These Kingdom values seem upside down to most people. Can a person be a follower of Christ without following Christ? Jesus's teachings are so revolutionary. What if Jesus really meant every word He said? Hi, I'm David Bercot, and I am Dean Taylor. We are finishing up the book of 1 Clement. We talked about it in our last session, and we said that we were going to have one more session in it. We're going to talk about salvation, about predestination or election, and also about the phoenix bird.
We touched on it in our first one. And so we'll just, we'll start maybe with the phoenix since it's the lighter topic. So I still remember I spoke at this conference. I'm not going to say where, but anywhere. Anyway, afterwards, it was at a time there were a whole lot of people jumping on me about the early church and trying to discredit them and all of that. So this guy comes in out of the audience. I mean, I'm just there in the foyer, you know, talking with people.
And he starts, you know, asking all of these, you know, gotcha kind of questions. And then he reads the passage from Clement about the phoenix. And he says, "You see, that's what kind of nonsense you get when you start reading the early Christians." And he caught me a bit off guard. Yeah, I learned after sessions like that and many more what kind of things I might get hit with and to be a little bit better prepared to respond. So do you want to comment on it first? That's me.
I'm right now, I have to come back to my mind. I'm trying to guess where you were, but okay. So anyway, yeah, you know, I, I, um, it's some reason never really bothered me. I always just considered it, you know, a scientific thing. And I think you mentioned this on the last, the last episode of, of our Clement of Rome, how it's actually very good. You know, Clement of Rome almost made canon.
And, and the fact that it didn't, this would be actually a big, gigantic scientific blunder, you know, of something because we really have all, you take the entire scriptures and there's nothing that is like this in the word of God is amazing. You know, and then we have this and then bam. So it, it, it, we've always been very clear. And I think this is one of the reasons why, one of the many reasons to draw a line at canon.
And the thing is, when you don't, you know, what I noticed even in the early days with us, David, is that, you know, like when you want to try to start doing it at a hundred or at 199 or, you know, or 200, all you're doing is moving the debates and the textual criticisms and all that kind of a thing down the line, you know, and people do it with on, on and on.
And, and then when you're always dealing with people who don't even have any claim of being inspired and no one's claiming that they're inspired, it's, it's a real, it's a real bad thing. And so I, I, uh, yes, we are obviously extremely excited about the early church and we think it is the most excellent commentary on the word of God, but it is not the word of God. And this is a perfect example why we're very thankful for that. Yeah. Yeah.
And so it, it just shows the, it's like a window into what people thought and believed right there in the last days of the apostles for, you know, with all the scientific errors and all that, but it was the scientific knowledge of that time period. Interestingly, so two of the most respected writers who, who would have been around, I mean, who would have been being read at the time of Clement. So this is like the year AD 96. Okay. So you got Herodotus, who's generally called the father of history. He was Greek.
He was with Alexander the Great, not a general, but Alexander brought him on his campaigns just to keep a record, make up stuff, whatever, embellish the records, you name it. And then he became a geographer. So he wrote about all these parts of the world where he traveled. And he, I don't know that he, he's also, he's known as the father of history. Some people call him the father of lies, but that belongs to Satan.
But he, he did pick up local legends and either fell for them or had fun passing them on while he didn't believe them. I'll give him credit that he believed everything he wrote. So he taught, he's the first one who wrote about it, not the first one to talk about it, but the first one to actually put it in writing. And this is this respected official historian, you know, appointed by Alexander the Great, you know? Yeah, exactly. And so he describes it in detail. Okay. Well, then what year would he have been?
Like AD 300, something like that. I'm going by memory. Okay. Then you have Pliny the Elder, who was in the first century. This would have been just a few decades before Clement writes. And he was a Roman naturalist, which is what they would have called a scientist. And he had written this encyclopedia. I've got to hear my notes out. It was 37 volumes, so bigger than the Encyclopedia Britannica. It's called Natural History.
