What Does 2 Corinthians 1:18 Mean?
But as God is steady, our word toward you is not yes and no.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
But as God is true, our word toward you was not yea and nay.THE KEY
The word’s yes stays whole because the God named as its ground is steady.
THE MEANING
The verse sets God’s steadiness beside a word directed toward you that does not split between yes and no. It presents clarity as grounded in a character that does not waver, so the word can be received as one coherent thing.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that the word reaching you is built on contradiction, that a yes can mean no at its foundation.
THE ROOT
πιστός
pistos
GROWS FROM
πιστ-
pist-
Firmness and reliability: the quality of what can be trusted.
“steady” in this verse is pistos. The adjective πιστός (pistos, firm and reliable) shares its stem with words for trust and trusting. The verse binds the steadiness attributed to God to speech that does not turn into its opposite, joining what can be trusted with the act of trusting.
ALSO GROWS
pistis: trust, reliance
πίστις
Trust rests its weight on something dependable; the verse places God’s steadiness beneath the word spoken toward you.
pisteuō: to trust, rely, or be persuaded
πιστεύω
The act of trusting grows from the same word family as reliability: a steady word gives trust somewhere to rest.
THE PATTERN
Speech grounded in divine reliability holds its course: its yes does not become no.
God is not a man, that he should lie, nor a son of man, that he should relent. Has he said, and will he not do it? Has he spoken, and will he not make it stand?For the ages, LORD, your word is set in the heavens.Before all things, my brethren, do not swear, neither by heaven, nor by the earth, nor by any other oath. Let your yes be yes, and your no be no, lest you fall under judgment.THE THREAD
God is steady, through whom you were called into sharing in common with his Son, Jesus the Anointed One, our Lord.The Greek word translated “true” here, πιστός (pistos, firm and reliable), is the same word translated “faithful” in this verse. The shared root makes God’s steadiness the ground beneath the word’s unchanging yes.
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