20The sun will be turned into darknessand the moon into ‘blood’before the great and glorious day of the Lord will come.
21And it will be: whoever calls on the name of the LordTo call on the ‘name’ of the Lord is to call on Him. To ‘call’ on Him is to place yourself under His protection, which involves a recognition of His rulership.will be saved!’
47praising God and having favor with all the people. And day by day the Lord addedNotice who does the adding, and He cannot be deceived. to the ChurchThree percent of the Greek manuscripts, of inferior quality, omit "to the Church" (as in NIV, NASB, LB, TEV, etc.). those who were being saved.
17also, grasp the helmet of the salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is God’s Word spoken;ρημα (rather than λογος)—the implication appears to be that we must speak the Word. Well, how else can you use the ‘Sword’?
18praying at all times in the Spirit, using every prayer and petition, yes being watchful to this end with all perseverance and petition for all the saints
24The grace be with all those who love our Lord Jesus Christ with an undying love.Evidently "the grace" is not for everybody. Amen.
5even when we were dead in our transgressions—made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved)
8For by grace you have been saved, through the FaithThe Text has ‘the’ faith; the reference is to a specific faith, presumably the body of truth that revolves around the person of Jesus.—and this not of yourselves, it is the gift of God—
19So then, you are no longer strangers and aliens, but fellow citizens with the saints and members of God’s household,
23God, from this man’s seed, according to promise, has broughtInstead of ‘brought’, some 25% of the Greek manuscripts have ‘raised up’, as in AV and NKJV. SalvationInstead of ‘Salvation’, some 15% of the Greek manuscripts have ‘a Savior, Jesus’, as in most versions. to Israel,
33God has fulfilled the same to us, their children, when He raised up Jesus;The "raised up" here presumably refers to the incarnation; the resurrection comes in verse 34. as also it stands written in the second Psalm:‘You are my Son, today I have begotten you.’See Psalm 2:7.
34And that He raised Him from the dead,The resurrection of Jesus from the dead is crucial; without it we have no Gospel. no longer to return to corruption,People like Lazarus who were returned to life, had to die again (and decompose); with Jesus it was different: His resurrection was definitive, and involved a glorified body. He has spoken thus,‘I will give you the holy things guaranteed to David.’See Isaiah 55:3.
4Rejoice in Sovereign always; again I say, rejoice!
20Now to our God and Father be the glory for ever and ever. Amen.
23The grace of the Sovereign, Jesus Christ, be with you all.Instead of "you all", some 9% of the Greek manuscripts have ‘your spirit’ (as in NIV, NASB, LB, etc.). Amen.
11You see, today,The shepherds were Jews, and their ‘day’ began at 6 p.m. The angel’s use of ‘today’ indicates that Jesus was born at night, since the angel delivered his message at night. in David’s city, a Savior was born to you, who is Lord Christ!
26(It had been revealed to him repeatedly by the Holy Spirit that he would not see death until he saw the Lord’s Messiah.The Greek Text has ‘Christ’, but the Holy Spirit presumably used Hebrew to communicate with Simeon. The man evidently lived in communion with God, and thus the Holy Spirit could guide him at any time—here He sends him into the temple at just the right moment.)
5Examine yourselves as to whether you are in the faith; test yourselves. Do you yourselves really not know that Jesus Christ is in you?Sin does have a way of undermining confidence. A Christian who keeps on sinning tends to become less and less sure of his salvation.—unless indeed you are disqualified.
9Now we are glad when we are weak and you are strong. And we also pray for this, your perfecting.
14The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.Here we have a clear reference to the Trinity.Amen.
7and with a loud cry he said: "What do you want with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I implore you by God,Now really, a demon appealing to God! Since he had recognized, correctly, that Jesus was ‘Son of the Most High God’, he was appealing to Him through His Father—pretty shrewd! (I assume that he had been informed that the attempt to destroy Jesus with the storm had failed.) don’t torment me!"
34And He said to her: "Daughter, your faith has saved you. Go into peaceThat is what the Text says, ‘into’ not ‘in’. To go in peace is to leave on good terms, no hard feelings. But what might going into peace be? I would say that you take the peace with you; you live within an atmosphere of peace. Now that is a proper ‘blessing’! and be healed from your affliction."
40But they started ridiculing Him.They knew that she was dead, as indeed she was. After He put them all out, He took the child’s father and mother, and those with Him,Peter was there, and he helped Mark write this Gospel. and went in where the child was lying.
2Bear one another’s heavy burdens, and so fulfill the law of the Christ.
