• Image one, thanks to Pastor David Pitman for posting on Facebook. I often find optical illusion art and photography, interesting.
• Image two: I am willing to agree with someone with a different worldview, as all truth in God's truth.
• Continued: That is hoping and praying that God has me in the truth, always, even as I am both finite and sinful.
• Continued: I certainly disagree with friends, sometimes, but agreeably, in the love of Christ.
• Image three: Sadly, my own personal observance of some people in life makes me reason these statements are often true.
• I was listening to John 1, online from the King James Version (KJV).
• John 1: 17 struck me as interesting and so I looked it up in the Orthodox Study Bible, which is an excellent academic reference, although I am Reformed and not Orthodox.
• This study bible uses the New King James Version (NKJV).
• John 1: 17: For the law was given through Moses, but grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.
• The Orthodox Study Bible references grace with Romans 5: 21.
• The NKJV: Romans 5: 21: so that as sin reigned in death, even so grace might reign through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.
• Again from the NKJV: The Orthodox Study Bible references truth from John 8: 32.
• John 8: 32: And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”
• John 14: 6: Jesus said to him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me.
• John 18: 37: Pilate therefore said to Him, “Are You a king then?” Jesus answered, “You say rightly that I am a king. For this cause I was born, and for this cause I have come into the world, that I should bear witness to the truth. Everyone who is of the truth hears My voice.”
• Without the exact same wording and emphasis, there is clear theological consistency here between the Apostle Paul's view that the gospel is of grace through faith in the applied atoning and resurrection work of Jesus Christ; and what the Apostle John taught within the Gospel of John.
• This New Testament theology is contrasted from both the Apostle John and the Apostle Paul by the Mosaic Law, of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament.
• Theologically, it is evident that the Apostle John and Apostle Paul, also agreed on the truth of the Gospel. Again from the NKJV: Ephesians 4: 15: but, speaking the truth in love, may grow up in all things into Him who is the head—Christ—
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THE ORTHODOX STUDY BIBLE, NEW TESTAMENT AND PSALMS (1993) Saint Athanasius Orthodox Academy, Nashville, Tennessee, Thomas Nelson Publishers
