Synonyms: renounce, relinquish, dispense with, forswear, disclaim, disown, disavow, discard, wash one's hands of, give up, stop, cease, drop, forgo, desist from, have done with, abjure, abstain from, discontinue, break off, refrain from, set/lay aside, desert, leave, leave high and dry, turn one's back on, cast aside, break (up) with, vacate, quit, evacuate, withdraw from, surrender, cede, yield, indulge in, give way to, give oneself up to, yield to, lose oneself to/in, uninhibitedness, recklessness, lack of restraint, lack of inhibition, unruliness, wildness, impulsiveness, impetuosity, immoderation, wantonness
Antonyms: keep, claim, continue, stick by, self-control, power through, achieve, defend, bear, hope, acquire, quick visit, adopt, continue along, adhere, remain, pursue, support, take up, keep up, reuse, advocate, stay, persevere, cherish, keep going, carry on
Showing 951 to 975 of 1249 results
Understanding Series
L. Ann Jervis
... Christ” (2:16). Whether Paul’s presentation of the rival evangelists’ position is fair or not, it is clear that Paul was willing to go to almost any lengths to defend the Gentiles’ right to be believers in Jesus Christ without having to adopt the Jewish law. 2:6 Paul is not overawed by the Jerusalem church leaders. Paul describes the leaders as “those who seemed to be important.” Implying that whereas others might be intimidated by their current eminence in the Jerusalem church and perhaps their ...
952. Freedom In Christ
Galatians 5:1-15, Galatians 5:16-26
Understanding Series
L. Ann Jervis
... off from Christ (cf. 4:19). The choice is the Galatians’ to make. They are in Christ and in God’s grace as they are. They will not lose the benefit of Christ through remaining as Gentiles, as the agitators are asserting. But if they choose to adopt law they will fall from grace, for they will have chosen to refuse God’s gift of Christ’s self-offering (cf. 2:21, “if justification comes through the law, then Christ died for nothing”). In the face of the Galatians’ fascination with the law Paul ...
Understanding Series
Arthur G. Patzia
... are new beings—a new creation (2 Cor. 5:17)—yet are to become new people at every moment of their lives (Rom. 12:1–2); believers have the first fruits of the Spirit (Rom. 8:23a), yet groan within themselves as they “wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies” (Rom. 8:23b); here believers receive all of Christ’s abundant wealth (Phil. 4:19), yet there is a glory to be revealed (Rom. 8:18). To a certain extent, Ephesians and Colossians retain a belief in the Parousia as ...
Understanding Series
Arthur G. Patzia
... number of non-Christian sources that bear witness to the concern that existed in the ancient world about the unity of the cosmos, God, Law, Truth, and all areas of life (pp. 685–86). The assumption is that the author of Ephesians adopted such formulas, gave them a specific Christian content, and incorporated them into his epistle. Most commentators, however, take verses 4–6 to be a compilation of verses and ideas that Paul has used throughout his writings. The main difference between Paul’s undisputed ...
Understanding Series
Arthur G. Patzia
... is F. Hauck’s article “koinos” (“fellowship”), TDNT, vol. 3, pp. 789–809, esp. pp. 806–7, where he discusses the fellowship that the believer enjoys with Christ. Lohse’s view on the “woes of the Messiah” is discussed in his commentary, pp. 69–72. Martin adopts this interpretation of 1:24 when he states: “Paul takes over this notion and bends it to his purpose. In his life of service to the Gentile churches he is called upon to represent his people as a martyr figure and to perform a ...
Understanding Series
David J. Williams
... and the Lord Jesus Christ to the greeting. The Greek would allow it, and it would thereby indicate the place (en, “in”) in which grace and peace are to be found rather than the source (apo, as in the formulae above) from which they come. But NIV adopts the consensus view that the phrase belongs rather with the church of the Thessalonians, expressing the idea that the church was at rest in God. In the world it had no rest. It was a persecuted church. However, the promise was that no one could snatch ...
Understanding Series
David J. Williams
... ; 3:2). A further purpose in sending Timothy is so that no one would be unsettled by these trials. The verb, sainō, occurs only here in the NT. It is used of dogs, “to wag the tail,” but it has several derived meanings including the one adopted by NIV, “to unsettle” (attested in the papyri). The trials (thlipsis, lit. “pressures”) are those referred to in 1:6 and 2:14—the pressures of persecution. You know quite well, Paul adds, that we were destined for them—the verb keimai, “to be laid ...
