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ὑπακοή (Hypakoē): Obedience and Submission · Reformed Thinking

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  In the ancient world, the physical act of answering the
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  front door and the theological concept of obeying the Creator
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  of the universe were described using the precise same word.
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  Yeah, it is an incredible connection to think about.
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  It really is welcome to reform thinking, everyone.
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  Today we have a highly specific mission for our deep dive into
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  the source material. We are taking a comprehensive
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  look at a single Greek noun hypoco, which translates to
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  obedience, and its root verb akush, which means to hear.
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  Right. And to do this we are
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  referencing an extensive stack of theological dictionaries and
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  Greek lexicons. Now you might be thinking a
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  linguistic study sounds like a dry grammar lecture.
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  Oh, absolutely, But this will fundamentally alter how you read
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  your Bible and how you understand the nature of faith
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  itself. Yeah, we are going to trace how
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  the physical act of hearing a sound morphs into the absolute
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  theological concept of obedience in the New Testament.
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  And along the way, this linguistics lesson will unlock a
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  much clearer view of Christ's work as our federal head.
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  Let us unpack this, starting with the ancient world.
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  Right. We need to look at the stark
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  contrast between ancient Greek and Hellenistic religions and
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  biblical religion regarding the five senses.
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  The contrast there is striking, right?
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  It sets the stage for everything we will discuss today.
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  It really does. Think about the ancient
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  Mediterranean world. If you were an average citizen
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  living in Greece or the broader Hellenistic empire, your entire
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  religious framework was built around the eye.
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  So the goal was always to see something.
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  Yes, if we look at the historical records of the Greek
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  mystery cults, the most famous 1.
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  The Illicitian Mysteries. It was basically the pinnacle of
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  ancient religious experience. People would travel from all
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  over the known world just to participate in.
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  Those they would, and the whole thing was oriented around visual
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  apprehension. If you were an initiate in these
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  cults, you went through a series of purifications, you fasted and
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  you marched in processions. But all of that was just the
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  preamble. The absolute climax, the moment
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  you were waiting for, happened in a specific building called a
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  Telesterian. This was essentially a massive,
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  darkened initiation hall. You would stand there in the
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  pitch black, surrounded by other initiates, just waiting, and
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  then suddenly there would be a brilliant flash of light.
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  And that was the big reveal. Precisely.
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  The Hierophant, the chief priest, would reveal some sacred
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  object or perform a specific action in that sudden burst of
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  illumination. The goal was not to hear a
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  sermon. You were there to witness a
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  divine spectacle. You were there to look.
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  Yeah, so the entire religious payoff was a visual thrill.
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  It sounds like the difference between, you know, buying a
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  ticket to a spectacular visual laser show versus listening to a
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  military general give life saving orders over a radio.
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  That is a great analogy. I mean, 1 is a passive visual
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  experience. You sit back in the dark, you
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  wait for the lights to flash and you observe.
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  You might feel a sense of awe, but it does not demand a
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  physical response from you. Right.
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  You're just taking it in. But listening to a military
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  command over a radio demands action.
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  You hear the coordinates, you hear the orders, and you have to
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  move. You have to obey.
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  That passive observation was so central to the Greek mindset
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  that their philosophers built entire epistemological systems
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  around it. Oh.
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  Really like who? Well, the philosopher Philo even
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  argued that the sense of hearing is deceptive, but the sense of
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  sight is true. He believed that reality is only
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  truly comprehended through vision.
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  So words can lie to you, but seeing is believing, yes?
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  In the writings of Apulius or in the Mithras liturgy, the highest
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  spiritual achievement occurs when the devotee finally sees
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  the deity. And we see that in the
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  archaeology too, do we not? We do.
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  The monuments that have survived to our time, which depict
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  religious acts, show this clearly.
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  In the villa item in Pompeii, for instance, sacred objects are
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  covered with a cloth. And then what happens?
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  The solemn climax of the ritual occurs when that cloth is
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  withdrawn so the worshipper can look at the symbolism.
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  The focus is entirely on observation.
