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Galatians 1:7 (Galatians (NIGTC)): Paul himself had for long sought justification before God by his observance of the Jewish law, until his Damascus-road experience taught him the fruitlessness of such a quest and the bankruptcy of the way of law-keeping as a means of getting right with God. The assurance of ultimate acceptance by God, which could never be his while he lived under law, he received on the spot when he yielded submission to the risen Christ. On the spot, too, he realized that the law, to which he had devoted all his gifts and resources, had not been able to prevent him from pursuing the sinful course (as he now knew it to be) of persecuting the church of God (cf. v 13); the law had not been able to show him that the course was sinful. The law, he says later, ‘was added because of transgressions’ (3:19), i.e. to bring transgressions into the open and even to stimulate their commission; and in his personal experience this was true in a special sense: it was his devotion to the law that led him into the sin of sins—persecuting the followers of Christ. He himself knew the joyful sense of release from legal bondage when he placed his faith in Christ, and he desired the same release for his fellow-Jews; but the Gentiles, who had come to faith in Christ and experienced his saving grace without ever having lived under Jewish law, should now wish to assume the yoke of that law was a perversion of all reasonable order. The New International Greek Commentary Galatians. A commentary on the Greek Text.

Philippians 1:4 (UBCS Php): Paul’s introductory thanksgiving is repeatedly linked with the assurance of his constant prayer for the friends to whom he writes (cf. Rom. 1:9; Eph. 1:16; 1 Thess. 1:2; 2 Tim. 1:3; Philem. 4). One gets the impression that he could never think of them without praying for them; but over and above that, he prayed for them regularly and systematically both as individuals and as churches. It is not certain whether the words in all my prayers for all of you should go closely with the following clause (as in niv) or with the preceding clause I thank my God … for you, in which case they would stand in parallel construction with every time I remember you. The repetition of all and every time/always (one and the same root in Greek) is noteworthy; it is a characteristic feature of Paul’s style throughout his correspondence and not least in this letter. There are four occurrences in verses 3 and 4, which could be brought out in the rendering: “I thank my God for you in all my remembrance of you at all times in all my prayer for you all.”

F. F. Bruce. Ephesians Verse by Verse Ephesians 1:14 (OYB Eph): The possessive pronoun “our” here includes Jewish and Gentile believers together. The truth which is expressed in one way by the figure of “sealing” is expressed in another way by the use of the word “earnest.” This Greek word (arrhabōn) is derived from a Semitic root represented in the Hebrew Bible by the term rendered “pledge” three times in Genesis 38:17–20. There Judah gave his daughter-in-law Tamar certain articles of his personal property as a pledge until he could redeem his promise to present her with “a kid of the goats.” The word is used in Modern Greek for an engagement ring, a fact which speaks for itself. So our possession of the Spirit here and now is the guarantee divinely given that we shall one day enjoy in its fullness all that inheritance which God has reserved in heaven for those that love him (cf. 1 Corinthians 2:9; 1 Peter 1:4). Believers are God’s redeemed possession already, but the consummation of his redeeming work remains to be experienced by us. We “have the first fruits of the Spirit,” but the harvest still lies in the future; meanwhile we are “waiting for our adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body” (Romans 8:23). The word for “God’s own possession” (Gk. peripoiēsis) appears in much the same sense in 1 Peter 2:9; the corresponding verb is rendered “purchased” in Acts 20:28. Such Old Testament passages as Exodus 19:5; Deuteronomy 14:2; Psalm 74:2 and Malachi 3:17 form a background to these New Testament expressions (cf. also Titus 2:14, where another word of similar meaning, periousios, is used). Not only our inheritance in Christ, but God’s inheritance in the saints, will be finally realized in that coming age, and “the praise of his glory” will be complete.

Hebrews and the Gospel The purpose of our author’s exegesis of Old Testament scripture, as of his general argument, is to establish the finality of the gospel by contrast with all that went before it (more particularly, by contrast with the Levitical cultus), as the way of perfection, the way which alone leads people to God without any barrier or interruption of access. He establishes the finality of Christianity by establishing the supremacy of Christ, in his person and in his work. As regards his person, Christ is greater than all the servants and spokesmen of God who have gone before—not only greater than other human servants and spokesmen (even Moses) but greater than angels. For he is the Son of God, his agent in creating and maintaining the universe, who yet became the Son of Man and submitted to humiliation and death. He is now exalted above all the heavens, enthroned at God’s right hand, and he lives forever there as his people’s representative. The special aspect of the person and ministry of Christ which is emphasized in this epistle is his priesthood. This epistle, in fact, is the only New Testament document which expressly calls him a priest, although his priesthood is implied in others. One source of our author’s priestly Christology is the Old Testament: if the ruler addressed in Ps. 110 is the Davidic Messiah, as was believed by Jews and Christians alike, then it is the Messiah who is acclaimed in v. 4 of that psalm as “a priest for ever after the order of Melchizedek”—the perfect priest-king. But the mere citation of an Old Testament text would have been pointless if the character and work of Christ had not had a recognizably priestly quality. And our author stresses repeatedly Jesus’ qualifications to be his people’s effective high priest—not only was he personally “holy, free from guile and defilement” (7:26) but having been tested “in all respects” as his people are, he can sympathize with them and supply the help they need in the hour of trial (4:15f.; 2:18). Bruce, FF (1990). Hebrews

