WORD STUDIES IN THE BIBLE: PART 1 (EPHESIANS 1:14)

I must first of all apologize for subjecting you to a somewhat detailed journey through the linguistics of the Bible which may be of little interest to you. Those who really want to get into Bible study in some depth may find it useful, but I am the first to admit that very few Christians have the time, money, or inclination to devote to such studies. For those people, I would encourage you to read through these pages anyway just to give you a small appreciation of what is involved in thoroughly immersing yourself in a personal investigation into the Word rather than relying on your pastor or Sunday school teacher to do it for you.

There are several useful pieces of information to be gleaned from looking into the individual words in the Bible as well as a number of valuable sources available to help you do it. Let's start with the basics.

Locating a Passage of Scripture

Sometimes all you want to do is locate where a particular passage is found. You may dimly remember the words or general thought but have no idea where to actually find it. As an example, I seem to recall that the Bible talks about the Holy Spirit being the down payment for us. From the context alone, I could probably guess that it came from the New Testament rather than the Old Testament. That narrows it down a bit. Also, it doesn't sound like something that would be in the Book of Revelation. Other than that, however, I would not know where exactly to look.

Here is what my old-school approach would be. I would consult an analytical concordance, the most popular of which are Strong's or Young's. You would have to purchase one, download it on your computer or smart phone, or use a free Bible source on the internet such as blueletterbible.org or biblegateway.com. All these concordances are organized alphabetically by the English translation. But the immediate problem you will face is that most of the analytical concordances are keyed to words in the King James Version only.

There have been times when I knew most of the quotation I was searching for, including three or four key words, but I still couldn't find what I wanted in a concordance. And even if I did manage to do it, it might take me up to an hour before I hit on the right passage. For example, “down payment” is not found in Strong's or Young's. On the other hand, a search for “Holy Spirit” in Young's gives rise to other problems. It turns out that the listings are under the KJV wording “Holy Ghost” instead. And there are so many times that the phrase appears (approximately 80) that my concordance doesn't even bother to quote part of each passage so that I can scan through them to see if one fits.

Now if I abandon my old-school approach entirely, I can instead simply do a Google advanced search in which I quote as much of the passage in question as I can remember. When I simply entered “holy spirit is down payment,” the very first hit sent me directly to Ephesians 1:14.

I then looked back to see where my problem using a concordance arose from. In the first place, Young's Concordance is keyed to the archaic KJV word “earnest” in place of “down payment.” Secondly, I might not have been able to find the passage even then since “Holy Spirit” appears in Ephesians 1:13 while “earnest” doesn't show up until the following verse. Thus, the short phrase given in Young's as an aid under Ephesians 1:14 only reads, “which is the earnest of our inheritance.” That says nothing whatsoever concerning the Holy Spirit, so I would probably not even bothered looking it up in the Bible. However, another listing under “earnest” was II Corinthians 5:5, and the accompanying phrase read “given unto us the earnest of the spirit.” That would have led me off in the wrong direction since that wasn't really the specific verse for which I was searching.

Comparing Translations

Let's assume that you have either located the verse(s) in question or that perhaps you knew it already. The easiest place to go from there to get a handle on the various word meanings in the verse is to compare English translations to see what the different linguistic experts have come up with. Again, this can be done using on-line sources or Bible apps that are readily available. One problem with the former is that the free sources may tend to limit their translations to older ones that may be outdated and/or to more obscure renderings. And a problem with some apps is that it becomes awkward at times trying to view more than one or two translations at the same time for easy comparison.

Getting back to old-school solutions, there are fairly inexpensive books (at least for the New Testament) offering three or four side-by-side translations for you to conveniently utilize without having to purchase multiple translations and opening them up alongside one another for study. Whether you go either way, my strong recommendation is to obtain at least one each of the following: (1) the King James Version, (2) a more modern translation in the KJV tradition (such as NASB, RSV, ASV, NRSV, or ESV), (3) a fresh modern translation which doesn't necessarily feel that it needs to adhere closely to the KJV (examples would be NIV, TEV, NEB, Jerusalem Bible, and Anchor Bible) and (4) a paraphrase such as The Message, J.B. Phillips, or The Living Bible.

Apparently, some publishers have the same general approach in mind since I have a very useful volume published by Christianity Today, Inc. containing side-by-side columns with the KJV, RSV, Phillips, and NEB renderings and appropriately titled The New Testament in Four Versions. From that compilation, we get the following translations of Ephesians 1:14:

        “which is the earnest of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession, unto the praise of his glory.” (KJV)

        “which is the guarantee of our inheritance until we acquire possession of it, to the praise of his glory.” (RSV)

        “and that Spirit is the pledge that we shall enter upon our heritage when God has redeemed what is his own, to his praise and glory.” (NEB)

        “as a guarantee of purchase, until the day when God completes the redemption of what he has paid for as His own, and that will again be to the praise of his glory.” (Phillips)

And for more renderings, we could add:

        “The Spirit is the guarantee that we shall receive what God has promised His people, and this assures us that God will give complete freedom to those who are his. Let us praise his glory!” (TEV)

        “This down payment from God is the first installment on what's coming, a reminder that we'll get everything God has planned for us, a praising and glorious life.” (The Message)

        “the Spirit's seal upon us means that God has already purchased us and that he guarantees to bring us to himself. This is just one more reason for us to praise our glorious God.” (Living Bible)

        “who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God's possession – to the praise of his glory.” (NIV)

        “the pledge of our inheritance which brings freedom for those whom God has taken for his own, to make his glory praised.” (JB)

        “He is the guarantee of what we shall inherit [to vouch] for the liberation of God's own people, to the praise of his glory.” (AB)

And finally, if you are curious, here is a word-for-word literal rendering of that verse from a Greek Interlinear NT based on the wording in the KJV:

    “who is an earnest of the inheritance of us, till [the] redemption of the possession, to [the] praise of the glory of him.”

From all of the above renderings, we can put together a summary of the translations of some key words in the passage:

        earnest = guarantee = guarantee of purchase = down payment = pledge = deposit = first installment

        inheritance = enter upon our heritage = receive = what we will inherit = what's coming

        redemption = liberation = freedom

    purchased possession = possession = what is his own = those who are God's possession = God's own people = His people = those whom God has taken for his own

Of course, that is not the end of the translation differences, which include adding clarifying words which are not in the original Greek, rearranging or shortening the phrases, and altering some of the pronouns and prepositions. One seemingly small example actually has great theological import, namely, changing the pronoun for Holy Spirit from “who” in the Greek to “which” or rewording it so that no pronoun is needed at all. This can have the effect, intended or not, of weakening the idea that the Holy Spirit is a personage in favor of the notion that He is just an impersonal force emanating from God.

A final thing to note in comparing these translations is the way the final phrase is handled differently in some versions. Thus, rather than “to the praise of His glory” or its equivalents, the paraphrases treat it as either a call to praise or a description of the sort of life God has in mind for us.

One final thing to keep in mind in comparing translations: In general, those renderings prepared by single authors (such as The Message, J.B. Phillips, Anchor Bible, and The Living Bible) should probably not be weighed as seriously as those put together by a committee of experts instead.