161 entries · A–Z by scholarly transliteration
What Sarai does next, the text describes in a single Hebrew word: ta'anneha. She treated her harshly. The same root — 'anah — is used in Exodus 1:11-12 to describe Egypt's affliction of Israel. The word carries the weight of oppression, not merely a scolding. Whatever Sarai did, it was severe enough to drive a pregnant woman into the desert alone.
The God Who Showed Up · Chapter 2 — El Roi — The God Who Sees
Stop and weigh what is happening. God is making a promise to Hagar. Descendants too many to count. A son with a name God Himself chooses. And the name — Ishmael — means "God hears." The Lord has given heed to your affliction. The same root — 'anah — that described what Sarai did to Hagar now appears in God's response to it. She was afflicted. God heard.
The God Who Showed Up · Chapter 2 — El Roi — The God Who Sees
The word Abba is Aramaic — an intimate, familial address. Paul does not use the formal Greek word for father. He uses the word a child uses. The redeemed person’s access to God is not the access of a subject to a distant king, or even of a citizen to a sympathetic judge. It is the access of a child to a Father.
A New and Living Way · Chapter 2 — Who Are We That You Are Mindful of Us?
The Aramaic word behind “Father” is Abba — the word a child uses for their father. Not the formal term of address used in legal or religious contexts, but the familiar, intimate, everyday word. Paul picks this up in Romans 8:15: “You have received a spirit of adoption as sons by which we cry out, ‘Abba! Father!’” And again in Galatians 4:6: “God has sent forth the Spirit of His Son into our hearts, crying, ‘Abba! Father!’”
A New and Living Way · Chapter 7 — Lord, Teach Us
The first half is the negative. Does not rejoice in unrighteousness. The Greek verb is chairei, the ordinary word for being glad, for taking pleasure in something. The object is adikia — unrighteousness, wrongdoing, what falls short of what God requires. Paul is forbidding a particular kind of pleasure: the pleasure a believer can take in wrong being done — in the wrong done by another, in the wrong exposed in another, in the wrong that finally catches up with another. The word the world has invented for this pleasure, because the world has practiced it long enough to need a name, is schadenfreude — joy at another’s harm. The believer is being told that joy of that kind has no place in him.
The Love God Calls Us To · Chapter 11 — Love Does Not Rejoice in Unrighteousness, but Rejoices With the Truth
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From a chapter examining both institutional and non-institutional positions side by side — read in context.Jude 12 refers to “love feasts” — agapai — as an established practice in the apostolic churches. The term is specific. It was not a general word for a meal; it named a particular kind of gathering in which Christians came together for a meal in love. If love feasts were practiced in the apostolic churches, then church meals have apostolic precedent, and a modern congregation that continues them walks in an established pattern.
Why the Division Among Brethren · Chapter 9 — Fellowship Halls and Social Meals
From a chapter examining both institutional and non-institutional positions side by side — read in context.Jude 12 does not authorize what it sometimes appears to. Jude refers to certain false teachers as “hidden reefs in your love feasts when they feast with you without fear, caring for themselves” (Jude 12). The phrase “love feasts” (Greek agapai) does describe a kind of shared meal practiced among first-century Christians. Jude mentions them in passing without condemning the practice itself; his concern is the intruders at the meals, not the meals.
Why the Division Among Brethren · Chapter 9 — Fellowship Halls and Social Meals
Now to Him who is able to do far more abundantly beyond all that we ask or think, according to the power that works within us, to Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever. Amen.
The Love God Calls Us To · Chapter 16 — Love Never Fails
Paul the apostle is not telling the Romans to rearrange the outside. He is telling them to be fundamentally changed on the inside. And the mechanism of that change — the instrument by which morphē happens — is the renewing of the mind. The Greek is anakainōsei tou noos. Anakainōsis — renewal, from ana (again) and kainos (new — and not neos, which means new in time, but kainos, new in kind, new in quality). And nous — the mind as the faculty of moral reasoning, understanding, and judgment.
Change the Mind, Change the Man · Chapter 6 — THINK!
There are two movements here, not one. Lay aside the old self — yes. But also put on the new self. The old man must be removed. The new man must take his place. And notice where the renewal happens: in the spirit of your mind. The Greek is ananeousthai tō pneumati tou noos hymōn. The word ananeousthai comes from ana — again — and neos — new. Made new again. And noos is the same word we traced through Chapter 6 — nous, the faculty of moral reasoning, the mind that governs the direction of a person’s life.
Change the Mind, Change the Man · Chapter 9 — The Long Road
But notice — the invitation is not to come and be left where you are. It is to come and find rest. The Greek word is anapausō — from ana (again) and pauō (to cause to cease, to give rest). It is renewal. It is the stopping of the weight. It is the thing the substance promised and never delivered, the thing the next drink or the next hit or the next bet swore it would provide — and never could. Because what the soul needs, the flesh cannot supply.
Change the Mind, Change the Man · Chapter 10 — The God Who Finds You
The word translated “persistence” is the Greek anaideia — a word that carries the sense of shameless boldness, audacity, refusal to be embarrassed by asking. The man at the door does not give up. He keeps knocking even though the hour is inconvenient, even though his request is socially awkward, even though the easy thing would be to go away and try again in the morning. His shameless persistence secures what politeness would have forfeited.
A New and Living Way · Chapter 7 — Lord, Teach Us
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There are two movements here, not one. Lay aside the old self — yes. But also put on the new self. The old man must be removed. The new man must take his place. And notice where the renewal happens: in the spirit of your mind. The Greek is ananeousthai tō pneumati tou noos hymōn. The word ananeousthai comes from ana — again — and neos — new. Made new again. And noos is the same word we traced through Chapter 6 — nous, the faculty of moral reasoning, the mind that governs the direction of a person’s life.
Change the Mind, Change the Man · Chapter 9 — The Long Road
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Slow to anger. The Hebrew is erek apayim — literally, long of nose. An ancient Hebrew idiom for the slow burn. The picture is of nostrils that take a long time to flare. Hebrew’s way of saying what Greek would later say with makrothumeō. The same idea, translated across two languages over a thousand years apart, applied to the same God: long-fused. Slow to ignite. The fuel of righteous anger is present, but it takes time to reach the powder, and most of the time the powder never goes off at all.
The Love God Calls Us To · Chapter 2 — Love Is Patient
God is described, throughout Scripture, as slow to anger. We met the phrase already in the chapter on patience — erek apayim, long of nose, the long fuse. That long-tempered God is the same God who, again and again in the Old Testament, was provoked — the word used is the same paroxynō family in the Greek translations of the Hebrew — by the idolatry of His people:
The Love God Calls Us To · Chapter 9 — Love Is Not Provoked
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Aphorontes — from aphoraō — and this word matters. It means to look away from everything else and fix the gaze on one thing. The prefix apo means “away from.” It is not a glance. It is not a divided attention. It is the deliberate act of turning the eyes away from everything that competes for your focus and locking them on one fixed point.
Change the Mind, Change the Man · Chapter 9 — The Long Road
The NASB translates the Hebrew phrase as “at twilight.” The literal Hebrew is bein ha’arbayim — “between the evenings.” Jewish tradition understood this to mean the afternoon hours, roughly between three o’clock and sundown. That was when the Passover lamb was to be slaughtered. Not in the morning. Not at midnight. In the afternoon of Nisan 14.
The Last Week of the Lamb · Chapter 1 — The Lamb in Egypt
This is also the afternoon of Nisan 14 — the day God commanded the Passover lamb to be killed. Exodus 12:6 specified that the lamb was to be killed bein ha’arbayim — “between the evenings” — understood as the afternoon hours. In the first century, the Passover lambs were slaughtered in the temple during the afternoon of Nisan 14.
The Last Week of the Lamb · Chapter 9 — The Lamb Is Killed
In Exodus 12, God commanded the Passover lamb to be killed on the fourteenth day of the month, in the afternoon — bein ha’arbayim, between the evenings (Exodus 12:6). The blood of the lamb was to be applied to the doorposts (Exodus 12:7). And when God saw the blood, He would pass over that house, and the firstborn would not die (Exodus 12:13).
The Last Week of the Lamb · Chapter 9 — The Lamb Is Killed
Read verse 36 again: “every careless word.” Not every malicious word. Not every blasphemous word. Every careless word. The Greek word here is argon — from which we get the English word argon (the inert gas). It literally means idle, inactive, useless, without work. Jesus is not only concerned with words that actively harm. He is concerned with words that do nothing — words spoken without thought, without purpose, without care.
Bridge Moments · Chapter 1 — The Weight of Words
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Second: “If He would render Himself as a guilt offering.” The word is asham — the guilt offering prescribed in the Law of Moses (Leviticus 5:14–6:7). The guilt offering was specifically for making restitution. It was the sacrifice that paid what was owed. Isaiah is saying that the servant’s death would function as a guilt offering — paying the debt that the people owed but could not pay.
The Last Week of the Lamb · Chapter 2 — The Lamb in Prophecy
The word for vapor is atmis — a mist, a puff of steam, the breath you see on a cold morning that is there for an instant and then gone. That is what James says your life is. Not what it might be. What it is. And I had spent decades of that vapor telling myself I had plenty of time.
Change the Mind, Change the Man · Chapter 7 — Coming to Himself
But when God provides, the text uses a different word. The animal in the thicket is an ayil — a mature ram (Genesis 22:13). Abraham spoke of a seh. God sent an ayil. The text preserves both words. Whether Abraham intended anything beyond reassuring his son, we cannot say — the text does not tell us.
The God Who Showed Up · Chapter 4 — Jehovah Jireh — The Lord Will Provide
The English word “baptism” is not actually a translation. It is a transliteration — the Greek word baptizo was carried over into English with its spelling changed but its meaning left behind. The Greek word means to immerse, to submerge, to plunge beneath. Not to sprinkle. Not to pour. To put completely under.
From the Beginning · Chapter 8 — So What Do I Do Now?
The English word “baptism” is not a translation. It is a transliteration — the Greek word baptizo carried over into English with its spelling changed but its meaning left behind. The Greek word means to immerse, to submerge, to plunge beneath. It does not mean to sprinkle. It does not mean to pour. It means to put completely under.
Why Do You Delay? · Chapter 3 — What Baptism Is
But in Genesis 1:1, this plural noun takes a singular verb. The Hebrew word translated "created" is bara — and it is third person masculine singular. Not "Gods created." God — plural in form — created, singular in action. The grammar itself holds a tension: a plural name doing a singular thing.
The God Who Showed Up · Chapter 1 — Elohim — The God Who Was Already There
There is another word in Genesis 1:1 that deserves careful attention — the verb bara, translated "created."
The God Who Showed Up · Chapter 1 — Elohim — The God Who Was Already There
Bara is used in the Old Testament exclusively of God. Human beings make, build, form, and fashion. But they do not bara. This verb is reserved throughout the Hebrew Scriptures for divine creative action — bringing into existence something that did not exist before. It is used in Genesis 1:1 for the creation of the heavens and the earth. It is used in Genesis 1:21 for the creation of living creatures. It is used in Genesis 1:27 — three times in a single verse — for the creation of human beings in God's image.
