Hi, I'm David Bercot, and tonight the title of my message is" Capital Error." I still remember Saturday, February 1, 2003, quite well. We were living in East Texas at the time in a house that was way out in the country. In fact, we were the last house on a small country dead-end lane. Our property sat back off the road behind a hayfield. And that particular Saturday morning, I was working on some scroll matters. It was a quiet Saturday morning, and I was enjoying the more relaxed pace that Saturday usually brought.
But then suddenly I heard this heavy semi-truck pulling up outside my office. In fact, I not only heard it, but I could feel the heavy vibrations. It really surprised me as we weren't expecting any deliveries, and big trucks didn't just happen to be on our country lane, and they certainly wouldn't just happen to come down our long driveway. So I quickly stepped outside my office to see who it was. Well, to my utter amazement, nothing was there. There was no semi, there wasn't even a pickup or a car, nothing.
How could this be? I knew I had not imagined the noise. I walked all the way around our house, I looked across the hayfield, but there were no vehicles of any kind anywhere. Well, there was nothing I could do but to scratch my head and go back to work. Well, around noon, before breaking for lunch, I quickly checked the headline news on my computer to see if anything of importance was happening in the world.
Then I saw these huge headlines: Space Shuttle Columbia breaks apart while re-entering the atmosphere over Texas. Suddenly, I realize that is what I heard and felt. Now, it's unbelievable that something that high up in the atmosphere could be heard and felt miles and miles away, here on the ground. But that was the truck that I thought I heard.
In fact, they ended up finding some parts of the shuttle in our county, and quite a bit of the debris landed 40 miles from our house at the university I had attended earlier in my life. But what caused this huge catastrophe for a shuttle to break up? Well, it turned out to be something relatively little. When the shuttle had launched, a piece of the foam insulation had broken off from the external fuel tank, not from the shuttle itself, but the fuel tank.
And when it broke off, it struck the left wing of the shuttle. Now, at the time, it didn't seem like a big thing. This was actually the 28th mission for Columbia, and pieces of foam had broken off before when it was launching. And it didn't affect the space mission that Columbia was doing, nor did it affect its ability to orbit the Earth.
However, when it was returning to Earth and re-entered the Earth's atmosphere, that little bit of damage to the wing of the Space Shuttle allowed hot atmospheric gases to penetrate and destroy the internal wing structure, and that caused the spacecraft to become unstable, and when you're going that fast, just blew apart from the friction of the atmosphere. Yes, little things can have an enormous impact on big things.
In fact, it was a little thing that had caused the Space Shuttle Challenger to explode back in 1986. Now, in today's dollars, the Challenger had cost over $200 billion. Yet it was just a little part an O-ring that destroyed it. Now, an O-ring is basically a glorified gasket or seal. But one of the O-rings on the booster rocket had failed at liftoff, and this allowed pressurized hot gases to escape from inside the booster, and boom, before you knew it, the entire thing exploded.
Now, interestingly, it wasn't even necessarily a defective O-ring. I'm not sure what they finally concluded on that. What had happened was that it had been exceptionally cold the morning of the launch, even though they were launching from Florida. And it was the unexpectedly cold temperature that had affected the O-ring, that then affected everything. So something as small as having an unusually cold morning was enough to destroy a $200 billion spacecraft, plus the lives of the members of the crew that were on it.
Again, little things can have big impacts. Well, tonight we're going to be talking about another kind of little thing that has a huge impact on something much bigger. However, this time the consequences can be eternal. We're not talking about just $200 billion. We're talking about a person's eternal life, because this little thing can completely alter the gospel message. And what's the little thing I'm talking about? Simply a capital letter. In New Testament Greek, there were no upper and lower-case letters.
The entire text was written in all capital letters called uncials. So when someone translates the New Testament into English, he or she has to decide on whether or not to capitalize any given word. Now, most of the time it's obvious. I'm talking about words like God, Jesus, Holy Spirit, Jerusalem, and Herod. However, for other words like" law" and" spirit," translators have to carefully examine the context to know whether or not to capitalize that word.
Unfortunately, their theological biases and preconceptions will normally influence their decision to capitalize such words or not. We're going to be looking at two particular words tonight, law and spirit. We'll be seeing how capitalization can totally change the meaning of those words. So let's start with the word law. I wasn't exaggerating when I said that sometimes the decision as to whether or not to capitalize a letter can completely alter the gospel message. Let me give you an example, Romans 6:15.
Here we read," What then? Shall we sin because we are not under law but under grace?" Certainly not. What I just read is the way most modern English translations render Romans 6:15. With that rendering, Paul seems to be saying that we Christians are not under any kind of law. We are simply under grace. But the 1611 King James Version reads," What then? Shall we sin because we are not under the Law, but under grace?" Certainly not. And Law there is capitalized.
