GOD’S WORD FOR YOU
LUKE 1:37
37 For nothing is impossible for God.”
This is a double negative, which is quite acceptable in Greek. It is also expressed as a future statement: “nothing will be impossible for God.” The Greek future tense in this case isn’t easy to cast smoothly into English (see also the NOTE below).
In his wisdom, the Holy Spirit let this verse drop into God’s Word at this point for a very specific reason. We can quote this passage throughout the Bible, and it’s appropriate. “In the beginning, God created…” (Genesis 1:1). How? Nothing is impossible for God. The Lord brought back the exiles from Babylon, for nothing is impossible for God. The Lord raised Lazarus from the dead, drove out demons, healed the sick, proved his divinity through the Old Testament Scriptures, and fulfilled all prophecies about himself, all because nothing is impossible for God. But the most important place in all Scripture for us to be reminded of this truth is here, at the Lord’s incarnation. Here is where we wonder the most; here is where mankind struggles with the limits of human imagination over against the facts of the text: A virgin would give birth to God. How? “For nothing is impossible for God.”
When this has sunk in, we begin to see what omnipotence truly means. Being all-powerful doesn’t just mean being able to do whatever you want. How it would be wasted on any one of us! God uses his almighty power to preserve us and to preserve the work of the Church, so that his saving grace can be carried by us and by others to the ends of the earth. By his power, we were raised to spiritual life through the seemingly impossible means of water and the spoken word—but nothing is impossible for God. On the Last Day, we will be raised from death, and our ruined and destroyed flesh will be raised to beautiful and renewed life, perfect, healed, and whole again. Nothing is impossible for God.
Each of us might ache for the ability to accomplish something—just one thing—that would be impossible. To have another chance, to bring someone back, to sidestep some temptation, or to do just one thing all over again. But sinful man would be instantly corrupt. We would use such a power to sin and have a “do-over,” trying out the limits of such power, and discovering that we would inevitably destroy ourselves. Only God alone should have such power, and only God really does possess it. We can be humbly and joyfully grateful for his, and we trust in him. He uses this power for our eternal good, beginning with the creation, and continuing right through to our eternal preservation and joy in heaven. Meditate on this, and be comforted: Nothing is impossible for God.
In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith
NOTE
“for God” or “with God”?
Codex Y (Uncial 034), copied in the Ninth Century, is an example of a group of manuscripts of the New Testament with a slightly different reading of this verse: “For nothing is impossible with God.” The difference is between παρα του θεου (“for God,” the usual text) and παρα τω θεω (“with God,” abbreviated τω θω in the upper right corner). There is no difference in the theology of God’s omnipotence, merely in how this is expressed in Greek and in our translations.
The reason for the change might be that Greek itself changed over the centuries, just as English changes. No one would ever have said “I’m looking to buy a new this or that” thirty years ago, but this is growing into acceptance more and more all the time. Perhaps I’m the only person left who is offended by such slang. So it may have been with Greek as the old Koine dialect of Bible times passed out of use and became the Byzantine Greek of late antiquity and medieval times. “Nothing is impossible for God” was the way it was said in the First Century, but by fifth, sixth, and later centuries, this wasn’t the way people talked anymore. Some manuscripts kept the old text, especially where Greek wasn’t people’s first language, but a few copies of the Bible (usually the ones from Greece itself) were changed over the years, so that the people would understand the word of God in their own language. For this reason, I feel that we should treat these later “Byzantine” Greek manuscripts (Codex Y is, I think, a transitional manuscript) more as versions or translations than as representatives of the original text, just as a paperback edition of Shakespeare today is updated with modern spellings and grammar in many places rather than the Bard’s Elizabethan English. What’s most important for us is that we understand what God means, and here he means this: Nothing is impossible for God, with God, by God, through God, or from God.
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Pastor Smith serves St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, New Ulm, Minnesota