What Does 1 Corinthians 6:3 Mean?
Have you not seen that we will judge messengers? How much more the things of daily living?
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
Know ye not that we shall judge angels? how much more things that pertain to this life?THE KEY
The same discerning capacity that reaches messengers also reaches the ordinary affairs of this life.
THE MEANING
The verse gives the community a striking measure of discernment: even the messengers are within its scope. If such weighty judgment belongs to the community, the everyday affairs of this life lie within its reach. The future tense opens that capacity beyond this moment, while the comparison presses its meaning into present disputes.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that ordinary disputes are outside the community’s capacity to judge: the verse reasons from a greater responsibility to a lesser one.
THE ROOT
κρίνουμεν
krinoumen
GROWS FROM
κριν-
krin-
To distinguish, decide, or judge.
“judge” in this verse is krinoumen. English can make judgment sound like sentencing alone; κρίνω also carries the act of distinguishing and deciding. The verse frames the community as capable of making a considered judgment across both extraordinary and ordinary affairs.
ALSO GROWS
krisis: judgment; decision
κρίσις
This branch makes visible the decision reached through discernment.
kritēs: judge
κριτής
This names the one who exercises the same capacity to distinguish and decide.
anakrinō: examine; inquire into
ἀνακρίνω
This compound shows the same root at work in careful examination.
ἀγγέλους
angelous
GROWS FROM
ἀγγελ-
aggel-
Messenger; one who announces.
The word translated “angels” is ἄγγελος, meaning messenger. It keeps the focus on a role of carrying a message, and the verse’s reach includes even those messengers within its field of judgment.
ALSO GROWS
angelia: message; report
ἀγγελία
This related word names what a messenger carries, linking the role to the message.
euangelion: good message; good news
εὐαγγέλιον
This word belongs to the same messenger-and-message family, showing how the root extends from the bearer to the announcement.
THE PATTERN
Discernment reaches across spiritual claims and ordinary disputes, weighing each rather than accepting it at face value.
But the one of the breath judges all things, yet he himself is judged by no one.Beloved, do not lean your weight on every breath, but test the breaths, whether they come out of God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world.And I commanded your judges at that time, saying, Hear and respond between your brothers, and judge in alignment between each man and his brother, and the sojourner who is with him.THE THREAD
But the one of the breath judges all things, yet he himself is judged by no one.The Greek uses ἀνακρίνει (anakrinei), built on the same κριν- root as κρίνω in this verse. That shared root brings out examination and discernment as the capacity beneath “judge.”
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