GLOSSARY

In the Bible, there are some concepts that we don't learn from the world and terms that we misuse in our daily lives. Below we explain the most important ones for understanding the fundamental principles of God for humanity.

ABOUT WHO WE ARE

  • We believe in one God (Deuteronomy 6:4) who is the Maker of the heavens and the earth (Genesis 1:1). This God has revealed Himself to us as a triune God, meaning there is only one God, but He exists in three distinct Persons – God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. It is not three gods united as one, but the unity of one God. We as humans cannot fully comprehend this concept of Trinity, and no one metaphor or analogy can perfectly explain it. The term Trinity in fact does not even appear in the Bible, but we can still understand and experience who God is by what He has revealed to us through the Bible. Here are some key facts about Trinity that you should know:

    • God is one (Deuteronomy 6:4, 32:39, 1 Corinthians 8:4).

    • The one God exists in three Persons (Matthew 3:16-17, 28:19, 1 John 5:7).

    • The three Persons are each fully God (Romans 1:7, Titus 2:13, Acts 5:3-4).

    • Each of the Persons is distinct from the others (1 Peter 1:2).

    The three Persons are equal because each is fully God eternally and unchangingly, but they have different roles in their relationship. We see each of the three Persons in works of creation (1 Corinthians 8:6, John 1:3, Genesis 1:2), revelation (Revelation 1:1, John 1:1, 16:13), and redemption/salvation (John 3:16, 1:14, Romans 8:11) in that the Father initiates all things, the Son executes them, and the Holy Spirit applies them.

    It is important to understand the concept of Trinity because it helps us enjoy a deep relationship with God. For example, we may address any Person of the Trinity in our prayer, but we pray to the Father in the name of the Son, Jesus Christ, as the Holy Spirit reveals the Word to us, as the Holy Spirit directs us to pray (John 14:26, 15:26, Romans 8:26-27, Ephesians 6:18). Through Jesus Christ we have access to the Father (John 14:6) and to the power of the Holy Spirit (John 14:16) that awakens nonbelievers and sanctifies believers to accomplish God’s redemptive history throughout the whole world (John 14:26, Matthew 24:14). The concept of Trinity is everywhere in the Bible and how we live our lives in relation with God.

    Here, we only briefly explain that we believe in one God in three Persons. As you commune with the triune God through the Bible and inherit His character, you will continue to unearth the mystery of Trinity in your life.

  • Mankind was created in the image of God (Genesis 1:27). We all acknowledge that humans are distinguished from other animals primarily by their complex cognitive abilities and the capacity for creation of intricate cultures and advanced technology. But the Bible allows us to approach this concept of “image of God” from “Who God tells us He is” instead of “What image we think we have.”

    First and foremost, God is Spirit (John 4:24). So, He is eternal, immortal, and invisible (1 Timothy 1:17). When God created mankind, He breathed His breath, or His Spirit, into the human body that He formed from the dust of the ground so we became spiritual beings (Genesis 2:7). Because we received God’s Spirit, we could commune with God and glorify Him, which we refer to as worship. Because we have the Spirit of God, God can speak His blessings upon us that we may know God intellectually, emotionally, volitionally, and bodily (Genesis 1:28).

    This leads to the second point, that God has unique attributes that we as God’s image bearers should be able to sense (Romans 1:20). God has incommunicable attributes as the Creator, such as omnipresence (Psalm 139:7-10, Jeremiah 23:24), omniscience (Psalm 139:1-4, Hebrews 4:13), and omnipotence (Genesis 1:1, 18:14, Jeremiah 32:17, Romans 4:17), that we may worship Him in awe (Psalm 33:8, Hebrews 12:28). But He also has communicable attributes that we are designed to inherit as God’s image bearers (2 Peter 1:4), such as love (1 John 4:7-8), holiness (Leviticus 11:44-45, 1 Peter 1:15-16), righteousness (Deuteronomy 32:4, Psalm 145:17, 1 John 2:29), and faithfulness (Numbers 23:19, Matthew 24:35, Hebrews 10:23). To that end, God has given us intellect, emotions, and volition, with which we can commune with Him and inherit His attributes.

    So the image of God means not only that we have intellect, emotions, and volition, but also that we are filled with the communicable attributes of the triune God (Genesis 1:26). As individuals, we inherit God’s love, holiness, righteousness, and faithfulness, to name a few. In our relationships with God and other people, we have the loving and self-giving fellowship within the triune God flowing into us (John 14:26, 2 Corinthians 13:14).

