This week’s entry, from exercises in Ecclesiastical Latin in John F. Collins’ A Primer of Ecclesiastical Latin, is from John 5:25.  It comes in the middle of a segment where Jesus is proclaiming his authority as coming from the Father.  Here is the segment of the verse again from the Latin Vulgate which I read and translated, with my translation of it, and then of the entire verse in English (ESV), followed by some grammar points:

Latin:

…venit hora et nunc est…

English (my translation):

…an hour comes and now is…

English (ESV):

Truly, truly, I say to you, an hour is coming, and is now here, when the dead will hear the voice of the Son of God, and those who hear will live.

Vocab:

hora = hour

et = and

nunc = now

Grammar:

This week and last week, I studied 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th conjugation verbs.  Basically, you memorize a verb’s principal parts (there are four), and to conjugate the verb, you take the “-re” off of the second principal part to give you the present tense verb stem.

For instance, the verb in this verse – “venit” – comes from “venire,” meaning “to come” (advent, venue, venture, etc.), and its four principal parts are: venio, venire, veni, ventus.  You would take off the “-re” from the second principal part “venire” to give you the present tense verb stem: “veni-“.  There are some vowel changes from short to long, but I won’t mention those right now.

Next, you have to add personal endings to the present tense verb stem to indicate the person and number of persons doing the action:

first-person singular = -o

second-person singular = -s

third-person singular = -t

first-person plural = -mus

second-person plural = -tis

third-person plural = -nt

This verb has a “-t” ending, so it is third-person singular: he/she/it comes

Last week I also studied the irregular verb for “to be” – “sum,” and this week’s verse has a form of this in it; its four principal parts are: sum, esse, fui, futurus.  Since this one is irregular, it doesn’t exactly work like the regular verbs mentioned above, so it’s best just to memorize the six forms of the present tense:

first-person singular = sum

second-person singular = es

third-person singular = est

first-person plural = sumus

second-person plural = estis

third-person plural = sunt

The form in this week’s verse is “est,” which is also third-person singular: he/she/it is.

Now we can see the meaning, literally: “it comes, the hour, and now it is;” or more fluidly: “the hour comes (or, is coming), and now is.”

That’s all for this verse, so until next time - Linguas Scripturae Amate!

English:

the third day he rose from the dead;

Latin:

tertia die resurrexit a mortuis;

Greek:

τῇ τρίτῃ ἡμέρᾳ ἀναστάντα ἀπὸ τῶν νεκρῶν,

(tē tritē hēmera anastanta apo tōn nekrōn,)

In the last post, Article 4 was about Christ’s crucifixion, death and burial.  Praise God that was not the end of the story – He arose!  This article deals with that.  It is pretty short, too, so it’s easy to memorize.

Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield

Here is a great quote by B. B. Warfield from “The Religious Life of Theological Students.”  Actually, the whole essay seems like a great quote!  Westminster Seminary California gave new students this short essay at our new student orientation, and in it Warfield reminds us that we need not create a false dichotomy between theological study and personal piety:

Sometimes we hear it said that ten minutes on your knees will give you a truer, deeper, more operative knowledge of God than ten hours over your books. ‘What!’ is the appropriate response, ‘than ten hours over your books, on your knees?’ Why should you turn from God when you turn to your books, or feel that you must turn from your books in order to turn to God? If learning and devotion are as antagonistic as that, then the intellectual life is in itself accursed, and there can be no question of a religious life for a student, even of theology…Put your heart into your studies; do not merely occupy your mind with them, but put your heart into them. They bring you daily and hourly into the very presence of God; his ways, his dealing with men, the infinite majesty of his Being form their very subject-matter (pp. 2, 6).

Copyright 2003 by Judith E. Lingenfelter and Sherwood G. Lingenfelter. Teaching Cross-Culturally: An Incarnational Model for Learning and Teaching published by Baker Academic. Publisher permission required to reproduce. All rights reserved.