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  When we turn to the Old Testament and the religion of
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  Judaism, we see the absolute opposite of that visual
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  obsession. Oh, complete opposite.
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  In the biblical text, seeing God meant certain death.
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  Think about the prophet Isaiah. Right in Isaiah chapter 6.
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  Yeah, When Isaiah sees the Lord seated on the throne, his
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  immediate reaction is not a feeling of spiritual
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  enlightenment or mystical achievement.
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  His immediate reaction is pure terror.
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  He cries out that he is ruined. Yes, he says.
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  He's ruined because he has unclean lips and his eyes have
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  seen the king. He expects to perish on the
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  spot. Even Moses, who had an
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  incredibly close relationship with God, was only permitted to
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  see God's back. Because the Lord stated clearly
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  in Exodus 33 that no man could see his face and live.
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  Earthly unclean human eyes lack the capacity to process that
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  level of holiness without being destroyed by it.
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  So true vision of God is treated as an eschatological event.
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  Yes, something reserved for the life beyond, when men are no
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  longer of unclean lips, when they are glorified.
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  Because seeing the divine fades into the background in the
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  biblical text, hearing comes to the forefront.
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  The God of the Bible is a God who speaks.
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  He spoke the universe into existence.
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  He spoke from the burning Bush. He spoke the law at Sinai amidst
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  Thunder and thick clouds, where the people saw no form but only
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  heard a voice. Therefore, biblical religion is
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  an acoustic religion of action. To hear the word of Yahweh is to
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  be commanded by it. Right, the core confession of
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  Israel is the Shima. Which begins Hear, O Israel, the
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  Lord our God, the Lord is 1. And the decisive religious
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  statement in the prophets is always hear the word of the
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  Lord. Exactly.
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  Or, well, let's say precisely when God appears in a theophany,
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  it is not for the sake of giving the prophet a visual thrill.
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  It is specifically to send the Prophet to pass on his word, to
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  cause himself to be heard by the people.
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  Let me bring this right into our Reformed thinking framework.
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  This distinction is entirely relevant to how we understand
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  salvation. Oh completely.
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  We hold to the Protestant doctrine of justification by
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  faith alone. And the apostle Paul states in
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  Romans 10.17 that faith comes by hearing, and hearing through the
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  word of Christ. Our entire theological framework
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  rests on a God who speaks and a people who are commanded to
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  listen. We are not saved by witnessing a
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  visual spectacle. We do not need a blinding light
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  in a dark room. No, we are saved by hearing the
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  Gospel declaration, that is the forensic legal declaration that
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  Christ lived and died in our place, and we are saved by
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  responding to it. This leads us directly into the
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  vocabulary of divine acoustics. We need to look at the base
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  Greek verb for hearing, which is a koosh.
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  Then what happens when you add different prefixes to it?
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  Right. Yes.
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  The verb akoosh is common in every period of secular Greek.
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  It simply means the physical act of hearing a sound or receiving
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  a report. It is just the basic acoustic
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  function of the ear. But things get fascinating when
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  we look at the compound verbs, specifically Issa koosh and APA
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  koosh. So what happens when you add
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  those prefixes? By adding these prefixes, the
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  word shifts from general hearing to a highly specific, directed
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  kind of hearing. In the ancient secular world,
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  these words denoted A deity listening with favor.
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  Oh, they were technical terms in the ancient language of prayer.
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  Yes, when you beg to God to listen to your petition, you use
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  these specific words, asking them to pay heed and grant an
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  answer. And the ancient Pagan people
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  took this concept quite literally, didn't they?
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  They really did. In Egypt and later spreading to
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  places like Pompeii and Delos, worshippers literally modeled
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  stucco ears onto the walls of temples.
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  Or carved them into altars, yeah.
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  In the Temple of Isis in Pompeii, archaeologists found
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  two stucco ears modeled on the wall right behind the statue of
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  the goddess. They did this to symbolize a God
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  who hears A Theos apuchos. They wanted physical, visual
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  proof that their deity had the capacity to listen to their
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  requests. I find that historical detail
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  absolutely fascinating. The psychology behind it is so
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  telling. It really is.