    As a result of the fall, however, we all are born in separation from God (Romans 3:23). As the spiritually dead, we have a tendency to perceive the image of God regardless of the source of the spiritual power, and therefore have an erroneous goal in our lives. Why it happened, how it affects us, and how we can reverse it are discussed in below sections.

  • We see the concept of a child of God in the New Testament. Then, who becomes a child of God? What does it mean to be a child of God?

    As a result of the fall of the first man Adam, we all are born in separation from God. As God had warned him, we all are now born spiritually dead (Genesis 2:17, Romans 6:23). The Bible reveals that we belong to Satan and therefore we want to do what Satan desires and not want to do what is righteous before God (John 8:44, 1 John 3:10), i.e., we have sinful nature. When the spirit is separated from the flesh at physical death, the body returns to the dust, but the spirit goes to where it belonged: God or Satan (Job 34:14-15). This is about our spiritual affiliation and spiritual state and if we don’t do anything about the spirit, we live in bondage to Satan and sin (John 3:18).

    How do you become a child of God? When you believe that Jesus is the Christ and receive Him as your Lord and Savior in your spirit, the Holy Spirit will come into you and you will become a child of God (Romans 10:9-10, John 1:12). It’s that simple, because Jesus has finished the work of Christ and you only need to let Him in and do the work of Christ for you. Please make sure to understand why, and we have the “About Jesus Christ” section below for you.

    There’s an enormous right given to a child of God (John 1:12), but here we discuss a few important ones:

    • Indwelling of the Holy Spirit: When you receive Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior, the Holy Spirit comes into you to dwell in you and be with you forever (John 14:16-17).

    • Background of heaven: Because the spirit belongs to God now, it goes to heaven at physical death; you have the background of heaven here on earth (Ecclesiastes 12:7, Philippians 3:20).

    • Connection to God: It means you can now connect with the Creator God on the throne of heaven through the spirit by prayer and receive the power of God to have God’s design principle restored in your mind and body, and in the world (Romans 8:2, 12:1-2, Acts 1:8).

    • Authority of Christ: You can free yourself from the power of sin and death and receive the filling of the Holy Spirit by using the authority of the name of Jesus Christ. You can break down the forces of darkness by the name of Jesus Christ (Mark 3:15, Luke 10:17-20, Acts 16:18). You can cast the sinful nature to Jesus Christ and ask God to crucify it to death (Romans 6:6-7). You can ask for the filling of the Holy Spirit who can illuminate children of God through the Word to uncover the truth and what is to come (John 14:26, 15:26, 16:13). You can also ask God to mobilize heavenly angels to help us for this work of our salvation (Hebrews 1:14).

    • Influence on the world: As you renew your mind to inherit the divine nature and pray for other people using the above rights, you will help other people restore the image of God. In other words, you are becoming a co-heir of God by and with Christ Jesus (Romans 8:15-17).

ABOUT SIN AND THE FALL

  • The Hebrew and Greek words that are often translated as sin in the Bible literally means to “miss the mark,” referring to failure to meet a standard or goal. So, for us, any deviation from God’s law is sin, breaking God’s perfect harmony in our lives.

    Most fundamentally and importantly, it is sin if we fail to conform to the created order of God, or the word of God. We were created to be God's image bearers so that we could commune with God in our entire being (Genesis 1:27) and reflect His character in our lives (Genesis 1:28). It is sin if we leave this position or state in any part of us. It is sin if we follow the words and rules that are different from God's created order. If you truly understand what sin means from God's perspective, you will feel God's love that He wants to protect us.

    So God commanded the first man Adam this one simple rule that he must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil (Genesis 2:17). By God’s law, we fall to bondage to Satan when we sin, resulting in death in the order of spiritual, mental, and physical death (Genesis 3:7-12, 17-19). We continue to sin if we are in bondage to Satan, because we are separated from God and there is no way we can conform to the word of God in our entire being (1 John 3:8). This is why God continues to warn us in the Bible against idolatry (Exodus 20:2-6), which in essence is to miss the mark of being God's image bearer and follow some other ways of the world (Ephesians 2:2), because the result of sin is death and wrath (Romans 6:23, Ephesians 2:3).