And so he goes into the geography and science all over the world, collected all the knowledge of the ancient people. And it's in there. He describes the phoenix bird. So if you were an educated person, you knew about the phoenix bird. I mean, it showed that you were an educated man, you know, or, or woman. So, you know, what do you think? I mean, is Clement, because you're a Christian, does that mean that you have some future scientific knowledge that people in your age didn't know? I mean, you know, let's be fair.
He's just writing about what everyone believed in his age. And it was a perfect illustration of the resurrection. It still is. It's just now you would, you would use it. Yeah. There was this myth. And yeah, it's a really neat picture of, of the resurrection where they thought it was an actual bird. But yeah, to blame him, like, go ahead. For those who haven't actually read it, just a summary. Don't have to read the whole detail. Just give us a quick summary of what Clement says, says there.
That's, that's the analogy. Yeah. So this bird, and I'm going by memory here, I think lived in Arabia. And it would live like 500 years. So obviously no one had traced it from the birth to the death, because this would have spanned whatever, 10 generations, 15 generations, whatever of people. So supposedly then when it was time for it to die, it would go back to its nest or a nest and it would just set on fire, just spontaneous combustion. And then out of those ashes would arise a new bird.
I mean, it is so much like Christ. I mean, here he's crucified, put to death, he's done with, and then he arises from the grave. And so here's this bird. It dies, it burns up, and lo and behold, here comes a, a new bird out of it. So yeah, I mean, it's like anyone reading this encyclopedia, you know, would be like, wow, this is a perfect picture of the resurrection. It's right there in God's creation.
So yeah, it's, it's silly on our part to think that these people would have had a different way of thinking than the ones around them. As far as scientific knowledge, you know, knowledge about how to do this or that, you know, it was a real world that Jesus came into. He was dealing with real people at their level. Yes. Yeah. Amen. So yeah, that, I guess in a nutshell is, yeah, on the phoenix bird. So it's, it's people who want to discredit the early Christians are just to me showing their own ignorance.
Like, oh, you mean you really imagine that people, Christians in the first century knew, had all this scientific knowledge. I wonder if they knew about atoms, you know, and the electrons and, and all this, you know, it's a little silly. It's just finding fault where you can find fault, even if it has no merit. And that's what this person was doing. So what's our, our next subject I think we were going to get into was what you have on your list there. Clement of Rome. Salvation. Salvation. Okay.
So Clement of Rome is packed. And, uh, and the thing that you, that's almost embarrassing about it is it sounds so much like Paul. And, and you really just feel the apostolic, you know, teachings in him and the same kind of balances about salvation, about works and that kind of a thing. And it gives a testimony of, of these things going out.
And I, and I always say one of the things that I always really try to encourage when, when I, when I go back to read Clement of Rome or tell people to read the Apostolic Fathers in general is do your very best to erase from your mind all the theological baggage that all these things could possibly mean. And so, you know, he's not having to argue against abuses of faith. He's not having to argue, you know, any of these types of things. He had no Catholicism to deal with. He had no evangelicalism to deal with.
He had none of that. And, and so in that, you can just read it. And, and when you do that, it's really beautiful. I mean, so as Paul, the stuff that Clement says is just filled with this amazing balance of that we are saved by grace through faith. And that faith then gives us this power to live a righteous life that is required of us to live this righteous life. And he says all those balancing things that God judges us. He looks at our heart.
He looks at our, our actions, but yet he does all those things by his, by his power, by his grace working within us. And that's powerful. Uh, and I have some of my favorite ones, but you, you probably have some too, just some of your thoughts on, on his salvation and grace and that type of a thing in general. Yeah. So yeah, like you say, it's, it's almost, it, it, it is actually really good that he wasn't writing a commentary on Romans.