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  You are a Pagan worshipper, you're offering a sacrifice and
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  you're speaking into the void. You are terrified that the God
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  is ignoring you, or asleep, or distracted.
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  So to comfort yourself, you mold a physical plaster ear onto the
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  wall of the temple. You are literally speaking into
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  a fake ear hoping the deity catches the sound waves.
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  But the Old Testament takes this Pagan concept of a hearing God
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  and completely purifies it. Yahweh does not need stucco
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  ears. The biblical text constantly
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  affirms that God hears the size of the oppressed, the cry of the
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  widow, and the desire of the poor.
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  He hears because He is merciful. Let us get really specific and
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  look at how this vocabulary shows up in the New Testament.
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  Let's do that. I am looking at Hebrews 5.7
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  which describes Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane.
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  It says He offered up prayers and supplications with loud
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  cries and tears to him who was able to save him from death.
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  And it says he was heard because of his reverence.
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  The Greek word therefore heard is ISA couste, Yes.
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  That is the aoris passive participle of ISA couse Christ
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  was heard and his prayer was granted an answer because of his
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  reverence or piety. The Greek word ulabia, right?
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  Yes, this is a stunning theological truth.
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  Christ's filial devotion, His total submission to the Father's
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  will, resulted in his prayer being met with a favorable
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  hearing. But we must define what hearing
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  means in this context. In biblical Greek, hearing is
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  not passive of audio reception. It requires an action.
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  Right. For God to hear a prayer means
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  to grant an answer or show mercy.
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  He responds to the acoustic input with divine action.
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  When the text says God heard the groaning of the Israelites in
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  Egypt, it does not mean he finally noticed the sound of
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  their weeping. It means he determined to act,
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  to send Moses, to bring the plagues, to deliver them.
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  The hearing and the saving action are inextricably linked.
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  Conversely, for humans to hear God means to execute his will.
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  Here's where it gets really interesting.
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  Oh yeah, yeah. If God is omniscient, meaning he
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  literally registers all audio frequencies and knows every
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  spoken word in the universe, what does the biblical text mean
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  when it says God refuses to hear someone?
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  That is a great question. For example, in the book of
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  Deuteronomy, God tells the rebellious Israelites that he
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  will not hear them when they cried out.
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  Or in the prophets, God says he will shut his ears to their
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  prayers. He clearly perceives the sound
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  of their voices. He knows the syllables they are
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  forming. So what is happening there?
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  That is a crucial distinction, and it proves our point about
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  the biblical definition of hearing.
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  When the text says God refuses to hear, it means he refuses to
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  grant favor or take merciful action based on that prayer.
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  He rejects the petition. His hands are stayed not because
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  he is deaf to the sound, but because the moral condition of
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  the people prevents him from granting their request.
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  Look at Isaiah chapter 1 where God says even though you make
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  many prayers, I will not listen. Your hands are full of blood.
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  He hears the audio of the prayer perfectly well.
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  But because their hands are full of blood, because they are
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  practicing injustice, he refuses to grant the favorable response.
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  Hearing in the biblical sense is always tied to the corresponding
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  action. If the action is absent, true
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  hearing has not occurred. This brings us perfectly to the
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  next linguistic concept. If biblical hearing demands a
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  response, what happens when the sound waves hit the human ear?
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  The brain registers the command, but the will absolutely refuses
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  to budget. Is there a word for that
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  acoustic rebellion? That leads us directly into the
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  dark side of hearing. We look at the word paracou.
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  We start with that base word for hearing a kush and we add the
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  prefix para. This prefix generally means a
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  side or a long side. So literally a paracute means to
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  hear a side. Sometimes this is a completely
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  neutral event. For instance, in Mark 5.36,
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  people come from the ruler of the synagogue's house to tell
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  him his daughter is dead. They tell him not to bother the
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  teacher anymore. The text says Jesus overheard
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  what was said. He was standing alongside the
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  conversation and caught the audio.
