What does “Maranatha” mean?
Question 10152
The word “Maranatha” appears once in the New Testament, at the close of Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians: “If anyone has no love for the Lord, let him be accursed. Our Lord, come!” (1 Corinthians 16:22). That final phrase, preserved in its original Aramaic as Marana tha, is one of the earliest recorded Christian prayers and carries a significance that far exceeds its brevity.
The Meaning of the Word
The Aramaic phrase Marana tha can be divided in two ways, each producing a slightly different sense. Divided as Marana tha, it means “Our Lord, come!” and functions as a prayer or invocation directed to Christ, calling on Him to return. Divided as Maran atha, it means “Our Lord has come” and functions as a confession, a declaration that the Lord has already arrived. Most scholars and translators prefer the former reading, “Our Lord, come!”, on the grounds that it fits the context better as a prayer and corresponds to the similar prayer in Revelation 22:20: “Come, Lord Jesus!”
What is remarkable about this phrase is that it is Aramaic, not Greek, preserved untranslated in a Greek letter written to a predominantly Gentile church in Corinth. This preservation strongly suggests that the phrase had already become a fixed, recognisable expression in the earliest Christian worship, so familiar that it needed no translation. It had the character of a liturgical formula, much as later Christians would preserve the Hebrew “Amen” and “Hallelujah” without translation. The fact that it is Aramaic points to its origin in the earliest Jewish-Christian community in Palestine, dating it to the very first years of the church’s existence.
What It Reveals About the Earliest Church
The significance of Marana tha for understanding the earliest Christian community can hardly be overstated. The phrase addresses Jesus as “our Lord” (Maran), using the same Aramaic title that would have been used of God Himself. That the earliest, Aramaic-speaking Jewish believers addressed the risen Jesus with this title is powerful evidence that the worship of Jesus as Lord was not a later Hellenistic development, as some critics have claimed, but a feature of Christian belief from the very beginning. Within months or years of the crucifixion, Jewish monotheists were addressing Jesus with divine language. This is not the product of gradual theological evolution. It is the response of people who had encountered the risen Christ and drawn the only possible conclusion about who He is.
The phrase also reveals that the earliest Christians lived in active expectation of Christ’s return. “Our Lord, come!” is a prayer of longing, urgency, and hope. It is not the language of a community that expected to settle into a long historical project of gradually improving the world. It is the language of a community that expected the Lord to come back, and soon. This expectation, far from being a mistake that subsequent history corrected, is precisely the posture the New Testament commends. The church is always to live in readiness for the Lord’s return.
The Context in 1 Corinthians 16
Paul places Marana tha immediately after a solemn warning: “If anyone has no love for the Lord, let him be accursed” (1 Corinthians 16:22). The juxtaposition is deliberate. The coming of the Lord is both hope and warning. For those who love Him, His return is the answer to the deepest longing of the human heart: the vindication of all that has been endured, the completion of all that has been begun, the reunion with the One in whom all joy is found. For those who do not love Him, His coming is judgement. The prayer “Our Lord, come!” carries both notes simultaneously. It is an expression of worship from those who belong to Him and a sobering reminder to those who do not.
So, now what?
The earliest Christians prayed Marana tha because they genuinely expected Jesus to return and genuinely wanted Him to. This is the test of authentic Christian hope: not merely believing that Christ will come back, but wanting Him to. The prayer is as appropriate today as it was in the first century. The world has not outgrown the need for it. The church has not moved beyond the posture it expresses. “Our Lord, come!” is the cry of a people who know that everything wrong with this world has an appointed end, and that end is a Person. He is coming. The church prays for it, lives in readiness for it, and refuses to be embarrassed by the simplicity and directness of that ancient Aramaic plea.
“He who testifies to these things says, ‘Surely I am coming soon.’ Amen. Come, Lord Jesus!” Revelation 22:20