And that gives Paul's statement a completely different meaning. With this rendition, Paul is saying that we're no longer under the Law of Moses. Now, we Christians live under God's grace or favor. But Paul is not necessarily saying that we no longer have any commandments. Of course, today, few people use the 1611 King James. The edition of the King James Version that most readers use today is the 1769 revision made by Dr. Benjamin Blayney at Oxford University. It renders Romans 6:15 this way. What then?
Shall we sin because we are not under the law, but under grace? Certainly not. Now, hearing that orally, it doesn't sound any different from the 1611 King James, because it uses the word" the" there, but it renders law with a lowercase L, so it makes the meaning ambiguous. Of course, we should never let Christianity turn on a single verse. In the case of the word law, though, it appears over 200 times in the New Testament.
So the decision to capitalize or not to capitalize the phrase" the law" affects a lot of New Testament teaching. It makes a big difference as to whether we Christians are under no commandments, or that simply we are not under the commandments of the Mosaic Law. Now, as do most of my listeners, I believe in the inerrancy and infallibility of God's Word, but I don't believe in the inerrancy and infallibility of Bible translations.
Never be afraid to second-guess a Bible translator or a Bible commentator if you have good reason to do so. If you've listened to very many of my messages about what the early Christians believed, you're no doubt already aware that the early Christians believed that after we are born again, we maintain our saved relationship through an obedient love faith relationship with Christ. They didn't teach that we can earn our salvation. They understood that salvation is a gift.
However, they also believed that God gives this gift only to those who love Him. And if we love Him, we will obey His commandments. Jeremiah prophesied that under the New Covenant, God's laws would be written in our hearts. He didn't prophesy that there would be no laws. Luther, of course, taught a totally different gospel. He taught that we shouldn't be looking for commandments in the New Testament because we're now under grace, not law.
Luther said," We can't please God with our works, which he defined as external obedience to any kind of laws." Now, I think Luther sincerely believed that he was restoring the apostolic faith. He wasn't trying to introduce error into the Church. On the other hand, he knew full well that he was going against what everybody had taught ever since the close of the New Testament. I mean, he was egotistical enough to imagine that he knew more than everyone who preceded him. Now, Luther was no dummy.
He knew that if he was going to introduce a radically new gospel to the Christian world, he had to change the meanings of a number of key words used in the New Testament. One of the first words Luther zeroed in on was the word" law." He had to convince people that Christians are under no commandments. He realized he could sell people on his gospel simply by changing the definitions of law and works.
So he put a preface in front of each Bible book in order to make sure that people would read his new German Bible through his glasses.
In his preface to Romans, Luther wrote," I will do my best so far as God has given me power to open the way into the letter to the Romans through this preface, so that it may be the better understood by everyone." For heretofore, it has been evilly darkened with commentaries and all kinds of idle talk, though it is, in itself, a bright light, almost enough to illuminate all the Scripture. To begin with, we must have knowledge of its language and know what St.
Paul means by the words law, sin, grace, faith, righteousness, flesh, spirit, and so on. Otherwise, no reading of it has any value. The little word" law" you must not take here in human fashion as a teaching about what works are to be done or not done." So Luther says that the letter to the Romans is in itself a bright light almost enough to illuminate all the Scripture.
Of course, we would have to wonder if Romans is such a bright light in itself, why did no one grasp its" true meaning" until Luther came along and redefined all the major terms that are used in it? Apparently, it's only a bright light if you have Luther's codebook to interpret it. And evidently, no one had that codebook from the time of Paul's death to the year 1522, when Luther wrote his preface.
As I've said for Luther's gospel to work, it's important that when people read the New Testament, particularly Paul's epistles, they need to interpret the word" law" to mean any kind of law from God. In other words, when Paul repeatedly emphasizes that Christians are not under the law, and that we cannot be saved by the law, it has to appear that Paul is talking about law in general.
If Christians read the New Testament with the understanding that Paul is talking about the Law of Moses in all of his epistles, which is how the early Christians understood him, then it destroys Luther's whole gospel. In fact, Luther's gospel simply disappears.
As Luther himself said," None of us are going to understand Romans, and by extension any other of Paul's letters, unless we use his special definitions." Now, Luther succeeded in having his gospel prevail because he convinced Christians that Paul is not talking about the Mosaic Law. Instead, Paul is talking about law in general. Luther's gospel has spread primarily through sermons, tracts, books, and commentaries.
