Hello, this is Pastor Steven Anderson from Faithful Word Baptist Church in Tempe, Arizona,
and today we're going to talk about John 1.7 in the Greek New Testament.
In English, this verse reads, the same came for a witness to bear witness of the light
that all men through him might believe.
Let's look at it in Greek.
Uthos ilethenis martyrian, ina martyrisi peri tu fotos, ina pandes pistefsosi theaftu.
Let's go through it word by word.
Uthos is a word that you should recognize from verse two of this passage.
Uthos in enarchi proston theon, the same was in the beginning with God.
Here it means the same again, the same came for a witness to bear witness to the light.
This is the demonstrative pronoun, usually translated as this or this one,
meaning the guy we just referred to.
That's why it says the same, the one that we just talked about, John.
There was a man sent from God whose name was John.
Uthos ilethen.
Uthon means came, it's the past tense of the verb erhome.
So, if you were looking up this word in a dictionary,
this is the form that you would find, erhome, which means to come or to go.
It's a really common word in the New Testament.
In fact, this exact form of erhome, uthon is something that comes up so
much in the New Testament that you should just memorize this word as
the past tense of come.
And it's the simple definite past or the aorist past.
We'll get more into that verb tense in a future lesson.
I don't want to bombard you with too much grammar in this lesson because there
are some other things later in the verse that I want to spend more time on.
So, utos ilethon, the same came, is martyrian, for a witness.
Martyrian here, this is where we get our word martyr, by the way, the word for
witness, or one who gives testimony.
Martireo is the verb I testify or I witness.
This word right here is in the accusative case.
And is a very common preposition in the New Testament, and
it takes an accusative case.
Now, usually the word is translated as in, into,
toward, to, that's usually what it means.
Into is probably the most common definition that you're going to find of
East throughout the New Testament.
I believe it's used about 1700 or so times.
It's a really common preposition in the New Testament, usually meaning into.
But it does not always mean into, because as you can see here,
it's translated as for, because it's saying the same came for a witness.
Now, this is one of the most controversial words in the whole Greek
New Testament.
There's a lot of debate about the word is, because it usually means into or unto.
And in fact, even later in John chapter one, it's translated as unto.
This is where people get confused in regard to Acts 2-38.
Because in Acts 2-38, when they ask Peter, what shall we do?
And he says, repent and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of the Lord Jesus,
for the remission of sins.
That for the remission of sins is the word is.
And so a lot of people will make the statement that is always means into or
unto or it always has a forward looking view to it.
And so that means that they are getting baptized
in order that they might receive remission of sins.
Which is what people who believe in baptismal regeneration teach,
the Catholic Church, for example, or the Church of Christ.
These religions will try to use that verse to teach baptismal regeneration,
Acts 2-38.
First of all, you should never base what you believe on one verse in the Bible.
When there's so much scripture that makes it crystal clear that faith in Christ is
the only requirement for salvation, and that whosoever believeth in him
should not perish but have eternal life.
You don't want to just turn the whole doctrine of salvation on its head because
of one verse, Acts 2-38, that makes it seem as if baptism is necessary for
salvation in their mind.
But when it says for the remission of sins,
the word for can also have a meaning because of.
For example, if I said so and so is wanted for murder,
it means that they're wanted because of murder.
It doesn't mean that they're wanted for
murder like they're wanted so that we can get them to murder someone, okay?
So for, the English word for can also mean because of.
And you say, well, but that's not Greek.
It's accusative case.
Okay, but let me give you another example in the Greek New Testament
that uses es with an accusative case that means because of.
Matthew 12 41.
In Matthew 12 41, Jesus talks about the men of Nineveh, and
he says they repented at the preaching of Jonah.
And when it says they repented at the preaching of Jonah,
it's saying, it's using the word es there, okay?
So obviously they repented because of the preaching of Jonah.
They didn't repent in order that he might preach to them.
So that's a perfect example in Matthew 12 41 of the word es being used to mean for,
or because of.
Here it means for in a different sense because it says the same came for
a witness or as a witness, if you like.
So I just wanted to point that out because the word es has so
much controversy surrounding it.
And a lot of people will make very bold statements about Acts 2 38 saying,
that word es, it is always forward looking.
It's always accusative case and therefore it always means into, unto, toward.
And they think it should be that you should get baptized unto
the remission of sins.
But in reality, no, you're getting baptized as a result of
the remission of sins, not vice versa.
Because you get your sins remitted when you believe on Jesus Christ,
then you get baptized after salvation.
And by the way, people often misquote Acts 2 38 as what must I do to be saved?
And they'll say, it asks in Acts 2 38, what must I do to be saved?
And they said, repent and be baptized.
But that's simply not true.
The question that's asked is just, men and brethren, what shall we do?
Asking, what should we do, is different than asking, what must I do to be saved?
Should we repent and be baptized?
Absolutely, but what must we do to be saved?
Well, just a little earlier in Acts chapter 2, he says, it shall come to
pass that whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved.
So right there in Acts chapter 2, the Bible says that all we have to do to be
saved is call upon the name of the Lord.
