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<\/em>) in the Son has everlasting life; and he who does not believe (apeitheo<\/em>) the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him.”<\/p>\n Other versions, such ASV, NASV, ESV, RSV, etc., say, “He who believes in the Son has everlasting life; and he who does not\u00a0obey<\/strong>\u00a0the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him.”<\/p>\n The same thing exists in Hebrews 3:18-19, “And to whom did He swear that they would not enter His rest, but to those who did not obey? So we see that they could not enter in because of unbelief.”<\/p>\n How do the writers get “obey?”\u00a0 It makes sense, as if you do believe, you will obey.\u00a0 But obey is a definition far down the list in the concordance.<\/p>\n\t The Greek word\u00a0apeitheo<\/em>\u00a0is a compound word. The prefix\u00a0a<\/em>\u00a0means “not” and the verb\u00a0peitho<\/em>\u00a0means “to obey” when used in the active sense or “to be persuaded” when used in the passive sense. In John 3:36 the verb is in the active present tense, so “disobey” would be the correct literal translation.<\/p>\n Jesus’ contrast of believe (pisteuo<\/em>) against disobey (apeitheo<\/em>) demonstrates that God sees belief and obedience to be two sides of the same coin. So many denominational teachers have claimed that faith and works are separate issues and that we are saved by faith alone that people are often surprised to find that God sees things differently. James said, “You see then that a man is justified by works, and not by faith only<\/em>” (James 2:24). Belief cannot be separated from obedience. A person who is obeying is demonstrating his belief. A person who believes won’t sit there and do nothing.<\/p>\n The writer of Hebrews makes the same parallel. Hebrews 3:18-19 shows that disobedience and disbelief are two views of the same problem.<\/p>\n Thus, in Acts 14:2 it says, “But the unbelieving Jews stirred up the Gentiles and poisoned their minds against the brethren.<\/em>” But it literally says the “disobeying Jews;” the Jews were actively showing their disbelief by stirring up the Gentiles against the Gospel — an act of disobedience.<\/p>\n “Unbelief” is not a wrong translation for\u00a0apeitheo<\/em>\u00a0but it does lose a bit of the richness that is present in the text.<\/p>\n\t Thanks for answering my question!<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" 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 wrath of God abides on…<\/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":[49,1574,54,190],"class_list":["post-36481","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-answer","tag-faith","tag-greek-language","tag-obedience","tag-translation"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":29566,"url":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/in-john-336-should-it-be-does-not-obey-or-does-not-believe\/","url_meta":{"origin":36481,"position":0},"title":"In John 3:36, should it be “does not obey” or “does not believe”?","author":"Jeffrey Hamilton","date":"October 17, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Question: I was\u00a0linking one of my web sites to \"How does obedience relate to saving faith?\" which has some excellent info. \"He who\u00a0believes\u00a0in the Son has eternal life; but he who\u00a0does not obey\u00a0the Son will not see life, but the wrath of God abides on him\" (John 3:36 NASB). I\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":36481,"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":48868,"url":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/how-can-jesus-not-judge-those-who-believe-if-we-are-all-judged\/","url_meta":{"origin":36481,"position":2},"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":[]},{"id":28596,"url":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/did-god-break-his-promise-to-moses\/","url_meta":{"origin":36481,"position":3},"title":"Did God break His promise to Moses?","author":"Jeffrey Hamilton","date":"August 22, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"Question: In Moses' time than God had promised him that he would go into the promised land right but then later when Moses strikes the rock twice and water comes out then god says that Moses will not Lead the people into the promised land because how can Moses be\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":47349,"url":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/obeying-god\/","url_meta":{"origin":36481,"position":4},"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":79216,"url":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/why-didnt-jesus-mention-baptism-to-nicodemus\/","url_meta":{"origin":36481,"position":5},"title":"Why didn’t Jesus mention baptism to Nicodemus?","author":"Jeffrey Hamilton","date":"November 19, 2024","format":false,"excerpt":"Question: Why didn't Jesus mention baptism to Nicodemus in the gospel of John when he asked? Answer: Great question. I love Nicodemus's story, and I believe it can help us understand the need for water baptism. Firstly, I would like to say we don't see the whole story of Nicodemus\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\/36481","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=36481"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36481\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36481"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36481"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lavistachurchofchrist.org\/cms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36481"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Answer:<\/h2>\n
Response:<\/h2>\n