Language Appreciation — Unit 9: Four More Greek Words — The Vocabulary of Salvation

In 1515 a young Augustinian monk named Martin Luther sat in his study in the tower of the Black Cloister at Wittenberg, preparing lectures on the Epistle to the Romans. He had spent his adult life trying to earn salvation. He had fasted until his body broke down. He had crawled up the Scala Sancta in Rome on bleeding knees. He had confessed his sins for six hours at a stretch until his confessor told him to go away and come back when he had committed real sins. He was a tortured soul, and the verse that tortured him most was Romans 1:17: "the righteousness of God is revealed."

The Latin word in his Bible was justitia Dei, "the justice of God." To Luther, the righteousness of God meant the perfect standard by which God would judge him and find him guilty. The verse read like a death sentence. How could that be good news? He hated the verse. He hated God for putting it in the Bible. And then, while he was still working through Romans in his lectures (1515–1516), he opened the Greek text Erasmus published in early 1516, and he read the same verse in the language Paul actually wrote: dikaiosynê theou. He looked at the verb forms. He saw that dikaiosynê in Paul did not mean the standard by which God judges. It meant the righteousness God gives as a free gift to those who believe. The just shall live by faith. Not by works. Not by climbing stairs on bloody knees. By faith.

When Luther understood the Greek word dikaiosynê, he said it was as if "the gates of paradise opened and I walked in." That moment in the Wittenberg tower lit the Reformation.

Why this unit matters

Unit 8 opened four Greek words from the Gospel of John: Logos, agapê, charis, pneuma. Unit 9 opens four more, this time from the Epistle to the Romans: pistis (faith), sôzô (save), dikaiosynê (righteousness), and kyrios (Lord). Together these eight nouns and verbs form the heart of the New Testament's salvation vocabulary. By the end of this unit you will be able to read Romans 1:16–17 in Greek — the verse that ignited the Reformation. You will see what Luther saw when he opened Erasmus's Greek Testament. Two more units after this: Unit 10 teaches you Strong's numbers in your hand, and Unit 11 turns you loose on your first real word study. You are about to cross the finish line.

Notice that our unit scripture — Romans 1:16–17 — contains three of the four words we will study tonight. Paul packs them into two verses: sôtêria (salvation, the noun-form of sôzô), pisteuonti (believing, the verb-form of pistis), dikaiosynê, and pistis again. The fourth word, kyrios (Lord), is not in these two verses; we meet it in Philippians 2:9–11. The whole Reformation is hidden in two verses, and the key to the safe is three Greek words.

Modern English has done to the word "faith" what time did to "charity." It has shrunk it. Today when people say "I have faith," they often mean "I hope it works out." Faith has become a synonym for optimism with no object. "Just have faith." Faith in what? It doesn't matter; just have it. Believe in believing.

The Greek word pistis never means anything close to that. Pistis is trust placed in something or someone trustworthy. Pistis without an object is not pistis at all. It is wishing. The Greek word always asks: trust in whom? In what? The trustworthiness of the object is the whole point of the faith. A chair I have never seen will hold me if it is well-built, regardless of how much pistis I bring to the act of sitting. A chair made of rotten wood will collapse under me no matter how much pistis I summon. Pistis is not the power that makes the chair hold. Pistis is the act of sitting on a chair that already holds. Christianity is not faith in faith. Christianity is faith in Christ.

The Hebrews 11 hall of fame

Read Hebrews 11 in any English Bible and you find the word "faith" repeated like a drumbeat. "By faith Abel offered … By faith Enoch was translated … By faith Noah … By faith Abraham …" Every one of these is the same Greek word: pistei, the instrumental form of pistis. The entire chapter is a one-word chapter, repeated twenty-four times. And in every single case the faith has a definite object. Abel trusted God's instruction about sacrifice. Noah trusted God's warning about the flood. Abraham trusted God's promise of a son. Faith is never a vague feeling; it is always a response to a word from God. Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God (Romans 10:17). The Greek confirms it: pistis ex akoês. Faith out of hearing. Faith needs an object, and the object is what God has actually said.

