How to Do a Greek Word Study (Step-by-Step)

You are reading John 3:16 and you stop at the word love. You know it is significant. But you have heard that the New Testament was written in Greek, and that Greek had multiple words for love — each with a distinct meaning. You want to know which one is used here, what it actually means, and whether it appears elsewhere in the same letter.

What you are describing is a Greek word study. And despite what you may have assumed, you do not need years of seminary training or a working knowledge of the Greek alphabet to do one. You need a method and the right tools.

This guide walks you through a complete Greek word study from start to finish — using the New Testament as your source text — in a way that any serious Bible student can follow.

What Is a Greek Word Study?

A Greek word study is the practice of examining the original Greek term behind an English word in the New Testament — tracing its meaning, usage, and range across Scripture rather than relying solely on what a translator chose to render it.

English translations make thousands of decisions that Greek word studies help you see. The same Greek word is sometimes translated differently in different passages. Different Greek words are sometimes translated with the same English word. Neither situation is a mistake — translation involves real choices — but knowing the original gives you a fuller picture of what an author intended to communicate.

Word studies are used by pastors preparing sermons, by seminary students writing exegetical papers, and by serious laypeople who want to read Scripture at a deeper level. The method is the same across all three.

What You Need Before You Start

You need three things:

1. A passage and a word to study. Choose a specific word in a specific verse. "Love in John" is too broad. "The word translated love in John 3:16" is the right scope.

2. Access to an interlinear Bible. An interlinear Bible displays the original Greek text with an English gloss (a word-for-word translation) directly beneath each Greek word. This is how you find the Greek term behind any English word.

3. Access to a lexicon. A lexicon is a Greek-to-English dictionary designed for biblical study. It gives you the full definition of a Greek word, its range of meanings, and often its usage history. The most widely used reference is the Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament by Bauer, Danker, Arndt, and Gingrich — known as BDAG. For most word studies, a solid digital lexicon will serve you well.

You do not need to know Greek. You need to be able to match symbols on a screen to look up what they mean. The tools do the rest.

Step 1: Find the Greek Word Behind the English

Open your passage in an interlinear Bible. The interlinear shows you two lines of text: the Greek word on top, and its English gloss directly beneath. Find the English word you are studying and look at the Greek above it.

For example, in John 3:16, the word translated loved in most English translations corresponds to the Greek verb ἠγάπησεν — from the root ἀγαπάω (agapao). The interlinear makes this visible without requiring you to read Greek fluently.

Note on which Greek text to use: There are multiple editions of the Greek New Testament. The two most commonly used in study are the Robinson-Pierpont Byzantine Majority Text and the SBL Greek New Testament (SBLGNT). For most word studies, the choice of text will not affect your results — the same key words appear across all editions. If you study from an Apostolic or Byzantine-leaning tradition, the Robinson-Pierpont text is the appropriate choice.

Once you have located the Greek word, write it down. You will use it in the next steps.

What to record at this step:

• The Greek word as it appears in the text (the inflected form)
• The lexical form (the dictionary form — usually the nominative singular for nouns, present active indicative first person singular for verbs)
• The Strong's number, if available — a numbering system that connects words across many reference tools

Step 2: Look Up the Lexical Definition

With your Greek word in hand, look it up in a lexicon. A good digital lexicon will give you:

• The definition — the full range of meaning the word carries in ancient Greek usage
• Domain — the semantic field the word belongs to (e.g., emotion, action, relationship)
• Sub-definitions — how the word's meaning shifts in different contexts
• References — specific New Testament passages cited as examples of each usage

For ἀγαπάω (agapao), a lexicon will tell you that this verb carries the sense of deliberate, principled love — love expressed through commitment and action rather than primarily emotion. It is distinct from φιλέω (phileo), which carries warmer relational and affectionate connotations.

That distinction matters. It means John 3:16 is not primarily describing God's emotional feeling toward the world — it is describing a deliberate act of love expressed through giving. The word itself carries that theological weight.

What to record at this step:

• The full lexical definition
• Any sub-definitions that seem relevant to your passage
• Semantic distinctions from related words (synonyms, antonyms)

Step 3: Trace the Word Across Scripture

A single occurrence of a word gives you one data point. Tracing the word across the entire New Testament — or across a single author's writings — gives you a pattern.

Use a concordance or your study tool's search function to find every occurrence of the same Greek root in the New Testament. Pay particular attention to:

• How the same author uses the word elsewhere. John uses ἀγαπάω extensively throughout his Gospel and his letters. Examining his other uses reveals how he understands and deploys the word.
• How different authors use the word. Paul, Peter, and John may use the same Greek term with slightly different emphasis.
• Surprising or contrasting uses. Does this word appear in contexts that change or nuance your initial understanding?