And Acts 2 38 is not a formula for salvation.
It's just what people should do.
They should repent and be baptized, but
they should be baptized after they're saved, not in order to get saved.
And again, I don't want to spend a whole Greek lesson talking about that, but
I just thought it was important to point that out,
because we're talking about the preposition is.
So, utos, ilten, is, martirian.
The same came for a witness.
Ina martirisi peri tu fotos.
In English, this next phrase says, to bear witness of the light.
The same came for a witness, to bear witness of the light.
Let's look at this word by word.
Ina here means, in order that.
Martirisi, you can obviously see the similarity between martirian and
martirisi, this is from the verb martireo.
This is in the subjunctive mood.
Now, let me just explain to you a little bit about this verb.
And I don't want to go too deep, because I don't want to just
blast you with way too much information in one lesson.
At this point in your Greek studies,
you don't need to know just everything about every verb tense.
That's something that's going to come with time and study.
But at this point, it's enough that you start to recognize certain forms and
that you start to identify characteristics about
verbs in different tenses and in different moods.
So let me just start out by pointing out to you that in this word,
martirisi, there is a yota subscript under the last letter.
Now, remember when we were learning about the different case endings for
nominative, genitive, dative, and accusative.
And I pointed out to you that when you see that yota subscript on a noun or
pronoun, it's a telltale sign of the dative case in the singular.
And so I just kind of gave you that shortcut.
When you see that yota subscript, dative singular,
just something that you can do.
Well, when it comes to verbs, that yota subscript is also a telltale
sign of the subjunctive mood.
It is always used with a subjunctive.
Now, there are subjunctives that do not have the yota subscript.
But, for example, pistefsosy is also subjunctive, and
I'm going to explain what that means in a moment.
But all I want to say right now is just that when you see a verb in the Greek New
Testament, and that verb has a yota subscript at the end,
you can instantly know that that is subjunctive, okay?
Now you say, well, what does subjunctive mean?
Well, when we talk about verbs,
they have all kinds of different characteristics about them.
For example, verbs can either be singular or plural.
So we call that the number of the verb.
Verbs can also have a different person, first person, second person, or
third person.
First person is something I'm doing, second person is something you're doing,
third person is something that someone else is doing.
So verbs have person and number, and they also have tense.
And when we talk about tense, you immediately think of what?
Past tense, present tense, future tense.
That's a timing element of the verb.
But not only that, verbs have a mood.
Now, the moods of verbs in Greek are going to be the indicative mood,
the subjunctive mood, and the imperative mood.
Now, the indicative mood is just the mood of making a simple statement.
And usually the main verb, the vast majority of the time,
the main verb of the sentence is going to be indicative.
It's just a basic statement.
Subjunctive, on the other hand, is often part of a dependent clause,
or it's often coming after a subordinating conjunction.
Maybe you remember learning that in elementary school,
in English class about coordinating conjunctions and subordinating conjunctions.
Well, the subjunctive is often going to follow that subordinating conjunction.
And often, the subjunctive will be translated
with the word may or might in front of it.
So case in point right here, if we're looking at this phrase here,
Ina marteresi peri tu fotos, to bear witness of the light.
The same came for witness to bear witness of the light.
What this is saying literally is, Ina, in order that marteresi,
he might bear witness, it's subjunctive, he might bear witness,
peri tu fotos, about the light or of the light, okay?
So this is saying that he came for
a witness in order that he might bear witness of the light.
So in English, this comes across as the same came for
a witness to bear witness of the light.
That all men through him might believe.
Notice, that all men through him might believe.
And again, this is in the subjunctive mood right here, this pistefso, see?
And we're going to break that down in a moment.
In addition to having person, number,
tense, mood, verbs also have voice.
And the voice is either going to be active, passive, or middle.
And we talked about that back in the lesson on John 10, verse 19, I believe.
When we talked about the subject doing the action,
That's the active voice, or the subject being acted upon.
That is the passive voice.
So when we look at a verb, there are all these different parameters that we have
to understand about that verb.
And when we look at this verb, we can see that it is singular, okay?
The same came for a witness, to bear witness or
in order that he might bear witness of the light.
This is singular, this is third person, this is active, and
this is subjunctive.
So, ina, and I'm not trying to be complicated here, okay?
I'm trying to make it simple.
If some of this is going over your head, just don't worry about it.
But the main thing I want to point out is that the subjunctive is often translated
with may or might in front of it, and it's usually not the main verb of the sentence.
It'll often follow something like ina, in order that he might, or
in order to, is what this comes out meaning.
So ina martirisi, and I just wanted to point out that when you see the yota
subscript, that is a tell-tale sign of a subjunctive verb.
So ina martirisi peri tu fotos.
And again, if that went over your head, don't worry about it.
Just learn something different from the lesson.
Okay, peri, in English we have the word periscope, right?
And the periscope is the thing on the submarine, and
you can look all the way around 360 degrees with a periscope.
The word peri means around or about.
And if I looked all about, I'm looking around.