You will sometimes hear people say, "I just need to have more faith." That is the wrong question. The right question is: am I trusting the right Person about the right promise? Pistis is not measured by intensity. Pistis is measured by its object. The smallest pistis in the right Object saves; the largest pistis in the wrong object damns.

Faith and the verb pisteuô

The noun pistis has a matching verb: pisteuô, "to believe, to trust." When John 3:16 says "whosoever believeth in Him," the Greek word is pisteuôn. Same root. So whenever you read either "faith" or "believe" in the English New Testament, you are usually looking at the same Greek family. Faith is something you have; believing is what you do with it. In Greek they are not two separate ideas. They are the noun and verb of one reality — trust placed in the trustworthy Christ.

Ask the average Christian what "saved" means, and the answer is almost always: "saved from hell, going to heaven." That is true, but it is one-quarter true. The Greek verb sôzô is much bigger than that. It is one of the most flexible verbs in the New Testament, and it shows up in some surprising places.

Sôzô means to rescue from danger, in any sense. It can rescue from drowning (Matthew 14:30, when Peter cries "Lord, save me" as he sinks — kyrie sôson me). It can rescue from disease (Mark 5:34, when Jesus tells the woman with the issue of blood, "your faith has made you whole" — hê pistis sou sesôken se; literally "your faith has saved you"). It can rescue from death (Mark 5:23, when Jairus begs Jesus to come heal his daughter "that she may be saved and live"). It can rescue from a sinking ship (Acts 27:31). And it can rescue from sin and judgment (Acts 16:31, when Paul tells the Philippian jailer, "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved").

The Greek word does not split into "physical rescue" and "spiritual rescue." It holds them together. When the New Testament says Christ came to save, it means He came to rescue the whole person from every kind of ruin — from sin, from death, from sickness, from fear, from meaninglessness, from the grave itself. Salvation is comprehensive. Your soul is saved now. Your body will be saved at the resurrection. Your tears will be wiped away forever. Sôzô covers all of it.

The English derivatives

The Greek noun for "salvation" is sôtêria. The word for "savior" is sôtêr. These show up in English in unexpected places. Soteriology is the theological term for the doctrine of salvation. Soter is a common name in Greek Christian families to this day. And every Spanish-speaking Christian who has ever sung "Salvador mío" is calling on the sôtêr.

Three tenses of salvation: I have been saved (justification, from sin's penalty). I am being saved (sanctification, from sin's power). I will be saved (glorification, from sin's presence). All three are sôzô. One Greek verb, three tenses, one Salvation.

How this changes Bible reading

When you read "He saves to the uttermost them that come unto God by Him" (Hebrews 7:25), the Greek is sôzein eis to panteles — "save unto the uttermost," "save completely." There is no half-saving with Christ. The verb in Greek is comprehensive, present-tense, ongoing. He saves and He keeps saving. The same Greek verb that rescued Peter from the waves is the verb that rescues you from your sin. The Carpenter of Galilee still reaches into storms.

Greek dikaiosynê belongs to a whole family of related words. The adjective dikaios means "righteous" or "just." The verb dikaioô means "to declare righteous, to justify." The noun dikaiosynê means "righteousness" or "justification." The whole legal vocabulary of the doctrine of justification by faith hangs on this single Greek root.

Here is the problem Paul faced. In Greek and Roman thought, dikaiosynê meant moral excellence — the quality of being just, the standard of right conduct. A righteous person was a person whose life met the standard. By that definition, no one could be righteous before God. The Old Testament makes the case plainly: "There is none righteous, no, not one" (Romans 3:10, quoting Psalm 14). The standard is unmeetable. Pagan Greeks knew it. Pious Jews knew it. Luther knew it. Every honest soul who has ever read the Sermon on the Mount has known it.

