SIL Translator’s Notes on John 3:33

3:33

Whoever accepts His testimony has certified that God is truthful: The person who believes Jesus’ testimony is declaring his trust in God. He is showing that he trusts God, that he knows that God deserves his trust.

Here are other ways to translate this sentence:

To accept his witness is to declare that God speaks the truth.
-or-
But everyone who does believe him has shown that God is truthful. (Contemporary English Version)

accepts His testimony: The Greek word that the Berean Standard Bible translates as accepts here means “received” or “believed.” A person who accepts Jesus’ testimony welcomes and believes what Jesus says about what he witnessed and believes it to be true.

certified: The Greek word that the Berean Standard Bible translated as certified means “guaranteed.” It is to confirm or agree that something is true. In some languages it is more natural to talk about “proving” or “confirming.” For example:

has proven that God is true (New Century Version)
-or-
has confirmed clearly that God is truthful (NET Bible)
-or-
But whoever believes Jesus’ testimony says: “The word of God is definitely true.”

© 2020 by SIL International®
Made available under the terms of a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License (CC BY-SA) creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0.
All Scripture quotations in this publication, unless otherwise indicated, are from The Holy Bible, Berean Standard Bible.
BSB is produced in cooperation with Bible Hub, Discovery Bible, OpenBible.com, and the Berean Bible Translation Committee.

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