without wax

I love words and finding out their etymology and meaning. I discovered a really exciting one today while studying for VL (oh yeah, I gotta write a blog about that...coming in a few days or whever i get to it :) ).

The verse for tonight was Phil. 1:9-10:

And this I pray, that your love may abound still more and more in knowledge and all discernment, that you may approve the things that are excellent, that you may be sincere and without offense till the day of Christ,

The AWANA explanation said that the word 'sincere' meant pure, and genuine and that it meant 'to inspect by holding up to the light'. That is somewhat true, but it misses the COOL and true origin of the word. One website tried to explain the etymology as follows: "perhaps originally 'of one growth' (i.e. 'not hybrid, unmixed'), from sem-, sin- 'one' + root of crescere 'to grow'" (source). I say: BAH!

Check this out:

Good ol' Johnny Mac in his study bible says THIS:

In the ancient world, dishonest pottery dealers filled cracks in their inferior products with wax before glazing and painting them, making worthless pots difficult to distinguish from expensive ones. The only way to avoid being defrauded was to hold the pot to the sun, making the wax-filled cracks obvious. Dealers marked their fine pottery that could withstand 'sun testing' as sine cera—'without wax.'
MacArthur, J. J. (1997, c1997). The MacArthur Study Bible (electronic ed.) (Php 1:10). Nashville: Word Pub.

Cool, huh?! I know Spanish and it's close to Latin and so I know that 'sine' means 'without' and so I figured that 'cera' meant wax and it does! (see?) So 'sine cera' = without wax and becomes 'sincere' in English.

So now you have a better understanding of what the word 'sincere' means: without wax, without defect, without cracks, without inconsistencies that are deviously being covered over by someone who is trying to swindle you.

Let us strive to be without wax, sincere, free from defect--to live lives that God can hold up to the sunlight and see no guileful cracks.