4 Sin in the Gospels, Acts, and Hebrews to Revelation. Robert W. Yarbrough
SIN IN THE GOSPELS, ACTS, AND HEBREWS TO REVELATION
ROBERT W. YARBROUGH
The focus of this chapter will be the New Testament apart from the Pauline epistles. Paul’s writings will be treated in the next chapter. In each of the first three sections below we will consider (1) the Gospels, (2) Acts, and (3) the books of the New Testament from Hebrews to Revelation. Eight of the nine New Testament books from Hebrews to Revelation are letters. In this chapter when referring to them as a group we will call them the General Epistles.1 A fourth and final section will sum up the findings of this chapter.
A preliminary word: even before we probe descriptions of sin as provided by various New Testament words2 and passages, we can doubtless agree that sin in the broad sense of “wrongdoing” is not just a New Testament issue. It is as real as the front pages of daily newspapers. In early 2012, the North American world of professional sports was shaken by revelations that National Football League coaches in New Orleans had placed “bounties” on the star players of opposing teams. The defensive players of the New Orleans Saints were offered cash incentives to injure quarterbacks such as Brett Favre and Kurt Warner. Even supporters of “old school” or “smashmouth” football could agree this was ethically heinous. The recreational activity of spectator sports is too often corrupted by wrongdoing on massive scales and to shocking degrees.
Much more gravely, also in early 2012, the apparent massacre of Afghan civilians by an American soldier sparked New York Times columnist David Brooks to reflect that such acts seem inexplicable for those who hold to today’s prevalent view that “most people are naturally good, because nature is good. The monstrosities of the world are caused by the few people (like Hitler or Idi Amin) who are fundamentally warped and evil.”3 But Brooks goes on to note that “in centuries past most people would have been less shocked by the homicidal eruptions of formerly good men. That’s because people in those centuries grew up with a worldview that put sinfulness at the center of the human personality.” From this viewpoint, Brooks concludes, this United States soldier, if proven guilty,
like all of us, is a mixture of virtue and depravity. His job is to struggle daily to strengthen the good and resist the evil, policing small transgressions to prevent larger ones. If he didn’t do that, and if he was swept up in a whirlwind, then even a formerly good man is capable of monstrous acts that shock the soul and sear the brain.
The daily news at all levels is full of reminders that people in all places, cultures, and walks of life do things that are widely regarded as wrong. This is one reason why reflection on what the New Testament says about wrongdoing or sin is a timely and profitable exercise. The New Testament offers extensive input on what “wrongdoing” is, how God confronted it in his Son and in revelatory writings that Christians call Scripture, and how through faith in Jesus human wrongdoing can be forgiven. Moreover, wrongdoers can be transformed into people who replace their wrongdoing with good, no longer serving darkness but walking in increasing compliance with the God who is light and in whom there “is no darkness at all” (1 John 1:5).
If this is true, then problems plaguing the world today may find solutions in the New Testament’s stories and teachings, for the more people who find this light and walk in it, the less that darkness will enjoy uncontested dominance in extending its devastating tentacles into lives, societies, and nations. That is the benefit in purely horizontal terms. Thinking vertically, the more that this happens, the more that the true and living God will receive the glory that he deserves.
Indirect Evidence of Sin: The Invitation to Repentance and Conversion
As will be shown below, the New Testament offers a rich collection of words that point directly to sin in its various types and forms. But before examining that evidence, we need to note the framework in which that evidence takes shape. The New Testament contains ubiquitous pointers to sin by its frequent and widespread calls for repentance and conversion.
The Gospels
When John the Baptist makes his appearance, his first recorded words are, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand” (Matt. 3:2). This statement implies two things. First, there is a kingdom that people need to enter. Apparently they are presently outside it; they are in some sense lost or estranged. Second, to enter this kingdom repentance is necessary. A condition for repentance is acknowledgment of sin, as we see a few verses later: “And they were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins” (v. 6). The fiery prophet John recognized sin in his listeners and called on them to confront it. This is true not only of the masses but even of the social and religious leaders: “When he saw many of the Pharisees and Sadducees coming to his baptism, he said to them, ‘You brood of vipers! Who warned you to flee from the wrath to come?’” (v. 7). To avoid this wrath people must not only repent but “bear fruit in keeping with repentance” (v. 8). This implies abandoning certain wrong attitudes and actions and adopting others. It implies forsaking sin and replacing it with what is right.
Throughout Matthew’s Gospel there is a stress on repentance, not only in John’s preaching but even more so in that of Jesus. For Jesus as for John, sin is a major issue. Jesus preaches repentance as his ministry gets underway (4:17). He targets not only individuals but towns such as Chorazin and Bethsaida (11:21) with this message: “Then he began to denounce the cities where most of his mighty works had been done, because they did not repent” (v. 20). Jesus commends the repentance of Nineveh (see the Old Testament book of Jonah) and reproaches the hardness of his hearers (12:41), for as Isaiah prophesied, they refuse to “turn” (or repent) and be saved (13:15). Like John the Baptist, Jesus calls for a decisive shift or conversion to enter the kingdom he came to announce: “Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (18:3). Near the end of Jesus’ earthly ministry he reproaches the religious leaders for not believing the Baptist’s message. Even when they saw “the tax collectors and the prostitutes” responding to John’s preaching, they “did not afterward change [their] minds and believe him” (21:32). This “change of mind” is repentance. It was a condition of rescue from sin that many of Jesus’ (and John’s) hearers were unwilling to perform.
Mark’s Gospel echoes Matthew’s in recording that first John the Baptist and then Jesus preached “repentance for the forgiveness of sins” (Mark 1:4; the words are from the Baptist) and “repent and believe in the gospel” (Jesus in v. 15). Also like Matthew, Mark reports that Jesus applied Isaiah’s insight that among his listeners would be many who would refuse to “turn and be forgiven” (Mark 4:12). This lament is based on the conviction that the generation and the individuals to whom Jesus came were mired in sin. Mark goes beyond Matthew in stating that when Jesus commissioned the Twelve and sent them out to preach (6:7–13), “they went out and proclaimed that people should repent” (v. 12). The twelve imitated Jesus in their conviction that all persons need to acknowledge sin, repent, and believe in the good news that Jesus announced and embodied.