What Paul does with the word

And then Paul takes the word and does to it exactly what he did to charis. He flips it. In Romans 3 he announces "the dikaiosynê of God revealed apart from law … even the dikaiosynê of God by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe." Dikaiosynê in Paul is no longer the moral excellence you have to achieve. Dikaiosynê is the right standing God gives as a gift to those who trust in Christ. The verb dikaioô is a courtroom verb: it means "to declare righteous," to issue a verdict of "not guilty" from the bench. When God justifies the sinner who trusts Christ, He is not pretending the sinner is good. He is transferring Christ's perfect righteousness to the sinner's account and declaring the legal verdict: righteous.

Christ took our sin on the cross; we receive His dikaiosynê by faith. This is called "the great exchange," and the whole transaction depends on one Greek word.

The Wittenberg tower revisited

Now go back to Luther in his study. The Latin Bible he had used all his life translated dikaiosynê as justitia, "justice." But the Latin word, by the year 1515, had drifted to mean the punitive justice of a judge — the standard by which God condemns. When Luther opened Erasmus's Greek New Testament, printed in 1516, and read Romans 1:17, he saw something the Latin had hidden: dikaiosynê theou is not the standard God demands. It is the gift God gives. "The just shall live by faith" — ho dikaios ek pisteôs zêsetai. Luther later wrote: "I felt myself to be born anew and to enter through open gates into paradise itself." That sentence, in the tower at Wittenberg, was the spark of the Reformation. One Greek word. One reformer's understanding. Half a millennium of Protestant history.

The English derivatives

The Latin form justitia gives us English justice, justify, justification. The Greek dikaios gives us less directly — theodicy ("the justification of God," literally "God-justice"). (The proper name Eudokia, common in the Eastern Church, sounds related but is not: it means "good pleasure" and comes from a different root.) Whenever you see "justify" in an English Bible, think dikaioô. The legal verb. God's verdict, pronounced from the bench, transferring Christ's perfect record onto the sinner who trusts Him.

The Greek word kyrios had two great uses in the first century, and the Christians took the second one and made it the defining confession of the church. Use one: any master or owner. A slave called his owner kyrios. A wife sometimes called her husband kyrios. A polite shopper in the agora called any unfamiliar man kyrios in the same way an English speaker says "sir." This is the lowest register of the word. Use two: the absolute Lord, the Sovereign of the universe. When the seventy translators rendered the Hebrew Old Testament into Greek around 250 BC (the Septuagint or LXX, which we met in Unit 2), they faced the question of how to translate the unspeakable divine Name, YHWH. Hebrew tradition refused to pronounce it; the rabbis substituted Adonai ("Lord") in reading. The Septuagint translators chose the equivalent Greek title: Kyrios. From 250 BC onward, every Greek-speaking Jew read his Old Testament with the word Kyrios standing in the place of God's covenant Name. Kyrios, in the Bible, is the name of God.

The Roman provocation

Now jump forward three centuries. In Rome under Domitian (the same emperor who exiled John to Patmos in Unit 7), the imperial cult began demanding that every Roman citizen affirm Kyrios Kaisar — "Caesar is Lord." It was a one-sentence loyalty test. Pinch a pinch of incense on the altar of the emperor's image and say three words: Kyrios Kaisar. Walk away free. Refuse, and you went to the lions. For most Romans the test was trivial — just a civic ritual, no deep belief required. For Christians it was impossible. They had already confessed three other words: Kyrios Iêsous. "Jesus is Lord."

Notice what is happening. The Christians are not using a generic word for "boss." They are taking the same Greek word the Septuagint used for YHWH and saying: that Person, the One the Old Testament calls Kyrios, is Jesus of Nazareth. The earliest Christian creed in the New Testament is three Greek words: Kyrios Iêsous, "Jesus is Lord" (1 Corinthians 12:3, Romans 10:9, Philippians 2:11). The shortest possible confession of faith. The word Kyrios attached to the name Jesus carries the full weight of Old Testament monotheism. To say "Jesus is Lord" is to say "Jesus is YHWH." And that is what the Romans heard. And that is why the Romans killed Christians.

