I heard a recording of a young fellow who was trying to preach about faith get hopelessly confused by saying that the opposite of faith is the law. According to his view, the opposite is not doubt, not unbelief, but the law! Perhaps he doesn’t realise, but the word “obedience” is only in the New Testament!

Here’s the truth:

1. We keep the law by faith, “So then with the mind I myself serve the law of God” (Rom. 7:25b). “That the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit.” (Romans 8:4).

2. As Christians, we are supposed to do works, “But wilt thou know, O vain man, that faith without works is dead?” (James 2:20).

3. Faith believing is a work, “Jesus answered and said unto them, This is the work of God, that ye believe on him whom he hath sent.” (John 6:29).

It is true that you cannot earn salvation by works. And it would be correct to point out that faith does not mean doing things merely in human strength. Confessing the victory needs to come out of a believing heart, otherwise making a thousand confessions is meaningless. But faith demands effort, there is no such thing as having faith but being passive. Resting in God is an active decision, not an excuse for laziness or apathy.

In the computer age, English is the standard, and Greek not. One evidence for this is the fact that the diacritic symbols required for Greek are more complex than the standard English (i.e. US) (i.e. Latin character) keyboard, and are down deep in the unicode set for font characters/symbols. Even if a font were to substitute the normal alphabet for Greek, the two different symbols used for “s” cannot both be used, “σ” (sigma) and “ς” (stigma).

The fact is Greek is not more holy, nor is Greek more conversant than English. It was a Reformation principle to bring the Scripture from Greek to English. It’s in English now.

All those Christian materials that are being made that say, “now the Greek word at this place is ____ and that means _____ and _____ or ______” are really needless statements, especially considering that the Scripture already has been translated from Greek since the Reformation, makes sense, and has served the Church for centuries. This “I know Greek” attitude seems akin to the Mediaeval pride of knowing Latin. The Protestant Church needs to get this issue fixed up, otherwise the Russians will say, “We know Greek better than you, your understanding and interpretation is wrong”, and many be sword-cut, flamed, captivated and spoiled.

Despite the efforts of Greek immigrants, the succeeding generations are no longer retaining the use of Greek. This progressively strengthens the argument that English can be used in preaching to them.