What is a nation?
“Nation” is a common enough word in everyday speech. You hear it on the news, out of the mouths of politicians, you read it in books of history, or even fantasy. If I simply say to you the word “nation”, you probably picture your particular nation in your mind. If I present to you “nation” as a category and ask you to provide me with a list of particular entities that fit into the broader category of nation, this would not be an arduous task. You would start rattling off, “America, England, Brazil, China, Israel, Russia etc.” On the other side of things, if I were to ask you for a list of things that did not fit in this category, this would be pretty easy as well. Perhaps you wonder why I'd issue such a strange challenge, but you could easily think, “oh, well, cats, sandwiches, rocks, books,” and on and on you could go. You know, intuitively, what things are nations and what things aren’t. However, if I simply ask for a definition of a nation, you might struggle. Nations are something you recognize well. You function every day with the assumption of their existence, but what is it in particular that makes a nation a nation?
In modern parlance, the term is typically used of to refer to a political society, with some kind of governmental structure. Think, nation-state. But the term nation, as it was originally used and stemming from the Latin nationem originally referred to “a race of people… with common ancestry and language”1 The Greek term (usually) translated as nation in the New Testament is ἔθνος (ethnos), from which we get ethnicity, which carries this same idea. “A body of persons united by kinship, culture, and common traditions, nation, people.”2 Put simply, nations are distinct people groups. Throughout this piece, the terms nation, race, ethnicity and peoples will be used interchangeably.
The topic of differing nations, and various races of people, distinct ethnē is one that seems to be very polarizing and divisive in our time. It is an obvious reality that racial prejudice has existed and persists in the modern day. We have witnessed the critical theorists who make almost an ideology out of race, seeing it as the driving force behind every conceivable injustice in society. As a reaction to that, you have people who are so opposed (rightly; I think) to critical race theory, that they go so far the other direction as to essentially deny that varying races do truly exist.
What is the proper attitude of the Christian? How is he to navigate this topic from a Scriptural worldview? One of the things that I believe is absolutely key is to recognize what the Bible teaches about the history of the nations, as well as what the Bible has to say concerning the future of the nations.
Genesis 1-11
I heard Ken Ham say once that the key to answering most social issues in our day is to go back to the first 11 chapters of Genesis. Well, he would be proud, as in our present study we are going to go back to the beginning, to the origin of nations as well as man himself, where we will observe where the nations came from before we see, more clearly, God’s purposes in them.
On the sixth day of creation, God made man. “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth” (Genesis 1:26). Although all of God’s creation was good, it was an only man that was made in His likeness. It was only after creating man that He rested on the seventh day. It is clear from the Biblical account of origins that man takes a sort of preeminence in the created realm. He holds a special place, in relation to the Lord, when compared to all other created things.
Genesis 2 gives us a closer look at man’s creation, we see that “the LORD God formed man of dust from the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living creature” (Genesis 2:7). God determines it is not good for man to be alone, and so decides to create a “helper fit for him”, and thus the first woman is created (Genesis 2:18-22). When we read about man being alone, we know that there were already all kinds of different animals in the garden he was to tend to and interact with, and so his being alone can only be interpreted as there being no other humans prior to the creation of the woman. This is a point that is obvious enough (to orthodox Christians, anyway), but I believe it is crucial to our understanding of the varying races/nations we will observe throughout the rest of history. That all nations, all peoples, initially stem from these two. Distinct people groups were not a part of the unblemished, undefiled creation of God. Does this mean that to have varying nations is wrong or immoral? Of course not! Eating meat was not a practice in the garden, either, and yet the rest of the Bible shows us how God can bless the eating of meat. What this tells us, however, is that distinct nations are not a necessary part of the way the universe will operate.
