Lecture 6: Be Filled: The Greek at Work, and the Case for Literal Interpretation

The lecture, section by section

1. What the Greek gives: article and tense

   In the Greek of Ephesians 5:18 there is no article before spirit, so the interpreter checks the rest of Ephesians and finds the Spirit of God named both with and without the article; the question must be asked before it can be answered. The two verbs, be drunk and be filled, both stand in the present tense: not a moment but an ongoing, habitual, characteristic reality, a durative command with no cessation in view.

2. Voice: who does the filling

   Both verbs are middle and passive forms. Wine is the agent that exerts its influence on the drunkard, though the man remains responsible for putting himself under it; and the believer cannot fill himself. The Ephesians are commanded to be filled, to live under an agency beyond themselves, and any claim that we today stand in the verse must be earned from other Scriptures, not assumed.

3. One verb, five participles

   As the Great Commission hangs going, baptizing, and teaching on the one command make disciples, so be filled is followed by five participles in verses 19 through 21: speaking in psalms and hymns, singing, giving thanks, submitting. They are attendant realities that extend the command: where a congregation is filled with the Spirit, that music, gratitude, and mutual submission follow as the command's own outworking.

4. The strongest contrast in the language

   The little word between drunkenness and filling is the strongest contrastive word Greek has, an outright opposition, not a comparison: the chaotic, wasteful lack of control of drunkenness against the useful, fruitful self-control of the Spirit-filled life. Rosscup quotes Moody's aim, my human best filled with the Holy Spirit, and adds the plea that language study be carried with humility, never paraded over the layman's head.

5. Who is the command for?

   Context raises a searching question: is verse 18 only for believers? Four verses earlier the writer cries awake, you who sleep, rise from the dead, and the near context has warned that the immoral have no inheritance in the kingdom. Paul and John elsewhere write knowing some hearers claim a reality they do not have. Rosscup holds it gently, not adamantly: the grace of Ephesians 2, salvation as gift and believers as God's workmanship, can reach the drunkard in the crowd, and the preacher should not assume the whole audience is safe.

6. The grammatical, historical, literal method

   Principle eleven names the method: historical, reading each passage inside its own framework, as Hosea 11 must first be read without Matthew 2; grammatical, weighing the language as the Greek of 5:18 was just weighed; and literal, seeking the most natural, meaningful, customary sense of the words in their culture and time. Literal never means wooden: I am the door begins from the literal sheepfold of the context and transfers to the spiritual doorway just as real, and God as Abraham's shield protects without being bronze.

7. The ditch of letterism

   Letterism grinds the letters themselves: assigning numbers to the letters of a Hebrew word to compute the Messiah's arrival, a practice some ancient interpreters loved and some moderns revive. It imposes on the letters a system they were never intended to carry, falsification wearing the costume of precision.

8. The ditch of loose meaning

   The opposite ditch assigns meanings too loose to be the text's own. Even Calvin and Leupold, revered and rightly so, explain away the feet on the Mount of Olives in Zechariah 14 in ways that strain the passage; and the Magi returning home another way has been preached as hearts transformed at a conference. If you want that truth, go to the passages that teach it. And when a great interpreter fails in one passage, do not throw out the baby with the bath: those who live in glass houses should not throw stones.

9. Real figures, really intended

   Scripture is full of figures the literal method gladly recognizes. The beast of Revelation is no animal stalking the earth but the devouring political and military juggernaut of the final tyrant; the woman with twelve stars is Israel, Jacob's house of the twelve, fleeing to the wilderness for protection. Seeing the figure where the text intends it is not a departure from sanity but the healthy, natural reading.

10. Four tests for figurative language

    How do you know a figure is intended? First, other Scripture points that way: the helmet of salvation is spiritual because salvation everywhere else is a deliverance, past, present, and future, not headgear. Second, grammar: the crown of life is a genitive of apposition, the crown consisting of life, eternal life now possessed and one day consummated. Third, tension with reality: plucking out the eye leaves the heart still sinning, this is my body cannot mean cannibalism, a speaking sufferer is no literal worm, and Israel walked rather than flew on eagles' wings. Fourth, the context itself points to the figure: I am the vine, you are the branches names persons, not plants.

11. The Armageddon of 1861

    A man named Baldwin published a book proving from Daniel 11 that the coming war between North and South was Scripture's king of the north against the king of the south, and that the South would win. It sold wonderfully to people needing comfort, and it twisted the word to fit the interpreter's own day, the standing temptation of every preacher who wants relevance more than truth, feeding itching ears while a listener admires his accent.

12. One reward, many descriptions

    Letterism's cousin builds five separate crowns from five crown passages: a soul winner's crown, a purity crown, and the rest, as if some believers will enter glory without righteousness, without rejoicing, without incorruptible life. Every believer is promised all of it; the five are descriptions of one many sided reward. Putting aside a time worn interpretation is not putting aside God's word, and it must be done gently: the Lord's servant must not strive but be gentle, patient, instructing, never a young buck arriving with a manifesto against the beloved teachers of a congregation's past.

13. Why defend the literal method

    Three reasons. It is the usual practice for interpreting any literature, Shakespeare or Chaucer or a Western novel where a heroine sizzles and a hero thunders without confusion. All secondary meanings depend on a literal base: the sheepfold grounds the door, the mountain grounds the stone cut without hands, the census book grounds the book of life. And only the literal method, managed by context, word study, grammar, and background, provides a control on the abuse of Scripture; without it, interpretation becomes a grab bag where every reader's meaning counts, and the leader's only recourse is the humble, loving work of showing people what the text itself says.

1. Be filled is present tense, passive, and plural: ongoing, received rather than self-produced, and meant for a congregation together. Which of those three notes does your own picture of the Spirit-filled life most need?

2. Rosscup honors Calvin while rejecting his reading of Zechariah 14, and warns against throwing out the baby with the bath. How do you hold deep respect for a teacher and honest disagreement at the same time?

3. The five participles say a Spirit-filled church sings, gives thanks, and submits to one another. Where do you see those marks in our congregation, and where might they grow?