A project that I've been working on for a few years now is The Free Grace Study Bible. I decided to start linking to it here in the posts in order to give updates and share my progress, and also so that a link to it will always be in the posts that show up when scrolling through my past posts on a cell phone. Just some free advertising for Jesus! I expect some pushback from those in the Calvinist or Lordship Legalist camps, but that's okay. I welcome their comments, as I believe open dialogue is the best way to test our views against the Bible and see which ones actually hold up.
The Free Grace Study Bible also includes my personal translation of the New Testament, which I've simply titled the "Free Grace Translation." Thus far I've translated Mark 1:1-22 and John 1:1-8:39. I started with Mark 1:1-22 thanks to Bill Mounce (see my post on that here). Although our theological views differ significantly (he's a Calvinist and a Lordship Legalist who generally promotes that error), his resources related to Biblical Greek provided a starting point for my own work. After translating Mark 1:1-22, I shifted to focus on translating the Gospel of John. I'm currently working through translating it verse-by-verse and chapter-by-chapter.
This has been a slow process. I could translate The Gospel of John much more quickly if I didn't add in the Bible Translation Notes and the Free Grace Study Notes. But I decided to add those in (at least for the Gospel of John) in order to preemptively respond to any naysayers who might otherwise want to disparage the translation, not from a biblical basis, but rather due to a Calvinistic bias disguised as objectivity. By providing Bible Translation Notes and the Free Grace Study Notes, it helps to show the solid biblical underpinnings for my translation and why, in many ways, it is an improvement upon the more well-known and "popular" Bible translations, such as the revered King James Version. While the Bible Translation Notes and the Free Grace Study Notes slow the process exponentially, I believe they are vital for showing the "why" behind the text, though I may eventually prioritize the Translation Notes focused on syntax and grammar as I move forward.
My prayer is that God will bless this project and that The Free Grace Translation & Study Bible will be a blessing to many. As I labor on this, I'm reminded of the historical weight of this truth. As Augustine said: "Grace, unless it is free, is not grace." And if some people aren't particularly fond of Augustine that's okay, he wasn't right on everything. Here's the apostle Paul saying the same thing more pointedly: "Being justified freely by His grace, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus" (Rom. 3:24).
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