Another thing we observe from this is that there is a certain commonality amongst all peoples. The Apostle Paul will later recognize this in the seventeenth chapter of Acts. When he addresses the Areopagus, he says, “And [God] made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him” (Acts 17:26-27). This passage will be revisited later, but for now it’s important to note that, contextually, what Paul is discussing before the Areopagus is what all men, Jew and Gentile alike, hold in common—specifically, that they are God’s offspring (in the sense of creation, Acts 17:28-29) and that they are called upon to repent (Acts 17:30). The source of this commonality is stated by the Apostle Paul in recognizing that all these varying people groups stemmed from Adam.
Going back to Genesis, we observe the sin of Adam, which holds all of his offspring in sin, the rebellious disobedience against God as he and his wife eat of the forbidden tree, having been deceived by the serpent. At this point in time, God makes a prophetic proclamation against the serpent, which will serve as the backdrop for the rest of human history, and hence, everything we will discuss in this article. “The LORD God said to the serpent, ‘Because you have done this, cursed are you above all livestock and above all beasts of the field; on your belly you shall go, and dust you shall eat all the days of your life. I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel’” (Genesis 3:14-15). What we see happening after this is a spiraling descent into moral decay and lawlessness.
Genesis 4 tells us of Cain’s jealous slaying of his brother Abel, which will serve as the origin of the many wars the nations of the earth will fight against one another. Genesis 6 describes unlawful and unholy sexual unions, which God judges by destroying all the people of the earth in a flood. He spares Noah and his family, from whom all peoples will now derive from. Yet, after the flood subsides, wickedness is found in Noah’s family. Finally, the height of man’s hubris and rebellion is seen in chapter 11. The relevant passage will be produced in full here:
“Now the whole earth had one language and the same words. And as people migrated from the east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. And they said to one another, ‘Come, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly.’ And they had brick for stone, and bitumen for mortar. Then they said, ‘Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth.’ And the Lord came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of man had built. And the Lord said, ‘Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do. And nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and there confuse their language, so that they may not understand one another’s speech.’ So the Lord dispersed them from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city. Therefore its name was called Babel, because there the Lord confused the language of all the earth. And from there the Lord dispersed them over the face of all the earth.” - Genesis 11:1–9 (ESV)
Notice what we read in verse 1, “the whole earth had one language and the same words.” We see that a common language is essential to what constitutes a people to be a people, as verse 6 affirms, “they are one people.” Remember that this is a fruit of how God created man. He brought all men from one man, Adam. This was God’s original creation. There was nothing morally wrong with this. As we have observed, varying distinct nations, while not sinful, are not necessary.
What God brings judgement upon, then, is not the fact that all the people shared a common tongue. What God was judging was what corrupt man was doing with this one common tongue, which otherwise was a blessing from God. In verse 4, we read that these sinful men were attempting to build, for themselves, a city and “a tower with its top in the heavens”. The fruit of this would be that they would “make a great name” for themselves, and that they would not be “dispersed over the face of the whole earth”. Fundamentally, this is the sin of pride.
What man is attempting to do here is create an artificial immortality. Thinking they could so work to preserve themselves, that no force could ever disperse them. We see God is greatly displeased with this undertaking. He shows how powerless man is compared to Him, as He goes down and confuses their language and dispersed the people over all the face of the earth. It is at this moment in history that the nations, as we know them today, are born.
Something very important should be learned from this, that I think is far too overlooked in our present day. The existence of the varying nations came as a result—not of God’s blessing, but of God’s cursing. It is the result of God’s judgement that we have varying races upon the earth. Again, this does not entail that distinct nations are wrong, nor does it mean that an affection for one’s kin or culture is wrong. What it does mean is that affection for one’s nation must be tempered. It is possible to go overboard in a love for one’s nation. One example would be loving the nation above the church. Another would be loving one’s nation so much that you hate other nations.
I also want you to remember what caused the dispersing of the nations. It was man’s sin. Remember that prophetic warning back in Geneses 3, when the Lord says He would put enmity between the offspring of the serpent and the offspring of man? You see that in Genesis 11, it is children of the devil who have worked (unwittingly) to bring about the existence of many nations, and at this point in world history, it is the devil himself who holds sway over these nations.