He wasn't writing a theological work on salvation because then people could say, oh, well, look, see, so this all started with Clement of Rome. He, you know, right, right, recreated the, the view of salvation. No, he's writing to the Corinthians about the schism going on there. Now what he says about salvation is just along the side, like what we all understand this. I mean, this is what we, you know, let me remind you. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
In other words, you don't throw in something, if he's making something new up, you don't throw that in when you're trying to convince somebody to come to peace and to break a schism. You don't throw in some new theology or something like that. So this is, you know, he just realizes this is what we all believe. And what makes Clement so special in addition to that is he was one of the elders in Rome. So they're the ones who received the letter from Paul. He may well have known Paul.
He may have been the Clement that's mentioned. I think it's in Galatians. He might not have been, but I mean, he's in that church just 30 years after Romans was written. So if that church, if the elders in that church didn't understand Romans correctly, well, who is, you know? Amen. Right. Here, I'm going to just read you some representative quotes. It's just going to be a couple. Okay. So the first one shows how much they understood we are saved by grace, like you said. Okay.
All these people, and he's talking about Abraham and, and the long stream of witnesses. Therefore, we're highly honored and made great, not for their own sake or for their own works or for the righteousness which they did, but through the operation of God's will.
And we too, being called by his will in Christ Jesus, are not justified by ourselves, nor by our own wisdom or understanding or godliness or works which we have, uh, worked in holiness of heart, but by that faith through which from the beginning, Almighty God has justified all men. So you read that quote and your first reaction might be, hey, Luther's right. Luther's got it right. Man, it's right here, you know? Right.
Well, yeah, that scripture, Paul says, he's just quoting Paul or summarizing Paul, but the very next paragraph, you know, for what reason was our father Abraham blessed? Was it not because he worked righteousness and truth through faith? Mm-hmm. So yeah, they recognize, hey, you know, we aren't saved by ourselves or because we're so righteous and all of that. They have that down.
They understand we don't earn our salvation, that if our righteousness was truly looked at in its actual worth, instead of God looking at us mercifully, yeah, none of us would deserve anything. Right. But immediately they also understand the works have to be there as well. The, the faithfulness, the obedience to Jesus Christ. So I mean, like I say, this is one of my favorite because it's two paragraphs by each other. That's excellent. Yeah. Right, right next to each other. That's what paragraphs were that?
Was that? It's 31 and 32. Of course, those are man-made numbers, but yeah, I, he probably had no paragraphs. It's probably one long, oh, the spaces in it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I mean, that is beautiful. And it also brings in the whole concept, you know, we get in James and they're right there in those two paragraphs.
You have the beautiful harmony between, you know, Romans and James and that it's this through faith, this is acting, you know, and if you think about that idea of, of James saying, show me your faith by your works and, and the very clarity of that, it is, it is powerful and it's, it does give you a worshipful feel of just, it, it draws you to God. It's like, wow, it gets you excited. It makes you, makes you want to, to follow him. Yeah. I, I have some here too that I wrote down. It's from actually the same chapter.
I hope I'm not just reading a paraphrase of what you had too. 32, round verse, sentence four, and we too being called by his will in Christ Jesus. And 33, what then shall we do, brethren? Shall we become slothful in well-doing and cease from the practice of love? God forbid that any such course should be followed by us. On the contrary, let us hasten with all energy and readiness of mind to perform every good work. Again, it almost sounds exactly like Paul. What do we say then?
Do we do, you know, do we go on sinning? God forbid, let it never be. And so yeah, I, I think that that's another one here about self-control. He says in first Corinthians, in first Clement, excuse me, 30, let us clothe ourselves with concord and humility. Ever, and again, this is good context to remember what the whole context is, is this fight that's going on in Corinth.
Let us clothe ourselves with concord and humility, ever exercising self-control, standing far off from all whispering and evil speaking, being justified by our works and not our words. Yeah. So it goes with that, uh, what you're talking about there as well. Another one I've, I've found, uh, kind of jarring in that is, is also his explanation of judgment itself. And again, his thing is trying to get the Corinthians to note, God is watching, guys. Yeah. You stop.