It should be noted in all of this that the Gospels record preaching primarily by Jews (i.e., John the Baptist, Jesus, Jesus’ disciples) to other Jews. From the Bible’s perspective, the Jews had for centuries possessed “the oracles of God” (see Rom. 3:2). In that respect, they had more knowledge from and about God than other peoples on the earth. If anyone should have been “better” and less susceptible to sin, it was these people. Yet it is precisely to these people that so many calls to “repent!” are addressed. If the Jews of Jesus’ day were so sinful in God’s sight, how much more dire was the predicament of all other peoples, who from Scripture’s perspective were “having no hope and without God in the world” (Eph. 2:12)?
Early in Luke’s Gospel the theme of “turning” or conversion is broached. The angel announces to Zechariah that the offspring of Elizabeth and him “will turn many of the children of Israel to the Lord their God” (1:16). He will “turn the hearts of the fathers to the children, and the disobedient to the wisdom of the just, to make ready for the Lord a people prepared” (v. 17). It is accordingly no surprise that their son John proclaims “a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins” (3:3) and calls for “fruits in keeping with repentance” (v. 8).
In Luke’s Gospel Jesus explicitly connects his ministry to repentance due to sin: “I have not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance” (5:32). The stakes in this call are gravely lofty: “Unless you repent, you will all likewise perish” (13:3, 5). When there is repentance, there is heavenly joy that sin’s condemnation has been lifted: “There will be . . . joy in heaven over one sinner who repents. . . . Just so, I tell you, there is joy before the angels of God over one sinner who repents” (15:7, 10). In Jesus’ understanding of life among his followers, what we call the church, repentance and sin are critical issues: “Pay attention to yourselves! If your brother sins, rebuke him, and if he repents, forgive him” (17:3).
Luke’s equivalent to Matthew’s Great Commission (Matt. 28:18–20) connects the gospel message, repentance, and sin: Jesus “said to them, ‘Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer and on the third day rise from the dead, and that repentance and forgiveness of sins should be proclaimed in his name to all nations, beginning from Jerusalem’” (Luke 24:46–47).
John’s Gospel contrasts with the previous three by not using the “repent/repentance” word group. Yet John echoes Jesus’ lament drawn from Isaiah that the people would not “turn” or convert (12:40). And John’s Gospel is informed by Jesus’ conviction that people languish in darkness and need to come to his light:
Jesus said to them, “The light is among you for a little while longer. Walk while you have the light, lest darkness overtake you. The one who walks in the darkness does not know where he is going. While you have the light, believe in the light, that you may become sons of light.” (vv. 35–36)
This is conversion, without use of the word. It is the call for life-changing “believing” in Jesus, the Fourth Gospel’s signature stress, as forms of the verb “believe” occur about one hundred times. As the quote above shows, there can be no “believing” in John’s sense without turning from darkness to light. This is the essence of repentance. Therefore, while John does not use the word, his conviction and Jesus’ teaching that the world is in darkness (1:5; 8:12) are eloquent testimony to the prevalence of sin (“people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil”; 3:19) and their need to turn (repent) and by believing find the light: “I have come into the world as light, so that whoever believes in me may not remain in darkness” (12:46).
The Gospels are united in calling for repentance and thereby highlighting the universal implication that people—even the Jews (John 1:11)—languish in darkness and rejection of God. All four Gospels agree in their outlook on the reality and problem of human sin.
Acts
Acts preserves a rich echo of the gospel witness regarding repentance and conversion. “While repentance and conversion are central foci in all the Gospels, Luke, especially in Acts, seems to highlight these themes just a little more, too.”4 Regarding the latter, Luke uses the word epistrephō (I turn, turn around, convert) nearly a dozen times. From the start it is clear that this “turning” comes in conjunction with repenting of sins, as Peter’s Acts 3 sermon makes clear: “Repent therefore, and turn back, that your sins may be blotted out” (v. 19). The divine role in sinners’ turning or conversion is underscored in the final recorded words of that same sermon: “God, having raised up his servant, sent him to you first, to bless you by turning5 every one of you from your wickedness” (v. 26).
Sin and condemnation are a factor when Luke employs the related word strephō (I turn) in recording Stephen’s speech. Stephen charges that his and his hearers’ forefathers in Egypt would not obey God “but thrust him aside, and in their hearts . . . turned to Egypt” (7:39). The baleful consequence was a corresponding “turn” on God’s part: “God turned away and gave them over to worship the host of heaven” (v. 42). In both of these instances, the “turning” has unpleasant consequences.
Acts’s stress, however, is on “turning” or conversion (cf. epistrephō) that moves in God’s direction and results in his present and eternal blessing. As a result of Peter’s healing of Aeneas at Lydda, “all the residents of Lydda and Sharon . . . turned to the Lord” (9:35). Christian presence at Syrian Antioch was established when men from Cyprus and Cyrene preached there, “and the hand of the Lord was with them, and a great number who believed turned to the Lord” (11:21). At Lystra, Paul and Barnabas brought “good news” that their hearers “should turn from” their polytheism “to a living God, who made the heaven and the earth and the sea and all that is in them” (14:15). Luke’s summary of the first missionary journey (chaps. 13–14) pictures Paul and Barnabas “describing in detail the conversion of the Gentiles” (15:3).
Since the very nature of the gospel is decided on in Acts 15, it is significant that “turning” or conversion is part of James’s concluding endorsement of the apostolic gospel as proclaimed to the Gentiles by Paul: “Therefore my judgment is that we should not trouble those of the Gentiles who turn to God” (v. 19). This corresponds to Paul’s defense of his ministry before Agrippa II: he was sent to the Gentiles “to open their eyes, so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to God, that they may receive forgiveness of sin” (26:18). Paul very nearly quotes John the Baptist on the same occasion as he describes how after his own conversion he preached at Damascus, in Jerusalem, throughout Judea, and finally “also to the Gentiles, that they should repent and turn to God, performing deeds in keeping with their repentance” (26:20; cf. 13:24). Acts ends with Paul’s grim announcement, drawing on Isaiah, that many of his Jewish listeners are dull of hearing and blind of heart; they cannot (because they will not) “turn” so that God “would heal them” (28:27).
