I visit my mother in hospice every morning.  When she still spoke to me she asked me to pray that she could “get out of here.”  I told her I didn’t think that I could care for her at her home.  She said that wasn’t what she meant.  I didn’t answer her.  Later that same visit she sang:

I am the resurrection and the life,

He that believeth in me tho’ He were deade,

Yet shall He live,

Yet shall he live,

And whosoever liveth and believeth in me

shall never, never die.^[1]

I recalled the context of these words: Lazarus, Martha’s brother, had died (John 11:21-27 NET):

Martha^[2] said to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.^[3]  But even now I know that whatever you ask from God, God will grant you.”

Jesus replied, “Your brother will come back to life again.”

Martha^[4] said, “I know that he will come back to life again in the resurrection at the last day.”

Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life.  The one who believes in me will live even if he dies, and the one who lives and believes in me will never die.  Do you believe this?”

She replied, “Yes, Lord, I believe that you are the Christ, the Son of God who comes into the world.”

I’ve understood Martha’s answer to Jesus’ question as a very diplomatic and reverent, “No.”  Granted, Jesus had used the subjunctive of emphatic negation οὐ μὴ ἀποθάνῃ, will never die (NET), shall never die (KJV).  She had most likely washed and prepared Lazarus’ body.  She probably supervised his burial four days earlier.  Jesus was talking crazy talk.  It had its impact on me.

From then on I have believed everyday that she who lives and believes in Jesus will never die.  And everyday I pray that my mother can be absent from the body, and…present with the Lord.^[5]  Almost everyday since, she has been quietly absent from her body and, I trust, present with the Lord.  She sings hymns and choruses aloud from time to time.

Once she woke and wanted to sit up to sketch.  She used to sketch all of the time, any time she sat down.  But she drifted off again before I could find a pencil or paper.  Another time I asked her if she really wanted to sketch.  She told me where her sketch pad and pencils were at home.  She has them now.

Mostly, I read while I sit with her.  A friend asked me to read “From Dawn to Decadence: 1500 to the Present, 500 Years of Western Cultural Life” by Jacques Barzun.  My friend lent me his own copy to seal the deal.  It’s 800 pages but I’m working my way through it slowly.

Considering the development of prose Mr. Barzun wrote:^[6]

One 17C[entury] creation that was neither Baroque nor a pretended imitation of the ancients was its prose….

The modern languages took a much longer time to develop a prose worthy of the name than to find poetic meters that suited their idiom….In early modern times [writers] were hampered by their virtually native mastery of Latin: it spoiled the vernacular syntax. Thanks to its case endings, Latin leaves the writer free to throw the makings of his sentence into one spot or another without changing the sense. That cannot be done when meaning depends on the right sequence and right linking of words.

I’ve heard, and seen to a certain extent, a similar assessment of Greek.  But I find it difficult to believe.   Todd Engstrom‘s article on Academia.edu—“A Prepositional Phrase’s Contribution to the πίστις Χριστοῦ Debate in Romans 3:28”—caught my ear.

We will focus on the placement of the prepositional phrase χωρὶς ἔργων νόμου (“apart from works of law”) in Romans 3:28.  How does it contribute to the πίστις Χριστοῦ (“faith of Christ”) debate?  By having the prepositional phrase χωρὶς ἔργων νόμου (“apart from works of law”) modify the noun ἄνθρωπος (“man”), it bolsters the subjective genitive interpretation of πίστις Χριστοῦ (“faithfulness of Christ”).^[7]

Generally, I avoid academic arguments these days.  As Jesus’ understanding of eternal life (John 17:3) has taken root and grown in me the desire to judge others’ “eternal destination” by their verbiage has weakened. But a paper about Greek word placement contributing to the meaning of the text was irresistible. Mr. Engstrom continued:

When we place the prepositional phrase χωρὶς ἔργων νόμου (“apart from works of law”) to modify the noun ἄνθρωπος (“man”), we get ἄνθρωπος χωρὶς ἔργων νόμου (“a man apart from works of law”).  Since “works of law” refers to the works required by the Law, we can interpret this as “a man apart from the deeds required by the Law.”^[8]

So Mr. Engstrom’s English translation of Romans 3:28 became, “For we consider a man apart from works required by the law to be declared righteous by faithfulness [Table].”^[9]  All in all I have no problem with this translation.  The word faithfulness would have bothered me in the past.