I lived and taught overseas at an international Christian school in Tianjin, China for four years.  After returning to the States and starting graduate studies at Westminster Seminary California, one of the first courses I took was one covering ministry in Asia and Asian-American contexts.  One of the professors required us to read and write a review/reflection based on the book Teaching Cross-Culturally: An Incarnational  Model for Learning and Teaching, by Judith E. Lingenfelter and Sherwood G. Lingenfelter.  I enjoyed and greatly benefited from it, and would like to include that review/reflection here to encourage others, especially educators, to read it as it has good theological implications for education, and it is short, which is a plus for educational books!

(Review/Reflection begins:)

Even though I lived and taught overseas, and read many books on the topic of cross-cultural teaching and ministry, I found the ideas and strategies in Teaching Cross-Culturally fresh and new. Their book is insightful and Biblical in its desire to look to Christ as our model.

The authors presented the most essential things about teaching. Though their book is directed towards overseas teachers, they stress the fact that most classrooms anywhere today are cross-cultural. They support the view that teachers present a “hidden curriculum” as they unknowingly pass on their culture through what they teach. In addition, they support the idea that there are multiple learning styles, and they group them into two main groups: analytical and relational. Finally, they stress not just transferral of information, but transformation of character.

In addition to educational information, they included information about living overseas. From my experience, they seemed to cover everything, and it made me wish that I had read their book before I had gone to China. For instance, they give advice on learning the culture, and exhort readers to build relationships with nationals. Also, they present coping strategies for new responsibilities and culture shock, and warn against building false expectations.

Where I think that the authors presented something fresh is in their consistent appeal to Scripture instead of the popular psychology underpinning other educational books. Using Jesus as the model of a perfect teacher, and examining how his teaching styles presented the gospel both analytically and relationally, the authors presented several applications of “incarnational” teaching that Christian teachers can use to speak the truth in love to their students.

Finally, I personally benefited from the chapter on “The Role of the Teacher.” The authors included a chart that arranges information pertaining to various cultures, and subsequent charts that present the teachers’ and students’ respective roles. In these charts, the authors have one horizontal spectrum of high to low group identity, and one vertical spectrum for high to low role stratification. These two spectra divide the charts into four quadrants, which are: Authoritarian, Hierarchist, Egalitarian, and Individualist. I identified with the examples of Egalitarian, Individualist western teachers, but taught mostly Korean students, who come from an Authoritarian, Hierarchist culture. With one class in particular, I felt as if a majority of the students were always against me and I wondered what I had done to make things so. Because of this book, I think I know.

The authors mention that sometimes the Egalitarian/Group context sets up a situation in which, if the teacher fits into the group, they are accepted as in insider; but if they are not, the students may form a group against them. I think that the majority of the Korean students in an international school, while they come from a more Hierarchist background, have attended the same school for several years, during which time they come into consistent contact with westerners who come from more Egalitarian backgrounds. Perhaps over time, they begin to adopt an Egalitarian outlook towards their teachers as they see their western classmates challenge them. Then, perhaps, while retaining group identification, they have become a hybrid-group: Group-oriented, Hierarchist Asian students, relating to their teacher in a more Egalitarian way. Perhaps, then, since I was not able to become one of the group, they formed a group against me, opposed me, and treated me with suspicion. I think I taught content well, but failed to learn on the cultural level, teach incarnationally, and build relationships through which I could share the gospel.

I enjoyed reading this book, and think it contains all the information that I have read elsewhere while being written in at least half the pages. In addition, a major strength of the book is the Scriptural model of Jesus, and applying truths to the classroom in cross-cultural settings. Reading it has made me think of the areas in which I failed in a cross-cultural setting, ways in which I could improve, and refueled my desire to return overseas to learn, teach, and love others.

While the topic of the book, namely the position of N. T. Wright and other proponents of the “New Perspectives on Paul” on Paul’s doctrine of justification, is greatly important, it is not the topic of this blog post, nor the quotes themselves, per se. I appreciated their quotes personally, as I read them as I was applying for Westminster Seminary California last Summer, and was recently reminded of it after finishing my first semester there this past Spring.  The topic of the quotes and the section in Piper’s book is rather about the importance of both contending for the truth, but also enjoying the God of the study of and contention for the truth.

Piper writes:

[Arguing] for the truth of God should never replace enjoyment of the God of truth.