However, from the very beginning, Luther and his supporters have helped to spread his gospel by tampering with Scripture. As I've mentioned, Luther added prefaces to every Bible book. His prefaces to the New Testament in general and to the letter to the Romans predisposed the readers of his new German Bible to embrace His gospel before they had read even one verse of Romans. Not only that, Luther even tampered with the sacred text of Scripture.
For example, he altered Paul's statement in Romans 3:28, which reads," Therefore we conclude that a man is justified by faith apart from the deeds of the law." In his translation, Luther added the word" alone," which appears nowhere in the Greek text. So he has Paul saying," Therefore we conclude that a man is justified without works of the law, but by faith alone." Now, translators today also tamper with Scripture in order to promote Luther's gospel.
In addition to the methods he used, they have an additional tool: capitalization. In German, all nouns are capitalized, so the word" Law" is always capitalized in German, regardless of which law is being spoken of. But that's not the case in English. One of the basic grammar rules in English is that we capitalize proper nouns. What is a proper noun? Well, it's the name of a particular person, place, or thing. Paul is the name of a particular person, so we capitalize it.
Mount Rushmore is the name of a particular place, so we capitalize it. The Bible is the name of a particular thing, so we capitalize it. Specific legislation is also the name of a particular thing, so we capitalize the names of specific laws or codes of law. For example, we capitalize Constitution, Bill of Rights, First Amendment, Magna Carta, and the Code of Hammurabi. Since the Law of Moses is the name of a particular collection of laws, it should be capitalized, just like we capitalize the code of Hammurabi.
Let's go back to the word" Constitution", which I just mentioned. When we write the phrase" the Constitution of the United States," we always capitalize it. What about the single word" Constitution"? If we are referring to the Constitution of the United States, then we capitalize it. Because if we write" Constitution" with a lower case, it means we are referring to the Constitution of some organization or club, not to the Constitution of the United States.
So it is with the Law of Moses, we should always capitalize the single word" Law" when it refers specifically to the Law of Moses. Otherwise, it means we're talking about law in general. Now, the English rules of capitalization had not been completely solidified when the King James Bible was published in 1611. Nevertheless, the translators nearly always capitalize any reference to the Law of Moses.
Now, in the case of modern translations, the New American Standard also capitalizes the word" Law" any time it refers to the Mosaic Law. However, most English Bibles use a lowercase L when the New Testament passages talk about the Law, even though it is clearly talking about the Law of Moses. By using a lowercase L, the translators make it appear that Paul is talking about law in general. Paul seems to be contrasting grace with any kind of commandments.
To me, it is scandalous that Bible translators feel so free to tamper with God's Word, to translate passages in such a way that the reader will be purposely misled. And the bigger scandal is that they've gotten away with it. There has been no outcry among Christians about this tampering with God's Word. I've read a lot of criticisms about modern translations, but none of the criticisms I've read have ever mentioned this dishonest and misleading practice of translating the law with a lowercase L.
And it's no accident that these translators have gotten away with this since they've slanted the Scriptures to fit popular evangelical theology, they've been able to get off scot-free. Few people will speak out against dishonesty if the dishonesty supports their own beliefs. Now, if these translators had slanted Scripture in such a way that it went against evangelical theology, I can assure you there would be a loud voice of criticism.
I say that because I grew up with the New World Translation of Jehovah's Witnesses. The men who translated it slanted their translation to fit the theology of Jehovah's Witnesses. And there are countless articles, tracts, and books that attack their translation because of this. I can't help but think of Paul's words in Romans 2:1. He says," Therefore, you are inexcusable, O man, whoever you are, who judge, for in whatever you judge another, you condemn yourself.
For you who judge practice the same things." Now, to be sure, Paul is not talking about Bible translating here, he's talking about wicked conduct. However, the principle is still the same. When we condemn someone else for the very thing we are doing, we're actually condemning ourselves. Now, as with Luther, I don't think any of these Bible translators are trying to corrupt the Scriptures. All of them believe that they are simply promoting God's truth. But Jehovah's Witnesses think that too.
In fact, the same could be said of everyone who has played a part in changing the historical Christian faith. Probably more than any other single person, Augustine took the Church away from what it originally believed and practiced. However, I don't believe for a moment that Augustine was deliberately trying to corrupt Christianity. No, he sincerely believed he was helping the cause of Christianity.
In the series of CD messages I recently recorded about discovering the Septuagint, I present incontrovertible evidence that Jerome out and out lied in order to sever the Western Church from the Septuagint and to attach it to the Masoretic Text. However, I have no doubt that in his heart, Jerome believed he was merely telling a white lie that was justified because he was bringing the Church over to the correct Old Testament text.