The God Who Showed Up · Chapter 1 — Elohim — The God Who Was Already There
But when the kindness of God our Savior and His love for mankind appeared, He saved us, not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness, but according to His mercy…
The Love God Calls Us To · Chapter 3 — Love Is Kind
Jesus loved the rich young ruler even as the man walked away (Mark 10:21–22). He did not withdraw His love when the man rejected His invitation. The text says He “felt a love for him” before delivering the hard truth, and there is no indication that love ceased when the man chose not to follow. Love does not operate on a conditional basis. If it does, it is not love. It is investment with an expected return.
Bridge Moments · Chapter 3 — Love, Not Agenda
And then she went back to the very town she had been avoiding. The woman who came to the well at noon to escape the gaze of her community went straight back to the center of that community and said, “Come, see a man who told me all the things that I have done.” The very thing she was hiding from — her past, her shame, the “all the things” she had done — became the basis of her testimony. She was not embarrassed by Jesus’ knowledge of her life. She was amazed by it. Because He had seen everything and stayed. He had known everything and offered her living water anyway.
Bridge Moments · Chapter 4 — “Give Me a Drink”
The first half is the negative. Does not rejoice in unrighteousness. The Greek verb is chairei, the ordinary word for being glad, for taking pleasure in something. The object is adikia — unrighteousness, wrongdoing, what falls short of what God requires. Paul is forbidding a particular kind of pleasure: the pleasure a believer can take in wrong being done — in the wrong done by another, in the wrong exposed in another, in the wrong that finally catches up with another. The word the world has invented for this pleasure, because the world has practiced it long enough to need a name, is schadenfreude — joy at another’s harm. The believer is being told that joy of that kind has no place in him.
The Love God Calls Us To · Chapter 11 — Love Does Not Rejoice in Unrighteousness, but Rejoices With the Truth
The second half is the positive. But rejoices with the truth. The verb here changes. It is synchairei — the same root word chairei, with the prefix syn attached, meaning with. Love does not just rejoice over the truth; love rejoices with the truth. Love is on the same side as truth. They are partners. Where truth is honored, love claps. Where truth is hidden or twisted or covered up, love grieves. The believer is not just being asked to avoid the wrong pleasure. He is being given a new pleasure to learn — the pleasure of standing alongside what is true, even when standing alongside it costs him.
The Love God Calls Us To · Chapter 11 — Love Does Not Rejoice in Unrighteousness, but Rejoices With the Truth
The Hebrew word behind “train up” is chanakh — and it means more than instruction. It means to dedicate, to inaugurate, to set something apart for its intended purpose. It is the same word used for the dedication of the temple. When Solomon dedicated the temple, he set it apart, consecrated it, gave it to God for the purpose God intended. Chanakh carries that same weight when applied to a child — dedicate this child, set them on the right path, consecrate the early years to the purpose God designed.
Change the Mind, Change the Man · Chapter 3 — Where Did We Go Wrong?
The word charis is one of the richest words in the New Testament. It is the word for grace — the same word used for God’s unmerited favor toward sinners. But in the context of speech, charis carries the additional sense of that which is attractive, winsome, and beneficial to the hearer. Luke uses it in Luke 4:22 when he describes the crowd’s reaction to Jesus at Nazareth: they “were amazed at the gracious words which were falling from His lips.” The same root. Jesus’ speech was marked by charis — it was pleasing, compelling, full of a quality that drew people in rather than pushing them away.
Bridge Moments · Chapter 2 — The Kairos Principle
The preparation happens before the conversation begins. “Sanctify Christ as Lord in your hearts” — that is the heart preparation from Chapter 1. “Always being ready” — that is ongoing, not occasional. “To everyone who asks” — again, this is responsive: someone asks, and you are prepared to answer. “With gentleness and reverence” — with charis, with salt, with grace. Peter and Paul are saying the same thing from different angles.
Bridge Moments · Chapter 2 — The Kairos Principle
The Hebrew word translated “vision” is chazon. It does not mean personal vision, foresight, or strategic planning. Chazon is the technical term for prophetic revelation — the word of God disclosed to His people through His prophets. It is the same word used in 1 Samuel 3:1, Isaiah 1:1, and the opening of virtually every prophetic book. When Nahum writes, “The oracle of Nineveh. The book of the chazon of Nahum” (Nahum 1:1), he is not describing a business plan. He is describing what God showed him. Chazon is God’s revealed word — His message, delivered through the men He chose to speak it.
Can These Bones Live? · Chapter 3 — When the Word Goes Silent
And the second half of the verse confirms it. Hebrew proverbs are built on parallelism — the two halves interpret each other. “Where there is no chazon, the people are unrestrained; but happy is he who keeps the law.” Vision and law. Revelation and commandment. The first half describes what happens when God’s word is absent. The second half describes what happens when God’s word is present and obeyed. The two halves are not talking about two different subjects. They are talking about the same subject from two angles.
Can These Bones Live? · Chapter 3 — When the Word Goes Silent
Two phrases, saying the same thing. Word from the Lord — rare. Visions — infrequent. The chazon of Proverbs 29:18 was already scarce. Not gone entirely. Rare. Infrequent. The famine was beginning, but there was still an occasional meal.
Can These Bones Live? · Chapter 3 — When the Word Goes Silent
Paul did not learn kindness as a virtue floating free of God. He learned it as the very character of the God who saved him. The Old Testament returns again and again to the Hebrew word chesed — usually translated lovingkindness or steadfast love — to describe the way God deals with His people. It is the unfailing, unrelenting, unsurprised goodness of God toward those who do not deserve it. It is the kindness that walks back into a relationship the other party has broken, and quietly fixes it again, and again, and again.
The Love God Calls Us To · Chapter 3 — Love Is Kind
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No chapter excerpts found in the current build. This word is in the curated table but may not yet be italicized in any chapter prose.
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And the word behind “way” is derek — a road, a path, a manner of life. Train up a child according to the path that is right for them. Set their feet on the road. Dedicate the early years to walking it with them.
Change the Mind, Change the Man · Chapter 3 — Where Did We Go Wrong?
And then Jesus said something that cut to the heart of Nicodemus’s identity: “Are you the teacher of Israel and do not understand these things?” The Greek uses the definite article — ho didaskalos — “the teacher of Israel.” This was not just any teacher. Nicodemus was apparently renowned for his teaching. He was the go-to authority. And Jesus said: you, the recognized expert, do not understand the most fundamental thing about the kingdom you claim to teach?
Bridge Moments · Chapter 5 — “You Must Be Born Again”
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No chapter excerpts found in the current build. This word is in the curated table but may not yet be italicized in any chapter prose.
No chapter excerpts found in the current build. This word is in the curated table but may not yet be italicized in any chapter prose.
The word is doulos. Slave. And a doulos in the first century was not a hired servant who could give notice and walk away. A doulos was property. Owned. A doulos did not set his own schedule, choose his own labor, or decide when he had done enough. He belonged to his master, and he did what his master commanded. That was the arrangement. That was the whole of his existence.
Change the Mind, Change the Man · Chapter 2 — The Progression
This is why the embarrassment did not produce change in me. I could see the damage. I could feel the shame. But I was no longer a free agent making independent decisions about my life. I was a doulos, and my master was not interested in my embarrassment or my shame. My master wanted obedience, and I gave it, because that is what slaves do.
Change the Mind, Change the Man · Chapter 2 — The Progression
Everyone. Not everyone who commits a particular sin. Not everyone who commits sin past a certain threshold. Everyone. And the word “slave” is doulos again — the same word Paul used in Romans 6 that we unpacked in Chapter 2. Property. Owned. Under the authority of a master who does not negotiate.
Change the Mind, Change the Man · Chapter 4 — All of the Imprisoned Are Not in Prison
The word Paul uses — egkakeo in the Greek — means to grow weary, to lose courage, to give in. It’s the temptation to stop. To sit down on the side of the road and say, “I’m done.” And Paul says: we don’t. Not because the circumstances have improved. Not because the body has rallied. But because of what he sees happening beneath the surface.
One Day Closer to Home · Chapter 5 — Outwardly Wasting, Inwardly New
Paul says he is “always of good courage.” Twice in this passage he uses the word — tharrheo — which means to be confident, to be bold, to take heart. It’s the opposite of the egkakeo from the previous chapter — the temptation to lose heart. Paul isn’t just not losing heart. He’s actively courageous. And the source of that courage is specific: he knows where he’s going.
One Day Closer to Home · Chapter 6 — The Tent and the Building
Not I have less than I could have. Not I am missing one ingredient. I am nothing. The Greek is outhen eimi — literally, nothing I am. The man with every gift and no love is not a discounted version of a great Christian. He is, in the only accounting that matters, zero.
The Love God Calls Us To · Chapter 1 — The More Excellent Way
The reaction is immediate: "Therefore they picked up stones to throw at Him" (John 8:59). They understood exactly what He said. He did not say "Before Abraham was born, I was" — that would have been a claim to pre-existence, remarkable but not necessarily blasphemous. He said "I am" — ego eimi in the Greek, present tense, the same construction used in the Septuagint translation of Exodus 3:14. Jesus took the covenant name of God — the name given at the burning bush, the name too holy for many Jews to even speak aloud — and applied it to Himself.
The God Who Showed Up · Chapter 5 — Yahweh — The Self-Existent One
The phrase is eis heauton de elthōn — and it is one of the most remarkable phrases in the New Testament. Literally, “having come to himself.” Not “having come to a new realization.” Not “having learned something he did not know before.” Having come to himself. Back to who he was before the far country. Back to what he already knew — that his father’s house existed, that his father’s servants were better off than he was now, that there was a home he had walked away from.
Change the Mind, Change the Man · Chapter 7 — Coming to Himself
Aphorontes eis ton tēs pisteōs archēgon kai teleiōtēn Iēsoun.
Change the Mind, Change the Man · Chapter 9 — The Long Road
The Greek preposition in both verses is eis — into, toward, unto. Not en (in, already inside). Not peri (about, concerning). Eis — movement from one location to another. The person who is baptized moves from outside of Christ into Christ. From the domain where every spiritual blessing is absent to the domain where every spiritual blessing is present.
Change the Mind, Change the Man · Chapter 10 — The God Who Finds You
So what is this thing Jesus built? The word itself helps us understand. The Greek word translated “church” is ekklesia — and it simply means “the called out.” It’s not a building. It’s not an organization. It’s not a denomination. It’s a group of people — people who have been called out of darkness and into light, called out of sin and into Christ, called out of the world and into the family of God.
From the Beginning · Chapter 9 — What Happens Next?
He did not merely gather crowds and hope something would emerge. He spoke with deliberate purpose about establishing a community — his church. The word he used was ekklesia, a Greek word his listeners would have understood as an assembly, a called-out body of people organized around a common identity and purpose. Not a vague spiritual feeling. Not a loose association of admirers. A thing — something with enough structure to be identified and enough durability to withstand the gates of Hades.
