οὐκέτι δοῦλοι

οὐκέτι λέγω ὐμας δούλους, ὅτι ὁ δοῦλος οὐκ οἶδεν τί ποιεῖ αὐτοῦ ὁ κύριος — κατὰ Ἰωάννην 15:15α

ouketi lego hymas doulous, hoti ho doulos ouk oiden ti poiei autou ho kyrios — kata Ioannen 15:15a

No longer do I call you slaves, because the slave does not know what his master is doing. - John 15:15a

Slavery is anathema to modern, enlightened cultures that pride themselves on individual independence. The abomination of man abusing power over his fellow man should be. Yet though we condemn slavery in its most obvious form, we embrace it in other less obvious but equally insidious forms: addiction, immorality, avarice, and wrath. Everyone who indulges in these commits sin, and as Jesus says, “Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin” (John 8:34a, ESV).

Paul reiterates Jesus' stark statement, writing, “Formerly, when you did not know God, you were enslaved to those that by nature are not gods” (Galatians 4:8, ESV). The Greek word translated as “slave”, δοῦλος, indicates one born into slavery. Apart from the knowledge of God and His Word, we readily sell ourselves to anything but Him. We may not explicitly call what we devote all our time, thought, talent, and treasure as gods, but actions in this vein betray any feeble declarations of independence or irreligiosity.

In and of ourselves, we have no hope. “But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. And because you are sons, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, crying, 'Abba! Father!' So you are no longer a slave, but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God” (Galatians 4:4-7, ESV).

Thankfully, Christ prevailed over the world and its enslavements, even death, in His sacrifice and resurrection. If we accept this truth and the price paid for our freedom, then we will truly be free to become heirs of God's kingdom. Just as heirs are privileged to enjoy the inheritance which is set aside for them, we also are privileged to share in the glory which Christ shares with the Father. The apostle Paul writes, “The Spirit himself bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, then heirs--heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer with him in order that we may also be glorified with him. For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us” (Romans 8:16-18, ESV).

Inheritance is not only a privilege. As Paul writes, followers of Christ should expect to share in Christ's suffering as well as His glory. Our motive for following Christ should not be the search of pleasure but the pursuit of God's kingdom and His righteousness. All those in Christ once sought after themselves and the decaying enticements of the world unto enmity with God, leading to death.

Despite its empty results, sin still entices. The apostle Paul had to admonish some of his slipping brothers and sisters in Christ , “But now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how can you turn back again to the weak and worthless elementary principles of the world, whose slaves you want to be once more?” (Galatians 4:9, ESV) We who follow Christ today must be equally mindful of the temptation to sin. Though no longer slaves to sin, we should use our freedom judiciously to avoid falling back into that slavery, according to the knowledge of the Father's will which Christ has given us through His Word in which He has enjoined us to remain.

παύω

There is no entry this week for κλῆμα 15:5. Please return next week for the continuation of our examination of John 15.

φίλοι

ὐμεῖς φίλοι μού ἐστε ἐὰν ποιῆτε ἃ ἐγὼ ἐντέλλομαι ὑμῖν. — κατὰ Ἰωάννην 15:14

hymeis filoi mou este ean poiete ha ego entellomai hymin. — kata Ioannen 15:14

You are my friends if you do the things I command you. — John 15:14, translation mine

Learning by rote has received much in the way of bad press as of late. The relentless and often haphazard pursuit of progress that typifies our current American culture dictates that teachers avail themselves of more recent and thus ipso facto more effective strategies. While educational innovation can be a worthy goal, the careless discarding of proven methods for the sake of novelty ultimately does didactics a disservice.

Repetition is a natural linguistic expression of emphasis. In Ancient Greek, reduplication of the initial phoneme of a verb serves a grammatical function in that it indicates the perfect aspect. In English, we will often reduplicate words to emphasize the quality or quantity of that which we are describing, e.g., “He's a Christian, I mean a CHRISTIAN-Christian” (source: Corpus of English contrastive focus reduplications, assembled by Jila Ghomeshi, Ray Jackendoff, Nicole Rosen, and Kevin Russell). Christ Himself frequently reduplicated the word “Amen” when pointing out something that He wanted listeners to focus on, saying “Amen, Amen, I say unto you.” Jesus is recorded as having used this construction twenty-five times across all the Gospels, three times in the thirteenth chapter of John's gospel alone (John 13:16,20,21).

Repetition and reduplication for emphasis are not limited to phonemes and words but extend also to discourses and concepts. Parents repeat admonitions to their children ad infinitum so that what is said will sink in. Anyone who has read through Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy can attest to the repetition of particular laws, especially in Deuteronomy, which is, as its name suggests, the second recitation of the law.

