Linguistic Gap Analysis

Where Javanese has no equivalent

• Justification (forensic declaration): Javanese has no single word for a legal declaration of right standing granted by a judge. The compound kaanggep bener dening Gusti Allah (“counted as righteous by God”) is a constructed phrase and needs teaching support the first several times it appears.
• Imputed righteousness: similarly constructed (kabeneran kang kaanggep saking Gusti Allah). There is no everyday Javanese concept of a status being credited apart from one’s own action — the cultural intuition, reinforced by kasekten and kasampurnan, runs the opposite direction, toward standing built up through discipline.
• Covenant: prajanjian exists but functions more like a formal, negotiated pact than the relational, God-initiated bond Scripture describes. Every occurrence needs surrounding context to carry the relational weight.

Where Javanese has a false friend

• Gusti (lord): doubles as the ordinary address for a feudal lord or palace master within the keraton social hierarchy, requiring context to establish Christ’s unique, supreme Lordship.
• Kasekten (potency): the most pervasive false friend in this package, describing acquirable spiritual or magical power attributed to sacred objects, ascetics, and rulers; risky for both grace and the power of God.
• Titisan (spirit-descent): the belief that an ancestor’s or deity’s spiritual quality is reborn or manifested in a later figure, a serious false friend for resurrection.

Where Javanese already has strong equivalents

• Pitados (faith/belief) functions well for trust in a person, once the object of trust is specified.
• Dosa (sin) functions well as moral transgression, provided it is anchored to offense against a personal God rather than left as generic ritual impurity (cemer).
• Katimbalan (calling, drawn from court-summons protocol) works well for a personal divine call, once distinguished from the impersonal wahyu.