A while ago, I reported how after knee surgery I had trouble walking down stairs. My physical therapy consisted mostly of stretches performed several times per day. I realized from these that I could improve a skill not just by repeating the process (like walking down stairs a lot), but also by preparation (like quadriceps stretches and leg lifts while on my back or leaning on a tree). I picked prayer as a discipline to improve. A prayer stretch would be something that is not prayer that improves prayer. Humility was my first choice for a prayer stretch. Why? That's the best way to pray for the first time: “God, have mercy on me a sinner.” Subsequently: “Humility is not thinking less of yourself, it's thinking of yourself less.” (Rick Warren). “If you meet a really humble man, ... probably all you will think about him is that he seemed a cheerful, intelligent chap who took a real interest in what you said to him.... He will not be thinking about humility: he will not be thinking about himself at all.” (C.S. Lewis) That kind of humility helped my frequency of prayer and emotional transparency before God. It continues to be a preparation for prayer. That kind of humility certainly helps relationships! Likewise, stretches of Forgiveness and Thankfulness have become part of my prelude to prayer. A little thought will convince you that, like muscles, no virtue stands alone. Virtues support other virtues. Recently I have been reviewing the Lord's Prayer. The line "your will be done" is a commitment first to learn what God wants; and then to make it so, ideally with other people. Though narrower in scope, I find the line, "Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors" to be the most challenging in the Lord's Prayer. This verbal contract is particularly weighty in view of Jesus' ominous comment that immediately follows the Lord's Prayer: "If you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses." This warning is repeated to close the story of the unjust servant in Matthew 18:21-35. Something to consider: How does the Lord's Prayer differ from my prayers? What do I omit, what do I add? Think about how this applies to you, then read on.
Don't panic. Probably all points in your prayer are modeled by other outstanding Biblical prayers and principles. Here is a list. I suspect what Jesus selected to include in this model prayer are priorities his followers then and his followers now should add to our daily prayers. My knee is better, my prayers are better. I need to work on, among other things, forgiveness. Ha, forgiveness is easy, except when it involves people. Forgiving a Christian brother or sister can involve a four-step escalation procedure, per Matthew 18. But how do I handle a hit-and-run where the offender is not known? Do I stew forever? How about when I'm afflicted by a group of disagreeable people, a greedy corporation, a whole other nation that has missiles pointed at me? My current main problem with forgiving is discerning how I should best forgive such uncooperative offenders. Here I offer a batch of "forgiveness stretches". Some of these simply broaden my perspective and get above the fog of resentment. Five Stretches for Better Forgiveness Forgiveness means “canceling a debt”. Forgiveness does not mean:
Stretch #1: Love!
Love: Have compassion. Do kindness. Inasmuch as I practice unconditional compassion and kindness, then decisions about forgiveness are not complicated. Forgiveness can be reflexive rather than calculated. Stretch #2: Discern! “And it is my prayer that your love may abound more and more with knowledge and all discernment…” Philippians 1:9-11 “If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God…” James 1 Stretch #3: Rejoice! “Rejoice in the Lord always; again I say, rejoice! Let your reasonableness be known to everyone. The Lord is at hand; do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.” Philippians chapter 4 “Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.” Matthew chapter 5 “Not forgiving is like drinking rat poison, and then waiting around for the rat to die.” - author Anne Lamott Stretch #4: Ask God to Do the Work You Cannot Do, and Trust God to Do It • Jesus asked, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” Luke 23:34 • Stephen asked, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.” Acts 7:58-60 • Paul prayed, “All deserted me. May it not be charged against them.” 2 Tim 4:16 • “Vengeance is mine,” says the Lord. Romans 12:17-21, Deuteronomy 32:35 Stretch #5: Persevere
"While physical training has some value,
training in holy living is useful for everything. It has promise for this life now and the life to come." 1 Timothy 4 What are your Spiritual Stretches?
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This is from a sermon series on the Lord's Prayer. Eric and Wadmar were other presenters. See the October 2024 videos. Here I consider technical issues with Matthew 6:12, “Forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors.” I hope you like the pictures! Other articles will pursue the emotional perspectives of forgiveness. If you want to see a train wreck in church, ask everyone to pray the “Lord’s Prayer” together from memory. English-speaking crowds start in mumbled confusion:
You say: just read the words from a screen or from paper. Ah, but a child will pipe up, “Mommy says we pray with our eyes closed!” The elderly may sigh, “That’s not the way I learned it.” After that rocky start and a few more blips, Catholics, Anglicans, Episcopalians, Lutherans, and Methodists saying “Our Father” reach this combo request and commitment:
Other Christians are terse:
If everyone can regroup to end the prayer, many finish abruptly:
But the King James Version crowd continues onward for a big finish, a magnificent and rousing doxology:
Even if we all read from a projected image, you know that down the street someone is reading different words. This train wreck may not happen Sunday morning, but is pretty much guaranteed for Christian weddings and funerals. The confusion isn't perceived as robust diversity. It doesn't help the perceived integrity of this model prayer, of the Bible, and Christian unity. Good news: the oldest manuscripts of the Lord’s Prayer are consistent, word-by-word. I'll demonstrate this in a minute. More good news: Instead of digging like Indiana Jones or traveling to distant museums or monasteries, you can access images of these foundational documents online. Moreover, we'll demonstrate that traditions—not Bibles, not translations—are the primary cause of these word collisions. This evidence requires some technical trekking. Please consider these encouragements to keep on praying, keep on praying: “If you are tired from carrying heavy burdens, come to me and I will give you rest.” “In certain ways we are weak, but the Spirit is here to help us. For example, when we don't know what to pray for, the Spirit prays for us in ways that cannot be put into words.” (If you are reading this on a phone, you might want to rotate to landscape mode.) THE LORD’S PRAYER IN STEREO
