Does the fact that God gave the New Testament in Koine Greek show that he wants his word to be widely understood?

This text is from a letter written by David Gooding in 1990.

Yes, in general I agree that the fact that God gave the New Testament in Koine Greek shows us that he wants his word to be available to all peoples in languages they can easily understand.

I am not quite sure that Koine Greek was the language of the market place in cities like Athens and Corinth. To a Greek, it would carry a decided Semitic flavour. More importantly, it would contain familiar Greek words like sarx (= flesh), but used in a technical sense, that would be quite foreign to Greek thought.

Modern translations of such technical terms often yield to the temptation of substituting theological interpretation in the place of straight translation. One example would be 1 Corinthians 5:5 where the NIV renders 'flesh' as 'sinful nature'—that is plain interpretation and, in my opinion, a wrong interpretation—and it is a false method in that it attempts to make the New Testament more simple for the modern reader than it was for the original readers. But in general, I do agree that the New Testament should be translated in straightforward, simple, but I hope elegant, English.

With love in the Lord,