Theological Term of the Week

warning passages (of Hebrews)
Five passages interspersed throughout the New Testament book of Hebrews exhorting professing believers to remain faithful by warning of the consequences of apostacy.1

• From scripture, one of the warning passages:

For it is impossible, in the case of those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, and have shared in the Holy Spirit, and have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the age to come, and then have fallen away, to restore them again to repentance, since they are crucifying once again the Son of God to their own harm and holding him up to contempt. For land that has drunk the rain that often falls on it, and produces a crop useful to those for whose sake it is cultivated, receives a blessing from God. But if it bears thorns and thistles, it is worthless and near to being cursed, and its end is to be burned. (Hebrews 6:4-8 ESV)

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Theological Term of the Week

high priestly prayer of Jesus
Jesus’ final prayer, found in John 17, in which he “prays, first for himself (vv. 1–5), then for his disciples (vv. 6–19), and finally for later believers (vv. 20–26)”;1 also called the Farewell Prayer.

• From scripture, an excerpt from the high priestly prayer:

I am praying for them. I am not praying for the world but for those whom you have given me, for they are yours. All mine are yours, and yours are mine, and I am glorified in them. And I am no longer in the world, butthey are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, keep them in your name, which you have given me, that they may be one, even as we are one. While I was with them, I kept them in your name, which you have given me. I have guarded them, and not one of them has been lost except the son of destruction, that the Scripture might be fulfilled. But now I am coming to you, and these things I speak in the world, that they may have my joy fulfilled in themselves. I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. I do not ask that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one. They are not of the world, just as I am not of the world. Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. As you sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. And for their sake I consecrate myself, that they also may be sanctified in truth. (John 17:9-19 ESV)

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Theological Term of the Week

Bread of Life Discourse
Jesus’ teaching discussion on the bread of life found in John 6:22-58.  

• From scripture, an excerpt the bread of life discourse:

Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes has eternal life. I am the bread of life. Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh.” (John 6:47-51, ESV)

• From The God Who Is There by D. A. Carson:

Jesus says he is the Bread of Life and unless we eat him we will die. At a superficial level, the notion of eating Jesus might sound jolly close to cannibalism. Or those of us who are more religiously inclined might think, “Maybe it’s the sacrament of holy communion or something like that.” Originally, that was not what Jesus meant at all. We must not forget that in the ancient world just about everybody worked with their hand or on farms, so they were closer to nature than we are today… . [I]f you were to ask anybody in the first century where [food] came from, they would reply, “From plants, fish, and animals.” They have grown or caught this food themselves. So anybody in the first century knows that you live because the chicken died… . All of this organic material that we feed ourselves with—which we must have or we die—has given its life for us in substitution… .

Either you die or something else living dies so that you may live. Jesus picks up on that language and says, “Unless you eat my flesh, you will die. I die so that you may live.”

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