Established in Faith, Encouraged in Love, and Prepared for Christ's Coming

Στηρίζω means to make firm, strengthen, or establish someone so that instability gives way to steadiness. Paul's uses show that this strengthening is both God's work and a ministry believers pursue for one another. In 1 Thessalonians 3, Paul prays that the Lord will establish the believers' hearts in holiness as they await Christ's coming. In 2 Thessalonians 2, encouragement and strengthening in good word and deed follow the call to stand firm in apostolic teaching.

Romans 1 shows Paul's desire to visit and strengthen the church through shared spiritual encouragement. The verb does not promise an untroubled temperament or self-generated resilience. It describes firmness produced through God's grace, truth, prayer, holy obedience, and the mutual ministry of Christ's people.

παρακαλέω means to urge, appeal, exhort, encourage, comfort, or summon alongside, with the exact nuance supplied by context. In the Pastoral Epistles, the word is a practical ministry verb. Paul urges Timothy to remain in Ephesus to confront false doctrine, urges prayer for all people, tells Timothy to appeal to an older man as to a father, commands him to encourage faithful servants, tells him to encourage in preaching with patience and instruction, and tells Titus to encourage others by sound teaching and to encourage and rebuke with authority.

The word is not merely emotional comfort and not merely hard command. It describes speech that comes alongside people with truth, authority, patience, respect, and doctrinal substance. παρακαλέω is one of the words that keeps pastoral ministry from becoming either harsh control or vague affirmation. It is truth applied to people for faithful response.

πίστις means faith, trust, or faithfulness, and in the Pastoral Epistles it carries both personal reliance on Christ and the entrusted body of apostolic truth. The word can describe sincere faith, the faith that receives salvation in Christ Jesus, faith held with a clear conscience, faith that can be shipwrecked, faith some abandon, and the faith Paul has kept to the end.

It can also describe the faith of God's elect and the faithful conduct that adorns the teaching about God our Savior. This range requires careful teaching. Paul is not using πίστις as bare religious sincerity. Faith has an object: Christ Jesus. Faith also has a moral companion: a good conscience. Faith can be nourished by Scripture, guarded against false teaching, modeled across generations, and persevered in through suffering.

In these letters, faith is personal and doctrinal, received and guarded, confessed and lived. It is not works-righteousness, but neither is it empty profession. Pastoral teaching should help readers trust Christ, hold the apostolic faith, keep conscience clear, resist shipwreck, and finish the race.

Thlipsis names pressure, affliction, distress, and tribulation that presses on God's people from the outside and can expose what is rooted within. The word can describe trouble that comes because of the word, the pains of childbirth, the normal hardships through which disciples enter the kingdom, apostolic suffering, and the great tribulation from which the redeemed finally emerge.

It does not make suffering a virtue in itself. Rather, it teaches readers to see affliction under Christ's rule: real trouble, real weakness, real endurance, and real hope. In John 16:33 Jesus does not deny tribulation; He locates peace in Himself and courage in His victory over the world.

πειράζω (peirazō) means to test, try, tempt, or put to the proof. The same action-language can describe a test that reveals something or a temptation that entices toward sin, so agent, purpose, object, and moral context govern translation. Jesus is led by the Spirit into the wilderness and tempted by the devil, distinguishing God’s sovereign purpose from the tempter’s evil intent.

Religious leaders test Jesus by demanding a sign, not as humble seekers but as opponents. Paul assures believers that temptation is common to humanity and bounded by God’s faithfulness, who provides a way to endure. Hebrews presents Jesus as truly tempted in every way like us yet without sin, grounding His sympathetic high-priestly ministry. James forbids the claim that God tempts people with evil and traces temptation toward disordered desire.

The verb itself does not identify the moral agent, guarantee failure, or make every hardship a direct satanic attack.

πειράζω (peirazō) means to test, try, tempt, or put to the proof. The same action-language can describe a test that reveals something or a temptation that entices toward sin, so agent, purpose, object, and moral context govern translation. Jesus is led by the Spirit into the wilderness and tempted by the devil, distinguishing God’s sovereign purpose from the tempter’s evil intent.

Religious leaders test Jesus by demanding a sign, not as humble seekers but as opponents. Paul assures believers that temptation is common to humanity and bounded by God’s faithfulness, who provides a way to endure. Hebrews presents Jesus as truly tempted in every way like us yet without sin, grounding His sympathetic high-priestly ministry. James forbids the claim that God tempts people with evil and traces temptation toward disordered desire.

The verb itself does not identify the moral agent, guarantee failure, or make every hardship a direct satanic attack.

Κόπος names labor, toil, weariness, trouble, or the burden caused by demanding effort. People ask why a woman is being troubled when she anoints Jesus, but He defends her beautiful act. A reluctant neighbor says not to bother him after his household is settled for the night. Jesus tells disciples they reap a mission field for which others have done the exhausting labor, and Paul says each worker receives according to personal toil.

The noun can describe either costly work or the disturbance someone imposes on another. It does not glorify exhaustion for its own sake. The task, burden, beneficiary, motive, and Lord's evaluation determine whether the labor is faithful, exploitative, avoidable, or misunderstood.

εὐαγγελίζω is the verb that gave Christianity its most distinctive word. The noun εὐαγγέλιον (gospel, good news) dominates the NT's self-description; εὐαγγελίζω is the verb of that noun ; to bring, announce, or proclaim glad tidings. The local Greek index currently counts about 54 NT occurrences across a striking range of contexts. The angel announces to the shepherds with it (Luke 2:10).

