Insights Into Bible Action Words
All languages have different ways of describing action. Greek action words (verbs) present actions different from those we are familiar with in English. For example: English discusses actions as past, present, or future, with some variety in each idea. Greek also discusses actions as past, present, or future, and also has some variety in each idea. The time and kind of action are called the “tense.”
The Present Tense
The Greek Present Tense is a current action, but it adds the implication of continuing activity. For example, in Matthew 7:7-8 the popular verses say, “Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.” (NIV) The action words ask, seek, and knock are present tense, implying that you keep asking, keep seeking, and keep knocking. It is a continuing activity.
We can represent this idea with a line drawing. Here, the line represents the action itself. The “x” indicates the position of the person seeing the action.
____x____ The Greek Present tense. The action started some unknown time ago and will continue for some unknown time into the future. A sentence example is “Tom is painting his house.” You see him with a brush, paint, and a ladder, but you don’t know how long he has been painting or when he will finish.
The Future Tense
The Greek Future Tense, like English, simply points to the future.
Here, the “x” indicates the position of the person seeing the action. and the line represents the action.
x_______ The Greek Future tense is like the English future tense. An example sentence of this is “Tom will paint his house.” In this case, you look forward to some time in the future when he will get around to painting his house. You don’t know exactly when, but you expect that it will happen.
The Past Tense
The Greek Past Tense is described in several different ways:
One form is called “Imperfect.” It points to a past time when the action was seen as continuing.
____x____ Here is a sentence example of how this works: “Tom was painting his house.” The action was going on some time in the past. Like the Present Tense, you saw him painting but don’t know when he started or when he will finish. However, last month, when you drove by, he was busy painting.
Another form is called “Aorist.” It sees the action as a single, whole completed act.
x This looks like “Tom painted his house.” You don’t know when he started or when he finished. All you know is that the whole job was finished when you thought about what he did. The paint and ladder were all put away, and everything was cleaned up. In the Imperfect tense, you saw him while he was painting, but in the Aorist tense, you saw the whole finished job.
Another form is called “Perfect.” It sees the action itself as completed in the past, but it also includes seeing the effects of that action as continuing up to the present time.
_ _ _ _x Here, the dashed line represents the results. While the “x” indicates the position of the person seeing the action. The perfect tense differs from the Aorist tense, because now you notice
a). The action of painting
b). The results that have continued up to the present time
This tense says, “Tom painted his house with results. The neighbors are happy, and his wife wants a celebration trip.” These results were also true in the Aorist tense, but if the Aorist tense is used, it means you did not pay attention to the results there.
The final form is called “Pluperfect.” It is like the Perfect tense, where the action completed in the past has continuing results, but stops looking at the results at some point in the past.
_ _ _ _ x This is best summarized in the sentence, “Tom painted his house with results. When you drove past his house two years ago, you noticed that he had finished painting, and the house looked so nice that you remember neighbors talking about it. It might be run down now or need work, but when you stopped looking at it two years ago, it was fine.”
Why You Need A Greek Analytical Lexicon
To best use these concepts anywhere in the Greek New Testament, you need a Greek Analytical Lexicon. It will identify the tense of any verb in the Greek New Testament. Let’s look at a few together:
John 2:23 “Now while he was (Imperfect) in Jerusalem at the Passover Feast, many people saw (Present) the miraculous signs he was doing (Imperfect) and believed (Aorist) in his name.”
Notice the Aorist “believed;” i.e., they did a whole deed; made a whole commitment to him. This is the same decision the disciples made earlier. John 2:11, “This was the first of his miraculous signs Jesus performed at Cana in Galilee. He thus revealed his glory and his disciples put their trust (i.e., believed, Aorist) in him.”
John 3:16 “For God so loved (Aorist) the world that he gave (Aorist) his one and only Son, that whoever believes (Present) in him shall not perish (Aorist subjunctive “might not perish) but have (Present subjunctive, “might have”) eternal life.”
John 1:12 “Yet to all who received (Aorist) him, to those who believed (Present) in his name, he gave (Aorist) the right to become (Aorist) children of God.”
Contrast the word “believe” in John 1:12 and 3:16 with its tense in John 2:11 and 2:23 of a whole act, a full commitment, a conversion decision. John 1:12 and 3:16 are a continuing act of trusting, not a verse about conversion, as some people say.
Now contrast these with the tense idea of “believe” in John 6:68–69. “Simon Peter answered (Aorist) him, ‘Lord, to whom shall we go (Future)? You have (Present) the words of eternal life. We believe (Perfect) and know (Perfect) that you are (Present) the Holy One of God.’” We might describe Peter’s words about believing this way: “We made a past decision to trust to you, and have been living up to the present time in the continuing effects of that previous commitment.”
Notice the big shift from John 3:16 as John 3:18 uses a Perfect tense. “Whoever believes (Present) in him is not condemned (Present), but whoever does not believe (Present) stands condemned (Perfect) already because he has not believed (Perfect) in the name of God’s one and only Son.”