The Sanctifying Work of the Spirit

The opening statements in many of the letters of the New Testament always sound the same to me. As I was reading a few days ago, I came to the beginning of 1 Peter and noticed just how dense it is:

1 Peter 1:1-2

Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ, to God’s elect… who have been chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through the sanctifying work of the Spirit, to be obedient to Jesus Christ and sprinkled with His blood: Grace and peace be yours in abundance.

As my title may suggest, I'm going to focus on what this says about the Spirit, but first I want to cut through the syntax of these verses and highlight the important points:

Jesus Will Build the House for God’s Name

Recall from the previous snack that the book of Hebrews reveals that some of the prophecies concerning Solomon are also applicable to Christ. Of those that I examined, I’d now like to focus on 2 Samuel 7:13: “He is the one who will build a house for my Name.” Let’s notice first of all that Jesus referred to His own body as God’s temple when talking to the Pharisees:

John 2:19

Jesus answered them, “Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days.”

4 Dual Prophecies of Solomon and Jesus

The introduction to the book of Hebrews contains A LOT of quotes from the Old Testament scriptures. It’s become my practice to stop my reading and look up any such quotes to see if any more significance can be gained by understanding the link between original context and the quoted context. An occasion such as this presented itself when I came to the following verse:

Hebrews 1:5

For to which of the angels did God ever say, “You are my Son; today I have become your Father?” Or again, “I will be his Father, and he will be my Son?”

The second quote being referenced here comes from 2 Samuel 7:14. In context, this verse is part of God’s response to David’s desire to build a temple for God to replace the Tent of Meeting. On one hand, 2 Samuel 7 appears to refer to David’s immediate son, Solomon, who became the next king of Israel and supervised the building of God’s temple. However, here we see the book of Hebrews states that this prophecy of Solomon is also a prophecy of Christ. The implications for Solomon are obvious, but what can we learn about Christ from examining these verses further?

The Fire of the Holy Spirit

In the midst of Paul’s closing remarks to the Thessalonians, he likens the Holy Spirit to a fire that dwells within us:

1 Thessalonians 5:19

Do not put out the Spirit’s fire

It’s easy to read this and say, “Oh, I get it. The Spirit is like a fire and we’re supposed to always have the Spirit in us, like not letting a fire go out” (this was my first thought, anyway). But then I remembered something from the Old Testament. God gave the Old Covenant law for very deliberate and specific reasons. Every sacrifice in Leviticus reveals something special about Christ. Every article of the tabernacle in Exodus reveals something about how we are to live, since we are now the temple of God. Recall one of the Lessons from Psalm 1: we should delight in God’s law, but we cannot delight in the law if we do not know the law. When we read that the Spirit is a fire that we must not put out, then we should remember what is written in the law:

Lessons from Psalm 1

Psalm 1 begins with the following list of actions that cause a man to be blessed:

Psalm 1:1-2

Blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked or stand in the way of sinners or sit in the seat of mockers. But his delight is in the law of the LORD, and on His law he meditates day and night.

These are instructions on how to “position ourselves for blessings,” as some have said. There are three things a blessed man does not do: if you want to be blessed, then stop taking advice from the wrong people, don’t live your life the same way that sinners live theirs, and don’t mock God with your attitude. Also, there are two things a blessed man does do: delight in the law of God and think about it all the time.

5 Ways to Conduct Yourself Wisely in Tough Situations

No matter what your life is like, you are eventually going to find yourself in a conflict. Two well-meaning people can find themselves on opposite sides of an issue. While they may be sincere, it is often the case that one or both parties are wrong in their approach to the argument. For those of you in the United Church of God, there have been such circumstances recently, but the principles presented here are of such a broad scope that even those who have no idea what I’m talking about will find them helpful. In such cases, we are all obligated to decide who and what to believe and how to react. God’s Word provides many more instructions than those listed here, but I have found these to be especially relevant.

Do You Need the Law?

