The NET Bible

I’ve been using the New English Translation, or NET Bible, as my version of choice on my YouVersion Bible app for a few years now. There are a few reasons I really like it:

First, it was one of the first translations to be made available totally free of charge. I know that workers deserve to be paid (1 Tim 5:17-18), and so I don’t at all begrudge the efforts of, say, Zondervan to be compensated for their work on the NIV, but I deeply appreciate that a group of scholars is working to make a Bible translation free of charge.

Second, like most Bible translations, it has translation footnotes where there be some alternate possibility for how a verse is translated. However, the NET Bible’s translation footnotes (which are available in YouVersion) are incredibly detailed - often approaching a study Bible’s study notes in thoroughness. For serious study, I’ll still break out my four-pound ESV Study Bible, but having the NET translation footnotes readily available on my phone is great. The online version of the NET Bible goes further; it includes free commentaries by Thomas Constable, Alexander Maclaren, and Matthew Henry. I’ve often found Constable’s notes helpful in study and teaching.

Third, the translation sometimes uses newer scholarship for a bit of a different perspective in its translations. I’ve found this helpful in my own reading of Scripture, so I wanted to share a few examples here. I hope it will provide some new insights for you, too.

A couple of caveats before I continue: Like many former Bible college students, I’ve studied Greek. However, I’m nowhere near qualified to evaluate the work of professional Greek scholars; I can say that I appreciate a particular translation and find it helpful, but I’m limited in how well I can say it’s more or less accurate than others. And I don’t want to make too much out of these translation differences. Some skeptics (and, perhaps, some Christians) will make a big deal out of differences in manuscripts and translations, but the fact is that the overwhelming majority of the text in our Bibles are clear and unquestioned.

Ephesians 4:26-27

How the NIV puts it:

“In your anger do not sin”: Do not let the sun go down while you are still angry, and do not give the devil a foothold.

How I’ve usually heard it interpreted: It’s not a sin to be angry, because anger is just an emotion, but we must not sin by letting anger control us. To help avoid the temptation of sinning in our anger, we should deal with it promptly - that same day, if possible.

How the NET puts it:

Be angry and do not sin; do not let the sun go down on the cause of your anger. Do not give the devil an opportunity.

How the NET translation notes explain it:

Christians are to exercise a righteous indignation over sin in the midst of the believing community (v. 26a; note that v. 25 is restricting the discussion to those in the body of Christ). When other believers sin, such people should be gently and quickly confronted (v. 26b), for if the body of Christ does not address sin in its midst, the devil gains a foothold (v. 27).

If following God really is the priority in our lives, if we’re learning to love the things that he loves and shun the things that he hates, then there are things that should make us angry. The Bible also says that “human anger does not accomplish God’s righteousness” (James 1:20), and there are definitely risks in indulging that anger or in resorting to it too quickly when we see something we don’t approve of - but we ought to have passion, and we ought to take sin within the church seriously.

I also appreciate how this interpretation ties together the passage; Paul starts out Ephesians 5 with a discussion on the importance of holy living, and instead of following that with a random assortment of specific commands, this interpretation has Paul lead into the importance of holy living within the community by promptly and truthfully confronting each other where we fall short.

1 Corinthians 13:12

How the ESV puts it:

For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known.

How I’ve usually heard it interpreted: In the larger passage, Paul is talking about how spiritual gifts will no longer be needed in the future. Some people interpret this as referring to the end of the apostolic age and the completion of the canon of Scripture: once that’s happened, we have God’s Word to give us more complete knowledge, and so the partial knowledge through prophecy and speaking in tongues would no longer be needed. A more likely interpretation, I think, is to understand the future state as referring to the second coming of Christ: our knowledge of God on earth is “dim,” imperfect, and partial, but once Jesus returns, our knowledge of God will be complete (to the extent that finite beings’ understanding of the infinite God can be complete).

How the NET puts it:

For now we see in a mirror indirectly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know in part, but then I will know fully, just as I have been fully known.

How the NET translation notes explain it:

Corinth was well known in the ancient world for producing some of the finest bronze mirrors available. Paul’s point in this analogy, then, is not that our current understanding and relationship with God is distorted (as if the mirror reflected poorly), but rather that it is “indirect,” (i.e., the nature of looking in a mirror) compared to the relationship we will enjoy with him in the future when we see him “face-to-face.”