8—he who sows to his own flesh will reap deteriorationIf the deterioration is never checked, guess what happens. from that flesh; he who sows to the Spirit will reap eternal life from that Spirit.
18The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with your spirit, brothers. Amen.
15Because we are the aroma of Christ for God, among those who are being saved and among those who are being wastedWe are accustomed to ‘perishing’. The verb here has a considerable semantic area and can be rendered—destroy, kill, deprive, void, lose, perish—depending on the context, but I believe the root idea is ‘waste’. The only way to fulfill the purpose for which you were created, to realize your potential, is to turn your life over to Jesus. The alternative is to waste your life, both now and forever. Of course the enemy works to make people think the opposite.—
16to these a smell of death into death, while to those a fragrance of life into lifeThe Gospel of Christ represents both life and death: if you receive it, you get life; if you reject it, you get death. Naturally, those in rebellion against God do not enjoy being reminded that they have chosen death.—and who is adequate for such things?
33But He turned, looked at His disciples, and rebuked Peter, saying: "Get behind me, Satan!From the parallel passage in Luke 9:18-22, where we have three present participles—‘answering’, ‘warning’ and ‘saying’—it is clear that Peter’s two efforts form part of a single conversation. Well that scares me; that sends shivers up my spine. Within three minutes, or five at the most (we can see in Luke that this was a single conversation), Peter spoke two times. The first time it was God who put the words in Peter’s mouth. It was Jesus Christ, God the Son on earth, who explained the true nature of the transaction—Peter did not speak on his own but moved by the Father. So far so good; that God can do something like that comes as no surprise. It is the second time that is bothersome, because this time it was Satan who put the words in Peter’s mouth! Again, it is Jesus Christ, God the Son on earth, who explains the true nature of the transaction. When He uses the enemy’s proper name, Satan, His meaning is inescapable. It really was Satan. Once again we are face to face with the most terrible truth that there is in this life, at least as I see it. The enemy has access to our minds, he can put words in our mouths. I wish in the worst way that it was not true, but my wishes do not change reality. You have in mind men’s values, not God’s values."
35Because whoever may resolve to ‘save’ his life will waste it; but whoever may ‘waste’ his life for my sake and the Gospel’s, he will save it.What does the Lord mean when He speaks of saving or losing one’s ‘life’? One does not lose one’s soul for love of Christ. Nor is the reference to being killed. Rather, Jesus has in mind the life we live, the accumulated results of our living. All that I have done up to this moment plus all that I will yet do until overtaken by death or the rapture of the Church, whichever happens first—that is the ‘life’ that is at risk (in my own case). Let us look at our Lord’s words a little more closely. There seems to be a contradiction here—if you lose, you save; if you want to save, you lose. How can it work? The parallel passage, Matthew 16:27, gives more context. "For the Son of the Man is going to come in the glory of his Father, with his angels, and then he will repay each according to his deeds." Christ was thinking of the day of reckoning. In other words, "we will all stand before the judgment seat of Christ" (Romans 14:10) and "each of us will give account of himself to God" (Romans 14:12). "For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive his due according to what he has done while in the body, whether good or bad" (2 Corinthians 5:10). I understand that 1 Corinthians 3:11-15 is referring to the same occasion, the day of reckoning. After declaring that Jesus Christ is the only foundation, Paul speaks of different materials that one might use in building on it: "gold, silver, precious stones" or "wood, hay, straw". (Although the primary interpretation of this passage presumably has to do with the performance of teachers and leaders in the church, I believe it clearly applies to the daily life of each believer as well.) The point is, our deeds will be tested by fire. If fire has any effect upon gold or silver it is only to purify them, but its effect on hay and straw is devastating! Okay, so what? Let us go back to the beginning. God created the human being for His glory; to reflect it and contribute to it. I suppose we may understand Psalm 19:1 and Isaiah 43:7 in this way, at least by extension. But Adam lost this capacity when he rebelled against God. For this reason the sentence that weighs against our race is that we "fall short of the glory of God" (Romans 3:23). But the Son came into the world to restore our lost potential. Ephesians 1:12 and 14 tell us that the object of the plan of salvation is "the praise of His glory" (see also 2 Corinthians 1:20). And 1 Corinthians 10:31 puts it into a command: "Whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God." Now then, the point of all this is not to ‘ruin’ our lives, to take all the ‘fun’ out of them (as many seem to think). God isn’t being arrogant, unreasonable, too demanding. Quite the contrary—He is just trying to save us from throwing away our lives. Surely, because the glory of God is eternal (Psalm 104:31), and when I do something for His glory that something is transformed and acquires eternal value—it becomes ‘gold, silver, precious stones’. Works done for the glory of God will go through the fire without harm. On the other hand, what is done with a view to our own ambitions and ideas is ‘straw’. We all know what fire does to straw! To be a slave of Christ means to live with reference to the Kingdom; it means to do everything for the glory of God. In this way the slave ‘saves’ his life because he will be building it with ‘gold and silver’, which will pass through the fire at the judgment seat of Christ without loss. In contrast, the believer who refuses to be a slave of Jesus builds his life with ‘hay and straw’, which will be consumed by the fire—and so he ‘loses’ his life; he lived in vain; the potential that his life represented was wasted, thrown away. What a tragedy!