The Character No One Could Invent · Chapter 11 — What He Built
“About the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, 'Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?' that is, 'My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?'”
The Last Week of the Lamb · Chapter 9 — The Lamb Is Killed
The Hebrew word translated “God” in verse 5 is elohim — the same word used for God throughout Genesis 1. Some translations render it “angels,” following the Septuagint, but the Hebrew is elohim. Made a little lower than God. Crowned with glory and majesty. These are not the words of a theology that sees humanity as insignificant. They are the words of a theology that sees humanity as the pinnacle of visible creation — not because of anything we have achieved, but because of what God made us to be.
A New and Living Way · Chapter 2 — Who Are We That You Are Mindful of Us?
And the name the text uses for the God who was already there is Elohim.
The God Who Showed Up · Chapter 1 — Elohim — The God Who Was Already There
The Hebrew word Elohim is the very first name for God in Scripture. It appears in the first sentence of the first verse of the first book. Before any other name is given — before Yahweh, before El Shaddai, before any of the compound names that will fill the pages of this book — the reader meets Elohim.
The God Who Showed Up · Chapter 1 — Elohim — The God Who Was Already There
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The phrase “reaching forward” is epekteinomenos — a word borrowed from the athletic games. It is the image of a runner who is not coasting, not jogging, not glancing over his shoulder at the ground he has already covered or the failures that lie behind him. He is straining forward — every part of him extended toward what is ahead. And “I press on” is diōkō — to pursue, to chase, to hunt with intent. This is not a casual stroll toward improvement. This is the deliberate, daily, relentless pursuit of the goal.
Change the Mind, Change the Man · Chapter 9 — The Long Road
“And reaching forward to what lies ahead.” Here’s where the language gets physical. The word Paul uses — epekteinomenos — is an image of a runner in full stretch. Leaning into the race. Body extended toward the finish line. It’s not casual. It’s not passive. This is a man straining forward with everything he has. An old man, in chains, straining forward.
One Day Closer to Home · Chapter 1 — The Rearview Mirror
Paul didn’t write Philippians 3:13–14 as a young man setting out. He wrote it as an old man pressing on. The word he used — epekteinomenos — is the image of a runner in full stretch, body extended toward the finish line. Not coasting. Not drifting. Straining forward. And the thing he was straining toward was not behind him. It was not beneath him. It was above him. The upward call of God in Christ Jesus.
One Day Closer to Home · Chapter 13 — Press On
This is the language of aim. Of orientation. Of where the eyes are fixed. And the command is not complicated: ta anō phroneite — set your mind on the things above. Mē ta epi tēs gēs — not on the things on the earth.
Change the Mind, Change the Man · Chapter 6 — THINK!
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The word translated “daily” is the Greek epiousios — a word so rare that scholars have debated its precise meaning for centuries. It appears nowhere else in ancient Greek literature outside of this prayer and one ancient fragment that may simply be quoting it. Some have understood it as “for the coming day” — bread for tomorrow, security for what lies ahead. Others have understood it as “needful” or “sufficient” — the bread we require for existence.
A New and Living Way · Chapter 7 — Lord, Teach Us
Slow to anger. The Hebrew is erek apayim — literally, long of nose. An ancient Hebrew idiom for the slow burn. The picture is of nostrils that take a long time to flare. Hebrew’s way of saying what Greek would later say with makrothumeō. The same idea, translated across two languages over a thousand years apart, applied to the same God: long-fused. Slow to ignite. The fuel of righteous anger is present, but it takes time to reach the powder, and most of the time the powder never goes off at all.
The Love God Calls Us To · Chapter 2 — Love Is Patient
God is described, throughout Scripture, as slow to anger. We met the phrase already in the chapter on patience — erek apayim, long of nose, the long fuse. That long-tempered God is the same God who, again and again in the Old Testament, was provoked — the word used is the same paroxynō family in the Greek translations of the Hebrew — by the idolatry of His people:
The Love God Calls Us To · Chapter 9 — Love Is Not Provoked
exagorazomenoi = “buying up, redeeming, purchasing from the marketplace”
Bridge Moments · Chapter 2 — The Kairos Principle
The NASB translates ton kairon here as “your time,” but it is the same Greek construction — the same kairos, the same exagorazomenoi. And Paul adds a reason for the urgency: “because the days are evil.” The opportunities are precious because the window is not unlimited. The world is broken. People are hurting. The need is urgent. And the moments when hearts are open do not last forever.
Bridge Moments · Chapter 2 — The Kairos Principle
tous exo = “the ones outside” — those outside the community of faith
Bridge Moments · Chapter 2 — The Kairos Principle
The word for “confess” is exomologeisthe — and the prefix exo matters. It means out. Out in the open. Not concealed, not whispered, not hinted at. The sins are brought out — out of the dark, out of the silence, out of the prison of secrecy — and placed before another human being. Not before God only, although that comes first and always. But before one another. The confession James calls for is horizontal, not just vertical. It is spoken to a person, face to face, out loud.
Change the Mind, Change the Man · Chapter 4 — All of the Imprisoned Are Not in Prison
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God’s nature is the deepest opposite of aschēmoneō. Whatever God does, He does fittingly — fitting to His holiness, fitting to His justice, fitting to His mercy, fitting to His purposes. There is no ungainly moment in the life of God. No discordant act. No conduct out of step with His being. The very word holy — qadosh in the Hebrew, hagios in the Greek — carries the idea of set apart, distinct, fitting only to Him. God is wholly becoming because God is wholly God.
The Love God Calls Us To · Chapter 7 — Love Does Not Act Unbecomingly
The Hebrew word is halak — walked. It is an ordinary word for an ordinary action, and that is precisely the point. It does not describe a single encounter with God, or a vision, or a dramatic spiritual experience. It describes a sustained, ongoing, directional movement in company with God. The same word is used in Genesis 3:8 where God is described as “walking in the garden” — the context of the original relationship before the fall. Enoch, in some real sense, recovered and sustained what the garden was meant to be.
A New and Living Way · Chapter 3 — From the Beginning: The First Cries
The Hebrew phrase God speaks in verse 14 is Ehyeh asher Ehyeh — "I AM WHO I AM." The word Ehyeh is the first person form of the Hebrew verb hayah, which means "to be." When God speaks of Himself, He says Ehyeh — I AM. The name that is given to Israel, however, is the form we know as Yahweh — spelled with the four Hebrew consonants Yod-He-Vav-He, often written as YHWH. This form appears to come from the third person of the same verb: He IS. When God names Himself, He says "I AM." When His people speak of Him, they say "He IS."
The God Who Showed Up · Chapter 5 — Yahweh — The Self-Existent One
The verb hayah in the form used here is what Hebrew grammarians call the imperfect — a form that expresses ongoing, uncompleted action. It is not past tense. It is not a single completed moment of existence. It carries the sense of continuous, unfinished being. "I AM" is not "I was" — He did not exist once and then stop. It is not "I will be" — He is not waiting to begin. It is the present, continuous, ongoing reality of a God who simply IS — always, now, without interruption.
The God Who Showed Up · Chapter 5 — Yahweh — The Self-Existent One
The word for “renewed” — anakainoo — means to make new again, to restore to a fresh condition. And it’s in the present tense. This isn’t a one-time event. It isn’t something that happened at conversion and stopped. It is happening to you today. Day by day. The Greek literally reads hemera kai hemera — “day and day.” Every single day the body loses a little more ground, the spirit is being refreshed, restored, rebuilt.
One Day Closer to Home · Chapter 5 — Outwardly Wasting, Inwardly New
Paul told you that the outer man is decaying — and he didn’t flinch from it. He named it. The body is wasting away. You feel it every morning. But he said something is happening at the same time, in the opposite direction: the inner man is being renewed. Day by day. Hemera kai hemera. Not in spite of the decay, but alongside it. Two things, moving in opposite directions, inside the same person. And the one that’s growing is the one that lasts.
One Day Closer to Home · Chapter 13 — Press On
So that his spirit may be saved. There it is. The purpose clause. Hina to pneuma sōthē — “in order that the spirit may be saved.” Everything in this passage — the removal, the delivery, the destruction of the flesh — all of it points toward one end: salvation. Not punishment. Not rejection. Not “he made his bed, let him lie in it.” The goal is rescue.
Change the Mind, Change the Man · Chapter 5 — Love That Says No
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And in the moments when He had every right to flare at petty offense — when the soldiers spat in His face, when the high priest had Him struck on the cheek for answering plainly, when the crowd that had just shouted Hosanna now shouted crucify Him, when Pilate handed Him over to be beaten — He did not flare. He stood. He answered when answering served the truth, and He kept silent when silence served the truth, and the paroxynō that any other man would have shown He did not show, because the love that does not seek its own is also the love that does not flash with temper at what touches it. Peter watching Him learned the lesson and later wrote it down:
The Love God Calls Us To · Chapter 9 — Love Is Not Provoked
“Hosanna to the Son of David; blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord; Hosanna in the highest!”
The Last Week of the Lamb · Chapter 3 — The Arrival and the Selection
The Greek verb here is hypomenei — from hypomenō, literally to remain under. The prefix hypo- means under. The verb menō means to remain, to stay. Put them together and Paul’s word is, in flat English, stays under. The picture is mechanical. A weight has been placed on a man, and the man stays under it. He does not move out from under it. He does not collapse. He does not run. He bears the weight for as long as the weight is there.
The Love God Calls Us To · Chapter 15 — Love Endures All Things
Run with endurance — di’ hypomonēs. Hypomonē comes from hypo (under) and menō (to remain). It is the quality of remaining under the load without quitting. Not sprinting and collapsing. Not a burst of motivation followed by a long silence. Enduring. Day after day. Morning after morning. The long road walked one step at a time.
Change the Mind, Change the Man · Chapter 9 — The Long Road
The last of the four turns to the believer himself, in the long view. Love endures all things. When the bearing has stretched into years, the believing has been worn down, and the hoping has gone on so long it has begun to feel like wishful thinking — what does love do then? Paul has an answer, and the answer is not what an exhausted believer would expect. It is one verb, and it is the strongest of the four. Hypomenei. Stays under the load. The next chapter takes that up, and then we close.
The Love God Calls Us To · Chapter 14 — Love Hopes All Things
The Greek verb here is hypomenei — from hypomenō, literally to remain under. The prefix hypo- means under. The verb menō means to remain, to stay. Put them together and Paul’s word is, in flat English, stays under. The picture is mechanical. A weight has been placed on a man, and the man stays under it. He does not move out from under it. He does not collapse. He does not run. He bears the weight for as long as the weight is there.
The Love God Calls Us To · Chapter 15 — Love Endures All Things
That is why this verb is the right last verb. The chapter on love does not end with the believer’s victory; it ends with the believer’s steadiness. Hypomenei panta — endures all things — is the verb of a love that has nowhere to be in a hurry, because the love itself is the destination and the staying-under is what love looks like over time.