  • The wages of sin, or the price of sin, is death (Genesis 2:17, Romans 6:23, Isaiah 59:2). Biblically speaking, death means our separation from God of life (Genesis 2:7, John 1:4) and fall to bondage to Satan of death (Hebrews 2:14), which is manifested in the order of spiritual, mental, and physical death (Genesis 3:7-12, 3:17-19).  

    As soon as the first man Adam sinned, death came to him, and this event, referred to as “the fall,” introduced sin and death to the world (Romans 5:12). He was immediately separated from God and became spiritually dead (Genesis 3:7-8). We see that this spiritual death now affects his intellect, emotions, and volition. His intelligence was impaired to perceive he could hide from the omnipresent God and to misinterpret the question of the omniscient God (Genesis 3:8-10). His emotions were marred to be captivated by shame and fear and to take God’s questions as an accusation (Genesis 3:7-12). As a result, he instinctively chose to shift the blame to God and his wife Eve (Genesis 3:12). Now, the relationship between Adam and Eve is wounded (Genesis 3:12). All other creatures that they were supposed to care for as God’s image bearers are now under the influence of the spirit of death that has taken over them (Genesis 3:17-19). They are now destined for physical death, when the spirit will be separated from the body and receive judgment while the body will return to the ground (Job 34:14-15, Hebrews 9:27, Genesis 3:19).

    So the consequence of sin is death, and this death does not only mean physical death but spiritual death that brings about disorder and disharmony inside and outside of us. In other words, our greatest privilege of the image of God is damaged, and we take after Satan’s attributes as the spiritually dead (John 8:44, Ephesians 2:3), destroying not only ourselves but other creatures (John 10:10, Genesis 3:17-18).

  • Sin is any deviation from our standard or goal of the image of God. There are theoretically an infinite number of ways and scopes in which we can deviate from it. Therefore, to discern sin, it is best to establish a solid foundation of understanding about what it means by the image of God and have our spiritual sense come alive to know God and His word/law intellectually, emotionally, and volitionally.

    Knowing the infinite God with our finite capabilities requires seeking God and receiving His inspiration and guidance through life. However, here we leave for you a brief explanation of the optimal state of the mind, i.e., the standard and goal of the mind.

    • Intellectually, we glorify God because we see God's word/law working in us and other creation (Genesis 2:19-20), especially the principle of Christ (John 15:26, 16:14).

    • Emotionally, we glorify God in love and awe because we feel God’s love in everything that we are and that we do (Genesis 2:18-25) and witness that He brings everything to life (Job 12:10, Acts 17:25).

    • Volitionally, we want to do what is pleasing to God, what is glorifying God, what is life-giving to all creatures (Genesis 2:19-20, Philippians 2:13).

    If you are in conformity with the above three standards, you can consider yourself to be in a healthy state of mind. But if you lack in any way, you should immediately seek God in Christ Jesus to fully restore them before the spiritual death grows to affect you further.

ABOUT SATAN AND DEMONS

  • First of all, angels were created as good spirits by God to worship God and do God's will (Isaiah 6:2-3, Hebrews 1:6, Psalm 103:20-21). However, some of them followed Satan in leaving their position and rebelled against God (Jude 1:6, Revelation 12:7). They were defeated by God's army of angels and thrown out from heaven to earth (Revelation 12:8-9).

    These fallen angels are demons who will be cast into the eternal fire of hell when Jesus Christ returns to judge (Matthew 25:41, Revelation 20:9-10). Meanwhile, they have been working evil in this world to steal our privilege and blessing as God's image bearers and destroy our lives spiritually, mentally, and physically (Ezekiel 28:16-18, Ephesians 2:2, John 10:10). What do they exactly do as Satan’s followers? Please read the “What does Satan do to us?” section below.

  • Satan is a Hebrew word that means “adversary” or “accuser” (Zechariah 3:1). As the word suggests, Satan's main role is to obstruct us in receiving God’s blessing and accuse us of our sins and shortcomings to God (Zechariah 3:1, Revelation 12:10). The Bible also calls Satan “the devil” which means “slanderer” who slanders God to us (Genesis 3:1-5) and us to God (Revelation 12:9-10), driving wedges between God and us and among us.

    Satan refers to the head of demons and therefore it is a singular noun (Luke 11:15). God had initially appointed him as a guardian cherub full of wisdom, perfect in beauty, and blameless in his ways, but he became proud of the God-given beauty and wisdom and rebelled against God with his angels to be his own god (Ezekiel 28:12-19, Isaiah 14:13-14, Revelation 12:7).

