Matt Jones' Random Acts of Verbiage

This is our “reading week” at Regent and it has been a mix of studying lots of Greek, reading, hanging out with friends in Seattle, and visiting with family in south Washington, oh and of course moving a bunch of my boxes from Seattle to my parents’ house in Bonney Lake. And its only Wednesday! Still lots more to come. This is why I haven’t updated and may not again until early (?) next week. Sorry!

I have been meaning to post this for quite a while and figured I might as well do it now as I have been going over a bunch of Greek for a midterm. This “Exegetical Insight” is largely from William Mounce’s Basics of Biblical Greek (Second Edition from Zondervan Publishing, 2003).

Greek is a difficult language. I am learning Koine (which means “common”) Greek, which isn’t even the most difficult Greek, but hard enough for me. (I am hoping for a B in the class!) There are 6 different tenses in Koine as opposed to our three in English (past, present, and future). One of the tenses that is very difficult to directly translate is the “Perfect” tense. The perfect tense

describes an action that was brought to completion and whose effects are felt in the present. (225)

One thing to note here, “present” means for the writer of the text and not necessarily for the reader (although could be). Mounce has a very nice insight in his text that I would like to quote (224):

It is often the very first and the very last thing we say that is the most important, or the statement that is the most memorable. First impressions and last impressions are the lasting impressions. The same is true for Jesus. The first statement we hear him say is that he should be in his Father’s house (Luke 2.49). Even at the age of twelve, he was aware of his divine lineage.

And as he hung on the cross, having lived a sinless life, having paid the penalty for your sins and mine, Jesus uttered his last words before dying. Τετέλεσται (tetelestai) “It is finished” (John 19.30). This one word summary of Jesus’ life and death is perhaps the single most important statement in all of Scripture. The word means “to complete,” “to bring to perfection.” Jesus had fully done the work God the Father sent him to do. Paul spends Romans 5 discussing this very fact, that our salvation is sure because Christ’s death totally defeated the effects of Adam’s sin, completely.

But the tense of the verb, the “perfect” tense, brings out even more of what Jesus was saying. The perfect describes an action that was fully completed and has consequences at the time of speaking. Jesus could have used the aorist, ετελέσθη (etelestha), and simply said, “The work is done.” But there is more, there is hope for you and for me. Because Jesus fully completed his task, the ongoing effects are that you are I are offered the free gift of salvation so that we can be with him forever. Praise the Lord. Τετέλεσται

How cool is that? Something is really lost just reading the English.

Romans 5:1-11 (NRSV)

(5.1) Therefore, since we are justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, (2) through whom we have obtained access to this grace in which we stand; and we boast in our hope of sharing the glory of God. (3) And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, (4) and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, (5) and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.

(6) For while we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. (7) Indeed, rarely will anyone die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person someone might actually dare to die. (8) But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us. (9) Much more surely then, now that we have been justified by his blood, will we be saved through him from the wrath of God. (10) For if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, much more surely, having been reconciled, will we be saved by his life. (11) But more than that, we even boast in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have now received reconciliation.

Now go read the rest of Romans 5, its all good stuff. Sit and meditate of this stuff.

Christ’s work truly was completed. It wasn’t simply a statement that Jesus thought he was about to die and his life was over, it was so much more than that. That completion has brought us into something very large. God has called us into something that we could never do on our own. He died for us, was battered for us, was a servant to us. It makes sense that we should live our lives for him.

(5.3) And not only that, but we also boast in our sufferings, knowing that suffering produces endurance, (4) and endurance produces character, and character produces hope, (5) and hope does not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured into our hearts through the Holy Spirit that has been given to us.

Can I boast in my sufferings? I fail at this miserably. I am too self-centered to see the larger story that Christ has called us into. 1 Peter 2.24,25 says this:

He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds you have been healed. For you were straying like sheep, but have now returned to the Shepherd and Guardian of your souls.

That is very comforting and challenging and convicting. Because it has been completed in Christ, we have returned to the Guardian of our souls. His wounds saved us, not anything we could ever hope to do. We own him our lives and our daily walk and actions should reflect that.

God bless, and remember,
Τετέλεσται

[UPDATE: The original post and comments are no longer available. Sorry!]