WE WILL BE LIKE HIM - 1 JOHN 3:2-3

Verses 2-3: Beloved, now we are children of God, and it has not appeared as yet what we will be. We know that when He [it] appears, we will be like Him, because we will see Him just as He is. And everyone who has this hope fixed on Him purifies himself, just as He is pure.”

Continuing from verse 1, John emphasizes our present position: that we are children of God, His spiritual offspring. But it has not yet appeared what we will be. The Greek word for appeared means to be made visible or manifest, W.E. Vine clarifies this:

The Scriptural sense of the word, is more than to “appear.” A person may “appear” in a false guise or without a disclosure of what he truly is; to be manifested is to be revealed in one’s true character.1

The Apostle Paul describes this true character as the “new self2 who is being renewed to a true knowledge of the One who created him” (Colossians 3:10). When John states what we will be, he is suggesting that our new self will become “something inconceivably glorious”3 in the future, when our time is finished here on earth. It will entail not only our spiritual transformation (Romans 12:2) but also our physical change into an immortal body (1 Corinthians 15:53ff).

But now a problem arises in the interpretation of this verse. The reason being that the next phrase could be translated from the Greek in two ways: “when He appears” or “when it appears.” The latter seems to be the logical choice, referring back to “it has not appeared,” with reference to our true character.4 So that when our true character (it) has been made manifest (appears), we have the assurance of knowing that “we will be like Him.” The question is: in what way will we be like Him? One thing for certain, we will not be like Him in His deity. Therefore, we must recognize that what John is referring to is our future spiritual and physical composition.

John elaborates upon this, stating in effect, that without a doubt “we will see Him just as He is.” This is an absolute truth statement. Which means we will need to take John’s word on this, for he saw Our Lord during His early 30’s on various occasions while He was on the earth: in the flesh (John 1:14); at the Transfiguration event (Luke 9:28-36); in His resurrection body (John 21). Thus, we will see Our Lord just as He appeared when John last laid eyes on Him ascending into Heaven (Acts 1:9-11). Our Lord provided proof of His resurrected body when He dispelled Thomas’ skepticism (John 20:19ff) and descriptive details of the nature of His present resurrected body, that it is physical and not spiritual:

“See My hands and My feet, that it is I Myself; touch Me and see, for a spirit does not have flesh and bones as you see that I have.” (Luke 24:39)

By this verse, John is claiming that we have a future beyond the initial stage of being a child of God: spiritually, when we achieve maturity in the knowledge of the truth (1 John 2:21; cf. Ephesians 4:13) and physically, upon leaving this present world when we will be like Him in our new resurrected immortal body, just like the Our Lord’s (cf. Romans 8:29; 1 Corinthians 15:49; Philippians 3:21).

This Hope

What is ‘hope’? Most people define it as the dictionary does: “To wish for a particular event that one considers possible,”5 accepting the possibility that what is wished for may not come to pass. But that is not Biblical hope. Biblical hope is best defined as “a looking forward to in confident expectation.”6

Whenever we see this word ‘hope’ in Scripture, we should understand it to mean ‘confident expectation.’ When we consider any of God’s grace provisions—salvation (Romans 8:24; 1 Thessalonians 5:8); eternal life (Titus 1:2; 3:7); our resurrection (Acts 23:6; 24:15); future glory (Romans 5:2)—we can have a confident expectation of the certainty that He will fulfill what He promises. The writer of Hebrews emphasized this aspect of our hope in God’s eternal provisions, that “This hope we have as an anchor of the soul, a hope both sure and steadfast” (Hebrews 6:19). And this is what John is saying here, that we can be confident that we will be like the Lord Jesus Christ when we see Him after our time on earth has ended.

Therefore, John maintains that for every believer this hope should be fixed on Him. The word fixed is an added emphasis of the Greek phrase: upon Him. Wuest asserts that “the idea is, ‘hope resting upon Him,’ or ‘hope set on Him.’”7 The Apostle Paul concludes that we should be “Looking for the blessed hope and the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Christ Jesus” (Titus 2:13).