You can't just go living like you want and get away with this. And, and Clement 28, he says, all of us therefore must hasten to return to the blameless and holy way of life. And let us turn aside from empty talkfulness and the wicked desires and let us become obedient to his glorious and holy will. For we have, for we will have to face the judgment seat of Christ. And each one must give an account of himself. Let us serve God with fear and in holiness, just as he commanded us.
And then even a little more direct, and actually in 21 before this, he says, he sees into our hearts and he understands everything. So let us then do everything with the awareness that he is watching us and we will be found to be innocent before him. So yeah, it's this balance of all that kind of thing is, is powerful in him. Yeah. It's so interesting because one of the things motivating me to have read the Ante-Nicene Fathers in the first place were the questions on salvation.
Is it true that works or obedience play no role in our salvation? It seemed to me from scripture it does. And then is it once saved, always saved? And so here I open up the Ante-Nicene Fathers, the very first work, Clement of Rome, and, and I read it and it answered it right there. Now I'm glad I kept reading because yeah, there were so many discoveries waiting for me, but yeah, right off the bat I saw, okay, they're, they were reading scripture the same way I read it.
It seems pretty clear in scripture that it's we're saved by faith and God's grace, but he does require obedience. It's a gift he gives us, but there are some conditions attached to it. And then, yeah, we still have to fear the judgment. It's not all over just because we have been saved. And yeah, that same paragraph of 28 that you read, I, I had marked the sentence since then, all things are seen and heard by God.
Let us fear him and forsake those wicked works which proceed from evil desires so that through his mercy we may be protected from the judgments to come. Yeah. So right. It's, it's a sense of security, but it's not unconditional eternal security. It's like, you better have some fear because we're not guaranteed on, on the judgment just because we're Christians. No, if we act wickedly, we have a lot to fear.
So yeah, it, it, like I say, the letter is so valuable again for those who may be listening to this and didn't listen to the first part. This is AD 96. We're talking about maybe a year after the book of Revelation was written, or maybe a couple of years. I mean, right there in the same time period. And this is Rome, the very people who got the letter from Paul, who had the opportunity. He spent two years in Rome, two years in Rome. Right. Right.
Hey, you know, they could all visit him and he had a rented house or something, you know? Hey, Paul, okay, we got your letter here. Yeah. Can you explain this? Can you harmonize this? I mean, as I said, if they didn't get Romans correctly, well then yeah, who, who can? Yeah. Amen. And, and, and then also that with the, the other side of the balance on that is he even goes to those, the passage you read earlier that even in the motives of our heart, we can't take our own credit that this is all through God.
And so there's a mystery in all that. There's something that God is doing it, but it actually is required that it actually happens. Yeah. And there's, there's something to that. And it's, it is a beautiful, beautiful passage, passages. He goes through all that and it is good. I'm glad you brought out that it's not a passage on salvation. Like, you know, this is a topic that he's trying to get them to understand while he's trying to cure the problem there that's happening in Corinth.
And so yeah, that's, that is a fascinating point to bring out. Yeah. In chapter 46, he says this, therefore let us cleave, that means cling to the innocent and righteous since these are the elect of God. So you're right off the bat. He says who are the, the elect. Now that English word elect, the Greek word is eklogei, and it just means to choose or to select. You know, if you put an S in front of it, I think it would remove a lot of the mystery instead of calling them the elect.
If you said these are the select, these are the ones that God selected because of their innocence, they were innocent and righteous. Again, not on their own power and yet not apart from, from their own will. You know, it's, we don't know where God's power starts and our own power ends. It's the synergy of us working with God because God wants it that way. He could do everything. He doesn't need us to do anything, but he, he doesn't want a bunch of puppets down here. He wants people who respond to him.
So I think I mentioned in one of our conversations, and I'm digressing slightly, but I think it's John Chrysostom who makes the point that because they're called the elect or chosen, he said it shows that it's not arbitrary. I'm just totally paraphrasing this, but it's, it's because of how we live.