He then quotes Owen on enjoying:

[More important than all is] a diligent endeavor to have the power of the truths professed and contended for abiding upon our hearts, that we may not contend for notions, but that we have a practical acquaintance within our own souls.  When the heart is cast indeed into the mould of the doctrine that the mind embraceth-when the evidence and necessity of the truth abides in us-when not the sense of the words only is in our heads, but the sense of the thing abides in our hearts-when we have communion with God in the doctrine we contend for-then shall we be garrisoned by the grace of God against all the assaults of men.

Next, he turns to Machen to provide the contending:

Every really great Christian utterance, it may almost be said, is born in controversy.  It is when men have felt compelled to take a stand against error that they have risen to the really great heights in the celebration of the truth.

Controversy of the right sort is good; for out of such controversy, as Church history and Scripture alike teach, there comes the salvation of souls.

That is where I am and where I want to remain – learning and contending for the truth in Machen’s legacy of Westminster Seminary California; and, as Owen wrote and Piper agrees (as I’m sure Machen would as well), communing with God in the doctrine for which we contend.

(John Owen, Vindiciae Evangelicae; or, The Mystery of the Gospel Vindicated and Socianism Examined, Vol. 12, The Works of John Owen, ed. William Goold (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1966), 52; J. Gresham Machen, “Christian Scholarship and the Defense of the Faith,” in J. Gresham Machen: Selected Shorter Writings, ed. D. G. Hart (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 2004), 148-149; J. Gresham Machen, What Is Faith? (1925; reprint Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1991), 42-43; all quoted in John Piper, The Future of Justification: A Response to N. T. Wright (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 2007), 28-29.)

I first became interested in the book because a man with whom I worked for a Christian organization in China highly recommended it, and because its message bears similarity to the way that organization (similar to many others, most likely), is proceeding with missions work in China, and now the Middle East; and it, if not its methodology and theology, probably is driving the outreach of that organization.  I plan to write a review of, and response to, the book to post here, but would like to share some preliminary thoughts.

Kling has traveled much, so his book is very interesting when he simply recounts the stories of his travels around the world; and he seems to have a good grasp on globalization and how it is affecting the church.  However, while one endorsement says, “I’m glad we have [Fritz] as a guide” (Meeting, 1), I would say his answer of how the church should respond is woefully inadequate.  I would fear for a global church with Kling as guide, and am relieved it does not truly have him at the helm.  The book is unscriptural at best, if including much Scripture at all; it is atheological, listening more to business leaders and globalization gurus than theologians on or of missions, past or present; it exalts personal experience over the canonical Word of God; and it is poorly researched, citing Wikipedia as a source more than ten times, and online blogs on several other occasions.

Furthermore, from the first chapter it is evident that while ostensibly praising traditional missionaries and mission work, he exhibits a distinct lack of respect for them and their methods, believing they are no longer adequate and effective in today’s world.  He calls this approach “Mission Marm,” negatively stereotyping it from the outset.  He applies this backhanded compliment technique to traditional church, missions and the gospel extremely often, which is the standard fare of Emergent literature, with which Kling’s own work bears striking similarities.  Overall, it seems like Brian McLaren’s “New Kind of Christianity” added to Thomas Friedman’s globalization analyses, and then applied to the mission field.

In fact, the traditional understanding of the gospel gets no mention at all.  The example of traditional missionaries who made a life’s work out of living in another culture, learning languages and customs, persevering despite adversity and building long standing, deep relationships in order to share the true gospel of justification by grace alone, through faith alone, in Christ alone, on the authority of Scripture alone; and moving people from a knowledge of and faith in the true gospel of Christ to discipleship in correct belief and practice is absent and, according to Kling, inadequate in today’s globalized setting.

Instead, what is praised in the new book, and new evangelical ideas about missions, is much of what is praised of secular culture: an ability to move in and out of an increasingly globalized and westernized/modernized culture with one’s technological gadgets and social media connections, connecting non-profit organizations with people groups for the sake of a social gospel and activism.  This approach Kling calls “Apple Guy.”  While the main metaphor of his book is that the two approaches – “Mission Marm” and “Apple Guy,” traditional and modern, should meet and mix, as do two tributaries of the Amazon River, it is clear whom he prefers and whom he does not: globalization carries the majority of the book, while “Mission Marm” is consistently described negatively, as in one place where she is compared to Kling’s aunt and mentioned as “dead” three times in two sentences (Meeting, 15).