When the Catholic Church and the Reformers put Christians to death for teaching what both Rome and the Reformers thought was heresy, they sincerely believed they were doing the right thing. In their minds, they were protecting the Church and keeping it from falling into major error. In fact, nearly all of the corruption that has come into Christianity has come from well-meaning people who thought they were helping God. However, I don't think their sincerity is going to be much of a defense on Judgment Day.
In the kingdom of God, how we do things is just as important as the end we are seeking. In Christianity, the end never justifies the means. God doesn't need us to lie, kill, or torture people in order to protect His Church as though He were helpless. He doesn't need us to slant His Scriptures or tamper with them in order to get across what we believe is His truth. What He needs from us is to be scrupulously honest when we are translating His Word.
Tampering with God's Word applies to a lot of issues, but right now we're specifically looking at the practice of refusing to capitalize the phrase" The Law" when the passage is obviously referring to the Law of Moses. As nearly as I can tell, this whole business of using a lowercase L for law started with the 1769 revision of the King James Bible. The main person behind that revision was Dr. Benjamin Blayney at Oxford University.
Although King James only Christians will tell you that there is no difference between the 1611 King James and the 1769 King James, except for changes in spelling. That's not really true. Whereas the 1611 King James normally capitalizes the phrase" the Law" when it refers to the Mosaic Law. The 1769 revisionist changed all of those capital L's to lowercase Ls. My guess is that Blayney did this on purpose in order to bring the King James Bible more in line with Luther's teaching. But I could be mistaken.
In modern times, the new King James Version follows the practice of the 1769 Blayney revision of not capitalizing law, even when the text is clearly talking about the Mosaic Law. Two of the most popular modern translations today are the NIV and the ESV. Both of those translations usually capitalize the word" Law" or the phrase" Law of Moses" when it appears in the four gospels, unless it's clearly not talking about the Law of Moses. So the translators know the rule that we capitalize proper nouns.
Nevertheless, even in the gospels, they aren't completely consistent with it. However, beginning with the Book of Acts, both of those translations switch to a lowercase L whenever the phrase" the law" appears, even when there can be no doubt that the passage is talking about the Mosaic Law. Let me give you an example of what I'm talking about. I'm going to be reading from the second chapter of Luke in the New International Version, the NIV, beginning with verse 22.
Here we read," When the time of their purification according to the Law of Moses had been completed, Joseph and Mary took him to Jerusalem to present him to the Lord." Now the NIV capitalizes Law of Moses there. Anyway, we continue. As it is written in the Law of the Lord, every firstborn male is to be consecrated to the Lord.
Here, they capitalize the word" Law" in the expression" Law of the Lord," and they do so in the next verse, verse 24," And to offer a sacrifice in keeping with what is said in the Law of the Lord, a pair of doves or two young pigeons." Finally, verse 27," When the parents brought in the child Jesus to do for him what the custom of the Law required, Simeon took him in his arms and praised God." And again, they capitalized the word" Law" there.
So the translators know and acknowledge the rule of capitalization that we capitalize proper nouns. Yet beginning with the Book of Acts, both the NIV and the ESV suddenly stop capitalizing the phrase" the law." This way, when the reader gets to Romans and Galatians, his mind is already taking the phrase" the law" to be talking about law in general. I'll give you an example of what I'm talking about. I'm going to read from Hebrews 10, verses 28 and 29 from the NIV.
It says," Anyone who rejected the law of Moses died without mercy on the testimony of two or three witnesses." Now there they don't capitalize the law of Moses. They did it back in the gospels, but now that they're in the epistles, they use a small L. How absurdly inconsistent can you be? You capitalize Law in the gospels, but you refuse to do it in the epistles. This is simply deliberate tampering with God's Word.
What is particularly incriminating is that in that same chapter of Hebrews, the NIV capitalizes several words that the rules of capitalization in English would not have you capitalize. For example, Hebrews 10:25, and the NIV reads," Let us not give up meeting together as some are in the habit of doing, but let us encourage one another, and all the more as you see the day approaching." Now, in that verse, the NIV capitalizes the word" day," even though there is no rule in English that says it should be.
In fact, we don't know for sure what day the writer is even talking about. He could be talking about our personal day of deliverance from this life. He might be talking about the day that Christ returns, or he simply may be referring to day in contrast to night. In other words, we presently live in a world of darkness, but daylight is approaching, so let's especially be encouraging one another.
So it's stretching things a bit to capitalize day in that verse, but the fact that they do it shows me that they are keenly aware of what terms they want to capitalize and what terms they don't, and their decision to not capitalize the law is no accident.
Remember, Luther knew that to sell his gospel, he had to redefine the word" law." So these translators do their part to muddy the waters and confuse the reader by refusing to capitalize the phrase" The Law" in Acts and in the epistles, but they do it back in the gospels. Also, they capitalize the phrase" The Law and the Prophets," where it appears even in the epistles. So they know that proper names are supposed to be capitalized. They are simply incriminating themselves.
