Posts Tagged: the perfect tense in Greek

“THE GLORIOUS PERFECT TENSE IN GREEK”

On October 18, 2018 by Dteb With 0 Comments - down to earth believer

Sometimes, biblical scholarship seems like a huge waste of time.  However, . . .

Here is an e mail from me to one of my online students, who is taking a course on electronic tools for the study of the Bible.  He was saying in his e mail to me how much he was looking forward to learning a bit more about Hebrew and Greek.

Here is my reply:

“I am debating how much to go into the Hebrew and Greek, even though I can function and teach in both fairly well.  However, I think that it is difficult to teach biblical languages remotely.  Not impossible, but difficult.

However, in order to understand what is going on in Accordance, we do need some facility with Greek and Hebrew.

For example, a frequent nuance of the Greek perfect tense is that it suggests action completed in the past, but with ongoing results.

So, if you hover over a Greek word in Accordance (or a tagged word in translation), and you see that it is a “perf.” verb, you need to know what that suggests.  Otherwise, it’s just an irrelevant factoid.

A good example is Romans 5:2:

“Through him [i.e., through Christ] we have also obtained access by faith into this grace in which we stand, and we rejoice in hope of the glory of God.”

I have bolded two words that are in the perfect tense in this verse.  So what difference does that fact make?

A lot!

What this verse is saying is that we have already obtained (action completed in the past, but with ongoing results) access by faith into the grace of God in Christ.  Not only our obtaining access has been completed in the past, but with ongoing results, but also, we have stood in the past and will continue to stand in this grace.

Now that will preach!”

But the first person I need to preach to is myself.  Here is the truth: I struggle virtually every day with a feeling that I do not stand in grace, that I do not even have access to that grace.

So, I have a choice.  I can either believe me, or I can believe God.  Think I’ll try trusting God’s Word.  After all, I’ve tried trusted myself plenty, and it has rarely worked out well.

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