When I thought faithfulness was my efforts to obey my parents, the rules of my religion, the teaching of Jesus, the laws of my city, county, state or nation, the law of God and, finally, Paul’s definition of love recast as rules for me to obey, it would have bothered me a lot.  Mr. Engstrom was very careful, however, to stress that this is Christ’s faithfulness.  And now I know that faithfulness (πίστις) is one aspect of the fruit of the Spirit.

Mr. Engstrom, however, didn’t mean exactly what his English translation said:

Who is this man apart from the deeds required by the Law?  He is a Gentile.^[10]

I’ll translate that back into Greek: λογιζόμεθα γὰρ δικαιοῦσθαι πίστει ἔθνος (“For we consider a Gentile to be declared righteous by faithfulness”).  It’s true enough.  But would it have gnawed at me as χωρὶς ἔργων νόμου (apart from the works of the law) had done?  Or would I have remained more content with my act?  If χωρὶς ἔργων νόμου is removed from Romans 3:28, my go to verse would become Galatians 2:16.

Mr. Engstrom had reworked that one, too, in a different paper.

With the adjectival use of ἐξ ἔργων νόμου, Paul’s thesis actually reads:

15 We are Jews by nature and not Gentile sinners; 16 knowing that a man from works of law is not declared righteous, except through the faith of Jesus Christ, and we have believed in Christ Jesus, so that we may be declared righteous from the faith of Christ and not from works of the law, because out of the works of the law every flesh will not be declared righteous.^[11]

Here even I could see that he had done a pretty good job of unraveling ἐὰν μὴ (except; literally: “if not”).  The translators of both the NET and KJV [Table] have rendered ἐὰν μὴ but.  I thought my knowledge of Greek was insufficient to understand it, which it was: I thought that linking a prepositional phrase to the word it followed was verboten in Greek, at least unnecessary.

This time, however, I didn’t want to translate ἄνθρωπος ἐξ ἔργων νόμου (“a man from works of law”) a Jew.  Perhaps the categories Jew and Gentile were fixed and more watertight in the first century than they are today, perhaps not.  But I am a Gentile who grew up in a Christian home and a Christian church and became “a man from works of law.”  God’s law was about the last law I came to, but Paul’s insistence that God’s law could not make me righteous eventually made me suspicious of all the other laws and rules I lived by.  It prompted me to seek out the righteousness of God through the faithfulness of Jesus Christ for all who believe [Table].^[12]

So how’s that going?  Better.  Of course, if I measured my performance against some absolute standard—all Jesus, all of the time; I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me^[13]—I’d probably conclude that I suck at this.  But as I wrote that, it occurred to me that I may have objective and subjective reversed.

I first wrote “objective standard”; “absolute standard” was an edit.  What I was thinking of originally as objective was my impression of the time spent alone with God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit.  One guess who is the weak link in that chain.  I’ve tried to talk about this with someone who knows me.  I rejected her response out of hand and haven’t spoken of it since, because she began to tell me how wonderful I am.

I took that as a psychological attempt to make me feel better about myself.  I don’t want to feel better about myself.  I want to become the righteousness of God.^[14]  Of course, if I actually perceived that I had become the righteousness of God I would feel much better about myself, and that, knowing me, would become the biggest stumbling block of all.  The Greek reads: γενώμεθα δικαιοσύνη θεοῦ ἐν αὐτῷ (“become the righteousness of God in Him”).

If I take my friend’s assessment as more objective than mine, however, I must confess that outwardly at least more of Christ shows through me than all the sin I see in me alone with God, subjectively.  For God achieved what the law could not do because it was weakened through the flesh.  By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and concerning sin, he condemned sin in the flesh, so that the righteous requirement of the law may be fulfilled (πληρωθῇ, a form of πληρόω) in us, who do not walk according to the flesh but according to the Spirit.^[15]

But I say, live by the Spirit and you will not carry out the desires of the flesh.^[16]  But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control.  Against such things there is no law [Table].^[17]  Love does no wrong to a neighbor.  Therefore love is the fulfillment (πλήρωμα) of the law.^[18]

Do not think that I have come to abolish the law or the prophets.  I have not come to abolish these things but to fulfill (πληρῶσαι, another form of πληρόω) them.^[19]

Tables comparing John 11:21 and 11:24 in the NET and KJV follow.