Some people claim that the law of God that the Israelites were given on Mount Sinai is not the same law of God that applies to Christians today, while still others claim that no law at all is relevant for Christians today. In Romans, Paul writes to a mixed congregation of Jews and Gentiles who have had problems with certain Jews saying that salvation is by the law rather than by faith in Christ. Paul makes it clear that this is not the case, but notice that he simultaneously defends the keeping of the law:

Romans 2:10-12

But glory, honor, and peace go to every man who works good, to the Jew first, and also to the Greek. For there is no partiality with God. For as many as have sinned without the law will also perish without the law. As many as have sinned under the law will be judged by the law.

Take careful consideration of what it says here: “as many as have sinned without the law will also perish without the law.”

Do You Trust in the Flesh or in the Spirit?

I've been remiss in writing during the Feast of Tabernacles, partly due to lack of internet and partly due to lack of time. Now that I'm back, I should have a fair amount of both, and I'm full of ideas from the Feast, so hang on tight! For today, a subtle point about the following scripture in Jeremiah occurred to me.

Jeremiah 17:5

Cursed is the one who trusts in man, who depends on flesh for his strength and whose heart turns away from the LORD.

When I asked in the title, "Do you trust in the flesh or in the Spirit?" I can't imagine that many people would answer that they trust in the flesh - but the reality is that many people who call themselves Christians trust in the flesh rather than the Spirit!

6 Things Every Christian Should Know About the 1000 Years

Revelation 20 refers to a 1000 year period immediately following Christ's return. This period of time is pictured by the next of God's annual festivals: the Feast of Tabernacles, which is also called the Feast of Ingathering and the Feast of Booths. This feast begins this Wednesday night and lasts for 7 days. Here are some important points about the Millennium that we should be familiar with and keep in mind during this time:

7 Things Every Christian Should Know about the Day of Atonement

Tomorrow at sundown begins the Day of Atonement, the only day in the bible on which God commands His people to fast. This day has great significance for Christians today, and the following list contains just some of the important points that this festival of God represents.

7 Things Every Christian Should Know About Christ's Second Coming

The Feast of Trumpets, referred to as "Rosh Hashanah" by the Jews, begins tonight at sunset and continues until tomorrow at sunset. For the Jews, this day represents the beginning of the civil new year, a time of restoration and repentance leading up to the Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur). In truth, this Holy Day pictures the second coming of Jesus Christ to earth, as I explained in a previous article. This Feast is not just for the Jews, and Christians today should be observing this day. Here are 7 important points about Christ's second coming that are pictured by the Feast of Trumpets:

Stephen Hawking Says God is "Not Necessary" for Creation

Today, Fox News published a story about physicist Stephen Hawking crediting the laws of physics for the creation of the universe rather than God. He is quoted as saying:

"Because there is a law such as gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing"

From reading this, you might say to yourself that if God created the laws and the laws "created" the universe, then God still created the universe. If that is the case, then the existence of the universe is still dependent on the existence of God. However, to fully complete his denial of God, Dr. Hawking then goes on to exclude even this notion:

"It is not necessary to invoke God to light the blue touch paper and set the universe going."

Really?

God on Globalization

Yet another snack that originated from the food safety conference last month. When the representative from the CDC was speaking, he was talking about all of the difficulty in tracking outbreaks on a national scale. One of the things that he noted was that if 10 people who ordered the same dish in a restaurant in a small town on Tuesday all get sick on either Wednesday or Thursday with the same symptoms, then it’s not hard to trace the source. The difficulty comes in when you have a national outbreak with cases sporadically strewn across the nation. It’s much more difficult to diagnose food-borne illness when the patients have never met each other, their respective doctors don’t know each other, and there is no reason to think that the person is sick from something that they ate rather than from some other source. The curious thing is that these types of nation-wide outbreaks only occur because products are shipped from a single producer to retailers all over the country – so if it’s contaminated when it leaves the packaging plant, it’s contaminated in dozens of stores across several states.

I’m not necessarily advocating that we all buy local, but it does seem that life would be a lot simpler if we did. This lead me to pondering what God thinks of globalization. Globalization is good for consumers because it gives us greater variety and better prices. It's bad for consumers because it causes more pollution, more potential for spreading disease, and fewer local jobs in areas that are not productive enough to attract large-scale businesses. When I put it like that, globalization doesn’t look so great. It's not enough to effect a drastic change in my behavior, but it does make me wonder if this is the sort of thing that God was getting at in these scriptures:

Micah 4:4

Every man will sit under his own vine and under his own fig tree, and no one will make them afraid, for the LORD Almighty has spoken.

