5 Benefits of Using Greek in Sermon Prep

“When will I actually use this?”

It’s a fair question asked by many a Greek student. Preachers-in-training spend hours and hours memorizing verb charts and vocabulary; learning participle, infinitive, and genitive uses; and trying to grasp the grammar until, at long last, they can pull from their vast-yet-shaky knowledge of the language to scratch out a few sentences of the New Testament. Unsurprisingly, many are eager to put into practice what they’ve worked so hard to learn.

Yet when they do, the warnings of James Barr and D. A. Carson lurk in the background, haunting seminarians and young preachers. “Avoid the etymological fallacy.” “That’s an illegitimate totality transfer.” “I may be putting too much weight on the aorist here.” We often learn from our Greek professors how not to use our Greek.

But how should it be used? If you’ve put in the time to learn the language but aren’t sure what the payoff is—or should be—here are five ways your Greek can help your sermon prep.

Table of Contents

1. It helps you slow down and read carefully
2. It helps you notice repeated vocabulary and themes
3. It helps you recognize and study important words
4. It helps you answer exegetical questions
5. It helps you discern a passage’s structure
Closing advice: Use it, but don’t show it

1. It helps you slow down and read carefully

One of the major benefits of studying Greek and then using it in preaching and teaching is that it forces you to read the text much more carefully. You will find yourself going almost painfully slowly, at times laboring over every word in a phrase. Often this will result in things standing out to you that you might have missed had you read at a normal rate in your first language. It’s much harder for your brain to go into autopilot when you must translate every phrase you come across.

I can remember translating through 1 Corinthians 11 for Greek homework and coming upon the little phrase διὰ τοὺς ἀγγέλους. This seemed pretty straightforward: διὰ with an accusative direct object normally means “because of,” and ἀγγέλους is the plural of “angel.” Thus it would seem to mean, “because of the angels.”

But that didn’t seem right. In the context, Paul had been talking about head coverings, and he had just said, “for this cause a woman should have authority on her head.” How were angels a reason for a woman to wear a head covering? It had been several chapters since Paul had last mentioned angels (cf. 1 Cor 6:3), and I had no idea what role they could play in this already challenging chapter. I stared at the phrase for a bit, but I couldn’t figure out what I was missing. I finally shrugged, wrote down “because of the angels,” and hoped that the phrase wouldn’t show up on the translation quiz the next day.

When we got to class, I waited for my brilliant Greek teacher to show me what I had missed. Instead, I was surprised to learn that, in fact, I hadn’t missed anything. Paul had indeed said that women should have authority (or a symbol of authority) on their head “because of the angels.” What did that mean? Well, that’s been debated and will probably continue to be debated. It’s an odd phrase, as any notable commentary on 1 Corinthians will show.

Yet although I had read 1 Corinthians many times before, I had never previously noticed this phrase. How had I missed such a strange expression? Because before, I hadn’t been reading slowly and carefully.

Obviously, this is not a sufficient reason of its own to study Greek. But the practice of slowing down and reading carefully is a benefit that shouldn’t be dismissed too quickly.

2. It helps you notice repeated vocabulary and themes

English translations do not translate the same word the same way every time. This is because most words will have multiple senses or meanings, and the senses of words don’t line up perfectly from language to language. For example, the Greek verb that most students learn immediately is λύω, which means “to loose” or “to destroy.” This means that when translating, the translator must pick between “loose” or “destroy,” because in English those are very different ideas.

The Bible’s authors will often use a Greek word repeatedly to make a point or build a theme. But, because of the above, this repetition might not show up in an English translation.

Probably the clearest example of this is the book of Romans. In Romans, the Greek root δικη shows up seventy-seven times in the Nestle-Aland text.

• BDAG glosses δίκη as “punishment, penalty, justice.”
• One major verb that comes from δικη is δικαιόω, which means “justify” or “declare righteous.”
• δικη is also the root of several related nouns like δικαιοσύνη, δικαίωσις, and δικαίωμα, which are translated as “righteousness” or “justification.”
• Finally, δίκαιος is the adjective form that is translated as “just” or “righteous.”