The great controversy of the First Century Church was whether or not Gentiles had to be circumcised and live by the Mosaic Law in order to be Christians. However, from reading most modern Bibles and from listening to most sermons today, a person would never know it. Very, very little is said about this controversy, even though it was the overarching, volatile issue of the First Century Church.
Although it was crystal clear to the early Christians that Paul was dealing with this great controversy, Luther downplayed it in order to make it appear that Paul was dealing with a far different issue. According to Luther and according to evangelical Christians today, the overarching issue was that some Christians had a wrong understanding of salvation. According to Luther, they imagined that their obedience to Christ played an essential role in their salvation.
And this is what Paul was working so hard to correct. However, where do we read of any such issue in the historical parts of the New Testament? Absolutely nowhere. One of the early controversies we read about is in Acts 11. This is right after Peter had returned from bringing the gospel to Cornelius in his household. We read," Now the apostles and brethren who were in Judea heard that the Gentiles had also received the Word of God.
And when Peter came up to Jerusalem, those of the circumcision contended with Him, saying," You went into uncircumcised men and ate with them." But Peter explained it to them in order from the beginning. That's Acts 11:1-4. Imagine this. This was Peter himself, the leading apostle. Yet these Jewish brothers had no hesitancy to challenge him on what he had just done that is, eating a meal with uncircumcised Gentiles.
Now, thankfully, that group of men accepted Peter's account, no doubt because of the various miracles that he related. However, the controversy over the Gentiles did not disappear. It continued to simmer. After Paul began ministering to both Jews and Gentiles in Antioch and other churches, Jewish Christians from Jerusalem came up to Antioch, arguing that the Gentile converts needed to be circumcised and to live by the Law of Moses.
They also convinced the Jewish Christians in Antioch not to eat with uncircumcised Gentiles. We read about this in the second chapter of Galatians, where we read," Now when Peter had come to Antioch, I withstood him to his face because he was to be blamed. For before certain men came from James, he would eat with the Gentiles. But when they came, he withdrew and separated himself, fearing those who were of the circumcision.
And the rest of the Jews also played the hypocrite with them, so that even Barnabas was carried away with their hypocrisy.
But when I saw that they were not straightforward about the truth of the gospel, I said to Peter before them all," If you, being a Jew, live in the manner of Gentiles and not as the Jews, why do you compel Gentiles to live as Jews?" We who are Jews by nature and not sinners of the Gentiles, knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the Law, talking about the Mosaic Law, but by faith in Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Christ Jesus that we might be justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of
the Law, capital L.
For by the works of the Law, capital L, no flesh shall be justified. But if while we seek to be justified by Christ, we ourselves also are found sinners, is Christ therefore a minister of sin? Certainly not. For if I build again those things which I destroyed, I make myself a transgressor. For I, through the law, died to the law, that I might live to God. I have been crucified with Christ.
It is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me, and the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me. I do not set aside the grace of God, for if righteousness comes through the law, then Christ died in vain. Let me ask you, what was the issue in antioch that Paul is talking about? Was the problem that Christians were trying to be good? Was the problem that Christians were believing that obedience to Christ was essential to salvation?
Is that the problem Paul talks about? No, he does not. The problem was that Jewish Christians were trying to force Gentiles to be circumcised and to live under the Mosaic Law. So which law was Paul talking about in his rebuke of these Jewish Christians? Was it the law of Christ? Of course not. Was it law in general? No, it was not. He is obviously talking about the Law of Moses.
Yet Bible translators have obscured this obvious fact by refusing to capitalize the word" law" in this passage of Galatians, where Paul mentions law probably five or six times.
Paul was never talking about," Are we saved by Christian works versus Christian faith?" It was always," Are we saved by the works of the Mosaic Law versus are we saved through faith in Christ?" Now, unless I'm mistaken, this incident that Paul describes in Galatians is one in the same incident as that described in Acts 14 and 15, when Paul and Barnabas returned from their first missionary journey. I say that I think these are the same incidents, because both accounts refer to something that happened in Antioch.
And both accounts occurred at the time when Barnabas and Paul were still working together in the ministry. Okay, we read this in Acts beginning in chapter 14:26. From there, Paul and Barnabas sailed to Antioch, where they had been commended to the grace of God for the work which they had completed. Now, when they had come and gathered the Church together, they reported all that God had done with them, and that He had opened the door of faith to the Gentiles. So they stayed there a long time with the disciples.
And certain men came down from Judea and taught the brethren," Unless you are circumcised according to the custom of Moses, you cannot be saved." Therefore, when Paul and Barnabas had no small dissension and dispute with them, they determined that Paul and Barnabas and certain others of them should go to Jerusalem to the apostles and elders about this question.
