What does "earnest" (arrabon) of the Spirit mean?
Arrabōn (ἀῥραβών) is a down payment, a deposit that guarantees the full sum will come. "The earnest of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession" (Eph 1:14). The Spirit is God’s guarantee of the believer’s future.
What the text states
Arrabōn is a commercial term: the first installment that both begins the payment and pledges the rest. In modern Greek it means an engagement ring. God gives the believer the Holy Spirit as the arrabōn, the guarantee that the full inheritance is coming (Eph 1:14, 2 Cor 1:22, 5:5).
This is a pillar of eternal security: a down payment that could be forfeited would be no guarantee at all, and Scripture calls the Spirit exactly a guarantee.
Go deeper
Checked 2026-09-29 by Darren. 45 Scripture citations verified against the KJV rows. Every Strong's number in the wave-3 notes resolved against our own strongs_greek / strongs_hebrew and the lemma matched the form in the file. Wave 3. 45 quoted fragments table-passed against the verses table, all pass. 21 Greek and 3 Hebrew Strong's entries cross-checked against strongs_greek (5,523 rows) and strongs_hebrew (8,674). Three notes, none a form mismatch: (1) G2434 hilasmos is glossed in our table as 'atonement... an expiator', usage 'propitiation', so Strong's own wording is softer than the answer's 'not merely expiation'; Thayer and BDAG carry the propitiation sense and the KJV renders it so. (2) G728 is spelled arrhabon in our table (double rho) against the file's arrabon; the same word, a transliteration convention. (3) our table derives skenoo (G4637) from skenos (G4636), while the answer says it is built on skene (G4633); the three are cognate and skene is the LXX's tabernacle word. One reference in the wave-3 verification notes did not exist: Rev 22:24 (Revelation 22 ends at verse 21). Ruled by Darren 2026-09-29 a typo for Rev 22:17 and corrected in the source file. The hilasmos gloss discrepancy was ruled the same day: the answer stands and is not softened.