| The Spirit of God has carefully chosen specific words to declare and describe His great salvation (Psalm 12:6). God's words are powerful, living and life-giving (Hebrews 4:10; John 5:24; 6:23; 8:30-32 cp. Job 23:12; Psalm 119:103; Jeremiah 15:16).
God's vocabulary includes some difficult and unfamiliar words. However, we cannot just skip over them or substitute them with other words that are not accurate. As with our look at the "Selected Scriptures for Example," care and attention (i.e. hard work) is required to understand the meanings of words in the context of the Scripture in which they appear – and then to compare Scripture with Scripture (Isaiah 28:9-10; II Timothy 2:14-17; II Peter 3:15-16). Good Bible dictionaries, that give definitions of the words in their original language, and give the Scripture locations, are needed to acquire proper understanding.
To get started, here is a list of recommended sources:
Strong's Exhaustive Concordance,
Vine's Complete Expository Dictionary,
Wilson's Old Testament Word Studies,
Unger's Bible Dictionary,
Baker's Dictionary of Theology,
The Interlinear Bible (J. P. Green, Sr.), and
The MacArthur Study Bible.
Two other challenging books are by J. I. Packer: Knowing God and God Has Spoken.
Here is a list of important words to study and understand how God uses them:
Names of God (The Lord, The LORD, Jehovah)
Scripture, Revelation, Inspiration, Law
The World
Sin, Sins Remission Satan, The Devil
Salvation, Judgment Grace, Mercy, Propitiation
Faith, Believe
Justification, Justify, Righteous
Redemption, Redeem
Reconciliation, Reconcile
Regeneration
Sanctification, Sanctify
Holy, Holiness
Mortification, Mortify
Fellowship, Communion
Death, Hell, Lake of Fire
More Scripture to encourage you: Psalm 56:4,10 cp. 138:2; Proverbs 1:5 cp. Psalm 1:1-3; Isaiah 50:4; Proverbs 2:1-22; Isaiah 55:6-11; Amos 8:11.
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