in tension for a moment because he doesn’t get the full answer here. In other words, what he does learn is: people got saved by seeing Jesus’ signs at Jerusalem. Secondly, he learns that there were some, some of these — maybe all of the ones referred to in the previous verse — whom Jesus did not feel that He could entrust Himself to.
Bob: Yeah.
Zane: So the first-time reader of the Gospel of John may say, “I wonder what that is about.” And he has to say, “You know, I should read on.” By hopefully by the time he gets to chapter... okay, he meets Nicodemus again. Right? And Nicodemus is neither fish nor fowl here.
Bob: Yes.
Zane: So that, you know, that’s like dropping a clue. And then they get to chapter 12, and they suddenly discover that there were a lot of rulers who believed in Him and didn’t confess Him because they loved the praises of men more than the praises of God. And then his mind can go back to the — “Well that’s what’s wrong with these people.”
Bob: So as the first-time reader of John, then, should establish certain things and suspend a judgment on other things.
Zane: That’s right.
Bob: He doesn’t come and say, “Oops! I misunderstood what John 1:12 was saying or what John 3:16 is saying.” Instead, he says, “That’s clear...
Zane: Yes.
Bob: ...but I’m not quite sure what’s wrong with these people...
Zane: That’s right.
Bob: ...and it seems to be with Nicodemus, but I’m not sure.” But by the time he gets to chapter 12, what he suspended his interpretation on now comes around. And the problem is, too many people make up their mind based on experiential factors, or their denomination, or their pastor, or their parents, or you know, commentary tradition...
Zane: Or their previous theological indoctrination, whatever it was.
Bob: ...whatever it is, rather than simply saying, I mean, couldn’t a person say, “Well, I really don’t know what this means, but I know it doesn’t mean these people weren’t genuinely born again”?
Zane: Yes. Yes, because already John has made clear that it is faith that brings eternal life, right? So... but where is the first-time reader of the Gospel of John who understood everything on the first reading? And you know, I’m sitting here as a man who has had the privilege of reading it for, you know — I wasn’t reading at five — but I was probably reading it at seven —
Bob: Yeah!
Zane: — six or seven.
Bob: So close to seven decades.
Zane: Yes, uh-huh. And I’m still learning things in the Gospel of John that I didn’t notice or see before. They haven’t changed the basic thrust or message of the Gospel of John for me, which was clear from the get-go: Believe in Him, and you have eternal life. But a lot of things are in here that are deeper than the surface, and this is one of the things. On the surface we don’t get this the first time. We may not even get it the second or the third. I can’t remember exactly when it dawned on me that these passages were connected and, of course, that often happens in Bible study as we read the entirety of the document we’re reading, as we study the various parts of it, they begin to come together for us. But it doesn’t happen overnight, and it’s not something that you can — I was always a little frustrated when you were told to teach the book of First John in one semester. You can go over the full book of First John, but the chances that you know everything — and certainly that the students know everything — by the time you’re finished is very enormous and high.
Bob: Well, I remember I had both James and the Johannine Epistles from you in one semester, and at the time it didn’t seem like a whole lot when I started the semester, but by the end of the semester I was like, “We covered an enormous amount of material.” And yeah, you’re right. So the person who comes to this and takes the text as it says, even on the first reading — even a child on the first reading — is gonna get, “I believe in Jesus, I have everlasting life.”
Zane: Yeah. That’s right.
Bob: Subsequent readings, maturity over time, is gonna let me understand the secret believer motif although, fortunately, we can help people along.
Zane: Absolutely.
Bob: We can say, “If you never read this before, maybe you should look at this right now.”
Zane: In fact, that’s what teachers are for. You have two ways to go as a Christian. If you don’t get any teaching from a spiritually discerning person, you’re going to spend years and years and years getting where other people have gotten in a very short time. Why? Because we need to get into a teaching environment. That’s what churches are for...
Bob: Right.
Zane: ...to make disciples by teaching the Word. We have to stay in the Word, and if we stay in the Word, we’ll eventually know the truth, even if we’re — you know, it’s hard to believe that somebody can stay in the Word very long and stay out of the church very long.
Bob: Right.
Zane: But assuming that we are responsive to the Word of God and doing what we learn from the Word of God, then a teaching environment is the best thing for us because people with discernment, with years of experience, with years of wrestling with this and praying about it — they have something to offer us. And therefore it’s good, if a person were confused on this, if they were in a church where they could say, “Look, this sounds like to me this. What do you think?” — a good teacher should be able to straighten them out quickly.
Bob: Yeah. Yeah, that’s fantastic. Well, anything else, then, on this passage?
Zane: No, that’s all I can think of at the moment, Bob.
Bob: Okay. Well, thanks. This is great. I really enjoyed it. And then next time — you know, it’s lunch, we’re late for lunch. So how about if we just hold off until next time we record, and we’ll do John 12:42?
Zane: I’m in favor of lunch!
Bob: Right. Amen!