“You are not ill-equipped or slighted on any necessary gifts as you patiently anticipate the day when our Lord Jesus, the Anointed One, is revealed. Until that final day, He will preserve you; and on that day, He will consider you faultless.” —I Corinthians 1:7-8 (The Voice)

The Greek verb katartizo took center stage in Part Two. We saw there that the kernel of its meaning relates to restoration and maintenance. As such, it shares little semantic space with yacad (meaning “to begin” or “to found”), the Hebrew verb that the translators of the Septuagint (the Old Testament in Greek) translated as katartizo in Psalm 8:2. We looked at the use of katartizo in several New Testament contexts, showing how individuals have a responsibility to maintain a good relationship with God and man.

Part Three will demonstrate that God Himself has taken on the roles of Restorer and Maintainer, the verb katartizo applying to Him as well as to His people. We will survey that verb, which corresponds to the second member of the “first-last” merism, showing how it pertains to God’s ongoing maintenance of His creation and His people—to the very last.

Hebrews 11:3 ¹ offers us a glimpse of God’s work of restoration during Creation week: “By faith we understand that the worlds [ages] were framed by the word of God . . .” (New King James Version [NKJV]). The translators, taking their cue from the translators of the original King James Version (KJV), rendered katartizo as “framed.” The Amplified Bible, Classic Edition (AMPC) adds an instructive gloss: “By faith we understand that the worlds . . . were framed (fashioned, put in order, and equipped for their intended purpose) by the word of God . . ..”

Any number of other versions renders katartizo in this passage with the verbs created, made, or formed. In doing so, they miss the gist of the meaning of katartizo. What did God really do during Creation Week? He restored what Satan had spoiled. He mended it. Further, in terms of the meaning of katartizo, it is crucial to be aware of just what that restoration entailed.

For God not only restored the creation, but He added to it. He added elements that were not present before. This adding of value is a crucial part of the meaning of katartizo. The geological record indicates that God added plants that were nonexistent before His restoration. He also added animals that apparently were not present before Satan befouled the face of the earth. Then, He added man, who had not walked on its surface before. Finally, He created the Sabbath for man: “And He said to them, ‘The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath’” (Mark 2:27). So, if we stop to think about it, God added the Sabbath as well.

In our own experience, the act of restoration often includes adding value; we strive to make the new better than the original. For example, when people restore an old house, they do more than paint and clean. They frequently add new features, such as an expanded closet, another bathroom, upgraded electrical wiring, or a picture window in the living room.

When I was a teenager, my pals and I were never pleased to accept a car as it came to us. We felt compelled to install an aftermarket steering wheel, a new suspension, an upgraded radio, or a four-barrel carburetor. If we could afford it, we would fit the vehicle with a new engine. We were well advised to do so, as God tells us to dress and keep the garden—er, car. And, of course, that dressing included a new paint job, right? Katartizo defines all that activity to which modern boys are almost naturally driven. We were equipping our cars to make them fit for the work we wanted them to perform.

We realize, of course, that God did more than restore His physical creation. Peter’s comments in I Peter 5:10 indicate that He restores us as well, His New Creation²: “And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to His eternal glory in Christ, will Himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you.” The English verb “restore” is a translation of katartizo.³ Restoration is one of four works of grace God performs on our behalf. Just as God “turned His attention to Noah” and the animals on the ark (Genesis 8:1, The Message), so He is also at all times attentive to His people’s needs.⁴

With that thought in mind, notice how the AMPC glosses Hebrews 13:20-21. This passage forms the benediction at the end of the book of Hebrews:

Now may the God of peace . . . Who brought again from among the dead our Lord Jesus, that great Shepherd of the sheep, by the blood [that sealed . . . ] the everlasting . . . (covenant, . . .), strengthen (complete, perfect) and make you what you ought to be and equip you with everything good that you may carry out His will; [while He Himself] works in you and accomplishes that which is pleasing in His sight, through Jesus Christ (the Messiah); to Whom be the glory forever and ever . . .. Amen.

This interpretation indicates how attentive God is to us, how completely He equips us or fits us out, as it were, with everything we need. It is fair to conclude, as we reflect on the physical creation, which was, by God’s assessment, “very good,”⁵ that His ongoing maintenance of His New Creation is high quality, first-rate through and through. He spares nothing to give us what we need.

God’s Work of Gifting His People

All this hints at an essential concept behind the verb katartizo. God’s work to maintain and restore, to equip and fit, is a work of gifting. Hebrews 10:4-5, a loose quotation of Psalm 40:6-7, nicely demonstrates the scriptural link between gifting and maintaining:

For it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins. Consequently, when Christ came into the world, He said,

“Sacrifices and offerings You have not desired, but a body have You prepared for Me . . ..”

The verb prepared is katartizo. Though a bit weak in this context, the translator’s use of this verb is by no means inaccurate. After all, when a fisherman mends his nets, he is preparing them for the next day’s work. When a person fixes his car for the trip to the Feast, he is preparing it, making it ready, and, hopefully, roadworthy, for the journey, suitable for the trip.