This comparison suggests that Jesus adapted prayers to the situation—even this model prayer. I have highlighted differences in order to reconcile them. Features in common, like "Father" and "holy name" suggest they are essentials. Also, what praise, requests, and commitments here tend to be in my prayers? Which am I missing? What do I add that is not here? But having spotlighted them, I confidently propose to here clear up those translation collisions, starting with "Forgive us our debts" versus "Forgive us our trespasses". Do these originate in the source manuscripts? Do different Bible translations to English account for these collisions? As you'll see, the sources use just one Greek word for what gets translated as debts, trespasses, sins, etc. Here is a picture of that source word as penned around AD 350: Pronounce that "oh-pheel-EH-mahtah". As in English, another form of the same word is used for "debtors", "those who trespass against us", etc. As a visual aid, below is a someone feeling a tomato, er, tomahtah. She also is paying her tomahtah bill. Let's call this young lady,"Ophelia" to associate her with this mystery word OpheelEHmahtah in its various forms. Following is a photo from what scholars consider the oldest manuscript of the whole Bible. (There are older manuscripts focused on individual parts of the Bible.) Featured here is the Lord's Prayer. Highlighted toward the bottom are the two Ophelia words. Highlighted at the top and magnified below is a Greek word that transliterates as "PATER". What do think PATER means in English? Over on the right, look at the fourth line. It starts with a word "PONHROU" meaning "evil", as in "deliver us from evil" in verse 13. The next word after that is "EAN" meaning "if" as in "if you forgive" beginning verse 14. What is between? Nothing. This is where we expect, "For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever, amen." This expected praise doesn't show up in a source manuscript until 200 years later. We'll show that in a minute. But first, here is a second AD 300-400 source manuscript, Codex Sinaiticus. It was found in Mount Sinai monastary and now resides in the British Museum in London. Apart from spelling abbreviations and halos for "PATER" and heaven, Sinaiticus agrees with Vaticanus. Wrapping our show and tell: 200 years after Vaticanus and Sinaiticus, here from the Smithsonian in Washington DC is Codex Washingtonianis. This third manuscript also has "PATER" and two "Ophelias" just where expected. But there's more. Do you see the "AMEN" in the largest highlighted section? You might also spot ΔΥΝΆΜΕΙς , "power". Alas, Washingtoniatis usually is in a vault not on exhibit. You can access images of these three source manuscripts and others at: ntvmr.uni-muenster.de/liste/. For a third time we see those two "Ophelia" words. Other manuscripts will present the "Our Father" quite as we've seen here. We have consistency. But what do these words mean? "Debts" or "trespasses" or what? To answer this, we consider how these words are used elsewhere in the Bible and other writings from that time. Aha, Matthew 18 has eight Ophelias! Here is useful background info for Matthew 18: How ought one repent? How to apply the Torah to life's persistent challenges quite occupied the Jewish thinkers after Daniel's time. By the time of the Pharisees, they advised that offenders confess their fault and then request forgiveness by saying, “Please” three times. This they based on Genesis 50:17, where in Hebrew the brothers beg Joseph, “Please, please, please forgive us!” The first two chapters of Amos also figure in. There are additional practices, opportunities, and safeguards to deal with repentance and forgiveness, such as Yom Kippur and prayer. What about crooks who would exploit easy forgiveness? The sages and later the Pharisees maintained that after a third forgiveness—nine pleases—the victim need not forgive, and should call in the authorities to investigate and deal with this forgiveness moocher. Meet sincere, impulsive, fisherman Peter, a follower of Jesus. Maybe Peter is thinking, “Jesus is big on forgiveness. The Pharisees say to forgive three times. I bet Jesus wants us to forgive four times. Maybe five. Hmm... perhaps I can impress Jesus.” THE CASE OF THE UNFORGIVING SERVANT - MATTHEW CHAPTER 18 VERSE 21+ Then Peter came up and said to Jesus, “Lord, how often will my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? As many as seven times?” Jesus said to him, “I do not say to you seven times; but seventy-seven times!” “Therefore the kingdom of heaven is like a king who wished to settle accounts with his servants:
But when that same servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed [ōpheilen] him a hundred denarii [about 20 bucks]. Seizing him, he began to choke him, saying, ‘Pay what you owe [opheileis]!’ So his fellow servant fell down and pleaded with him: ‘Have patience with me, and I will pay you!’ He refused and went and put his fellow servant in prison until he should pay the debt [opheilomenon]. When his fellow servants saw what had taken place, they were greatly distressed! They went and reported to their master all that had taken place. Then his master summoned him and said to him, ‘You wicked servant! I forgave you all that debt [opheilomenon] because you pleaded with me. And should not you have had mercy on your fellow servant, as I had mercy on you?’ And in anger his master delivered him to the jailers, until he should pay all his debt [opheilomenon].” “So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart.” Minor point: The source manuscripts, whether early or late, in Matthew 18 use eight "Ophelia" words like OPHELHMATA, all for money owed. So, "forgive us our debts as we have forgiven our debtors" accurately translates Matthew 6:12. Two verses later in Matthew 6:14-15 Jesus says,"forgive trespasses" [PARAPTOMATA]. This fine word in various forms is used in 15 other New Testament verses, and is translated trespasses, stumbling, transgressions, offenses, or wrongdoing. I conclude that whether we call them debts or trespasses or sins, Jesus wants us to forgive all kinds of faults! Major, major point: Do I want God to forgive me? Then I must sincerely forgive! What's the essential difference among the following four statements of Jesus?
