Who’s the savior in Titus?  The OT prophet proclaims “I, even I, am the LORD (Yahweh), and apart from me there is no savior.” (Isaiah 43:11)  When Paul wrote this letter to Titus, he would have had an understanding that there was no savior other than Yahweh God.  Yet once in each chapter he applies the title to God and to Jesus.  Note the introduction of the book:  God “brought his word to light through the preaching entrusted to me by the command of God our Savior.”  And just one line later, “Grace and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Savior.” (1:3-4)  Then in the second chapter, slaves should be subject to their masters, so that “in every way they will make the teaching about God our Savior attractive.”  And just a few sentences later, “we wait for the blessed hope – the glorious appearing of our great God and Savior, Jesus Christ.” (2:10-13)  And finally in the third chapter, Paul puts in this marvelous statement about grace:  “When the kindness and love of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy.  He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us generously through Jesus Christ our Savior.” (3:4-6)

                Could there be a stronger statement of the deity of Jesus?  God is our savior; Jesus is our savior; and each said three times.  In fact, Jesus is our great God and savior!  Paul wasn’t confused; he knew exactly what he was saying, and only the Trinity doctrine explains it without contradiction.  By the way, with this line of reasoning, one can prove the deity of Jesus even in the New World Translation of the Jehovah’s Witnesses – a bible translation (not a Bible!) which goes to great length to remove any reference to Jesus’ diety.  Though they change the wording of “our great God and savior,” the argument still holds.  This is such a compelling statement of deity that even that translation couldn’t get it out!

          I read John Piper’s blog on a regular basis.  I found this interesting article by him on the TNIV translation this morning.  The fascinating title is “Barak Obama and the TNIV.”  Though arriving at the same conclusion I came to while reading through it, Piper has a different appraoch that deserves a hearing.  I find it hard to disagree with his argument.  Piper’s article is here.

          My thoughts were at the end of this miscellaneous article.

For the last few weeks I have been reading Benson Bobrick’s book, Angel in the Whirlwind:  The Triumph of the American Revolution.  Because of my interest in English Bible history and translation, I had previously read his Wide as the Waters: The Story of the English Bible and the Revolution It Inspired.  I was so fascinated by that work, that I had to read this one as well.  This one is no less fascinating, though it is not a quick read.  My reading time has been limited the past few weeks and I am only 110 pages into a 500 page book, but every page and detail has been intriguing.  Here is just one of many great quotes so far:

From time to time, the religious life of America was shaken by evangelicals, most notably in the mid-1730s and 1740s, when a fundamentalist revival – marked by prayer meetings, confessions, repentances, and hysterical conversions – swept through the colonies north and south.  .  .  . 

Perhaps the most charismatic of the “New Light” evangelicals was George Whitefield, a follower of John Wesley, who challenged his listeners to awake to the requirements of a spiritual life.  He emphasized personal accountability as well as a more passionate communion with God.  .  .  . 

Even the worldly wise Benjamin Franklin was so moved by Whitefield’s oratory on one occasion that, he tells us in his Autobiography, “I emptied my pocket wholly, gold and all, into the collector’s dish.”  .  .  .  The Great Awakening helped bind Americans together with a shared sense of their spirituality as a people and, perhaps, “prepared them,” in the words of one historian, “for the coming ordeal of sacrifice and war.”

Franklin and his compatriots were not so moved when, in the mid-1760s, the king and Parliament began to preach their own requirements and to pass the collection plate around for themselves.  (pages 59-61)

For my devotions this year I will be reading through the New Testament twice.  The first time through I am reading the NET Bible.  This translation was developed as a digital Bible from the outset, as it was designed to be a freely-available on-line English Bible.  You can find it at www.bible.org/netbible/index.htm   The translators included thousands of footnotes, which are a great wealth of information for translation and study.

Matthew 1:18-25.  There are many who would discount the virgin birth of Jesus as myth added to the story later.  These pundits will point to the famous virgin passage in Isaiah and remind us that the Hebrew word translated as virgin could mean any young woman, not necessarily a sexual virgin.  But that argument ignores the New Testament evidence from Luke and Matthew.  This passage in the very beginning of Matthew not only supports the virgin birth, but actually emphasizes it.  Notice how often Matthew makes note of it:  1) The very first thing we learn about Mary’s pregnancy is that it happened “before they came together.”   2) In fact, she was “found to be pregnant through the Holy Spirit.”  3) Joseph “intended to divorce her”  for the very reason that he knew he wasn’t the father of this mysterious baby.  4) However, the angel told him in a dream that the child conceived in Mary “was from the Holy Spirit.”   5) This all happened to fulfill the prophecy of Isaiah, “The virgin will conceive and bear a son.”   Matthew’s quotation of the prophecy contains the Greek word which can only mean a sexual virgin, and he applies it to this particular situation for that reason.  6) Even after they were married, Joseph “did not have marital relations with”  Mary until after the child was born.  And finally, 7) Matthew makes it clear in the genealogy that Joseph is the adopted father of Jesus when he says Jacob was “the father of Joseph, the husband of Mary, by whom Jesus was born.” (v16)  “Whom” in this verse is the feminine form of the word, so there is no confusion as to Matthew’s meaning.

Matthew clearly teaches the virgin birth and does so emphatically.  The debate over whether Jesus was virgin-born is not a matter of what the Bible says; it is a matter of whether one believes the Bible or not.  It is not a matter of biblical interpretation, but one of biblical authority.  Those who teach the virgin birth as myth simply choose not to believe the clear meaning of the text.

