Why I use the ESV

I use the ESV at Garden Heights Baptist Church in my preaching and teaching ministry. It is a highly accurate translation. It is clear! And it is beautiful in its expressive language. I grew up on the KJV for the first 12 years of my life, was introduced to the NIV as a young person and used this primarily through my college, seminary, and first several years of ministry. I also have tremendously benefited from NASB version in my sermon preparation and consult it along with other versions regularly.

The strength of the KJV has been its massive usage in the English speaking world and its beauty. Its weakness is that people don’t think and talk in Elizabethean English anymore. The strength of the NIV is its understandability, but it is not strong in its literal translation of God’s Word–althought I can read from it and affirm, “Thus says the Lord!” (The TNIV is severely compromised. I do not recommend it). The strength of the NASB is its accurate translation of the original Greek and Hebrew manuscripts of God’s Word, but its weakness is its “woodness” in translation. It is not as highly readable, lyrical, and majestic, especially for public reading.

I am not a one-version only person but among all the English translations, I prefer far and away the ESV. Why do I use the ESV primarily now in my preaching and teaching ministry. Why do I encourage my congregation to memorize from it?

Instead of re-inventing the wheel, let me just let John Piper speak to this issue as he addressed his congregation on this issue back on January 4, 2004. You can read the whole sermon here.

What’s unique about this year is that we are introducing a new Bible translation, the English Standard Version. On June 3 the Council of Elders unanimously approved the following motion:

That we make the English Standard Version the preaching Bible of Bethlehem Baptist Church, and that we change our pew Bibles to the ESV when funds are available, and that we create fighter verse material based on the ESV.

As of this Sunday that is all done. What remains is to say why and then turn to the text for an encouragement to give ourselves to the Word this year. The full rationale that I presented to the Elders last June is online for you to read at www.DesiringGod.org. So I will be very brief here on this issue. But here to set the stage, here is the first paragraph of the paper:

I love the Bible the way I love my eyes—not because my eyes are lovely, but because without them I can’t see what’s lovely. Without the Bible I could not see “the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ.” Without the Bible I could not know “the unsearchable riches of Christ.” Without the Bible I would not know that I am a great sinner and that Christ is a great Savior. I love the Bible because it gives the wisdom that leads to salvation, and shows me that this salvation is nothing less than seeing and savoring the glory of Christ forever, and then provides for me inexhaustible ways of seeing and knowing and enjoying Christ.

The privilege of having God’s Word in our own language is of incalculable worth. I would rather have you read any translation of the Bible—no matter how weak—than to have you read no translation of the Bible. If there could be only one translation in English, I would rather it be my least favorite than that there be none. God uses every version to bless people and save people.

The Problem

Here is the problem we have had for almost thirty years in the English speaking world. The New International Version has become the most popular modern translation of the Bible in the Evangelical Church . But the NIV is very much of a paraphrase rather than a more literal translation. When I first read it in 1975 I knew I could never teach or preach from it, because of how much interpretation it does that I think the reader should do, not the translator. I will illustrate in a moment.

There have been two main alternatives to the NIV. One is the King James Version, which was translated into 17 th century English and not suitable as a translation into contemporary English. The other is the New American Standard Bible, which we have used in this church for some 20 years. The problem with the NASB is that, while being quite literal, it is not as readable as it might be. In other words, we were forced for 30 years to choose between the more readable, but less literal, NIV and the less readable, but more literal, NASB.

We are no longer limited to those two choices. The English Standard Version was published two years ago and is far more literal than the NIV and far more readable than the NASB. Not only is it a better balance, in my judgment, of literalness and readability, but it has the advantage of being in the lineage of the King James Version. Here’s what I mean by lineage. The King James Version was published in 1611. A revision was published in 1901 called the American Standard Version. Then in 1952 the King James Version and the American Standard Version were revised and published as the Revised Standard Version. It was a good translation, but with a few liberal theological biases and some free-wheeling speculation in certain Old Testament poetry.

This version went out of print and was replaced in 1989 by the New Revised Standard Version. For most Evangelicals the NRSV was so lopsided in its handling of gender issues it never became a common version.

I am deeply thankful to God that Crossway Books made the decision to call for a preservation of the King James lineage by publishing a light revision of the Revised Standard Version. That is what the ESV is. Here you will find the cadences and much of the wording that you may have absorbed from the King James even without reading the King James—just because its impact on our culture for almost 500 years has been enormous.

Why the ESV Instead of the NIV?

The key practical question that should be asked is: Why not the NIV? So many people use it. Children have been raised on it. Why encourage people to change? Please know, that is all we are doing: encouraging. We do not require anyone to change in the Bible you use for your own personal reading and meditation and memorization. We hope that we can persuade you to move over to the ESV and that over the next several years there can be enough unity in this move as a church that we can do congregational recitations and readings right from our own Bible.

So why is the ESV better for us than the NIV? Now let me say again that the NIV is the precious Word of God. Oh, how careful we must be not to belittle the Word of God. And yet we must not put any human translation above criticism. God has used the NIV to bring millions of people to faith in Christ over the last 40 years. But its essential weakness is that the translators do for the reader what they should be allowed to do for themselves—they go well beyond necessary interpretation that is always involved in translation, and make decisions for the reader that good English does not require. Far too often the NIV replaces the ambiguity of the original with the decision of the translator, not because good English demands it, but because the philosophy of translation favors translator-clarity over apostolic-ambiguity. In all the following cases the ESV keeps the more literal translation and the NIV gives the interpretation of the translator instead of the ambiguity of the original.

Romans 1:5 ( hupakoen pisteos )
^ESV the obedience of faith
^NIV the obedience that comes from faith

Romans 3:20 ( ex ergon nomou )
^ESV By works of the law
^NIV by observing the law

Romans 13:8 ( medeni meden opheilete )
^ESV Owe no one anything
^NIV Let no debt remain outstanding

Hebrews 6:1 ( nekron ergon )
^ESV dead works
^NIV acts that lead to death

James 2:12 ( nomou eleutherias )
^ESV the law of liberty
^NIV the law that gives freedom

John 11:6 ( hos oun ekousen ) This is not an ambiguity removed. It is a meaning reversed, perhaps because the translation could not see what meaning “therefore” could have.
^ESV So, when he heard
^NIV Yet when he heard

Romans 8:35-36 ( thanatoumetha holen ten hemeran ) Again this is not a removal of ambiguity but a softening of the original. But the effect is to play into the hands of those who might argue: Christians only “face death” in persecution and calamity. They can be spared if they have enough faith. But the text says, “We are being killed.”
^ESV we are being killed all the day long.
^NIV we face death all day long.

Well, I am deeply thankful that the ESV exists. I pray that it will become the primary reading, preaching, teaching, memorizing Bible version of the English speaking world. It would be a wonderful thing if there could be glad-hearted common usage in local churches so that almost everyone is using the same Bible. Whether that happens will be finally God’s doing, not ours.

I hope you will consider the ESV for your family and for yourself.