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  He paracutes the message. He then turns to the ruler and
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  says, do not fear, only believe. There is no guilt in that kind
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  of hearing aside, he simply caught a conversation not meant
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  directly for him. That neutral usage in Mark 5.36
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  is accurate, but it is quite rare in the New Testament.
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  Far more often the prefix para as a highly negative guilty
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  weight to the verb. It comes to mean bad hearing,
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  specifically a willful unwillingness to listen.
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  It is not a physical deafness, it is a moral deafness.
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  The person catches the audio, they comprehend the message,
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  they understand the authority of the speaker, but they actively
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  refuse to internalize it or act upon it.
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  They. Disregard the command entirely.
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  They hear the words and they toss them aside.
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  We see this dynamic described beautifully, though tragically,
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  in First Corinthians 14.21. Yes, Paul is writing to the
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  Corinthian church about the gift of speaking in tongues, and he
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  quotes the prophet Isaiah. God says that He will speak to
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  his rebellious people through the lips of foreigners and in a
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  foreign tongue. And then God says, and even then
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  they will not listen to me. They will not Isaac Kusantai.
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  They receive the physical sound waves.
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  The auditory information enters their ears, but they refuse the
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  message. This perfectly illustrates the
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  tragedy of willful disobedience. It is a stubborn refusal to let
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  the word penetrate the heart and produce the required action.
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  They hear the Prophet speak, but they choose to pretend it is
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  just meaningless noise. We can trace this negative
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  concept to its noun form perico, which translates directly as
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  disobedience. And this is where we strike
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  theological gold regarding the Reformed doctrine of federal
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  headship. Yes, in Romans 5.1 Teen the
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  apostle Paul sets the grand contrast between the actions of
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  Adam and the actions of Christ. He writes for as by the one
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  man's disobedience many were made sinners.
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  The word Paul uses for Adam's disobedience is perico.
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  Think about the gravity of that linguistic choice.
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  Adam's original sin in the garden, the act that plunged the
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  entire cosmos into ruin, is literally described as a bad
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  hearing. He stood in the garden.
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  He heard the explicit acoustic command of God regarding the
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  tree of the knowledge of good and evil.
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  God said you shall not eat of it.
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  Adam heard the words perfectly. But he heard them amiss.
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  He turned a deaf ear to his creator.
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  He took the authoritative command of God and pushed it
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  aside, choosing instead to listen to the whispering voice
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  of the serpent. That framing makes Adam's
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  failure incredibly relatable. We all have a tendency to employ
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  selective hearing. Oh.
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  Absolutely. Think about how often we use
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  selective hearing to avoid doing something we dislike.
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  A parent asks a child to clean their room, and the child
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  somehow manages to block out that specific frequency while
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  remaining perfectly capable of hearing a television in the next
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  room. We hear the audio, but we filter
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  out the authoritative demand because we prefer our own
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  autonomy. We do not want to be told what
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  to do. Adam caught the audio of God's
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  law, but he chose to filter out the authority behind it.
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  His Perico, his willful, selective bad hearing was an act
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  of treason. And the Westminster Confession
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  relies heavily on Romans 5 to explain original sin.
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  It does. Adam was not just a private
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  individual making a personal mistake.
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  He acted as a public person, the federal head and legal
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  representative of all humanity. His bad hearing, his willful
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  rebellion against the clear acoustic command of God, was
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  imputed to all his natural descendants.
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  Imputation is a legal accounting term.
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  It means that Adam's guilt, his status as a rebel, was legally
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  credited to our account. Because he acted as our
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  representative, when he refused to hear, we all fell in him.
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  Therefore, we are all born with ears that are naturally deaf to
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  the righteousness of God. We were born in a state of
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  Perico. We enter the world morally deaf,
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  actively suppressing the truth and refusing to listen to our
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  Creator. This grim reality sets up the
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  absolute necessity for a new federal head.
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  We need a representative who possesses perfect hearing.
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  And that brings us to the main verb of our study today.