Understanding Series
David J. Williams
... uses it deliberately here “to express a feeling too deep for words” (Morris). Paul poured out his heart in prayer most earnestly for the Thessalonian Christians. Of a number of verbs that he might have chosen to relay the idea, “to pray,” Paul adopts one in particular, deomai, that conveys his sense of dependence on God. What follows relates both the content and the purpose (see disc. on 2:12) of his prayer. It was twofold: First, that we may see you again—the longing for the Thessalonians ...
959. The Man of Lawlessness
2 Thessalonians 2:1-12
Understanding Series
David J. Williams
... guess at Paul’s meaning. What is holding him back translates the neuter participle of the verb katechō, meaning (1) “to hold fast” (cf., e.g., 1 Thess. 5:21), (2) “to hold back” (cf. Philem. 13), or (3) “to hold sway” (if intransitive). NIV adopts the second sense, the consensus view. With the participle being neuter, Paul appears to be saying that some thing is restraining the man of lawlessness. But we find that in the next verse the participle changes to masculine, so that in verse 7, he ...
960. Final Greetings
2 Thessalonians 3:16-18
Understanding Series
David J. Williams
... name should appear in the address (cf. 1:1; 1 Thess. 1:1). On the other hand, it was not unusual for the author to add a few lines at the end if an amanuensis had written the bulk of the letter at his or her dictation. Paul adopts this practice here, claiming in fact that this was the distinguishing mark in all (of his) letters. Elsewhere he draws attention to it explicitly in 1 Corinthians 16:21; Galatians 6:11; Colossians 4:18 and Philemon 19. In this instance, it may have been prompted by the possibility ...
Understanding Series
Gordon D. Fee
... The words braided hair and gold or pearls may go together and have to do with tiered hair decorated with gold and pearls. See J. B. Hurley, Man and Woman in Biblical Perspective, pp. 198–99. 2:11–12 In requiring learning “in a quiet demeanor” Paul is hardly adopting a view like Plutarch’s: “Her speech as well ought not to be for the public.… For a woman ought to do her talking to her husband or through her husband” (26.30–32, Loeb). Plutarch’s view had to do with all women in all public ...
Understanding Series
Gordon D. Fee
... is expressed eschatologically precisely because he is now dead. 1:18 The prayer-wish literally reads: “May the Lord grant him to find mercy from the Lord on that day.” Several explanations for this awkward construction have been offered (see Kelly or Hanson). The most likely (adopted by Spicq, Kelly, Hanson, et al.) is that the first Lord refers to Christ (as in vv. 2 and 8 above, and ordinarily in Paul and the PE), and that the second refers to God and reflects the LXX. The Appeal Renewed After a brief ...
Understanding Series
Gordon D. Fee
... 3:4, it is said in a slightly different and more positive way. These represent two sides of the same coin. His children are themselves to be believers; that is, the potential elder is to be the kind of person whose children have followed him in adopting his faith. Or it could mean they are “faithfully” to reflect the behavior of “the faithful.” In either case, the flip side of the coin is that they are not to be open to the charge of being wild (or “dissipation,” “debauchery”; cf. Eph. 5:18 ...
Understanding Series
Gordon D. Fee
... difference in historical setting, not authorship. For a thorough discussion of the first two alternatives for understanding the middle terms of this verse, see G. R. Beasley-Murray, Baptism in the New Testament, pp. 209–16. For a presentation similar to the one adopted here (alternative 3), see J. D. G. Dunn, Baptism in the Holy Spirit, pp. 165–70. For a discussion of rebirth in Hellenism, see D-C, pp. 148–50, although their fascination with parallels in the mysteries seems to preclude their hearing ...
Understanding Series
Donald A. Hagner
... on aiōn in TDNT, vol. 1, pp. 203f. The eschatological dimensions of “inheritance” and its connection with sonship are important not only for Christ, but for his people who, according to Paul (Rom. 8:17) and Peter (1 Pet. 3:7), enjoy their sonship by adoption and are made fellow-heirs with Christ. For our author the inheritance of the saints is important. See 6:12, 17; 9:15; 10:36; 11:8. 1:3 Some scholars have argued that v. 3 was originally part of a confessional hymn. The opening relative pronoun ...
Understanding Series
Donald A. Hagner
... elsewhere in the NT (e.g., 1 Tim. 4:3). This provides some support for T. W. Manson’s thesis that Hebrews was written to the same gnostic-influenced community in the Lycus Valley to which Colossians is addressed. R. Jewett has adopted this viewpoint in his commentary. A similar asceticism, but with very different presuppositions, was held by the Essenes such as those who formed the community at Qumran. Hughes uses this to support his theory that the readers were influenced by the Essene perspective ...