So it was, I thought it was so funny that to him, the, someone who spoke Koine Greek, that right, yeah, just, yeah, the fact that Paul uses that word shows that how, how we live plays a major role because in other words, God is sitting and choosing who he wants. It's not something predestined that we have no control over. Wow. Wow. Wow. Okay. So let me, let me read another one. Now we're getting into the issue of schisms. So again, he's not writing a treatise on predestination or free will or anything like that.
It's just part of his trying to persuade them. He says, love admits of no schism. In other words, it allows no schisms. Love gives rise to no sedition. Love does all things in harmony. By love, the elect of God have been made perfect or complete. Without love, nothing is well pleasing to God. In love has the Lord taken us to himself. On account of the love he bore us, Jesus Christ, our Lord, gave his blood for us by the will of God, his flesh for our flesh and his soul for our souls.
So he just mentions there, the elect or the, the chosen that it's by love that we are complete. And yeah, again, the idea, he doesn't go into it. He's not talking about the theology, but again, we've been chosen by God, the ones who love, the ones who are innocent, the ones who are obedient. These are the ones God chooses because they've shown that they really love him. Yeah. That's, that's really good.
You know, I, I remember reading the old church and it was one of the things that, that I was marking, you know, as I was noticing that this vocabulary is used and sometimes they'll even talk about the number, the number of the elect and, you know, people. Yeah. Clement mentions it somewhere. Yeah. Okay. Right. And so, you know, in the, in that idea, I, I, I really started pondering that, but they would clearly not talking about it in the way that was later used and, you know, in, in different centuries.
But again, this is another point that you can look at it and it's, and it's just fresh from it. But one of the things I have noticed that a lot of us who, um, like let's say we're, we're coming out of an evangelical mindset or we are, are fighting against Calvinism or something, there does tend to be within us a, um, a sense, almost a swing the pendulum so far that you don't even allow God to intervene into human affairs.
You know, it's like, oh no, God, uh, God's not going to control something because that's going to sound like Calvin, you know? And so there's this tendency to go the other way. And the one thing that I, I've seen as I've walked through all this through all these years is that they had no problem of seeing that God intervenes in mankind when he wants to do something or control a nation or whatever. He can do that, but forcing someone to be saved is just out of the question.
I mean, it's just, there's no, there's no, there's no, there's no record of like that something in there. And one of the passages that really struck me one is, is in Acts 17. And I ponder this on the, on the discussion of predestination and election and this kind of a thing and, and how we have kind of it differently. And this kind of, I really dealt with this passage and thinking about how God has used nations. And when we look at two kingdoms and that kind of a thing, I won't go into a long discussion on that.
It's another whole podcast, but, but this passage I love in Acts 17, 26, of course, this is Paul on Mars Hill talking to the philosophers over there. And he says this point in verse 26, and he has made from one blood every nation of men to dwell on the face of the earth and has determined their pre-appointed times and the boundaries of their dwelling. So like, whoa, okay, there it is.
I mean, you know, so that they should seek the Lord in the hope that they might grope for him and find him, though he is not very far from each one of us. And so it's interesting in the Reformed world, typically there's a, they're very careful of saying, hey, you have nothing to do with salvation, but you really should get involved in politics. You should really get involved in your nation and that kind of a thing. It's interesting. It seemed like Paul's saying just the opposite.
God's got the, the, the politics taken care of. He's got the elect of the nations and how it's going to work so that men in their free will can literally grope after God. It's powerful vocabulary of just how, of how God controls things so that we in our free will can follow him in a powerful way. And so yeah, I look at those election passages and that type of a thing and, and look at it in the right context and it's, and it's kind of exciting. Yeah. Yeah. Thing. Yeah. Yeah.