This then is the gospel for Kling: social action, social justice, social gospel.  He reduces the entire Christian faith to two precepts: the Great Commandment and the Great Commission.  (I was about to write “Protestant Christian faith,” but Kling believes Christianity should be much broader than that – Christopher Columbus is mentioned in connection with the Roman Catholic Queen Isabella as having “in common a goal of taking the gospel from Spain to all of the world” (Meeting, 96)!)  Therefore, for Kling, all of the faith, the gospel, is reduced only to loving God and loving neighbor, and then the Great Commission is preaching and teaching that gospel to the world through actions and the example of Christ.  However, D. A. Carson, research professor of New Testament at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, in a critique of Emergent writer Brian McLaren who shares Kling’s view (as seen in A Generous Orthodoxy, 184), writes about this approach:

I think that this is among the shallowest and most distorted readings of Mark 12:28-34 now on offer.  Jesus presents these commandments as the two that are most important in the law, not as the fundamentals of the faith…[To] claim that these two laws are “the fundamentals of the faith” not only misconstrues the context of the passage where Jesus’ utterance is found, it also overlooks the central themes of the canonical Gospels and, indeed, the entire New Testament” (D. A. Carson, Becoming Conversant with the Emerging Church (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2005), 177-178).

Furthermore, loving God, loving neighbor and showing the love of Christ to others through example translates to social action.  Kling writes:

[The] future church will need to find its voice in a wider-than-ever range of issues, like poverty, human rights, ecology, justice, conflict, equality, reconciliation, and global events (Meeting, 24).

This sounds not like the new message Kling believes it is, but a lot like something else, something older.  In 1932, an ecumenical commission chaired by William Ernest Hocking published a report on global missions entitled Re-thinking Missions. It stated:

We must work with greater faith in invisible successes, be willing to give largely without any preaching, to cooperate whole-heartedly with non-Christian agencies for social improvement (The Commission of Appraisal, William Ernest Hocking, chairman, Re-thinking Missions: A Laymen’s Inquiry after One Hundred Years (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1932), 326, 65, 70; quoted in Douglas A. Sweeney, The American Evangelical Story: A History of the Movement (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2005), 100).

Against this approach by Hocking and the Commission, conservatives in the 1930s and 1940s, led by men such as J. Gresham Machen (founder of Westminster Theological Seminary and the Orthodox Presbyterian Church, in whose tradition I study at Westminster Seminary California – you can see where I stand!) founded and revived organizations devoted to the explicit witness of the traditional gospel to the world.  It is interesting that we are back around at the issue again of downplaying the traditional gospel and emphasizing social action with Kling’s new book.

Both Kling and Hocking’s social gospel, however, do not sound like the Apostle Paul’s gospel:

For I decided to know nothing among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified (1 Cor. 2:2, ESV).

Or the gospel of Jesus Christ himself, via Mark:

For even the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many (Mk. 10:45, ESV).

Strangely, Kling never mentions this gospel; it is the thing essentially missing altogether from his analysis.  If the gospel of grace is deleted, the only thing left is the law, and the social gospel Kling promotes is then essentially a works-based righteousness of doing good actions to redeem and transform a physically-realized kingdom of God by ourselves.  However, Christ has told us, “My kingdom is not of this world” (Jn. 18:36);  It is rather a spiritual kingdom that we advance through preaching and teaching the gospel of Christ crucified.

The world does not need the works righteousness of social activism, transformationism, nor more Apple-toting, Skyping, short-term missionaries.  Rather, it still needs more of the deep-roots planting of traditional missionaries, through long-developed relationships centered on preaching the gospel of Christ crucified and justification by grace through faith to the lost, seeing sinners brought to faith, and then discipled in local churches.  This, not Friedman’s “information arbitrage,” nor Kling’s “7 Global Currents” tool, is what the Global Church needs, and what Kling does not deliver, much less mention even once – what it has always needed, simply: preaching of the Word – the Law and the Gospel, and administration of the (two) Sacraments.

