1:11a

agrees with the glorious gospel: The Greek word that the Berean Standard Bible translates as agrees with literally means “according to.” In this verse, Paul was saying that healthy instruction is instruction that agrees with the gospel. It is implied that, when people tell others about the gospel, they also teach about the way that God wants people to behave. (Stott, page 50, makes an important point: “It is particularly noteworthy that sins which contravene the law (such as breaches of the Ten Commandments) are also contrary to the sound doctrine of the gospel. So the moral standards of the gospel do not differ from the moral standards of the law. We must not therefore imagine that, because we have embraced the gospel, we may now repudiate the law!…There is no antithesis between law and gospel in the moral standards which they teach; the antithesis is in the way of salvation, since the law condemns, while the gospel justifies.”)

the glorious gospel of the blessed God: The Greek expression that the Berean Standard Bible translates as the glorious gospel of the blessed God is literally “the gospel of the glory of the blessed God….” Scholars do not agree about the way in which the Greek word for “glory” connects with the rest of the expression:

(1) It refers to God’s glory. For example, the Revised English Bible says:

the gospel which tells of the glory of the ever-blessed God

(Revised English Bible, New Jerusalem Bible, God’s Word)

Most commentators also follow this interpretation.

(2) It refers to how glorious God is. For example, the Good News Translation says:

the [gospel]…from the glorious and blessed God

(Good News Translation, Contemporary English Version)

(3) It refers to the glory of the gospel itself. For example, the New International Version (2011 Revision) says:

the glorious gospel of the blessed God

(Berean Standard Bible, New International Version (2011 Revision), Revised Standard Version, New American Standard Bible, NET Bible, New Living Translation (2004 Revision), King James Version)

Interpretation (1) has the strongest commentary support. It is recommended that you follow it. Paul was talking about the glory of God. (See Zerwick, §47, “where, as often happens in Paul, several genitives follow one another, each commonly depends upon the preceding one, e.g. 2 Cor 4:4…” See also BDF §168. Arichea and Hatton say that the reason is “because of the presence of the definite article before ‘glory’ in the Greek.” In 2 Corinthians 4:4, the construction is almost identical, mentioning “the gospel of the glory of Christ.” In 2 Corinthians 4:4 and 6 it is clear that the construction refers to the gospel which tells of the glory of Christ. The verses say, “The god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers, so that they cannot see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God….For God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.”) There is a similar phrase, “the gospel of the glory of Christ,” in 2 Corinthians 4:4.

glorious: The Greek noun that the Berean Standard Bible translates as glorious literally means “glory” (see the Revised English Bible). This refers to God’s greatness or majesty.

gospel: The Greek word that the Berean Standard Bible translates as gospel literally means “good news.” In the New Testament it specifically refers to the good news about Christ.

the blessed God: In the New Testament, the Greek word makarios that the Berean Standard Bible translates as blessed is only used to describe God here and in 6:15. It means that God has all blessings in himself. He is not dependent on anyone else for joy or for anything. (Hanson, page 60, says, “It came originally from pagan Greek literature (Homer calls the gods ‘blessed’), and was adopted by Hellenistic Judaism, which is no doubt how it entered the vocabulary of the author of the Pastorals. D-C [Dibelius and Conzelmann], rightly no doubt, see here traces of a liturgical style.”)

In your translation, use an expression that would be appropriate for referring to God. Some possibilities are:

the God who lives in perfect joy
-or-
the God who has all blessings
-or-
the perfect God

In some languages, it is not possible to use the definite article (the) in a phrase like the blessed God. To do so might cause the readers to think that there is another god who is not blessed. If this is true in your language, you may need to say something like:

our(incl) blessed God

1:11b

with which I have been entrusted: Paul was saying that God had trusted him to teach the gospel message accurately.

© 2003 by SIL International®

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All Scripture quotations in this publication, unless otherwise indicated, are from The Holy Bible, Berean Standard Bible. BSB is produced in cooperation with Bible Hub, Discovery Bible, OpenBible.com, and the Berean Bible Translation Committee.