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"Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God, according to the promise of life
which is in Christ Jesus" (II Tim. 1: 1).
At the end of the first epistle to Timothy he describes it as "the life which is life
indeed" (I Tim. 6: 19 R.V.). This future life is the real one; the present is only a
shadow. Eternal life in the epistle is a gift and cannot be revoked.
The Indwelling of the Holy Spirit.
We have noticed in past studies that the Holy Spirit's presence with men was
temporary, and it was not until the gift of the Holy Spirit as the Comforter that it could be
said that He would abide with the believer for ever and be in him (John 14: 16, 17). The
Apostle Paul confirms this in Rom. 8: 9 and 11:
"But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in
you . . . . ."
"But if the Spirit of Him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, He that
raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by His Spirit that
dwelleth in you."
Not only this, but the Lord Jesus Himself indwells the believer. Later on in Ephesians
Paul was to pray that these believers might be strengthened by the Spirit in order that
Christ may dwell in their hearts by faith (Eph. 3: 16, 17). With two such mighty
indwellers we can surely accomplish all God's will for us whatever this may involve!
Spirit or spirit?
There is great difficulty in translation to know when to render pneuma, spirit, with a
capital "S" or a small `s'. The translator can get no help either from the original Greek
manuscripts or the printed editions of the Greek Testament. One class of manuscripts is
written all in capitals. These are called "Uncials". The other class is written all in small
letters with very few capitals at the beginning of books or sections, or of large
paragraphs. These are called "Cursives". There are no capitals for certain words as we
used them today.
We get little help from the A.V. of 1611. Many editions have been printed and in
these, great modifications have been made from time to time. We can say that none of
the existing editions of the A.V. exactly represents that of 1611. The use of capitals was
much more common in the 17th century and words like Sabbath, Ark, Mercy-Seat, Altar
always had capitals. The modern tendency is to diminish their use.
As a consequence of this, the translator is compelled to fall back on the context and
weigh up carefully whether a capital "S" should be used, thus making it refer to the Holy
Spirit, or a small `s', referring to His gifts or to some psychological use. As the word
pneuma, spirit occurs some 385 times in the Received Text, the problem is a frequent
one. The reader should therefore bear in mind that capitals in any translation are the
opinions of the translator and become interpretation rather then translation. Moreover,
they obviously affect the sense of the passage in which they occur.