the ultimate guide

This week in New Testament, we took one scripture out of the Bible and broke it down into the different greek words and their original meanings. I think it is interesting to see and just goes to show not only how many different interpretations there are, but also how easy it is to apply the Bible to any situation in life. And if we really dig deep to study it out, we can learn so much! The scripture that I would like to break down is Ephesians 2: 5 which states that “even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, (by grace we are saved;)” There is so many good things in this simple verse! Let’s start at the beginning, a very good place to start. So I love the analogy between death and sins and life and Christ in the beginning. Quickened means to make alive or revive. So the beautiful imagery is that in our sins we are dead but through Christ we are made alive again. I also like the connotation of quickened meaning to revive as well because even when we have become completely dead through out sins, when there seems like there is no hope at all for us, Christ is the one that can bring us back again. Next I want to talk about the phrase “by grace we are saved.” As Latter-Day Saints, we believe that we are saved through the grace of Christ after all that we can do. After we have completed as many righteous works in this life as possible, then Christ comes in to make up the difference. The original greek work for grace has a root in the word Charisma which means the ability to guide or direct. The greek translation for the word saved means to deliver, protect, heal, or make whole. So if we put those two together, the verse is saying that through Christ’s ability to guide us, we are able to be healed. Christ is going to be there to guide us through our life and our trials, but he isn’t going to complete them for us. And if at anytime, we step away from our guide and need to be revived, He is always going to be there with a defibrillator in hand to keep up going. Christ is always going to be there to keep us alive or to revive us whatever it may be. He will guide us in every aspect of our lives if we let Him, but we are the ones who have to take the steps in the right direction. He can’t take them for us, He can only show us what is right.  

anchor in Christ

Deciding what to write about this week was pretty difficult. Normally there are many different comments throughout the week in class that particularly stand out that I can take what the Professor and run with it, finding other quotes from people or adding my own personal insights. There were many like that this week but for some reason I don’t really feel like running… I think I feel more like diving. Hopefully taking some scripture that we didn't really talk about and deciding what I think it means and could be applied to. We’ll have to see how this goes. In Acts 27 we learn about a story in which Paul is traveling on a ship as a prisoner to be brought to Caesar for trial. As the ship comes upon land Acts 27:28 states that the men in the ship “sounded, and found it twenty fathoms: and when they had gone a little further, they sounded again, and found it fifteen fathoms.” Sounding means that the sailors would drop a rope into the water to see how deep it was so that their ship wouldn’t either hit the sand or get stuck. The men in the ship sounded to the point that they were just barely far enough from the shore that the bottom of their boat wouldn't become stuck. But when they dropped their anchor, a storm from behind pushed the boat against the land and it was easily and quickly destroyed. This story is extremely applicable to us in that we can be the giant ship, the anchor is can be our friends, Christ, and the standard Mormon answers with the shore and sand in the ocean can be seen as giving into temptation. We can check to see how close we are to the shore or temptation but if we get as close as the sailors in the Bible did we would not be prepared for the trials or storms in our life that tend to come our way. If anything out of the blue was to happen, we would crash up the land and be destroyed. We can’t get right up against our temptations and trials, technically staying away while still being as close as possible. The sailors also didn't have firm enough planted anchors so when the storm, trial or temptation came, their ship was easily ripped away from where they were. In this case, the storm was strong enough that four anchors was not enough to hold the ship down from falling into temptation. Four may seem like a lot but why only four when we can use so much more so that there is no fear that we will be destroyed by temptation. But we have to rely on Christ in order to be our anchor and to save us from temptation.