What we will next see, in the story of redemption, is that while the nations are brought about as the result of God’s judgement, He has a plan and a purpose to redeem these nations.
The Call of Abram
After telling us of the dispersion of the peoples, Genesis 11 ends with a genealogy. Of all the races, there is one line of people in particular that the Holy Spirit focuses in on, and the narrative of the book of Genesis begins when we get to a man named Abram.
After reading the origin of the many nations, we see God has a plan in establishing one nation in particular.
“Now the Lord said to Abram, ‘Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you. And I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.’” - Genesis 12:1–3 (ESV)
We see though Abram is to be the father of one nation in particular, a great nation, that all the families of the earth would be blessed in him. In verse 7, the Lord promises to give Abram’s offspring a particular piece of land from the river of Egypt to the Euphrates (see Genesis 15:18). From this, we gather a nation is typically associated with a specific section of land. The land will remain significant for the rest of the Old Testament narrative. When the people of Israel are brought into exile in Babylon, there is great sorrow in their hearts to be in “a strange land” (Psalm 137).
In Genesis 17, the covenant the Lord makes with Abram is further solidified with the addition of circumcision. And while we are told that Abram was to be the father of one great nation in particular, in Genesis 17:4 the Lord promises Abram will father a multitude of nations.
“Behold, my covenant is with you, and you shall be the father of a multitude of nations. No longer shall your name be called Abram, but your name shall be Abraham, for I have made you the father of a multitude of nations. I will make you exceedingly fruitful, and I will make you into nations, and kings shall come from you. And I will establish my covenant between me and you and your offspring after you throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your offspring after you. And I will give to you and to your offspring after you the land of your sojournings, all the land of Canaan, for an everlasting possession, and I will be their God.” - Genesis 17:4–8 (ESV)
In verse 8, it is reaffirmed that there is a particular land Abraham’s descendants would dwell in, which would entail a particular nation, and yet he is promised to be the father of a multitude of nations. Genesis 12:3 had earlier promised that all the families of the earth would be blessed in Abraham, and so how do we put all these things together? The answer to that will come many years later, as a child is born in Bethlehem.
The rest of the book of Genesis narrates the patriarchs of the nation of Israel. In the other books of Moses, the Torah, we learn more about the nation of Israel’s role in history, especially that it is a particularly chosen and blessed people. Israel was to be a nation that all other nations would look to and praise for its wisdom and understanding (Deuteronomy 4:6). Ultimately, this blessing was a result of God’s unmerited favor, rather than anything intrinsically valuable to the Israelite race.
“For you are a people holy to the Lord your God. The Lord your God has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession, out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth. It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the Lord set his love on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples, but it is because the Lord loves you and is keeping the oath that he swore to your fathers, that the Lord has brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt.” - Deuteronomy 7:6–8 (ESV)
We see here that the nation of Israel, and the Israelite people have a peculiar place amongst all nations, yet it is not because of anything worthy in them, it is solely on the basis of the covenant keeping God’s promise to Abraham. When one reads the rest of the story of the Bible, he discovers time and time again just how unworthy of God’s blessing the Jewish people are. Well, if the race chosen by God for His own possession is not intrinsically more valuable than any other race, than people of all races should recognize that there is no race of people more valuable than any other. Thus, even in the particularity of the Israelite nation, we learn about the commonality of all peoples.
When the World Changed
We are approaching the Christmas season as I am writing this, and it is often forgotten (even by Christians) that the world fundamentally changed with the birth of Jesus Christ.
