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Each weekday in the month of August, we will pursue “prepositional truth” by zeroing in on a single Greek preposition in a single verse, noting the theological richness so often embedded in the humble words we so often overlook.
Small things can make a big difference.
Take, for instance, a common household item that has made your life easier – even though its precise origin is unknown, and you probably don’t even know how many are currently under your roof.
We’re talking about the humble paper clip.
Even though there are a number of claimants to the honor of being the first person to bend a piece of wire into one and a half loops, historians of invention have never agreed as to who, exactly, that person was. He or she was apparently employed by the Gem Manufacturing Company of Britain in the 1870s – an organization that never bothered to patent the design.
But everyone agrees on this point: Paper clips, while generally taken for granted, are wonderfully effective at holding things together. Loose papers need never be loose again.
Prepositions are the “paper clips” of human language. They hold things together, even though we rarely given them the credit they are due.
From a classical grammatical standpoint, prepositions are small words that most often provide information about three things: location (“the ball is under the couch”), time (“he arrived before dinner”) and direction (“my hopes for lower gas prices this summer are going down the drain”).
Nouns and verbs are crucial for communication. But without prepositions, we would be seriously puzzled as to how they relate to each other.
Biblical texts are no exception. Consider what the apostle Paul says in Ephesians 4:6. Here’s what we have if we take away its four prepositions: “One God and Father all, who is all and all and all.” That doesn’t make much sense.
But now let’s add those four words back in: “One God and Father of all, who is over all and through all and in all.” Now we have something to talk about. Theologians, in fact, have spent 2,000 years wrestling with what it might mean that God is over, though, and in his people. Each of those ideas is loaded with significance, and we still haven’t plumbed the depths of their meaning.
Throughout the month of August, we’re going in search of “prepositional truth” – what we can learn from some of the humblest words in the Bible.
That’s actually a play on words. Theologians, philosophers, and pop psychologists are currently engaged in a furious debate over the validity of “propositional truth” – whether any proposition, or statement about reality, can actually be said to be True with a capital T, or whether the best we can do is settle for highly individualized “truths” with a lower case “t.”
A majority of Americans (and all too many church members) are currently sold out to the latter perspective. “You have your truth, and I have mine, and neither viewpoint is more valid than the other.”
Bible students, however, quickly discover that both Old and New Testaments are thoroughly and unapologetically propositional. Truth exists. Truth with a capital T. Truth that can be known. Which means we can also discern what is not true – even as we follow the One who claims to be the Way, the Truth, and the Life (John 14:6).
Our task this August will be to seek such truth by spotlighting, each day, a single preposition in a single verse.
Our hope is to uncover some of the overlooked treasures that are so often associated with some of the Bible’s smallest words.
Let’s begin with a verse that most of us can recite by heart: “For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16).
There’s a perfectly good word in the Greek language for “in,” as in “believe in.” It’s en, which just happens to be the most common preposition in the New Testament. En often denotes position or location, as in, “During a sweltering week like this, you can usually find me in the house.”
But that’s not the word we find in John 3:16. Instead, our text says, “whoever believes eis him…” Eis connotes more of a sense of direction, such as “into.”
John, in fact, frequently calls his readers to “believe into Jesus” instead of just “believe in” him.
What’s going on here?
John is doing much more than inviting us to “believe a set of facts about Jesus,” or “pass a theological quiz,” or “feel good about Jesus the way you believe in your favorite NFL team.” Believing eis Jesus means to entrust ourselves to him – to be locked in or bound together with Jesus as a person.
Bible scholar Dale Bruner summarizes this brilliantly:
“The Greek ‘into’ does us the great service of conveying trust’s direction, goal, and resting place: trust is directed ‘into’ Jesus, into his person, and rests there ‘in” him ‘into’ whom one has placed one’s life.”
Eis appears in another oft-cited text, Matthew 18:20: “Whenever two or three persons are gathered eis (“into”) my name, there I am, right in the midst of them.” If we are locked into Jesus, in other words, he’s locked into us.
We happen to live in a time when being “into” something has become a colloquial expression. The 2009 feature film He’s Just Not That Into You tells the story of nine characters who are having major relational issues. Gigi, in particular, doesn’t know how to “read” the moments when her dates are trying to tell her they are no longer interested.
Jesus makes it clear that we don’t have to have special skills or abilities to “read” whether or not he’s interested in us.
“Come unto me,” he says in Matthew 11:28, “all you who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.”
That means God’s own Son and the Savior of the world is “into” you. And he’s “into” me. We cannot possibly hear better news this weekend.
One question remains: Are you “into” Jesus? Are you willing to entrust yourself, as best you can right now, to his grip?
His grip, it turns out, is the safest place in the universe.