“He who believes<\/strong> in the Son has eternal life; but he who does not obey<\/strong> the Son will not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him<\/em>” (John 3:36 NASB).<\/p><\/blockquote>\nI am wondering about this Scripture though. “Does not obey” certainly makes the point and it may be the better translation from Greek? I haven’t studied Greek yet. However, in my Bible, it says “does not believe”.<\/p>\n
“He who believes<\/strong> in the Son has everlasting life; and he who does not believe <\/strong>the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him<\/em>” (John 3:36 NKJV).<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\tAnswer:<\/h2>\nho<\/em> (The) pisteuion<\/em> (believing) eis <\/em>(on) ton<\/em> (the) huion<\/em> (Son) echei<\/em> (has) zoen<\/em> (life) aionion<\/em> (eternal) ho <\/em>(the) de <\/em>(and) apeithon<\/em> (not being subject) to<\/em> (to the) hoio<\/em> (Son) ouk<\/em> (not) apsetai<\/em> (shall see) zoen (life) …<\/p><\/blockquote>\napeitheo<\/em>: An a<\/em> at the beginning of a word serves the same function as “in-” or “un-” in English. It negates the root word. The verb peitho <\/em>means “to persuade.” When used as an active verb it means “to disobey.” When used as a passive verb it means “to be unpersuaded.” In this particular verse, the word is in the nominative, singular, masculine, participle, present, active case.<\/p>\nIn translation to English, the word is translated as both “unbelieving” and “disobedient.” But that is my point. Being disobedient and not believing are seen as synonymous terms. It is only those who deny that faith is joined with works who try to make a distinction. “Even so faith, if it has no works, is dead, being by itself<\/em>” (James 2:17). We lose a bit when this particular word is translated into English. Between the NASB and the NKJV, I think the NASB does a better job capturing the meaning in this case.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Question: I was linking one of my web sites to “How does obedience relate to saving faith?” which has some excellent info. “He who believes in the Son has eternal life; but he who does not obey the Son will not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him” (John 3:36 NASB). I am wondering about this Scripture…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[20],"tags":[139,959,54,190],"class_list":["post-29566","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-answer","tag-belief","tag-john","tag-obedience","tag-translation"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":36481,"url":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/why-is-apeitheo-in-john-336-translated-not-obey-in-some-versions-and-not-believe-in-others\/","url_meta":{"origin":29566,"position":0},"title":"Why is apeitheo in John 3:36 translated “not obey” in some versions and “not believe” in others?","author":"Jeffrey Hamilton","date":"January 16, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"Question: Something interesting that I came across last week in studying: John 3:36 is a commonly quoted scripture. The KJV, NKJV, and Youngs roughly say: \"He who believes (pisteuo) in the Son has everlasting life; and he who does not believe (apeitheo) the Son shall not see life, but the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Answer"","block_context":{"text":"Answer","link":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/category\/answer\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1933,"url":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/how-does-obedience-relate-to-saving-faith\/","url_meta":{"origin":29566,"position":1},"title":"How does obedience relate to saving faith?","author":"Jeffrey Hamilton","date":"November 19, 2004","format":false,"excerpt":"Question: How does obedience relate to saving faith? Answer: \"What does it profit, my brethren, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can faith save him? If a brother or sister is naked and destitute of daily food, and one of you says to them, \"Depart\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Answer"","block_context":{"text":"Answer","link":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/category\/answer\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":66523,"url":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/reading-past-john-316\/","url_meta":{"origin":29566,"position":2},"title":"Reading Past John 3:16","author":"Jeffrey Hamilton","date":"February 12, 2024","format":false,"excerpt":"by Perry Hall Do we sometimes miss a powerful point because we stop reading? John 3:16 is so well-known that people stop reading. What happens if we keep reading? Notice these contrasts: \"For God loved the world\" (John 3:16) vs. \"People loved the darkness\" (John 3:19). \"He gave his one\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Article"","block_context":{"text":"Article","link":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/category\/article\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":47349,"url":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/obeying-god\/","url_meta":{"origin":29566,"position":3},"title":"Obeying God","author":"Jeffrey Hamilton","date":"February 28, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"by Dennis Stackhouse On one occasion King Saul had been given a direct command from God to utterly destroy Amalek, including men and women, children and infants, as well as all the livestock (I Samuel 15:3).\u00a0 However, Saul and the people spared Agag, the king of Amalek, along with the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Article"","block_context":{"text":"Article","link":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/category\/article\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":9880,"url":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/the-role-of-obedience-in-salvation\/","url_meta":{"origin":29566,"position":4},"title":"The Role of Obedience in Salvation","author":"Jeffrey Hamilton","date":"September 17, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"by Jack Holt Obedience is an obligation each human being sustains to God. This is so because God is the Creator and Ruler of the universe, and we are his creatures. Beyond the fact that God is Creator and Ruler, love places us under a moral obligation to obey. As\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Article"","block_context":{"text":"Article","link":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/category\/article\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":48868,"url":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/how-can-jesus-not-judge-those-who-believe-if-we-are-all-judged\/","url_meta":{"origin":29566,"position":5},"title":"How can Jesus not judge those who believe if we are all judged?","author":"Jeffrey Hamilton","date":"August 11, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"Question: Why is it that, even though we are supposed to do God's will to be saved supposedly, why does Jesus say that those who believe will not be judged, even though you were saying we are all judged? In that case, then it's like a paradox because everyone is\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Answer"","block_context":{"text":"Answer","link":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/category\/answer\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29566","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29566"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29566\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29566"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29566"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29566"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}