The narrative of the birth of Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew reveals some incredible details about the purpose of Christ’s having come into the world. One particularly beautiful piece of typological fulfillment is in chapter 2, when we read about Joseph and Mary’s journey to Egypt, after Herod plots to kill the small child. Matthew says that this brief detour was “to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet, ‘Out of Egypt I called my son’” (Matthew 2:15). This is a citation of the prophet Hosea, where he recalls Israel’s having been called out of the land of Egypt. We start to see that Jesus Christ Himself is the fulfillment of God’s purposes in the nation of Israel. Jesus is called “the King of the Jews” (Matthew 2:2).
In the time of Jesus’ maturity, we read of Him going out to the wilderness to be tempted by the devil (Matthew 4). One particular scheme of the devil’s sticks out for our present purposes.
“Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their glory. And he said to him, ‘All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.’ Then Jesus said to him, ‘Be gone, Satan! For it is written, ‘You shall worship the Lord your God and him only shall you serve.’” - Matthew 4:8–10 (ESV)
Jesus is shown all the kingdoms, or nations, of the earth and is offered them on the condition that He would serve Satan. Obviously, Jesus refuses to do so, but we learn an important detail here about the historical reality of the nations—that at least until this point, they were under the dominion of the devil. Remember back to God’s warning in the garden concerning the relationship between the serpent and the seed of the woman? God has promised that the seed of the woman would crush the head of the serpent. 1 John 3:8 says that “The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil”.
For many generations, Satan ruled the kingdoms of the earth, but at the advent of the Son of God’s incarnation, his kingdom begins to crumble.
Jesus’ earthly ministry was particularly localized to the Jewish people, rather than Gentiles (Matthew 15:24), but in John 12 we discover that this does not mean Jesus’ purposes in redemption were restricted to the Jewish people. In John 12:20, we read of some Greeks coming up to seek Jesus. When Jesus hears of this, His response is to say, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified” (John 12:23). He goes on to say, “Now is the judgement of this world; now will the ruler of this world be cast out. And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself” (John 12:31-32).
When Jesus speaks of being “lifted up from the earth” verse 33 tells us that this was in reference to His death on the cross. Jesus’ death on the cross would serve as the judgement of the world, where its ruler would be cast out and all people (as in, all kinds of people—remember the Greeks, non-Jews, who were seeking Jesus) would be drawn unto Him. In the Johannine corpus, the ruler of this world is seen to be the devil (see John 14:30, 1 John 5:19). The Son of God appeared to destroy the works of the devil, and we see that, paradoxically, this will take place at His death on the cross.
At this point we might reflect on that hotly debated passage in Revelation 20, which tells us of Satan’s being cast out (bound and thrown into a pit) so as to no longer deceive the nations (Revelation 20:1-3). If, as in Matthew 4:8-10, the devil had authority over the nations, and at the cross he is cast out, no longer to deceive the nations, then the nations of this world will now have a new relationship with the Lord God.
After His resurrection, Jesus tells His followers that, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age” (Matthew 28:18-20). The nations, no longer lying under the deception of the devil, now belong to Christ, and He commands His church to go and collect them for Himself.
The Acts of the Apostles
The book of Acts tells us of the Apostle’s carrying out of Jesus’ words in the Great Commission. In Acts 2, we have detailed for us the glorious day of Pentecost, in which the Spirit is given to the Christian church. And what is the very first thing we read about the Spirit doing? Enabling people to speak in other tongues, or languages (Acts 2:4). The very judgement of God that was brought upon the peoples in Genesis 11 was now being reversed. Men from every nation were hearing of the mighty works of God in their own native tongue (Acts 2:9-11).
One of the earliest controversies in the Christian church, was how Gentile Christians were to relate to Jewish Christians. Acts 10 showed us how God was bringing the Gentiles into the family of God, with the conversion of Cornelius, but some of the Jews were apprehensive about this change in how God was working. The culmination of this is in Acts 15, at the Jerusalem council. Some men, called the party of the circumcision, were teaching that in order to be saved Gentiles had to be circumcised. Not only was this an egregious denial of the Gospel of grace, it was essentially saying that one needed to become Jewish in order to become a Christian. The council will condemn this false, heretical teaching.
