Linguistic Gap Analysis

Where Thai has no equivalent

• Justification (forensic declaration): Thai has no single word for a legal declaration of right standing granted by a judge. The compound การถูกนับว่าเป็นผู้ชอบธรรม (“being counted as righteous”) is a constructed phrase, not an existing idiom, and needs teaching support the first several times it appears.
• Imputed righteousness: similarly constructed (ความชอบธรรมที่ทรงถือว่าเป็นของเรา). There is no everyday Thai concept of a status being credited to someone apart from their own action — cultural intuition, reinforced by both บุญ and บารมี, runs the opposite direction.
• Covenant: พันธสัญญา 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 Thai has a false friend

• อวตาร (avatar): the single highest-risk false friend in this entire Language Package. It is the most natural-sounding word for “a deity taking human/animal form,” and it is reinforced daily by royal and popular religious culture, not confined to ancient epic literature.
• บารมี (barami): doubles as merit-charisma attributed to monks and the monarchy. Used carelessly for divine glory or grace, it implies these were built up over time rather than inherent or freely given.
• วิญญาณ (winyan, spirit): covers ghosts, the Buddhist consciousness-continuum, and ordinary “spirit” generally. Standing alone it does not specify a personal, eternal, divine Spirit, and must always appear in its full compound form for the Holy Spirit.

Where Thai already has strong equivalents

• ความเชื่อ (faith/belief) functions well for trust in a person, once the object of trust is specified and distinguished from ศรัทธา’s devotional connotation.
• บาป (sin) functions well as moral transgression, provided it is anchored to offense against a personal God rather than left as the impersonal negative-karma sense.
• ธรรมบัญญัติ (law) is an established, unambiguous rendering for the Mosaic Law with no unwanted Buddhist monastic connotation.