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Earnest and Seal. The Ephesian believers were 'sealed'. What does this
mean? The word translated, 'to be sealed' or 'to set a seal' is the Greek
word sphragizo, and a seal is sphragis, which words represent the Hebrew
chotham. Seals were employed to safeguard letters or treasures, to guarantee
legal evidences, deeds, etc., to give authority to shut and seal the doors of
a prison:
'So she wrote letters in Ahab's name, and sealed them with his seal' (1
Kings 21:8).
'I subscribed the evidence, and sealed it' (Jer. 32:10).
'The king sealed it (the den) with his own signet' (Dan. 6:17),
are samples of its use. The word sphragis, 'seal', comes sixteen times in
the New Testament and sphragizo twenty -six times.
We will not attempt to examine every reference, but we are particularly
concerned with the subject of Ephesians 1:13 which is connected with the
witness of the Spirit. There is a passage written before Acts 28, which, by
its very additions, is illuminating. We refer to 2 Corinthians 1:22:
'Who hath also sealed us, and given the earnest of the Spirit in our
hearts'.
At first, unless like true Bereans we consider the context, we may
assume that inasmuch as both 2 Corinthians 1:22 and Ephesians 1:13 speak of
both seal and earnest, that it is all one and the same whether the Epistle
thus quoted is on one side of Acts 28 or the other. And this is done by the
advocates of Acts 13 as the Dispensational Frontier. A close examination,
however, will reveal an essential dispensational difference:
'Now He which stablisheth us with you in Christ, and hath anointed us,
is God; Who hath also sealed us, and given us the earnest of the Spirit
in our hearts' (2 Cor. 1:21,22).
The word 'stablish' is the Greek bebaioo which is used in 1 Corinthians
1 and Hebrews 2 with particular reference to the confirming nature of
miraculous gifts:
'Which at the first began to be spoken by the Lord, and was confirmed
unto us by them that heard Him; God also bearing them witness, both
with signs and wonders, and with divers miracles, and gifts of the Holy
Spirit, according to His own will?' (Heb. 2:3,4).
'That in every thing ye are enriched by Him, in all utterance, and in
all knowledge; even as the testimony of Christ was confirmed in you: so
that ye come behind in no gift; waiting for the coming of our Lord
Jesus Christ' (1 Cor. 1:5 -7).
Paul practically said, therefore, in 2 Corinthians 1:21, 'Now He which
confirmeth us (by the endowment of miraculous gifts) with you ... is God'.
Associated with this confirmation is 'anointing'. Chrio, 'to anoint', gives
the title 'Christ', The Anointed. This anointing, says John in his first
Epistle, made it unnecessary that any man should teach those who received it,
for 'the same anointing teacheth you of all things' (1 John 2:27). No member