“The apostles and the elders were gathered together to consider this matter. And after there had been much debate, Peter stood up and said to them, ‘Brothers, you know that in the early days God made a choice among you, that by my mouth the Gentiles should hear the word of the gospel and believe. And God, who knows the heart, bore witness to them, by giving them the Holy Spirit just as he did to us, and he made no distinction between us and them, having cleansed their hearts by faith. Now, therefore, why are you putting God to the test by placing a yoke on the neck of the disciples that neither our fathers nor we have been able to bear? But we believe that we will be saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus, just as they will.’” - Acts 15:6–11 (ESV)
We see that the way God is choosing to work in the Gospel age is to make no distinction between Jew and Gentile. “We will be saved through the grace of the Lord Jesus, just as they will”. God shows no partiality (Romans 2:11), and thus He has one moral standard for Jews and Gentiles and one path of salvation for them as well. What we see here, then, is that there is not a separate Jewish church, and Gentile church, but that just as all men have one covenant head, Adam, so all redeemed men have one covenant head, Christ. “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s offspring” (Galatians 3:28-29). The idea of there being a separation between how one class of people is saved compared to another class is confuted by the Apostle Paul. And, in the fulfillment of the promises made earlier to Abraham, all those who are in Christ are Abraham’s offspring.
Let us return again to Acts 17, when Paul is before the Areopagus.
“So Paul, standing in the midst of the Areopagus, said: ‘Men of Athens, I perceive that in every way you are very religious. For as I passed along and observed the objects of your worship, I found also an altar with this inscription: ‘To the unknown god.’ What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. The God who made the world and everything in it, being Lord of heaven and earth, does not live in temples made by man, nor is he served by human hands, as though he needed anything, since he himself gives to all mankind life and breath and everything. And he made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him. Yet he is actually not far from each one of us, for ‘In him we live and move and have our being’; as even some of your own poets have said, ‘For we are indeed his offspring.’ Being then God’s offspring, we ought not to think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone, an image formed by the art and imagination of man. The times of ignorance God overlooked, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent, because he has fixed a day on which he will judge the world in righteousness by a man whom he has appointed; and of this he has given assurance to all by raising him from the dead.’” - Acts 17:22–31 (ESV)
Standing before these Gentile philosophers, Paul asserts something of the commonality of all men, in that all men are, in some sense, in a relationship with God. All men are created by God, all men receive their life from God, and all men will be judged by God.
We read, in verse 26, of the one man (Adam) through whom all these various peoples were brought forth. They are in a relationship with God, having Adam as their federal head. This being the case, these distinct peoples are made up of sinners, abiding under God’s wrath. Paul says that God is commanding all people everywhere to repent (verse 30). Paul asserts that there is fixed, by God, a day of judgement on which all men will be judged by God. The assurance of this is found in one man (Christ) whom God raised from the dead. Men from every nation, if they are to be reconciled to their creator, will find their redemption through one mediator, the man Christ Jesus.
When Paul says that God has “fixed” a day of judgement, this tells us that history is going somewhere. It will come to an end.
Consummation
In God’s plan of redemption, the Bible tells us that it is His purpose, before the end of the world, to gather all the nations to Himself. Satan’s dominion over the nations which began in Genesis 11, came to an end at the cross of Christ. “The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign forever and ever” (Revelation 11:15). This kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ encompasses all nations, though they were at one time dispersed, they will be redeemed through Christ. Daniel’s vision says that Christ is given “dominion and glory and a kingdom, that all peoples, nations and languages should serve him” (Daniel 7:14).
Through one man God brought forth all the nations of the earth, and through one man God is bringing them back into one kingdom, the kingdom of God.
