My last and final study (for now) on doing word studies…
PAY ATTENTION TO THEOLOGICAL WORDS:
In 1 Thessalonians 1:4, Paul writes:“knowing, brethren beloved by God, His choice of you.” That sounds like an unassuming phrase, until you do a word study on “choice.”
If you use Mounce’s Reverse Interlinear translation (on biblegateway.com) and Greek helps, you find Strong’s # and the GK # and the definitions. One definition is: “in NT election to privilege by divine grace.” The word is found only 7 times in the NT (from billmounce.com): Romans 9:11; 11:5, 7, 28; 1 Thess. 1:4; 2 Peter 1:10; Acts 9:15. That’s not hard to study: seven verses. Take a look at those 7 verses and their context and see what Paul has to say.
If you go to biblestudytools.com, you find a host of Bible dictionaries and encyclopedias. You might check Baker’s Evangelical Dictionary of Biblical Theology and look up “elect.” If you do that, you learn some things.
If you read the whole article, you learn that God’s election of Israel is a significant theme in the Old Testament. For example, in Amos 3:2, God tells Israel: “You only have I chosen among all the families of the earth; Therefore I will punish you for all your iniquities.”
Since in the OT, it was “Israel” who was God’s elect, God’s chosen, for Paul to refer to the church of Christ (composed largely of Gentiles – 1:9-10) as chosen means that Paul is identifying Christians as God’s elect during the Christian Age! That’s important. That is a subtle but sure message to these young, persecuted Christians, that they are – in Christ Jesus – God’s chosen people. They might be rejected by the world but they are chosen by God.
Finally, let’s take a look at another example, from 2 Thessalonians. In 2 Thessalonians 2:3, Paul writes,“Let no one in any way deceive you, for it will not come unless the apostasy comes first, and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of destruction.” Now “apostasy” would be a good word to do some word study on (later).
For this devotional, I want us to consider the phrases “man of lawlessness” and “son of destruction.” Now, you can look up “man” and come up with 2,294 occasions and read all of them or “son,” and read all 4,880 occasions of that word! Or, you can look up phrases. “Man of lawlessness” – (when you look up phrases in computer software, put the phrase in parentheses) – you learn that this is the only passage where it is found. That severely limits our ability to interpret the phrase! This is also the only time “son of destruction” is found. Again, not much help in that regard.
So, we have to change our phrase a little. What does “man of” mean? Or “son of”? Let’s look that phrase up. The expression “man of” is found 164 times. Just looking at the first three verses, I can draw the conclusion that “man of” is a figure of speech for someone “characterized by…”
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That is one indication that this “man of lawlessness” might not be a specific person. The phrase “son of” is similar but used a whopping 1,165 times. Of course it is used literally to refer to relationships.
I know from previous studies that “son of” is a figure of speech to refer to someone having the qualities or characteristics of someone or something. 1 Thessalonians 5:5 is an excellent example of the use. In fact, the expression “son of God,” when it is not referring to Jesus, refers to someone who is characterized by God, characterized by godly attributes.
We see the same idea in the phrase “sons of disobedience” in Ephesians 2:2; 5:6 (cf. Colossians 3:6), and “sons of men” (Eph. 3:5 – i. e., having qualities of mankind; a figure of speech for humans).
This brings up an important point. In doing word studies, we would start understanding the meaning of a word in a given context, in this order:
1. The word’s use in the same letter (if it is so used);
2. The word’s use in other writings by the same author;
3. The word’s use in the New Testament;
4. The word’s use in the Old Testament.
It pays to enrich your knowledge of biblical words.