In terms of content? There is no difference. Jesus is consistent. And scary. This is why this is called a hard saying of Jesus. Teachers will emphasize—as they should—that salvation is a free gift not earned by me. They will say that if I don't forgive when I should, then that's a sign I was never saved, just a fake, having no roots, lacking the fruit of the spirit called forbearance. I am hypocritical to pray for my forgiveness when I remain unforgiving. Mark suggests before continuing on the prayer track, I pull the emergency brake and fix my forgiveness. If you have trouble with forgiveness repair, my fix-it advice follows below and in other articles. Jesus had previously, before the story of the unforgiving servant, given an escalation procedure for forgiving another Christian, Matthew 18:15-20. Some Christians assert that I must follow that procedure and instances of it such as in Luke 7, Luke 15, & Acts 2. That is: after escalating confrontations, if there is no repentance, then there is no forgiveness. The offender is shunned, and even that is an opportunity to think again and repent. I previously pondered this sequence. The Lord's Prayer does not require that repentance before forgiveness process. Some other passages likewise simply do not require repentance before forgiveness. I want to do what is right. Am I out of line, usurping God's ways if I forgive before repentance? Say, someone steals my car or vandalizes it. Do I forgive the unknown offender who may never be found? Or else do I stew forever? Or what if someone stabs me. Suppose I die before my murderer can repent. For not forgiving, am I not forgiven? Am I bound for hell? Arghhh, I don't want to play this game. My solution is to let the unconditional law of love govern the practice of forgiveness. I'll confront as opportunity and wisdom permit. Before that, I am a reflexive forgiver. So sue me. I'll forgive you. To conclude: no source manuscript uses trespasses or sins or wrongdoings in the Lord's Prayer. They all use Ophelia words that translate as "debt" and "debtors". Of over 900 English translations only two Bibles have used "trespasses" in the Lord's Prayer. These are the 1546 Tyndale Matthew Bible and the 1833 Joseph Smith Latter Day Saints Inspired Version. Some translations and paraphrases aimed at kids and learners may use neither debts nor trespasses or sins, but instead, something like "wrongdoers". No Catholic Bible uses "trespasses" in "Our Father"! None in English, none in Latin. Why then do Catholics, Anglicans, Episcopalians, Methodists, and Lutherans say, "Forgive us our trespasses"? “Trespasses” comes from traditional catechisms, traditional devotionals, and The Book of Common Prayer! The devout learned "trespasses" as kids. They teach "trespasses" to kids. They pray "forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us" several times a day. If not perfunctory, that's a great practice. Pope Francis in 2019 directed modification of "Our Father" in Bibles from "lead us not into temptation" into "do not let us fall into temptation". This accords with James 1:13. Maybe "trespasses" also will get gradual updates. But there's tremendous inertia in this tradition. From this technical presentation, I hope you have gained appreciation for the veracity of the Bible and the labors of Bible translators. I hope you've gained appreciation for the "Our Father" prayers Jesus taught. I hope you—as I—have come to recognize the debt we owe Jesus, that he himself forgave, paying with his own blood and righteousness. In other articles I have dealt and aim to deal with some emotional and spiritual choices involving prayer and forgiveness. Let us forgive. Then let us pray. Forbearance. That's a word I rarely hear in church—or anywhere. Forgiveness gets the spotlight. To best understand forbearance, let me jabber first about a quarrel regarding forgiveness. Part 1: Forgiveness as a Reflex A long time ago someone asked me what “forgiveness” means to me. I offered the following simplistic definitions:
The something could be a spot on the exit lane, my chocolate-chip cookie, my wallet, my reputation. There's a debt owed to me, at least an apology. Then instead of reacting with retribution, angry words, or silent bitterness, I respond with kindness. Prompt forgiveness is in my interest! “Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And do not lead us into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For if you forgive other people for their offenses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive other people, then your Father will not forgive your offenses.” Matthew 6:11-15 Forgiveness is good for the forgiver. Anne Lamott and others have observed: “Not forgiving is like drinking rat poison, and then waiting around for the rat to die.” I gather from Jesus’ frequent teaching about love, that reflexive forgiveness comes with the whole unconditional love package. Consider his directives from Luke chapter 6: “I say to you who are listening: Love your enemies! Do good to those who hate you! Bless those who curse you! Pray for those who are cruel to you! If anyone slaps you on one cheek, offer him the other cheek, too. If someone takes your coat, do not stop him from taking your shirt. Give to everyone who asks you, and when someone takes something that is yours, don’t ask for it back. Do to others what you would want them to do to you. If you love only the people who love you, what praise should you get? Even sinners love the people who love them. If you do good only to those who do good to you, what praise should you get? Even sinners do that! If you lend things to people, always hoping to get something back, what praise should you get? Even sinners lend to other sinners so that they can get back the same amount! But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without hoping to get anything back. Then you will have a great reward, and you will be children of the Most High God, because he is kind even to people who are ungrateful and full of sin. Show mercy, just as your Father shows mercy. Don’t judge others, and you will not be judged. Don’t accuse others of being guilty, and you will not be accused of being guilty. Forgive, and you will be forgiven.” Tough Questions:
Part 2: Forgiveness as a Procedure Later I found that some Christians say that my reflexive forgiveness is wrong for all concerned. They say, the Perfect Pattern is this: Do not forgive until the offending party has repented! “If your fellow believer sins, go and tell him in private what he did wrong. If he listens to you, you have helped that person to be your brother or sister again. But if he refuses to listen, go to him again and take one or two others with you. ‘Every case may be proved by two or three witnesses.’ If he refuses to listen to them, tell the church. If he refuses to listen to the church, then treat him like a person who does not believe in God or like a tax collector. Truly, I say to you, whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven. Again I say to you, if two of you agree on earth about anything they ask, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven. For where two or three are gathered in my name, there am I among them.” Matthew 18:15-20 An example of this sequence (offense, repentance, then forgiveness) turned up in the Corinth church. The church shunned the offender so thoroughly that Paul had to tell the church, effectively: The offender has repented! Enough already! Forgive! See 1 Corinthians 5 and 2 Corinthians 2 for the two-part story. The above Matthew 18:15-20 procedure segues to Matthew 18:21-25, the story of the Unforgiving Servant, where I find out what happens if I fail to forgive. Jesus could forgive any way he wanted. Yet on the cross, Jesus prayed, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” Stephen, likewise: And as they were stoning Stephen, he called out, “Lord Jesus, receive my spirit.” And falling to his knees he cried out with a loud voice, “Lord, do not hold this sin against them.” And when he had said this, he fell asleep. Acts 7:59-60 A bystander at Stephen's stoning much later had this to say: Repay no one evil for evil, but give thought to do what is honorable in the sight of all. If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. Beloved, never avenge yourselves, but leave it to the wrath of God, for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.” Paul, in Romans 12, referencing Deuteronomy 32 Part 3: Forbearance I still prefer my simple, reflexive forgiveness, but I've come to think one click forgiveness is not always appropriate. It lets me move on and generally is a benefit to me. However, I see value in some confrontation. Can I confront the jerk who cut me off on the highway? Best not! Ought I try to ask productive questions of a friend who offends me? Sure. That's work. That's risky. It takes courage, sensitivity, and practice. I continue to learn. When words have first presented in my mind as a reproach, rephrasing as a question can smooth the way to reconciliation. "Why did you eat the last cookie?" Is silent patience sometimes best? There’s a word for how I reconcile instant forgiveness versus due process. I do... forbearance. “Forbear!” is an antique British word replaced these days by “be patient!” Forbearance is not coping. Forbearance is not ignoring an offense. Forbearance is patiently loving. Forbearance is deferring all retribution to God. Practice with your chin raised saying, “I forbear ye, knave!” Better, practice thinking, “Love bears all things.” On his gravestone William Shakespeare requested visitors to forbear in the sense of “have mercy”: “The quality of mercy is not strained; It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven Upon the place beneath. It is twice blest; It blesseth him that gives and him that takes...” Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice “Forbear to judge, for we are sinners all.” Shakespeare, Henry VI, Part 2. In law, “forbearance” is postponing a legal right. A lender could forbear payment of a debt. Forbearance is more nuanced than either reflexively forgiving or reflexively demanding repentance. My usual pronouncement in charitable giving, certainly to other believers, is “no quid pro quo”, no this for that: reflexive forgiveness. But as a Walmart customer, I expect this for that! As a teacher, I specify certain performance for a grade and specify behavior to avoid the principal's office. If discernment is required for one-to-one problems, how much more when I am just one victim of many? Ought I ignore offenses against another person? Or crimes with unknown perps? Or “victimless” sin? Or offenses to God? Jesus cleared the temple. I pray that the Lord will bless the offending party with insight, remorse, and repentance. But quite as important, I pray, “Heavenly Father, you have toward each of us love, discernment, and patience. May we each grow in love, discernment, and patience." A deciding factor for me is that, Jesus and the New Testament writers urge me to love unilaterally, provided that love is not just compassionate feelings, but also doing kindness, perhaps sacrificial action. See Matthew 5:44-48, Luke 6:27-38. That rather simplifies the procedural calculus: Step 1: Love. Step 2: There is no step 2. The ASV and RSV are the English Bible translations with most use of “forbear”. Here is a comparison. (For mobile viewing of this comparison, rotate to landscape view.) Here is one of the passages and versions that mentions "forbearance". What is a result of forbearance? I entreat Eu-o′dia and I entreat Syn′tyche to agree in the Lord. And I ask you also, true yokefellow, help these women, for they have labored side by side with me in the gospel together with Clement and the rest of my fellow workers, whose names are in the book of life. Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice! Let all men know your forbearance. The Lord is at hand. Have no anxiety about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God, which passes all understanding, will keep your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. Footnote 1: Forbear is a verb meaning to mercifully delay justice. Furbearer is a noun applying to hairy animals such as those above. Forebear—note the additional “e”—is a noun, meaning ancestor. It comes from “fore-be-er”. Can you spot the three forebears in the following image? Footnote 2: Before Jesus’ time, Jewish leaders legislated that proper repentance has several steps: recognition, regret, confession before the aggrieved with a vow not to repeat the misdeed, and restitution when appropriate. If confession was repeated three times—preferably before witnesses—then the offender was no longer accountable morally for that incident. If the victim had not forgiven at that point, the original offender was off the hook and the cosmic debt of moral condemnation transferred to the original victim! Anyone could be forgiven three times for a simple offense. (Is that nine repentances?) Offense #4 indicated that these previous repentances were bogus. Subsequent offenses need not be forgiven. Such repeat offenders faced judicial or community penalty These rules also specified that no one can forgive someone else’s loss. The family or friends of a murder victim must not forgive the murderer! They can demand repentance for the anguish the murder caused them and could forgive that. Punishment for murder simply fell under the eye for an eye standard. The notions of three confessions and three offenses as God’s limits comes from a stretched reading of Amos chapters 1-2. Also, in Genesis 50:17 in Hebrew the brothers beg Joseph for forgiveness, saying "please" three times. Not all Jews agree with this guidline, citing for example, “the steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end.” (Lamentations 3:22). Of course breaking the Sabbath is among the offenses that only God can forgive. Regardless of repentance, the penalty for Sabbath-breaking was death. Temple Judaism is past, so today a truly repentant person will pray more on Yom Kippur and simply do better. Footnote 3: In Matthew 18 Peter probably thought he was generous to forgive seven times. Maybe Peter thought, that's more than twice the patience the Pharisees require. Jesus will be impressed. Knowing Peter, Peter likely hoped that on offense #8 he could pound the offender. But what did Jesus say? “Oh, Peter. Just seven times? Seventy-seven times is better! Let me tell you a story...” Later, in John 21, Jesus walks Peter through three repentance statements. These can be seen as corresponding to Peter’s three denials. Also: three confessions adhered to Talmudic custom mentioned above, probably making Peter feel really forgiven. Footnote 4: In Luke 5, the Pharisees gasped, “Who can forgive sins but God alone?” even though Jesus does not say, “I forgive your sins.” Luke uses a passive Greek verb: “Man, your sins are forgiven,” apheōntai; Matthew 9 and Mark 2, likewise. I'm not sure how this would go in Aramaic or Hebrew. Of course, Jesus then dramatically commands: "But that you may know that the Son of Man has authority on earth to forgive sins”—he said to the man who was paralyzed—“I say to you, rise, pick up your bed and go home!” Footnote 5: Yes, Jesus and Stephen said in effect, “May God forgive you." Coming from me, such a deferral could be heard as poorly-veiled sarcasm implying, “But I do NOT forgive you!" Holy insults are a southern US practice that slightly cushion a criticism or slam: "He's dumb as a bag of hammers, God love him." "That was one, um, one chewy peach pie, bless your heart." Until convinced otherwise, when I say simply, "I forgive you," I will mean it.
