Deuteronomy 30:2

30:2 Then if you and your descendants ¹  turn to the Lord your God and obey him with your whole mind and being ²  just as ³  I am commanding you today,

Deuteronomy 30:6-8

30:6 The Lord your God will also cleanse ⁴  your heart and the hearts of your descendants ⁵  so that you may love him ⁶  with all your mind and being and so that you may live. 30:7 Then the Lord your God will put all these curses on your enemies, on those who hate you and persecute you. 30:8 You will return and obey the Lord, keeping all his commandments I am giving ⁷  you today.

Ezekiel 36:26

36:26 I will give you a new heart, and I will put a new spirit within you. I will remove the heart of stone ⁸  from your body and give you a heart of flesh. ⁹ 

Ezekiel 36:31

36:31 Then you will remember your evil behavior ¹⁰  and your deeds which were not good; you will loathe yourselves on account of your sins and your abominable deeds.

Zechariah 12:10

12:10 “I will pour out on the kingship ¹¹  of David and the population of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and supplication so that they will look to me, ¹²  the one they have pierced. They will lament for him as one laments for an only son, and there will be a bitter cry for him like the bitter cry for a firstborn. ¹³ 

Luke 15:17-19

15:17 But when he came to his senses ¹⁴  he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired workers have food ¹⁵  enough to spare, but here I am dying from hunger! 15:18 I will get up and go to my father and say to him, “Father, I have sinned ¹⁶  against heaven ¹⁷  and against ¹⁸  you. 15:19 I am no longer worthy to be called your son; treat me ¹⁹  like one of your hired workers.”’

John 6:44-45

6:44 No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him, ²⁰  and I will raise him up at the last day. 6:45 It is written in the prophets, ‘And they will all be taught by God.’ ²¹  Everyone who hears and learns from the Father ²²  comes to me.

Ephesians 2:3-5

2:3 among whom ²³  all of us ²⁴  also ²⁵  formerly lived out our lives in the cravings of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath ²⁶  even as the rest… ²⁷ 

2:4 But God, being rich in mercy, because of his great love with which he loved us, 2:5 even though we were dead in transgressions, made us alive together with Christ – by grace you are saved! ²⁸  –

Ephesians 2:2

2:2 in which ²⁹  you formerly lived ³⁰  according to this world’s present path, ³¹  according to the ruler of the kingdom ³²  of the air, the ruler of ³³  the spirit ³⁴  that is now energizing ³⁵  the sons of disobedience, ³⁶ 

Ephesians 2:1

New Life Individually

2:1 And although you were ³⁷  dead ³⁸  in your transgressions and sins,

Titus 3:3-7

3:3 For we too were once foolish, disobedient, misled, enslaved to various passions and desires, spending our lives in evil and envy, hateful and hating one another. 3:4 ³⁹  But “when the kindness of God our Savior and his love for mankind appeared, 3:5 he saved us not by works of righteousness that we have done but on the basis of his mercy, through the washing of the new birth and the renewing of the Holy Spirit, 3:6 whom he poured out on us in full measure ⁴⁰  through Jesus Christ our Savior. 3:7 And so, ⁴¹  since we have been justified by his grace, we become heirs with the confident expectation of eternal life.” ⁴² 

[30:2]  ¹ tn Heb “sons” (so NASB); KJV, ASV, NAB, NIV, NRSV, NLT “children.”

[30:2]  ² tn Or “heart and soul” (also in vv. 6, 10).

[30:2]  ³ tn Heb “according to all.”

[30:6]  ⁴ tn Heb “circumcise” (so KJV, NAB, NIV, NRSV); TEV “will give you and your descendents obedient hearts.” See note on the word “cleanse” in Deut 10:16.

[30:6]  ⁵ tn Heb “seed” (so KJV, ASV).

[30:6]  ⁶ tn Heb “the Lord your God.” See note on the second occurrence of the word “he” in v. 3.

[30:8]  ⁷ tn Heb “commanding”; NAB “which I now enjoin on you.”

[36:26]  ⁸ sn That is, a heart which symbolizes a will that is stubborn and unresponsive (see 1 Sam 25:37). In Rabbinic literature a “stone” was associated with an evil inclination (b. Sukkah 52a).

[36:26]  ⁹ sn That is, a heart which symbolizes a will that is responsive and obedient to God.

[36:31]  ¹⁰ tn Heb “ways.”

[12:10]  ¹¹ tn Or “dynasty”; Heb “house.”

[12:10]  ¹² tc Because of the difficulty of the concept of the mortal piercing of God, the subject of this clause, and the shift of pronoun from “me” to “him” in the next, many mss read אַלֵי אֵת אֲשֶׁר (’ale ’et ’asher, “to the one whom,” a reading followed by NAB, NRSV) rather than the MT’s אֵלַי אֵת אֲשֶׁר (’ela ’et ’asher, “to me whom”). The reasons for such alternatives, however, are clear – they are motivated by scribes who found such statements theologically objectionable – and they should be rejected in favor of the more difficult reading (lectio difficilior) of the MT.