So these Jewish Christians from Judea were bold enough to go to Antioch and tell the newly converted Gentile Christians there that they had to be circumcised in order to be saved. This was both a theological issue and also a nuts and bolts matter. And it was an issue of such magnitude and such volatility that it took a major council held in Jerusalem with all twelve apostles present, plus Paul, Barnabas, and James to settle the issue.
Let's see what happened when Paul and Barnabas first arrived in Jerusalem for this council." And when they had come to Jerusalem, they were received by the Church and the apostles and the elders, and they reported all things that God had done with them. But some of the sect of the Pharisees, who believed, rose up saying," It is necessary to circumcise them and to command them to keep the law of Moses." So once again, what was the issue?
Was the problem that some Christians were saying we must keep the commandments of Christ? And Paul was saying," No, we're saved by faith alone, not by obedience to Christ." No, that was not the case at all. The issue was that some Jewish Christians, particularly the converted Pharisees, were saying that Gentiles had to be circumcised and keep the Law of Moses. It is right there in black and white. Now let's look at the contents of the letter that James and the Apostles sent out to end this controversy.
The letter says this:" The apostles, the elders, and the brethren, to the brethren who are of the Gentiles in Antioch, Syria, and Cilicia. Greetings!
Since we have heard that some who went out from us have troubled you with words, unsettling your soul, saying," You must be circumcised and keep the law, to whom we gave no such commandment." It seemed good to us being assembled with one accord to send chosen men to you with our beloved Barnabas and Paul, men who have risked their lives for the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. We have therefore sent Judas and Silas, who will also report the same things by word of mouth.
For it seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us to lay upon you no greater burden than these necessary things that you abstain from things offered to idols, from blood, from things strangled, and from sexual immorality. If you keep yourselves from these, you will do well, farewell. In that letter, did the apostles say anything even remotely similar to Luther's gospel, that we are saved by faith alone, and that obedience plays no role in our salvation? No, there's not even a hint of such a teaching in their letter.
Yet this would have been the perfect occasion to say that if that was, in fact, the apostolic faith. The issue was not faith versus works, but salvation through faith in Christ versus salvation through the works of the Mosaic Law. Now, it was not long after this council that Paul and Barnabas disputed between themselves and went their separate ways. That's why I think the events described in the second chapter of Galatians are the same events described in Acts 14 and 15.
Regardless, you would have thought that this letter from all twelve apostles would have forever settled the matter. However, it didn't. The Jews had a hard time accepting the fact that the Law that had been given by God through Moses was now no longer in effect, at least as to its ceremonial requirements. So Paul was continually having to deal with this same issue over and over again.
That's why Paul tells the Romans," Therefore, we conclude that a man is justified by faith apart from the works of the law." Or is He the God of the Jews only? Is He not also the God of the Gentiles? Yes, of the Gentiles also, since there is one God who will justify the circumcised by faith and the uncircumcised through faith. Now, how can anyone take those words and try to claim that Paul is talking about law in general, that he's talking about Christ's commandments?
Paul makes it clear that he is still dealing with the same issue, and that issue was," Do the Gentiles have to be circumcised and live by the Mosaic Law?" And Paul continues to reiterate that the answer is no. It's the same issue he discusses with the Galatians, the Ephesians, the Philippians, the Colossians, and others.
Finally, in case anyone imagines that Paul was teaching that obedience to Christ is not essential to salvation, they should note what he told the Corinthians where he said," Circumcision is nothing and uncircumcision is nothing, but keeping the commandments of God is what matters." We've been talking for the past half hour or so about Bible translators not capitalizing the word" law" when the context is clearly talking about the Mosaic Law.
Now I want to talk about the opposite error, capitalizing a word when it should not be capitalized, and the word we're going to be looking at is spirit. Again, by way of quick review, New Testament Greek was written in all capital letters called uncials. So the English translator has to decide whether or not to capitalize any given word. In the Greek, you can't tell Law with a capital L apart from law with a small L. You can't tell Spirit with a capital S apart from spirit with a lowercase S.
In a companion CD to this one entitled The Difference Between the Spirit and the Soul, I explain how Christians today have lost the original early Christian teaching about our human spirit, and that's because of modern Bible translators capitalizing the word" spirit" virtually everywhere it appears in the New Testament. Whenever they capitalize it, it makes it appear that the writer is talking about the Holy Spirit when he may be talking about a different spirit.
Now, what we're going to be talking about for the rest of this message is not our human spirit, but the word" spirit" used in the sense of the general intent or purpose of something. Now, this issue is not quite as big as that of the Mosaic Law versus law in general. However, it dovetails with that issue. It makes it complete when we look at this part about the letter versus the spirit. There are three passages in the New Testament that contrast the letter with the spirit.