However, other translations strengthen the impact of verse 5 by using less oblique language, such as “made ready” or “made fit,” as in the translation proffered by the AMPC:

Hence, when He [Christ] entered into the world, He said,

“Sacrifices and offerings You have not desired, but instead You have made ready [katartizo] a body for Me [to offer] . . ..”

Nevertheless, by far the most adequate translations of verse five are those that regard this “preparation” as a gift from God, a gift to make us ready, fit, adequate to the task. The Contemporary English Version puts Hebrews 10:5 this way: “Sacrifices and offerings are not what You want, but You have given [katartizo] Me My body.”

The New Living Translation’s offering is even more searching:

That is why, when Christ came into the world, He said to God,

“You did not want animal sacrifices or sin offerings. But You have given [katartizo] Me a body to offer.”

The underlying concept, importantly, involves the Fatherhood of God. The Father gave a body to Christ, something human fathers do for their children as well. In all likelihood, God’s action of giving Christ a body fit for sacrifice is akin to His establishing Him as a “founded foundation,” discussed in Part One. Christ’s sacrifice for sin was efficacious because God founded His body and Spirit.

Does God also gift us, His children, with a body appropriate for the work He has set for us? Does His attention to us extend that far back to our beginnings? In answering these questions, Psalm 139:15 becomes germane. The psalmist says of God: “When my bones were being formed, carefully put together in my mother’s womb, when I was growing there in secret, You knew that I was there . . .” (Good News Translation).

The evidence is unmistakable: God also formed our bodies—wove them, as the KJV has it. Even before we were born, God was building for us a body, gifting us with the talents and abilities we would use as we later became living sacrifices for Him.⁶ That, too, is all part and parcel of the meaning of katartizo.

In fact, it is in the gifting of God—in His prescient “founding” of our bodies before we were born and in the attentiveness He shows us throughout life—that the disparate meanings of yacad and katartizo begin to converge.⁷

Time and Space Bracket the Race

Taking the usages of the two verbs together, yacad in the Old Testament and katartizo in the New, what we see is subtle merism. It is not an obvious one, like “in and out,” “up and down,” or “first and last,” but a merism nonetheless: the beginning and the end, with—as is common with merisms—everything included in between. Yacad: The work God started at the beginning, the founding. Katartizo: The work He continues to do and will continue to do until the end. Together, the two verbs cover the gamut of God’s work. They show God as the Founder and Maintainer of His creation, the Giver and Sustainer of all life.

When I was an undergraduate, I ran the 440-yard dash⁸ for exercise. It is a quarter-mile dash, a sprint race. One thing that beats on your consciousness during a race is the bracket of space, as officials fastidiously measure distances. Each lane: 440 yards, 1,320 feet—not an inch more or less. There is also the time bracket: For sure, a runner had better not leave those starting blocks early. Officials are everywhere, one eye glued to the athletes, the other to their certified timepieces. They virtually embody the brackets of time and space, the defining brackets of any race.

A prevalent figure in Paul’s writing is that of a race. For example, he tells the members of the churches located around Galatia, recorded in Galatians 5:7: “You were running the race beautifully. Who cut in on you and stopped you from obeying the truth?” (International Standard Version [ISV]). The same apostle tells us when our spiritual race began in Ephesians 1:3-4:

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before Him.

The gun sounded for us somewhere before the creation of the kosmos. Unlike in the 440 I ran, we did not hear the report of the starting gun, but we did hear our calling later, in the fullness of time.

In Philippians 1:5-6,⁹ Paul indicates when that most-important race will end:

I thank God for the joy we share in telling the good news from the very first day until now. God began to do a good work in you. And I am sure that He will keep on doing it until He has finished it. He will keep on until the day Jesus Christ comes again. (Worldwide English New Testament)

The NKJV puts it, “until the day of Jesus Christ.” It is clear from Luke 17:24 (and other scriptures) that that day is the day of His return: “For as the lightning flashes and lights up the sky from one side to the other, so will the Son of Man be in His day.”

God’s work in us is indeed one of yacad combined with katartizo. He began it before we were born. In addition, He performs an ongoing work of maintenance, adding value, restoring, repairing, preparing, equipping, perfecting the New Man, gifting him with everything he needs to bring him successfully to the Day of Christ—to the resurrection of the just. He started the work, and He will finish it. He is indeed the First and the Last.

In I Corinthians 1:7-9, The Message summarizes the matter in characteristically everyday English:

Just think—you don’t need a thing, you’ve got it all! All God’s gifts are right in front of you as you wait expectantly for our Master Jesus to arrive on the scene for the Finale. And not only that, but God Himself is right alongside to keep you steady and on track until things are all wrapped up by Jesus. God, who got you started in this spiritual adventure, shares with us the life of His Son and our Master Jesus. He will never give up on you. Never forget that.

End Notes

1 Unless otherwise noted, all scriptural citations are from the English Standard Version (ESV).

2 See II Corinthians 5:17: “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.” See also Galatians 6:15.

3 The implications of Peter’s choice of the Greek verb translated “establish” in the ESV is important. His choice demonstrates that Peter did not consider yacad to be synonymous with katartizo. To him, they had separate meanings. A close look at his choice of verb for the fourth member of the four-member series of verbs in I Peter 5:10, the verb translated “establish,”makes this clear.

