A New Testament Verb You Are Being Asked to Disbelieve

Okay, really quick screen flow video here. I shared this with the Bible say class this morning. Wanted to share it with you all here on the Lord's day. Gotta be really quick because I gotta get to church and I gotta leave in 16 minutes.

The Imperfect Verb in 1 Corinthians 6:11

So, gotta do this quick. Wanted to show you a Greek verb that the world this week will tell you not to believe. How's that? Yep, there's a Greek verb. Let me show it to you here. Let's take a look at this image right here.

This is Codex Alexandrinus. I'm going to zoom in right here. And there it is right there. Eta. See that? Those three letters there, eta. The world is going to tell you this week not to believe that that's true.

Now, what am I talking about here? Well, and such, and then you've got t and then tinnis, were, such were, eta, imperfect of I, me, some of you. Then you have but. You were washed, you were justified.

What you're looking at here in this ancient manuscript of 1 Corinthians chapter six, verse 11 is the imperfect form of I, me that says such were some of you. Such were some of you. So let's take a look at it here.

In the main text here, we'll close this out so we can get it a little bit larger here. Close out the reference tools too and blow it up real quick here. There's the word right there, eta. And such were some of you, were.

Paul’s Warning Against Sexual Sin and Deception

What's this talking about? Well, you scroll back here and it's a list of behaviors and lifestyles that Paul says at the beginning of verse one. Or do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God?

Then he says, do not be planaste, do not be deceived. Then he has the whole list and includes these phrases right here. Uta malakoi, uta arsenokoitai. I think the ESV nails it here because it recognizes malakoi, which is normally translated effeminate and arsenokoitai is what men do with men in bed.

These two phrases are catching all of the homosexual relationship, the dominant and the submissive. And so the ESV simply has men who practice homosexuality, puts the two of them together. And I think that's exactly right.

And so now you see what the issue is here because what we're being told by many people, even in what used to be called evangelicalism today is that that should be a present tense and such are some of you.

That shouldn't be eta, which is imperfect active. It should be este, which is the present active indicative form. That's what we're being told. Now, there are two 12th century manuscripts of all the manuscripts of first Corinthians.

There are two 12th century manuscripts that have a text of varying here. None of them have the present. For some reason, a scribe was confused and put the optative, which really doesn't make any sense here whatsoever.

But every other manuscript, they all read the same way. In fact, it's so unanimous that the major critical texts don't even list that textual variant. It's in the CNTTS apparatus, but no place else. So there's no question about what Paul wrote.

He says, such were some of you, then he uses Allah, but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ and the spirit of our God. And obviously what all of us are facing today is a culture that is saying, you cannot believe that.

You cannot believe that's from God. We say otherwise, now they won't. Claim divine authority, but they'll claim cultural authority. And so there you have a single verb and you're being told to stop believing it.

Rejecting Cultural Pressure and Trusting Divine Revelation

And the question for all of us Christians is how many of these verbs can we stop believing? Does it really matter? I mean, the difference between esta and eta, it's so little, just like the difference between homoousios and homoiousios.

Homoousios means Jesus is truly God, homoiousios means he isn't. Or it's just like when Jesus said, egoaim, I am, and the Jews pick up stones to stone him. What if he just changed the tense and made himself just preexistent, but not really Yahweh.

You see, you can't pick and choose what you are and are not going to believe in divine revelation. And the world is telling us you need to reject what the scriptures teach. We need to start telling people that that's what they're doing, that they are specifically telling us to stop following the commands of Jesus Christ.

At least that will put the conversation on an even footing. So there you go. There's the word that you're being told to not believe. I pray that I will believe it this week, that I'll believe all these God-breathed words, and I pray you will as well.

Thanks for watching.