O, How Man Goes Wrong: Let Me Count the Ways!

I often think about the two greatest commandments in the law: love God with all of your being, and love your neighbor as yourself. Each of these two commandments encompass an entire list of commandments. Most notably, the first 4 of the Ten Commandments instruct us on how to have love for God, and the last 6 of the Ten Commandments instruct us on how to have love for each other. Furthermore, there are two ways that you can fail to keep any commandment:

1. You can practice it outwardly, but not be sincere in your heart.
2. You can fail to practice it.

Rejoice in Suffering

The New Testament takes quite a stand on the attitude that we should have towards trials. There is a familiar scripture in James that says:

James 1:2-4

Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything. 

We are supposed to rejoice whenever bad things happen to us because it helps us develop perseverance. Furthermore, this verse indicates that by persevering, we are made “mature and complete, not lacking anything.” But how does perseverance make us complete? Paul’s letter to the church of God in Rome describes this process in more detail:

God’s Solution to Food-borne Illness

This is yet another idea that I got from the food safety forum last week (it sort of made an impression on me). One of the main causes of food-borne disease is improper sanitation, which I discussed a little bit in a previous snack (How to Change Your Mind). You could say that the point of that discussion, as it relates to sanitation in foods, is that people need to have a compassionate heart so that they care about the people that they are growing/packaging/preparing food for, and that this is the only way to ensure that they will observe proper sanitation standards. Another point accentuated in that post was that when God gives us His Spirit, He transforms our heart so that we will keep His laws. Of course God will ultimately eradicate disease of every kind, but the aim of this snack is to make the case that the current burden of food-borne disease could be greatly reduced if everyone would simply follow God’s law today.

The Golden Calf – Which Kind of Idolatry?

As I was doing my latest article at The Voice of One Crying Out in the Wilderness (The Second Commandment - Is it Different from the First?), it occurred to me that the account of the Israelites making a golden calf in Exodus 32 is a violation of the 2^nd commandment rather than the 1^st (see the introduction to that article for an explanation of the difference). Let’s carefully review exactly what happened in that story (you may want to read it yourself first in Exodus 32).

How is God's Government Different?

This is yet another Spiritual Snack inspired by the food safety conference that I attended the other day. At this forum, there were speakers from the food safety agencies of the federal governments (FDA, FSIS, and CDC) as well several from state food safety agencies. For those of you who are not aware (as I wasn’t), the state of North Carolina has pretty much the best food safety program in the country, so it was kind of a big deal. Anyway, as I was learning about all of these different government agencies and how they were structured, some important points of God’s government came to mind.

How to Change Your Mind

I was at a food safety seminar recently, and the subject of how to get people to practice better sanitation standards came up. The remark was made that in many cases people know what good sanitation standards are and can easily pass quizzes on the most important points, and yet so many food-handlers don’t practice them. The speaker remarked that indeed we all do this sometimes – we know that we should wash our hands after going to the restroom, but sometimes we just don’t. Why is that, and what does it have to do with God?

God Will Have Mercy on Them All

If you’ve ever read Exodus, you may wonder whether or not it was fair for God to harden Pharaoh’s heart, especially when Pharaoh got to the point where he wanted to let the Israelites go. Is God fair? Did God condemn Pharaoh by hardening his heart?

What does the Bible Teach about Women in the Church?

Paul made a few statements about women in his letters which have often been misinterpreted to either suppress the role of women in the church or to label the bible as sexist. For example,

1 Corinthians 14:34-36

Women should remain silent in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but should be in submission, as the Law says. If they want to inquire about something, they should ask their own husbands at home; for it is disgraceful for a woman to speak in the church.

The context of the chapter here is vital to understanding what Paul is actually saying here.

