What Does 1 Corinthians 3:3 Mean?
For you are still fleshly, since among you there is boiling, and strife, and splits. Are you not fleshly, and do you not walk as humans?
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
For ye are yet carnal: for whereas there is among you envying, and strife, and divisions, are ye not carnal, and walk as men?THE KEY
The envy in this verse is the same word that can name zeal, so the fault line is where ardor turns into rivalry inside the community.
THE MEANING
Where envy, contention, and faction take hold among you, the way you walk is shaped by rivalry and separation. These visible relationships reveal the pattern directing the community now.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that a community’s maturity is proved by what it claims; this verse tests that claim against the conduct visible among its people.
THE ROOT
ζῆλος
zēlos
GROWS FROM
ζηλ-
zēl-
Zeal, ardor, or jealousy; an intensity that can become rivalry.
“boiling” in this verse is zēlos. The word translated “envying” can also name zeal or ardor; one Greek word holds both meanings. Here that intensity has turned into comparison among the readers, exposing the way they are walking.
ALSO GROWS
zēloō: To act with zeal, jealousy, or envy.
ζηλόω
The verb keeps the same intensity in motion: it can be directed toward a goal or against another person.
zēlōtēs: An ardent or zealous person.
ζηλωτής
This branch shows that the root can name committed ardor; here that ardor has become rivalry within the group.
διχοστασίαι
dichostasiai
GROWS FROM
στάσις (stasis), from ἵστημι (histēmi)
To stand; a stance or position. The full word combines this with δίχα (dicha), meaning apart or in two.
“splits” in this verse is dichostasiai. The word translated “divisions” combines “apart” with “standing”: faction becomes a posture, with people set against people. The conflict is not only felt; it gives the group its direction.
ALSO GROWS
stasis: A stance or position; by extension, a faction or uprising.
στάσις
The shared standing element makes division a settled position between people.
anastasis: A standing up or rising.
ἀνάστασις
The same standing element can describe rising; in this compound it describes people standing apart.
apostasia: A departure or revolt.
ἀποστασία
This branch uses the same standing element with the sense of standing away, echoing the separation named here.
σαρκικοί
sarkikoi
GROWS FROM
σάρξ
sarx
Flesh; the bodily or human sphere.
“fleshly” in this verse is sarkikoi. The label translated “carnal” is built from sarx, “flesh”; here it names a way of walking made visible through rivalry and faction. The verse makes the label concrete through envy, strife, division, and a walk by human standards.
ALSO GROWS
sarx: Flesh or embodied human life.
σάρξ
This is the noun underlying the adjective used to describe the readers.
sarkinos: Fleshy or composed of flesh.
σάρκινος
This related adjective uses the same root to describe what is made of flesh.
sarkikos: Pertaining to flesh or the fleshly sphere.
σαρκικός
This is the adjective applied to the readers as their conduct is described.
THE PATTERN
When rivalry governs a community, envy and contention spread into division and disorder.
And his brothers envied him, but his father guarded the word.For where boiling and strife are, there is no standing still and every base deed.Image-service, potion-craft, hatreds, strife, jealousies, rushes of anger, rivalries, splits, chosen sides,THE THREAD
Let us walk with good bearing, as in the day, not in carousing and drunkenness, not in bedding and unbridled acts, not in strife and boiling.Romans repeats ἔρις (eris, strife) and ζῆλος (zēlos, envy or zeal) beside “walk.” That pairing shows rivalry as more than an isolated feeling: it becomes visible in the path a community takes.
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