Let’s establish the connection between katartizo (translated “restore” in the ESV) and themelioo (translated “establish”in the ESV) of I Peter 5:10. Both are members of the four-member series of verbs appearing in I Peter 5:10: 1) Restore, 2) Confirm, 3) Strengthen, and 4) Establish. Katartizo is the first member of the four-member series, while themelioo is the fourth member of that series. Importantly: In separate quotations from the Old Testament, both Greek verbs appear as yacad. That is, indirectly, yacad appears twice in the series of verbs appearing in I Peter 5:10, as delineated below.

The context of the catalog in I Peter 5:10 is a coordinate list, that is, four verbs of equal value but of different meaning. Thematically, the series does not consist of synonyms, but of verbs with diverse senses. If Peter had intended themelioo to be a synonym of the first member of the catalog, katartizo (that is, if he used those two verbs appositionally), he would have listed themelioo immediately after katartizo, according to the conventions of Greek (and incidentally, English) grammar. He would not have separated the two verbs (katartizo . . . themelioo) by two other verbs that are clearly not synonyms. All this argues that Peter saw katartizo and themelioo as having different meanings.

Interestingly, the apostle listed themelioo, which has the implication of initial action (laying a foundation), last rather than first in the series.

Themelioo (Strong’s #2311) means “to lay a foundation,” “to found,” and by implication, “to establish” or “to settle” as to settle a new town. It appears six times in the New Testament (Matthew 7:25, “founded”; Luke 6:48, “laid the foundation”; Ephesians 3:17, “grounded”; Colossians 1:23, “grounded”; Hebrews 1:10, “laid the foundation”; and I Peter 5:10, “establish”). As the table above indicates, themelioo’s use in Hebrews 1:10 cross-references with yacad in that it is a quotation of Psalm 102:25: "Of old You laid the foundation of the earth, and the heavens are the work of Your hands.” In Hebrew, the term “laid the foundation” is yacad.

In Luke 6:48, the root word of themelioo is also present, themelios (Strong’s #2310), which means “foundation.” This noun is generally translated “foundation” in I Corinthians 3:10-12.

The ramification of Peter’s use of katartizo and themelioo appearing in a series of coordinate verbs is important. His use of these two verbs as member one (katartizo) and member four (themelioo) in a four-verb list indicates that he did not consider them to be synonymous. The context makes that clear. To Peter, katartizo does not semantically map to yacad. It has a separate meaning, “to restore,” as detailed in my wider remarks. Themelioo appears to be the verb of choice in the New Testament when the intended meaning pertains to “found” or to “lay a foundation,” and therefore more closely aligns with the Hebrew yacad. This is one of the clearest arguments that katartizo in the New Testament does not mean the same as yacad in the Old Testament. If one is looking for a one-to-one correlation between a Hebrew verb and its Greek counterpart, the best bet is to look at the yacad-themelioo pairing.

4 The Hebrew verb zakar (Strong’s #2142) first appears in Genesis 8:1. It is used 233 times in the Old Testament. One of its meanings is “to be mindful” as in Psalm 115:12 (New American Standard Bible): “The Lord has been mindful of us; He will bless us; He will bless the house of Israel; He will bless the house of Aaron.”

Zakar is the verb “remembered” in Psalm 8:4, discussed in Part One in reference to God’s “taking care of” people. That care, of course, implies His restoration and maintenance of us: “[W]hat is man that you take notice of him, or the son of man that you pay attention to him?” (ISV).

5 Genesis 1:31: “And God saw everything that He had made, and behold, it was very good.”

6 See Romans 12:1: “I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship.”

7 From what I can determine, only five versions of the New Testament stress the idea of founding or beginning in their translations of Matthew 21:16. In doing so, importantly, they indicate the subtle convergence between the meanings of yacad and katartizo. Other versions tend to use verbs such as “perfected,” “prepared,” and the like. The five versions that use the verb “create” (or its synonyms) are as follows:

• The Expanded Bible’s text of Matthew 21:16 glosses katartizo with the words “prepared/created praise,” thereby connecting the Greek verb with the notion of founding or beginning.

• The GWT renders Matthew 21:16 as, “‘From the mouths of little children and infants, you have created praise’?”

• The ISV renders Matthew 21:16 as, “‘From the mouths of infants and nursing babies you have created praise’?”

• The Names of God Version translates Matthew 21:16 as, “‘From the mouths of little children and infants, you have created praise’?”

• George Lamsa’s translation of the Peshitta treats Matthew 21:16 as, “You have composed a song?” The verb compose is a semantically specialized form of “created”when referring to music (or writing). Hence, this version also catches the notion of founding or creating, the idea behind yacad.

8 It has more recently been recalibrated as the 400-meter race.

9 Compare Psalm 138:8: “The LORD will fulfill his purpose for me; your steadfast love, O LORD, endures forever. Do not forsake the work of your hands.”