Fervent in Spirit

FERVENT IN SPIRIT
Romans 12:11

TRANSLATIONS

"Fervent in spirit" --- NASB, KJV, NKJV, NAB, ASV, Lamsa

"Keep your spiritual fervor" --- NIV

"In ardour of spirit" --- NEB

"A heart full of devotion" --- TEV

"Let us keep the fires of the spirit burning" --- Phillips

"Keep yourselves fueled and aflame" --- Message

"Keeping spiritually aglow" --- Berkeley

"Serve the Lord with a boiling spirit" --- SEB

"Be spiritually enthusiastic" --- McCord

Other translations, unlike those above, view the reference to "spirit" as referring to the Holy Spirit, and thus they capitalize the word:

"Be aglow with the Spirit" --- RSV

"Always on fire with the Spirit" --- Williams

"On fire with the Spirit" --- Goodspeed

Commentators are divided on this interpretation. "Spirit here denotes the human spirit, not the Holy, as some have imagined" (Lard, p. 390). "The RSV is probably right in taking the reference to be to the Holy Spirit" (Bruce, p. 229).
WORD STUDY
The Greek word zeo appears only twice in the NT writings. The other location is Acts 18:25 where it is used of Apollos. This word never appears in either the OT writings or the Apocrypha. By the use of this word the apostle Paul "directs them to maintain the spiritual glow" (Arndt, p. 337). "It is used to denote ardour, intensity, or, as we express it, a glow --- meaning intense zeal" (Barnes, p. 282).
SCRIPTURE REFERENCE
I Thessalonians 5:19
COMMENTARY
"The spirit brought into contact with Christian truth and with the fire of the Holy Spirit will naturally have its temperature raised, and will be moved by the warm touch as heat makes water in a pot hung above a fire boil. Boiling water makes steam, does it not? And what is to be done with the steam that comes off the 'boiling' spirit? You may either let it go roaring through a waste-pipe and do nothing but make a noise and be idly dissipated in the air, or you may lead it into a cylinder and make it lift a piston, and then you will get work out of it" (Maclaren, p. 270-71).
"We must keep our spirit at boiling point. The one man whom the Risen Christ could not stand was the man who was neither hot nor cold" (Barclay, p. 178).
"The Christian's consistent attitude must be one of enthusiasm, a warm fervour which the Spirit promotes" (Layman's, p. 1411).
"Our flesh, like the ass, is always torpid, and has therefore need of goads; and it is only the fervency of the Spirit that can correct our slothfulness" (Calvin, p. 465).

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