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  If biblical hearing is tied to action, and Adam failed to act
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  on what he heard, we need to look at the Greek word for
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  someone who actually responds to the call.
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  We are now at the door of submission, looking at the verb
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  hypaku. We start with akush to hear and
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  add the prefix hip which comes from hypo meaning under so to
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  hear under. I find the secular origin of
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  this word absolutely fascinating.
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  Tell me about it. Long before it was used by
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  theologians to describe our relationship to God, hypaku was
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  the technical term for a concierge or a Porter answering
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  a front door. Really just answering a door.
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  Yes, Plato uses it this way in his work The Phaido.
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  Xenophon uses it this way in his Symposium.
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  Someone knocks at the gate and the servant who goes to the door
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  listens to see who was there and opens it is the one who
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  hypercoup. We even see this exact usage,
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  well this specific usage, in the New Testament book of Acts,
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  chapter 12, verse 13. Yes, the story of Peter.
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  Right, the apostle Peter miraculously escapes from
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  prison, goes to the House of Mary where the church is
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  gathered praying for him, and he knocks at the door of the
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  gateway. And a servant girl named Rhoda
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  goes to answer the door. The Greek text says she went to
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  Hypercush. The linguistic evolution of this
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  word is a phenomenal study in how language adapts over
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  centuries. It begins with the incredibly
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  mundane physical task of a Porter answering a knock.
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  You are inside, you hear a sound at the gate, you go under the
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  archway, you listen and you respond to the person demanding
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  entry. From that specific physical
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  action, the word broadened in the papyri, the everyday
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  documents of the ancient world, to become a formal legal term.
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  Oh wow. It was used for answering a
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  court summons. We have ancient records, actual
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  receipts and court documents of a man being fined 250 denarii
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  because he was summoned by a magistrate and he Kay Pakusen.
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  He did not respond. He failed to answer the legal
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  knock at his door, so to speak. He ignored the summons of the
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  governing authority. From that legal judicial
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  context, the word evolved further into the standard term
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  for strict formal obedience. It described the submission
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  wives owed to husbands, the compliance slaves owed to
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  masters, and even the way the wind in the sea submitted to the
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  commands of Jesus when he calmed the storm.
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  So let us put all this together. The concept of obeying the
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  Sovereign Lord of the Universe shares linguistic DNA with the
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  guy working the night desk at a hotel.
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  That is spot on. You hear a knock at the door.
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  You recognize the authority of the person knocking.
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  You acknowledge the authority of the summons and you open the
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  door. You place yourself under the
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  authority of the one making the demand.
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  It is a beautiful progression from a physical action to a
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  spiritual posture. You are not just hearing a
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  sound, you are yielding your territory to the person on the
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  other side of the door. That analogy captures the
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  essence perfectly. Let us look at how the early
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  Church utilized this concept in practice.
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  OK, where do we see that? In Acts chapter 6, verse 7, Luke
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  records the rapid growth of the church in Jerusalem.
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  He writes that the word of God continued to increase and a
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  great many of the Jewish priests became obedient to the faith.
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  The Greek phrase is hypoku and tapeste.
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  Think about these priests. They were steeped in the Old
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  Testament sacrificial system. They were the religious elite.
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  When they became Christians, they did not just nod their
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  heads in intellectual agreement with a list of historical facts
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  about Jesus of Nazareth. They answered the authoritative
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  summons of the Gospel. They heard the knock of Christ's
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  message on the door of their hearts.
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  They opened that door and they submitted entirely to his
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  Lordship. Their hearing resulted in
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  definitive action, a complete transfer of allegiance from
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  their old religious system to the resurrected king.
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  If that is the verb, what happens when Paul turns this
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  concept into a noun? That takes us to Paul's
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  linguistic innovation and how it cements our understanding of
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  federal headship. We are looking at the noun form
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  hypico. Our sources reveal A fascinating
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  detail about this specific noun. It was incredibly rare in
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  secular Greek. It barely existed in the common
• 20:07
  vocabulary. Furthermore, it only appeared
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  one single time in the entire Septuagint, which is the Greek
• 20:12
  translation of the Old Testament.
