Τεκνία μὴ ἀγαπῶμεν λόγῳ μηδὲ τῇ γλώσσῃ (I John 3:18)

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Title: Children, We Should Not Love In Word and in Talk

The text is, “Τεκνία μὴ ἀγαπῶμεν λόγῳ μηδὲ τῇ γλώσσῃ ἀλλ’ ἐν ἔργῳ καὶ ἀληθείᾳ”.

Τεκνία -> neuter, plural, vocative noun → children

μὴ -> negative particle → not

ἀγαπῶμεν -> first person, plural, present, active, subjunctive verb → we should love

λόγῳ -> masculine, singular, dative noun → in word

μηδὲ -> coordinating disjunctive conjunction → and not

τῇ -> feminine, singular, dative article → the NRIEH

γλώσσῃ, -> feminine, singular, dative noun → in talk

ἀλλ’ -> coordinating adversative conjunction → but

ἐν -> preposition taking the dative for its object word → in

ἔργῳ -> neuter, singular, dative noun → deed

καὶ -> coordinating additive conjunction → and

ἀληθείᾳ -> feminine, singular, dative noun → in truth

The meaning of this verse is,

Children, we should not love in word and in talk, but in deed and in truth.

**NRIEH:  For the sake of clarity the word is translated into English, but to avoid such odd constructions as applying a definite article (“the”) to a substantive sufficiently determined by its being a proper noun, or by the use of a qualifier other than the definite article. An example would be the basic translation “Peter said to the Jesus”; the word “the” is completely unnecessary. There are many examples of this in the New Testament. The designation NRIEH is equivalent to “Not Rendered Into English Here”.

Τεκνία μὴ ἀγαπῶμεν λόγῳ μηδὲ τῇ γλώσσῃ (I John 3:18) by Dennis Glover is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.