Malachi 3:6 - "I, the LORD, Do Not Change"

God’s law is no exception to Malachi 3:6 – God does not change! Contrary to popular thought, Jesus did not come preaching a “new” religion of love. Instead, He came declaring that the Israelites had never truly embraced the love that God had commanded through the law and the prophets. This is clearly seen in the following passage from Zechariah:

Zechariah 7:9-11

 This is what the LORD Almighty says: 'Administer true justice; show mercy and compassion to one another. Do not oppress the widow or the fatherless, the alien or the poor. In your hearts do not think evil of each other.' But they refused to pay attention; stubbornly they turned their backs and stopped up their ears. They made their hearts as hard as flint and would not listen to the law or to the words that the LORD Almighty had sent by his Spirit through the earlier prophets. So the LORD Almighty was very angry.

Mercy, Not Sacrifice (Part 2)

The second time that Christ quotes Hosea 6:6 (“I desire mercy, not sacrifice”) is found in Matthew 12:1-8 (a contextual discussion of this verse can be found in What Does God Want?, and also see Part 1 of this snack). Here we have the disciples picking grain from a field on the Sabbath. This prompts the Pharisees to point out to Jesus that they are breaking the Sabbath.

Matthew 12:3-7

He answered, “[David] entered the house of God, and he and his companions ate the consecrated bread – which was not lawful for them to do, but only for the priests. Or haven’t you read in the Law that on the Sabbath the priests in the temple desecrate the day and yet are innocent? If you had known what these words mean, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the innocent. For the Son of Man is the Lord of the Sabbath.” 

Some people look at these circumstances and say that Christ was changing how the Sabbath was to be observed. While he did take issues with how the Pharisees observed the Sabbath, he was not changing how God originally commanded us to keep the Sabbath. The Pharisees had built a strict system of traditions in addition to God’s law in order to make sure that people wouldn’t be breaking the law. For example, the Pharisees had rules about how much you were allowed to carry on the Sabbath, thinking “if you can’t carry anything, then you can’t do any work that might involve carrying something.” Strict rules such as these were not given by God, and that’s why Jesus refers to them as “commandments of men” (Matthew 15:9) – and that’s exactly what Jesus took issue with here.

In His response, Jesus first cites the time when David and his men were fed with bread from the temple, found in 1 Samuel 21. The point that He is making with this reference is that God’s law of love can, in special circumstances, supersede the physical observances required by the law, such as if a person or animal falls into a hole on the Sabbath, you're allowed to pull them out (Luke 14:5). What David and his men did was worse than what the disciples were doing because God specifically made a law that only the priests could eat that bread, and yet David is not condemned for it. On the other hand, what the priests did in the temple was required by the law, and their Sabbath day duties easily violated the Pharisees so-called “law” (i.e. the “commandments of men”). Jesus then pulls out Hosea 6:6 to drive home the point that God’s law is not just about physical observances, but about love. God didn’t mind if we gather food to eat on the Sabbath (as long as we are doing it to feed ourselves and not for profit); therefore, the Pharisees “condemned the innocent.” Finally, Jesus asserts His authority, telling them “the Son of Man is the Lord of the Sabbath.” Jesus owns the Sabbath – It’s His! Therefore, He knows what’s allowed and what’s not.

It should be clear then that Jesus was in no way trying to change the Sabbath (or any of God’s law, for that matter) in justifying what His disciples did. Instead, He rebuked the Pharisees for unrightfully making the Sabbath a burden with extraneous requirements rather than observing it with their hearts, and it’s all about the heart.

Mercy, Not Sacrifice (Part 1)

In my recent post What Does God Want?, I explained the contextual meaning of Hosea 6:6, a verse which Christ quoted in response to the Pharisees on two separate occasions. The first instance in which Jesus’ quotes Hosea 6:6 (which says “I desire mercy, not sacrifice,”) is found in Matthew 9:9-13. This story begins with Christ calling Matthew, who was a tax collector, to follow Him. The Pharisees wouldn’t have even touched a person like Matthew, and yet Jesus ate at Matthew’s house, along with other “tax collectors and ‘sinners.’” Considering their way of thinking, it’s no wonder that the Pharisees were taunting the disciples over this! When this got back around to Jesus, he said, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.”

