DAILY - 20 Amazing Bible Words To Know: (epiousion)

The word “daily” is interspersed throughout the Bible. The Old Testament refers to daily sacrifices, daily obligations, daily rules for priests and the Lord daily bearing our burdens. Jeremiah tells us that God sent prophets daily to His people.

Jesus told His disciples to take up their crosses daily to follow Him and, in the early church, teaching, praying and eating together were daily events. So, it should come as no surprise that in the Lord’s Prayer, in Matthew 6:11, Jesus tells us to pray for our daily bread.

But, what if I told you that He never said that?

There is a way to say “daily” in Greek and that’s not what Jesus did in the Lord’s Prayer. Instead, He used a word that is not found anywhere else in the Bible. In fact, it’s so rare that it’s hard to find that word anywhere else at all. That makes it hard to figure out exactly what it means.

That word is “epiousiov.” We have to kind of piece that word together to get at its meaning but when we get there it’s a real eye opener. It looks something like this: epi, the prefix of the word, means “for or from” while ousion, the root, means “being or substance.” (We get the word “essence” from that one.)

So, according to Chrysostom, the bishop of Constantinople in the early centuries of the church, what Jesus actually said was something like this: “Give us the bread of our essence.” In other words, give us that bread that we need to exist. That, according to translators, refers to our daily bread. But it means much more than that.

Jesus was talking about spiritual bread. I think we have a tendency to say the Lord’s Prayer and think that Jesus wanted us to pray for food. We can miss the true point of that prayer if that’s all we see there. We need God to sustain us every day. He is the Bread of Life.

What Jesus was telling us is that we need to turn to God every day, not just when we need help or when we want something. Our relationship with Him is essential every day to our very being. Our daily bread is God Himself. We need that every single day.