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Trusting the words enables a reader to study the words effectively. The ESV will prove, I believe, to be an effective and helpful translation for those many individuals and groups whose goal is to study the Scriptures. Studying a text means paying close attention to the words; there is no other way in to the heart of it. The Book of Romans solidly sets forth a whole series of theologically weighty words like righteousness, propitiation, justification, predestination, and glorification. Why do we need these words? Why shouldn't we restate their meanings in simpler words? Righteousness, for example, is a key word throughout Romans, and Paul takes great care to open up just what it means. Righteousness constitutes the foundational ingredient of his theme, the gospel, in which "the righteousness of God is revealed" (1:17). Another version puts it that the "Good News tells us how God makes us right in his sight" (New Living Translation). The more literal ESV here keeps the focus solely on God and, rather than pinning down right off just what God does for us in the gospel, it makes us—Paul makes us—lean forward to see just how the gospel will reveal the righteousness of God.
At the heart of the how is the word propitiation (3:25), which means the appeasing of wrath. After Paul has explained in the first chapters why human beings are deserving of God's wrath, propitiation becomes a beautiful word, as we see the blood sacrifice of Christ perfectly satisfying the wrath and judgment of a righteous God. Many versions change "propitiation" to "sacrifice of atonement," capturing the sense of payment or redemption, but eliminating the more direct and difficult picture of an angry God whose wrath is turned away.
Difficult is perhaps an important word in the context of this discussion. In one sense, the ESV might be accused of being more difficult than some other contemporary versions. Two responses come quickly to mind. First, this accusation of difficulty is not a problem with the translation; it is a problem with the Bible and with taking the time to read and study it. I remember the first time I taught Shakespeare. The play was King Lear, and one of the first questions from my first-year college students was: "Couldn't we read this in a modernized version?" My answer was no, because I wanted them to read the words Shakespeare wrote, to understand them, learn from them, and delight in their beauty. By the end of that class, most of those students had taken in that play wholeheartedly, memorized parts of it, and enjoyed it thoroughly.
The process did require a bit of work. Anything worthwhile does. For good reason the church has developed teachers and preachers and theologians, to help us dig into the riches of the inspired word of God. The ESV is certainly not difficult to the degree that Shakespeare is! It does, however, respect readers enough to give them the biblical text in all its demanding beauty.
The second response to those who worry over the difficulty of translations like the ESV has to do with Scripture's perspicuity—another large but indispensable word. The main meaning of what God inspired can be plainly understood by just about any reader who wants to understand it. I have seen this truth lived out repeatedly, as people in our church and women in my studies take up the Bible for the first time and find truth breaking in on them. They don't understand the nuances of every passage; no one does, completely. But understanding comes, through reading and studying and the enlightenment of the Holy Spirit.
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