If Acts’s stress on turning or conversion implies the inherent sinful status and direction of persons apart from the gospel good news, its frequent mention of repentance is an even more direct indictment of humans in their sin. We have already seen verses above that speak of both turning and repenting of sin (3:19; 26:20). Other key passages confirm the connection between sin and repentance. Before the Sanhedrin Peter says of Christ, “God exalted him at his right hand as Leader and Savior, to give repentance to Israel and forgiveness of sins” (5:31). In Samaria Peter tells Simon the sorcerer, “Repent, therefore, of this wickedness of yours, and pray to the Lord that, if possible, the intent of your heart may be forgiven you” (8:22). In the wake of Cornelius’s acceptance of the gospel message, incredulous Jewish believers exclaim, “Then to the Gentiles also God has granted repentance that leads to life” (11:18). At Athens Paul states, “The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent” (17:30). At Ephesus he recalls that “John baptized with the baptism of repentance, telling the people to believe in the one who was to come after him, that is, Jesus” (19:4). Paul summarizes his lengthy ministry at Ephesus as “teaching you in public and from house to house, testifying both to Jews and to Greeks of repentance toward God and of faith in our Lord Jesus Christ” (20:20–21).
We see, then, that in Acts, quite apart from explicit reference to sin (to be treated below), we learn much about the human condition and the remedy for it by frequent mention of conversion and its often stated precondition, repentance. To a lesser but still significant degree, this will be true of the Hebrews to Revelation corpus as well.
Hebrews to Revelation
The Gospels and Acts tell the story of gospel good news going out into settings where people had not heard it and were invited to respond. In such situations, “repentance” and “turning” to God understandably receive frequent mention. The situation shifts with the New Testament letters. They are written primarily to people who have already received the message. We would not expect to find so much talk of repentance and conversion. These are already facts of life for the first readers of these writings.
This is certainly true of the notion of turning to God. The term favored in Luke and Acts, epistrephō (I turn, turn back, convert), appears only three times in the General Epistles (James 5:19, 20; 1 Pet. 2:25) and not at all in Revelation. There is a connection with sin in the James and Peter passages, so the implicit affirmation of human sinfulness is present. But it is not pronounced like it was in the Gospels and Acts.
References to repentance are nominally more numerous, though frequent only in Revelation. In the General Epistles, Hebrews groups “repentance from dead works” with “faith toward God” as part of “the elementary doctrine of Christ” (6:1). A few verses later there is mention of the impossibility for those who “have fallen away” to be restored “again to repentance” (v. 6). These fleeting references at least show that the writer shared the conviction of other New Testament authors that humans share in a sinful condition requiring repentance to remedy. Such repentance can be elusive, as Esau discovered when “he found no place for repentance, although he sought it with tears” (12:17, author’s translation).
The only other mention of repentance in the General Epistles comes from Peter’s observation that “the Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance” (2 Pet. 3:9). All people, not just some, need to repent. God is patient toward that end. Those who fail to heed this call will perish.
The last book of the New Testament mentions repentance a total of ten times in seven connections. These can be surveyed effectively in tabular form:
References to Repentance in Revelation
Those Called to Repentance
Text/s
Sins Requiring Repentance
Church at Ephesus
2:5
Loss of first love; neglect of works done at first
Church at Pergamum
2:16
Embrace of the false teaching of Balaam and the Nicolaitans
Jezebel and her collaborators in the church at Thyatira
2:21–22
False teaching, sexual immorality, idolatry
Church at Sardis
3:3
Appearance but not reality of spiritual life; dead works not complete in the sight of God
Church at Laodicea
3:19
Pride, complacency, spiritual tepidity
Survivors of the plagues of the sixth trumpet
9:20–21
Evil works, worship of demons and idols; murder, sorcery, sexual immorality, theft
Victims of the fourth and fifth bowls of God’s wrath
16:9, 11
Reception of the mark of the beast and worship of its image
The table above shows two things. First, repentance is an issue and often a need in Christ’s churches. It is not just an act for those who have not received the gospel. Five of the seven churches of Asia Minor are called to repentance. The two that are not, Smyrna and Philadelphia, are spared this only by persecution (Smyrna) and “patient endurance” (3:10) under indignity and adversity. Second, repentance is needed not just for the general reason that people have sinned, or that sin is in the world, although both of those needs are true and real. Rather, repentance in Revelation is also connected to particular sins. This brings us squarely back to the subject of this chapter, “Sin in the New Testament.” We have been arguing that relevant to that subject is the indirect evidence of the New Testament’s calls for turning (or conversion) and repentance. These calls are implicit recognition of sin. In Revelation this implicit recognition becomes explicit, as the right-hand column in the table above shows. This is not a comprehensive list of sins for which God judges churches and the world and calls them to repent, of course. But it gives a fairly broad and graphic sketch of ways in which people do wrong in God’s sight, sometimes in congregations right under his nose. Revelation affords one final lurid glimpse of what the New Testament describes and condemns as sin.
Words for Sin: the Hamartia Group
We now turn to several word-groups that refer to sin, sins, or sinning. Words carry their meaning in sentences, paragraphs, and documents, so it is not words in isolation that will concern us but words as they actually appear and function in the non-Pauline portions of the New Testament. The most prominent word-group is related to the noun hamartia (sin). Other words in this group are the verb hamartanō (I sin), the noun hamartēma (sin, transgression), and the adjective hamartōlos (sinful), which is often made into a noun and then means “sinner.”
These words occur a total of 176 times in the New Testament outside of Paul’s writings. (Paul uses these words a total of ninety-one times.) We can set forth the number of occurrences of these words in each New Testament book as follows:
Matthew
15
Mark
14
Luke
33
John
25
Acts
9
Hebrews
29
James
9
1 Peter
8
2 Peter
3
1 John
27
2–3 John
06
Jude
1
Revelation
3
In this section we will not look at every single occurrence. We will rather characterize how these words are used in each book and what this tells us about our overall subject.
Gospels
In Matthew’s opening chapter, an angel reveals that Jesus’ very name directly addresses our topic: his earthly father Joseph is told to “call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins” (Matt. 1:21). This mission is confirmed decades later at a meal where “many tax collectors and sinners came and were reclining with Jesus and his disciples” (9:10). Jesus is rebuffed by the Pharisees for this unholy mingling with transgressors. But Jesus defends his action, observing that it is the ailing, not the healthy, who need a doctor. Accordingly, he tells his detractors, “Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice.’ For I came not to call the righteous, but sinners” (v. 13). The New Testament does not minimize or whitewash sin. But neither does it present sin as an insoluble problem, for Jesus came for the sake of sinners. He remained true to this mission despite those who maligned him for it, saying, “Look at him! A glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!” (11:19). In response, Jesus calmly replied in that same verse, “Yet wisdom is justified by her deeds.”
