What Does Revelation 21:27 Mean?
No common thing enters it, nor whoever makes foulness or a lie, except those written in the Lamb's scroll of life.
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
And there shall in no wise enter into it any thing that defileth, neither whatsoever worketh abomination, or maketh a lie: but they which are written in the Lamb’s book of life.THE KEY
The verse distinguishes those who make falsehood from those already inscribed in life.
THE MEANING
The city has a boundary: what defiles, makes abomination, or makes falsehood does not enter it. Its inhabitants are identified as those written in the Lamb’s book of life. The vision holds falsehood and belonging to life apart, speaking to the life before you now.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie this undoes is that a life can be whole while falsehood remains inside it; the verse gives falsehood no place in the city of life.
THE ROOT
γεγραμμένοι
gegrammenoi
GROWS FROM
γράφω
To write or inscribe.
The Greek form means those who have been written, with the result of that writing still standing. The verse identifies the entrants by an inscription in life, rather than by the falsehood-making named just before them.
ALSO GROWS
graphē: Writing, a written text
γραφή
The same root presents belonging as something recorded.
gramma: A letter or written mark
γράμμα
It carries the root’s sense of identity preserved in written form.
κοινόν
koinon
GROWS FROM
κοινός
Common, shared, ordinary; in this context, profane or unclean.
The word translated defileth is literally common, with the sense of what is profaned or unfit for the set-apart city. Its shared stem with koinonia, sharing in common, reveals a connection English obscures; the verse excludes what is profaned, not sharing itself.
ALSO GROWS
koinōnia: Sharing in common
κοινωνία
It comes from the same word family and makes the common or shared sense audible.
koinōnos: Partner, participant
κοινωνός
It names someone who shares in something, from the same common-root family.
ψεῦδος
pseudos
GROWS FROM
ψευδ-
Falsehood, a lie.
“makes a lie” in this verse is pseudos. The phrase names falsehood as something made: the Greek says the one doing an abomination and falsehood. The city excludes not just a false statement but falsehood as an enacted reality.
ALSO GROWS
pseudomai: To lie
ψεύδομαι
The verb shows falsehood as an act.
pseudēs: False
ψευδής
This adjective carries the same root into the quality of what is untrue.
THE PATTERN
The restored city is pictured as a bounded life where defilement and falsehood are excluded, and belonging is recorded.
Awake, awake. Put on your strength, O Zion. Put on the garments of your adornment, O Jerusalem, the set-apart city, for no more shall the uncircumcised and the unclean come into you.Let them be wiped out of the scroll of the living, and let them not be inscribed with the aligned.Outside are the dogs, and the potion-makers, and the fornicators, and the bloodshedders, and the image-servers, and everyone who loves and makes a lie.THE THREAD
Yet do not rejoice in this, that the breaths submit to you, but rejoice instead that your names have been written in the heavens.Luke uses the same Greek write-root for the names written in heaven. That shared verb opens the book image here as belonging already inscribed; Revelation names the record as the Lamb’s book of life.
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