What Does 2 Corinthians 10:2 Mean?
But I ask you, that I may not be bold when I am present, with the confidence by which I reckon to be bold against some, who reckon us as walking according to the flesh.
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
But I beseech you, that I may not be bold when I am present with that confidence, wherewith I think to be bold against some, which think of us as if we walked according to the flesh.THE KEY
“Walked” describes a whole course of life, so the accusation reaches for what governs a person, not merely where the body goes.
THE MEANING
You can live in a body without letting merely human force set the direction of your life. The speaker holds courage in reserve for those who mistake embodied presence for conduct governed by the flesh.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
A mild presence proves weakness, and bodily life means the body’s limits are in command.
THE ROOT
περιπατοῦντας
peripatountas
GROWS FROM
πατέω (patéō), with περί (perí)
To tread or step; the compound carries the sense of walking about.
The Greek verb can describe literal walking and a person’s course of conduct. The charge concerns what shapes that whole course, not simply the fact that someone has a body.
ALSO GROWS
patéō: To tread or step.
πατέω
The walking image begins with steps on the ground and extends to the steps that shape a life.
katapatéō: To trample or tread underfoot.
καταπατέω
This related compound makes the shared movement tangible: the same root for treading can describe a person’s manner of going through life.
σάρκα
sarka
GROWS FROM
σάρξ
sarx
Flesh; bodily substance, and by extension the human sphere in its creaturely limits.
The phrase κατὰ σάρκα (kata sarka, “according to flesh”) says more than that someone has a body: it describes a way of acting measured by human means. The next verse holds embodiment and rule apart, saying the speaker walks in the flesh but does not fight according to the flesh.
ALSO GROWS
sarkinos: Fleshly in the sense of having the substance or quality of flesh.
σάρκινος
This branch keeps the physical sense in view: being embodied does not by itself establish what governs a person’s conduct.
sarkikos: Pertaining to flesh; in some contexts, governed by fleshly concerns.
σαρκικός
This branch shows how “flesh” can describe a governing mode, the distinction the verse raises.
THE PATTERN
A life can move through embodied conditions without taking those conditions as its governing rule.
He has shown you, O human, what is good. And what does the LORD seek from you, but to do justice, and to hold fast to faithful love, and to walk low with your God?So that the alignment of the instruction might be filled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the breath.And I say, walk in the breath, and you will not complete the craving of the flesh.THE THREAD
For though we walk in the flesh, we do not wage war according to the flesh.The next line names the distinction this verse is guarding: walking in the flesh describes embodied life, while warring after the flesh describes a governing method. The repeated roots for “walk” and “flesh” keep being in a body distinct from being ruled by flesh.
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