The Love God Calls Us To · Chapter 15 — Love Endures All Things
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And the purpose is healing. The Greek word is iathēte — from iaomai, which means to cure, to restore to health. James ties the healing directly to the confession. Not to the prayer alone — although the prayer matters, and James says so. But the healing is connected to the confession itself. To the breaking of the silence. To the moment when the person trapped behind the wall finally opens their mouth and says the thing they have been terrified to say.
Change the Mind, Change the Man · Chapter 4 — All of the Imprisoned Are Not in Prison
A virgin will bear a son. That is not a normal birth. That is a sign — something that could only happen by the direct intervention of God. And His name would be Immanuel, which means “God with us.”
From the Beginning · Chapter 4 — The Long Promise
"Therefore the Lord Himself will give you a sign: Behold, a virgin will be with child and bear a son, and she will call His name Immanuel."
The God Who Showed Up · Chapter 12 — Immanuel — God With Us
Now all this took place to fulfill what was spoken by the Lord through the prophet: "Behold, the virgin shall be with child and shall bear a Son, and they shall call His name Immanuel," which translated means, "God with us."
The God Who Showed Up · Chapter 12 — Immanuel — God With Us
Aphorontes eis ton tēs pisteōs archēgon kai teleiōtēn Iēsoun.
Change the Mind, Change the Man · Chapter 9 — The Long Road
A grammatical note is owed here. The kai in “and upon the Israel of God” has been read two ways — as a simple connective pronouncing peace on two groups (the church and ethnic Israel), or as epexegetical (“and, that is, the Israel of God”) identifying one group. The grammar alone does not settle it. The reading offered here takes the kai as epexegetical, because that is the reading consistent with the argument of the whole letter — a letter whose burden is that belonging to Christ, not belonging to the flesh, is what marks the heirs of the promise. The connective reading would have Paul contradict his own argument in its closing line.
Can These Bones Live? · Chapter 9 — The Israel of God
The word for “renewed” — anakainoo — means to make new again, to restore to a fresh condition. And it’s in the present tense. This isn’t a one-time event. It isn’t something that happened at conversion and stopped. It is happening to you today. Day by day. The Greek literally reads hemera kai hemera — “day and day.” Every single day the body loses a little more ground, the spirit is being refreshed, restored, rebuilt.
One Day Closer to Home · Chapter 5 — Outwardly Wasting, Inwardly New
Paul the apostle is not telling the Romans to rearrange the outside. He is telling them to be fundamentally changed on the inside. And the mechanism of that change — the instrument by which morphē happens — is the renewing of the mind. The Greek is anakainōsei tou noos. Anakainōsis — renewal, from ana (again) and kainos (new — and not neos, which means new in time, but kainos, new in kind, new in quality). And nous — the mind as the faculty of moral reasoning, understanding, and judgment.
Change the Mind, Change the Man · Chapter 6 — THINK!
The word “new” here is important. The Greek is kainos, and it doesn’t mean new in the sense of “recently made” — that would be neos. Kainos means new in character, new in quality, new in kind. It’s the difference between buying a new car off the lot and having your old car completely restored and transformed into something better than it was the day it rolled off the assembly line. The creation isn’t discarded. It’s renewed. Made what it was always meant to be.
One Day Closer to Home · Chapter 11 — No More Tears
“I am making all things new.” Not: I am making all new things. The emphasis matters. God is not scrapping the creation and starting over. He is taking what exists — what is broken, what is groaning, what is worn thin — and making it new. Kainos. Renewed. Restored. Transformed into what it was always designed to be.
One Day Closer to Home · Chapter 11 — No More Tears
The NASB translates ton kairon here as “your time,” but it is the same Greek construction — the same kairos, the same exagorazomenoi. And Paul adds a reason for the urgency: “because the days are evil.” The opportunities are precious because the window is not unlimited. The world is broken. People are hurting. The need is urgent. And the moments when hearts are open do not last forever.
Bridge Moments · Chapter 2 — The Kairos Principle
First: “Today salvation has come to this house.” Not “someday, if he keeps his promise.” Not “provided he follows through.” Today. Salvation arrived in the person of Jesus, and it arrived at the house of a man the whole city considered beyond saving. The word “today” connects to the urgency Jesus expressed at the tree: “today I must stay at your house.” The divine appointment had its divine fulfillment. This was a kairos day for Zacchaeus.
Bridge Moments · Chapter 6 — “I Must Stay at Your House”
Swallowed up. The Greek word is katapino — to drink down, to consume entirely. Mortality doesn’t simply end. It gets consumed by something so much larger and more powerful that it disappears into it, the way a single drop disappears into the ocean. Life — real, eternal, unending life — swallows mortality whole.
One Day Closer to Home · Chapter 6 — The Tent and the Building
That word “swallowed up” — katapino — is the same word Paul used in 2 Corinthians 5:4, the passage we just walked through in the last chapter. Mortality swallowed up by life. Death swallowed up in victory. The same consuming, overwhelming, totaling force. Death doesn’t negotiate a truce. It gets swallowed whole.
One Day Closer to Home · Chapter 7 — Sown Perishable, Raised Imperishable
“There will no longer be any death.” Gone. Not reduced. Not managed. Not pushed to the margins. Gone. The thing that has haunted every chapter of this book — the decaying body, the tent being torn down, the fear that holds people in slavery — it is gone. Death came into the world through sin (Romans 5:12), and it has stalked every generation since. But it does not get the last word. It was swallowed up in victory when Christ rose (1 Corinthians 15:54 — the katapino we traced through Chapters 6 and 7). And in this vision, the victory is final and complete. Death is no more.
One Day Closer to Home · Chapter 11 — No More Tears
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The Greek phrase Paul used — pollō mallon kreisson — is emphatic. It is not “a little better” or “somewhat better.” It is “far better,” “very much better,” “better by far.” Paul stacked comparatives. He wanted there to be no ambiguity about what he was saying: to depart and be with Christ is not merely acceptable, not merely a relief from suffering, not merely the end of pain. It is very much better than the best this life has to offer. And Paul’s life, for all its suffering, was not a small life. He had seen churches planted across the Roman Empire, lives transformed by the gospel, and the resurrected Christ Himself on the road to Damascus. Yet all of that, weighed against what was waiting for him, was the lesser thing.
Through the Valley · Chapter 5 — What No Eye Has Seen
Paul told the Corinthians that to be absent from the body is to be at home with the Lord (2 Corinthians 5:8). He told the Philippians that to depart and be with Christ was “very much better” (Philippians 1:23) — pollō mallon kreisson, stacked comparatives in the Greek, as if a single word for “better” was not strong enough to carry the reality. Jesus told the thief on the cross, “Today you shall be with Me in Paradise” (Luke 23:43). Today. Not eventually. Not after a period of waiting. Today.
Through the Valley · Chapter 7 — So We Do Not Grieve as Those Who Have No Hope
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“About the ninth hour Jesus cried out with a loud voice, saying, 'Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?' that is, 'My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?'”
The Last Week of the Lamb · Chapter 9 — The Lamb Is Killed
The verb Paul reaches for here is logizetai. It is not a poetic word. It is not even a particularly religious word. It is an accountant’s word. Logizetai is what you do when you write a number in a ledger — when you record a debit, when you enter a credit, when you keep a running tally of what is owed and by whom. Paul uses this word repeatedly elsewhere, often in financial or judicial settings, and most heavily in Romans, where the accounting concept is at the center of his argument about how a sinner can be declared righteous before God. He uses it here, in the middle of one of the most exalted chapters on love ever written, to say something startling: love does not run the books.
The Love God Calls Us To · Chapter 10 — Love Does Not Take Into Account a Wrong Suffered
The same Greek verb logizetai shows up in another of Paul’s letters, in a very different context. In Romans 4, Paul is making the argument that righteousness is credited to us not by our works but through faith in Christ. He quotes David from Psalm 32:
The Love God Calls Us To · Chapter 10 — Love Does Not Take Into Account a Wrong Suffered
The word translated dwell on — or in some translations, think on — is logizesthe, from logizomai. And this is yet another word, different from both nous and phroneō. Logizomai is a commercial term — an accounting word. It means to reckon, to calculate, to settle accounts, to weigh carefully on a balance. It is the word a merchant uses when he sits down with his ledger and examines every entry. It is deliberate. It is focused. It is not daydreaming about lovely things. It is sitting down and reasoning.
Change the Mind, Change the Man · Chapter 6 — THINK!
In the opening of John’s Gospel, the apostle takes this even further: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1). Jesus Christ Himself is called the Word — the Logos. God did not merely use words. He sent the Word. The ultimate expression of God’s communication with humanity was not a book, not a decree, not a set of instructions written in the sky. It was a Person. God’s final Word to us has a face, a voice, and a name.
Bridge Moments · Chapter 1 — The Weight of Words
ho logos hymōn = “your word / your speech”
Bridge Moments · Chapter 2 — The Kairos Principle
The Greek word Paul reaches for is makrothumeō. It is built from two pieces. Makros means long. Thumos means temper — or, more literally, anger, passion, the heat that rises in a man when he is crossed. Put the two pieces together and Paul’s word is, in flat English, long-tempered.
The Love God Calls Us To · Chapter 2 — Love Is Patient
No chapter excerpts found in the current build. This word is in the curated table but may not yet be italicized in any chapter prose.
The Greek phrase Paul used — pollō mallon kreisson — is emphatic. It is not “a little better” or “somewhat better.” It is “far better,” “very much better,” “better by far.” Paul stacked comparatives. He wanted there to be no ambiguity about what he was saying: to depart and be with Christ is not merely acceptable, not merely a relief from suffering, not merely the end of pain. It is very much better than the best this life has to offer. And Paul’s life, for all its suffering, was not a small life. He had seen churches planted across the Roman Empire, lives transformed by the gospel, and the resurrected Christ Himself on the road to Damascus. Yet all of that, weighed against what was waiting for him, was the lesser thing.
Through the Valley · Chapter 5 — What No Eye Has Seen
Paul told the Corinthians that to be absent from the body is to be at home with the Lord (2 Corinthians 5:8). He told the Philippians that to depart and be with Christ was “very much better” (Philippians 1:23) — pollō mallon kreisson, stacked comparatives in the Greek, as if a single word for “better” was not strong enough to carry the reality. Jesus told the thief on the cross, “Today you shall be with Me in Paradise” (Luke 23:43). Today. Not eventually. Not after a period of waiting. Today.
Through the Valley · Chapter 7 — So We Do Not Grieve as Those Who Have No Hope
No chapter excerpts found in the current build. This word is in the curated table but may not yet be italicized in any chapter prose.
No chapter excerpts found in the current build. This word is in the curated table but may not yet be italicized in any chapter prose.
No chapter excerpts found in the current build. This word is in the curated table but may not yet be italicized in any chapter prose.