Also in Matthew, Jesus shows that he has authority to forgive sins (9:6). “Since hamartia [sins] . . . is used in the plural, ‘sinful acts’ are clearly in mind, rather than sin in the abstract.”7 He counsels his disciples regarding how to deal with sins when they threaten fellowship between brothers: “If your brother sins against you, go and tell him his fault, between you and him alone. If he listens to you, you have gained your brother” (18:15). Since Jesus’ willingness to forgive sins is so vast, his followers are empowered to profound depths of forgiveness, not just the seven times that Peter feared (v. 21) but even to seventy-seven times (v. 22).
Jesus’ earthly life was ended as the result of being “betrayed into the hands of sinners” (26:45). An example would be Judas, who confesses too late, “I have sinned by betraying innocent blood” (27:4). Nevertheless, there would be hope for those who turned against him and fled like Peter and the others, for Jesus’ “blood of the covenant” was “poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins” (26:28).
Mark’s Gospel is much shorter than Matthew’s but contains almost as many references to the hamartia word-group. In general, these references echo insights found in Matthew. Jesus as the Son of Man has authority to forgive sins (2:5–11). He dined with “sinners,” was criticized for it, and responded, “I came not to call the righteous, but sinners” (v. 17). Yet despite reaching out to sinners, falling into their hands would be his undoing: at the end of his Gethsemane prayer, he tells his slumbering inner circle, “The Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners” (14:41). While all sins can be forgiven except for blasphemy against the Holy Spirit (3:38–29), in Mark Jesus speaks of “this adulterous and sinful generation” to be judged when the Son of Man returns (8:38).
A note here is in order about “blasphemy against the Holy Spirit,” often called “the unpardonable sin.” What is this terrible misdeed? Based on those to whom Jesus seemed to attribute it, it appears to have been a state of hardness of heart in which the Holy Spirit’s gracious conviction is resisted so long and adamantly that the sinner becomes impervious to God’s softening, beckoning love. Sinners’ hostility toward God’s redemptive working seats human self-righteousness on the throne of lordship over their souls. No forgiveness is possible because sinners’ will to oppose God’s gracious Spirit has walled off their lives from God’s means of grace. As in the case of Esau (Heb. 13:17) or of some of Jesus’ most brazen and entrenched adversaries, the sinner’s hard commitment to autonomy proves stronger than his wistful but weaker will to repent.
In both Matthew and Mark, sin is a prominent motif that explains the need for Jesus’ coming and defines the predicament of those he came to rescue. Luke’s Gospel sounds these same notes. But it contains more than twice as many references to the hamartia word-group than either Matthew or Mark. Some of these references are Luke’s versions of accounts found in the other two (Luke 3:3; 5:20–21, 23–24, 30, 32; 7:34; 17:3–4). But at twelve points Luke gives fresh information utilizing hamartia expressions:
1)
Only Luke records Zechariah’s Spirit-led prophecy (1:67) that his son John would “give knowledge of salvation to his people in the forgiveness of their sins” (v. 77). John’s ministry like Jesus’ was bound up in addressing the problem of human sin.
2)
Only Luke records Peter’s sense of abject sinfulness at the call of the first disciples when a large catch of fish was taken: “But when Simon Peter saw it, he fell down at Jesus’ knees, saying, ‘Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord’” (5:8). Peter is often depicted as mercurial, but his deep sense of guilt and unworthiness from early in his relationship with Jesus deserves more attention as a contributing factor to his at-times fanatical zeal. His seeming volatility and instability may have been driven by a desperate, wise, and in fact deeply insightful sense of his sinfulness.
3)
Only Luke is explicit about “sinners” (6:32–34) in his version of the Sermon on the Mount. (Matthew’s version speaks instead of “tax collectors” and “Gentiles.”)
4)
Only Luke records Jesus’ anointing by a woman at the home of Simon the Pharisee, a woman who was “a sinner” (7:37). A sinner’s touching Jesus was scandalous for Simon and discredited Jesus in his eyes (v. 39). But her example of loving contrition despite her many sins (v. 47) testified to the forgiveness of sins that Jesus pronounced: “And he said to her, ‘Your sins are forgiven’” (v. 48). This prompted everyone else at the dinner “to say among themselves, ‘Who is this, who even forgives sins?’” (v. 49).
5)
Only Luke speaks of “sins” in the Lord’s Prayer (11:4). (Matthew’s version uses “debts.”)
6)
Only Luke details Jesus’ comments when he was told about Pilate’s slaughtering some Galileans as they worshiped. Jesus warned his listeners not to think that those Galileans were “worse sinners” (or “offenders”) than all other people (13:2–5).
7)
Only Luke records that when Jesus told the parable of the lost sheep, “tax collectors and sinners were all drawing near to hear him” (15:1), so that “the Pharisees and the scribes grumbled, saying, ‘This man receives sinners and eats with them’” (v. 2). Disgruntled observers of Jesus aside, there is “joy in heaven” (v. 7) and “before the angels of God over one sinner who repents” (v. 10).
8)
Only Luke tells of the Prodigal Son and the redemptive effect of his realization of his sin: “Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you” (15:18, 21). This is the revelation and, on the son’s part, contrite humility that made a happy ending to the story possible.
9)
Only Luke tells of the Pharisee and the tax collector, the latter of whom was justified when he “would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’” (18:13). Jesus here forcefully and memorably commends a sense of personal sinfulness as fundamental to reconciliation with God.
10)
Only Luke tells of Zacchaeus and the consternation of some over Jesus’ fraternizing with him as onlookers “grumbled, ‘He has gone in to be the guest of a man who is a sinner’” (19:7). Zacchaeus would own up to his sorry track record and take steps to make amends that Jesus would approve (v. 9). Jesus would conclude that Zacchaeus was one of “the lost” whom “the Son of Man came to seek and to save” (v. 10). “Sinner” and “lost” are seen to be synonymous.
