The Expositor’s Bible Commentary, Abridged: New Testament

Top Highlights

“This verse presents us with a difficult problem. On the face of it, the verse in Greek ascribes to Sarah an activity possible only to males, that she deposited seed for children. Two of the best suggested interpretations are: (1) To see the words ‘Sarah herself’ as dative and not nominative. The meaning would then be ‘By faith he, together with Sarah herself, received power.…’ Abraham then had faith in connection with the birth of Isaac, and Sarah is linked with him. (2) To take the words about Sarah as a parenthesis, as NIV does. This translation also inserts ‘Abraham’ into the text and makes the rest of the verse refer unambiguously to a male.” (Page 995)

“John presents Jesus as the Lord of the maturing and questioning believer.” (Page 290)

“This letter has been called the ‘Magna Carta of Christian liberty,’ for it maintains that only through the grace of God received through faith in Jesus Christ can a person escape the curse of sin and of the law and live a new life, not in bondage or license, but in a genuine freedom of mind and spirit through the power of God.” (Page 703)

“God’s capacity to meet his people’s spiritual needs far exceeds anything they can either request in prayer or conceive by way of anticipation (Php 4:7). It is actualized through ‘his power,’ which continually operates within the lives of believers.” (Page 766)

“His incarnation was the full manifestation of grace and truth because it was the greatest possible expression of God’s compassion for people and the most perfect way of conveying the truth to their understanding.” (Page 298)