Purified Believers

John concludes that when believers have this hope fixed upon the knowledge that at a future time “we will be like” Jesus Christ, that the rightfully expected response should be to consistently purify oneself. This requires the believer to know and confess their sins (1 John 1:9) and to develop “the habit of resisting every defiling influence and keeping oneself free from it.”8 To achieve this the Psalmist prescribes: “Depart from evil and do good, So you will abide forever” (Psalm 37:27).

However, how can we accomplish this? We must remember Our Lord stated that “apart from Me you can do nothing” (John 15:5b). So we dare not attempt this in our own strength. We need a power source that will separate us from evil in order to achieve this purity, that power has been made available for us by the sanctifying Word of truth (John 17:17) that we acquire by the Holy Spirit’s teaching (John 14:26; 16:13).

The fact is, we need to be pure in order to be effective in our walk of faith. Jesus Christ doesn’t need to become pure; He proved that He is pure by His holy life, having successfully resisted “every vile and sinful surrounding and temptation.”9 It is the reason why John can decisively state without any ambiguity, that the essence of Our Lord Jesus Christ is that of absolute purity.

Are we striving in our moment-by-moment walk of faith to be pure, just as He is?

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[1] Vine, W. E., Unger, M. F., & White, W., Jr. (1996). In Vine’s Complete Expository Dictionary of Old and New Testament Words. Nashville, TN: T. Nelson, 2.32.

[2] KJV—“new man”

[3] Jamieson, R., Fausset, A. R., & Brown, D. (1997). Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible. Oak Harbor, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc, 2.531.

[4] Vincent, Marvin R. (n/d). Word Studies in the New Testament. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 3.44; Robertson, A. T. (1933). Word Pictures in the New Testament. Nashville, TN: Broadman Press, 1 John 3:2.

[5] The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition,     https://ahdictionary.com/word/search.html?q=hope [Retrieved  October 8, 2024]

[6] Swanson, J. (1997). In Dictionary of Biblical Languages with Semantic Domains: Greek. Oak Harbor: Logos Research Systems, Inc.

[7] Wuest, K. S. (1997). Wuest’s Word Studies from the Greek New Testament. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 13.145.

[8] Vine, W. E. (1996). Collected Writings of W.E. Vine. Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson, 1 John 3:3.

[9] Van Ryn, August (1948). The Epistles of John, New York, NY: Loizeaux Brothers, p. 91.

 

© 2025 David M. Rossi

 

A NEW DAY IN AMERICA?

January 20, 2025 is the Inauguration Day of the newly re-elected president, Donald J. Trump. There was great fanfare among conservative Americans over the landslide victory and the securing of a major mandate. It was asserted that this victory was because of the negative impact of 12 years of progressivism imposed upon the United States, aimed at dismantling the underlying principles of our great republic.

However, many Christians today rightly conclude that these days are evil (Ephesians 5:16), not simply because the moral infrastructure has been obliterated, but because our culture elevates and promotes the individual’s personal values as sacred and that any and all virtues are archaic and obsolete. This is at the core of our country’s decay, as we wallow in unquestionable decadence. We are “slouching towards Gomorrah”1 while the Liberal culture shrieks how dare we question their depravity.

Who Can Save Our Country ?

So what is God’s plan for curing the sickness of an evil culture? He has chosen to use mature, alert believers as His witnesses for the gospel; so that many might believe in Jesus Christ as their Savior and enjoy His eternal life and not end up in the Lake of Fire. Faithful believers going about His work, can be influential in changing the course of human history and provide prosperity and protection2 to our nation; revitalizing and rescuing it from experiencing God’s judgement. For this is the responsibility of the Church of Jesus Christ. We are to be the “salt of the earth,” the instrumental preserving and cleansing factor representing Our Lord. We are also to be “the light of the world” (Matthew 5:13-14) to enlighten our fellow citizens with the gospel of salvation so that the nation may experience the blessings of God.

Our Course of Action

Since the spiritual battle for our nation is in the hands of believers of Jesus Christ, we have two options to choose from: to despair or to advance.

