Yesterday morning was spent sleeping for two hours after spending the night in the ER with our youngest child who had a medical emergency. You don’t want all the details, but if you’ve ever had a child brush death, you don’t need mine. You already know.
Overarching the entire event, I can see the finger of God pushing pieces into place even over the course of the last decade. The relationship with that child was strained at best, but in the last couple of months, she had decided to move closer in heart to me. Established in her mind was the reality that she can reach out to me any time. It had been true before, but it was clearly articulated in her mind. And she did.
With spending the night leaned over her gurney, trying to calm her, in the foggiest corners of my mind, I knew the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him who conducts the smallest instruments in the symphony that is my life. From entering the ER room and the doctor was a man who attends our church, to the result of texting our pastor at 1130 pm was that he decided to drive over to the hospital to sit with us for an hour (who knew that was comforting?!), to the freak presence of a dear friend who is a sheriff and he took time out of his day to pray for us. The nurse in ICU wasn’t just empathetic to the situation of having a wild horse for a child, she was sympathetic, spending at least 30 minutes hugging me and letting me cry, and confirming that I am a good mama.
As you can imagine, that is simply a sliver of all that God was actively doing to keep me aware of his presence. I am sure I have no idea all that God was doing to go before me and be behind me in this time of darkness.
What I do know, the eyes of my heart were once again enlightened that I might know the hope, and the greatness of his power toward me. Walking to the bathroom, away from the room where my daughter laid, I remember weeping and crying out to God, “I feel so alone!” Even with my beloved there (and believe me, he is my beloved and best friend), I felt utterly undocked and drifting on an inky black sea. I’ve had that conversation with my heavenly Daddy so many times in the tumult that is the world of being a parent. With no shame, I have that conversation. He already knows the level of my doubting heart, why hide it? Faithful to once again enlighten the eyes of my heart, he makes me to know him.
As I have been walking through this horror, I thought we could look together at this word know and see if there is more than meets the eye.
Why look up only one word? Good question. As I look at the text, it is the main point of Paul’s prayer. He wants the recipients to know some information. I’m also going right to the dictionaries without looking at context because this is such a common word and has so many different nuances to it. Intentionally, I want to understand how the scholars see this word in its particular context.
Speaking of context, let’s read a couple of surrounding verses.
17 that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of him, 18 having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, 19 and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe, according to the working of his great might
Ephesians 1:17–19 (ESV)
Here is a graphic from Logos Bible Software that helps us see how the word is used in the ESV.
As you can see, this word is used very frequently in the NT. Let’s investigate what the dictionaries have to say about this word and how Paul meant it.
First stop is TDNTA.
1. oída, which means “to know” and is more or less synonymous with ginṓskō, is often used in the NT in a general way, e.g., to know a person in Mk. 14:71, to be able to understand in Mt. 7:11, to apprehend in Eph. 1:18, and to recognize in 1 Th. 5:12.
Kittel, G., Friedrich, G., & Bromiley, G. W. (1985). Theological Dictionary of the New Testament (p. 673). Grand Rapids, MI: W.B. Eerdmans.
Conveniently, the entry included the reference for the passage we’re studying so we know that this resource defines the word know in Ephesians 1:18 as to apprehend.
Let’s check out what BDAG has to say.
④ to grasp the meaning of something, understand, recognize, come to know, experience…come to know what the hope is Eph 1:18.
Arndt, W., Danker, F. W., & Bauer, W. (2000). A Greek-English lexicon of the New Testament and other early Christian literature (3rd ed., p. 694). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Another definition that we can use to help us more fully understand the word is to grasp the meaning of something.
The last one we will peruse is Mounce’s.
Verb: οἶδα (oida), GK 3857 (S 1492), 318. oida is the most common word for “know, understand” in the NT. There is little difference between ginōskō (GK 1182) and oida in NT usage as they are often used synonymously and merely reflect the speaker’s preference for one word rather than the other (e.g., Mt 16:3 compared to Lk 12:56).
Mounce, W. D. (2006). Mounce’s Complete Expository Dictionary of Old & New Testament Words (p. 384). Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.
Mounce indicates that the there are two words that both commonly translate into the English word know and that the difference is really only the preference of the writer. What that tells us is that we don’t want to press the word too hard and add meaning to the word that the author didn’t intend.
Let’s list what we’ve gathered as the definition for this word.
- apprehend
- grasp the meaning of something
- understand
- recognize
- experience
As you can see, this list of synonymous terms helps to paint more of a 3-dimensional picture of what Paul was praying for us.
Wrapping up today’s Bite, I want us to learn to be able to identify the main point of a passage and make sure we understand that foremost. We looked at all of those cross references for different phrases in the last few Bites and that is important since they are the things Paul wanted us to know. But overarching, we want to know what it is to know.
Now that I’ve spent time studying the text, I can see that the phrase having the eyes of your hearts enlightened is in reality a parallel thought to that you may know. One defines the other. If I were going to “correct” my structural diagram, I think I would line those two phrases up as equals.
Next time we will apply this section of scripture. As you can tell from our conversation at the beginning, I will have a lot of application that is near to my soul from this passage. It’ll be a good time dwelling on the truth of God’s word.