So it's that, that's a good point, Dean, that there's a big difference between the biblical view of free will and like the view of God that Deism held that, right, he's not involved in man. He created us, but, but then he just got out of the picture. No, people who live, who believe in biblical free will believe that God has ordained many things, particularly with regards to the nations, with regards to the church as a whole. It's a God who actively intervenes in human affairs, in individual lives.
You know, God is always there, but it's not a God who micromanages every last little detail has been fixed by him. There's a freedom for us to respond, but we do have an active God who cares about us, who, like I say, amen. I, I doubt there's any Christian that, and probably few humans that God has not individually intervened in their life in many different ways, helping them on their salvation, you know, dealing with health, dealing with a lot of issues. So we have an active intervening God.
It's just not a God that goes to the extreme that he has to control every detail because he can't give anyone any God-like powers, but we were made in his image and we're hardly in his image if we're just robots. Yeah. Amen. Amen. So there was one quote I, I was looking at today that I thought was really interesting because it revealed that word elect, which chosen is probably a better one. Anyway, it's in chapter 52. He's not talking at all about anything to do with predestination.
He says, brethren, the Lord stands in need of nothing and he desires nothing of anyone except that confession be made to him. Now again, don't take that sentence out of context. He's encouraging them to confess their sin. For he says, for the elect David says, I will confess unto the Lord. So he refers to King David as the elect David, but what he's meaning is the chosen, that David was the chosen of God.
Uh, he was the anointed that, you know, so illustrating, yeah, they're understanding elect as somebody that God chooses, you know, and David was chosen for a reason. You know, it wasn't arbitrary. You know, Samuel says, yes, humans look at the outside. God looks at the heart. So he had looked at the heart of David. Amen. Yeah. The reason why he, he chose him. Yeah. That's good. That's good stuff. So I guess, you know, in a lot of the, what these podcasts are to do is to encourage the study of Clement.
And so, you know, as, as we're doing this, there's some, this is one of the, this is one of the best, right? I mean, Clement of Rome, this, this is one of the, the, the power pack apostolic fathers and, um, letting it read for themselves is just a, a, a really powerful thing. Yeah. I, I think, you know, people ask me all the time, okay, which, which works do you recommend? I, I read, cause it's, it's, you know, it's a lot there. There's no better place to start with than Clement.
One, it's maybe the oldest, it's either that or the Didache, I think, are the only two contenders. And it, because it's coming from the church in Rome, which was, you know, Paul really commends them in his letter. So it was a church that was on course. It wasn't some church that he has to, you know, admonish continually and that sort of thing. And to be written so close to the death of the apostle John, it's, it's amazing. And it's very readable.
And like I say, if you don't get stumbled on the phoenix, I mean, you know, when I read that, it's like no one had prepared me for it. And it's like, whoa, you know, um, but once you're, you know, uh, are aware of some of those surprises and are reading them in the context of, hey, I'm reading an actual historical work and how people believed back then, what science taught and that kind of thing. Uh, yeah, it, it is an amazing letter that, um, yeah, we're blessed that that got preserved, that it didn't get lost.
Amen. I think maybe, is it, and correct me if you remember the history, I think it's only preserved because it's in Sinaiticus or some of these other Bibles. And isn't it also in the Bryennios, the one, the codex that he found with the Didache and the, that's right. Yes. And that, that was, yeah, found much later. Yeah. Or whenever, maybe it was around the same time. Yeah.
So yeah, it is, I think God, he obviously preserved his word, but he also preserved key writings of the early Christians so that we have, you know, a little bit of light to see how they were understanding the New Testament, you know, and, and again, by including the phoenix in there right away, he tells us, look, these people are not infallible. Don't put them up on the level of scripture, but they do have a lot we can learn from. Amen. Okay. Well, amen. Well, thank you. Yeah. So we'll look forward to the next one.
We'll go through what another of the early writings. Okay. That was good. All right. Listen to you, brother. These kingdom values seem upside down to most people. Can a person be a follower of Christ without following Christ? Jesus's teachings are so revolutionary. What if Jesus really meant every word he said?