First, we could choose despair, meaning we would retreat from our Divine responsibility by rejecting the power of the Holy Spirit to be His witnesses to a fallen world (Acts 1:8). Looking at all the cultural decay and corruption it is easy to exclaim: “We’re finished!” and give in to what appears to be hopeless. On a larger scale we have never had to contend in our country with what the early Apostles underwent. Consider what the Apostle Paul believed in the midst of his trying times:

We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not despairing; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed (2 Corinthians 4:8–9)

And expressed how he was confident that,

Who delivered us from so great a peril of death, and will deliver us, He on whom we have set our hope. And He will yet deliver us (2 Corinthians 1:10)

To despair is the sin of unbelief—the embracing of hopelessness and the false notion that God is powerless to deliver. Note how the Psalmist came to realize how wrong he was to give in to despair “against an ungodly nation” (Psalm 45:1):

  Why are you in despair, O my soul?

And why are you disturbed within me?

Hope in God, for I shall again praise Him,

  The help of my countenance and my God. (Psalm 43:5)

Second, if we indeed believe that we are in a battle, the best plan of action would be to advance upon the opposition. A great strategy in military battle is to advance to high ground—a position of superior advantage. For us to take the high ground we demonstrate the belief that we are on God’s side and have confident expectation that He can and will provide the victory (Proverbs 21:31; 1 Corinthians 15:57).

The high ground for the believer is not marching and demonstrating in the public square; there are no Scripture to support this type of activity. The Apostle Paul described exactly what our battle consists of:

For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world forces of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places. (Ephesians 6:12)

And since this is our struggle, Paul explains how we are to array ourselves for battle:

Put on the full armor of God, so that you will be able to stand firm against the schemes of the devil...Therefore, take up the full armor of God, so that you will be able to resist in the evil day, and having done everything, to stand firm. (Ephesians 6:11 & 13)

What is often missed when reading these verses is the phrase “having done everything, to stand firm” and then repeated as a command to “Stand firm” (v.14). Once we have done everything necessary in preparing for battle we are to stand firm with great resolve and confidence, without becoming despondent. This is exactly what Moses told the Israelites when confronting the Egyptians: “Do not fear! Stand by and see the salvation of the Lord which He will accomplish for you today” (Exodus 14:13a).

In the following verses of Ephesians 6:14-17 he summarizes the armor we have been given. All but one is designed to defend ourselves. The final piece of armor is meant to be used offensively: “the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God” (v.17). Marching on Washington D.C. or local protests will never defeat the evil enemy. We are to use our knowledge of God’s Word as the only authorized weapon against the dark forces confronting us in our culture.

The Struggle on Two Fronts

We must face the fact that our struggle is on two fronts: the unbelieving world and liberal Christian denominations. The unbelieving world holds to arbitrary “truths” that vary from one individual to another; while liberal Christians pick and choose the Biblical truths of their penchants, often ascribing their own slant on them according to their emotional sentiments—much of the time to appease cultural dictates.

For the unbelieving world has no view of Scripture, and rejects it outright; whereas the liberal Christian has a weakened view of Scripture, rejecting the absolute authority and reliability of God’s Word. Therefore they both end up in the same place having no final objective authoritative truth, where everything is relative and everyone invents their own “truth” standard.3

Since the battle is an assault upon the absolute truth of Scripture, the obedient Christian must utilize the only weapon that can counteract untruth: the sword of the Spirit—the Word of God. It requires that we know, understand and are able to accurately handle the Word of truth (2 Timothy 2:15); speaking and living His truth into our culture—with humility and confident of God’s victory.

Are we willing to do the hard work of studying daily to be prepared?

Conclusion

Never let it be forgotten: Jesus Christ is our Savior—He controls history, for He is the “Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end” (Revelation 21:6). Donald J. Trump is not our savior. Even though he my lead our country back to political and economic greatness again and he may even ensure that personal freedom and liberties be restored along with the freedom of religious expression. But he will never single-handedly spiritually revive our nation—that is the commission invested to all believers of Jesus Christ.

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[1] Bork, Robert H. (1997). Slouching Towards Gomorrah, New York, NY:ReganBooks.

[2] Thieme, R.B., Jr. (2022). Thieme’s Bible Doctrine Dictionary, Houston, TX: R.B. Thieme, Jr., Bible Ministries, p. 197.

[3] Schaeffer, Francis A. (1985). The Complete Works of Francis A. Schaeffer, Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 4.335.