In The Meeting of the Waters: 7 Global Currents That Will Propel the Future Church, author Fritz Kling states,

[The] future church will need to find its voice in a wider-than-ever range of issues, like poverty, human rights, ecology, justice, conflict, equality, reconciliation, and global events (Meeting, (Colorado Springs, CO: David C. Cook, 2010), 24).

I do not think that there is a problem with Christians working to assist people in the world as they see fit, but it is a different thing to call this the mission of the Global Church or Missions itself.  The mission of the Global Church and Missions is to preach the gospel of “Jesus Christ and him crucified” (1 Cor. 2:2, ESV).  However, in books like The Meeting of the Waters, the gospel has been redefined; it has to be redefined to fit their agenda.  For instance, Kling reduces the entire faith to two principles: the Great Commandment and the Great Commission:

Followers of Christ obey two major biblical mandates: the Great Commandment and the Great Commission.  The Great Commandment instructs us to love the Lord wholly and also to love our neighbors as ourselves…In the Great Commission, Jesus told His followers to make disciples in all the world (Meeting, 138).

Therefore, for Kling (and several others who promote social justice), all of the Christian faith is reduced only to loving God and loving neighbor, and then the Great Commission is preaching and teaching that gospel to the world through actions and the example of Christ.  D. A. Carson writes about this approach in a critique of Emergent writer Brian McLaren, who shares Kling’s view (as seen in A Generous Orthodoxy, 184):

I think that this is among the shallowest and most distorted readings of Mark 12:28-34 now on offer.  Jesus presents these commandments as the two that are most important in the law, not as the fundamentals of the faith…[To] claim that these two laws are “the fundamentals of the faith” not only misconstrues the context of the passage where Jesus’ utterance is found, it also overlooks the central themes of the canonical Gospels and, indeed, the entire New Testament” (D. A. Carson, Becoming Conversant with the Emerging Church (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2005), 177-178).

Thank God that the Gospel that “[The] Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mk. 10:45, ESV) has been, is, and will continue to be much deeper than Kling’s waters of social action.

I wrote before about how we are beginning the process of catechizing Madelyn, educating her in the questions and answers of a historic Reformed Baptist catechism for children.  We had worked on questions 1 and 2, and still review those nightly with her in addition to prayer and Bible reading.  At this stage, we do not expect any comprehension yet, only response by memory.  However, our desire and prayer is that at a young age the vocabulary and answers will be embedded in her mind, which God will use to convict her of sin through His Law, to communicate to her the Gospel of Christ by the Holy Spirit, and upon which He can later build.

Having practiced questions 1 and 2 for several months, we recently moved on to question 3, and the question requires a longer answer – four words long (hence the several months in between these posts):

3.Q. Why did God make you and all things?
A. For his own glory.

Madelyn can now handle two-word or syllable answers; three words or syllables are a stretch; four are impossible if all at once.  However, if we break it up – “For his”…”own”…”glo-ry,” she can manage it pretty well.

What has really been encouraging is that in addition to enjoying this nightly question and response time, she also demonstrates an interest both in listening to Bible stories and participating in prayer, which we do in conjunction with the catechism.  It is amazing but true – children can soak up much at young ages (we are also teaching her Mandarin Chinese words, which she masters along with the accompanying tones, but that is a different story) – what better to soak up than truths about God, Christ and Scripture?

Q: "Who made you?" A: "Gaahh!" (God)

Q: "What else did God make?" A: "Aahh thhss!" (All things)

In Job 25:4-6 (NKJV), he interrogates Job, saying,

How then can man be righteous before God?  Or how can he be pure who is born of a woman?  If even the moon does not shine, and the stars are not pure in His sight, how much less man, who is a maggot, and a son of man, who is a worm?

One thing to observe first after reading these verses is that this book is old.  There does not seem to be much certainty as to the date of the writing, but the story itself seems to come from a time after Adam and Noah, as these times are referenced in the book, but before or at least contemporary with Abraham, as there is no mention of him, Israel, the Exodus, or the Law of Moses.  Which then makes Bildad’s line of questioning fascinating for several reasons, not least of which because the questions have to do with justification before Christ, which is another topic that could be explored later; but also because the attitude is critical, rhetorical – as if Bildad’s assumed answer is that we cannot know: we are nothing, we should just stop trying to know about God, justification, truth.  It seems essentially post-modern, but it is not, because it is pre-modern.  Post-modern questioning of truth-claims is not new – it has gone on since the beginning of recorded history.

