Endeavor to present yourself approved to God, an unashamed worker, cutting straight the word of truth." Greek translation

In order to obtain the clearest interpretation of scripture, it is important to examine the passages in light of it's historical setting, it's context and very importantly it's grammar.  The entire New Testament was originally written in Greek and later translated into many other languages. Ever heard the term "that's Greek to me"?  A slogan which  implies something that is hard to understand.  The Greek language is very comprehensive  in comparison to the English language.  An example is the word love.  In English there is only one word used, where as  in Greek, there are four: agape-God's divine love, storge-familial love, philia-brotherly/friends love and eros which is sexual love. Though the language is more extensive than English, it is very concise.
 

Many words, phrases, and paragraphs in the New Testament cannot adequately be known without some knowledge of Koine (biblical) Greek. Once a person knows the form of a word, (for example that a particular verb is present tense, active voice, and indicative mood), then they can have a much better understanding of the original meaning and know what the Holy Spirit was conveying through .New Testament writers .

In the English language, the function that a noun performs is based upon its position in the sentence. Consider the following verse from Romans 16:20, "But the God of peace will crush Satan under your feet shortly." As a reader of English, one has no problem in quickly discerning who is the subject of the sentence (the one doing the crushing) and what is the direct object of the verb (the one being crushed).

Because the noun "God" comes before the verb "will crush", the English reader sees "God" as the subject of the sentence, the performer of the verb's action. The noun "Satan" comes after the verb and is thus considered the recipient of the verb's action.

However, consider the meaning of the sentence if the words of this verse were put in the following order: "But Satan shortly under your feet will crush the God of peace." Consider the reason why one would call this perversion a blasphemy. All the same words are in this sentence, but their positions have been rearranged. Since the order of the words have changed, the reader of English understands that their role in the sentence has also changed. This example clearly illustrates how important "word order" is in the English language.

The Greek language, however, operates altogether differently. It is what is called a fully "inflected language." Inflection is the changing of a word's form. The change is based upon the role that word plays in the sentence.

Each Greek word actually changes form (inflection) based upon the role that it plays in the sentence. Verbs also inflect (change forms) to indicate things such as person , tense, mood, etc. Regardless of the order of the words in Romans 16:20, the reader of Greek would still be perfectly clear as to the fate of God's enemy and would not in the least be concerned about the possible demise of the God of peace. Thus it is important to understand what the case of each Greek noun indicates and what the form of every Greek verb is implying.

Here is a quick Greek reference guide.

For a more comprehensive study of the Greek language and it's usage in the Bible,  see link below.

www.ntgreek.org

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