Revelation 5 gives us a spiritual picture of the church’s worship of Christ, when she sings, “for you were slain, and by your blood you ransomed people for God from every tribe and language and people and nation, and you have made them a kingdom and priests to our God, and they shall reign on the earth” (Revelation 5:9-10). It is quite clear from all this that the purpose of God for the nations, is to bring them into one. God’s plan is to take all peoples, and make them one people, in and through Christ Jesus.
Therefore, one might speak of the fall of the nations. It is not that nations, or distinct peoples, or distinct races are sinful things. It is that they are not eternal things. They will pass away. And so while love for one’s nation is not a sinful thing, and as a matter of fact may be a man’s duty this side of heaven (as Paul had great love for his kinsmen, Romans 9:3) I do say that our love for our people must be tempered accordingly.
We should learn from this great and beautiful story, that just as all men stem from one creator, all men can have an incredible bond and unity through one mediator, Christ Jesus. The Christian church, in fulfillment of national Israel, is now called a people for God’s own possession (1 Peter 2:9-10). When God called one nation to Himself in the Old Covenant, this was a type and shadow of what He would eventually do with all peoples.
Such is the great story of the rise and fall of the nations. It is all centered on the cornerstone of history, the life and death of the man Christ Jesus.
Points of Application, In No Particular Order
It would be necessary for us to say a few words as for our application of these truths. Anyone who follows any of the “Christian Nationalism” stuff online, especially on X, has discovered all kinds of discussion over the past few months about race, ethnicities, nations etc. It is this discussion which has inspired me to undertake this writing. Not because there is necessarily anything inspiring in the content of what people are saying, but that I thought it necessary to open up my Bible and seek out a Biblical view of nations and God’s plan for them.
One thing that I think is abundantly clear from the testimony of the Scriptures, is that there is absolutely no place for ethnic animosity or hatred amongst Christians. This should go without saying, but I just write this because with the rise of the “new Christian right” it seems this is something people are slow to just come out and say. If you are harboring hatred in your heart for others, solely due unto their race, you are in sin. You don’t understand the purposes of Christ in the Gospel, to gather men of all races into one body. If even the Jewish race, the one particularly called by God in the Old Covenant, are not better than other races, then no member of nay race ever has the right to feel a sense of racial superiority over and against other races.
This also means that there is an incredible unity that Christ brings to men of different ethnicities. What this means is that in a Christian society, sanctified by the Gospel of Jesus Christ, sanctified individuals will be able to gather together with a bond of true community that cannot be accomplished by any level of blood and soil alone. It is a truth I passionately affirm, that the imputed righteousness of Christ provides not just a stronger, but the strongest bond amongst men there can ever be. In the New Covenant, God removes our hearts of stone and gives us hearts of flesh. He writes His Law on our hearts and empowers us to obey Him. Therefore, when God saves a person, regardless of their race, they can be brought into true unity with other Christians, in a Christian society—a kind of unity that can never be experienced on the basis of anything else.
And before anyone accuses me of being an open borders globalist, who is too ideological to recognize the very real distinctions that exist amongst differing races, let me say quite frankly that that is not the case. I affirm, the rather obvious truth, that men of differing races tend to be different from other man. However, I attribute this to culture more than I do ethnicity. I also believe that this means men from distinct cultures are incompatible with certain other cultures. And so nothing that I have presented in this article can be used as a basis for artificial integration, where you take men from one country and transport them to another country, with no sanctification or assimilation. I believe the only way for men to assimilate to other cultures is through a very organic process. And as far as Christian societies are concerned, it will be Christ sanctifying that person such that they are a covenant keeper, along with the other members of a given society.
I also believe it to be a perfectly appropriate thing for believers, marrying in the Lord, to marry Christians of other races. The covenant people of God in the Old Covenant were to be marked off by a distinct race, but this is no longer the case in the New as God is gathering all of His sheep into one flock.
Christians, reading and believing the Scriptural realities presented above, should labor, with love in their hearts for all people, to bring every nation under submission to the Lord Jesus Christ.
William Arndt et al., A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 276.