Although the picture of drinking from the mouth of God is a useful image of the word of God as the water of life, the second part of the saying is so typically gnostic -- hidden things! We've got hidden things over here! -- that it's not worth bothering with.
109 Jesus said, "The kingdom is like a man who had a treasure in his field without knowing it. He died and left it to his son, but the son didn't know (about the treasure). After he inherited the field he sold it. When the one who bought it went plowing, he found the treasure. He began to lend money at interest to whomever he wished." [Matthew 13:44]
This saying twists the meaning of the similar (but much shorter) parable of the Hidden Treasure in Matthew 13. In the Bible, the point of the parable (and its companion, the Pearl) is that one should be willing to give up anything for eternal life (compare Paul's thoughts about outreach and evangelism in 1 Corinthians 9:1-27 and 10:23-11:1). Here, the gnostic idea is that knowledge is hidden, and can only be uncovered by hard work. There might be a Christian application to be sure to pass one's Christian faith on to the next generation, but the main point here is the misguided idea that the guy who works hard will win. For Biblical truth to the contrary, we hardly need to go any farther than Ecclesiastes ("For whom am I toiling?" Eccl. 4:8), and Ecclesiastes 7:20, "There is not a righteous man on earth who does what is right and never sins." Compare this to Ephesians 2:8-10: "It is by grace you have been saved, through faith -- and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God -- not by works, so that no one can boast."
110 Jesus said, "Let whoever finds the world and becomes rich, renounce the world." [Matthew 19:16-24; Mark 10:17-25; Luke 18:18-25]
Compare Proverbs 11:28: "Whoever trusts in his riches will fall, but the righteous will thrive like a green leaf." Also Job 21:34; Psalm 49:6; etc.
111 Jesus said, "The heavens and the earth will be rolled up in your presence. [Isaiah 34:4; Hebrews 1:10-12; Revelation 6:13-14 and some versions of Psalm 102:25-27] And one who lives from the living one [John 11:25-26] will never die." Does not Jesus say, "The world is unworthy of one who finds himself?"
In this context, this saying seems more like a promise that the one who discovers the hidden secrets will understand everything than the comfort that believers will have nothing to fear from the Last Day.
112 Jesus said, "Woe to the flesh that depends on the soul; woe to the soul that depends on the flesh."
This co-dependency motif is present earlier in Thomas; see sayings 29 and 87.
113 His disciples said to him, "When will the kingdom come?" [Jesus said] "It will not come by waiting for it. It will not be a matter of saying 'Here it is' or 'There it is.' Rather, the kingdom of the Father is spread out upon the earth, and men do not see it." [Matthew 24:23-25; Mark 13:21-23; Luke 17:20-24]
Although we could find this idea in the Apocrypha (Sirach 1:9, "The Lord poured [his Wisdom] out upon all his works"), the idea is also found throughout Scripture itself.
114 Simon Peter said to him, "Send Mary away, for females are not worthy of life." Jesus said, "Look, I will lead her myself so that she will become like a male, so that she too may become a living spirit resembling you males. For every female who will make herself male will enter the kingdom of heaven."
Perhaps it is in this final passage that the Gnostic author of The Gospel of Thomas shows his true colors. To the Gnostic, eternal life is not possible for a woman, who is so completely bound to the flesh. Perhaps there was also a kind of male guilt involved in this idea: women were completely bound up in male fleshly desires. But the idea behind this offensive passage is that unless a woman becomes like a man, setting aside all thoughts of the world and focusing on loftier, heavenly things, she can't enter into eternal life. This idea is found in other ancient heretical writings: "The perishable has reached the imperishable; the feminine element has attained to this masculine element" (First Apocalypse of James 41:15-19).
This is contrary to everything in Scripture. We don't achieve eternal life ourselves at all. We can't make ourselves acceptable to God by becoming better people, or by comparing ourselves to a person (or a race, or gender) that we feel is somehow inferior. And we can't make ourselves acceptable to God by balancing the evil in our lives with good, either. We don't pray our way into heaven, and we don't pray or pay the way into heaven for anyone else, either. Jesus forgave our sins.
There is no other testimony about God than that which is already there for us in the 66 books of the Holy Bible. John was fighting this very notion when he wrote:
Anyone who believes in the Son of God has the testimony in his heart. Anyone who does not believe God has made him out to be a liar, because he has not believed the testimony God has given about his Son. And this is the testimony: God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life. (1 John 5:10-12)
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