personal and spiritual meanings

8/9/2019 Personal and Spiritual Meanings

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PERSON-MEANINGS and SPIRITUAL MEANINGS areneeded in Bible Grammar and Lexicons, and in life

The 'Personal' Aspect in Grammar and Dictionary Definitions... is something I

didn't learn from formal Bible-grammar classes.The 'Spiritual' intention of language... is something I didn't learn at my mother'sknees.

This is an extract, to entice Bible scholars, to download the free scripturecommentary at http://sites.google.com/site/freecommentary I hope you find it thought provoking and new.

Summary: Two neglected areas of a word's meaning are 'personal' and 'spiritual'.They need to be recognised, formally, as primary not secondary dimensions of meaning. Only in scripture can this become obvious.

A Greek preposition (I'm using 'en' and related ones as an example), for instance, will routinely be given...

a place meaning as its primary one -- a physical visible picture, like 'inside' or'upon'.

It will routinely be given a ' motion ' meaning , like 'towards the inside' or 'away from' -- still quite

imaginable as a picture --and a time meaning -- less visible -- like 'during' or 'at',plus some specially named meanings (instrumental ; agentive ), like 'with, by, through',and even some ' extended ' and ' figurative ' meanings like 'intensively so' 'of a higher rank

than'

But no-one seems to recognise a formal ' person -oriented' meaning, e.g. Christ with us; God among us;

fighting against us.

We just don't think in that 'person' category of possible meanings, so we can'teasily recognise it.

When God dwells 'in' heaven, we think of a place, or even a time, such as thefuture reality, eternity, but we don't even imagine that it is telling us that'heaven' is a person, a presence of God, wherever and whenever 'heaven'appears.

Our approach is upside-down, perhaps born out of atheism's influence. Person-meanings are not 'extended' 'minor' 'peculiar' -- They are the first and ultimate


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intention.

Language is about people, and even more fundamentally about Godspeaking to man on our level as if we are destined to be in His Image.It is not child's play.

Only when God talks to us do we even suspect that He, as the author and giver of language, has more on His mind than we have on ours. When we write, we writeabout things of the world we know. When He writes, He tells us of the worlds wedon't know -- and that turns out to be, not about lost physical dimensions, butabout lost spiritual dimensions. He is concerned with live, moral people, not withthe nuts and bolts of physics.

Since the mystery of reality is ultimately personal, we have been found to be over-robotic in analysing the languages of God!

You could teach the place-meaning to a monkey, and the time-meaning to a child, but why expect anything other than a person-meaning, as the prime intention, from a Bible dictionary? Scripture isafter all a love-letter from God. How much more personal can you get?

We can semantically split the 'person' (even of God) into innumerable semanticsub-categories of 'mind, body, soul and spirit', without recognising the heart of God; always thinking in tangible 'realities' as best we can, and missing the person,the personality, the heart-intention.

Examples:

'Heavens and Earth' refers to covenants of God. [You will find the explanationin our commentary]

'Obey the Commandments' refers to love. [Translations refuse to consider it --'heed my words, no-one else's']

'Fear God' refers to marriage. [Why do we miss it?]

The 'elements' disappearing in fire refers to God judging false religion. [Thereference is spiritual]

'All creation' refers to every man, every person. [God is clear in His focus]

The 'foundation' of the Earth refers to Man mucking up. Heb_9:26 ,Luk_11:50-51

'The earth will shake' refers to the land (the people in it) being judged by God.[We should not be so physical about a spiritual message]

'Judgment' means praise and reward. Rom_2:6-7, 1Co_4:5


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'The second death' is separation from God's presence. 2Th_1:9

Whole phrases, idioms and sets of phrases need adequate definitions, as a matterof course.

##Acknowledge the fundamental place of figurative meaning to the 'realmeaning' of word-pictures and you wouldn't need a 'theological' dictionary.

##Look for the personal aspect to meaning and you can translate moreaccurately.

##Think personally and you can interpret Person-to-person.

Active Nominative vs Accusative Passive

Take as a nitty-gritty example, the personal meanings of the standard Greek cases(nominative, vocative, accusative, genitive, dative).

Accusative of person can be a case of shame , of accusation , of inferiority, of subordination. The nominative case, in contrast, is for the actor in control .Passive constructions can reverse that, but the idea of passivity remains. There isno active way of 'being begotten'. It is phrased in the passive, but requiressubmission. Yet John manages it.

John avoids putting the origin of Christ into the accusative case or passiveconstruction.

For example, to say 'In the beginning was the Word' is a bad translation intoEnglish word order of John's choice of case .It puts God in the passive position in relation to the verb, as if to say 'he wasmade'.To translate it instead as, 'In the beginning the Word was ' puts the Word into theactive position in English, and into the superior case (nominative), as it is inGreek. The interpretation is as if 'He made Himself', or 'existed', or 'actively cameinto being' before anything else.

Jesus gets put into the accusative of shame when he is playing the submissiverole.E.g.

2Co 5:21 Him who knew no sin he made to be sin on our behalf; that wemight become the righteousness of God in him.

'He made him sin' is a double accusative. The personal accusative, Jesuscrucified, is of like shame to the objective accusative, sin.


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E.g.Joh 8:28 Jesus therefore said, When ye have lifted up the Son of man, thenshall ye know that I am he, and that I do nothing of myself, but as the Fathertaught me, I speak these things.

