Luke 13:24

13:24 “Exert every effort ¹  to enter through the narrow door, because many, I tell you, will try to enter and will not be able to.

John 5:24

5:24 “I tell you the solemn truth, ²  the one who hears ³  my message ⁴  and believes the one who sent me has eternal life and will not be condemned, ⁵  but has crossed over from death to life.

Romans 6:17-22

6:17 But thanks be to God that though you were slaves to sin, you obeyed ⁶  from the heart that pattern ⁷  of teaching you were entrusted to, 6:18 and having been freed from sin, you became enslaved to righteousness. 6:19 (I am speaking in human terms because of the weakness of your flesh.) ⁸  For just as you once presented your members as slaves to impurity and lawlessness leading to more lawlessness, so now present your members as slaves to righteousness leading to sanctification. 6:20 For when you were slaves of sin, you were free with regard to righteousness.

6:21 So what benefit ⁹  did you then reap ¹⁰  from those things that you are now ashamed of? For the end of those things is death. 6:22 But now, freed ¹¹  from sin and enslaved to God, you have your benefit ¹²  leading to sanctification, and the end is eternal life.

Romans 6:1

The Believer’s Freedom from Sin’s Domination

6:1 What shall we say then? Are we to remain in sin so that grace may increase?

Colossians 1:9-11

Paul’s Prayer for the Growth of the Church

1:9 For this reason we also, from the day we heard about you, ¹³  have not ceased praying for you and asking God ¹⁴  to fill ¹⁵  you with the knowledge of his will in all spiritual wisdom and understanding, 1:10 so that you may live ¹⁶  worthily of the Lord and please him in all respects ¹⁷  – bearing fruit in every good deed, growing in the knowledge of God, 1:11 being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might for the display of ¹⁸  all patience and steadfastness, joyfully

Colossians 1:2

1:2 to the saints, the faithful ¹⁹  brothers and sisters ²⁰  in Christ, at Colossae. Grace and peace to you ²¹  from God our Father! ²² 

Colossians 1:17-18

1:17 He himself is before all things and all things are held together ²³  in him.

1:18 He is the head of the body, the church, as well as the beginning, the firstborn ²⁴  from among the dead, so that he himself may become first in all things. ²⁵ 

Ephesians 2:3-10

2:3 among whom ²⁶  all of us ²⁷  also ²⁸  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 ²⁹  even as the rest… ³⁰ 

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! ³¹  – 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 ³²  the surpassing wealth of his grace in kindness toward ³³  us in Christ Jesus. 2:8 For by grace you are saved ³⁴  through faith, ³⁵  and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God; 2:9 it is not from ³⁶  works, so that no one can boast. ³⁷  2:10 For we are his workmanship, having been created in Christ Jesus for good works that God prepared beforehand so we may do them. ³⁸ 

Ephesians 2:1

New Life Individually

2:1 And although you were ³⁹  dead ⁴⁰  in your transgressions and sins,

Ephesians 2:12

2:12 that you were at that time without the Messiah, ⁴¹  alienated from the citizenship of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, ⁴²  having no hope and without God in the world.

Titus 3:3-6

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 ⁴³  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 ⁴⁴  through Jesus Christ our Savior.

Titus 3:2

3:2 They must not slander ⁴⁵  anyone, but be peaceable, gentle, showing complete courtesy to all people.

Titus 1:11

1:11 who must be silenced because they mislead whole families by teaching for dishonest gain what ought not to be taught.

Titus 1:1

Salutation

1:1 From Paul, ⁴⁶  a slave ⁴⁷  of God and apostle of Jesus Christ, to further the faith ⁴⁸  of God’s chosen ones and the knowledge of the truth that is in keeping with godliness,

Titus 3:14

3:14 Here is another way that our people ⁴⁹  can learn ⁵⁰  to engage in good works to meet pressing needs and so not be unfruitful.

[13:24]  ¹ tn Or “Make every effort” (L&N 68.74; cf. NIV); “Do your best” (TEV); “Work hard” (NLT); Grk “Struggle.” The idea is to exert one’s maximum effort (cf. BDAG 17 s.v. ἀγωνίζομαι 2.b, “strain every nerve to enter”) because of the supreme importance of attaining entry into the kingdom of God.

[5:24]  ² tn Grk “Truly, truly, I say to you.”

[5:24]  ³ tn Or “obeys.”

[5:24]  ⁴ tn Or “word.”

[5:24]  ⁵ tn Grk “and does not come into judgment.”

[6:17]  ⁶ tn Grk “you were slaves of sin but you obeyed.”

[6:17]  ⁷ tn Or “type, form.”

[6:19]  ⁸ tn Or “because of your natural limitations” (NRSV).

[6:21]  ⁹ tn Grk “fruit.”

[6:21]  ¹⁰ tn Grk “have,” in a tense emphasizing their customary condition in the past.

[6:22]  ¹¹ tn The two aorist participles translated “freed” and “enslaved” are causal in force; their full force is something like “But now, since you have become freed from sin and since you have become enslaved to God….”

[6:22]  ¹² tn Grk “fruit.”

[1:9]  ¹³ tn Or “heard about it”; Grk “heard.” There is no direct object stated in the Greek (direct objects were frequently omitted in Greek when clear from the context). A direct object is expected by an English reader, however, so most translations supply one. Here, however, it is not entirely clear what the author “heard”: a number of translations supply “it” (so KJV, NASB, NRSV; NAB “this”), but this could refer back either to (1) “your love in the Spirit” at the end of v. 8, or (2) “your faith in Christ Jesus and the love that you have for all the saints” (v. 4). In light of this uncertainty, other translations supply “about you” (TEV, NIV, CEV, NLT). This is preferred by the present translation since, while it does not resolve the ambiguity entirely, it does make it less easy for the English reader to limit the reference only to “your love in the Spirit” at the end of v. 8.

