6:15a

the blessed and only Sovereign One: In the New Testament, the Greek word makarios that the Berean Standard Bible translates as blessed is only used to describe God here and in 1:11. It means that God has every blessing in himself. He is not dependent on anyone else for joy or anything else. (Hanson, page 60, says, “It came originally from pagan Greek literature (Homer calls the gods ‘blessed’), and was adopted by Hellenistic Judaism, which is no doubt how it entered the vocabulary of the author of the Pastorals. D-C [Dibelius and Conzelmann], rightly no doubt, see here traces of a liturgical style.”)

In your translation, use an expression that would be appropriate for referring to God. Some possibilities are:

the…Ruler who lives in perfect joy
-or-
the…Ruler who has all blessings
-or-
the perfect…Ruler

only Sovereign One: God is the only one who rules over everything. He is unique.

6:15b

the King of kings: That is, the King who is greater than all other kings.

Lord of lords: That is, the Lord who is greater than all other lords.

General Comment on 6:15b

The title “Kings of kings and Lord of lords” is also used in Revelation 17:14, 19:16. Make sure you translate it in the same way in these places.

6:15c

will bring about in His own time: Paul was saying that God had already decided when Christ would return. When that time comes, God will cause it to happen.

in His own time: The Greek expression that the Berean Standard Bible translates as in His own time means that God will cause this to happen at the exact time that he has chosen.

© 2003 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.