 

© 2025 David M. Rossi
 

THE FATHER'S LOVE BESTOWED ON US - 1 JOHN 3:1

Verse 1: See how great a love the Father has bestowed on us, that we would be called children of God; and such we are. For this reason the world does not know us, because it did not know Him.

 

Behold and Be Amazed

John begins chapter 3 with the simple command: see. However, this doesn’t bring out the full effect of what John is trying to emphasize. The Greek word means to look, to open the eyes of one’s mind and perceive. It is a command that we behold and pay strict attention to what John is about to disclose regarding this particular love which the Father has imparted to us.

The phrase ‘how great’ is one Greek word, an inquisitive adjective meant to encourage the reader to contemplate. There is a word in the Greek for ‘great’, but it is not what John uses here. This word questions “of what sort,”1 implying a sense of awe, amazement, admiration, astonishment, otherworldly. The word is used only 7 times in the New Testament (Matthew 8:27; Mark 13:1 (twice); Luke 1:29; 7:39; 2 Peter 3:11; 1 John 3:1). It is as if John is saying: “Wow! Behold, how amazing is this love the Father has bestowed on us?” R.M.L Waugh notes:

The more the aged John meditated on the love of God, the more he was filled with wonder at the uniqueness of it. There is something unearthly about the divine love. The New Testament writers cannot help using a distinctive word (agape) to indicate its rare quality. Human love is so often kindled by love of a friend; but divine love is utterly and absolutely unselfish.2

In his gospel, John declared the intensity of God’s amazing love:

For God so [in this manner] loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. (John 3:16)

John goes on to explain why we should be astonished by this unearthly love: that we would be called children of God! Believers are presently in a relationship with God, Who intentionally desires fellowship with us; otherwise, He would not have provided His Son’s death in our place on the cross to satisfy His just demands for the atonement of our sins. Now we can understand why John expressed awe of the Father’s love by the phrase how great.

The fact that the Father loves us was proclaimed by Our Lord in His Upper Room Discourse:

"For the Father Himself loves you, because you have loved Me and have believed that I came forth from the Father." (John 16:27)

This love is eternal, as emphasized by the word bestowed, it remains in us forever; it cannot be lost nor can it be forsaken by the believer. The Apostle Paul explained this thoroughly when he wrote:

For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, will be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:38–39)

Even if we were ever to be faithless, He remains faithful (2 Timothy 2:13). Our salvation, our eternal life is secured in the Father’s love for us. We can never lose our salvation. Our Lord asserted this:

“And I give eternal life to them, and they will never perish; and no one will snatch them out of My hand. My Father, who has given them to Me, is greater than all; and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand.” (John 10:28–29)

The authority for Our Lord to give eternal life was granted by the Father (John 17:20), Who ultimately gives eternal life (1 John 5:11) and is the promise Our Lord made to us (1 John 2:25).

The phrase and such we are appears simply in the Greek: ‘and we are,’ describing our absolute state of being—that we indeed are undeniably the Children of God because of our spiritual birth (cf. Romans 8:16). This serves to underscore the finality of this issue.

The Destitute World

What John means by the world is not with regard to God’s creation. For what God created was deemed “very good” (Genesis 1:31). What he is referring to is the present world order ruled by Satan: ‘the evil one’ (1 John 5:19), ‘the prince of the power of the air’ (Ephesians 2:2), ‘the god of this world’ (2 Corinthians 4:4). He is the deceiver of the whole world (Revelation 12:9) so that the people who reside in this world are agnostics, atheists, unbelievers—the mass of unregenerate mankind. Remember, there are only two categories of people who populate the world: those who believe in Jesus Christ, the God of the universe; those who knowingly or unwittingly follow the delusion of Satan and his minions.

Having this understanding of John’s use of the word world, we are able to perceive the significance of this last phrase of this verse.