How was Christ using this verse? I believe that His meaning was two-fold. The primary purpose of His response was to justify the fact that He was eating with people who were generally regarded as unrighteous men. His claim is that He is there to help them as a doctor helps a sick person. Their sickness was their sin, which He desired them to repent of through His teaching and guidance. That’s always why He preached: so that people would repent and turn to God. When He quotes Hosea 6:6, He is mostly accentuating His love and compassion for these people (mercy), not simply following the letter of God’s law as the Pharisees did (sacrifice).

The secondary implication of His response was to point out the hypocrisy of the Pharisees. Note that He says “go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.’ He was not complimenting the Pharisees here by distinguishing them as the “righteous” - it sounds more like a challenge! He was pointing out their pride for thinking that they were righteous. In reality, they were not doing what God wanted! God desired "mercy" from them through love and compassion towards these people that they were calling sinners, but they gave God only "sacrifice" through physical adherence to the law, disregarding unconditional love for others. After all, the commandment has always been "love your neighbor as yourself" - it has never been required that your neighbor be righteous by your own standards.

Christ: Our Guilt Offering

Isaiah 53 prophesies about the coming of Christ, and includes numerous aspects of His life and the suffering He would endure. The phrasing of verse 10 in the NIV caught my eye, where it says “Yet it was the LORD’s will to crush Him and cause Him to suffer, and though the LORD makes His life a guilt offering, He will see His offspring and prolong His days, and the will of the LORD will prosper in His hand.” What does it mean that His life is a guilt offering? We know that Christ was sacrificed for our sins, but is there more significance to this concept?

The “guilt offering” was a particular kind of offering in Israel’s sacrificial system. The provisions for it are given in Leviticus 5:14-19. The guilt offering is similar to the sin offering, and in fact the Hebrew words for “guilt” and “sin” are very similar and sometimes interchangeable. The key difference in the two is that the guilt offering is given instead of the sin offering if there is the opportunity to make “restitution.” It says that anyone who sins “in regard to any of the LORD’s holy things” is to bring a ram for sacrifice, but he must also “make restitution for what he has failed to do in regard for the holy things, add a fifth of the value to that and give it all to the priest, who will make atonement for him… and he will be forgiven.”

Today, Jesus has taken His place as both our High Priest and the Guilt Offering for our sins; however, we are still required to make restitution to God in order to fulfill the law concerning the guilt offering. More plainly, I say again: Christ is the priest and blood sacrifice required to fulfill those aspects of the guilt offering law, but the responsibility of restitution still falls on us to fulfill!  In so far as we had before dedicated ourselves to living an ungodly life, we must also dedicate ourselves with the same fervor plus “a fifth,” so that we may be more zealous for God’s way of life than we ever were for the world’s way of life.

Jesus and the Snakes

Numbers 21:4-8 gives a seemingly odd episode from the Israelites' wanderings. The Israelites, as they often did, complained that God was just leading them around "to die in the desert," grumbling that they had no food or water. As an unusual form of punishment, God sends poisonous snakes that begin biting and killing them. After this goes on for a bit, the Israelites quickly ask Moses to pray to God to take the snakes away. Interestingly, God didn't take the snakes away; rather, He told Moses to make a "bronze snake" and put it up on a pole, and that if anyone is bitten by a snake, they could look at the bronze snake and live.

Flash forward several centuries. In John 3:1-15, Jesus is explaining to Nicodemus, a certain Pharisee who believed that Jesus had come from God, that men must be born again to enter God's Kingdom. Nicodemus asks, "How can this be?" to which Jesus tells him that since he has not understood earthly things, then neither does Jesus expect him to understand heavenly things. And then, he says something interesting in verses 14-15: "Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes in Him may have eternal life."

I am continually amazed by how intimately everything in the bible is connected. After some consideration, I came to the following conclusions as to the meaning of what Jesus is revealing here. Notice that in the Numbers account, God sent the snakes. Jesus prophesied that there would be many false teachers; and, given what we know about snakes in the bible, my best analysis is that these snakes are false teachers whose false instruction, their "bite," causes death. God is preparing a time of great distress to come on the earth, which will cause everyone to cry out to be saved as the Israelites did. God has lifted up Christ, so that all who will look to Him rather than to the false teachers will live, though they have been bitten by false doctrines. At that time, people will be given understanding that Nicodemus lacked, both of earthly and heavenly things.