11)
Only Luke records that the women at the tomb were steadied by “two men . . . in dazzling apparel (24:4) who reminded and reassured them that the Son of Man had to “be delivered into the hands of sinful men” (v. 7).
12)
Only Luke makes explicit the role that “forgiveness of sins” plays in the gospel proclamation that Jesus commissions to be taken “in his name to all nations” (24:47).
Like Luke, the Gospel of John contains more references to the hamartia word-group than Matthew or Mark. Most of these references are not found in the other three Gospels. For example, John alone records the Baptist’s identification of Jesus as “the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!” (1:29). Only in John do we read of a healed man whom Jesus admonished, “See, you are well! Sin no more, that nothing worse may happen to you” (5:14). He speaks similarly to the woman taken in adultery (8:11). Sin is clearly a matter to which Jesus is not indifferent in the lives of those to whom he ministers.
Sin is a central issue in a sharp conflict between Jesus and religious leaders whom Jesus eventually calls sons of the Devil (8:44) and liars (v. 55). He tells them they will die in their sin (v. 21) and their sins (v. 24) unless they believe in him. How serious is the human sin problem? “Truly, truly, I say to you, everyone who practices sin is a slave to sin” (v. 34). In Jesus’ outlook this applies to all who do not trust in him, as well as to those whose trust is only superficial (see 2:23–25).
Jesus’ insight into sin can be trusted since he is free from sin (8:46), though some accuse him of being a sinner (9:16, 24). He draws heavily and authoritatively on his insight in the interchange with the man who was born blind because of someone’s sin, according to his disciples (v. 2). Jesus denies the direct tie between blindness and someone’s moral failure in this particular case (v. 3). Sin abides in those who think that they can see without the light that only Jesus can provide; their “guilt remains” (v. 41). Sin is not an innocent shortfall but a toxic and damning condition of guilt before God.
Remaining references to sin in the Fourth Gospel are found in the Upper Room Discourse (chaps. 13–17), at Jesus’ trial, and after he arose. In the upper room, he states that his opponents are “guilty of sin” because he has “come and spoken to them,” and “now they have no excuse for their sin” (15:22). They are guilty not only for rejecting what Jesus said but also for rejecting the implications of the works “done among them . . . that no one else did”; by seeing yet hating both Jesus and the Father, they are “guilty of sin” (v. 24). Jesus promises to send “the Helper,” who “will convict the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment” (16:8).
At Jesus’ trial Jesus implies that Pilate is doing wrong in his dealings with Jesus but that the one who handed him over to Pilate “has the greater sin” (19:11). Not all sins are of the same significance and gravity, apparently. At the Johannine “Little Pentecost,” where the risen Jesus shows his hands and side and says, “Receive the Holy Spirit” (20:22), Jesus tells the Eleven, “If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you withhold forgiveness from any, it is withheld” (v. 23). Jesus’ ministry of helping people deal with their sins is in some sense extended through his apostolic followers. Pronouncements of absolution in (especially liturgical) churches today can be traced back to Jesus’ words on this occasion.
Acts
Acts’s use of the hamartia word-group has already been glimpsed above in passages that speak of both repentance and sin, sins, or sinning (2:38; 3:19; 5:31), or in one case of both turning (converting) and forgiveness of sins (26:18). But there are other explicit references to sin in Acts, too. Among dying Stephen’s last concerns was the guilt of his accusers: “‘Lord, do not hold this sin against them.’ And when he had said this, he fell asleep” (7:60). The Holy Spirit descended on Cornelius and his relatives and friends (10:24) immediately after Peter said, “To [Jesus of Nazareth] all the prophets bear witness that everyone who believes in him receives forgiveness of sins through his name” (v. 43). A similar pronouncement occurs at the climax of Paul’s synagogue sermon at Pisidian Antioch: “Let it be known to you therefore, brothers, that through this man forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you, and by him everyone who believes is freed from everything from which you could not be freed by the law of Moses” (13:38–39). This passage reminds us of the close relation between sin and the law in terms of guilt and also faith as the means of Jesus’ death working its liberating effect.
Acts also recalls how an appointed spiritual guide named Ananias addressed the sin problem of Saul of Tarsus after his Damascus road encounter: “And now why do you wait? Rise and be baptized and wash away your sins, calling on his name” (22:16). At his arraignment before Festus at Caesarea, Paul protests that he has not “sinned” (hēmarton) “against the law of the Jews, nor against the temple, nor against Caesar” (25:8). Therefore he is innocent of the trumped-up charges being brought against him. Here “sin” is used in a civil rather than moral or theological sense; hence the ESV translates “committed . . . offense.” All human wrongdoing, not just religious infractions, counts as sin.
Hebrews to Revelation
The hamartia word-group is prominent in Hebrews, occurring twenty-nine times (see table above). A hamartia-based word is found in every chapter of Hebrews except chapter 6. The references can be grouped as follows:
1)
Christ, the ultimate sacrifice for sin. The Son of God won his exaltation by “making purification for sins,” after which he took his honorific seat at God’s right hand (1:3; cf. 10:12). His full humanity enabled him to “become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people” (2:17). In this he resembles the earthly high priest as established in the law of Moses (5:1). But there is a major difference: the earthly high priest “is obligated to offer sacrifice for his own sins just as he does for those of the people” (v. 3). Christ, by contrast, is “holy, innocent, unstained, separated from sinners, and exalted above the heavens” (7:26). Unlike earthly high priests, he does not need to offer daily sacrifices for himself and the people, “since he did this once for all when he offered up himself” (v. 27; cf. 9:26; 10:11–12).
2)
Warnings about sin. Israel’s example of unbelief and judgment is applied to the readers of Hebrews. They are told to “exhort one another every day, as long as it is called ‘today,’ that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin” (3:13). Failure to heed this will prove disastrous: “And with whom was he provoked for forty years? Was it not with those who sinned, whose bodies fell in the wilderness?” (v. 17). The writer puts a still finer point on this later on: “For if we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins” (10:26). Many Old Testament saints realized this and followed a course like that of Moses, who wisely chose “rather to be mistreated with the people of God than to enjoy the fleeting pleasures of sin” (11:25).