    As a result, he was expelled from heaven to earth along with his angels, or demons (Ezekiel 28:16-19, Isaiah 14:12, Revelation 12:9). He and demons will be cast and thrown into the eternal fire of hell at the return of Jesus Christ (Matthew 25:41, Revelation 20:9-10).

    Just as how he dragged the first man Adam and first woman Eve from perfect bliss to complete death, Satan as the author of sin continues to deceive us to sin to rob us of the greatest blessing of God's being with us and destroy us just as how he has been judged and cursed (1 John 3:8, John 10:10).

  • The bottom line is that he deceives us to sin (Revelation 12:9, 1 John 3:8). He has a clear goal of ruining us in the same way that he has been ruined (John 10:10, 8:44), and he knows God’s law very well that when we sin, we fall from God’s favor into his hands (Genesis 2:17, Romans 6:23).

    How exactly? Unlike Satan and demons who are spirits, we have the flesh as well as the spirit. So his main plan of attack is to lock us up in the desires of the flesh (Ephesians 2:3, 1 John 2:16) so that we do not know God properly, who will enlighten us to see the spiritual world correctly; even if we do have some knowledge, we do not believe and thus do not act on it (Mark 4:14-20).

    Here are a few examples of what Satan does realistically in our lives:

    • Satan distracts us from God into idolatry (Matthew 4:8-10, Ephesians 2:2, Galatians 4:8).

    • Satan clouds our thoughts so that we don’t know the truth (Matthew 16:23, 2 Corinthians 4:4).

    • Satan disguises himself as the truth, preventing us from reaching the truth of God (2 Corinthians 11:14-15).

    • Satan agitates our emotions (1 Samuel 16:14, Acts 5:3).

    • Satan makes us lose love for the truth (2 Thessalonians 2:9-10).

    • Satan incites a will against God (1 Chronicles 21:1, John 13:2).

    • Satan uses afflictions to provoke us into sinning (Acts 16:16-18, Mark 5:2-5, Luke 13:11).

    • Satan attempts to hinder the gospel of Jesus Christ (Matthew 14:24-30, 1 Thessalonians 2:18).

    We can overcome Satan only by the power of God through the way of Jesus Christ (John 16:33, Luke 10:17-19, 1 Peter 1:5). This is why we must know Jesus Christ properly and pray in His name.

ABOUT JESUS CHRIST

  • As a result of the fall of the first man Adam, mankind is separated from God and fallen to bondage to Satan (Isaiah 59:2, 1 John 3:8, Romans 5:12). No philosophical contemplation can free us from sin (Colossians 2:8). No good deeds can free us from Satan (Isaiah 64:6). We cannot meet the holy God in any way (Habakkuk 1:13, Hebrews 1:9) because we cannot liberate ourselves from sin and Satan with our mental or physical efforts (Ephesians 2:1).

    God who is righteous had to keep His own law (Job 34:12, Colossians 2:14). God who is omnipotent knew a perfect solution in accordance with His own law (Genesis 3:15). God who is love chose to make His own sacrifice to open this perfect way for us (Romans 5:8). So God the Son came to us in the human form (John 1:14) to fulfill God’s plan for our salvation (Matthew 5:17).

    He came by the name of Jesus which means “God is salvation,” because He would save His people from their sins (Matthew 1:21). Christ is a title that means “the anointed one” in Greek. During the Old Testament times, priests, kings, and prophets were ordained by anointment. Jesus fulfilled all these three offices of Christ simultaneously once and for all to solve our problems of sin, Satan, and separation from God (Matthew 16:16). In other words, Jesus is the Christ, or, Jesus fulfilled the duty of Christ.

  • As the Prophet, Christ makes God known to us (John 1:18) and reveals the will of God to His people (John 15:15) by the Spirit and the Word (1 Peter 1:10-12, Hebrews 1:2). To fulfill the office of a perfect prophet, He had to come to us as a sinless man and live a sinless life. He was conceived by the Holy Spirit, born of the virgin Mary (Matthew 1:20-23), to be fully God and fully man. He was born as a sinless man and committed no sin (1 Peter 2:22) as the perfect mediator between God and mankind (John 14:6).