Understanding Series
Norman Hillyer
... of one suffering on behalf of the sins of others is repeated in Isa. 53:4, 5, 11, 12. Matthew interprets Isa. 53:4 LXX (“He bears our sins and is pained for us”) as referring both to spiritual and to physical sickness (Matt. 8:17), and Peter is adopting a similar line. In the Talmud, Isa. 53:4 is taken to mean that Messiah is “the Leprous One” and “the Sick One” (b. Sanh. 98b). He himself bore (anēnenke) the sins (hamartias) of many. In the OT, to “bear iniquity” (Lev. 5:17; Num. 14:34 RSV ...
968. Living for God
1 Peter 4:1-11
Understanding Series
Norman Hillyer
... of Christ’s sinlessness (2:22)—but that he dealt once and for all with the world’s sin when he took it upon himself on the cross (2:24). The problem of dealing with sin is now over and done with. Peter’s readers are to adopt the same attitude. Believers are to recognize that in view of their new birth spiritually (1:3), by which they now partake in the risen life of Christ, they are to reckon themselves dead to the blandishments of sin, presented to them by their “evil human desires,” but ...
Understanding Series
Norman Hillyer
... life-blood. The bestowal of the promises enables believers to participate in the divine nature. This expression, although a commonplace in contemporary Hellenistic religious literature, is found in the NT only here, although the same idea appears in Paul in terms of adoption into the divine family: “You received the Spirit of sonship. And by him we cry, ‘Abba, Father.’ The Spirit himself testifies with our spirit that we are God’s children … heirs of God and coheirs with Christ” (Rom. 8:15–17 ...
Understanding Series
Norman Hillyer
... 6:2; 10:4, 12–13; 54:4–5). Sent … to hell (tartarōsas): The only occurrence in the NT of the verb tartarein, formed from Tartarus, in Greek mythology the place of punishment for the departed spirits of the worst of the wicked. In Jewish apocalyptic, which adopted the idea, Tartarus was said to be in the charge of the archangel Uriel (1 Enoch 20:2). In Homer, Hades is the place of confinement for dead human beings, and Tartarus is the name applied to a murky abyss below Hades in which the sins of ...
Understanding Series
Norman Hillyer
... the return of the Lord Jesus Christ. Thus Peter’s readers will be kept from being carried away by the powerful current of nefarious error propagated by lawless men, those who preach a false libertinism that claims freedom from all moral constraint by adopting a perverted view of Christian liberty. To be deceived by that ruinous teaching, Peter warns, would mean that you would face spiritual disaster, nothing less than a fatal fall from your secure position in Christ. To guard against such spiritual poison ...
972. The Lampstand
Exodus 25:31-40
Understanding Series
James K. Bruckner
... furnishings. Additional Notes 25:37 In Solomon’s temple, three of the lamps on ten lampstands were never allowed to go out (27:20; see 1 Kgs. 7:49). Later synagogues that continued this practice called it the “perpetual light.” The Roman church also adopted the practice. The Second Temple returned to the tabernacle pattern of one lampstand (1 Macc. 1:21; 4:49). The Roman Caesar Titus took this to Rome and represented it on his arch of triumph (Plaut, The Torah, p. 613). 25:40 This chapter includes ...
Understanding Series
Michael S. Moore
... , especially after a famine. “The valleys are mantled with grain; they shout for joy and sing” (Ps. 65:13). “Bless” (barak) links Boaz to a number of other international blessers in the Hebrew Bible (Melchizedek, Balaam, and Jethro). Later liturgists adopt this greeting as a model for all greetings, especially those intended for synagogue worship (b. Ber. 63a). 2:5 Upon seeing Ruth, Boaz immediately asks his foreman, Whose young woman is that? Boaz is surprised or at least bemused that Ruth ...
974. Israel's Sons
1 Chronicles 2:1-55
Understanding Series
Louis C. Jonker
... duty. Whether the Ethan and Heman mentioned in 2:6 are the same persons as those mentioned later in the Levite genealogy cannot be determined. However, since these names are used very rarely in the Hebrew Bible, the similarity remains conspicuous. By adopting these names in the Judahite genealogy, the Chronicler could have intended to connect the Levites with the Judahites (from whose lineage David would come). This would have given some status to these cultic staff and would confirm our suspicion that the ...
Understanding Series
Louis C. Jonker
... and bad being attributed to Yahweh), this tendency started developing in the late postexilic period, probably under the influence of Persian Zoroastrian dualism. We know from the Christian writings in the New Testament that the personification of evil was adopted in Christianity and was already well established during the time when the New Testament writings developed. For further discussion on the development of the understanding of Satan, see C. Breytenbach and P. L. Day, “Satan,” in Dictionary of ...
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