It should come as no surprise then to see Christ repeat many of His teachings. The exhortation to keep His commandments, which are the Father's commandments, falls into this category. Within two chapters of John's gospel, the exhortation is repeated five times:

• “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” (John 14:15, ESV)
• “Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him.” (John 14:21, ESV)
• “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him. Whoever does not love me does not keep my words. And the word that you hear is not mine but the Father's who sent me.” (John 14:23b-24, ESV)
• “If you observe my commandments, you remain in my love, just as I have kept the commandments of my Father and remain in His love.” (John 15:10, translation mine)
• “You are my friends if you do the things I command you.” (John 15:14, translation mine)

Keeping God's commandments is indicative of our love for Him, His love in us, and our friendship with Him. The word which is translated as “friends” in John 15:14 is φίλοι, literally those who are held dear, sometimes used in Ancient Greek to describe not only friends but kinsmen, as well.

No one would call a man his friend if he were habitually abandoned by that man. We go to great lengths to maintain friendships with those around us, often fulfilling the requests of friends for the sake of those friendships. Why should we treat Christ any differently? If we claim friendship with Christ, let us live like true friends, and not only as friends but as servants of the one true God in obedience. For the things Christ commands are not mere inclinations but mandatory instructions from the Father to us for our good and the Father's glory.

As the apostle James admonishes, “be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves. For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks intently at his natural face in a mirror. For he looks at himself and goes away and at once forgets what he was like. But the one who looks into the perfect law, the law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer who forgets but a doer who acts, he will be blessed in his doing” (James 1:22b-25, ESV).

Do not be like Judas, who spurned Christ's friendship and betrayed himself to sin and death. Rather, let us follow the example of the apostle John, who stayed at the cross after all the other apostles deserted Jesus and who, at Christ's behest, received His mother Mary into his home (John 19:26-27). We should likewise receive and respond to that which Christ entrusts to each of us, namely His Word, the message of His salvation. As Jesus said to those who were following Him, “If you abide in My word, you are truly My disciples, and you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (John 8:31, ESV). Though we be burdened with all manner of sin, if we repent from that sin and accept Christ's sacrificial gift and daily seek His friendship through the reading and practice of His Word, He will free us by the power of His Holy Spirit from the sin that holds us captive.

ψυχή

μείζονα ταύτης ἀγάπην οὐδεὶς ἔχει, ἵνα τις τὴν ψυχὴν αὐτοῦ θῇ ὑπὲρ τῶν φίλων αὐτοῦ. — κατὰ Ἰωάννην 15:13

meizona tautes agapen oudeis echei, hina tis ten psychen autou the hyper ton filon autou. — kata Ioannen 15:13

No man has love greater than this, that someone should lay down his life over his friends. — John 15:13, translation mine

Despite the admonitions of certain popular songs, the greatest love of all does not come from learning to love yourself but rather wells up from learning to love God and love as God loves. According to Christ, the highest expression of this is to lay down one's life over one's friends. Christ loved us enough to die over us, and His death and resurrection cover over our sins if we believe and repent and follow Him with earnest hearts.

Though the phrase ὑπὲρ τῶν φίλων can be rendered practically verbatim into English, the Greek word used to indicate the life laid down, ψυχὴ (psyche), carries a broader and deeper connotation than the English “life”, though the alternatives present their own problems. The English cognate, psyche, hints at this deeper meaning, but even that does not encompass the entirety of what Christ did for us on the cross. We must turn to Scripture for further elucidation.

At its root, ψυχὴ is derived from the verb ψύχω (psycho), meaning “I blow” or “I breathe”, as well as “I cool”. The verb is one of many in Greek related to breath, each with its own shade of meaning. One of the first instances in which ψυχὴ appears in Scripture is in the Ancient Greek translation of the Old Testament, the Septuagint. In Genesis, God mandates that ὃ ἔχει ἐν ἑαυτῷ ψυχὴν ζωῆς (ho echei en heauto psychen zoes), that is, “what has within itself the breath of life” (Genesis 1:30b, translation mine), may have any green plant for food. In Hebrew, the phrase “breath of life” is נֶפֶשׁ חַיָּה (nephesh chayah), נֶפֶשׁ (nephesh) corresponding to ψυχῂ as “breath”. Were one to stop there, one might conclude that the word “life” carries all the semantic weight necessary to convey the import of Christ's sacrifice.