So in English, about and around are often synonymous words.
So peri means either around or about, usually.
And so it's saying, ina martirisi, in order that he might testify or
bear witness, peri, about, think of a periscope looking all the way around.
About, around, same thing.
About to photos, about the light, or of the light.
This is what?
Genitive, of course, to, singular genitive.
So ina martirisi peri tu photos.
And then the last phrase means that all men through him might believe.
Ina, meaning in order that, pandes, pandes means all.
Of course, it comes from the word, pas, pasa, pan.
Earlier in the chapter, we had panda, which is plural neuter.
This is plural masculine.
Ina pandes, in order that all,
pistebsosi might believe,
via aptu would mean through him, that all men through him might believe.
In order that all men through him might believe.
And of course, we have the apostrophe after the, because it's actually thea.
But it's been shortened, sort of like we have contractions in English, and
we put an apostrophe to show that something is missing.
The alpha is missing, and it means through him, viaftu.
And you pronounce it all kind of run together because of that apostrophe.
So this last phrase becomes viaftu.
Now, you'll notice in the King James version
that the word men in this verse is in italics.
Because the last phrase here in English says that all men through him might believe.
The word men does not occur in this verse.
That's why men is in italics.
The italicized words in the KJV are used whenever a word has to be added for
the translation in order to make a good English sentence that makes sense.
Sometimes they have to add words.
Just like, for example, in Greek, sometimes a sentence won't even have a verb in it.
Well, in English, you have to have a verb in every sentence, so
they'll have to add a verb.
Now, it's not that they're just adding words to the Bible,
because the word men does belong there in the King James version, of course.
Because this is a masculine word, all.
It's a masculine plural of all.
So the implication there is clearly all men.
And that comes across in the Greek just with one word, pandes.
But in order to get that across in English, we have to have two words, all men.
That's why the word men is in italics.
Ina, pandes, pistefsosi, the of two.
So let's talk about this word pistefsosi again.
This is in the subjunctive mood right here.
And if you remember, we did a chart when we learned about the verb echo.
And echo meant I have.
And you remember how we drew a chart like this where we had the singulars over here
and the plurals over here, first person, second person, and third person.
And in that chart, we had echo, echis, echi,
echomen, echete, and then we had echusi.
Remember that?
Well, the Greek verb pistevo, which means I believe, follows the same pattern.
So if we were to write this down right here,
pistevo, it's gonna follow the same pattern, meaning it's gonna be pistevo,
pistevis, pistevi, pistevomen, pistevite, and then it's going to be right here,
this is the one that we're dealing with in this verse, pistevusi.
Okay, so right there, we have just the basic
third person plural, active indicative.
So if this were the main verb of the sentence,
just making a simple statement, they believe,
then we would be using this active indicative pistevusi, all right?
But because we are becoming subjunctive, there are gonna be some changes.
Also, let me point out that this chart, whether it's for echo or
pistevo, is for the present tense.
This word right here, pistevsosi, is not only subjunctive,
but it's also in the future tense.
So this sigma right here has been added in order to make it future, okay?
Because just the basic active indicative present tense third person plural of
pistevo is pistevusi, that's just the simple they believe, pistevusi.
In order to make it future, you can notice that an s has been added.
So instead of pistevusi, it's pistevsosi, all right?
So that sigma right there that's been added makes it future.
Then you'll also notice that this omicron epsilon,
in the original word down here, has become an omega.
That is the indicator of the fact that it has become subjunctive in mood, okay?
So again, it's too much for you to just absorb all of this in one lesson.
Just absorb everything about the moods and everything about these tenses and
everything about a verb in one lesson.
But what I want you to take away from this lesson is just a basic grasp of what
the subjunctive is, often translated may, might.
Not normally the main verb in the sentence,
usually following some kind of a subordinating conjunction, something like
ina.
And what I also want you to take away from this lesson is that when you see
the yota subscript, that is a telltale sign of a subjunctive verb.
And I also want you to take away from this lesson the fact that when you see
sigma added in a verb, that is an indicator of the future tense.
That's something that you're gonna see a lot with future verbs.
You just have to start spotting these little things and
putting the pieces together.
Down the road, you'll learn every form, you'll memorize every chart.
But at this point, just be familiar with that sigma as being an indicator,
often, of the future tense.
And then also, I just wanna point out that the fact that this oo has
become an o, mega, is an indicator of the subjunctive mood in that.
So again, the whole verse, and we'll reinforce this stuff later on also.
But hopefully you learned something in today's lesson.
Utos il then is martirian, the same came for a witness.
Ina martirisi peri tu fotos, to bear witness of the light.
Literally word by word it would be, in order that he might bear witness
about the light, in order that he might bear witness about the light.
But that doesn't sound very good in English, doesn't?
In order that he might bear witness about the light.
No, it sounds better the way it is in the King James with the identical meaning.
The same came for a witness, to bear witness of the light.
Ina pandes pistefso si the aftu, that all men might believe through him.
That all men through him might believe.
Next lesson, we will tackle John chapter one, verse eight.