And verse 17 would have been equally disorienting: “God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world.” The Pharisees were expecting a Messiah who would judge the Gentiles and vindicate Israel. Jesus said He came to save, not to judge. Everything about Nicodemus’s expectations was being inverted. The Messiah was not what he thought. The kingdom was not what he thought. The way in was not what he thought. Everything had to be rethought.
Bridge Moments · Chapter 5 — “You Must Be Born Again”
Listen to the language. “Who was a prophet.” Past tense. Whatever Jesus had been, He was that no longer — in their minds. “We were hoping.” Past tense again. The hope was gone. It had died on a cross three days ago. “We were hoping that it was He who was going to redeem Israel.” Their hope had been specific: political redemption, national restoration, the Messiah who would overthrow Rome and establish the kingdom. And that hope was not merely disappointed. It was crucified, dead, and buried.
Bridge Moments · Chapter 9 — Were Not Our Hearts Burning?
The Bible has a word for it, and the word itself proves the point. The Greek is metanoia — and it is built from two words you already know. Meta means change — a shift, a turning, an alteration. And noia comes from nous — the mind. The same word we unpacked in Romans 12:2. The faculty of moral reasoning, understanding, and judgment.
Change the Mind, Change the Man · Chapter 7 — Coming to Himself
The Greek for “without regret” is ametamelēton — and notice: this word does not contain nous. It is from metamelomai, which means to feel regret, to feel sorry after the fact. Metamelomai is about the emotions. Metanoia is about the mind. Paul the apostle is making a precise distinction: godly sorrow produces a change of mind so deep that it never reverses itself. Worldly sorrow produces a feeling of regret that fades as soon as the pressure lets up.
Change the Mind, Change the Man · Chapter 7 — Coming to Himself
The family has lived this distinction a hundred times. They know what worldly sorrow looks like, even if they have never had a name for it. Every broken promise was metamelomai — the addict felt terrible, swore it would be different, and meant it in the moment. But the mind never turned. And when the moment passed, the feeling passed with it.
Change the Mind, Change the Man · Chapter 7 — Coming to Himself
And you have been burned. You have believed before, and the words turned to ash. You have opened the door, and they walked back out. You have given the tenth chance, and it ended exactly like the first nine. And now you do not know what to trust. You do not know if this time is real or if this is another performance — metamelomai dressed up as metanoia.
Change the Mind, Change the Man · Chapter 7 — Coming to Himself
The second word is transformed — metamorphousthe. You hear the English word “metamorphosis” in it, and that is exactly the idea. But this word does not come from schēma. It comes from morphē — and morphē is the essential nature, the inner form, the fundamental substance of a thing. When a caterpillar becomes a butterfly, that is morphē. It is not a caterpillar wearing wings. It is a different creature. The change is total, from the inside out.
Change the Mind, Change the Man · Chapter 6 — THINK!
You are not going to change until you make up your mind to change. And I do not mean the kind of “making up your mind” that happens in a moment of crisis — the tearful promise at three in the morning, the vow in the back of a police car, the commitment signed on a clipboard at intake. I mean the kind of change the apostle Paul is describing in Romans 12:2. Metamorphousthe. A transformation of the essential nature. The renewal of the mind itself. The gaze redirected — not to a program, not to a method, not to willpower — but to God.
Change the Mind, Change the Man · Chapter 6 — THINK!
The Bible has a word for it, and the word itself proves the point. The Greek is metanoia — and it is built from two words you already know. Meta means change — a shift, a turning, an alteration. And noia comes from nous — the mind. The same word we unpacked in Romans 12:2. The faculty of moral reasoning, understanding, and judgment.
Change the Mind, Change the Man · Chapter 7 — Coming to Himself
The addict who sits in a courtroom and weeps — is that repentance? Maybe. But maybe it is the terror of sentencing. The addict who calls from rehab and says all the right things — is that the turning? Maybe. But maybe it is the script that gets the family to keep paying. The addict who swears on everything sacred that this time is different — is that metanoia? Maybe. But the family has heard that vow before. They have believed it before. And they have watched it dissolve before, sometimes within hours of the promise being made.
Change the Mind, Change the Man · Chapter 7 — Coming to Himself
Two kinds of sorrow. One leads to metanoia — genuine repentance, the kind you never regret because it changes the direction of your life. The other leads to death. And the difference is not the intensity of the emotion. Both sorrows can weep. Both can wail. Both can make promises. But one is sorrow over the sin itself — sorrow according to the will of God, sorrow that says, “What I did was wrong, and I cannot live with myself as the person who did it.” The other is sorrow over the consequences — sorrow of the world, sorrow that says, “I am sorry this is happening to me,” while the mind remains exactly where it was.
Change the Mind, Change the Man · Chapter 7 — Coming to Himself
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The Hebrew word translated “came near” is nagash — to draw near, to approach, to come close. It is a word of deliberate, intentional movement toward someone. It is the same root family that Hebrews 4:16 will later use when it tells NT believers to “draw near with confidence to the throne of grace.” Abraham draws near.
A New and Living Way · Chapter 4 — Abraham: The Friend of God
Abraham stood before the Lord and pleaded for Sodom (Genesis 18:22–33). He had no obligation to do so. The city was not his. The people were not his relatives — except for Lot, and even Lot had chosen Sodom over Abraham’s company. Yet Abraham drew near (nagash) and interceded. “Will You indeed sweep away the righteous with the wicked?” Six times he pressed his case, appealing not to any merit in Sodom but to God’s own character: “Shall not the Judge of all the earth deal justly?” Abraham stood in the gap for a city that did not deserve his advocacy.
A New and Living Way · Chapter 11 — Standing in the Gap
The same invitation that Abraham received when he approached God on behalf of Sodom — nagash, draw near — is now extended to every believer. The same intimacy Moses experienced in the tent of meeting — face to face, as a man speaks to his friend — is now available to all who come through the torn veil. What was exceptional has become normative. What was rare has become constant. What was the privilege of the few has become the birthright of every child of God.
A New and Living Way · Chapter 12 — A New and Living Way
The Hebrew verb for what God did to Adam is naphach — to blow, to breathe out. It describes an intimate, direct, personal act. God did not speak life into Adam from a distance the way He spoke light into existence. He leaned close. He breathed into the man’s nostrils. The word carries the image of mouth near face, breath passing from one person to another. It is the most personal act of creation recorded in Scripture.
Can These Bones Live? · Chapter 7 — Breathe on These Slain
In Ezekiel 37:9, when God tells Ezekiel to say “breathe on these slain,” the Hebrew verb is the same. Naphach. Blow. Breathe out. The breath that is being called from the four winds to enter these bodies is performing the same act, using the same word, that God performed when He knelt over a lifeless form in a garden and breathed a man into existence.
Can These Bones Live? · Chapter 7 — Breathe on These Slain
When the Jewish scholars translated the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek — the translation known as the Septuagint, completed roughly two centuries before Christ — they had to choose a Greek word for naphach. In both Genesis 2:7 and Ezekiel 37:9, the word they chose was emphysaō — to blow into, to breathe upon. The word appears elsewhere in the Septuagint in contexts of blowing fire or wrath, but in these two passages — the two moments where God’s breath brings life to the lifeless — the translators used the same Greek verb.
Can These Bones Live? · Chapter 7 — Breathe on These Slain
Paul the apostle is not telling the Romans to rearrange the outside. He is telling them to be fundamentally changed on the inside. And the mechanism of that change — the instrument by which morphē happens — is the renewing of the mind. The Greek is anakainōsei tou noos. Anakainōsis — renewal, from ana (again) and kainos (new — and not neos, which means new in time, but kainos, new in kind, new in quality). And nous — the mind as the faculty of moral reasoning, understanding, and judgment.
Change the Mind, Change the Man · Chapter 6 — THINK!
There are two movements here, not one. Lay aside the old self — yes. But also put on the new self. The old man must be removed. The new man must take his place. And notice where the renewal happens: in the spirit of your mind. The Greek is ananeousthai tō pneumati tou noos hymōn. The word ananeousthai comes from ana — again — and neos — new. Made new again. And noos is the same word we traced through Chapter 6 — nous, the faculty of moral reasoning, the mind that governs the direction of a person’s life.
Change the Mind, Change the Man · Chapter 9 — The Long Road
The word “new” here is important. The Greek is kainos, and it doesn’t mean new in the sense of “recently made” — that would be neos. Kainos means new in character, new in quality, new in kind. It’s the difference between buying a new car off the lot and having your old car completely restored and transformed into something better than it was the day it rolled off the assembly line. The creation isn’t discarded. It’s renewed. Made what it was always meant to be.
One Day Closer to Home · Chapter 11 — No More Tears
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The Hebrew word for what God breathed into the man is neshamah — the breath of life. And the moment that breath entered the body, the text says the man became a living being. Not that he was activated, like a machine being switched on. He became. The breath did not animate something that was already alive in some lesser sense. It transformed lifeless material into a living person. The difference between dust and a man is the breath of God.
Can These Bones Live? · Chapter 2 — Dust and Breath
The Hebrew is Yahweh Nissi. A nes in Hebrew is a banner — a standard, a flag, the rallying point that an army gathers around in battle. When an army was scattered or disoriented, the banner told them where to look. It was the visible marker that said: here is your commander. Here is your cause. Rally here.
The God Who Showed Up · Chapter 7 — Jehovah Nissi — The Lord Is My Banner
Paul the apostle is not telling the Romans to rearrange the outside. He is telling them to be fundamentally changed on the inside. And the mechanism of that change — the instrument by which morphē happens — is the renewing of the mind. The Greek is anakainōsei tou noos. Anakainōsis — renewal, from ana (again) and kainos (new — and not neos, which means new in time, but kainos, new in kind, new in quality). And nous — the mind as the faculty of moral reasoning, understanding, and judgment.
Change the Mind, Change the Man · Chapter 6 — THINK!
The word translated attitude in verse 5 is phroneite — from phroneō. And phroneō is a different word than nous. Where nous is the faculty of the mind — the organ itself — phroneō is the direction of the mind. It is where the mind is aimed. It includes disposition, inclination, attitude — not just what you know, but what you are inclined toward. What you care about. Where your attention is fixed.
Change the Mind, Change the Man · Chapter 6 — THINK!
The word translated dwell on — or in some translations, think on — is logizesthe, from logizomai. And this is yet another word, different from both nous and phroneō. Logizomai is a commercial term — an accounting word. It means to reckon, to calculate, to settle accounts, to weigh carefully on a balance. It is the word a merchant uses when he sits down with his ledger and examines every entry. It is deliberate. It is focused. It is not daydreaming about lovely things. It is sitting down and reasoning.
Change the Mind, Change the Man · Chapter 6 — THINK!
Every encumbrance — ogkon — every weight. Not just sin, though sin is named separately. An ogkon is anything that slows you down, anything that drags on you — the associations that pull you backward, the places that trigger the craving, the pride that tells you that you can handle it now.