Looking back a couple verses, however, reveals ψυχὴ indicating not only the breath of a living creature but the living creature itself, e.g., ἑρπετὰ ψυχῶν ζωσῶν (herpeta psychon zoson), “swarms of living creatures” (Genesis 1:20b, ESV); πᾶσαν ψυχὴν ζῴων ἑρπετῶν (pasan psychen zoon herpeton), “every living creature that moves” (Genesis 1:21b, ESV); ψυχὴν ζῶσαν κατὰ γένος, (psychen zosan kata genos) “living creatures according to their kinds” (Genesis 1:24b, ESV). In each of these instances, the Hebrew root of the word translated as ψυχὴ in the Septuagint is נֶפֶשׁ (nephesh).

This usage also extends to man with some slight differences. According to the Scripture, “then the LORD God formed the man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature.” (Genesis 2:7, ESV). Though the phrase “living creature” is the same in the Hebrew and the Greek as in Genesis 1:20, the text notes that God breathed into the nostrils of the man, separating him from the animals, about whom no such note is made. In Greek, the verb is ἐνεφύσησεν (enefusesen), used perhaps because ψύχω as a verb historically lost its connotation with breathing to its alternate meaning of cooling, but in Hebrew, the verb root is וַפַּח (naphach), to which נֶפֶשׁ (nephesh) is related. The Greek phrase used here for “breath of life”, πνοὴν ζωῆς (pnoen zoes), is derived from yet another Greek verb meaning to blow or breathe, πνέω (pneo), and the Hebrew likewise uses a different term, נִשְׁמַת חַיִּים (nishmat chayyim).

All this sets a stage in which נֶפֶשׁ (nephesh) and ψυχὴ see a broader usage throughout the Old Testament. As the breath of life comes to mean the life within, so also the physical life of man comes to mean his soul. The psalmist David declares, “My soul makes its boast in the LORD; let the humble hear and be glad” (Psalm 34:1, ESV). He also notes that “the wicked boasts of the desires of his soul” (Psalm 10:3, ESV). נֶפֶשׁ (nephesh) and ψυχὴ account for not only the man's physical life but his mental and emotional life as well.

In perhaps the most dramatic semantic extension, even God the Father speaks of His own soul through Moses, promising the nation of Israel that if the Israelites walk in the ways of the LORD, “I will make My dwelling among you, and My soul shall not abhor you” (Leviticus 26:11, ESV). If they turn to idols instead of Him, God warns, “I will destroy your high places and cut down your incense altars and cast your dead bodies upon the dead bodies of your idols, and My soul will abhor you” (Leviticus 26:30, ESV). David confirms this, saying of God, “The LORD tests the righteous, but his soul hates the wicked and the one who loves violence” (Psalm 11:5, ESV). The words נֶפֶשׁ (nephesh) and ψυχὴ appear in these verses as well, even though God is creator and not creature.

This examination is brought to fruition when we consider Christ, “who, though He was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but made Himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men” (Philippians 2:6-7, ESV). As Christ is simultaneously both fully God and fully man, He carries within Himself one soul dedicated to the Father's work.

Isaiah witnesses to the unity of Father and Son as God says to him, “Behold My servant, whom I uphold, My chosen, in whom My soul delights; I have put My Spirit upon Him; He will bring forth justice to the nations” (Isaiah 42:1, ESV). This prophecy is echoed in Matthew's gospel (Matthew 12:18), underscoring its significance. God's soul (ψυχή) delights in Christ, the faithful servant, and the Father's Holy Spirit inhabits the Son as it has from before creation.

If Christ is then fully God and fully man, and if the ψυχή of which Christ speaks of laying down extends beyond mere breath to encompass the soul, it stands to reason that His sacrifice is not only the offering of the breath of life within Himself as the perfect, sinless lamb, but the emptying of His very soul, at once human and divine, so that He might be filled with the sin of the world to become the object of the Father's wrath and save those who believe in Him from impending destruction. Lest it still be unclear, the triune God ripped Himself apart, cutting off the Son from the divine fellowship which He had enjoyed from all eternity so that He might prepare a place for us with Him, making way and room for us through the holes in His hands, back, brow, and side.

Only Christ could have accomplished this work, for “although He was a son, He learned obedience through what He suffered. And being made perfect, He became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey Him, being designated by God a high priest after the order of Melchizedek” (Hebrews 5:8-9, ESV). We are far from perfect, but we have Christ's example and His words and the promise of His ultimate work of love. Though we cannot offer ourselves for the sins of others, we should expend ourselves as living sacrifices, pointing through our daily witness to the One who can and did offer Himself so that those burdened by sin may find Him whose yoke is easy and whose burden is light (Matthew 11:30). In seeking His friendship and obeying Him, we accept the salvation He bought, and in lives shining as lights we show others to seek Him as we have sought.