Katalasso (1)

The New Testament was written in the Greek language as spoken by ordinary people in everyday life. A problem that faces readers of English translations is that many key Greek words are translated by English words that have become religious words. These religious words are an obstacle to understanding what the writers of the New Testament were saying.

One example is the Greek word καταλλάσσω, which is translated as “reconcile”. This word now has a religious meaning, which English readers assume they understand.

katalasso was actually a common commercial and social term before it picked up any special theological weight. Its ordinary senses:

• To exchange money or change currency
  This was probably the most basic, literal use — like exchanging one currency for another, or exchanging coins for goods. It is a money-changer’s word.

• To exchange or barter goods
  More broadly, swapping one thing for another in trade.

• To make up/patch things up after a quarrel
  This is the extended, very natural everyday sense — used of friends, spouses, or business partners who had fallen out and then settled their differences and were on good terms again. Like two people “made up” or “patched things up” after a fight.

• Diplomatic/political reconciliation
  Also used of cities, states, or factions ending hostilities and restoring normal relations —a peace-treaty sense.

So in plain, secular Greek, if you heard someone say a version of katallassō, you’d most likely think of:

• a money-changer at a market stall, or
• two people who’d had a falling-out and were now friends again.

Understanding this made me ponder why Paul chose to use this word to describe our relationship with God.

One commentator said, “The word carries the everyday logic of ‘swapping something for its opposite’ — enmity swapped for friendship, one currency swapped for another. The New Testament writers borrowed this ordinary ‘settling accounts / making up’ language to describe humanity’s relationship with God being switched from hostile to friendly — but the underlying word itself was just common marketplace and social vocabulary, nothing inherently religious”.

Apart from Romans 7, where the reference is to a broken marriage, the word katalasso and the related noun are used intensively in two passages.

Now all these things are from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the service of reconciliation, namely, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their wrongdoings against them, and He has committed to us the word of reconciliation. Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God were making an appeal through us; we beg you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God (2 Cor 5:18-20).

For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life. And not only this, but we also celebrate in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received the reconciliation (Rom 5:10-11).