What Does 1 Corinthians 6:20 Mean?
For you were bought in the marketplace for a price; so give weight to God in your body, and in your breath, which are God's.
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 bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s.THE KEY
Your body and breath together are the place where God’s weight is honored.
THE MEANING
Your body and your breath belong to God; neither sits outside the life that bears God’s worth. Being bought with a price names your life as claimed at cost, while the call to honor God’s weight reaches your body as well as your breath.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that the body is spiritually irrelevant while God concerns only the inner life dissolves here: both your body and your breath are God’s.
THE ROOT
πνεύματι
pneumati
GROWS FROM
πνευ-
pneu-
To blow, to breathe.
The word translated “spirit” is pneuma, from the same word-family as breath and blowing. Paired with “body,” it makes God’s claim tangible: your body and its living breath belong to God together.
ALSO GROWS
pneō: To blow; to breathe.
πνέω
This verb shows the movement carried in pneuma: breath is living motion.
pnoē: Breath; a blowing.
πνοή
This related word makes the breath sense audible beneath the English “spirit.”
ἠγοράσθητε
ēgorasthēte
GROWS FROM
ἀγορα-
agora-
Marketplace; the public place of buying and selling.
“bought in the marketplace” in this verse is ēgorasthēte. The verb is marketplace language, making “bought” a concrete claim of belonging. The verse’s emphasis falls on what follows: the one bought belongs to God in body and breath.
ALSO GROWS
agora: Marketplace; public gathering place.
ἀγορά
This is the noun behind the buying verb, revealing the market image carried into the verse.
exagorazō: To buy out; to redeem.
ἐξαγοράζω
This related verb extends the same buying language toward being bought out of a former claim.
δοξάσατε
doxasate
GROWS FROM
δοξ-
dox-
Weight, worth, honor.
“give weight to” in this verse is doxasate. To glorify God is to honor God’s weight. Here that honor is expressed through the body and breath, not only through inward thought.
ALSO GROWS
doxa: Weight; honor; glory.
δόξα
This related noun carries the worth and weight that the command asks the reader to honor.
doxazō: To honor; to glorify.
δοξάζω
This is the verb family behind the command, joining God’s weight to embodied life.
THE PATTERN
What belongs to God becomes the place where God’s worth is made visible.
A Psalm of David. The earth is the LORD's, and what fills it; the inhabited world, and those who settle in it.Therefore I urge you, brothers, through the compassions of God, to set your bodies beside God as a living sacrifice, set apart, well-pleasing to him, which is your true service.So whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the end that God is given weight.THE THREAD
You were bought with a price. Do not become the servants of humans.This verse repeats the same “bought” verb and price language, making God’s claim the ground of belonging. Here that claim reaches the body and breath; there it stands against being owned by other people.
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