Deuteronomy 7:7-8

The Basis of Israel’s Election

7:7 It is not because you were more numerous than all the other peoples that the Lord favored and chose you – for in fact you were the least numerous of all peoples. 7:8 Rather it is because of his ¹  love ²  for you and his faithfulness to the promise ³  he solemnly vowed ⁴  to your ancestors ⁵  that the Lord brought you out with great power, ⁶  redeeming ⁷  you from the place of slavery, from the power ⁸  of Pharaoh king of Egypt.

Zephaniah 3:17

3:17 The Lord your God is in your midst;

he is a warrior who can deliver.

He takes great delight in you; ⁹ 

he renews you by his love; ¹⁰ 

he shouts for joy over you.” ¹¹ 

Romans 3:24

3:24 But they are justified ¹²  freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus.

Ephesians 1:6

1:6 to the praise of the glory of his grace ¹³  that he has freely bestowed on us in his dearly loved Son. ¹⁴ 

Ephesians 2:4-9

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! ¹⁵  – 2:6 and he raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly realms in Christ Jesus, 2:7 to demonstrate in the coming ages ¹⁶  the surpassing wealth of his grace in kindness toward ¹⁷  us in Christ Jesus. 2:8 For by grace you are saved ¹⁸  through faith, ¹⁹  and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God; 2:9 it is not from ²⁰  works, so that no one can boast. ²¹ 

Ephesians 2:2

2:2 in which ²²  you formerly lived ²³  according to this world’s present path, ²⁴  according to the ruler of the kingdom ²⁵  of the air, the ruler of ²⁶  the spirit ²⁷  that is now energizing ²⁸  the sons of disobedience, ²⁹ 

Ephesians 1:9

1:9 He did this when he revealed ³⁰  to us the secret ³¹  of his will, according to his good pleasure that he set forth ³²  in Christ, ³³ 

Titus 3:4

3:4 ³⁴  But “when the kindness of God our Savior and his love for mankind appeared,

[7:8]  ¹ tn Heb “the Lord’s.” See note on “He” in 7:6.

[7:8]  ² tn For the verb אָהַב (’ahav, “to love”) as a term of choice or election, see note on the word “loved” in Deut 4:37.

[7:8]  ³ tn Heb “oath.” This is a reference to the promises of the so-called “Abrahamic Covenant” (cf. Gen 15:13-16).

[7:8]  ⁴ tn Heb “swore on oath.”

[7:8]  ⁵ tn Heb “fathers” (also in vv. 12, 13).

[7:8]  ⁶ tn Heb “by a strong hand” (NAB similar); NLT “with such amazing power.”

[7:8]  ⁷ sn Redeeming you from the place of slavery. The Hebrew verb translated “redeeming” (from the root פָּדָה, padah) has the idea of redemption by the payment of a ransom. The initial symbol of this was the Passover lamb, offered by Israel to the Lord as ransom in exchange for deliverance from bondage and death (Exod 12:1-14). Later, the firstborn sons of Israel, represented by the Levites, became the ransom (Num 3:11-13). These were all types of the redemption effected by the death of Christ who described his atoning work as “a ransom for many” (Matt 20:28; cf. 1 Pet 1:18).

[7:8]  ⁸ tn Heb “hand” (so KJV, NRSV), a metaphor for power or domination.

[3:17]  ⁹ tn Heb “he rejoices over you with joy.”

[3:17]  ¹⁰ tc The MT reads, “he is silent in his love,” but this makes no sense in light of the immediately preceding and following lines. Some take the Hiphil verb form as causative (see Job 11:3) rather than intransitive and translate, “he causes [you] to be silent by his love,” that is, “he soothes [you] by his love.” The present translation follows the LXX and assumes an original reading יְחַדֵּשׁ (yÿkhaddesh, “he renews”) with ellipsis of the object (“you”).

[3:17]  ¹¹ tn Heb “he rejoices over you with a shout of joy.”

[3:24]  ¹² tn Or “declared righteous.” Grk “being justified,” as a continuation of the preceding clause. Because of the length and complexity of the Greek sentence, a new sentence was started here in the translation.

[1:6]  ¹³ tn Or “to the praise of his glorious grace.” Many translations translate δόξης τῆς χάριτος αὐτοῦ (doxh" th" carito" autou, literally “of the glory of his grace”) with τῆς χάριτος as an attributed genitive (cf., e.g., NIV, NRSV, ESV). The translation above has retained a literal rendering in order to make clear the relationship of this phrase to the other two similar phrases in v. 12 and 14, which affect the way one divides the material in the passage.

[1:6]  ¹⁴ tn Grk “the beloved.” The term ἠγαπημένῳ (hgaphmenw) means “beloved,” but often bears connotations of “only beloved” in an exclusive sense. “His dearly loved Son” picks up this connotation.

[2:5]  ¹⁵ 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”).

[2:7]  ¹⁶ tn Or possibly “to the Aeons who are about to come.”

[2:7]  ¹⁷ tn Or “upon.”

[2:8]  ¹⁸ tn See note on the same expression in v. 5.

[2:8]  ¹⁹ tc The feminine article is found before πίστεως (pistews, “faith”) in the Byzantine text as well as in A Ψ 1881 pc. Perhaps for some scribes the article was intended to imply creedal fidelity as a necessary condition of salvation (“you are saved through the faith”), although elsewhere in the corpus Paulinum the phrase διὰ τῆς πίστεως (dia th" pistew") is used for the act of believing rather than the content of faith (cf. Rom 3:30, 31; Gal 3:14; Eph 3:17; Col 2:12). On the other side, strong representatives of the Alexandrian and Western texts (א B D* F G P 0278 6 33 1739 al bo) lack the article. Hence, both text-critically and exegetically, the meaning of the text here is most likely “saved through faith” as opposed to “saved through the faith.” Regarding the textual problem, the lack of the article is the preferred reading.

[2:9]  ²⁰ tn Or “not as a result of.”

[2:9]  ²¹ tn Grk “lest anyone should boast.”

[2:2]  ²² sn The relative pronoun which is feminine as is sins, indicating that sins is the antecedent.

[2:2]  ²³ tn Grk “walked.”

[2:2]  ²⁴ tn Or possibly “Aeon.”

[2:2]  ²⁵ tn Grk “domain, [place of] authority.”

[2:2]  ²⁶ tn Grk “of” (but see the note on the word “spirit” later in this verse).

[2:2]  ²⁷ 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]  ²⁸ tn Grk “working in.”

[2:2]  ²⁹ 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.

[1:9]  ³⁰ tn Or “He did this by revealing”; Grk “making known, revealing.” Verse 9 begins with a participle dependent on “lavished” in v. 8; the adverbial participle could be understood as temporal (“when he revealed”), which would be contemporaneous to the action of the finite verb “lavished,” or as means (“by revealing”). The participle has been translated here with the temporal nuance to allow for means to also be a possible interpretation. If the translation focused instead upon means, the temporal nuance would be lost as the time frame for the action of the participle would become indistinct.

[1:9]  ³¹ tn Or “mystery.” In the NT μυστήριον (musthrion) refers to a divine secret previously undisclosed.

[1:9]  ³² tn Or “purposed,” “publicly displayed.” Cf. Rom 3:25.

[1:9]  ³³ tn Grk “in him”; the referent (Christ) has been specified in the translation for the sake of clarity.

[3:4]  ³⁴ 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.