My postmodern brain likes the idea of seeing “dimly” or “darkly” in an imperfect mirror. (I even referenced it in last week’s blog post.) I struggle at times with doubt and with how to make sense of the numerous and conflicting takes on Christian beliefs, so that imagery resonates with me. And I don’t think it’s necessarily wrong. But what if it’s not what Paul is trying to say here? Through the Spirit of God working through the body of Christ (because that’s what the gifts of the Spirit are - even if we no longer see the same miracles as the first-century believers, the Spirit still does this), and through God’s Word (the Old Testament Scriptures that Paul knew, and the New Testament writings that even in the first century were becoming recognized as Scripture), we can see the reflection of God - accurately, even if it is indirect and incomplete.

Constable gives a modern-day analogy: “Today we might say that we presently look at a photograph, but in the future we will see what the photograph pictures.” It’s the difference between admiring the gorgeous photos of the Wiki Loves Earth contests and seeing those sights for yourself.

The NET translation notes go on to discuss possible Old Testament parallels: God told the Israelites that he spoke with Moses face-to-face instead of “in dark figures [of speech]” (Num 12:8), and Paul talks about Moses in 1 Cor 10 and 2 Cor 3, so he could have easily had Moses in mind here. That makes the imagery even stronger: Moses’ face reflected the glory of God to the Israelites who (through fear and fallenness) could not approach God themselves, but now we can see God’s glory reflected through his Word and his church, and now “we all, with unveiled faces reflecting the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another” (2 Cor 3:18). And, finally, in Heaven, we’ll see God directly, and each of us will be (as C.S. Lewis puts it) a “dazzling, radiant, immortal creature, pulsating all through with such energy and joy and wisdom and love as we cannot now imagine, a bright stainless mirror which reflects back to God perfectly (though, of course, on a smaller scale) His own boundless power and delight and goodness.”

Ephesians 3:11-12

How the NIV puts it:

[God’s intent was] according to his eternal purpose that he accomplished in Christ Jesus our Lord. In him and through faith in him we may approach God with freedom and confidence.

How I’ve usually heard it interpreted: The principle that we’re saved - that we’re able to approach God - only because we have faith in Christ and accept his grace, rather than because of anything that we do, is a core belief of Christianity and was one of the foundational emphases of the Protestant Reformation. It would be hard to overstate its importance. It reminds us of the wonders of God’s grace; it tells us of our need to put our wholehearted trust in God; it knocks down our continued efforts to set up our own standards of behavior as if our works could make us right with God. And yet…

How the NET puts it:

This was according to the eternal purpose that he accomplished in Christ Jesus our Lord, in whom we have boldness and confident access to God by way of Christ’s faithfulness.

How the NET translation notes explain it:

Though Paul elsewhere teaches justification by faith, this presupposes that the object of our faith (Christ) is reliable and worthy of such faith.

…And yet, I sometimes fear that we oversimplify or misstate justification by faith. In our zeal to give God, and not us, the credit for our salvation, we draw such a sharp distinction between faith and works that we almost make it sound as if our actions don’t matter (because, if our actions affected our eternal fate, then we’d be saved by works), or we try to argue that even responding to God (by choosing to accept the Gospel and being baptized) is itself a work. And I fear that “faith” has suffered a bit from being turned into church jargon; we know that it’s dead unless it’s accompanied by works (James 2:14-26), but we still define it primarily as “religious belief” or “a set of religious beliefs,” when its fuller meaning includes faithfulness (not merely belief or trust, but holding to one’s promise) and allegiance (belief plus a commitment that’s seen in one’s actions). (All of this is worth a longer discussion in some future post.)

And, in discussing how we’re saved and what we do and how we need to believe, why are we spending so much time talking about “we,” anyway? In discussing the salvation that Christ has wrought for us, shouldn’t we focus on Christ? That’s part of the reason I appreciate the NET Bible’s translation: all of the wondrous gifts that come with our salvation are through Christ’s faithfulness. The focus is on Christ.

The technical terminology here is whether the phrase “faith[fulness] of Christ” is an objective genitive (Christ is the object of “faith,” so “faith in Christ”) or a subjective genitive (Christ is the subject, so “Christ’s faithfulness”). This isn’t the only place where this phrase occurs; the NET translation notes also point out Rom 3:22, 26; Gal 2:16, 20, 3:22; and Phil 3:9 as places where “faith in Christ” should be translated “faithfulness of Christ.” I love going back to those passages and, without minimizing the truth that we’re justified because of our trust in and commitment to God, re-reading them in light of the bigger truth that we’re saved because of Christ’s and God’s faithfulness - because God upheld every promise he made to his people, even at the cost of his Son, and because Christ lived right and was obedient even to the cross.