3)
Promise and imperative in forsaking sin. God has promised: “For I will be merciful toward their iniquities, and I will remember their sins no more” (8:12; cf. 10:17). Christ has done what the Old Testament sacrifices only anticipated (10:4). There is no further need of “any offering for sin” (v. 18). But, since “we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin” (4:15), Christ’s work is not merely to be admired. There is need to “lay aside every weight, and sin which clings so closely, and [to] run with endurance the race that is set before us” (12:1). The readers of Hebrews are told, “Consider him who endured from sinners such hostility against himself, so that you may not grow weary or fainthearted” (v. 3). Christ’s self-sacrifice for the Father and for God’s people sets a high bar for his followers, who are virtually taunted that “in [their] struggle against sin [they] have not yet resisted to the point of shedding [their] blood” (v. 4). Just as according to Old Testament ordinance “the bodies of those animals whose blood is brought into the holy places by the high priest as a sacrifice for sin are burned outside the camp” (13:11), and just as Jesus “suffered outside the gate” (v. 12), believers in Christ are exhorted to “go to him outside the camp and bear the reproach he endured” (v. 13).
There is purpose and hope in this for two reasons. The first reason is who Christ is for those who call on him as their mediator before God: “We do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin” (4:15). The second reason is what Christ will do in the future: “Christ, having been offered once to bear the sins of many, will appear a second time, not to deal with sin but to save those who are eagerly waiting for him” (9:28).
The book of Hebrews keeps the sin problem constantly before the reader’s eye. Of significant words found in Hebrews, only three other words are used more times than the word “sin” (twenty-five times).8 Hebrews is equally persistent in commending Jesus as God’s eternal and only solution.
In James sin is given a clear definition: “Whoever knows the right thing to do and fails to do it, for him it is sin” (4:17). Sin is also acts condemned by God’s law: “If you show partiality, you are committing sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors” (2:9). Sin is associated with being “double-minded” (dipsychos): “Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded” (4:8). Being “double-minded” connotes instability (1:8), among other things. James explains how illicit desire morphs into sin and brings on death: “Desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death” (v. 15).
Yet sin can be forgiven through prayer and confession (5:15–16). A priority in congregational life should be bringing back sinners from their wanderings, for this saves souls from death and “will cover a multitude of sins” (v. 20). A hamartia word (“sins”) is, tellingly and memorably, the last word to appear in James’s epistle.
In 1 Peter, readers are reminded that Christ “committed no sin” (2:22), he bore believers’ sins so they “might die to sin and live to righteousness” (v. 24), and he “suffered once [decisively] for sins . . . to bring us to God” (3:18). Christians should do good and suffer, if necessary, rather than sin and endure the punishment that it brings (2:20). Christ’s suffering furnishes his followers with a template for their own lives; a decisive identification with Christ in this respect is tantamount to a decisive break with sin (4:1). The highest priority in congregational life is persistence in love that will overshadow and overwhelm the sins that proliferate in human lives: “Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins” (v. 8). First Peter’s final mention of sin quotes Proverbs 11:31 to underscore sin’s gravity: “If the righteous is scarcely saved, what will become of the ungodly and the sinner?”
Second Peter reminds of the punishment for sin (including hell) that rebellious angels incurred (2:4). It warns against false prophets and teachers who arise in the church. Their description is a colorful mini-guide for describing sin: “They have eyes full of adultery, insatiable for sin. They entice unsteady souls. They have hearts trained in greed. Accursed children!” (v. 14). It is important that believers keep before them their cleansing from former sins (1:9) and vigorously pursue the divinely bestowed characteristics that make for godliness (vv. 3–8). Knowledge of sin is not an end in itself, much less a free-standing virtue; it is rather an entrée to divine cleansing and provocation to pursue all the graces that constitute righteousness.
First John contains numerous references to the hamartia word-group. Several of these highlight Christ’s role in dealing with sin:
Other passages wrestle with how the believer needs to regard and deal with sin. Denial is not the solution (1:8, 10); confession is, so that God may forgive and cleanse (v. 9) by “the blood of Jesus his Son” (v. 7). Sin can be trivialized, but there is nothing trivial about sin, which is a manifestation of lawlessness (anomia; 3:4). This word can denote not just falling short of God’s moral law (like “sin” often does) but a positive and extreme rejection of that law. It occurs only fifteen times in the New Testament9 and sometimes connotes acts or attitudes that attract maximum divine disapproval and opposition. For example, Paul speaks of “the man of lawlessness” and “the mystery of lawlessness” (2 Thess. 2:3, 7). Envisioning the day of judgment, Jesus pictures himself banishing pretenders who call him “Lord” but whom he views as “workers of lawlessness” (Matt. 7:23). In the end times, “because lawlessness will be increased, the love of many will grow cold” (24:12).
John’s equating of “sin” and “lawlessness” in 1 John 3:4 may explain his statements that make it sound as though believers do not sin (3:6, 9; 5:18; in 2:1 he makes clear that believers may sin). John may be saying that when sin escalates to the point of anomia (lawlessness), it is incompatible with the very identity of those who have “been born of God” (3:9). Since 1 John warns against such sins as denial of Jesus as the Christ (2:22) and hatred of fellow believers (vv. 14–15), both of which are surely anomia-class transgressions, he may be saying that truly reborn believers who would commit such actions are a contradiction in terms and ultimately not God’s children, whatever their claims to Christian belief.
One other challenging reference to hamartia (sin) in 1 John relates to the so-called sin unto death. John states, “All wrongdoing is sin, but there is sin that does not lead to death” (5:17). Believers should pray for one another so that “God will give . . . life” to erring brethren (v. 16) in those areas where all humans, including Christians, struggle and fall short of God’s glory. This sin is serious but forgivable. Yet there is also “sin that leads to death,” sin so lethal that even to intercede for it is risky: “I do not say one should pray for that” (v. 16). In the overall context of 1 John it would make sense if this were sin of the anomia variety mentioned above. John may be saying that when professing believers abide in anti-Christian convictions (such as denying that Jesus is the Christ or that he came in the flesh) or practices such as hatred of one another (racism is a familiar example), they have made their own bed and must now lie down in it—they cannot expect, and God does not require, heartfelt intercession for such hardened transgressors. Yet John also does not forbid intercession for them, though caution is advised lest compassion for wrongdoers lead to entrapment in their ways (see Jude 23).
