In our Bible study this morning, we started 1 Thessalonians, and we read through some very familiar passages. I realized that I have only gone through this letter in personal devotional reading and never in a "formal" setting (not sure how that happened), so I have always read it in the NIV: We always thank God for all of you and continually mention you in our prayers. We remember before our God and Father your work produced by faith, your labor prompted by love, and your endurance inspired by hope in our Lord Jesus Christ. For we know, brothers and sisters loved by God, that he has chosen you, because our gospel came to you not simply with words but also with power, with the Holy Spirit and deep conviction. But this morning I happened to have my NAS with me: We give thanks to God always for all of you, making mention of you in our prayers; constantly bearing in mind your work of faith and labor of love and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ in the presence of our God and Father, knowing, brethren beloved by God, His choice of you; for our gospel did not come to you in word only, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction. Always reading the NIV, I had no trouble viewing the phrase following "power" as an appositive; in other words, reading it as "with power, namely the Holy Spirit and the deep conviction thereby produced." That's certainly how the NLT interprets it: For when we brought you the Good News, it was not only with words but also with power, for the Holy Spirit gave you full assurance that what we said was true. But when I read the NAS, I get a sense of distinction between the nouns. (Doing a quick pull of the verse at BibleHub, I discovered that many translations follow the NAS approach.) That's not to say that the distinction isn't there in the way the NIV translates the words, just that I could gloss over them more easily.
So here's what Paul says about the proof of his gospel in Thessalonika:
ev logo monon alla kai en duvamei kai en pneumati hagio kai en* plerophoria polle in word alone but also in power and in Holy Spirit an in all assurance/certainty (I've never liked trying to give a transliteration when the alphabets don't line up, so sorry about that; and that's also a pretty rough English translation.) There is a minor textual question about the presence of the starred en, but the one before it is accepted in all manuscripts. To make a long story short, this means that we are not dealing with the so-called TSKS construction. Paul is distinguishing between the nouns by making them the subjects of prepositional phrases. The only reason he would do that is if he really wanted to. In other words, the distinction between "power" and "Holy Spirit" is intentional. So what does that mean? What is the "power" Paul is talking about here? Pleasingly, the "study" part of my Bible actually had something to say about this: "that power is of the Holy Spirit (see Ro 15:13,18-19; 1 Co 2:4-5), but is also resides in the gospel itself (see Ro 1:16)." We all know what that means: time to investigate. Study Bibles are intended to be a starting point for study, not an end.
So where do we go with this? There is obviously the power of God in the Spirit of God; that's just good theology (see Luke 1:35). But the way the Romans 1 passage is worded makes you wonder that the concept of power is more intricate. So let's dig further. Do any New Testament passages make straightforward declarations about the power of God?
Something I didn't see which I expected to see was a direct connection with the Word of God, i.e. the Bible. Paul describes that Word as "God-breathed." The author of Hebrews describes it as "living and active." But let's go a step further - in Romans 10, Paul says that faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of Christ. Another way of translating that passage results in the idea that salvation comes when someone responds to a message about Christ (or even from Christ). We would call that "the gospel" (and so would Paul, although I would wonder why Paul didn't just say that here if that's exactly what he meant). So from these passages, it is pretty clear that there is power in the message of the Gospel itself, the good news about Jesus Christ. But it is not just any power to be claimed; it is the power to bring salvation. Here are a couple of dead-ends we could find if we pursued any of these thoughts by human logic.
What do we do with all of this? I actually think there are some very important consequences to this understanding that there is power in the Gospel even independent of the Spirit.
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