What Happened at Massah?

Recall the story of Satan tempting Jesus in the desert. You can read it in Luke 4 for a refresher, and you will see that for each of Satan's temptations Jesus had an answer from the Law. The part that I want to focus on is this: when Satan told Jesus to throw himself down off the cliff and have the angels save him, Jesus said "It says: 'Do not put the Lord your God to the test.'" The scripture He quoted is from Deuteronomy 6:16, which reads "Do not test the Lord your God as you did at Massah." 

So what exactly happened at Massah? After being delivered from slavery out of Egypt, Israel had rejected the promised land by their lack of faith and were being led through the desert by God from one place to the next as a period of trial and testing. Eventually they stopped at a place where there was no water for them to drink, and they start arguing with Moses and complaining against God, telling him to give them water, to which Moses responds by saying "Why do you put the LORD to the test?" The word "Massah" means "testing," and I find it interesting that, while God was testing the Israelites to see whether they would follow His ways or not in their wilderness wandering, the Israelites, rather than obeying God, in turn tested God, challenging Him to see whether He would really provide for them - as if parting the Red Sea and raining down manna had not been enough!

Moses then asked God what to do, because he could see the people were getting out of control. Despite the fact that God wasn't happy with their attitude, He provided water for His people. As a result of this whole ordeal, Moses gave the place the names "Massah," which means "testing," and "Meribah," which means "quarreling," because Israel tested the God and argued by saying, 'Is the LORD among us or not?'" 

Going back to the temptation: Satan was asking Jesus to prove that God was with Him. How often do we question whether or not God is with us? Just as He patiently provided water for an unbelieving people then, even greater is the patience of God toward us, for surely we have all sometimes tested God ourselves in ignorance as we wander through our own wilderness! Thank God for His mercy! But we are called to a higher standard, because Jesus, in whose way we are called to walk, after 40 days of fasting demonstrated through His response that we should not seek to prove to ourselves or anyone else that God is with us, but to have faith in God to provide. The Israelites were ready to stop following God and go look for water themselves because they thought God might abandon them, whereas Jesus knew that God was with Him.

So also, by the holy scriptures we can know that God is with us! Isaiah prophesied of Christ in Isaiah 7:14 that He would be called "Immanuel," meaning "God with us." Jesus lived on earth and was "God with us" in the flesh, but also in the Great Commission, when Jesus appeared to the disciples after His resurrection, Jesus assured the disciples that "surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age."  Jesus continues to be "God with us" today as we draw near the "end of the age," if we will repent of our sins, be baptized, and strive to live by God's word.

Rich Men, Camels, and Needles

In Mark 10:25, Jesus says that "it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God." I've often heard people use this scripture out of context as though it were literal, and it always bugged me until I read it today, but now I know for sure that they're wrong. Let's review what has just happened leading up to this verse. If you don't remember the story of the Rich Young Man, you can read it in Mark 10:17-31, but I'll give a brief review. There was a rich young man who came to Jesus and asked Him how inherit eternal life. Jesus tells Him to keep the commandments and lists a few of them. The man claims that he has always kept the commandments, and Jesus responds that he lacks one thing: he must sell everything that he owns, give it to the poor, and follow Him. The man became sad and left because he was rich and wasn't willing to give it up for God - then Jesus gives the analogy with the camel.

If we read between the lines, his problem was not that he was rich - it's that he held his wealth in higher esteem than God's kingdom and would not let it go to follow Jesus. Additionally, if we keep reading, Jesus makes this even more clear. The disciples fervently discuss this among themselves, as they typically did when Jesus said something they didn't understand, and asked him "Who then can be saved?" Jesus replied "With man this is impossible, but not with God; all things are possible with God."

There you go. He just told them that it is possible for a rich man to enter His Kingdom because with God all things are possible. Consider also some of the rich men in the Old Testament who will be in God's Kingdom - David, Job, and Abraham were all very rich. The key difference is that these men had the right heart, as is evident in each of their stories. They would have given up everything that they had without a second thought to follow God, and this is how we must also be.