The first one is Romans 2:29, where we read," He is a Jew who is one inwardly, and circumcision is that of the heart, in the Spirit, not in the letter, whose praise is not from man, but from God." All right, the second one is Romans 7:6," But now we have been delivered from the law, having died to what we were held by, so that we should serve in the newness of the Spirit, and not in the oldness of the letter." Interestingly, in that one, the New King James puts a small L on law, even though it's talking about the
Law of Moses, and they put a capital S on Spirit, which is certainly not how the early Christians were reading it.
Finally, let's go to 2 Corinthians 3:6. It says," God also made us sufficient as ministers of the new covenant, not of the letter, but of the Spirit, for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life." Now in virtually every modern translation, whether it's the New King James Version, the NIV, the ESV, and even the New American Standard, the word" Spirit" in all three of those passages is capitalized.
That makes it appear that the conflict is between the letter, which commentators will say refers to written laws, versus the Holy Spirit. However, that's not at all how the early Christians understood these passages. In fact, I can confidently say that that is not what Paul was saying. For Paul was using a common idiom in Greek, that is, contrasting the letter of a given law to the spirit of that law. We have this very same idiom in English, which we got from the Greeks by way of the Roman people.
You can look up the idiom letter of the law in many dictionaries and other reference works. I looked it up in several. One dictionary defines the idiom this way. The letter of the law refers to the strict and exact force of the language used in a statute, as distinguished from the spirit or general purpose and policy of the statute. The American Heritage Idioms Dictionary defines letter of the law this way, the precise wording of a law rather than the spirit or intent of it.
That dictionary then gives an example, which is from something that had been written in the 1500s, which said," Since it was the first time he had broken the rules, the school decided to ignore the letter of the law and just give him a warning." Finally, I want to read to you what one encyclopedia says about this phrase, the letter of the law. Now, keep in mind, these reference works I'm quoting are not talking about the New Testament passages I just read.
They are talking about the common idiom used in the English language, which was also a common expression in Greek as well. It says this:" The letter of the law versus the spirit of the law is an idiomatic antithesis.
When one obeys the letter of the law, but not the spirit, one is obeying the literal interpretation of the words of the law, but not necessarily the intent of those who wrote the law." Conversely, when one obeys the spirit of the law, but not the letter, one is doing what the authors of the law intended, though not necessarily adhering to the literal wording. So let's go back to Paul's words and see if this common idiom fits what he says. So we'll go back to the first quotation, Romans 2, verses 25 through 29.
And let's look at the entire context here. Paul says," For circumcision is indeed profitable if you keep the law," that is, the Mosaic Law. But if you are a transgressor of the law, your circumcision has become uncircumcision. Therefore, if an uncircumcised man keeps the righteous requirements of the law, will not his uncircumcision be counted as circumcision?
And will not the physically uncircumcised, if he fulfills the Law, capital L judge you though having the letter of the law and circumcision are a transgressor of the law. For he is not a Jew who is one outwardly, nor is circumcision that which is outward in the flesh. But he is a Jew who is one inwardly, and circumcision is that of the heart, and in the Spirit, not in the letter, whose praise is not from man, but from God. So what is Paul saying? First of all, he's obviously talking about the Mosaic Law.
He is saying that circumcision is only profitable if you are going to keep the Law of Moses. But if you transgress the Law, which the unbelieving Jews were doing, and so were the Jewish Christians, your circumcision counts for nothing. However, the uncircumcised Gentile, if He is fulfilling the righteous requirements of the Law, not the ceremonial requirements, then in God's eyes, He is circumcised.
That's because God is no longer looking at physical circumcision or at the observance of the ceremonial part of the Mosaic Law when He decides who is really a Jew and who isn't. Rather, He looks at what a person is inside. He looks for circumcision of the heart. As a result, God has raised up children of Abraham from among all races and people groups. Whether or not you're an ethnic Jew no longer matters, it's what's inside that counts. Was the Mosaic Law then a waste? Not at all.
First, it served as a guardian or tutor leading people to Christ. Second, the spirit of the Law that is, the righteous requirements of the Law, they still remain. God's people are no longer under the letter of the Mosaic Law, but we are under the spirit of it. Now, what does that mean? Well, Paul explains in chapter 13 of Romans where he writes," Owe no one anything except to love one another, for he who loves another has fulfilled the law.
For the commandments you shall not commit adultery, you shall not murder, you shall not steal, you shall not bear false witness, you shall not covet." And if there is any other commandment, are all summed up in this saying, namely," You shall love your neighbor as yourself." Love does no harm to a neighbor. Therefore, love is the fulfillment of the law." So the heart of the Mosaic Law is love.