Admittedly, 1 John’s teaching on sin is complicated. Any solutions require careful thought and wording, along with ongoing openness to clearer understanding of just how all of John’s hamartia expressions interrelate, both with each other and with his teaching on other subjects.
In Jude there is one reference to “sinners” (v. 15), identifying them with the “ungodly” people and their “ungodly” actions about which Jude has much to say (see also vv. 4, 18). Second Peter likewise warns against these individuals and their ways (2:5–6; 3:7). Their sin includes perversion of God’s grace so that they condone immorality along with denial of Christ (Jude 4). Central to Jude’s message is the warning that God will “execute judgment on all and to convict all the ungodly of all their deeds of ungodliness that they have committed in such an ungodly way, and of all the harsh things that ungodly sinners have spoken against him” (v. 15).
The final mentions of hamartia are found in Revelation. This book begins by extolling “Jesus Christ the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of kings on earth, . . . who loves us and has freed us from our sins by his blood” (1:5). Jesus’ role as sin sacrifice frames Revelation from start to finish (22:1, 3: “the throne of God and of the Lamb”). Late in the book God’s people are warned to abandon and abhor Babylon, a symbol “of earth’s abominations” (17:5), a place and power “drunk with the blood of the saints, the blood of the martyrs of Jesus” (v. 6). God’s people are told: “Come out of her, my people, lest you take part in her sins, lest you share in her plagues; for her sins are heaped high as heaven, and God has remembered her iniquities” (18:4–5).
Here “sins” are equated with “iniquities,” a word that points to another cluster of terms in the New Testament that shed light on its view of sin.
Words for Sin: the Adikia Group
The next prominent New Testament word-group that often speaks of “sin” or near equivalents is related to the noun adikia (injustice, wrong, wickedness, unrighteousness). Other words in this group are the verb adikeō (I do wrong, harm), the noun adikēma (misdeed), the adjective adikos (unjust, unrighteous), and the adverb adikōs (unjustly). These words occur a total of forty-eight times in the New Testament outside of Paul’s writings. (Paul uses these words a total of twenty-four times.) The non-Pauline occurrences are as follows:
Matthew
2
Mark
0
Luke
12
John
1
Acts
10
Hebrews
2
James
1
1 Peter
2
2 Peter
4
1 John
2
2–3 John
0
Jude
0
Revelation
12
The range of words used in the ESV to translate adikia word-group occurrences is as follows: unjust, do wrong, hurt, evil, shrewdness, unrighteous, dishonest, falsehood, wickedness, being wronged, iniquity/-ies, wrongdoing, wrongdoer, unrighteousness, suffering wrong, harm, evildoer, and do evil. This impressively diverse range of meanings shows how contextually varied and rich the adikia word-group is.
Gospels
All the Gospel occurrences of the adikia word-group appear in sayings of Jesus. He uses adikia in the Sermon on the Mount statement, “For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust [adikous]” (Matt. 5:45). Here “unjust” occurs in parallel with “evil” (ponēros), a word found sixty-five times in the non-Pauline New Testament writings, forty-four of those times in the Gospels. Not only sin (hamartia) and injustice (adikia) but also evil are topics frequently on Jesus’ lips. Space does not permit in-depth investigation of Jesus’ view of evil, but this would be part of any more in-depth look at sin in the New Testament.
Jesus uses an adikia form in speaking about the master of the house who must tell bogus devotees, “I do not know where you come from. Depart from me, all you workers of evil!” (Luke 13:27). He uses the same word four times to describe “unrighteous” mammon or earthly wealth in the parable of the dishonest manager (16:1–13; see adikia uses in vv. 8, 9, 10, 11). The hard-hearted judge whom a persistent widow wears down is called adikia (10:6). “Unjust” appears in parallel with extortionists, adulterers, and tax collectors in 18:11. The same word occurs as an antonym to “true” in John 7:18, where the ESV translates adikia as “falsehood.”
We can summarize Gospel use of adikia as showing Jesus to have what we might call a realist moral vision in how he characterized humans and society. While his love and compassion are prominent in the Gospels, these were not ideals that blinded him to a dark side found in people and their circumstances. He diagnosed the human condition as subtly but strongly tainted with elements of injustice, unrighteousness, and wrong.
Acts
Acts uses adikia words to spotlight people and actions very much like those described in the Gospels using the same word-group. Judas is said to have “acquired a field with the reward of his wickedness [adikias]” (1:18). Deeds of wrongdoing observed by Moses are denoted by the verbal form adikeō (“I do wrong, harm”) in 7:24, 26–27. Greedy Simon is said to be “in the bond of iniquity” (8:23). Gallio declines to name gospel witness at Corinth “a matter of wrongdoing [adikēma] or vicious crime” (18:14). In Paul’s defense before Felix at Caesarea he speaks of “a resurrection of both the just and the unjust [adikos]” (24:15), and he challenges his accusers to name the “wrongdoing” (adikēma) of which they wish to convict him (v. 20). In his subsequent defense before Porcius Festus, Paul denies any culpable behavior (note forms of adikeō [“I do wrong”] in 25:10–11).
From start to finish in Acts there is testimony to injustice and wrongdoing, or lack of the same, by use of adikia-related words.
Hebrews to Revelation
Nearly half of non-Pauline occurrences of adikia words are found in this portion of the New Testament. About half of these are found in Revelation, where “harm” is mentioned frequently due to various forces or events (2:11; 6:6; 7:2–3; 9:4, 10, 19; 11:5; in some of these cases “harm” is suppressed by God). As Revelation draws to a close, “iniquities” (adikēmata) are paired with “sins”: “For her sins are heaped high as heaven, and God has remembered her iniquities” (18:5). In Revelation’s final chapter “wrongdoers” and the “filthy” are contrasted with the just: “Let the evildoer still do evil [cf. adikeō], and the filthy still be filthy, and the righteous still do right, and the holy still be holy” (22:11). Adikia words in Revelation remind the reader that we inhabit a moral universe, and the complexion of the end of all things is to be determined along lines characterized by their good or evil in relation to God, who resources and rewards the former but punishes and banishes the latter.