For this refers to the preceding statement—the fact of God’s love bestowed upon us and that He calls us His children. This is specifically what the world does not know about us. The Greek word for know means “to come to know, recognize” or “to understand completely.”3 The world does not recognize nor does it understand this intimate relationship we have with the God of the universe. Lenski explains that,

We are utterly foreign to the world because even our Father is utterly foreign to the world. The world has no conception of what we are as those who are born of God and thus God’s actual children.4

The Apostle Paul tells us that the unregenerate “natural man” in their ignorance considers the “word of the cross” and the “things of the Spirit of God” as utter foolishness (1 Corinthians 1:18; 2:14). They regard us as the foolish oddities of the world. It is the reason the Apostle Peter could state that,

In all this, they are surprised that you do not run with them into the same excesses of dissipation, and they malign you (1 Peter 4:4)

By surprised Peter means “to be astonished by the strangeness of a thing.”5 In essence, we are considered to be irrational abnormalities in today’s culture. In fact, Van Ryn asserts that “the world not only does not understand the believer in Christ; it resents him if he lives to please the Lord.”6

But Peter gives us sound advice for how we are to live in this present world:

But sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts, always being ready to make a defense to everyone who asks you to give an account for the hope that is in you, yet with gentleness and reverence; and keep a good conscience so that in the thing in which you are slandered, those who revile your good behavior in Christ will be put to shame. (1 Peter 3:15–16)

 John concludes with an explanation for the worlds’ failure in understanding us: because it did not know Him—the Father. Jesus declared that “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30), so neither does the world know Jesus Christ. For this was established by John in his gospel account.

He was in the world, and the world was made through Him, and the world did not know Him. (John 1:10)

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[1] Robertson, A.T. (1934). A Grammar of the Greek New Testament in the Light of Historical Research, Nashville, TN: Broadman Press, p.741.

[2] Waugh, R.M.L. (1953). The Preacher and His Greek Testament, London: The Epworth Press, p. 25.

[3] Vine, W. E., Unger, M. F., & White, W., Jr. (1996). In Vine’s Complete Expository Dictionary of Old and New Testament Words. Nashville, TN: T. Nelson, 2.346.

[4] Lenski, R.C.H. (2001). Commentary on the New Testament, Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 11.450.

[5] Vine, 2.203.

[6] Van Ryn, August (1948). The Epistles of John, New York, NY: Loizeaux Brothers, p. 84.

 

© 2025 David M. Rossi

 

THE PRACTICE OF RIGHTEOUSNESS - 1 JOHN 2:29

Verse 29: If you know that He is righteous, you know that everyone also who practices righteousness is born of Him.

John begins with a suppositional premise “if you know that He (God) is righteous” which the genuineness of the following phrase is dependent upon. It presents a logical connection,1 meaning that if the premise is true then the conclusion is also true. But the important point that John seeks to emphasize at the outset is whether the believer knows that God is righteous. And so, in order to truly understand this verse, we must analyze the key words: righteous, righteousness, practice, know.

Righteousness of God

The word ‘righteous’ denotes the character of a person who conforms to what is just and right “without any deficiency or failure.”2 This implies that what is ‘just and right’ must be based on certain norms and standards, for instance, either the law of society or divine laws.

Regarding God’s righteousness, Dr. Norman Geisler asserts that “it refers to the intrinsic characteristic of God wherein He is absolutely just or right and is the ultimate standard of justice and rightness.”3 Adding to this, Dr. L.S. Chafer explains His unique character:

God is transparently holy and righteous in all His acts. When combined with love, His righteousness results in grace. God’s righteousness is ever absolute and perfect to infinity: “In him is no darkness at all.” God’s righteousness is seen in two ways: (a) He is a righteous Person (James 1: 17; 1 John 1:5) and (b) He is righteous in all His ways (Romans 3:25-26).4

This is an attribute of the very essence of God, setting the standard of perfect upright integrity, far above any and all human criteria. Lenski adds that “He is righteous in all His ways: in His laws, His promises, His verdicts, or a single act of His.”5 His righteous character can and should be studied in the following passages of Scripture: 2 Chronicles 12:6; Ezra 9:15; Nehemiah 9:8; Psalm 19:9; 89:14; Acts 17:31; 2 Timothy 4:8; Hebrews 1:8.