Jesus reads Isaiah 61 and declares himself anointed to εὐαγγελίζω the poor (Luke 4:18). Philip εὐαγγελίζεται the good news about the kingdom of God to Samaria (Acts 8:12). Paul frames his entire apostolic identity in terms of this verb: 'to me, the very least of all saints, was this grace given, to εὐαγγελίσασθαι to the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ' (Eph 3:8).

The LXX background is decisive. εὐαγγελίζω translates בָּשַׂר (piel) ; to bring good news ; the verb used in the Isaiah herald texts that run through Isaiah 40-66: the herald who brings the news of God's return to Zion, who announces peace, who proclaims salvation (Isa 40:9, 52:7, 61:1). This Isaiah heritage is not incidental. When Luke describes the angel's announcement to the shepherds with εὐαγγελίζω (Luke 2:10), he is identifying the birth of Jesus as the arrival of the Isaiah herald's long-anticipated news.

When Jesus reads Isaiah 61 in Nazareth and says 'today this is fulfilled in your hearing' (Luke 4:21), the εὐαγγελίζω that Isaiah promised is the act Jesus is performing in that synagogue. The NT's εὐαγγελίζω is not a new Greek word for a new religious phenomenon ; it is the arrival of the thing Isaiah's herald was announcing.

ἀγάπη means love, but in the New Testament it must be governed by God's own action rather than by modern sentiment. The word can describe human love, Christian love, and God's love, but its center of gravity is revealed in God giving His Son for sinners and in Christ forming a people who love one another. In the Pastoral Epistles, love is not detached affection.

The goal of instruction is love from a pure heart, a clear conscience, and sincere faith. God does not give His servants a spirit of fear, but of power, love, and self-control. Timothy must hold sound teaching with faith and love in Christ Jesus. He must flee youthful passions and pursue love with those who call on the Lord from a pure heart. Older men must be sound in love.

These uses show that ἀγάπη belongs with doctrine, conscience, faith, self-control, holiness, and endurance. It is not soft religious warmth. It is the gospel-shaped posture that seeks another's good under God's truth. The wider canon anchors this love in God Himself: God proves His love in Christ's death for sinners, love rejoices in truth, and anyone who claims to love God while hating a brother lies.

ἀγάπη therefore guards the church from loveless orthodoxy and truthless sentiment at the same time. Within church life, that means the teacher asks what kind of people instruction is forming, not merely whether arguments are being won. Love guards truth from becoming proud, and truth guards love from becoming indulgent. Because God's love moves toward sinners in Christ, the church's love moves toward people with patience, clarity, holiness, and hope.

G5303 names lack, deficiency, or what is missing. In Paul, the word often appears where need is met through costly fellowship. Second Corinthians uses it for the needs of the saints, where one church's abundance supplies another's lack and thanksgiving rises to God. Philippians uses related need language around ministry partnership and risk. Colossians 1 requires special care: Paul is not saying Christ's atoning suffering is deficient, but that Paul's apostolic sufferings fill out the appointed ministry of witness for the sake of the church.

The word helps teachers speak about need without shame, generosity without pride, and suffering without confusion about the sufficiency of Christ.

G4121 is represented in this Pauline-focused companion by the reviewed display gloss "to increase." In Paul's letters, the term appears in passages such as Rom. 5. 20, 1Thess. 3. 12, 2Cor. 4. 15, where the local argument determines whether the emphasis is doctrinal, ethical, pastoral, or ministry-related. The companion therefore treats To Increase as a passage-governed word study rather than a detached lexical slogan.

It gives teachers a compact way to notice the term, compare several Pauline settings, and move toward application only after the immediate context has set the boundary. The aim is disciplined clarity: the Greek term can sharpen reading, but it does not replace the grammar, flow, and theological burden of the passage itself.

Perisseuō means to abound, overflow, exceed, or have more than enough. Jesus says disciples' righteousness must exceed that of scribes and Pharisees, referring to kingdom obedience flowing from the heart rather than a larger quantity of public performance. The prodigal remembers hired servants abounding in bread. Paul urges believers eager for spiritual gifts to abound in building up the church.

Ephesians says God lavished grace on believers in wisdom and understanding, and Thessalonians calls an already loving church to abound still more. The verb can describe surplus provision, lavish divine giving, surpassing quality, or growth in faithful practice. Abundance is not automatically material prosperity or approval; the passage names what overflows and toward whom.

Παρουσία (parousía) means presence, arrival, or coming. It can describe the welcome arrival of an ordinary person, as when Titus comforts Paul, and it becomes a major term for the future coming of the Lord Jesus. The disciples ask about the sign of Jesus' coming; Paul prays for holiness at His coming with all His saints; James commands patient endurance until the Lord's coming; John urges believers to remain in Christ so they may stand confident rather than ashamed at His coming.

The ordinary use guards against treating the noun as a coded timetable. The eschatological uses describe personal arrival and resulting presence, not merely an inward idea or a recurring historical influence. Each passage emphasizes a different response: discernment, holiness, patience, steadfast communion, confidence, or warning.

Thlipsis names pressure, affliction, distress, and tribulation that presses on God's people from the outside and can expose what is rooted within. The word can describe trouble that comes because of the word, the pains of childbirth, the normal hardships through which disciples enter the kingdom, apostolic suffering, and the great tribulation from which the redeemed finally emerge.

It does not make suffering a virtue in itself. Rather, it teaches readers to see affliction under Christ's rule: real trouble, real weakness, real endurance, and real hope. In John 16:33 Jesus does not deny tribulation; He locates peace in Himself and courage in His victory over the world.