The following is a letter I sent to my nephews and nieces after a fun discussion of Bible translations:

Here is a chart I made a few years ago concerning how much paraphrase and how much word-for-word literalness was used by various translations.  I considered the Cotton Patch version as the most liberal paraphrase of all and assigned it a score of 100; and I considered an interlinear NT (a book where the English equivalents are typed between the lines of the Greek, with no concern for English sentence structure or word order) as a score of zero.  Everything else would fall between those.  Of course, this was a very subjective process, and I, in all my depravity, was the subject!  Other readers might assign the scores in a completely different way than I did, and I might do the numbers different today, but this will give you an idea of where I place various versions of the Bible.  Even if I changed the numbers, I would still keep the versions in the same order.

A couple of notes to remember:  First, we must consider what a translation team was trying to accomplish, whether they came near to accomplishing that goal, and whether that goal is legitimate for our purposes.  In that light, I find the NASB (1995 edition) and NIV as the ones that best accomplished their stated goals.  Whether those goals are legitimate depends on one’s perspective about translation theories and one’s purpose.  Here your pastor and I might not fully agree; that’s why I preach out of the NIV and he out of the NASB.  Though I like the NASB for study, I find the NIV captured our modern language better, is more widely read, and is thus preferred for preaching (another very subjective judgment).  And even though I read out of it, I usually begin my study with the Greek, and I’m not afraid to state when I disagree with the NIV.

Second, remember that more literal does not necessarily mean more accurate.  Every “translation” has to have some “paraphrase” in it due to literary context, social context,  figures of speech, etc.  We talked about this on Sunday.  At the same time remember that we believe in “verbal-plenary inspiration.”  That means all the words of the original are inspired.

And third, the fact that we can even consider such things makes us a very blessed people indeed!  Christians in the majority of languages and through most eras of church history would consider themselves fortunate to have one copy of the Bible in their native tongue.  Yet I have fifty different versions of the NT in English – and multiple copies of some of those!  Let’s not forget the price people like William Tyndale paid to allow us that privilege!

Blessings to all,

Uncle Glenn

Anyway, for what it’s worth after all those qualifications, here’s that subjective chart:

“He changes a wilderness into a pool of water and a dry land into springs of water.”  Psalm 107.  I have to ponder this idea every once in a while because life can be dry.  There have been very few “devotional thoughts” published on this blog in the past three weeks; I just haven’t had many thoughts worth publishing.  As a teaching pastor, I have to have a message for the congregation every Sunday, and for many that is their major input from God for the entire week.  (That is a humbling and sobering thought – maybe a matter to discuss another time.)  Fortunately, God has been gracious allowing me to be faithful to that task for many years, though I’m sure many of those massages have been very dry as well.  But for my own personal devotions, there have been many dry periods over those same years in ministry.  During the dry times devotionally, I am reminded that if God can raise the dead, and if he can make a dry land into a spring of water, then he can revitalize a dry devotional life also.  This period has been short lived, and there have been great times of fellowship through it.  My Sunday morning class on the Reformation and my sermon study in Colossians have been good, so it doesn’t feel like I’m overly thirsty.  When things are dry in your spiritual life, what do you do?  Comments on this one are welcome!

One more thought on dry times:  Not every meal you eat is a memorable meal, but you continue to eat regularly because you need it.  You won’t remember every time you open the Bible, but you should do it anyway because you need it!  The cumulative effect of consistent forgettable times in the Word has a far greater impact than a few memorable ones.  Without forgettable meals, you will die.

A related miscellaneous thought:  I thought sharing a little more on my own devotional plan might be instructive to some people.  I read through the entire Bible in a year, about every other year.  I often read a translation that I’m not very familiar with, because the unfamiliarity makes me pay more attention to what I’m reading, and because I’m just interested in what’s out there.  (I have a fascination with English translations of the New Testament and have over 50 translations and partial translations in my collection!)  This year I am reading through the TNIV for that very reason (more on that later as well).   I divided all the pages in this Bible, minus Psalms, by 50, and aim to read that many pages each week (in this case 21-1/3 pages).  I also divided the pages in Psalms by 50 and am reading that many pages in Psalms as well (1-2/3).  I separated the Psalms out because I love to spend time in them, but I don’t enjoy just reading quickly through them, they deserve more devotional thought than a quick read.  Some years I do the same with the Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John), breaking them up to read one each quarter.  This year I am reading straight through the Gospels, and that may be part of the reason for the dry period I’m currently in.  I am reading Luke this week and next.  It can seem monotonous after reading Matthew and Mark just prior to it.

During years I don’t read through the entire Bible, I read the New Testament at least twice, and spend more time in the Psalms.  Those years require less reading and allow more ponder/study time.

POSTSCRIPT Now a word on the TNIV:  This translation was blasted by some conservatives when it first came out, because of some changes from the NIV, which the translators made.  I had heard some from both sides and found myself philosophically more in agreement with the pro-TNIV argument; I also found some charges by the anti-TNIV group to be unfounded.  For example, it was said by some that the translation waters down the masculinity of Jesus.  Jesus is always called “he” and “man” except for the passage in First Timothy where he is called “human,” and Jesus being man as human, not man as male, is clearly the intent of that passage.  Mostly I think they did a fair job with the changes.  What I haven’t liked about the TNIV is the tiresome use of “them” and “they” for singular pronouns.  I know this is the common usage today, but it still drives me nuts.  This verse in Mark was enough to convince me not to use the TNIV after this year’s reading:  “Whoever (singular) wants to be my disciple (singular) must deny themselves (plural) and take up their (plural) cross (singular) and follow me.  For whoever (singular) wants to save their (plural) life (singular) will lose it, but whoever (singular) loses their (plural) life (singular) for me and for the gospel will save it.  Wow!  That seems like a lot of unnecessary verbal gymnastics to avoid using “he” and “his” as generic pronouns.