Greek gender example – the sword is the spirit or Spirit

Gender, as it relates to nouns and other substantives in the Greek language, does not necessarily refer to “male” and “female”. It refers to grammatical gender, which is determined purely by grammatical usage and must be learned by observation. Although nouns referring to people or animals that are obviously “male” or “female” would normally (but not always) be classified as masculine or feminine accordingly, the gender of most nouns seems to be somewhat arbitrary. Every noun must fall into one of three categories of gender: masculine, feminine, or neuter. The fact of gender, when considering a word in isolation, is of little importance to the student of the Greek New Testament. But in analyzing a sentence as a whole, gender may play a key role, especially when considered along with the adjectives, pronouns, and relative clauses that may be present. Taking note of the gender may alter altogether what a sentence may seem to be saying in English.
For example: “And receive…the sword of the spirit which is the word of God”( Eph 6:17). The word “sword” in Greek is feminine gender and the word “spirit” is neuter gender. So it is important in this sentence to find out what is the antecedent of the relative pronoun “which”. (i.e. What is the “which” referring back to?) The word “which” in this sentence is neuter, therefore it is referring back to the word “spirit” and not “sword.” Thus this sentence means: “And receive…the sword of the spirit which (spirit) is the word of God.”