When we truly love our neighbor, we have fulfilled all the requirements of the Mosaic Law that pertain to our relations with other humans. Jesus had already explained this. When the Pharisees asked Him what is the great commandment of the law, he replied," You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind." This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like it:" You shall love your neighbor as yourself.
On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets." Later, Jesus denounced the scribes and Pharisees, saying," Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you pay tithe of mint and anise and cumin, and have neglected the weightier matters of the law, justice and mercy and faith. These you ought to have done without leaving the others undone." You see, the scribes and Pharisees were all about the letter of the law.
They scrupulously followed every jot and tittle of the external requirements of the Law. But they knew nothing about the spirit of the Law, what Jesus calls the weightier matters of the law. These were justice, mercy, faith, and, of course, love. Now, when Jesus spoke those words of denunciation, the ceremonial aspects of the Law were still in force. That's why Jesus said that they were right in obeying the outward aspects, but they were very much in the wrong to neglect the spirit of the Law.
However, today we are no longer under the letter of the Law. Ever since Christ's death, we are only under the spirit of the Law. So we should never think that the Mosaic Law is something meaningless to us as Christians. It's all very much there in spirit. We should be looking at the overall spirit of the Law, for in the spirit of the Law, we can very much see the heart of God. We can see He is concerned for the poor, for the widows and the orphans. We can see He cares about how we treat servants.
We can even see His care for animals. In fact, the oldest animal cruelty laws in existence are those in the Mosaic Law. The Law also teaches us how we should treat and interact with our fellow man, our spouse, our parents, and our children. We learn that our God is a God of holiness, and that He wants us to be a kingdom of priests just as He had desired the Israelites to be. Well, I could go on and on about what we can learn from the Law. Remember, the only Bible the first Christians had was the Old Testament.
Everything they needed to know about God they learned from the Old Testament and also from Christian preaching. So the Law is not meaningless, but it is spiritual. That's why Paul said in Romans 7: 14," For we know that the law is spiritual." The early Christian teacher Origen wrote this," The Law has a two-fold sense, one literal, the other spiritual." In like manner, Paul says that the letter kills, but the spirit gives life.
He means by the letter the literal sense of the Law, and by the spirit, the spiritual sense of Scripture." Yes, trying to keep the letter of the Law kills, but following the spirit of the Law, the intent and purpose of it, gives life. In conclusion, tonight we've talked about two words: law and spirit. We've seen that modern Bible translations and even the 1769 King James Bible fail to capitalize the word" law" even when it clearly refers to the Law of Moses.
For millions of Bible readers, this has obscured what Paul is actually saying. So it is no small error. It constitutes a huge scandalous tampering with Scripture. We then saw how modern Bibles capitalize the word" Spirit" when Paul talks about the letter of the law versus the spirit. As a result, these modern translations have hidden from the eyes of millions of Christians the beneficial teaching of Paul about the spirit of the Law.
Finally, I want to say that we've only looked at two examples of what I call capital error. But law and spirit are not the only two words that are often capitalized incorrectly. Anytime you read Scripture, remember that the decision to capitalize or not to capitalize any word is simply a judgment call made by the translator. So don't be afraid to question the translator's decision.
You may find some wonderful spiritual gems just by capitalizing a word that the translator has not capitalized, or by not capitalizing a word that the translator has capitalized. If there is any question in your mind about what Paul was really saying in his epistles, go back and read his epistles, capitalizing the word" Law" every time it appears. The only exceptions are when he adds a qualifier to the phrase. For example, in Romans 7, Paul talks about all sorts of laws, such as the law of my mind.
Now there obviously He isn't talking about the Mosaic Law, and He makes that clear. Please understand that I am not doing a different version of what Martin Luther did. If you come across the expression" the law," and it doesn't seem to you that it's talking about the Mosaic Law, then don't capitalize it. Look at the context. Is circumcision the underlying issue? If so, then Paul is normally talking about the Mosaic Law.
As you read, keep in mind the overall context that many Jewish Christians were teaching that the Gentiles had to be circumcised and live under the Mosaic Law in order to be saved. Now, I didn't invent that context. It's right there in Galatians 2 and Acts 15 and all of the references Paul makes in his letters. In other words, don't blindly accept whatever the translators have written, and don't blindly accept whatever I say. Do some digging of your own to verify if what I've been saying is true or not.
Obviously, knowing New Testament Greek would be a huge blessing. However, you can still do an enormous amount of spiritual sleuthing without knowing Greek. In short, you can take charge of your own Bible study. You don't have to be a victim of capital error.