Grace and the New Living Translation
In my quest to settle on a favorite Bible translation (paraphrase?), I believe I’ve eliminated the New Living Translation.
Last night, Rick’s Ephesians bible study use a passage that included the word “grace” - except for my NLT. In its place was the phrase “God’s special favor.” This got my attention.
Let’s think about this…
Grace is perhaps THE MOST IMPORTANT part of Christianity. Without God’s grace, we’re back to trying to be “good enough” by keeping the law. Without God’s grace, Jesus doesn’t have to come to earth and die on a cross. I hope Christian readers can wrap their heads around this concept, if they haven’t already. If you don’t understand the impact of God’s grace on your life as a Christian, you don’t understand your salvation.
Back to the matter at hand…
I checked my NLT concordance and found only six instances of the word grace. Another word substitution included “kindness.” This astonished me. Why in the world would the editors of the NLT decide to use other words for one of the most important terms of Christianity? Other translations (and paraphrases) like the ESV, NKJV, and NIV have 20-40 instances of the word “grace.”
Up to this point, I was fan of the NLT for new believers. It’s easy to read (no “thee” and “thou” and all that jazz). It’s easy to understand. After this, though, I can’t say I’m supportive of new believers using the NLT.
As mentioned earlier, every believer needs to know the impact of God’s grace. When words like “special favor” and “kindness” are used, it’s easy to skip over them and not understand the meaning of that passage. It dumbs down the context of the message.
If you’re a NLT-user, take this for what it’s worth to you. I’ve narrowed my choices down to the ESV, NIV and NKJV.
The generation of “church people” that are coming into view today often suffer from pragmatism. Pragmatism means “let’s just do whatever works”. I am all for doing what works but it must be grounded biblical truth. The message of the cross is folly to those who are perishing (1 corinthians 1:18). We need to love people to death, but must not water down or dumb down the truth in hopes that they will “give in”. Words like “propitiation, sanctification, justification, atonement….” are often watered down. They are big words but we must know what they mean. Golfers know what par, birdie, and mulligan mean. Baseball player know what the DL is. Christians should know what justification means. It is sad that many christians are given a hard time for talking about these words yet no one ever fusses at a basketball player for knowing what a technical foul means.
Josh Martin
5 May 06 at 4:25 am