Practice

The word practice does not imply learning, as one might say they are practicing a musical instrument or rehearsing their lines for acting. The doctor practicing medicine when tending to a patient is nearer to John’s meaning of practice. The connotation of the word here implies “any external act as manifested in the production of something tangible.”6 In contrast with a musician learning to play his instrument by practicing or the actor practicing their lines prior to a performance, the inference here is the ongoing production of Godly righteousness in the believer’s life. For the believer to practice righteousness means that they are consistently producing clear evidence of their relationship with Jesus Christ on the basis of His truth standards.

But this characteristic of the believer is not produced merely behind closed doors, in the darkness or out of the way from the sight of others. It is what Our Lord meant when He stated “Let your light shine before men in such a way that they may see your good works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven.” (Matthew 5:16). This corresponds with John’s admonition to “walk in the Light” as evidence that we “practice the truth” (1 John 1:6-7). And yes, we do produce this righteousness internally in our thought life (Philippians 4:8) and while in His presence when we pray and study His Word; but it is supposed to be observable in our external lives before all mankind. To consider otherwise would disregard John’s intent that we become a mature believer and produce righteous characteristics.    

However, Our Lord provided cautionary advice that we were not to practice our righteousness before mankind with the attitude of showing off or in an attempt to compete or outperform others (Matthew 6:1-6). And yet at the same time He declared “that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you will not enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 5:20).

 Since the righteousness of God is an attribute of His perfect and incorruptible divine character, we can only produce His righteous character by the empowerment of the Holy Spirit. Those qualities of our lives that will portray God’s righteous character were specified by the Apostle Paul to be the fruit of the Spirit (Galatians 5:22-23).

You Know

There are two Greek words in this verse translated know. The first one refers to knowing intuitively. What John means by this is that the believer having advanced in his knowledge of the Word will/should be able to apprehend without much contemplation the righteous character of God.

The second word know means “to come to know, recognize” or “to understand completely.”7 So, therefore, if we possess in our frame of reference the fact of God’s righteous character, then, by John’s reckoning, we also will be able to recognize that same righteous character of God’s in those who produce clear evidence of such. More importantly, this is intended to be a personal assessment of our own status of spiritual maturity—to determine if we are producing in our life Godly righteousness.

Born of Him

What does it mean to be born of Him? John refers this to our spiritual birth, having nothing to do with our physical birth. For in John’s gospel, he stated that we, as children of God, “were born, not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God” (John 1:13). Our Lord affirmed this when He proclaimed:

“Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit he cannot enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be amazed that I said to you, ‘You must be born again.’” (John 3:5–7)

This spiritual birth has its source from God and is procured when we believe in the finished work Christ on the cross, where He satisfied the righteous demands of the Father as the just atonement for “our sins; and not for ours only, but also those of the whole world” (1 John 2:2).

How Should We Now Live?

Since we who have experienced this spiritual birth, this “so great salvation” (Hebrews 2:3), we should be primarily concerned with the strategy of living our lives today. We cannot approach our faith in a casual nonchalant fashion: maybe I’ll study His Word, maybe not; maybe I’ll respond to the events of life in a Godly manner, maybe I will not—whatever I choose to do I will do. That is not what John is intending for us his readers. Instead, the Apostle Paul’s instruction expands upon John’s objective of how we should endeavor to live:

For the grace of God has appeared, bringing salvation to all men, instructing us to deny ungodliness and worldly desires and to live sensibly, righteously and godly in the present age, looking for the blessed hope and the appearing of the glory of our great God and Savior, Christ Jesus. (Titus 2:11–13)

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[1] Wallace, D. B. (1996). Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics, Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House,  p. 696.

[2] Zodhiates, S. (2000). In The Complete Word Study Dictionary: New Testament. Chattanooga, TN: AMG Publishers, G1342.

[3] Geisler, Norman L. (2002). Systematic Theology, Minneapolis, MN: Bethany House, 2.323.

[4] Chafer, Lewis Sperry (1976). Systematic Theology, Dallas, TX: Dallas Seminary Press, 7.270.

[5] Lenski, R.C.H. (2001). Commentary on the New Testament, Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 11.446.

[6] Zodhiates, G4160.

[7] Vine, W. E., Unger, M. F., & White, W., Jr. (1996). In Vine’s Complete Expository Dictionary of Old and New Testament Words. Nashville, TN: T. Nelson, 2.346.

 

© 2025 David M. Rossi