What Does 2 Corinthians 12:15 Mean?
And I will gladly spend, and be spent out entirely, for your living souls. If I overflow in loving you, am I loved less?
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 I will very gladly spend and be spent for you; though the more abundantly I love you, the less I be loved.THE KEY
The same spending-root names both what is given and what the giver expends of himself: love can pour itself out without a guarantee of equal return.
THE MEANING
You may love gladly while receiving less love in return; the verse names both the giving and its cost. It makes no promise that deeper love produces equal affection. This expenditure reaches toward living souls, the whole living person.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that loving someone more necessarily makes them love you more in return.
THE ROOT
δαπανήσω
dapanēsō
GROWS FROM
δαπαν-
dapan-
To spend or expend.
“spend and be spent” in this verse is dapanēsō. The same root appears first in the active “I spend” and then in the passive “I am spent.” The grammar carries one expenditure from what the speaker gives to what happens to him, keeping the cost of glad love visible.
ALSO GROWS
dapanē: Expense or cost.
δαπάνη
It makes the verse’s spending concrete: love has a cost that is actually borne.
ekdapanaō: To spend completely or exhaust.
ἐκδαπανάω
This related form sharpens the movement from giving resources to being spent oneself.
ἀγαπῶν
agapōn
GROWS FROM
ἀγαπ-
agap-
To love or regard with care.
The same love-root appears in the speaker’s loving and his being loved. Love remains one thing in the sentence even as its direction and measure become unequal.
ALSO GROWS
agapē: Love.
ἀγάπη
The noun form gathers the act of loving into the very thing whose return is unequal.
agapētos: Beloved.
ἀγαπητός
This related word names the one who receives love, making the gap between loving and being loved easier to see.
ψυχῶν
psychōn
GROWS FROM
ψυχ-
psych-
Living soul, life, or person as a living self.
Where the KJV says “for you,” the Greek phrase names “your living souls.” The spending is directed toward people in their living selves, not toward an abstract spiritual part.
ALSO GROWS
psychē: Living soul, life, or self.
ψυχή
This is the singular form behind the phrase, showing that the giving reaches toward living persons.
psychikos: Natural; belonging to the living-soul life.
ψυχικός
This related form keeps the root connected to the life and personhood of the one being cared for.
THE PATTERN
Love’s self-giving can continue even when its return shrinks.
The LORD said to me, Go again, love a woman beloved of her friend, yet an adulteress, as the LORD loves the children of Israel, who turn their faces toward other gods and love cakes of raisins.For all these cast in from their overflow into the gifts of God, but she, from her lack, cast in all her living that she had.No one has greater love than this, that someone lay down his living soul for his friends.THE THREAD
And the next day, as he departed, he took out two denarii and gave them to the one who takes all in, and said, Tend to him. Whatever more you spend, I will give it back to you when I return.The Samaritan’s care uses the same spending-root as this verse: he pays for what another person needs and leaves room for further expense. Here the expenditure reaches beyond resources to the giver himself, spent for living souls.
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