What's in a word?

Last Sunday I had the joy of teaching on the subject of ‘Christ is our LIFE’.

And if I’m honest… I find that statement quite a nebulous one… it doesn’t immediately connect or help me directly… so, for me, it begs the question.

What does that REALLY mean?

Maybe if you’re reading this you’ve been around christian jargon for a while, so phrases like this seem normal. They can slide in and out of talks, books, or conversations with ease and without a second thought… and I guess that’s fine to some degree.  

But every now and then I think it’s good to press pause and dig in a little.

Yes, ‘Christ is our life’.  But what is going on here.

I wanted to try and find out a few more things, like…

What were the writers or speakers saying?
What might the original audience have been hearing?
Is what I’m hearing and understanding any different?
Am I missing something?
And, is this idea or word elsewhere in the Bible, and is that important?

Now, I’m not going to re-hash my whole talk into a blog post… you can listen to it here if you want to >>

But in short, when you look at the Greek word for LIFE in this setting it is revealing.
You see, in Greek there are a number of different words for LIFE used in the New Testament.

Bios - our physical life, possessions etc.
Psychē - our soul-life
Zōē - the divine, eternal life of God


So when Paul is saying in Colossians 3 that ‘Christ is our LIFE’.
He is using the Greek word zōē.

And throughout John’s gospel one of the key claims that features over and over again is that Jesus not only has zoe-life (which remember, in this context means He has a divine attribute that only YHWH possesses)… 

But He is also making this zoe-life available to all who believe in Him!


NOW, THE PRACTICAL BIT…

I know a number of you were really struck by this idea that by understanding a word better it brings more light to scripture. 

And some even asked for a list of where these life words crop up.

Well, I thought even better than a list; you might like to know about one really useful tool that you can use when studying the Bible…

The MOUNCE New Testament.

  1. First, fire up the computer / laptop (not ideal on phone).

  2. Then,  go to biblegateway.com and look up any New Testament passage.

  3. Now, change the Bible translation to MOUNCE, which is a Greek Interlinear NT translation by Bill Mounce.

  4. Once, there you should be able to hover and click on any of the Greek words.

    A short definition pops up for each word and you can also follow a small link to Bill Mounce’s website where you can see every time that word is used and take it even further.

 

If you want to have a go… click the link below and see where it leads you!

Here’s Colossians 3 in MOUNCE version >> 

And if you click on Zoe you can find all the places it appears in the NT.

And for Bios and Psyche - start with Luke 8:14 and Mark 8:34-36 in the MOUNCE translation and see where it leads you!

Obviously, this doesn’t take you all the way to understanding, it’s just like a dictionary and concordance, but I find it a really helpful and interactive tool to get started.

*** BONUS Word Studies***

Also if you want even more do check out Bible Project’s Word Study Series - these are really great.

Daniel Leeves