Last time we began looking at how Paul describes the gift of the Holy Spirit in Ephesians 1:1-14. When Paul says we are sealed with the Holy Spirit, I suggested that this sealing refers to a secondary experience. Please go back and listen to my reasons for what I know is a controversial yet Pentecostal viewpoint.
In this episode we will continue to examine Paul’s description of the gift of the Holy Spirit in these verses.
A deposit guaranteeing our inheritance (arrabon)
In Ephesians 1:14 and in 2 Corinthians 1:22, 5:5, Paul refers to the Holy Spirit as a pledge. The Greek word he uses (which was originally a Hebrew word) is arrabon. This has a variety of meanings and no one English word is really adequate as a translation, and so it will be helpful to explore its range of meaning a little before applying it to these verses.
One interesting use of this word is to be found in the Septuagint (the Greek version of the Old Testament used at the time of Jesus and the Early Church) in Genesis 38:15-18. The details of what is a rather complicated story need not concern us here but Judah, we are told, sees a woman he thinks is a prostitute and offers her a young goat from his flock as payment for sleeping with her. As he doesn’t have the goat with him, the woman asks for a pledge (arrabon) as a guarantee that he will send the goat and Judah gives her his seal and its cord.
This illustration helps us to understand the general meaning of the word arrabon. It may be defined as the deposit that pays part of a debt and gives a legal claim. The seal which Judah gave Tamar as a pledge (arrabon) was only a small part of what he gave her but it did guarantee that she would eventually get the greater gift, the goat she had been promised. The pledge was, therefore, also a token of a greater gift to come and the evidence that a promise had been made.
Bearing this in mind it’s not surprising that arrabon can also mean an engagement ring. An engagement ring is visible evidence that a promise has been made, but it also indicates that something far better is to be expected in the future. And this is very much how Paul uses arrabon with regard to God’s gift of the Holy Spirit to the Christian. If we understand the church to be the bride of Christ (Ephesians 5:22-33), we could think of the Holy Spirit as the church’s engagement ring, Christ’s gift to his bride pointing forward to the day when she will be united with him at ‘the wedding supper of the Lamb’ (Revelation 19:7-9).
So how does all this affect our understanding of the three verses where arrabon is used in the New Testament? It surely backs up the idea that our present experience of the Holy Spirit is God’s way of guaranteeing our future inheritance. This is clearly indicated in 2 Corinthians 1:22 where the Holy Spirit is described as a deposit guaranteeing what is to come. This includes the ultimate fulfillment of all God’s promises (v 20) and the assurance that we will one day be given a resurrection body (2 Corinthians 5:1-5, cf. Romans 8:11) and enter into our full inheritance as Christians:
Having believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession…(Ephesians 1:13-14).
The redemption of those who are God’s possession.
Now Romans 8:19 tells us that the whole of creation is waiting for the sons of God to be revealed while we ourselves are waiting eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies (v 23) and Ephesians 4:30 says that we are sealed with the Holy Spirit for the day of redemption.
This, together with Ephesians 1:13-14, which also speaks of our being sealed until our redemption, links our present experience of the Holy Spirit with that future day when the Lord himself shall descend from heaven and the dead in Christ shall rise, and when we who are alive and remain until the coming of the Lord are caught up with them to meet the Lord in the air (1 Thessalonians 4:16-17).
The day of redemption is the day when Jesus comes again. Paul calls it the redemption of our bodies (Romans 8:23) because it is on that day that our mortal bodies shall become immortal (1 Corinthians 15:50ff). Up to now the world hasn’t really understood who we Christians are! It’s been something of a secret. But on that day, when the entire universe shall be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God (Romans 8:21), then the sons of God will be revealed to the whole creation. But until that day, and for that day, we have been sealed with the Holy Spirit and received a taste in advance (arrabon) of the powers of the age to come.