Theology in Unusual Terms
By Jerry Batson, Th.D.
Special to The Alabama Baptist
Previously, we have looked at an Old Testament place name (Ebenezer) and an Old Testament personal name (Ichabod) in order to seek theological truths that attach to or flow from these words and the events surrounding them.
This week we look at a term lifted from the Aramaic vocabulary and inserted in the Greek New Testament. The word is “Maranatha.” It is found untranslated in the King James Version of 1 Cor. 16:22, “If any man love not the Lord Jesus Christ, let him be Anathema Maranatha.” In translation, the term expresses the prayerful and joyful exclamation, “O Lord, come!” The next to last verse in the Bible expresses this same sentiment, “Even so, come, Lord Jesus” (Rev. 22:20). This prayerful request follows immediately on the promise the ascended Christ gave His servant John, “Surely I am coming soon.”
‘God is our hope’
Regarding the place name Ebenezer, the basic truth about God is that He is our Helper, as expressed in the meaning of that name, “Hitherto hath the Lord helped us.” The name Ichabod reveals the basic truth that God is our glory, as deduced from the meaning of this name, “the glory has departed.”
This week the basic truth we take from the Aramaic term Maranatha is God is our hope. Titus 2:12–13 exhorts us to live soberly, righteously and godly in the present age, “looking for the blessed hope and glorious appearing of our great God and Savior Jesus Christ.”
The force or emphasis in the meaning of Maranatha is not on the timing of Christ’s return but on its certainty.
As time-bound creatures we might say it has been 2,000 years or so since Christ’s promise to return. However, from heaven’s viewpoint, in which a thousand years are as a day and a day as a thousand years, it has been but a couple of days since that promise was given.
Live in expectation
The practical force of a Maranatha faith is that we live each day in the expectation that Christ could return before sunset.
That possibility fills life with hope and serves as an impetus for holy living and faithful serving in the time we have before His coming for us or before our departure to join Him.
“We know that when He is revealed, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. And everyone who has this hope in Him purifies himself, just as He is pure” (1 John 3:2–3).
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