  • As the Priest, Christ makes propitiation for us (Hebrews 2:17, 1 John 2:2). He carried our sins and curses upon His sinless body (John 1:29, 2 Corinthians 5:21) and became a perfect sacrificial offering without blemish or spot for us (1 Peter 1:19). He fully discharged the debt of our sin by shedding His innocent blood (Leviticus 17:11, Hebrews 9:22, Ephesians 1:7) and brought the power of sin to complete death on the cross along with His death (Romans 6:10, Colossians 2:13-14).

  • As the King, Christ calls His people to Himself (John 17:2, Acts 15:14-16), bestows grace upon them to obey the law of His kingdom (Romans 1:5, Colossians 1:13), and restrains and overcomes their enemies (Psalm 110:1-2, 1 Corinthians 15:25) for His glory (Romans 14:11) and their good (Romans 8:28). To that end, He resurrected from the dead and destroyed the power of Satan who has the power of death (1 John 3:8, Hebrews 2:14).

ABOUT SPIRIT, MIND, AND BODY

  • We discussed in the “Image of God” section that God created mankind as spiritual beings, which distinguishes us from all other creatures. So we have a spirit in our body, and the Bible reveals that the spirit is different from the mind, although both are intangible and invisible, and that the spirit governs the mind.

    From Genesis 2:7, we learned that God breathed the breath of life into the first man Adam’s body through his nostrils, and Adam became a living being. Here, if we borrow the Hebrew origin used in this verse, God breathed the neshamah of life into Adam’s body through his nostrils, and Adam became a living nephesh. Neshamah is often translated as “spirit” or “breath” in English and it refers to a divine breath of life that connects an individual to God. Nephesh is often translated as “soul” or “being,” referring to a vital force that animates the body. So Adam received a “living” nephesh because God breathed into him the neshamah of God. Adam received a “living” soul because God breathed into him the Spirit of God.

    This spirit was damaged due to the fall, or, as a result of sin. The moment Adam sinned, he was spiritually dead, i.e., he was separated from God (Isaiah 59:2) and fell to bondage to Satan (Romans 6:23). So we are all born as the spiritually dead, and the spirit of death will affect our mind that animates our body (Hebrews 2:14-15).

    So we need the Spirit of Christ to bring the dead spirit back to life (John 5:24, 11:25). Once we receive the Spirit of Christ, we can connect to God who wants to revitalize our mind day by day (Psalm 116:8, 2 Corinthians 5:17, Romans 12:1-2).

  • We say spirit, soul, mind, thoughts, feelings, desires, etc. to refer to the mental/psychological part of a human, in part or in whole. But as discussed in the “Human spirit” section, the Bible clearly differentiates the human spirit in that the spirit connects to the spiritual domain and reveals that the human spirit affects the human mind.

    We saw that the Hebrew word that generally translates to “soul” in the Old Testament is nephesh, which basically means breath and refers to a vital force that animates the body. The Greek word for the “soul” in the New Testament is psuche, from which we get “psyche.” It refers to the seat of thoughts, feelings, and desires that animate the body, which would be translated into heart, mind, personality, or inner being in today’s terms.

    Then we arrive at a conclusion that the biblical concept of a human soul entails “spirit” and implies spiritual impact on the human mind. So when we say “mind” at Gratia, we will mean intellect, emotions, and volition. When we say “soul” at Gratia, we will mean the mind but in the context of how it is subject to the spirit. When you see the word “soul” in the Bible, consider the context for the meaning because it could mean spirit, mind, or both.

  • There are two Greek words that are translated as “body” or “flesh” in the New Testament. One is soma that refers to the physical body. The other is sarx that is often translated as “flesh.” It refers to the corporeal part of a human being, as opposed to incorporeal, i.e., spirit or soul. So it sometimes means the physical body (Colossians 2:5), and oftentimes refers to the substance of the body and the sensuous nature (Hebrews 9:13-14). So when we say “body” at Gratia, we will mean the physical body or physical manifestation. When we say “flesh” at Gratia, we will mean both mind and body.

    In the Bible, sarx is sometimes used to explain our sinful nature (Ephesians 2:2-3). However, neither soma nor sarx is evil in itself to God’s eyes who is Spirit. In fact, Adam and Eve were created good without sin in both their spirit and flesh (Genesis 1:31). What makes flesh or body good or evil to God’s eyes is which spirit we as spiritual beings followed (Matthew 7:18).

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