Likely you’ve come across the Greek-English combination (or the less common Hebrew-English combination) in sermons. This is when a preacher has decided it’s not enough to refer to the English word for something in the bible: It’s time to bust out the original languages.
It’s not enough to refer to the word of God; they have to refer to the rhema-word of God. Nor the love of God; it’s the agape-love of God. Nor just any moment of time, but a kairos-moment; nor just any sort of power, but dunamis-power.
They want you to know they’ve been looking up these words in the Greek dictionary, and they’ve learned there’s a deeper, special, biblical, Christianese meaning to them. And by golly they’re gonna preach that meaning.
Why do Christians do this? ’Cause they’re unfamiliar with foreign languages. Sad to say, most Americans are monolingual: They only speak English. They’ve never studied a second language. Either they don’t see the point because everybody speaks English (and if they don’t, they demand they do), or because they think it’ll be too difficult for them, or it’s “too late” now that they’re out of school.
So when they discover how another language’s version of the same word has a slightly different definition from ours, they go a little bit overboard. It’s as if their English-language bibles have been lying to them all along: There’s a much deeper, even hidden, meaning in the original language. And what other things might bible translators have been keeping from them?
In any event, they’re gonna get ahold of that Greek dictionary and preach that definition every chance they can. And so you know they’re up on their Greek, they’ll use the Greek-English combination to remind you of this.
I don’t mean to embarrass you if you’re in the habit of doing this. But I need to point out the Greek-English combination looks foolish to educated people. It’s like referring to a fiesta-party, a burro-donkey, or a siesta-nap: You’re saying the same thing twice, and you think it makes you sound smart. And it will—to people who don’t know any better. But a whole lot of people do know better, and not all of them will charitably think, “Well, they don’t know any better.” Instead, they’ll think you’re condescending fools. Education, you see, doesn’t always make you compassionate. Too often it’s the opposite.
There are four reasons why preachers insist on using the Greek-English combination in their teaching:
It reminds them of a specific scripture. Take the rhema-word—more accurately transliterated, the ríma-word. It means word, saying, or spoken statement. It means nearly the same thing we mean by the English “word.” You could preach the American dictionary and get just as much insight—and don’t think preachers haven’t. Why refer to the ríma-word at all? Because it reminds preachers of the first time they ever heard “ríma-word” defined: When Jesus stated,
It reminds them of a biblical definition. When people refer to the agapí-love of God, they have in mind Paul’s definition of love in 1 Corinthians 13, as opposed to the eight definitions our culture has for it. They’re trying to point out it’s not romantic love, or affectionate love, or infatuation—that it’s God’s charitable, unconditional love.
It reminds them of a fun interpretation. One really popular teaching is how the dýnamis-power of God is like dynamite—it’s explosive and combustive, and really shakes things up. Back when Alfred Nobel invented nitroglycerin sticks, he named them after the Greek word for power, dýnamis. While dynamite is explosive in nature, dýnamis, exactly like our English word “power,” isn’t necessarily. From what we know of God, his power is constant and unchanging and never runs out—far more like a dynamo than dynamite. But dynamite is more fun, so preachers keep preaching dynamite.
It’s to show off. When you have a preacher who does this with darn near every word in the bible, you’ve got a show-off. I had a friend in college who did this. I kept encouraging him to actually take the Greek classes, instead of quoting the Greek dictionary out of context and showing off his ignorance to everyone who had taken Greek. He never did.
It’s much easier to quote the wise than to actually pursue wisdom. But it’s false wisdom—and a symptom of insecurity in preachers who don’t feel they’re as educated as they ought to be. And like my friend, I recommend they stop faking it, and go learn Greek. It’s not that hard.