Daily Insights from the Bible - John 1:49 (Greek!)

When I first surrendered to God's call on my life to vocational ministry, I was a freshman at Baylor University. Before that, I had been working toward a teaching degree, which I did complete and used until I left for seminary, and had expected to study Spanish as my second language to fulfill my degree requirements. One of the changes I made, starting that next year, was that I shifted to study ancient Greek (amazingly, ancient Greek still fulfilled the requirement!), and I have loved Greek ever since. Hebrew was much more difficult for me, but Greek has always been natural and enjoyable to me.

A few years ago, I found out about something that a professor at one of our Southern Baptist seminaries, Dr. Rob Plummer at Southern Seminary in Kentucky, was doing to help students of Greek (and, therefore, the Bible). This was Daily Dose of Greek. Since then, I have included a daily Greek lesson almost ever working day. If you are interested in learning Biblical Greek, (and who doesn't have the time right now!) I would highly encourage you to check it out.

That all leads me to today's lesson from Daily Dose of Greek from John 1:49

 ἀπεκρίθη αὐτῷ Ναθαναήλ, Ῥαββί, σὺ εἶ ὁ υἱὸς τοῦ θεοῦ, σὺ βασιλεὺς εἶ τοῦ Ἰσραήλ.

Now, what I want to point out today is something fairly simple, but I hope beneficial to you. This verse is translated fairly simply as Nathanael's response to Jesus knowing him without having ever met before in the previous verse - Nathanael answered him (Jesus), "You are the Son of God, you are the King of Israel!"

First, this is an awesome and accurate profession of faith! These words should often be on our lips in praise of our Savior and King. Far too often, we forget that Jesus is King. Yes, He is our best friend. Yes, He loves us. Yes to so many other truths about Him. But we must never forget that He is also our reigning King.

But what drew me to this today is a little bitty thing - in the Greek, there is no definite article before the word for "king." Now, there is a good grammatical reason for including the definite article ("the") before king in the English translation, as Dr. Plummer explains in his video today. But the internal contextual evidence is much stronger. For, if Jesus is the Son of God, who else could ever be on par with Him? Who else could ever claim to be a king of Israel like Him? The answer is obviously, no one could.

When it comes to rule, authority, power, right, majesty, glory, honor, no one else can compare to Jesus Christ our King! Remind yourself of this often!