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  The Apostle Paul essentially adopts this obscure, rarely used
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  word, polishes it off, and uses it to define strict Christian in
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  obedience. He makes it a cornerstone of his
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  theological vocabulary. Paul takes this rare word and
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  makes it the centerpiece of his theological argument in Romans.
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  Let us return to Romans 5.1 teen the passage we looked at
• 20:35
  regarding Adam. Paul writes For as by the one
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  man's disobedience, the perico many were made sinners, so by
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  the one man's obedience, the hyperpole, the many will be made
• 20:46
  righteous. This verse is the bedrock of the
• 20:48
  Reformed doctrine of justification.
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  Adam gave us a record of bad hearing of Perico.
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  Christ, our new federal head, lived an entire life categorized
• 20:57
  by total flawless hyperco. He possessed perfect hearing.
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  The writer of Hebrews tells us in chapter 5, verse 8 that
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  although he was a son, he learned obedience through what
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  he suffered. I want to linger on that thought
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  because it is staggering. Christ learned at obedience.
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  He learned hypoco. We often think of Jesus as
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  having it easy because he is the Son of God, but this verse says
• 21:16
  he learned obedience through suffering.
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  It means he continually answered the door to the Father's will
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  every single day, even when that will led to mockery, rejection,
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  beating, and eventually a Roman cross.
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  Every single day of his earthly life he heard the command of the
• 21:32
  Father and submitted to it perfectly.
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  He never once employed the selective hearing of Adam.
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  And in Reform theology, we categorize this perfect record
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  into two parts, the active and passive obedience of Christ.
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  Yes, the Westminster Confession articulates this brilliantly and
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  it is vital for our assurance of salvation.
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  Christ's passive obedience refers to his willing submission
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  to the penalty of sin. He passively endured the wrath
• 21:58
  of God on the cross, dying in our place.
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  He paid the debt that we owed because of our sin.
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  However, simply paying the debt only brings our account balance
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  back to zero. It removes the negative, but it
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  does not provide the positive righteousness required to enter
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  heaven. That is where His act of
• 22:14
  obedience comes in. Christ's act of obedience refers
• 22:17
  to His perfect fulfillment of the righteous requirements of
• 22:20
  the Law throughout His entire earthly life.
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  Every moment he loved God with all his heart, soul, mind and
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  strength. Every moment he loved his
• 22:28
  neighbor as himself. He achieved a complete,
• 22:31
  unblemished record of flawless hypoco.
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  And the glorious truth of justification is that Christ's
• 22:37
  perfect record of obedience is imputed or credited to the
• 22:40
  believer by faith. Just as Adam's bad hearing was
• 22:44
  legally credited to us, bankrupting us, Christ's perfect
• 22:47
  hearing is legally credited to us, making us righteous in the
• 22:50
  sight of God. Christ is that new federal head
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  acting as our legal representative?
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  Let me push back on this for a second.
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  I want to play devil's advocate because people often get
• 22:59
  confused right here. OK, go for it.
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  If Paul talks about the obedience of faith right at the
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  beginning of Romans in chapter 1 verse 5, does not that sound
• 23:07
  like our works? Our personal obedience is the
• 23:09
  thing that saves us. I see what you mean.
• 23:11
  The phrase obedience of faith sounds like a combination.
• 23:15
  If faith requires our obedience to be real, how do we square
• 23:19
  that with the core Protestant doctrine of justification by
• 23:22
  faith alone? Are we saved by Christ's
• 23:25
  obedience or our own obedience? That is a highly common
• 23:28
  question, and a very good one. The answer lies in understanding
• 23:31
  the Greek grammar, specifically the genitive case used in the
• 23:35
  phrase obedience of faith. Tell us about the grammar there.
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  The phrase in Greek is hypochoic.
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  Peace sticks. This is an appositional
• 23:43
  genitive. It is not describing faith plus
• 23:46
  obedience as if there are two separate requirements we must
• 23:49
  fulfill to earn our salvation. It is not saying have faith and
• 23:53
  also try really hard to obey the rules.