For ἀγαπάω, a word-frequency search will show you that it appears throughout John's Gospel, his three letters, and Revelation — making it a central term in Johannine theology, not just a passing choice in 3:16.

What to record at this step:

• Total occurrences in the New Testament
• Key passages where the same word appears with clear or illuminating context
• Any significant patterns by author or letter

Step 4: Examine the Grammatical Form

Greek is a highly inflected language — the form of a word changes to indicate its grammatical function. For a noun, the ending tells you its case (subject, object, possession, etc.) and number (singular or plural). For a verb, the form tells you the tense, voice, and mood.

You do not need to be able to conjugate Greek verbs to understand this step. Your interlinear or study tool will include a morphological parsing for each word — a plain-English description of its grammatical form.

For ἠγάπησεν in John 3:16, the parsing reads: Verb, Aorist, Active, Indicative, 3rd person, Singular. In plain terms: a completed action, actively performed, stated as a fact, by a singular subject. This is not a continuing love or a general disposition — the aorist tense here points to a specific act. Combined with the lexical meaning, the grammatical form reinforces the reading that John 3:16 is describing a decisive, historical act of love expressed through the giving of the Son.

What to record at this step:

• Part of speech
• For verbs: tense, voice, mood, person, number
• For nouns: case, gender, number
• Any grammatical features that are significant for interpretation

Step 5: Bring It Back to the Passage

The purpose of a word study is not to replace reading the passage — it is to illuminate it. With your lexical definition, usage pattern, and grammatical analysis in hand, return to the original verse and read it again.

Ask yourself:

• Does knowing the Greek word change or deepen my understanding of this verse?
• How does the way this word is used elsewhere by this author inform what I am reading here?
• Is the English translation I started with a good rendering? If you had to translate this word into English, what would you choose?
• What theological or pastoral implications does this understanding open up?

Write a one-paragraph synthesis that integrates what you learned in steps 1 through 4 into a reading of the passage. This synthesis is the product of your word study — the insight that comes from going to the source.

A Note on Common Mistakes

Studying the English instead of the Greek. A word study is not a study of the English word love — it is a study of the specific Greek word behind it. Always anchor your study to the original language term.

Ignoring context in favor of etymology. A word's history (etymology) can be interesting background, but it does not determine meaning. Words mean what they mean in context — in the passage, in the book, in the author's usage. Etymology is a starting point, not a final answer.

Over-reading the Strong's number. Strong's numbers are a useful reference system for locating words across tools, but Strong's definitions alone are simplified for accessibility. For serious word studies, go beyond Strong's to a full lexicon.

Treating one word study as the final word. A word study is one tool in exegesis. It sits alongside grammatical analysis, historical context, literary structure, and theological synthesis. No single word study resolves every interpretive question.

Putting It All Together

1. Choose a passage and identify the word you want to study.
2. Open an interlinear Bible and locate the Greek word. Note the lexical form and Strong's number.
3. Look up the word in a lexicon. Record the full definition, sub-definitions, and semantic range.
4. Use a concordance to trace the word across Scripture. Note patterns in usage by the same author and across the New Testament.
5. Read the morphological parsing. Understand what the grammatical form tells you about the word's function in this sentence.
6. Return to the passage. Write a synthesis of what the word study taught you about the verse.

The Right Tools Make This Faster

A decade ago, doing a thorough Greek word study required a printed interlinear, a physical lexicon, and an exhaustive concordance — three books, opened simultaneously, with a lot of cross-referencing. Today, the right digital tools do most of that work for you.

Unrolled Scrolls puts the full interlinear text (Robinson-Pierpont Byzantine Greek NT, SBLGNT, Westminster Leningrad Codex Hebrew OT, and Septuagint), morphological parsing, cross-references, and an AI research assistant in one place. Click any Greek word in the interlinear and the word study begins automatically — you see the lexical definition, the frequency, the cross-references, and you can ask the AI to go deeper on any aspect of the word's usage.

You still do the thinking. The tools just remove the friction of getting to the text.

Open the Interlinear — Start a Greek Word Study

Conclusion

A Greek word study is not a technique reserved for scholars. It is a practice available to any serious Bible student willing to follow a method. The Greek text of the New Testament is not locked behind a language barrier — it is accessible with the right tools and a systematic approach.

The next time you stop at a word in your reading and want to know what it really says — go find out. The original is waiting.