CHRISTIANESE 101

 

I love salsa picante on my eggs. 

Okay, raise your hands if you correctly pictured a chunky tomato based sauce (possibly with the brand name Pace) with onions, cilantro, and jalapenos or other spicy pepper in it.

Now, a Spanish speaker would agree that salsa picante is an accurate picture of what I described. But so would Louisiana Hot Sauce, the topping for General Tso’s Chicken, cocktail sauce, or a spicy mustard. You see, in Spanish “salsa picante” simply means “spicy sauce”.

Sometimes Christians point out the problem of Christianese. However, we aren’t aware that many of the words we use have evolved to be more specialized than they originally were.
The New Testament was written in Koine Greek, meaning common Greek. The words which we translate as church, evangelize, baptize, Gospel, and apostle all come from a Greek vocabulary that a first century heathen would hear and have a concept of what it means.

Church (Greek word ekklesia) means a called out assembly. In a literal tense, it could refer to what we call church, and it could refer to the U.S. Congress. That doesn’t deny that God has a universal church, and that doesn’t deny that God speaks a lot about the local assembly. But we probably have some conceptions that are more tradition than Scripture about the church, such as it needing a building or that it meets on Sunday morning.

Many of you are aware that the word baptize is actually a transliteration of the Greek word baptizo, which means to immerse. You may have heard that because of that, baptism should be immersion as opposed to pouring or sprinkling. But we have a habit of automatically equating baptism with water immersion. Matthew 3:11 mentions three types of baptism (immersion), only one of which is water.

Some Christians believe that there are modern day apostles and others believe that there were only twelve or so that died off in the first century. However, both camps think of an apostle as a spiritually anointed person like Peter and Paul. The Greek word apostelo, transliterated apostle, means a sent out one, or as the Complete Jewish Bible translates it, emisary. A diplomat is an apostle. I personally believe that a church planter, especially in a pioneer mission field, can be called an apostle.

One last comment, and that deals with our translation to the Greek words phileo and agape. Both are translated in Scripture as “love.” But many Christians elevate agape as being more selfless, more sacrificial than phileo. One Bible College teacher pointed out that this distinction does not exist in Koine Greek literature. The difference between the two is that phileo is a relational love, one that can be completely selfless and sacrificial, but expects to be returned; agape is an unrequited love that has no expectation. 

Let me use a policeman as an example. He may sacrifice his life for his partner, but he expects the partmer to do the same if the situation was reversed. This is phileo. The policeman might also lay his life down for the mayor, but he would not expect the mayor to do the same. This is agape.

Yes, the Bible talks about God agape loving us and that we should agape love each other. Two points, though. First, Ephesians 5:25-31 deals with the husband being commanded to agape love his wife, yet in Titus 2:4 older women are trained to teach the younger women to phileo love their husbands. This makes more sense in light of relationships than to think a wife’s permitted to love her husband with a lesser love than the other way around.

Second, John 16:27 quotes Jesus saying that God phileo loved the disciples. We’re used to thinking of his love as agape per John 3:16. But I think it’s saying that God loves the world not expecting anything in return when Christ died on the cross. But God expects and desires those who believe to have a relationship with Him and to love Him in return.

P.S. Read John 21 in light of my comments on love. Three times Jesus asked Peter if he loved Him, and Peter answered three times “You know that I love you.” The first two times Jesus asked the question, He used the word agape. Each time Peter answered, and Jesus’ third question, used the word phileo. Many preachers say that Peter is saying his love for Christ is not at the level Jesus asked. But what if you take agape as meaning expecting nothing in return and phileo as expecting the love to be returned?

NOTE - This was written and originally posted as a Facebook note on October 11, 2015.