• 23:55
  Rather, faith is obedience to the Gospel.
• 23:59
  To believe the gospel is to bend the knee to Christ as Lord.
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  It is the initial defining act of submission.
• 24:05
  When God commands all people everywhere to repent and believe
• 24:08
  in His Son, believing is the act of obeying that command.
• 24:11
  Paul clarifies this dynamic in Romans chapter 6, verse 16.
• 24:15
  He says, Do you not know that if you present yourself to anyone
• 24:17
  as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one whom you obey,
• 24:21
  either of sin, which leads to death, or of obedience, which
• 24:25
  leads to righteousness? Coming to faith is a definitive
• 24:28
  transfer of allegiance. You are freed from the cruel
• 24:31
  master of sin, and you gladly submit to the righteous Master
• 24:35
  Christ. You are not earning your
• 24:38
  salvation, you are submitting to the One who earned it for you.
• 24:41
  That distinction is incredibly helpful.
• 24:43
  Faith is the act of opening the door to the rightful King,
• 24:47
  right? It is not a work we do to earn
• 24:49
  favor. It is the necessary response of
• 24:52
  a heart that has heard the divine summons and recognize the
• 24:55
  authority of the Voice. We are saved entirely by the
• 24:58
  hypocole of Christ, and our faith is simply the empty hand
• 25:02
  that receives that perfect record.
• 25:04
  This takes us to the final part of our linguistic study looking
• 25:07
  at blood covenants and what it means to be children of
• 25:10
  obedience. We turn to the Apostle Peter,
• 25:12
  who uses this noun hypako in a specific and visceral way right
• 25:16
  at the start of his first letter.
• 25:18
  In first Peter chapter one, verse 2, he writes to the elect
• 25:20
  chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father
• 25:23
  in the sanctification of the Spirit for obedience to Jesus
• 25:26
  Christ and for sprinkling with His blood.
• 25:27
  He pairs obedience directly with a sprinkling of blood.
• 25:31
  To understand Peter's specific phrasing, we have to look back
• 25:34
  to the Old Testament ratification of the Covenant in
• 25:37
  Exodus chapter 24. This is a very bloody, very
• 25:40
  physical scene. It is when Moses established the
• 25:44
  covenant between God and Israel at Mount Sinai.
• 25:46
  He built an altar and sacrificed oxen.
• 25:49
  He took half of the blood and threw it against the altar.
• 25:52
  Then he read the book of the Covenant in the hearing of the
• 25:55
  people. The people responded by saying
• 25:57
  all that the Lord has spoken, we will do and we will be obedient.
• 26:01
  They pledged their hypoco. Moses then took the remaining
• 26:04
  blood in basins and physically threw it on the people, saying,
• 26:07
  Behold the blood of the covenant that the Lord has made with you.
• 26:11
  Obedience and blood are inextricably tied together in a
• 26:14
  binding covenant. You cannot have the covenant
• 26:16
  relationship without both. Peter is taking this visceral
• 26:19
  Old Testament imagery and applying it to the New Covenant.
• 26:23
  Believers are brought into a binding, covenant relationship
• 26:25
  with God through the obedience of faith and the purifying,
• 26:29
  atoning blood of Jesus Christ. We are cleansed by His blood and
• 26:32
  bound to His Lordship. Later in that same chapter, in
• 26:35
  first Peter 1.14, Peter issues a command regarding how believers
• 26:39
  should live. He says, as obedient children,
• 26:42
  do not be conformed to the passions of your former
• 26:44
  ignorance. But if you look at the literal
• 26:46
  Greek translation, it is not an adjective describing a child.
• 26:50
  It is a noun phrase. It translates as children of
• 26:53
  obedience, techno hypocos. That sounds like a massive
• 26:57
  identity shift. It absolutely is.
• 26:59
  You are not simply a person attempting to perform a list of
• 27:03
  obedient tasks. You are fundamentally birthed by
• 27:06
  obedience. It is your family name now.