In the General Epistles as elsewhere in Scripture, God is emphatically “not unjust” (ou . . . adikia; Heb. 6:10). He will be “merciful toward” his people’s “iniquities” just as he “will remember their sins no more” (8:12). James calls the tongue “a fire, a world of unrighteousness [adikia]” (3:6). Peter speaks of suffering “unjustly” (adikōs; 1 Pet. 2:19). He also notes that Christ, who was righteous, suffered for “the unrighteous” (adikos; 3:18). Using the same word-group, 2 Peter speaks of “the unrighteous” who are kept “under punishment until the day of judgment” (2:9), of those who suffer “wrong [cf. adikeō] as the wage for their wrongdoing [adikia]” (v. 13), and of Balaam, “who loved gain from wrongdoing” (v. 15). The well-known verse 1 John 1:9 promises “[cleansing] from all unrighteousness [adikia]” through confession of sin and faith in Christ’s saving work.
New Testament writings from Hebrews to Revelation are united in their testimony to a God who is above wrongdoing, empowers his followers to shun unrighteous deeds, and is graphically explicit about what he disapproves and will punish, if not always immediately in this age then surely and irreversibly in the age to come. This helps explain the frequency and pungency of many uses of the adikia word-group in this portion of the New Testament.
Conclusion
Space does not permit in-depth consideration of other sin-related words groups.10 Matthew, for example, speaks of “trespasses” (6:14–15; 11:25). Hebrews speaks of drifting away (2:1) and falling away (6:6). Jesus speaks of transgressing God’s commandments (Matt. 15:3), and James of being “convicted by the law as transgressors” (2:9; see also v. 11). And then there is a host of non-Pauline New Testament words denoting acts such as adultery (twenty references), stealing or theft (ten), and immorality (twenty-one). There are lists of sinful acts such as those found in 1 Peter 4:3 (“sensuality, passions, drunkenness, orgies, drinking parties, and lawless idolatry”) or in the Gospels regarding what “defiles” a person (see Matt. 15:20; Mark 7:15, 18; cf. Jude 8). A memorable list of deeds condemned by Jesus appears in the Markan passage just cited:
What comes out of a person is what defiles him. For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person. (Mark 7:20–23)
It might not be correct to say that this chapter has merely scratched the surface of what non-Pauline portions of the New Testament say about sin. But we have certainly not been comprehensive in scope. And space has afforded little in the way of achieving depth of treatment in the broad areas of word-groups surveyed through interaction with contemporary New Testament scholarship. Brief reference to a slice of that scholarship may therefore be fitting in conclusion.
The late Donald Guthrie authored a voluminous New Testament theology11 in which he helpfully summed up New Testament views on sin in the various divisions of the New Testament writings treated in this chapter, e.g., Acts,12 Hebrews,13 and “the rest of the New Testament.”14 Guthrie is particularly clear in his “Summary of Jesus’ Estimate of Man’s Sin in the Synoptic Gospels,” where he notes that sin is “universal,” “internal,” “enslavement,” “rebellion,” and deserving of “condemnation.”15 In the Fourth Gospel, Guthrie finds sin characterized as “alienation from God,” “unbelief,” “mortal” (i.e., bringing about death), “universal,” and “lawlessness.”16 Guthrie’s findings in general echo and emphasize much of what has emerged in the discussion above.
Other New Testament theologies have helpfully traversed the same ground. Thomas Schreiner comments on the Fourth Gospel’s stress on “lawlessness” by observing, “Sin, then, is lawlessness, for it represents the refusal to believe in Jesus as the Christ; it is a fierce rebellion that refuses to submit to Jesus as Lord.”17 Some New Testament theologies are not so helpful. In Georg Strecker’s magnum opus, for example, “sin” does not even appear in the subject index, which is over eight pages long.18 It seems that just as people struggled to come to grips with sin in Jesus’ time, scholars vacillate in their treatment of it today.
What should not be forgotten, however, are the ways in which New Testament depictions of sin “contribute to the different interpretations of the work of Christ.”19 The non-Pauline portions of the New Testament do not dwell on sin as an academic question for ethicists or metaphysicians. Nor do they expound on sin for the sake of fueling some Christian moralism. They rather regard sin as a human plight that God has sworn to address. And they do this by steadily bringing the sin problem into proximity with Jesus. As Guthrie puts it, “If sin is enslavement, Christ brings deliverance. If it is falsehood, Christ presents truth. If disobedience, Christ shows the way of obedience. If deviation from the will of God, Christ sets the perfect example of righteousness.”20 Christ does all of this, and more, by virtue of his death and resurrection, which break forever the tyranny of sin and death. But that is where the writings of Paul come powerfully into play, as the next chapter will show.
1 For an excellent survey and in-depth study of these books see Karen Jobes, Letters to the Church: A Survey of Hebrews and the General Epistles (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2011).
2 For a summary of much of the relevant data see Colin Brown, ed., NIDNTT (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1978), 3:573–87.
3 David Brooks, “When the Good Do Bad,” New York Times, March 19, 2012. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/20/opinion/brooks-when-the-good-do-bad.html?r=3&hp. Accessed March 26, 2012. All quotations in this paragraph are from this article.
4 Craig Blomberg, Jesus and the Gospels (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2009), 170.
5 Here Luke uses the cognate word apostrephō.
6 The word for “evil” (ponēros) occurs once in 2 John and once in 3 John.
7 Donald Guthrie, New Testament Theology (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1981), 188.
8 Theos (God) appears sixty-eight times, legō (I say, speak) forty-four times, pistis (faith) thirty-two times.
9 Matt. 7:23; 13:41; 23:38; 24:12; Rom. 4:7; 6:19 (twice); 2 Cor. 6:14; 2 Thess. 2:3, 7, 14; Heb. 1:9; 10:17; 1 John 3:4 (twice).
10 See, e.g., Colin Brown, ed., NIDNTT, 3:383–587.
11 See n8.
12 Ibid., 199–200.
13 Ibid., 213–15.
14 Ibid., 215–17.
15 Ibid., 191–92.
16 Ibid., 193–97.
17 Thomas Schreiner, New Testament Theology: Magnifying God in Christ (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2008), 519.
18 Georg Strecker, Theology of the New Testament, ed. Friedrich Wilhelm Horn, trans. M. Eugene Boring (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2000), 740–48.
19 Guthrie, New Testament Theology, 217.
20 Ibid., 217–18.