What is meant by being “sealed” with the Holy Spirit? The expression occurs here and in Ephesians 4:30, where the present passage is echoed. An owner seals his property with his signet to mark it as his; if at a later time he comes to claim it and his right to it is questioned, his seal is sufficient evidence and puts an end to such questioning. So, the fact that believers are endowed with the Spirit is the token that they belong in a special sense to God. If the twelve disciples of Acts 19:1–7 were among those who heard this epistle read when it reached its destination, they would have thought immediately of that day when Paul met them and told them about the Holy Spirit of whom they had never heard before, the day when they received the Spirit after being baptized into the name of the Lord Jesus and having Paul’s hands laid upon them. And others among their fellow Christians would similarly think of the day when the Spirit came upon them, although to many of them this had happened as soon as they believed, before they entered the baptismal water as the outward and visible sign of the inward and spiritual grace which they had received. One way or the other, they had thus been incorporated into that living fellowship which was inaugurated when the Spirit came down to take possession of the new people of God on the first Christian Pentecost. Other seals, literal or figurative (like circumcision, the seal of the covenant with Abraham), were affixed externally; the seal of the new covenant is imprinted in the believing heart.

The death of believers before the parousia was something that the Thessalonian church had not been prepared for, and a problem was thereby created in their minds on which they sought enlightenment. They seem, in fact, to have put two questions to Paul: a. At Christ’s parousia, what will be the lot of those believers in him who have died before he comes? b. When may the parousia be expected? In answering the former question Paul assures them that those of their number who have died before the parousia will suffer no disadvantage when it take place; “we who are left alive until the Lord comes shall not forestall those who have fallen asleep”. On the contrary, when the Lord descends from heaven with the shout of command, the archangel’s voice and the trumpet blast, those who respond to his summons first will be the dead in Christ; when they rise at his call, brought to life with him who died and rose again, “then we who are left alive shall join them, caught up in clouds to meet the Lord in the air” (1 Thessalonians 4:14–18). This assurance is conveyed to them “by the word of the Lord”—on the authority of an utterance of Jesus himself (whether given before his death or subsequently we need not now inquire). The language and imagery are those associated with Old Testament theophanies of redemption and judgment—we may think of the trumpet blast which calls home the dispersed of Israel in Isaiah 27:13 and the clouds of heaven on which one like a son of man is brought to the Ancient of Days in Daniel 7:13—but what is here communicated in these terms is new and distinctively Christian. Because Jesus died and rose again, those who die believing in him cannot fail to rise with him; and all his people must live forever with him. F.F. Bruce Apostle of the Heart Set Free.

The conception of Christ as the goal of creation plays an essential part in Paul’s soteriology. And this is the more impressive when we bear in mind that the person thus presented as creation’s goal was Jesus of Nazareth, but lately crucified in Jerusalem, whose appearance as the risen Lord to Paul on the Damascus road had called forth that overmastering faith and love which completely reorientated his thought and action and remained thereafter the all-dominating motive of his life. Any attempt to understand the Christology of this epistle without taking into consideration this personal commitment of Paul to Christ would be the sort of understanding that Paul himself condemns as being “according to the elemental powers of the world and not according to Christ” (Ch. 2:8). This distinguishes Paul’s teaching about Christ as the goal of creation from all the Jewish parallels which have been adduced for it. Whatever was previously revealed about God now received fresh illumination from the fact of Christ and from faith in Christ—not only with regard to God’s saving activity but also with regard to His rôle as Creator of the universe and Lord of history. That the course of history is overruled by God for the accomplishment of His purpose is a major truth of the OT, but here we learn how vitally the accomplishment of His purpose is bound up with the person and work of Christ. So, too, in Eph. 1:10 we are told that God’s purpose, conceived in eternity by Him in Christ, that it might be put into effect when the appointed time had fully come, is that all things, in heaven and on earth, should be summed up in Christ. Or, as has been remarked already, it is by means of the mediatorial world-rule of Christ that God’s eternal kingdom is finally to be established (1 Cor. 15:24ff.). Bruce on Colossians