The business of preaching, after all, is to\u00a0explain the message of the word. I maintain that that can only be done by preaching.<\/p>\n
Now today, you see, because people don’t believe in preaching, they believe in new translations of the Bible. Have you ever thought that that was their main reason for all their excitement about new translations? It’s because they don’t believe in preaching.<\/p>\n
What’s the argument for the new translations, any one of them? They say people no longer understand the Authorized Version, and the Revised is very similar. They say we knew they don’t understand these terms: justification, sanctification<\/em>, and so on. We need now a new translation in which these terms will be put in a form that the modern man can understand. So they drop those terms, and propitiation<\/em> and others, and they put it in terms of being delivered<\/em>, they drop any idea of ransoming<\/em> and things like that, and they use some very general terms about liberation<\/em> and freedom<\/em> and things like that; and they really believe that men and women now understand the truth. And there is one of the greatest dangers, as I see it, in the present religious situation.<\/p>\n These great terms like justification <\/em>and sanctification, glorification<\/em>, and many others – propitiation<\/em>, and so on, I argue and maintain, cannot be presented simply by alternative translations. They are terms that have to be expounded. They are terms that have to be illustrated. What your modern translations are doing is to evacuate the terms of their real meaning. It is only the preacher who\u00a0can really show the profound content of the terms. That is why preaching is absolutely essential!<\/p>\n You can’t get a single term to explain propitiation<\/em>. You can’t get a single term to explain justification<\/em>, nor sanctification<\/em>. These terms must be worked out, they must be drawn out, they must be explained and expounded by the preacher; and alternative translations cannot do it. They are not doing so. They are indeed ultimately, so many of them, standing between the people and the real meaning of the terms.<\/p>\n I support this argument, of course, by again appealing to history. Men have never understood these terms. Even men and women, 200 years ago, before there was popular education, under the inspired preaching of people like Whitefield, the Wesleys, and the rest \u00a0were given an understanding – through the preaching – of the meaning of these great and glorious terms, and thereby through them, and by means of them, were led to a knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ as their personal Saviour and Redeemer.<\/p>\n The Book of Romans: Why Preaching?<\/a> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The business of preaching, after all, is to\u00a0explain the message of the word. I maintain that that can only be done by preaching. Now today, you see, because people don’t believe in preaching, they believe in new translations of the … Continue reading
\nVolume 10 \u2014 #3255 \u2014\u00a0<\/span>Romans 10:14-17
\n<\/a>February 28, 1964<\/p>\n