So, the Emergent Church’s emphasis on challenging truth-claims is not really new.  Job then answers, and after his answer we can examine his answer to the second of the Emergent themes that we have mentioned – “Deeds over Creeds” – right and practical living over doctrine.  Job answers with a series of questions in chapter 26:2-4 (NKJV):

How have you helped him who is without power?  How have you saved the arm that has no strength?  How have you counseled one who has no wisdom?  And how have you declared sound advice to many?  To whom have you uttered words?  And whose spirit came from you?

Job’s answers are themselves also rhetorical questions which show the impracticality of the Emergent approach.  When Emergents question truths or doctrines such as justification, and say things like, “Who can really know…?” or, “What is man anyway?” they challenge the ability to know with certainty.  However, they often emphasize right living instead, as Bildad and the others did.  They stress orthopraxy over orthodoxy, but forget that one needs a right doctrine to live rightly, or else it all falls flat.  Deeds come from Creeds.  Creeds and deeds are needed indeed, but priority on the creeds leads.

Job calls them out, and shows that for all their emphasis on practicality and orthopraxy, their approach was woefully impractical.  ”How have you helped?”  Implied, rhetorical answer: they haven’t.  ”How have you counseled?”  Implied answer: they haven’t.  ”How have you declared sound advice?”  Answer: they haven’t.  And, most frighteningly, “Whose spirit came from you?”  Answer: not God’s; so if a comparison can be drawn here to the Emergents – if not God’s, then whose spirit is coming from them?

Now, Job does not have all of the answers, but providentially, his or our experience, understanding or knowledge of the truth does not constitute the reality of that truth.  This is the point of the later appearance by God who tells them all Who He is and what He does.  His purposes are sovereign and ultimately not perfectly knowable by us because they are above us.  However, this does not lead us back to Bildad’s, the Emergent Church’s or the Post-moderns’ approach – “Who can know?”  Rather, there is truth, and we should, while guarding the mystery of God’s ultimate and sometimes unknowable plan, be faithful to record, articulate and summarize what He has revealed to us in Scripture.  Also, while not knowing perfectly, we can hold to truth-claims with certainty, as Job had done earlier in Job 19:25-27 (NKJV), which was ignored by Bildad, and is ignored by many today:

For I know that my Redeemer lives, and He shall stand at last on the earth; and after my skin is destroyed, this I know, that in my flesh I shall see God, Whom I shall see for myself, and my eyes shall behold, and not another (italics mine).

The theme of the Redeemer is a theme that was first introduced in Genesis 3:15 (NKJV), which has become known as the “Protoevangelium:”

And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her Seed; He shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise His heel.

The promise is of a Redeemer Seed, but One Who would be bruised.  Job, as Abraham, was not totally sure how man would be justified, but he had faith in His Redeemer, the promised Seed and Messiah Who would come, Who only is the Way, through Whom he would be justified, and he was certain in that knowledge.

So, Job answers the Emergent Church.  It is not new to challenge knowledge of the truth, it is neither novel nor interesting, and it is not practical.  If one could destroy truth and certainty, they would destroy the hope and assurance that we have in justification.  How would one counsel someone on their deathbed with Bildad’s/the Emergent Church’s words: “Well, who can really know how one is justified?  And, how can one be justified anyways?”  Or, as McLaren says, God’s final judgment depends not on Christ’s work outside of us, but on “how well individuals have lived up to God’s hopes and dreams for our world and for life in it” (Brian McLaren, The Story We Find Ourselves In: Further Adventures of a New Kind of Christian (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 2003), 166-167; quoted in D. A. Carson, Becoming Conversant with the Emerging Church (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2005), 181).

This works-based approach to justification – hoping we have done enough for God – does not provide assurance.  It only provides more law, which kills.  The law is needed, but so is the gospel.  The truth is that people can be certain of judgment, but they can also be certain of justification – we are told in Scripture that they can be, and we can have faith in the Redeemer Christ Jesus, and His work for us, not our own for Him.  This right knowledge of the law and the gospel is needed before any right living based on that knowledge can or does proceed.