[1:9]  ¹⁴ tn The term “God” does not appear in the Greek text, but the following reference to “the knowledge of his will” makes it clear that “God” is in view as the object of the “praying and asking,” and should therefore be included in the English translation for clarity.

[1:9]  ¹⁵ tn The ἵνα (Jina) clause has been translated as substantival, indicating the content of the prayer and asking. The idea of purpose may also be present in this clause.

[1:10]  ¹⁶ tn The infinitive περιπατῆσαι (peripathsai, “to walk, to live, to live one’s life”) is best taken as an infinitive of purpose related to “praying” (προσευχόμενοι, proseucomenoi) and “asking” (αἰτούμενοι, aitoumenoi) in v. 9 and is thus translated as “that you may live.”

[1:10]  ¹⁷ tn BDAG 129 s.v. ἀρεσκεία states that ἀρεσκείαν (areskeian) refers to a “desire to please εἰς πᾶσαν ἀ. to please (the Lord) in all respects Col 1:10.”

[1:11]  ¹⁸ tn The expression “for the display of” is an attempt to convey in English the force of the Greek preposition εἰς (eis) in this context.

[1:2]  ¹⁹ tn Grk “and faithful.” The construction in Greek (as well as Paul’s style) suggests that the saints are identical to the faithful; hence, the καί (kai) is best left untranslated (cf. Eph 1:1). See ExSyn 281-82.

[1:2]  ²⁰ tn Grk “brothers,” but the Greek word may be used for “brothers and sisters” or “fellow Christians” as here (cf. BDAG 18 s.v. ἀδελφός 1, where considerable nonbiblical evidence for the plural ἀδελφοί [adelfoi] meaning “brothers and sisters” is cited).

[1:2]  ²¹ tn Or “Grace to you and peace.”

[1:2]  ²² tc Most witnesses, including some important ones (א A C F G I [P] 075 Ï it bo), read “and the Lord Jesus Christ” at the end of this verse, no doubt to conform the wording to the typical Pauline salutation. However, excellent and early witnesses (B D K L Ψ 33 81 1175 1505 1739 1881 al sa) lack this phrase. Since the omission is inexplicable as arising from the longer reading (otherwise, these mss would surely have deleted the phrase in the rest of the corpus Paulinum), it is surely authentic.

[1:17]  ²³ tn BDAG 973 s.v. συνίστημι B.3 suggests “continue, endure, exist, hold together” here.

[1:18]  ²⁴ tn See the note on the term “firstborn” in 1:15. Here the reference to Jesus as the “firstborn from among the dead” seems to be arguing for a chronological priority, i.e., Jesus was the first to rise from the dead.

[1:18]  ²⁵ tn Grk “in order that he may become in all things, himself, first.”

[2:3]  ²⁶ 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]  ²⁷ tn Grk “we all.”

[2:3]  ²⁸ tn Or “even.”

[2:3]  ²⁹ sn Children of wrath is a Semitic idiom which may mean either “people characterized by wrath” or “people destined for wrath.”

[2:3]  ³⁰ 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]  ³¹ 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]  ³² tn Or possibly “to the Aeons who are about to come.”

[2:7]  ³³ tn Or “upon.”

[2:8]  ³⁴ tn See note on the same expression in v. 5.

[2:8]  ³⁵ 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]  ³⁶ tn Or “not as a result of.”

[2:9]  ³⁷ tn Grk “lest anyone should boast.”

[2:10]  ³⁸ tn Grk “so that we might walk in them” (or “by them”).

[2:1]  ³⁹ tn The adverbial participle “being” (ὄντας, ontas) is taken concessively.

[2:1]  ⁴⁰ 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.

[2:12]  ⁴¹ tn Or “without Christ.” Both “Christ” (Greek) and “Messiah” (Hebrew and Aramaic) mean “one who has been anointed.” Because the context refers to ancient Israel’s messianic expectation, “Messiah” was employed in the translation at this point rather than “Christ.”

[2:12]  ⁴² tn Or “covenants of the promise.”

[3:4]  ⁴³ 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]  ⁴⁴ tn Or “on us richly.”

[3:2]  ⁴⁵ tn Or “discredit,” “damage the reputation of.”

[1:1]  ⁴⁶ tn Grk “Paul.” The word “from” is not in the Greek text, but has been supplied to indicate the sender of the letter.

[1:1]  ⁴⁷ tn Traditionally, “servant” or “bondservant.” Though δοῦλος (doulos) is normally translated “servant,” the word does not bear the connotation of a free individual serving another. BDAG notes that “‘servant’ for ‘slave’ is largely confined to Biblical transl. and early American times…in normal usage at the present time the two words are carefully distinguished” (BDAG 260 s.v.). The most accurate translation is “bondservant” (sometimes found in the ASV for δοῦλος), in that it often indicates one who sells himself into slavery to another. But as this is archaic, few today understand its force.

[1:1]  ⁴⁸ tn Grk “for the faith,” possibly, “in accordance with the faith.”

[3:14]  ⁴⁹ tn Grk “that those who are ours” (referring to the Christians).

[3:14]  ⁵⁰ tn Grk “and also let our people learn.”