Ephesians chapter 4 verse 7: “But grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ's gift…. 11 And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, 12 to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, 13 until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, 14 so that we may no longer be children, tossed to and fro by the waves and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by human cunning, by craftiness in deceitful schemes. 15 Rather, speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in every way into him who is the head, into Christ, 16 from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every joint with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.” English Standard Version. Check other translations. Previously we decoded “saints”: Saints are us! So what does, “to equip the saints” mean? There are 63 English translations for Ephesians 4:12 now at BibleGateway.com. I count four ways they translate “equip”, with four pictures these translations bring to my malleable mind:
Recall that “saints” are part of a word family, the hagios clan. There are 233 New Testament verses featuring members of that family: Holy Spirit, holy city, holy man, holy angels, holy child, holy name, holy prophets, holy covenant, holy writings, holy kiss, and more. Though numerous, these contexts all consistently focus on the notion of the “holy”. "Holy" describes something or someone dedicated to God, or something or someone that God declared to be set apart for him. Thus God has declared us holy; not by our merit, but by Christ's. God had to tell Moses he was standing on holy ground. I don't mind when someone treats me like dirt. Through Christ you and I are holy dirt. By contrast, the New Testament word family for “equip” consists of just this one verse, Ephesians 4:12. The source word, katartismon, has no brothers or sisters. But katartismon has cousins: the katartizo family and katartisis family. These verses give contexts for translating the relatives of “equip”. Translation results among the relatives of “equip”: • prepare • bring forth • mend, repair, or prepare (fishing nets) • finish (work) • prepare (for destruction!) • unite (in same frame of mind) • mature • restore (someone benched for wrongdoing) • supply, complete (what is lacking) • prepare, provide (a body) • create (the universe!) Ahha! “Repairing” the saints probably came from James and John mending their nets. Peeking outside the New Testament (according to Thayer, Kittel, & BDAG), other Greek writings of the time add perspectives for katartismon: setting bones; furnishing a house; arming soldiers; artistry; competency; professionalism. Perhaps Paul saw this wide range of interpretation. He goes on to identify what happens when we successfully equip:
When we have these nine or so virtues, then congratulations! We will be equipped saints! We will be prepared, repaired, and perfected saints. These verses don’t completely reveal a process or a program. For that, what we have here is people. Just people, not programs. The first-century churches had apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors/shepherds, and teachers. These people were saints and they served saints. All the saints served God, one another, and the community. Ha. If these saints, even the apostles, were 100% perfect, then the New Testament would be much shorter! Their mediocrity or occasional slips are a plus for us! While the apostles and company had missionary and first-responder roles in equipping the saints, let us not forget verse 7: “to each one is given a gift”. Each saint has a role in the growth of saints. If we want how-to lessons on how to serve, how to increase in faith and knowledge, how to mature, how to speak truth in love, and more, we have records of how these saints did it: The New Testament. Equipping the Saints It was possible to go from zero to hero for one fellow, but his shepherd was Jesus. Ditto for this guy. Skill with your saintly vehicle benefits from coaching from other saints. The Bible records that missionary saints like Paul and Barnabas received help from one another and from the other saints: encouragement, money, hospitality, companionship, even correction. How ought the church do equipping? Is there a process, action plan, curriculum, catechism, program, or teacher’s guide? I assert that direction for equipping the saints is hidden in plain sight. It’s the Bible. Right: Some assembly required. Do you find the Bible puzzling? Enlist a holy hitchhiker like this guy did. Tip: The Bible is long. Parts are for you now, parts are for other situations. Starting in Genesis is ok. Exodus has drama and directives. Then jump way forward and read Luke several times. Luke’s sequel, Acts, made me a Christian. Leaning on holy people is essential. Pondering God's holiness helps. We also cannot neglect the prompting of God’s Holy Spirit. Just as Moses walked unknowingly on holy ground, just as Jesus walked and talked with two people without their immediate recognition, the Holy Spirit's direction is present even if we don’t recognize it. The higher view of GPS (God’s Powerful Spirit) will become preferred to following hunches and feelings, you know, like babies on the stormy ocean. One aspect of equipping is learning in doing. You’ll succeed at some attempts but mess up so much. Other saints can help you get up and stumble on. I enjoy fresh saints and canned saints. By canned saints I mean written or spoken advice I store for times of need and for continuing education. Another key concept is that saints differ in gifts. That’s stated in Ephesians chapter 4. Check also Romans 12 and the more controversial 1 Corinthians 12. How do you discover spiritual gifts? Consider my experience in an older article, Which Muppet are You? Another Biblical approach to discovering and developing your spiritual gift is in Kevin McConaghy’s super-duper list, The “One Anothers” of Scripture. A book by Gene A. Getz, Building Up One Another, comments on these equipping nuggets. Not enough? I was privileged to hear one of the last sermons of Ray Stedman, so I claim him as one of my equippers. He wrote a book, Body Life, freely available here. Body Life documents the equipping and growth of Peninsula Bible Church in a very hostile environment. Apostle Paul gives the following encouragement to his protégé Timothy and to us: “Keep using the gift God gave you … let it grow, as a small flame grows into a fire. God did not give us a spirit that makes us afraid but a spirit of power and love and self-control.” (2 Timothy chapter 1)
As previously demonstrated, start with an online Bible that contains the word “saints”. A majority of them do! Search for “saints”. You should find around 60 verses in the New Testament. Then comes journalist work. Where are the saints? What are they doing? How did they become saints? Who are these saints? The conclusions: When Luke, Peter, and especially Paul were writing, saints were definitely in Rome, Corinth, Ephesus, Colossae, Philippi, and Jerusalem—apparently everywhere. The saints also were in trouble, they were in jail, they needed money, and they needed prayer. They needed to keep out of the wild lives they previously had lived. They got the titles “saints” and “holy people” (hagios in Greek) not by being valedictorians, not by being exceptionally good, but by God calling them. So it is I conclude that saints are the people usually known as Christians. Saints are not necessarily super-Christians. Saints do not necessarily wear shiny Frisbee™ hats. Saints are not necessarily dead or martyrs. Saints don't necessarily walk on water, though I have seen that. Contemporary saints are us. We Christians are saints. This has terrifying implications for my life and yours. I want to address those at another time, but it suffices to again cite an encouragement from Peter in his first letter: As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance, but as he who called you is holy [hagion], you also be holy [hagioi] in all your conduct. ... But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation [hagios ethnos], a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people. Once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. Jesus prayed sometimes alone and sometimes with his team. In the New Testament, normal growth into actual holy lives requires that mixture of time with God and time interacting with believers. Moreover, a repeated idea in the New Testament is that Christians are a community of specialists: people with different gifts helping one another live and grow, quite as various body organs cooperate. Of the several NT chapters dealing with body life, Ephesians chapter 4 is what I have been studying recently: “…And he [Christ] gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, to equip the saints [that’s us] for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, … so when each part is working properly, the body grows as it builds itself up in love.” Before continuing how equipping can work, I have name-calling to finish. We call ourselves Christians. That term shows up only three times in the Bible! First is Acts 11:26: “in Antioch the disciples were first called Christians.” Check out the “almost Christian” in Acts 26, and the suffering Christians in 1 Peter 4. There are many more Biblical words for Christians. “More-Biblical” matters to some people when it’s convenient. We now know “saints” is one term for Christian, and it is used 60 times. Did you spot “disciple” above? Disciple translates a common Greek word mathētēs, meaning dedicated student or avid follower, a devotee, more than a fan. There were disciples of John the Baptist. There were disciples of the Pharisees. Outside the Bible you could find disciples of the Stoics—I have been accused of being one. You could cheerlead for the Epicureans. I count a whopping 233 Bible references to disciples of Christ. I bet you can think of yet more Bible words that can substitute for “Christian”. Here’s what comes to my mind. Ready? "Believer" (pisteuontes) occurs in the sense of “Christian” at least 14 times in the New Testament, for example, Acts 5:14: "And more than ever believers were added to the Lord, multitudes of both men and women". Some believers were Pharisees, a practice that continues today. "Brothers" of course can refer to siblings or best friends. English New Testaments use "Brothers" (adelphos) around 124 times for Christians. Some translations use "brothers and sisters". "The Church" (ekklēsia in various forms) is strongly associated with a group of Christians or their meeting place. Church appears in this sense around 106 times in the New Testament. Ekklēsia is used also for the Hebrews journeying to the promised land. It is used outside the Bible as a term for any assembly, any group of people, or a place where a group meets. In Acts 19:32, ekklēsia is not translated "church", for it is used of a riotous mob of pagans. Youth groups, pre-schoolers, if the shoe fits…. Preachers sometimes observe that ekklēsia breaks down to base words meaning “out” and “called”. Scholars caution that after 1,400 years of use even before Christ, Greek-speaking people cared about root words just like we care that the English word “humor” derives from “bodily fluid”. Interestingly, the choice of the English word "church" for an assembly of Christians involved some politics. For the Bible that eventually bore his name, King James specified: “3. The Old Ecclesiastical Words to be kept, viz. the word Church not to be translated Congregation &c.” This choice appeased some who wanted King James and Anglican leaders to remain owners of church real estate, authorities over church people, and defenders of the faith. The Bible has several more words for “Christians”.
“But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, so that you may declare the glorious deeds of the one who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Beloved, I urge you as sojourners and exiles to abstain from passions of the flesh, which wage war against your soul." After all that name-calling, I feel better wearing the label, “saint”. What comes to your mind with the mention of “saints”? People who pray a lot? Kind, generous people? Miracle-workers and martyrs? People in heaven? Clearly, saints pray. The Bible also speaks about a dozen times of praying for saints. What about praying to saints? In favor of this claim, the best Biblical reference I can cite is from James 5: “confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great power...” What if my prayer partner—hopefully a righteous person—is in heaven? The record suggests that people in heaven are alive (Matt 22:31-33), and whether in Hades or Heaven they can remember their life experiences and can persist in their values. However, we don’t know if they can see or hear us now. God in heaven hears our prayers—but do saints in heaven? If interaction is the point of paired prayer, separation is a problem. Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, we must get rid of every weight and the sin that clings so closely, and run with endurance the race set out for us, keeping our eyes fixed on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith. For the joy set out for him he endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God. Hebrews 12:1-2 does not picture the dearly-departed watching us and cheering us on. How vain of us if we think that. Rather, in view of the saints' parade in Hebrews chapter 11, we are to let their faithful lives witness to us. Their examples encourage us to discipline and endurance. Foremost, we look to Jesus both as example and as the one who claimed, “No one comes to the Father except through me.” Then he crushed sin and death and overcame the world. Why should we use a lobbyist when we have Jesus? We have a great high priest who has gone into heaven, and he is Jesus the Son of God. This is why we must hold on to what we have said about him. Jesus understands every weakness of ours, because he was tempted in every way that we are. But he did not sin! So whenever we are in need, we should come bravely before the throne of our merciful God. There we will be treated with undeserved grace, and we will find help. Hebrews 4:14-16 (CEV) What have we learned about the saints in the preceding looks at English translations? (1) Paul opened his letters to Rome, Corinth, Colossae, Ephesus, and Philippi, each addressing “the saints”. Paul carried aid to "the saints" in Jerusalem. (2) Said saints needed food, money, or release from jail. The saints needed prayer. (3) Paul’s greetings note that people did not become saints by merit, but by God’s call. We can add that (4) the New Testament letters mainly corrected the saints' bad choices, bad ideas, and infighting. The New Testament would be around half as long if the saints had been saintly. But nevertheless Paul called them saints. When the Ephesians and others heard Paul call them “saints”, did they ask, “what’s a saint?” Is this like where Jesus tells Peter, “On this rock I will build my church,”—and Peter replies, “Thanks, Jesus! Uh, what’s a church?” Given that the English language wasn't invented until around seven hundred years later, what word or words did Paul use for "saints" and how did his recipients understand that word? Online sites offer free tools to identify those original words and the cultural associations they probably held for their writers and readers. Let’s demonstrate. The screenshot here captures a web browser on my iPhone. It was opened to www.BibleGateway.com. I typed Ephesians 4:12 and chose to search in the Mounce Reverse Interlinear New Testament. Then I tapped the search button 🔍. The result follows below. Aha! This shows that in Ephesians 4:12 the English word “saints” comes from the Greek word family of hagios. Hagios is the representative from the family of words translated to “saints”. Hagios is not necessarily the specific word used in Ephesians 4:12. We’ll come to that word soon. Like English, Greek has slightly different words for singular “saint”, plural “saints”, possessive “saint’s” or “saints’”, and more. The suffix on a Greek word communicates much more than in English. “Interlinear” means that we start with the Greek or Hebrew source lines and with each source word list a corresponding translated word or phrase. “Reverse Interlinear” shown here means we start with a translation (such as the KJV, NIV, or ESV). Then with each word or phrase of the translation (like “saints”) comes the corresponding transliterated Greek or Hebrew source word family (such as hagios) or the specific source word (such as hagion) or its Greek form (ἁγίων). Either way you do it, this is a quick way to find the corresponding source for a translation. Footnote: if your aim is to master biblical Greek, an Interlinear is poison. If your aim is to quickly identify a translation/source relationship, an Interlinear is an expedient, compact tool. Don't expect the crowded presentation to detail nuances or other usage. In this case, hagios applies to "saints". As we'll see, hagios can be the source of other translated words such as "holy" and "purified". Here’s the good part: With BibleGateway Mounce Reverse Interlinear and other such tools, just click on saints or hagios. Boom! We get details about the hagios family: A short list of some ways hagios words are translated, and a long list of all the Bible verses in which hagios words appear. See below.
