What Does 1 Corinthians 12:26 Mean?
If one limb aches, all the limbs ache with it, and if one is clothed in weight, all of them rejoice with it.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
And whether one member suffer, all the members suffer with it; or one member be honoured, all the members rejoice with it.THE KEY
The same “with” binds both halves: one member’s pain is shared by all, and one member’s honor becomes joy for all.
THE MEANING
You are not sealed off from the members around you: their pain enters the body’s life, and their honor brings the whole body joy. Each person’s condition is carried through the whole.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that another person’s pain is theirs alone, or that another’s honor diminishes your own.
THE ROOT
συμπάσχει
sympáschei
GROWS FROM
πάσχω (paschō) + σύν (syn)
To experience or suffer; σύν (syn) adds “with, together.”
“ache with it” in this verse is sympáschei. The verb makes togetherness part of the act: this is pain experienced with the member, not merely observed from outside. The body shares what happens to one of its parts.
ALSO GROWS
paschō: To experience, undergo, suffer.
πάσχω
The shared pain begins with one member’s actual experience, which the body takes up as its own.
sympathēs: Sharing another’s feeling; compassionate.
συμπαθής
This related word also joins feeling to another, illuminating the verse’s picture of participation rather than distance.
pathēma: Suffering, affliction; something undergone.
πάθημα
It names the suffering itself that the other members share.
συγχαίρει
synchaírei
GROWS FROM
χαίρω (chairō) + σύν (syn)
To rejoice, joined to “with, together.”
“rejoice with” in this verse is synchaírei. The Greek places “with” inside the verb: συγχαίρει (synchaírei, rejoices with) already names relational joy before “all the members” makes its reach explicit. One member’s honor expands into the whole body’s joy.
ALSO GROWS
chairō: To rejoice, be glad.
χαίρω
This is the joy at the heart of the verse’s shared response.
chará: Joy, gladness.
χαρά
The related noun names the joy that spreads through the members when one is honored.
synchaírō: To rejoice with another.
συγχαίρω
This compound makes shared rejoicing part of the word itself.
δοξάζεται
doxázetai
GROWS FROM
δόξα
dóxa
Weight, worth, regard; the esteem accorded to someone.
“clothed in weight” in this verse is doxázetai. The honored member carries recognized weight in the body’s life. That weight produces shared joy rather than solitary prestige.
ALSO GROWS
dóxa: Weight, worth, esteem.
δόξα
The member’s honor is a recognition of the worth they carry in the body.
doxázō: To honor, esteem, give weight.
δοξάζω
The verb here describes a member receiving that regard, and the whole body sharing the joy.
THE PATTERN
A body makes another member’s suffering or joy part of the whole.
But Moses' hands were heavy. And they took a stone and set it under him, and he sat upon it. And Aaron and Hur held up his hands, one on this side and the other on that side, and his hands were steady until the sun went down.Rejoice with those who rejoice, and weep with those who weep.Remember those in bonds, as though bound with them, and those held in harm, as you yourselves also are in the body.THE THREAD
But even if I am poured out upon the offering and service of your trust, I rejoice, and rejoice together with you all.The Greek συγχαίρω (synchaírō, “rejoice with”) is the same compound verb rendered “rejoice with” in 1 Corinthians 12:26. Here the shared joy extends beyond the image of the body into a whole community’s gladness.
Read the SDV Bible.
Every verse has a Deep Dive in the app.
The iPhone Bible app with the Selah Decoded Version.
Does something in this reading look wrong? Tell us