All of this matters, because righteousness and justification are key themes of Romans. Realizing that what in English are two word families (“just, justification, justify,” as opposed to “righteous, righteousness, declare righteous”) are really one word family in the Greek will help the preacher better understand what Paul is doing with these ideas.

A similar thing happens with the Greek root αγιος, which means “holy.” The noun form is ἁγιασμός, which means “holiness” or “sanctification,” and the verb form is ἁγιάζω, which means “sanctify” or “make holy.” Many English speakers don’t realize that the word “saint” comes from the same root as “holy,” but to someone reading the Greek “saint” looks like “the holy one.” Or again the Greek root πειρα stands behind the words for “trial, try” or “tempt, temptation.” The interplay of these different but related senses is important for understanding passages of Scripture like James 1.

Seeing these and other connections throughout Scripture can help the careful student have a better grasp of God’s Word.

3. It helps you recognize and study important words

Studying words rightly is an important part of any sermon prep. Yet if there is one element of a preacher’s use of Greek that is likely to come under fire, it’s often the odd way we talk about Greek words. Some of this criticism is earned. Preachers can be guilty of making too much of the use of one synonym over another or emphasizing words in unhelpful or illegitimate ways. Some preachers love to use their Greek so much that they might end up saying something useless like, “The Greek word for ‘bread’ here is ἄρτος, which literally means ‘bread’.”

But while preachers should beware of reading too much into common, ordinary Greek words, sometimes a biblical author will use an unusual or rare word. Often by paying attention to these rare words, the preacher can find helpful exegetical nuggets.

For example, Philippians 3:20 uses the word πολίτευμα, a word that occurs only here in the New Testament (a hapax legomenon). This word is glossed by BDAG as “commonwealth” or “state.” It’s a word that would have been especially important for the city of Philippi. As a Roman colony, Philippi was viewed as equal to the Roman cities in Italy. It would have made perfect sense, then, for Paul to tell the Philippians that their πολίτευμα “is in heaven.” Just as Philippi was a slice of Rome for those living in Greece, so the church is supposed to be a slice of heaven living in the world.

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Later in Philippians 4:11, Paul will use the rare word αὐτάρκης (“content”), this time borrowing from the world of philosophy. Stoics and Cynics used this term for self-sufficiency, a total lack of need of anything outside of oneself. In an ironic twist, Paul transforms this self-sufficiency into a Christ-sufficiency in Philippians. He goes from “I have learned to be content in whatever circumstances I find myself” (Phil 4:11) to “I am able to do all things through him who strengthens me” (Phil 4:13). Whereas the philosophers of Paul’s day sought to weather the storms of life through their own power, Paul looked to Christ for the strength to find contentment.

These two quick examples show how word studies, especially of words that are relatively rare in the New Testament, can unlock helpful truth for preaching and study.

4. It helps you answer exegetical questions

As you read about a passage, scholars and commentators will present arguments about what it means. You might not be an expert, but knowing enough of the language can help you better listen in as the specialists go back and forth.

There are parts of the New Testament that are confusing, even for people who study Greek for a living. This doesn’t mean that, having two years of Greek under your belt, you’ll be able to definitively settle the correct interpretation on these challenging passages. But it does mean that you’ll be better equipped to have some idea of what everyone else is talking about.

1. Why do translations show the variety they do in the way they translate the second half of John 14:1?
2. Is it legitimate to translate James 2:14 as “can that kind of faith save him”?
3. Is Ephesians 4:22–24 saying that we have “put off … been renewed … put on” or that this is something we must do?

These and many other questions can only be answered by a working knowledge of the Greek language.

Sometimes, knowledge of Greek can keep you from making common mistakes, especially if you are using a good commentary.

For example, preachers sometimes point out that the phrase “Go and make disciples” from Matthew 28:18 uses a participle for the word “go.” This is true. But then they go on to argue that it should be translated, “Going, make disciples.” In other words, whatever you are doing in your life, you should also be making disciples.