Sigh. I thought I might be a saint. However, the meanings associated with hagios intimidate me! holy, consecrated, separate from common condition and use, dedicated, pure, righteous. In short, saints are weirdos. Of course, I’m joking—but not much. You’ll see. And I suppose “weirdo” does fit me. That's the dictionary. Much later, I'll comment on dangers of dictionaries. They list many possible meanings or translations of a word, but might not identify the specific meaning or translation for a specific passage such as Ephesians 4:12. The display here also starts a concordance, a list of all verses that contain some form of the Greek word hagios. These verses show trends in meaning. Continuing the demo: If you see a link “everywhere hagios appears in the New Testament“, click it! In some situations such as here, Bible Gateway just goes ahead and displays this list. You can scroll down through 222 New Testament verses where some member of the hagios family appears. “Word family” is called “Lexical Form”. You will find that hagios words are all about holy things: Holy Spirit, holy city, holy man, holy angels, holy child, holy name, holy prophets, holy covenant, holy kiss, … Eventually we get to Ephesians 4:12. Aha, in that verse the English word translated “saints” comes from the specific Greek word hagiōn (ἁγίων). A little before that, in Ephesians 3:18, “saints” comes from hagiois. BibleGateway also offers a Hebrew and Greek reverse interlinear for the New International Version—if you paid for the BibleGateway PLUS subscription. If you have not logged on as a PLUS user you can demonstrate this feature, but only occasional sample verses show the Greek text. Open a passage in the New International Version, say Ephesians 4. Click the gear icon ⚙ to set Options. Turn on "Reverse Interlinear". As with Mounce, just click a word to see its source family. My favorite free point-and-click Greek and Hebrew interlinear is at https://www.esv.org. In your web browser open that site. Register for a free login ID by clicking Sign In then Create an account. After login you have Greek and Hebrew tools that are otherwise hidden. The initial screen will display a Bible chapter. Click on the title to select the book and chapter you want, or to pull up all verses for a word family or word. Then in the upper left click the three dots ••• then Language Tools. This displays 3 choices: a Hebrew Old Testament, the 1995 NA28 Nestle-Aland, and the 2017 THGNT Tyndale House Greek New Testament. I usually select Tyndale House. For now it is newer. This interlinear displays the specific Greek word such as hagion for Ephesians 12:4. Clicking on hagion or “saints” will display the hagios word family information, including a glossary entry and a list of verses. There are options (the ••• on the right) to switch display between just Original Language, Interlinear, and Reverse Interlinear. Poke around, see what the other options do. Yet another interlinear tool is at www.stepbible.org, a free service of Tyndale House, Cambridge, UK. This lets you stack or interleave source text together with several translations including non-English translations. Then with just a click on a word, get its brief definitions, grammatical notes, and concordance list of verses. Sifting the Saints Paul starts 1 Corinthians with his typically long greeting: Paul, called to be an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and Sosthenes our brother, to the church of God that is in Corinth, to those sanctified [hagiazō] in Christ Jesus, called to be saints [hagios] together with all those who in every place call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord and ours: Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. I always thank my God for you... After this warm opening embrace, Paul starts beating up the hagios saints. By chapter 6, we get this: You yourselves cheat and do wrong, and you do this to your brothers and sisters. Or do you not know that wrongdoers will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor men who have sex with men nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And that is what some of you were. But you were washed, you were sanctified [hagiazoi], you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God. So I'm thinking, the saints at Corinth were not pretty figurines, too cool for school, too clean for the scene. Maybe I can be a saint after all. So I kept investigating the hagios family. Hagios was not a new word. When speaking Greek, the Jews for hundreds of years had applied hagios to themselves. “We are God’s chosen people, God’s holy people, hagios.” When speaking Greek, the Jews called Jerusalem the hagios polis, the holy city. The Bible? Hagios graphe, holy writings. For the Jew, hagios conveyed purity, cleanness, a ritually sanitary state. Hagios was about washing clean and staying clean. The Greek word hagios approximately translated the Hebrew word spoken as kodosh. Approximately. The old rabbis would sigh and point out that this Greek word hagios failed to convey the historical Hebrew kodosh attitudes of surrender, dedication, separation, and faithfulness to the Almighty and to his law. When people look at me, when people look at you, they see a Bible translation. Modern rabbi Abraham Heschel wisely observes that, “It may be difficult to convey to others what we think, but it is not difficult to convey to others what we live.” Greek people hearing the Jews would roll their eyes. The Greeks of the first century AD used hagios in a broader sense than the Jews. Hagios described any objects of worship, any places of worship, any stuff associated with a supernatural being, anything inspiring awe, dread, or utmost caution. It could be from the Canaanites, the Egyptians, the Jews, or the Greek pantheon. Whatever prompted a call to Ghostbusters. To the Greeks, hagios described something spooky, something awful, something… just… weird. How do I in 2024 northern Virginia know what Jews and Greeks thought 2000 years ago? One way is to search for translations like “saints”. Multiple uses give me multiple contexts. As a child I learned most of my native language not from a dictionary but from repeated collisions with contexts. Biblical contexts offer a sense of what the word meant to its users—as opposed to the way, after thousands of years, that word is used around moi. That inspection of contexts is what we have been doing here. A second way is demonstrated above. Even without significant experience in Greek or Hebrew, you can use an interlinear translation to find the corresponding source language words such as hagios or hagion. Consider the brief definitions of that word. Use the concordance or search feature and consider the contexts you discover. Paul uses the word “saints” a lot. More precisely, when talking about ordinary Christians, Paul uses hagios words over 38 times. Yet Paul is hardly the only one reminding Christians about personal holiness. The Psalms reference the kodosh a dozen times. Peter in his first letter adds these word pictures: As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance, but as he who called you is holy [hagion], you also be holy [hagioi] in all your conduct. ... But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation [hagios ethnos], a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. Once you were not a people, but now you are God's people. Once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy. Be holy. Live your title, saints! We can talk more about holiness in a rather later installment. In my next installment, we must talk about dangers of word study that we blithely skipped here. Stay tuned. Next: Saints ꓤ Us
