<p>10:28&nbsp;<em>And do not be afraid-</em>&nbsp;The Lord was quite clear that His followers should expect death and serious suffering for preaching Him. He perceived that fear of audience response would be a strong factor in the temptation not to preach Him. But He gave the reason for not fearing in :26- all shall be revealed at the day of judgment. Belief in the doctrine of final judgment therefore has huge impact upon life in practice- in this case, giving us strength not to fear the consequences of our witness. For many believers today, persecution unto death is not a likely consequence of witness; fear of slight embarrassment, being thought &lsquo;odd&rsquo; for turning a conversation around, is a very small price. The Lord is asking us here to accept that witness for Him may well cost us death. If we accept that, accept it as part and parcel of the Lord&rsquo;s basic message, then our approach to witness will be quite different. Fear of audience response will no longer be a major factor, if we have solemnly accepted that we are prepared to die for the sake of preaching the Gospel. Luke&rsquo;s record adds: &ldquo;I say unto you&nbsp;<em>My friends</em>, Be not afraid of them&hellip;&rdquo; (Lk. 12:4). If we are His friends, the friends of the Son of God, the prince of the kings of the earth- why fear audience response when we witness? The laboured assurances of the next verses about being of more value than sparrows etc. are all in the context, therefore, of assuring us that we need not ultimately fear negative response to our witness.</p>
<p><em>Of those that kill the body but are not able to kill the soul-&nbsp;</em>It is our &lsquo;real self&rsquo; which will eternally endure. In this sense, for the faithful, their body may be killed but their soul cannot be. I take this to mean that who they essentially are is for ever recorded by the Lord, and they will be given that same personality at the resurrection. Significantly, the Bible speaks not of the &lsquo;resurrection of the body&rsquo; [it&rsquo;s the creeds which speak of this], but rather &ldquo;the resurrection of the just&rdquo;, &ldquo;the resurrection of the dead&rdquo;. The resurrection is more about resurrected characters than resurrected bodies, although the process will involve a new body being given.</p>
<p><em>But rather fear Him who is able to destroy</em>- See on 16:25&nbsp;<em>lose it</em>.&nbsp;</p>
<p><em>Both soul and body-</em>&nbsp;The inference can be drawn that the rejected will have both soul and body destroyed at the last day. This means there must be a resurrection of the body- and then the destruction of that body in the condemnation process, as well as of their &quot;soul&quot;.&nbsp;<em>Psuhe</em>&nbsp;has a wide range of meaning- sometimes it can mean simply the body, at other times, the essential personality. This too will be destroyed, for the memory of the rejected will be forgotten, they will cease to exist in all dimensions. There should be a &quot;fear&quot; of rejection; there are more details, more frequently, about the condemnation experience than the joy of acceptance in that day. This is not negative psychology; the Lord in His wisdom knew that this was necessary for us, to keep ever before us the sense of the future we may miss. This should be our fear, far more than death or social rejection by those to whom we witness.</p>
<p><em>In Gehenna</em>- The Jews believed that &lsquo;hell&rsquo; had three sections: Gehenna, a place of eternal fire for those Jews who broke the covenant and blasphemed God; &lsquo;the shades&rsquo;, an intermediate place similar to the Catholic idea of purgatory; and a place of rest where the faithful Jew awaited the resurrection at the last day. This distinction has no basis in the Bible. However, it&rsquo;s significant that the Lord Jesus uses &lsquo;Gehenna&rsquo; and the figure of eternal fire to describe the punishment of people for what the Jews of His day would&rsquo;ve considered incidental sins, matters which were far from blasphemy and breaking the covenant &ndash; glancing at a woman with a lustful eye (Mk. 9:47), hypocrisy (Lk. 12:1,5; Mt. 23:27&ndash;33), not giving a cup of water to a &ldquo;little one&rdquo;, forbidding a disciple of John the Baptist to follow Jesus (Mk. 9:39&ndash;43); not preaching the Gospel fearlessly and boldly (Mt. 10:25&ndash;28). These matters were and are shrugged off as of no eternal consequence. But just like the prophets of Israel did, the Lord Jesus seizes upon such issues and purposefully associates them with the most dire possible punishment which His Jewish hearers could conceive &ndash; Gehenna. Time and again, the Bible alludes to incorrect ideas and reasons with people from the temporary assumption those ideas might be true. The language of demons, as we will show later, is a classic example. And it&rsquo;s quite possible the Lord is doing the same here with the concept of Gehenna &ndash; the punishment for the Jew who breaks the covenant and blasphemes. The Lord was primarily teaching about behaviour, not giving a lecture about the state of the dead. And so He takes the maximum category of eternal punishment known to His audience, and says that this awaits those who sin in matters which on His agenda are so major, even if in the eyes of the Jewish world and humanity generally they were insignificant.</p>