What Does 2 Corinthians 3:5 Mean?
Not that we are enough on our own to count anything as from ourselves, but our capacity is from God.
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
Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think any thing as of ourselves; but our sufficiency is of God;THE KEY
The verse places the same Greek word for “from” on both sides: you are not the source of your adequacy; God is.
THE MEANING
You do not generate your own adequacy; the source of what you are able to carry is God. Even your reckoning of what can be done does not stand as a self-contained origin. The verse speaks of dependence while leaving room for your part in the work.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie is that your capacity only counts if it originates in you.
THE ROOT
ἱκανότης
hikanotēs
GROWS FROM
ἱκαν-
hikan-
Adequacy, fitness, enough to meet a need.
“capacity” in this verse is hikanotēs. The Greek word family links sufficiency with being made competent. The verse names that adequacy as coming from God, and the next verse uses the same family for God making people able.
ALSO GROWS
hikanos: sufficient, fit, competent
ἱκανός
This is the related adjective: sufficiency is the state of being fit or able.
hikanoō: make sufficient, qualify, make able
ἱκανόω
The same word family describes capacity as something God makes present in a person.
λογίσασθαι
logisasthai
GROWS FROM
λογ-
log-
Reckoning, accounting, taking something into account.
“count” in this verse is logisasthai. The verb translated “think” carries the sense of reckoning or accounting. The verse reaches even the mind’s assessment of what is possible: that accounting does not make the self its own source.
ALSO GROWS
logizomai: reckon, count, consider
λογίζομαι
The related verb describes the act of taking stock that the verse says cannot arise from the self alone.
logismos: reckoning, calculation, reasoning
λογισμός
This related noun makes the verse’s “think any thing” sound like an account being formed, not merely a passing thought.
THE PATTERN
A person can act fully while capacity still originates beyond the self.
God, who girds me with strength, sets my way whole.I am the vine, and you are the branches. The one who remains in me, and I in him, this one bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing.But by the favor of God I am what I am, and his favor toward me did not become empty; rather I toiled more abundantly than all of them, yet not I, but the favor of God that is with me.THE THREAD
Who has also made us enough to be servants of a new covenant, not of the letter but of the breath, for the letter kills, but the breath makes alive.“Made us able” translates ἱκανόω (hikanoō), “make sufficient” or “qualify,” from the same Greek word family as ἱκανότης (hikanotēs), “sufficiency,” in verse 5. The next verse makes explicit what verse 5 implies: God is the source who makes people competent.
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