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One of the subtle clues Greek gives to its readers is how it views a series of words. For example, Jesus says to the Samaritan woman at the well, that "an hour is coming and now is when true worshipers will worship the father in spirit and truth." One of the exegetical debates of this verse surrounds the identity of the series of two words, "spirit" and "truth."

But here is where the Greek holds a hint that cannot be easily conveyed in English. There is only one preposition, "in" (en). This is Greek's way of telling the reader that the two objects of the preposition, "spirit" and "truth," are to be viewed as a unit, not two separate entities.

But how close a unit? Again we are reminded that Greek grammar does not often settle an exegetical issue, but rather shows us the range of possible meaning. What settles the issue is, as always, context. "Context is king."

“Grace, mercy, and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord” (1 Tim 1:2). Paul begins his letter to Timothy with a somewhat normal greeting, and yet sometimes familiarity can hide significant truths from English eyes.

One of the joys of Greek is in seeing the nuances of grammatical constructions. Albeit, it can take some time in the language to develop this level of sensitivity, but that’s the joy of the journey.

In this verse, there is one preposition (“from,” apo) that governs two objects (“God” and “Christ Jesus”). Grammatically, this means that Paul is in some way thinking of the two objects as acting in unison, as one. If “God” and “Jesus” were two distinctly different entities, normal Greek grammar would require the preposition to be repeated (“from God and from Jesus”). But the single preposition means that the two objects are to be seen as a single entity.