Change the Mind, Change the Man · Chapter 9 — The Long Road
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For the destruction of his flesh — not the destruction of him, but of his flesh. The Greek is olethros tēs sarkos. Olethros means ruin, destruction. Sarx — flesh — is the word Paul uses throughout his letters for the sinful nature, the appetites and patterns that war against the spirit. The target is not the man. The target is what is killing him.
Change the Mind, Change the Man · Chapter 5 — Love That Says No
The word for discipline here is paideia — and it comes from the Greek word pais, meaning child. This is not the language of punishment. It is the language of parenting. Paideia is the training of a child by a father who intends for that child to grow. It includes correction. It includes consequences. It may even include pain — the text says He scourges every son He receives, and mastigoō is not a gentle word. But the purpose is never destruction. The purpose is formation.
Change the Mind, Change the Man · Chapter 5 — Love That Says No
The word for discipline here is paideia — and it comes from the Greek word pais, meaning child. This is not the language of punishment. It is the language of parenting. Paideia is the training of a child by a father who intends for that child to grow. It includes correction. It includes consequences. It may even include pain — the text says He scourges every son He receives, and mastigoō is not a gentle word. But the purpose is never destruction. The purpose is formation.
Change the Mind, Change the Man · Chapter 5 — Love That Says No
pantote = “always, at all times” (no exceptions)
Bridge Moments · Chapter 2 — The Kairos Principle
The question is not rhetorical in the dismissive sense — as if the answer is simply “nothing.” The psalm does not end in human insignificance. But it begins with genuine wonder that God’s attention turns toward us at all. The Hebrew word translated “care for” in verse 4 — paqad — means to attend to, to visit, to act on behalf of. It is the word used when God remembered Rachel and “opened her womb” (Genesis 30:22). It is the word used when God “visited” His people and led them out of Egypt (Exodus 4:31). It is an active, purposeful attentiveness.
A New and Living Way · Chapter 2 — Who Are We That You Are Mindful of Us?
When the prophetic word is present and the people keep it, they are blessed. When the prophetic word is absent, they para — they cast off restraint. The Hebrew para carries the sense of loosening, unbinding, letting go. It is what happens to a people whose boundaries dissolve because the voice that established the boundaries has gone silent. They do not rebel in a single dramatic act. They come undone. They scatter. They drift into whatever feels right to each person individually, because the word that held them together is no longer holding.
Can These Bones Live? · Chapter 3 — When the Word Goes Silent
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No chapter excerpts found in the current build. This word is in the curated table but may not yet be italicized in any chapter prose.
A word about translation. The NASB has is not provoked. The older King James added the word easily — is not easily provoked — and put it in italics to mark it as the translator’s addition. The Greek does not say easily. But the easily is doing real work, because Paul himself was once provoked — paroxysmos, the related noun — by the idols of Athens (Acts 17:16), and that provocation was righteous. The believer can be moved by what should move him. A Christian whose blood does not stir at real wickedness has not become spiritual; he has become numb. What Paul forbids in 13:5 is not the holy anger that has a place in the believer’s life. What Paul forbids is the petty irritability of a man who flares at the small wrongs of daily life — the friend who is late, the spouse who forgot, the child who repeated the same mistake, the driver who cut him off, the brother in the church whose comment hit a sore spot the brother did not even know was there. That hair-trigger is what love has put down.
The Love God Calls Us To · Chapter 9 — Love Is Not Provoked
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No chapter excerpts found in the current build. This word is in the curated table but may not yet be italicized in any chapter prose.
The word translated “temptation” is the Greek peirasmos, which can mean either temptation (enticement to sin) or testing (trial that proves or refines). God does not entice to sin, but He does allow testing — Abraham was tested with Isaac, Job was tested with loss, Israel was tested in the wilderness. The prayer asks not to be brought into circumstances where we will face trials beyond our capacity to endure.
A New and Living Way · Chapter 7 — Lord, Teach Us
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The Greek preposition in both verses is eis — into, toward, unto. Not en (in, already inside). Not peri (about, concerning). Eis — movement from one location to another. The person who is baptized moves from outside of Christ into Christ. From the domain where every spiritual blessing is absent to the domain where every spiritual blessing is present.
Change the Mind, Change the Man · Chapter 10 — The God Who Finds You
The Greek word Paul reaches for is perpereuetai. It appears nowhere else in the New Testament. The word almost sounds like what it describes — per-per-eu-e-tai — a stuttering, on-and-on quality, the sound of someone whose conversation keeps coming back to himself. The Greek noun behind it, perperos, named the kind of man classical writers had been making fun of for centuries: the vain blusterer, the boastful soldier, the man who could not stop telling you what he had done.
The Love God Calls Us To · Chapter 5 — Love Does Not Brag
Paul takes that word and turns it on the church. Love does not perpereuetai. Love does not run its mouth in the direction of itself. Love does not work the conversation back around to its own gifts, its own work, its own importance. Love does not need an audience for what it has done, and it does not need a microphone for what it knows.
The Love God Calls Us To · Chapter 5 — Love Does Not Brag
The apostle Paul put it as a command: “Now flee from youthful lusts and pursue righteousness, faith, love and peace, with those who call on the Lord from a pure heart” (2 Timothy 2:22). The word is pheugo — flee, run, escape. Not resist. Not endure. Not manage. Flee. And notice what Paul places immediately after the fleeing: pursue. You run from something and to something. And you do it with those who call on the Lord. The fleeing is not into isolation. It is into the company of people who are running in the same direction.
Change the Mind, Change the Man · Chapter 9 — The Long Road
Believing all things looks like a high-school girl whose friend has not texted her back in two days, and who, instead of jumping to she must be mad at me, she must be talking about me, she must be done with the friendship, reaches for the simpler reading first — she has had a hard week, her phone has been off, she will text when she texts. The first reading is usually the right one. The cynical reading is rarely needed.
The Love God Calls Us To · Chapter 13 — Love Believes All Things
The word translated attitude in verse 5 is phroneite — from phroneō. And phroneō is a different word than nous. Where nous is the faculty of the mind — the organ itself — phroneō is the direction of the mind. It is where the mind is aimed. It includes disposition, inclination, attitude — not just what you know, but what you are inclined toward. What you care about. Where your attention is fixed.
Change the Mind, Change the Man · Chapter 6 — THINK!
Set your mind — phroneite. The same word. The direction of the gaze.
Change the Mind, Change the Man · Chapter 6 — THINK!
This is the language of aim. Of orientation. Of where the eyes are fixed. And the command is not complicated: ta anō phroneite — set your mind on the things above. Mē ta epi tēs gēs — not on the things on the earth.
Change the Mind, Change the Man · Chapter 6 — THINK!
The Greek word Paul reaches for is physioutai — from the verb physioō, meaning literally to puff up, to inflate, to blow up like a bellows or a bladder. The picture is mechanical. Someone has put air into something, and the thing now looks bigger than it actually is. A balloon is large until you stick a pin in it. Then it is what it always was — a small piece of rubber with nothing inside. The arrogant man is the same. The substance has not grown. Only the air has.
The Love God Calls Us To · Chapter 6 — Love Is Not Arrogant
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The verb Paul uses here is a vertical verb before it is ever a horizontal one. Pisteuō is what the believer does toward God. The man who has put his faith in Christ has believed the witness God has given about His Son (1 John 5:9–10). That kind of belief is not credulous. It is grounded. It is grounded in the trustworthiness of the One who has spoken. The believer trusts God because God is pistos — faithful, trustworthy, the One whose word does not fail.
The Love God Calls Us To · Chapter 13 — Love Believes All Things
That sentence sits at the very beginning of the same letter. Paul opens his correction of the Corinthians by reminding them that the God who has called them is faithful — pistos. He is the kind of God you can put your trust in. And the believers He has called are being asked, by extension, to be a people who can also be trusted, and who can also trust.
The Love God Calls Us To · Chapter 13 — Love Believes All Things
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So that his spirit may be saved. There it is. The purpose clause. Hina to pneuma sōthē — “in order that the spirit may be saved.” Everything in this passage — the removal, the delivery, the destruction of the flesh — all of it points toward one end: salvation. Not punishment. Not rejection. Not “he made his bed, let him lie in it.” The goal is rescue.
Change the Mind, Change the Man · Chapter 5 — Love That Says No
And the words He spoke with that breath confirm the connection: “Receive the Holy Spirit.” The ruach. The pneuma. The breath, the wind, the Spirit of God. The same reality that moved over the surface of the waters before the first word was spoken. The same power that entered the bodies in the valley and made them stand. Jesus breathed it onto His disciples and told them to receive it.
Can These Bones Live? · Chapter 7 — Breathe on These Slain
The Greek word for the rushing blast in this verse is pnoē — and it is not a word Luke chose carelessly. Pnoē is the exact noun the Septuagint uses in Genesis 2:7 for the “breath of life” that God breathed into Adam — pnoēn zōēs. It is also from the same root as pneuma, the Greek equivalent of ruach. Both words come from pneō — to blow, to breathe. When Luke described the sound that filled the house, he used the word that the Greek Old Testament had already assigned to the breath that made the first man live. The reader who knew the Septuagint would have recognized immediately what was happening.
Can These Bones Live? · Chapter 8 — A Rushing Mighty Wind
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pros = “toward, in the direction of, face to face with”
Bridge Moments · Chapter 2 — The Kairos Principle
But they are temporary. The Greek word is proskaira — lasting for a season, bound by time. What you see is real, but it is passing.
One Day Closer to Home · Chapter 10 — A Momentary Light Affliction
The first things. That’s what all of this is — everything you’re enduring right now. The aching joints. The funerals. The loneliness. The nights. The grief. All of it belongs to the first order of things. And first things pass. They are proskaira, to use the word Paul gave us in the last chapter — temporary, lasting for a season, bound by time. They feel permanent when you’re in the middle of them. But they are first things. And first things have an expiration date.
One Day Closer to Home · Chapter 11 — No More Tears
Before Pentecost, after Jesus had ascended and the disciples were waiting for the promised Spirit, we read: “These all with one mind were continually devoting themselves to prayer, along with the women, and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with His brothers” (Acts 1:14). The phrase “continually devoting themselves” translates the Greek proskartereo — a word that means to persist obstinately, to be steadfastly attentive, to give constant attention to something. It suggests not occasional prayer but a sustained posture of dependence.
A New and Living Way · Chapter 10 — The Prayers of the Church
By a new and living way. The Greek word for “new” here is prosphatos — literally “freshly slain.” It carries the sense of something recently opened, newly made accessible. The way did not exist before. Christ’s death created it. And it is living — not a dead ritual or a static system but a way that is alive because the One who opened it is alive.
A New and Living Way · Chapter 6 — The Veil Is Torn
It is new. The Greek word is prosphatos, which originally meant “freshly slain” and came to mean “recent, new.” This way did not exist before Christ. It was not available under the old covenant. It was opened by His death and remains perpetually fresh — not an ancient path grown over with weeds but a way that is always as new as the moment the veil was torn.