Caesar wanted a pinch of incense. Christ asked for everything. The same word, kyrios, demanded an exclusive answer. Polycarp, Perpetua, Felicity, Justin, Lawrence, Ignatius — all chose the lions over the incense.

The Philippians 2 hymn

Philippians 2:9–11 contains the climactic Christian use of the word. Paul, quoting what may be an early Christian hymn, writes: "Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name: that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth; and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord (Kyrios Iêsous Christos), to the glory of God the Father." That phrase — Kyrios Iêsous Christos — is the foundation creed of the Christian faith. The Greek word kyrios is the load-bearing wall. When you confess Jesus as Lord, you are not just saying He is your personal advisor. You are saying He is YHWH, the Sovereign of the universe, the One whose Name is above every name.

The English and Spanish derivatives

Through liturgical Greek, English picks up kyrie in the prayer Kyrie eleison, "Lord, have mercy," still sung in churches every Sunday around the world. Spanish has the word señor for everyday use and reserves it (capitalized as Señor) for Christ in the same way English reserves "Lord." Every time you sing "Christ is Lord" or "Cristo es el Señor," you are confessing what Polycarp went to the stake for. Kyrios Iêsous.

You have now met eight Greek words. Logos, agapê, charis, pneuma from Unit 8; pistis, sôzô, dikaiosynê, kyrios from Unit 9. You are ready to read Luther's verse. Here is Romans 1:16–17 in transliterated Greek with English underneath:

Counting the words

Read it again and count. Sôtêria (salvation, the noun-form of sôzô) appears once. Pisteuô (believing, the verb-form of pistis) appears once. Dikaiosynê (righteousness) appears once. Pistis (faith) appears three times. Kyrios is not in these two verses, but Christ is named: "the gospel of Christ" — and "Christ" in Pauline usage almost never travels without His Lordship implied. In two verses Paul has packed the salvation vocabulary of the Greek New Testament. This is why Luther could spend years on Romans and never reach the bottom. Every word is a doorway.

What Luther saw

Now read it with Luther's eyes. The dikaiosynê of God is being revealed — not the standard God demands, but the gift God gives. From faith to faith (ek pisteôs eis pistin) — salvation begins in faith, continues in faith, ends in faith, faith from start to finish. The just shall live by faith — the Habakkuk 2:4 quotation that runs through Romans, Galatians, and Hebrews like the bass line of the entire New Testament. The just live by pistis. Not by works. Not by climbing stairs in Rome on bleeding knees. By pistis. By trust in the Kyrios.

When Luther understood these two verses in Greek, he later wrote: "Here I felt myself altogether born again, and to have gone through open doors into paradise itself." The Greek opened doors the Latin had hidden. The same doors are open to you tonight.

Notebook activity

Before you take the examination, do this. Open the same notebook you used in Unit 8. Find the page where you wrote Logos, Agapê, Charis, Pneuma. Underneath, write Pistis, Sôzô, Dikaiosynê, Kyrios. For each one, write the English meaning, the verse you will remember it by, and one sentence describing how the Greek changes your reading. Now look at the whole page. Eight Greek words. Two columns. The Father, the Son, the Spirit, salvation, faith, righteousness, the Lord. You have the New Testament's salvation vocabulary on one page. Frame it. Tape it inside your study Bible. These eight words will travel with you the rest of your life.

Where Unit 10 picks up

Unit 10 changes gears. Until now we have been opening words one at a time as Wayne points them out to you. In Unit 10 you learn the tool that lets you do this yourself for any word in the Bible: Strong's numbers. Every Hebrew and Greek word in the Bible is keyed to a number. G3056 is logos. G4982 is sôzô. G2962 is kyrios. With Strong's numbers in your hand, you can open the lid on any word in any verse, any time. Unit 10 teaches Strong's three ways: on paper (the original concordance), on a phone (the modern apps), and on the full internet (Bible study websites). Then Unit 11 turns you loose on your first real word study. Two units left. You can see the finish line.