Now, this may sound really good—but there are problems with it. Grammatically, it is true that the word translated “go” is a participle, but it’s functioning as an “attendant circumstance.” An attendant circumstance is a participle joined so closely to the main verb that it adopts the mood of the main verb. These participles express actions that coordinate with and accompany the main action. So, we should rightly translate this verse, “Go and make disciples,” as we find in every major modern translation. This isn’t a call to casually disciple along the pathway of life; it’s a call to put forth effort and intentionality in accomplishing the task our Lord has left us.

5. It helps you discern a passage’s structure

Finally, studying Greek can help you see the underlying structure of the passage a little more clearly.

Languages use lots of little words to connect clauses, phrases, and ideas. We call these conjunctions. Yet, once again, translators don’t always use a word-for-word equivalence when translating conjunctions. Reading in the original Greek can make the natural divisions of thought clearer because it helps you see first-hand what connecting words the author used.

Take Ephesians 4–6. This section has often been summarized as the walk of the believer. On five separate occasions, Paul tells believers how they should walk (Eph 4:1, 17; 5:2, 8, 15). But a careful look at the Greek text will show that, not only does Paul use “walk” five times, but it is always in connection with the Greek conjunction οὖν (“therefore”) (Eph 4:1, 17; 5:1, 7, 15).¹

If we include Paul’s final οὖν (Eph 6:14), which combines with the verb “stand” (Eph 6:11, 13, 14) instead of “walk,” we have a rough outline for the second half of Ephesians that looks something like this:

• Walk worthily (4:1–16)
• Walk differently (4:17–32)
• Walk in love (5:1–6)
• Walk in light (5:7–14)
• Walk in wisdom (5:15–6:9)
• Stand strong (6:10–20)

Figuring out where one idea ends and another idea begins is one of the most frustrating, profitable, and overlooked parts of sermon prep. Figuring out how the author’s ideas go together does a lot to help the preacher think through what the ideas themselves are. You can do much of this work with a good English translation, but you can do it better if you know how to work with the Greek language.

Closing advice: Use it, but don’t show it

In closing, I would like to give one final piece of advice, something I try to follow but don’t always succeed at.

Often the best uses of Greek in sermon prep never show up in the sermon itself. Use your Greek as much as you can in your study, but be careful about mentioning it too much from the pulpit. The more times you say “Greek” in a sermon, the more you may subtly communicate to your audience that they can’t really know what the New Testament is saying unless they know Greek.

I remember being a sophomore in a Christian university and hearing one of my professors preach a message that was a Greek word study on παρακαλέω. He explained that the word meant “encourage,” which is a pretty good single word gloss that covers ideas like exhorting and comforting, as does the original Greek. He then took us to several different passages and showed us how the word was used, eventually making application to our lives from those passages. It was a good, technically careful, and responsible Greek word study.

But what really stuck out to me was that he never once in the message used the word “Greek” or the word παρακαλέω. He did say “the original word,” but that was it. He could have told us what the Greek word was, but he didn’t. He could have said, “now this Greek word” repeatedly throughout his message, but he didn’t. Most people who walked out of chapel didn’t realize they had just been given a Greek word study.

Our goal shouldn’t be to say the word “Greek” as many times as possible when preaching. Our goal should be to take the tools and training that we have been given and use them to be a blessing to God’s people. This happens as we use our Greek to carefully consider every word, observe repetition we might have missed in English, study important words, answer exegetical questions, and discern structure.

Learning Greek is a lot of work, and using it responsibly is also quite a bit of work. But all the work is worth it, if it means that one day we are privileged to hear, “Well done, thou good and faithful servant.”

Resources for making the most of Greek in your sermons

The Preacher’s Greek Companion series (Hendrickson)

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• Original Language Research: What to Do, What Not to Do
• Why We All Need the Biblical Languages
• Pastor, Are You Making These Common Lexical Mistakes?
• 3 Reasons Not to Mention Greek and Hebrew Words in a Sermon
• How to Use Greek Lexicons

1. I am indebted to Harold Hoehner and his magisterial commentary on Ephesians for this observation: Ephesians: An Exegetical Commentary (Baker Academic, 2002), 500.