Think Wink.

We have been studying in recent weeks the Greek behind Jesus famous words in John 3:16 and I have been offering a new translation based on these findings. Our new translation goes like this, “Thus in this manner God loved the world that he gave his one and only Son…” Today I want to focus on the ESV’s translation of “that whoever believes in him.” The final and fifth post on this verse will focus on “should not perish but have eternal life.” The Greek text behind our five English words is: hina pan ho pisteuon eis autov. So lets go.

The Greek word hina. It is a Greek conjunction whose primary function is to link two ideas together. It literally means “that, in order that, so that.” Most translations that I looked at go with either “that” or “so that.” It indicates the purpose of the idea previously mentioned. One translation, the World Wide English (New Testament), goes like this, “Because he did that…” So what we are seeing in Jesus’ words–and I often forget that these are Jesus words and not someone else’s–is the purpose behind the giving of the Son: those who believe in the Son will not perish but have eternal life. Hina is pointing to the purpose of God’s sacrificing Jesus, the purpose of Jesus’ coming to earth and die on the cross and be raised on the third day. We see the purpose here.

The next Greek word is one of the most controversial words in all of the New Testament in terms of Calvinism vs. Arminianism. The word is pan. It is a singular nominative masculine adjective. It literally means for individuals “each, any, all, every, everyone, all things, the whole, everything.” For a corporate entity it means “some of all types.” The reason why I define it like that is because when I say “all”, I don’t literally mean every single human being. For example, I might say something like, “Everyone’s doing it.” I don’t mean everyone in the whole world, but a good portion of people are. But that is only if the term is plural or corporate. Here the term is singular. Thus each individual is in the mind of Jesus’ words. So Jesus is speaking of every individual or “everyone.”

The next words are ho pisteuon. Ho is a singular nominative masculine article. It can be translated as “the, that” this.” Pisteuon is a present active participle, a verbal noun. It comes from the verb, pisteuo which means “to trust in or believe in or to be convinced of.” But here it is used as a noun, the article is the give away. The noun is masculine singular nominative (like pan and ho). So I think that the best way to translate this is “the believing” but that is kinda rough. I will update that in the final paragraph. But something worthy of note. The verb is present tense. That means it is something we do right now and never stop. It is a continuous verb. Faith is not something we do once and stop. It is a continual process, a life time of trusting Christ.

The final words are eis auton. Eis is a preposistion which identifies the relationship of believing and him. Here it is translated as “in” and most translations follow this. However, this is a little misleading. Eis does not literally mean “in” but “into.” Jesus literally means “Believe into me” or “Believe into the Son of Man/God” or “Believe into God.” The idea here is that Jesus is an entry point in which we walk “into.” Then we are “in” or inside that room, which is the Greek word en. I make this distinction to say that when one talks about being en Christ, it is our union with Christ and the blessings that go with that. When one talks about being eis Christ, it is talking about our faith and trust in Christ which unites us to him and not our actual union. Eis talks about joining with Christ but en talks about being joined with Christ. Auton is a Greek pronoun. Here it is singular accusative masculine. It literally means “he” in the masculine; in the accusative it means “him.” The “him” here is the same as in John 3:14-15, “And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.” Jesus is referring to himself here in John 3:14-15 and I think that this continues in John 3:16. So even though the text says “him” it means “Christ Jesus.”

Thus I continue the translation like this, “Thus in this manner God loved the world that he gave his one and only Son so that everyone that is believing in him…” I added the word “is” and changed “the” to “that” to keep the verbal noun intact with English syntax. But what we see that is so crucial in this text is that faith is of the utmost key to the whole gospel for man. For God the utmost crucial key is love and giving. At the center of it all is Jesus crucified and raised. We must keep that at the center and focus of all of our preaching and teaching, Christ crucified and raised.

James White on John 3:16-17

πᾶς ὁ πιστεύων

John 3:16 Part 2