After studying ancient Greek for a year and reading the Bible for close to 10 years, I often find myself honing in on one word and asking myself, What else could that word mean?
Such a thing happened when I came upon this very famous verse out of the book of Hebrews: "And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works..."
What does it mean to "stir up one another?" Because while I don't really know what that means, I do know that I want to figure it out because it sounds like the New Testament is saying that this is one smart way to make loving, good-working people. And who doesn't want more of that?
Upon investigating this Greek phrase, you find one word: παροξυσμός (paroxysmos), which has two seemingly different meanings. One leans toward encouraging or spurring encouragements, but the other meaning (and more commonly used in other Koine Greek texts) is most accurately translated to "irritating."
Can I quote the Dictionary of Biblical Languages? I thought so...
"sharp contention implying exasperation."
So, this gets a richer meaning does it not? The charge becomes clear: Do we have people in our lives who are friendly to us? Or do we have people who irritate us correctly? People who say things we know are right and good, but it's tough to hear? We need people in our lives who we trust that give us the type of love we need and not always the type of love we want. They are very different sometimes.
Love is nothing like tolerance, but it is often correcting, which is irritating to the one receiving it. We do not see the danger of playing in the street as a child, but we had people (parents) who cared enough to tell us that it was deadly.
In the same way, we need those seemingly irritating voices that demolish our pride and join with God in the renewal of our hearts.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
You irritate the flesh out of me.
(And let me irritate you: none of us are studying 'ancient' Greek. I think we are more studying an Erasmian take -- and pronunciation -- on the Koine Greek text.)
Chris, Another great post! I love how you point out that love is not tolerance. I've written a blog post or two about that myself. It kind of goes along with those liberating restrictions you talked about last Sunday. God is the ultimate "love" and so He sometimes irritates us when He corrects us, when He puts in our hearts a knowledge of necessary restrictions, which are irritating until they become the desires of our heart. Peace, Linda
Post a Comment