One Person, One Spirit, Many PeopleThe Bible also brings to the fore the related personal meanings of communityand intimate unity in a way no other book can. Many 'brotherhoods' steal theunity idea, and several make it 'family'-like, but I know of none which go the whole Biblical way of picturing the intimate closeness of Christ and his church asa 'husband and wife'. We are re-made into his image.The 'group' meanings are mostly lost due to our individualistic evangelicaloutlook; So we need to re-learn that the 'calling' to the saving 'faith' by 'baptism'and 'heart-circumcision', are singulars (not 'my calling; my faith; my baptism;my heart-circumcision' but his , now ours), in the same way as 'your (plural) body (singular)' speaks of us as individually members of one church, and one spirit with one Lord and husband. Therefore re-consider your (plural) calling (singular) brethren (group). We (one group) are 'co-heirs' (one group) to one throne.

Rom 6:3-6 Or are ye ignorant that all we who were baptized into Christ Jesuswere baptized into his death? 4 We were buried therefore with him throughbaptism unto death: that like as Christ was raised from the dead through theglory of the Father, so we also might walk in newness of life. 5 For if we havebecome united with him in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in thelikeness of his resurrection; 6 knowing this, that our old man was crucified withhim , that the body of sin might be done away, that so we should no longer be inbondage to sin;Col 2:11 in whom ye were also circumcised with a circumcision not made withhands, in the putting off of the body of the flesh, in the circumcision of Christ;

Lets take the Biblical idea of 'collective number' one step deeper than non-Biblical language will. When God says 'come ye to me', He takes it more seriously than a cut-throat gang sworn to mutual defence. He becomes us, for practicalpurposes. 'I in them and they in me; he is over all and through all and in all and isall in all'. You know the talk, but may never have found its sense.Nowhere is the intimately close and personal identification of the caller and thecalled more strikingly obvious as when Jesus says to the arch-persecutor of theChristians, Saul, on the road to Damascus, 'Why are you persecuting me?', or when he will repeat to the nations on judgement day, 'You gave me no food and

drink and comfort'. This underlines the over-riding primary meaning of talk. It isnot about bodies or sex or water or doctrines or grammar -- God -speak is allabout true love that would lay down God's life for yours.

The point is that 'collective number' is an inadequate label of tertiary rank, whereby we miss the primary and personal meanings. Our inbuilt-grammar hasfailed to guide us well.


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SPIRITUAL MEANINGS

A Dictionary of language written by God might surprise us, with His top-downview of the real meanings of words and ideas.

## When Jesus says 'This evil race', we think (physically) 'he is being Anti-Semitic', but Jesus, talking spiritually, talking as God, intended to convey: 'This brood of vipers, this evil and adulterous generation, begotten of the Serpent '.

## When John says The Light coming into the world was Life and Truth andGrace, we 'know' he is talking 'figuratively', as if He were twisting language . But3500 years of public, written prophecy ought to prove that God always intended to refer to the spirit of true prophecy. It is we who must be the ones alwaystwisting meaning to something unintended by God.

## Prophecy is something we all want to interpret physically rather thanspiritually. Prophecy does have a physical face-value meaning, applying tohistorical events. Each as yet unfulfilled prophecy we want fully fulfilled by tomorrow morning, or at least 'any day now'.

Hag 2:6 For thus saith Jehovah of hosts: Yet once, it is a little while, and I willshake the heavens, and the earth, and the sea, and the dry land;... [This was spoken to real people in long-ago history building a real temple andexpecting God to act in their time. We are all still waiting for the realfulfilment]..9 The latter glory of this house shall be greater than the former, saithJehovah of hosts; and in this place will I give peace, saith Jehovah of hosts.[This part of the prophecy is still not apparent]

The actual history then, saw the rebuilding as predicted, but not as prophesied...

Zec 2:4 and said unto him, Run, speak to this young man, saying, Jerusalemshall be inhabited as villages without walls, by reason of the multitude of menand cattle therein.

Jerusalem was repopulated at that time, but it didn't turn out quite like that.Some time later they were still refusing to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem, becauseof the prophecy. Nehemiah, guided by God, received better sense...

Neh 2:17 Then said I unto them, Ye see the evil case that we are in, how Jerusalem lieth waste, and the gates thereof are burned with fire: come, andlet us build up the wall of Jerusalem, that we be no more a reproach.

God does not allow quick fulfilment, but leaves prophecy only partly fulfilled. Wecall it 'Hidden meaning' 'Deceptive' 'Deep' 'second fulfilment', but how many millennia do we need to tumble to the simple fact that prophecy won't be finally and fully accomplished until the End? Paul told us 2000 years ago! It is anothercase of missing the primary intention of God's language, by reason of modelling it


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upon our own.

Scripture's primary intention is not its face-value , or physicalmeaning, or historical application, but the spiritual and most eternal

value.

So now we have added a time-dimension to true language, which outdistancesour formal grammar-tenses.

These are not 'idiomatic' usages of language, as if 'unusual and perverse'. They are the real meanings. Language is from God, certainly the Bible is, and languagefrom God is spiritual. There is no greater influence on our thinking, practices and world-view than scripture. It is not to be put into the 'idiomatic; idiosyncratic' basket.

What we need is a spiritually intelligent translation of scripture,using dictionary definitions from a top-down perspective ,addressed to spiritually mature people , not as if your dictionarywere enlightening children, foreigners, atheists or computers!

Such a dictionary and translation already lives in our hearts and minds as westruggle to listen to God and His words. The experts hate to grapple with the very soft edges of personal and spiritual meanings, and will not easily formally includethem; but we, as people, not robots, all need to nurture a heart which will listenfor what God would really have us alive to.

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