36Well, what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, yet forfeits his soul?
1Paul, an apostle—not from men nor through a man,Paul’s apostleship did not depend upon human ordination or recognition. So what about apostleship today? but through Jesus Christ and God the Father, who raised Him from the deadThe resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead is absolutely central to the Christian Faith (1 Corinthians 15:14,17).—
5to whom be the glory forever and ever. Amen.
15But when God—who set me apart from my mother’s womb and called me through His grace—resolved
2Grace to you and peace from God our Father and Sovereign Jesus Christ.
19You see, I know that this will turn out for my deliverance (through your supplication and the support of the Spirit of Jesus Christ)This is presumably a reference to the Holy Spirit (see John 16:13-15).
21—to me, to live is Christ and to die is gain.How can death be a gain? Only if you live for Christ.
9I am the door. If anyone enters by me, he will be saved,Jesus is the doorway, the only means of access into eternal life, a truth He will emphasize again in John 14:6. and will go in and out and find pasture.What does a sheep want? Protection and pasture. These Jesus offers, but since people are more complex than sheep, He offers abundant life.
11"I am the good shepherd.Here Jesus changes the figure—as the good shepherd He really cares about the sheep, to the point of dying for them. The good shepherd lays down his life on behalf of the sheep.
35If He called them ‘gods’ to whom the Word of God came—and the Scripture cannot be brokenThe Lord inserts this as an aside, but it is an important statement in itself—Scripture cannot be broken. If we build our lives on God’s Word we have a secure foundation, one that cannot be shaken. (Your faith in that Word may be shaken, but not the Word itself.)—
9Therefore, you pray like this:‘Our Father who is in the heavens,let Your name be reverenced;
13And do not bring us into testing,but rescue us from the evil one;The Father can rescue us from the evil one because He is far greater.because Yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen.’About 1% of the Greek manuscripts, of objectively inferior quality, omit the last clause (as in NIV, [NASB], LB, TEV, etc.).
30Now if God so clothes the grass of the field, which exists today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will He not much more clothe you, you little-faiths?
3Grace and peace to you from God our Father and Sovereign Jesus Christ.Where ‘Lord’ occurs without the definite article, as here, I usually render ‘Sovereign’; with either ‘the’ or ‘our’ I usually render ‘Lord’.
21For since, in the wisdom of God, the world through its ‘wisdom’ did not get to know God, it pleased God to save the believing ones through the ‘foolishness’ of what was preached—
30It is from Him that you are in Christ Jesus, who was made to us wisdom from God—also righteousness and sanctification and redemptionWe receive Christ’s righteousness to get started; the sanctification is to keep us clean along the road; the redemption is the final victory. Now really, isn’t that a wonderful salvation? Thank you, Jesus!—
14Then He was casting out a demon, and it was mute. As a result, when the demon had gone out the mute spoke! And the crowds marveled.
35So see to it that the ‘light’ in you not be darkness.
51from the blood of Abel to the blood of Zechariah,If the reference is to Zechariah the prophet, his death is not recorded in Scripture, but the temple was rebuilt in his day, so he could have died there. who perished between the altar and the sanctuary. Yes, I say to you, it shall be required of this generation!Guilt accumulates. Often a subsequent generation pays.
10But that day was a Sabbath, so the Jews said to the one who had been healed: "It’s the Sabbath! You aren’t allowed to carry the pallet."
14After these things Jesus found him in the temple and said to him: "See, you are well. Don’t sin any more, so that something worse doesn’t happen to you."The Lord seems to be implying that the former sickness was the result of sin. But he had been sick for 38 years, so he had paid a heavy price!
30I am not able to do anything from myself. As I hear, I judge, and my judging is just, because I do not seek my own will but the will of the Father who sent me.