A New and Living Way · Chapter 12 — A New and Living Way
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The Hebrew word is qara — to call out, to cry. It is the word of someone in need reaching toward someone who can help. It is not the word of ritual, of formal worship, of religious ceremony. It is a cry. And it arises not from abundance or comfort but from the experience of human brokenness and loss.
A New and Living Way · Chapter 3 — From the Beginning: The First Cries
The Psalms will be full of this same word — qara — and the same impulse. “I called upon the Lord in distress” (Psalm 118:5). “Out of the depths I have cried to You, O Lord” (Psalm 130:1). The cry that arises from human need and turns toward God is not a lesser form of prayer than the more composed, theologically articulate kinds. It may be the most primal and honest form — and Genesis records it as the beginning of humanity’s corporate reaching toward God.
A New and Living Way · Chapter 3 — From the Beginning: The First Cries
Near. Not distant. Not watching from a safe remove. Near. The Hebrew word is qarov — close, at hand, present. And the people He is near to are not the ones who have it together. They are the brokenhearted — nishberey-lev, those whose hearts are shattered, broken into pieces. And the crushed in spirit — dakke-ruach, those whose spirits have been ground down, compressed, beaten flat.
Change the Mind, Change the Man · Chapter 4 — All of the Imprisoned Are Not in Prison
We read this verse in Chapter 1, and it returns here because it is more specific to your situation than it might appear at first glance. The Hebrew word for “near” is qarov — it means close, present, intimate. Not near in the sense of being in the same general area. Near in the sense of being right beside you. The LORD is right beside the brokenhearted. Not watching from across the room. Not monitoring from a distance. Right there. In the chair beside the bed. In the driver’s seat on the way home. In the kitchen at midnight when the house is too quiet and the tears come again.
Through the Valley · Chapter 4 — Two Are Better Than One
The third strand holds (Ecclesiastes 4:12). It held before the valley, it has held through the valley, and it will hold after the valley. The cord of three strands does not unravel when one strand is taken, because the third strand was always the strongest. He will be with you in the first morning and the second morning and the hundredth morning. He will be with you when the well-meaning people have gone back to their own lives and the cards have stopped coming and the world has moved on in the way the world always does. He will be with you at three in the morning when the house is dark and the absence is loudest. The LORD is near to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit (Psalm 34:18). Qarov — right beside you. In the chair beside the bed. In the car on the way home. In the kitchen on the first morning when the coffee is for one.
Through the Valley · Chapter 8 — I Will Fear No Evil
The Hebrew is El Roi — God who sees. El is the word for God. Roi comes from the verb ra'ah — to see, to perceive, to regard. But this is not the seeing of casual observation. When Scripture uses ra'ah of God, it carries the weight of attention, care, and knowledge. God saw the affliction of His people in Egypt (Exodus 3:7 — "I have surely seen the affliction of My people"). God sees not as man sees (1 Samuel 16:7). To be seen by God is not merely to be noticed. It is to be known.
The God Who Showed Up · Chapter 2 — El Roi — The God Who Sees
The Hebrew is Yahweh Yireh — the Lord will see, the Lord will provide. The word yireh comes from the same root as ra'ah — the verb we met with El Roi, the seeing that is not casual observation but attentive knowledge. When Abraham names this place, he is saying: the Lord sees, and because He sees, He provides. Seeing and providing are not two separate actions. They are one. God sees the need before you speak it, and His provision is already in motion before you know to ask.
The God Who Showed Up · Chapter 4 — Jehovah Jireh — The Lord Will Provide
The Hebrew is Yahweh Rohi — the Lord is my shepherd. The verb ra'ah means to tend, to pasture, to shepherd — to take full responsibility for the care of living things that cannot care for themselves.
The God Who Showed Up · Chapter 9 — Jehovah Rohi — The Lord Is My Shepherd
The Hebrew word translated "follow" is radaph. It appears over a hundred times in the Old Testament, and in the vast majority of those uses, it does not mean "follow" in the casual sense of walking behind someone. It means "pursue" — to chase, to run after, to hunt down. It is the word used when enemies pursue someone in battle. When Pharaoh pursued Israel to the Red Sea (Exodus 14:8), the word is radaph. When Laban pursued Jacob (Genesis 31:23), the word is radaph.
The God Who Showed Up · Chapter 9 — Jehovah Rohi — The Lord Is My Shepherd
The Hebrew word translated “follow” is yirdephuni, from radaph. It does not mean to walk quietly behind. It means to pursue. To chase. It is the same word used for pursuing an enemy in battle, for hunting, for chasing something down with determination and intent. David said that goodness and lovingkindness were not merely accompanying him through life. They were chasing him. Running him down. Pursuing him with a relentlessness that matched the relentlessness of the valley itself.
Through the Valley · Chapter 8 — I Will Fear No Evil
The Hebrew is Yahweh Ropheka — the Lord your healer. The verb is rapha — to heal, to cure, to restore, to make whole. This is the name. And the context in which God reveals it is not what we might expect.
The God Who Showed Up · Chapter 6 — Jehovah Rapha — The Lord Who Heals
He does not reveal it at a sickbed. He does not reveal it after healing a plague or mending a wound. He reveals it after making bitter water sweet. The first act of rapha in this passage is not the healing of a body. It is the healing of water. The restoration of something that had gone wrong — something that should have sustained life but could not.
The God Who Showed Up · Chapter 6 — Jehovah Rapha — The Lord Who Heals
The word rapha appears throughout the Old Testament, and its range is broader than a single passage can capture. In Genesis 20:17, Abraham prays and God heals Abimelech and his household. In Numbers 12:13, Moses cries out to God to heal Miriam of leprosy. In 2 Kings 20:5, God tells Hezekiah, "I will heal you." In each case, the healing is physical, specific, and direct.
The God Who Showed Up · Chapter 6 — Jehovah Rapha — The Lord Who Heals
No chapter excerpts found in the current build. This word is in the curated table but may not yet be italicized in any chapter prose.
The Hebrew is Yahweh Rohi — the Lord is my shepherd. The verb ra'ah means to tend, to pasture, to shepherd — to take full responsibility for the care of living things that cannot care for themselves.
The God Who Showed Up · Chapter 9 — Jehovah Rohi — The Lord Is My Shepherd
Near. Not distant. Not watching from a safe remove. Near. The Hebrew word is qarov — close, at hand, present. And the people He is near to are not the ones who have it together. They are the brokenhearted — nishberey-lev, those whose hearts are shattered, broken into pieces. And the crushed in spirit — dakke-ruach, those whose spirits have been ground down, compressed, beaten flat.
Change the Mind, Change the Man · Chapter 4 — All of the Imprisoned Are Not in Prison
And the chapter that follows — Ezekiel 37 — shows the same two forces at work on the largest possible canvas. God set the prophet down in a valley full of very dry bones and asked him whether they could live. Then He told Ezekiel what to do: first, “Prophesy over these bones, and say to them, ‘O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord’“ (Ezekiel 37:4). Ezekiel spoke. The bones came together. Sinews and flesh and skin. But there was still no life in them. Then God told him to prophesy again, this time to the breath — the Hebrew ruach, which means breath, wind, and Spirit all at once: “Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe on these slain, that they come to life” (Ezekiel 37:9). Ezekiel prophesied. The breath came. They stood up, an exceedingly great army.
Why Do You Delay? · Chapter 2 — Born of Water and the Spirit
The Hebrew word ruach is essential to everything that follows in this book, so it is worth pausing here to understand it. Ruach is used 378 times in the Old Testament, and it carries three interlocking meanings: breath, wind, and spirit. These are not three different concepts that happen to share a word. They are three aspects of the same reality. The breath of God, the wind of God, the Spirit of God — these are all ruach. When Genesis 1:2 says “the Spirit of God was moving over the surface of the waters,” the word is ruach. When God breathes life into Adam, the animating force is ruach. When Ezekiel stands in the valley and God tells him to prophesy to the breath, the word is ruach. It is the same word and the same power doing the same thing at every stage of the story.
Can These Bones Live? · Chapter 2 — Dust and Breath
For the destruction of his flesh — not the destruction of him, but of his flesh. The Greek is olethros tēs sarkos. Olethros means ruin, destruction. Sarx — flesh — is the word Paul uses throughout his letters for the sinful nature, the appetites and patterns that war against the spirit. The target is not the man. The target is what is killing him.
Change the Mind, Change the Man · Chapter 5 — Love That Says No
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There is a detail here that a careful reader should notice. The Hebrew word Isaac and Abraham both use is seh — a young animal from the flock. It was the standard term for a sacrifice animal, the word anyone in their world would have used. Abraham was most likely answering his son honestly in the language they both knew — God will provide the offering — while trusting that God would resolve the impossible, even if it meant raising Isaac from the dead (Hebrews 11:19).
The God Who Showed Up · Chapter 4 — Jehovah Jireh — The Lord Will Provide
But when God provides, the text uses a different word. The animal in the thicket is an ayil — a mature ram (Genesis 22:13). Abraham spoke of a seh. God sent an ayil. The text preserves both words. Whether Abraham intended anything beyond reassuring his son, we cannot say — the text does not tell us.
The God Who Showed Up · Chapter 4 — Jehovah Jireh — The Lord Will Provide
The Hebrew is El Shaddai. This is the first time this name appears in Scripture. God does not explain it. He does not define it. He simply declares it — and then follows it with a command: walk before Me, and be blameless.
The God Who Showed Up · Chapter 3 — El Shaddai — God Almighty
The meaning of Shaddai is not as settled as some popular treatments suggest. The word has been connected to several Hebrew roots, and scholars have debated its origin for centuries. But we are not writing a book about what scholars think. We are writing about what the text reveals. And what the text reveals is consistent from its first appearance to its last.
The God Who Showed Up · Chapter 3 — El Shaddai — God Almighty
Every time El Shaddai appears in Scripture, it appears in a context of overwhelming power — the kind of power that overrides natural impossibility. God uses this name when He is about to do something that no human effort could accomplish.
The God Who Showed Up · Chapter 3 — El Shaddai — God Almighty
The psalmist does not merely pray for his own household or his own concerns. He prays for the city. He prays for its peace (shalom — wholeness, flourishing, well-being). He prays for those within its walls. And he does so not for abstract reasons but because of relationship: “for the sake of my brothers and my friends,” and “for the sake of the house of the Lord our God.”
A New and Living Way · Chapter 11 — Standing in the Gap
The English word "peace" carries part of the meaning but not all of it. In English, peace usually means the absence of conflict — the war is over, the fighting has stopped, everything is quiet. The Hebrew shalom is far richer. It carries the sense of completeness, wholeness, well-being — not just the absence of something wrong but the presence of everything right. When Scripture uses shalom, it describes a state where nothing is broken, nothing is missing, nothing is fractured.
The God Who Showed Up · Chapter 8 — Jehovah Shalom — The Lord Is Peace
But the shalom Gideon names on this altar is even more specific than the word's full range. Gideon is not naming an abstract concept. He is naming what just happened to him.
