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THE BREAD THAT GIVES LIFE |
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By Rev. John Gryparis Retired Church of God Pastor
Currently worshipping at Sunny Place Church of God, Addison, IL Email: jgryparis@hotmail.com. |
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As far back as I remember I had memorized the Lord’s Prayer in my native tongue, the language of the New Testament: the common (koine) Greek language of the time of Jesus. As I grew up and spent many years studying the Bible in my adopted language of English, I observed that the Lord’s Prayer in all the English versions of the Bible is the same, except they all differ in one point from the Greek text: the 27th edition of Nestle-Aland Greek New Testament. This discrepancy in the interpretation from the original text is found in Matthew 6:11, 12, where in response to a question from His disciples, Jesus is teaching them how to pray: “Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our debts . . .” (Matt. 6:11, 12).
For a long time, whenever I read or heard this prayer recited, I wondered why the English versions had the words “day” and “daily” in the text, while in the original, “day” appears only once. The word daily in the English text is a translation of the Greek word, epiousion, which in the original language means something altogether different, and I will address that meaning shortly.
The other difficulty was that praying for our daily food is contradictory to Jesus’ instructions, “Do not be anxious about your life, what you shall eat?” and, “Be not therefore anxious, saying, What shall we eat . . . or, What shall we drink?” (Matt. 6:25, 31). In the Gospel of Luke we also read, “Therefore I say unto you, Be not anxious for your life, what ye shall eat . . . And do not ask what you should eat or what you should drink” (Luke 12:22, 29).
In my mind and heart I could not accept that the most fundamental prayer that ever came from the lips of our Lord was not in complete harmony with His instructions elsewhere in scripture. After many years of patiently waiting, the answer came from the Bible itself. While teaching a Sunday School class from the book of Job, I encountered the very word ousia that had been a puzzle to me for all this time. In Job 30:22 the sufferer, in speaking to God, says: “Thou liftest me up to the wind; thou causest me to ride upon it, and dissolvest my substance [ousia]” (KJV). In this passage, when Job says, “You lifted me, You caused me, and dissolved my substance [ousia in Greek text]”, he is speaking of the trials and troubles in his life, not his “daily bread.”
Grammatically, epiousion is the composition of the preposition epi, and the genitive of the word ousia. According to the Greek Lexicon by Henry G. Liddell and Robert Scott published in 1914, both Plato and Aristotle used the word ousia to describe “the true nature of something” and “that which really is.” Searching the various dictionaries we find that over the ages, ousia meant: “essence, substance, life, that which is proper for our life,” while Origen interprets it to mean “necessary for existence.” The Lord’s Prayer is not about the needs of our temporary body, for Jesus assured us that “your Father knows what you need, before you ask Him” (Matt. 6:8).
What we are to pray for is the bread for our true nature, the bread that gives life to our real self, our immortal spirit. “I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger,” Jesus declared (John 6:35). In the Lord’s Prayer we are asking the Father to “Give us this day the bread of life (Jesus), and let go (forgive) us our debts” (6:11, 12). This rendering reflects the Greek text, and far more importantly, is in harmony with Jesus’ commandment, “Do not ask what ye shall eat . . . ,” and makes a lot more sense from a Biblical perspective. I pray and hope that as you contemplate this rendering of the Lord’s Prayer, the Holy Spirit will lead you to truth.
It is my belief that it is only a matter of time before God will inspire some Biblical scholars to reflect this fundamental truth in the Lord’s Prayer in an English translation of the Bible. This ought to help disarm the enemies and detractors of the Bible by removing at least one apparent inconsistency in the infallible Word of God.
The word “forgive (synhoresi)” is not found in the Bible, not even one time. The Bible uses active verbs (some are listed below) to describe the effect Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross had, since “our old self was crucified with Him, in order that our body of sin might be done away with, so that we would no longer be slaves to sin” (Rom 6:6).1. afino, let go; remission; 2. elefterono, to set free; 3. katharizo, to clean; 4. exalifo, wipe out; blot out; 5. apolitrosi, redeem.
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