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the interest of them?” That is to say, they fulfill the ordinance in the interest of a Christ
who is dead and in joint witness with (and therefore, in the interest of) believers who
never will be raised, whereas an essential element in baptism is its testimony to the
resurrection of Christ and of the believer.
In some passages
huper
may be used in the substitutionary sense, e.g., John 10:11,
15; Rom. 8:32; but it cannot be so taken in the majority of instances. Cf. 2 Cor. 5:15, in
regard to which, while it might be said that Christ died in place of us, it cannot be said
that Christ rose again in the place of us.
ON THE PREPOSITIONS
(575) AND
(1537).
The primary meaning of
apo
is “off”; this is illustrated in such compounds as
apokalupto
, “to take the veil off, to reveal”;
apokopto
, “to cut off”; hence there are
different shades of meaning, the chief of which is “from” or “away from,” e.g., Matt.
5:29, 30; 9:22; Luke 24:31, lit., “He became invisible from them”; Rom. 9:3.
The primary meaning of
ek
is “out of,” e.g., Matt. 3:17, “a voice out of the heavens”
(
RV
); 2 Cor. 9:7, lit., “out of necessity.” Omitting such significances of
ek
as “origin,
source, cause, occasion,” etc., our consideration will here be confined to a certain
similarity between
apo
and
ek.
Since
apo
and
ek
are both frequently to be translated by
“from” they often approximate closely in meaning. The distinction is largely seen in this,
that
apo
suggests a starting point from without,
ek
from within; this meaning is often
involved in
apo
, but
apo
does not give prominence to the “within-ness,” as
ek
usually
does. For instance,
apo
is used in Matt. 3:16, where the
RV
rightly reads “Jesus … went
up straightway from the water”; in Mark 1:10
ek
is used, “coming up out of the water”;
ek
(which stands in contrast to
eis
in v. 9) stresses more emphatically than
apo
the fact of
His having been baptized in the water. In all instances where these prepositions appear to
be used alternately this distinction is to be observed.
The literal meaning “out of” cannot be attached to
ek
in a considerable number of
passages. In several instances
ek
obviously has the significance of “away from”; and
where either meaning seems possible, the context, or some other passage, affords
guidance. The following are examples in which
ek
does not mean “out of the midst of” or
“out from within,” but has much the same significance as
apo
: John 17:15, “that Thou
shouldest keep them from the evil one”; 1 Cor. 9:19, “though I was free from all men”; 2
Cor. 1:10, “who delivered us from so great a death” (
KJV
); 2 Pet. 2:21, “to turn back from
the holy commandment”; Rev. 15:2, “them that had come victorious from the beast, and
from his image, and from the number of his name” (
ek
in each case).
Concerning the use of
ek
, in 1 Thess. 1:10, “Jesus, which delivereth (the present
tense, as in the
RV
, is important) us from the wrath to come” [or, more closely to the
original, “our Deliverer (cf. the same phrase in Rom. 11:26) from the coming wrath”], the
passage makes clear that the wrath signifies the calamities to be visited by God upon men
when the present period of grace is closed. As to whether the
ek
here denotes “out of the
midst of” or “preservation from,” this is determined by the statement in 5:9, that “God
appointed us not unto wrath, but unto the obtaining of salvation”; the context there shows
that the salvation is from the wrath just referred to. Accordingly the
ek
signifies
“preservation from” in the same sense as
apo
, and not “out from the midst of.”
ON THE PREPOSITION
(1772)