• 27:08
  You are defined by your lineage to the obedient son.
• 27:11
  Your entire nature has been rewired.
• 27:13
  That literal translation is vital for understanding the
• 27:16
  Christian life. Being a child of obedience
• 27:18
  indicates that your very nature has been altered by the
• 27:20
  regenerating work of the Holy Spirit.
• 27:23
  You possess a new disposition. In your unregenerate state, you
• 27:25
  were a child of wrath, naturally inclined toward perico bad
• 27:29
  hearing. You hated the commands of God,
• 27:31
  but now you are a child of obedience.
• 27:33
  Christian obedience is not the forced, resentful compliance of
• 27:37
  a captive or a slave bowing to a tyrant out of fear.
• 27:40
  It is the spontaneous, joyful submission of a child to a
• 27:43
  loving father. It is driven by love, which the
• 27:48
  Apostle James calls the Royal law of liberty in James 2.8.
• 27:52
  We obey because our hearts have been captured by the grace of
• 27:55
  God. We answer the door because we
• 27:57
  know and love the one who is knocking.
• 28:00
  We delight in his commands because we know they are good.
• 28:03
  Let's summarize the arc of our discussion today.
• 28:06
  Sounds good. We started in the dark, visually
• 28:08
  obsessed rooms of the Pagan mysteries, where worshippers
• 28:11
  waited for a sudden flash of light, seeking A passive visual
• 28:15
  thrill. We contrasted that with the
• 28:17
  speaking God of the Bible, the God of Sinai, who demands an
• 28:20
  acoustic religion of action. We saw that to hear God is to
• 28:24
  respond to Him, to grant Him authority over our lives, and to
• 28:27
  act on His commands. We looked at the tragic
• 28:30
  selective hearing of Adam, his Perico, his refusal to listen,
• 28:34
  which legally bankrupted humanity.
• 28:35
  And we found our hope in the perfect imputed obedience, the
• 28:39
  hypotheco of Christ, our true federal head, who perfectly
• 28:42
  fulfilled the law in our place. We also traced the secular
• 28:45
  history of our vocabulary. We saw how the simple physical
• 28:48
  act of a Porter answering a door in the ancient world evolved
• 28:52
  into a legal term for answering a court summons.
• 28:55
  And finally became the Christian term for joyful submission to
• 28:58
  the Lordship of Christ. Every time a believer obeys the
• 29:01
  word of God, they are answering the authoritative summons of
• 29:05
  their king. They are opening the door to the
• 29:07
  one who rightfully owns the house.
• 29:08
  Why should you as the listener care about all this Greek
• 29:12
  vocabulary? Because when we read the Bible
• 29:15
  in English, we just see the word obey.
• 29:18
  It can feel flat, demanding, or even burdensome.
• 29:21
  It can feel like a heavy list of rules we have to keep to earn
• 29:24
  God's favor, but knowing the Greek shows us a vibrant
• 29:27
  history. It shows us a history of
• 29:29
  answering doors, responding to court summons, and breaking the
• 29:32
  chains of our old slave master Sin.
• 29:35
  It reveals that obedience is not a cold legal transaction, but a
• 29:38
  warm covenantal reality sealed with blood.
• 29:41
  The linguistic background clarifies our theology.
• 29:44
  It points us away from our own flawed attempts at rule keeping
• 29:47
  and points us directly to the flawless record of Jesus Christ.
• 29:50
  His active and passive submission to the Father is our
• 29:53
  only hope for justification. We are counted righteous solely
• 29:57
  because He perfectly answered the door to the Father's will on
• 30:01
  our behalf. I want to leave you with a final
• 30:03
  thought to Mull over. If biblical hearing is entirely
• 30:07
  indistinguishable from action, and Jesus is currently knocking
• 30:10
  at the door of your life through the preaching of His Word, what
• 30:12
  is the specific summons you were pretending you didn't hear?
• 30:16
  Thank you for joining us for this deep dive on Reformed
• 30:19
  thinking.