We often hear words that have religious ideas connected to them. So, it becomes easy to just hear words like “Evangelism” or “Messiah” or “Gospel” and pass right on over them without thinking on what they actually mean.
One great example has to do with the word “evangelism”.
Evangelism means “the act of spreading the Gospel”.
But, have you ever noticed the word “angel” in “evANGELism”? Well, the two words are indeed related.
What a lot of people don’t realize is that we get the word “angel” from the Greek word angelos, which just means “messenger”. So, whenever we see a reference to an “angel” in the Bible, the translators just decided to not actually translate the word; it really means a messenger. In fact, when we do see the word “messenger” in our Bibles, it is the exact same Greek word: angelos (or the Hebrew mal’akh for the Old Testament).
Alright, so “angel” is just the word “messenger”. How does that help us?
Well, the word “evangelism” comes from two Greek words: eu, meaning “good” and angellein (the verb form of angelos), which means “to bring a message” or “to announce news”.
So, to evangelize is literally to bring good news.
And, if we’re using the proper Greek terms, we are called to be angels (messengers) of the evangel (an old English word for the good news/Gospel).