[12:10]  ¹³ tn The Hebrew term בְּכוֹר (bÿkhor, “firstborn”), translated usually in the LXX by πρωτότοκος (prwtotokos), has unmistakable messianic overtones as the use of the Greek term in the NT to describe Jesus makes clear (cf. Col 1:15, 18). Thus, the idea of God being pierced sets the stage for the fatal wounding of Jesus, the Messiah and the Son of God (cf. John 19:37; Rev 1:7). Note that some English translations supply “son” from the context (e.g., NIV, TEV, NLT).

[15:17]  ¹⁴ tn Grk “came to himself” (an idiom).

[15:17]  ¹⁵ tn Grk “bread,” but used figuratively for food of any kind (L&N 5.1).

[15:18]  ¹⁶ sn In the confession “I have sinned” there is a recognition of wrong that pictures the penitent coming home and “being found.”

[15:18]  ¹⁷ sn The phrase against heaven is a circumlocution for God.

[15:18]  ¹⁸ tn According to BDAG 342 s.v. ἐνωπιον 4.a, “in relation to ἁμαρτάνειν ἐ. τινος sin against someone Lk 15:18, 21 (cf. Jdth 5:17; 1 Km 7:6; 20:1).”

[15:19]  ¹⁹ tn Or “make me.” Here is a sign of total humility.

[6:44]  ²⁰ tn Or “attracts him,” or “pulls him.” The word is used of pulling or dragging, often by force. It is even used once of magnetic attraction (A. Oepke, TDNT 2:503).

[6:45]  ²¹ sn A quotation from Isa 54:13.

[6:45]  ²² tn Or “listens to the Father and learns.”

[2:3]  ²³ sn Among whom. The relative pronoun phrase that begins v. 3 is identical, except for gender, to the one that begins v. 2 (ἐν αἵς [en Jais], ἐν οἵς [en Jois]). By the structure, the author is building an argument for our hopeless condition: We lived in sin and we lived among sinful people. Our doom looked to be sealed as well in v. 2: Both the external environment (kingdom of the air) and our internal motivation and attitude (the spirit that is now energizing) were under the devil’s thumb (cf. 2 Cor 4:4).

[2:3]  ²⁴ tn Grk “we all.”

[2:3]  ²⁵ tn Or “even.”

[2:3]  ²⁶ sn Children of wrath is a Semitic idiom which may mean either “people characterized by wrath” or “people destined for wrath.”

[2:3]  ²⁷ sn Eph 2:1-3. The translation of vv. 1-3 is very literal, even to the point of retaining the awkward syntax of the original. See note on the word dead in 2:1.

[2:5]  ²⁸ tn Or “by grace you have been saved.” The perfect tense in Greek connotes both completed action (“you have been saved”) and continuing results (“you are saved”).

[2:2]  ²⁹ sn The relative pronoun which is feminine as is sins, indicating that sins is the antecedent.

[2:2]  ³⁰ tn Grk “walked.”

[2:2]  ³¹ tn Or possibly “Aeon.”

[2:2]  ³² tn Grk “domain, [place of] authority.”

[2:2]  ³³ tn Grk “of” (but see the note on the word “spirit” later in this verse).

[2:2]  ³⁴ sn The ruler of the kingdom of the air is also the ruler of the spirit that is now energizing the sons of disobedience. Although several translations regard the ruler to be the same as the spirit, this is unlikely since the cases in Greek are different (ruler is accusative and spirit is genitive). To get around this, some have suggested that the genitive for spirit is a genitive of apposition. However, the semantics of the genitive of apposition are against such an interpretation (cf. ExSyn 100).

[2:2]  ³⁵ tn Grk “working in.”

[2:2]  ³⁶ sn Sons of disobedience is a Semitic idiom that means “people characterized by disobedience.” However, it also contains a subtle allusion to vv. 4-10: Some of those sons of disobedience have become sons of God.

[2:1]  ³⁷ tn The adverbial participle “being” (ὄντας, ontas) is taken concessively.

[2:1]  ³⁸ sn Chapter 2 starts off with a participle, although you were dead, that is left dangling. The syntax in Greek for vv. 1-3 constitutes one incomplete sentence, though it seems to have been done intentionally. The dangling participle leaves the readers in suspense while they wait for the solution (in v. 4) to their spiritual dilemma.

[3:4]  ³⁹ tn Verses 4-7 are set as poetry in NA²⁶/NA²⁷. These verses probably constitute the referent of the expression “this saying” in v. 8.

[3:6]  ⁴⁰ tn Or “on us richly.”

[3:7]  ⁴¹ tn This is the conclusion of a single, skillfully composed sentence in Greek encompassing Titus 3:4-7. Showing the goal of God’s merciful salvation, v. 7 begins literally, “in order that, being justified…we might become heirs…”

[3:7]  ⁴² tn Grk “heirs according to the hope of eternal life.”