Seal of God

The Greek word translated to seal (sphragis, sphragizo) means to show genuineness, attest to, protect, or keep private. It is like the impress of a king's seal into wax on an important document, which attests to the identity of the author, the genuiness of the communication and protects it from innapropriate access. The meaning can be better understood by looking at other Bible verses that use the word.

• A) "If I be not an apostle unto others, yet doubtless I am to you: for the seal of mine apostleship are ye in the Lord" (1 Corinthians 9:2).
  
  The seal (the sign that Paul was a genuine apostle and that which protected his status as such) was the people of his work.
  
  
• B) "So they went, and made the sepulchre sure, sealing the stone, and setting a watch" (Matthew 27:66).
  
  They put a seal on the stone where Christ was buried, marking it as the genuine or official place and to protect it from being opened innapropriately.
  
  
• C) "He that hath received his testimony hath set to his seal that God is true" (John 3:33).
  
  When you receive (believe and accept) Jesus, you put your own seal upon God's word (attest and certify to the genuineness of God's word).
  
  
• D) "Labour not for the meat which perisheth, but for that meat which endureth unto everlasting life, which the Son of man shall give unto you: for him hath God the Father sealed" (John 6:27).
  
  You can have confidence that Jesus can provide you eternal life, because God has sealed Him (marked Him as genuine, the real deal and trustworthy).
  
  
• E) "In whom ye also trusted, after that ye heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation: in whom also after that ye believed, ye were sealed with that holy Spirit of promise, Which is the earnest of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession, unto the praise of his glory" (Ephesians 1:13-14).
  
  Followers of Christ are sealed by the Holy Spirit when they fully surrender to its work. Once the Holy Spirit is given full access to the heart/mind, the Holy Spirit can dwell there and immerse the person in its influence. Thus, the presence of the Holy Spirit means a person is sealed, or marked as a genuine child of God.
  
  
• F) "Bind up the testimony, seal the law among my disciples" (Isaiah 8:16). "For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, saith the Lord; I will put my laws into their mind, and write them in their hearts: and I will be to them a God, and they shall be to me a people" (Hebrews 8:10). "Forasmuch as ye are manifestly declared to be the epistle of Christ ministered by us, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God; not in tables of stone, but in fleshy tables of the heart" (2 Corinthians 3:3).
  
  The Holy Spirit works to help people understand the beauty of God's law, convict them to keep that law and enable them to live according to it. After a person receives the Holy Spirit and is marked as a genuine child of God, the Holy Spirit works to write God's law on their heart. Submitting to the Holy Spirit's work goes hand in hand with submitting to the law of God. Those who come to Christ and are given the blessing of the Holy Spirit, must cooperate with the Spirit's work in order to retain the blessing. The law is a seal that, when gently pressed down to mold a person's character gradually during their life, will leave a mark when it is completed that attests to the genuiness of those professing to follow God. (More about the Seal of God.)