The field of etymology is the study word origins, tracing our modern English words back to ancient languages. Sometimes the etymology of a word can be traced back thousands of years to an ancient language, and often we can see how a word in English is related to similar words in other languages. For example, the word, “family,” comes from Latin roots and we can find similar words in Latin-based languages such as Spanish (familia), French (famille), and Romanian (familie). For those who want to learn another language, these similarities make learning vocabulary a little easier.
While the meaning of these words is much the same across the language groups, the Latin origin of the word has a different nuance. The original Latin word, “famulus” referred to servants and slaves who belonged to a household. Over time, the word was generalized to refer to all who live within a household.
We do need to be careful when learning another language that we do not assign the same meaning to words that have a similar sound in English. From time to time a word in another language may sound similar but have a different meaning or a different nuance. Just because a word sounds similar does not mean that the speaker means the same thing.
The same can be said for the English language. If we hear someone say something, we need to know what they mean when they use the word. An obvious example would be the word, “gay,” which, if used in 1950, meant “happiness,” but now, in 2026, means something entirely different. We must be careful to understand the context in which the word is used, and we must understand the perspective of the one using it.
Thus, we must be careful to understand what someone means when they refer to Jesus. A Muslim, for example, highly respects Jesus, but they believe that he is only a prophet, secondary to Mohammed and certainly not the Messiah and Saviour. Mormons, while they speak often of Jesus (and Jesus’ name is included in the name of the organization), understands Jesus to be someone different from who we understand him to be. Mormons do not believe that Jesus is co-eternal with God the Father and is equal to him in every way, being the second person of the Triune God. Thus, when we hear someone refer to Jesus, we do need to know what their belief is about Jesus, for they may not be thinking of the same person we know him to be.
In a recent study of Evangelical Christians in Canada (Christian Reformed people would be included among them), 45% of respondents stated that while they believed that Jesus was a great teacher, they did not believe that he is God. This is an astounding statistic since the New Testament church has taught from its inception that not only is Jesus fully God but that his being God is necessary for our salvation. In other words, if 45% of Evangelical Christians deny the divinity of Christ, they are also denying the salvific work of Christ and thus also the possibility of salvation in general. This is not a small problem; it is a huge one that has serious implications for people who identify as Christians both now and in the future.
It should not be surprising, however, that the belief that Jesus is not God is becoming more prevalent. One of the trends in the church is to minimize theology because it is perceived to be boring and irrelevant. “I just want to live for Jesus,” one person told me recently, saying that she has no use for the more systematized teachings of Scripture. Living for Jesus is very important, of course, but, at the same time, it is equally important to know who Jesus is. Living for Jesus cannot replace believing in Jesus, and if we believe in someone, we need to know who they are.
There is a saying that goes something like this: if we stop believing in God, we don’t believe nothing; we believe anything. We can modify this and say, “If we don’t know who Jesus is, we don’t believe in nobody; we believe in anybody.” By not diligently searching the Scriptures (with the help of good Christian theology), we will lose our understanding of who Jesus is. At that point, Jesus can become whoever we want him to be, and we put our faith in that person, who may not resemble Jesus at all. Where is salvation in that? The devil doesn’t care if we believe and follow Jesus, as long as he is not the Jesus of the Bible. On the other hand, the devil’s purposes are destroyed if we truly understand that Jesus is the eternal Son of God who became a human being so that he could become a legitimate substitute for not just one person but for many so that many can be saved.
The problem the church is facing is not recent. More than 1500 years ago the church developed a creed (a statement of what we believe) summarizing the teachings of a man named Athansius, and that creed is dedicated to describing who Jesus is. At the very end, the creed states that there can be no salvation if the statements of the creed (based on Scripture) are not true. In other words, following Jesus is important but so is theology, a summary of the teachings of Scripture.
We all have an idea of what words mean. Even though similar words across languages might mean the same thing, the same word within one language might mean very different things, depending on who is using that word. When it comes to who Jesus is, we must be sure to understand him as Scripture teaches, for not doing so does not result in mere lack of understanding; it results in a lack of salvation, the very thing that Jesus came to provide.