What does “might” imply?
John 3:16-18
“For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. For God did not send the Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world might be saved through Him. He who believes in Him is not judged; he who does not believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God.”
James 1:18 also states: “In the exercise of His will He brought us forth by the word of truth, so that we would be a kind of first fruits among His creatures.”
So why doesn’t the Bible say “will” vs. “might”? What is the meaning behind “might”?
One member of The Society of Evangelical Arminians: “Use of the word ‘might’ in such instances is a grammatical issue. English translations traditionally use the word ‘might’ with purpose clauses because there is typically uncertainty related to purpose because theoretically a purpose might or might not be fulfilled. In the particular case of James 1:18, there actually isn’t anything in the Greek text that corresponds to ‘might’. More literally it reads ‘in order that we be.’ However, there are a number of passages that use purpose clauses that do have something that indicates ‘might’, the subjunctive mood. But again, this just goes with the purpose clauses. For example, John 3:16 says that God gave Jesus so that whoever believes in him might not perish but have everlasting life. But it is clear in Scripture that believing in Christ certainly gives us eternal life. The uncertainty is not tied to whether someone will get eternal life if they believe, but to whether someone will believe and therefore get eternal life. What kind of promise would that be for God to call us to believe and possibly get eternal life? ‘Believe in Jesus and you might get eternal life, or you might not. You just don’t know.’ That’s not the sense of such verses. So theoretically, purposes normally carry some measure of uncertainty to them in human activity, and so the subjunctive mood normally gets used when purpose is indicated. But that doesn’t mean a particular purpose in a particular instance is necessarily uncertain. The uncertainty involved could be attached to whether the condition will be fulfilled. Or it can be simply because purpose is involved even though the purpose is certain to be fulfilled. For example, the sentence ‘God spoke in order that the world might be created’ would take the subjunctive in Greek. But it is not as if there would be any doubt that if God spoke the decree for the world to be created, then that is exactly what would happen.”