Previously: I ❤ Translators In Part 1, “I ❤ Translators”, I started investigation of a persistent mystery of the Bible in Ephesians. Chapter 4 verse 7 starts clearly enough. But grace was given to each one of us according to the measure of Christ's gift. That quote uses the popular English Standard Version translation of the Bible. It translates from the language of almost 2000 years ago. Verses 8-10 take a detour through the Older Testament. Then we get a sentence that in the ESV spans verses 11, 12, 13, and 14. It uses several words that puzzle me. These words give me an impression of important people doing important business. 11 And he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, 12 to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ, 13 until we all attain to the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, to mature manhood, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ, … The ESV translation tries to be true to the source words. Most of the 63 informants at BibleGateway.com have that same word-oriented goal. Other translators are thought-oriented. They have the goal of clarity. I like clarity. I like clarity a lot. I kinda know what apostles, prophets, evangelists, and teachers do. But what is a crummy “shepherd” doing with these big shots? Comic relief? Does the shepherd bring his own sheep? This team, they “equip the saints”. What does this mean? Do they give the saints a box full of Bibles? Once I figure out who "the saints" are, maybe I can figure out what it means to "equip the saints". I pull up Ephesians 4:12 again. I stare at it. I look out the window. I stare at it some more. Then I click Ephesians 4:12 in all English translations. Just one click, and bingo bongo, 63 translations arguing with each other. Some people would call them a jabbering mob. I call them 63 witnesses. So I get out some tally cards. It takes work, but I boil the 63 down to at most 4 variations. Head work saves leg work. If you're following this on a phone, the table that follows looks better if you rotate to landscape mode. The Five Gangs of Ephesians 4:12
In each column, the first item listed is the majority. For example, “equipping” or “enabling” occurs in 38 of the 63 English versions at BibleGateway.com. However, many of these are descendants of the same great-grandad 1611 King James Version. What's with "repairing"? How do you repair a saint? I ought to go to Iason’s Pizza Palace to get the lowdown from the Greek informants that usually hang out there. But it’s a dark and windy night. I expect trouble. I'll work with what I have. Which is just words, only words. In the old days, I could thumb through a honkin’ big concordance to find every verse about “saints”. Now, I fire up BibleGateway.com or a similar tool. Then I find a witness like the ESV, a witness that knows about saints. I ask that witness: Tell me: what else do you know about saints? Where are they? What do they do? Jackpot. The ESV has 81 verses about saints: 21 verses in Old Town and 60 in New Town. Look at that. I see where the saints are and what they're up to. List 1: Saints are everywhere. They're in all the big cities, even in the emperor's mansion. This is a honkin’ big operation!
List 2: Saints are in trouble! It's a war!
List 3. Saints become saints by God's call.
How about that? My hunches about saints weren’t quite right. They weren’t quite wrong. Some saints were jailbirds. Maybe still are. Some were poor. Maybe still are. Some are under attack.... They don't get to be saints by being tough or by scoring hits. They got to be saints because the Boss said they were saints. The Catholic Boys, they say that we should pray to the saints that are in heaven. I don’t see that here. I do see that we should pray for the saints. These saints, they need prayer. They’re poor. They're needy. "Saints" go by other names too. So I search the NIV for "his people". 121 hits in Old Town, 15 hits in New Town. That's disappointing. But I know English translations can have different English words for the same source word. Choice depends on context. Some translations make one English word from different source words. So I see saints in Ephesians 1:1. If I look at Ephesians 1:1 in the NIV, I find "God's holy people". Searching for "God's holy people" in the NIV gives me 9 more hits. I can learn a lot from just comparing translations. I still ought to track down, what is the source word in Ephesians 4:12? What about “equipping” the saints? I search for “equip” in the ESV. Type the word, hit 🔍 . This turns up 14 hits in Old Town, mostly about getting ready for big fights. Like, “you equipped me with strength for the battle.” Hm. Good to know. Disappointing, there are just four cases of the English word "equip" in New Town. I still don't know what "equip" means for saints in Ephesians 4. There's still work to do. I hope the Greek can tell me more. Footnote: This sharp female flatfoot has a backstory. Her name is Billee Sundae. Sweet but cold. We may hear more from her. Footnote: We will visit "The Greek" in the next installment. That will be the most reliable way to find what a New Testament word meant to its writer and readers. The preceding tale aimed to encourage everyone to search the scriptures with the tools they have. If there are enough occurrences of an idea across a range of translations, it's likely that one can form adequate conclusions about a mystery word such as "saints". If there aren't enough clues in enough translations, then we may still be in the dark! Yet if we can't appropriately trust translations, then we step back to around the year 1300, before Bibles most readers could read. Obliterating English Bibles is not enough, we must also destroy the Vulgate, the Syriac, the Septuagint, and other translations. The four gospels could be mostly translations to Greek from Aramaic and Hebrew, so they must go too! What I'm saying is, I respect The Greek, yet I ❤ Translators. Next: Weirdos
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