The God Who Showed Up · Chapter 8 — Jehovah Shalom — The Lord Is Peace
When the Bible says God hears prayer, it is not describing a passive reception of sound. The Hebrew word used throughout the Old Testament for God’s hearing of prayer is shama — a word that consistently carries the sense of attentive, responsive hearing. It is the same word used when God “heard” the groaning of Israel in Egypt and acted (Exodus 2:24). It is the word used when Hannah prayed and God “remembered” her (1 Samuel 1:19-20). In the biblical understanding, God’s hearing is never merely acoustic. It is relational and active.
A New and Living Way · Chapter 1 — A God Who Hears
First: the lips of a priest should preserve knowledge. The word “preserve” in Hebrew is shamar — to keep, to guard, to watch over. It is the same word used in Genesis 2:15 when God placed Adam in the garden “to cultivate it and keep it.” The priest was a guardian of knowledge the same way Adam was a guardian of the garden. The knowledge was entrusted to him. It was not his to create, modify, or discard. It was his to protect and to pass on intact.
Can These Bones Live? · Chapter 4 — Destroyed for Lack of Knowledge
The Hebrew is Yahweh Shammah. The Lord is there.
The God Who Showed Up · Chapter 11 — Jehovah Shammah — The Lord Is There
And the simplicity of the name is the point. It is not a compound theological statement. It is not a description of an attribute. It is two words: Yahweh Shammah. The Lord — there. As if after everything the book has put the reader through — the idolatry, the departure, the exile, the death, the bones, the slow rebuilding — the simplest possible statement is the one that carries the most weight. He is there.
The God Who Showed Up · Chapter 11 — Jehovah Shammah — The Lord Is There
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All of these structures were real. They were given by God. They accomplished what they were intended to accomplish. But Hebrews 9 and 10 are clear: they were also anticipatory. They were shadows of something greater. The writer of Hebrews uses the Greek word skia — shadow — to describe the entire Levitical system in relation to what Christ would accomplish (Hebrews 10:1). A shadow has the shape of the real thing without being the real thing. The tabernacle, the sacrifices, the high priest entering the Holy of Holies once a year — all of these pointed forward to a greater reality not yet revealed.
A New and Living Way · Chapter 2 — Who Are We That You Are Mindful of Us?
No chapter excerpts found in the current build. This word is in the curated table but may not yet be italicized in any chapter prose.
No chapter excerpts found in the current build. This word is in the curated table but may not yet be italicized in any chapter prose.
Second — and this is the one most people skip right past: skopōn seauton — “looking to yourself, so that you too will not be tempted.” The word skopōn is from skopeō — to look at, to fix the attention on — the same root as skopos, the goal, the mark that Paul uses in Philippians 3:14. Keep your eye on yourself. Because the moment you believe you are above falling is the very moment 1 Corinthians 10:12 is warning about. Restore your brother. But do not forget that you are made of the same clay.
Change the Mind, Change the Man · Chapter 9 — The Long Road
And the goal — skopon, the mark, the thing he is looking at — is the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. The fixed point. The gaze that will not wander.
Change the Mind, Change the Man · Chapter 9 — The Long Road
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The Greek verb Paul reaches for here is stegei — from stegō, a word built on the noun stegē, meaning roof. A stegē is the cover over a house that keeps the weather out. The verb stegō is what a roof does. It holds up under what falls on it. It also covers what is underneath it from the eyes of the people walking past on the road.
The Love God Calls Us To · Chapter 12 — Love Bears All Things
Both meanings are alive in the verb Paul has chosen. Stegei can mean bears the weight of or covers, conceals. English translators have not all gone the same direction — the NASB says bears all things, the older King James does the same, the NIV says always protects, the NLT says never gives up. The differences are not contradictions. They are the two halves of one verb, and Paul almost certainly meant both. Love is the roof that holds up under the weight of what comes down on it from the people it loves, and love is the roof that covers what is underneath it from the eyes of those who do not need to see.
The Love God Calls Us To · Chapter 12 — Love Bears All Things
The hen gathering her chicks under her wings — that is stegei shown rather than spoken. The roof is the hen’s body, and what is being covered is the chick’s life from the predator above. Christ wanted to be that roof for Jerusalem. He was willing to take the storm on Himself so that the people underneath could be hidden. They refused. The willingness was His. The verb was His. Love bears all things is the verb Christ has used toward His people in every generation, and the believer who is being formed into His image is being formed into the same posture toward the brothers He has placed around him.
The Love God Calls Us To · Chapter 12 — Love Bears All Things
The second half is the positive. But rejoices with the truth. The verb here changes. It is synchairei — the same root word chairei, with the prefix syn attached, meaning with. Love does not just rejoice over the truth; love rejoices with the truth. Love is on the same side as truth. They are partners. Where truth is honored, love claps. Where truth is hidden or twisted or covered up, love grieves. The believer is not just being asked to avoid the wrong pleasure. He is being given a new pleasure to learn — the pleasure of standing alongside what is true, even when standing alongside it costs him.
The Love God Calls Us To · Chapter 11 — Love Does Not Rejoice in Unrighteousness, but Rejoices With the Truth
What is the complete thing? The Greek word is teleios — complete, mature, finished, brought to its full end. And the question of what Paul means by the perfect is one every careful reader of this passage has rightly asked, because the answer matters.
The Love God Calls Us To · Chapter 16 — Love Never Fails
The childish things were not foolish things. They were not bad things. They were the things the church needed at the age the church was. And when the church grew up — when the teleios came in the form of the completed Word of God — the childish things were done away. The same Spirit who had been giving them removed them, because the work they had been doing was finished.
The Love God Calls Us To · Chapter 16 — Love Never Fails
Paul declared the unity of the human race — every nation from one man. In a city that divided humanity into Greeks and barbarians, Paul asserted a common origin and a common purpose: “that they would seek God.” Human existence has a telos — a purpose, a direction. We were made to look for God. And then the crucial phrase: “if perhaps they might grope for Him and find Him.” The word psēlaphēseian means to feel around in the dark, to grope as a blind person feels for a wall. Humanity has been reaching in the dark for something it knows is there but cannot quite grasp.
Bridge Moments · Chapter 14 — “Men of Athens”
It is finished. In Greek, this is a single word — tetelestai. And it was a word that would have been immediately recognizable in the ancient world. It was the word stamped on a bill of sale when the full price had been paid. It was the word written across a criminal’s certificate of debt when the sentence had been served.
From the Beginning · Chapter 6 — The Death That Paid the Debt
In Chapter Six, we saw what happened on the cross — the certificate of debt nailed there, the price paid in full, tetelestai. But how do you know the payment was accepted? How do you know the sacrifice was sufficient?
From the Beginning · Chapter 7 — The Empty Tomb
The Greek word is tetelestai. It means “it is finished” or “it has been completed.” It is a word of accomplishment — not of defeat. Something had been brought to its end. A task had been fulfilled.
The Last Week of the Lamb · Chapter 9 — The Lamb Is Killed
The Greek word Paul reaches for is makrothumeō. It is built from two pieces. Makros means long. Thumos means temper — or, more literally, anger, passion, the heat that rises in a man when he is crossed. Put the two pieces together and Paul’s word is, in flat English, long-tempered.
The Love God Calls Us To · Chapter 2 — Love Is Patient
Paul the apostle is not telling the Romans to rearrange the outside. He is telling them to be fundamentally changed on the inside. And the mechanism of that change — the instrument by which morphē happens — is the renewing of the mind. The Greek is anakainōsei tou noos. Anakainōsis — renewal, from ana (again) and kainos (new — and not neos, which means new in time, but kainos, new in kind, new in quality). And nous — the mind as the faculty of moral reasoning, understanding, and judgment.
Change the Mind, Change the Man · Chapter 6 — THINK!
There are two movements here, not one. Lay aside the old self — yes. But also put on the new self. The old man must be removed. The new man must take his place. And notice where the renewal happens: in the spirit of your mind. The Greek is ananeousthai tō pneumati tou noos hymōn. The word ananeousthai comes from ana — again — and neos — new. Made new again. And noos is the same word we traced through Chapter 6 — nous, the faculty of moral reasoning, the mind that governs the direction of a person’s life.
Change the Mind, Change the Man · Chapter 9 — The Long Road
Three times in a single verse — image, image, image. The Hebrew word is tselem, the same word used elsewhere for a physical statue or representation. The idea is that humanity is, in some meaningful sense, God’s representative presence in creation. The likeness — demuth — adds the dimension of resemblance, of similarity in kind.
A New and Living Way · Chapter 2 — Who Are We That You Are Mindful of Us?
No chapter excerpts found in the current build. This word is in the curated table but may not yet be italicized in any chapter prose.
The Hebrew is Yahweh Yireh — the Lord will see, the Lord will provide. The word yireh comes from the same root as ra'ah — the verb we met with El Roi, the seeing that is not casual observation but attentive knowledge. When Abraham names this place, he is saying: the Lord sees, and because He sees, He provides. Seeing and providing are not two separate actions. They are one. God sees the need before you speak it, and His provision is already in motion before you know to ask.
The God Who Showed Up · Chapter 4 — Jehovah Jireh — The Lord Will Provide
The Hebrew phrase God speaks in verse 14 is Ehyeh asher Ehyeh — "I AM WHO I AM." The word Ehyeh is the first person form of the Hebrew verb hayah, which means "to be." When God speaks of Himself, He says Ehyeh — I AM. The name that is given to Israel, however, is the form we know as Yahweh — spelled with the four Hebrew consonants Yod-He-Vav-He, often written as YHWH. This form appears to come from the third person of the same verb: He IS. When God names Himself, He says "I AM." When His people speak of Him, they say "He IS."
The God Who Showed Up · Chapter 5 — Yahweh — The Self-Existent One
To understand what Yahweh means, it helps to understand what it excludes.
The God Who Showed Up · Chapter 5 — Yahweh — The Self-Existent One
God remembered Noah. The Hebrew zakar — not that He had forgotten, but that He actively turned His purposeful attention toward Noah and acted on his behalf. No prayer is recorded. No cry for help. No appeal to the covenant. God simply, sovereignly, remembered.
A New and Living Way · Chapter 3 — From the Beginning: The First Cries
God remembered Abraham. The same word used for Noah — zakar — purposeful, active attention turned toward the one who had prayed. The prayer was heard. The righteous were spared. Lot and his daughters were pulled out of the destruction before it fell. The answer to Abraham’s intercession was not “Sodom is saved.” It was “the righteous are not swept away with the wicked” — which is precisely what Abraham had argued for from the beginning.
A New and Living Way · Chapter 4 — Abraham: The Friend of God
No chapter excerpts found in the current build. This word is in the curated table but may not yet be italicized in any chapter prose.
No chapter excerpts found in the current build. This word is in the curated table but may not yet be italicized in any chapter prose.
No chapter excerpts found in the current build. This word is in the curated table but may not yet be italicized in any chapter prose.