What Does 2 Corinthians 4:16 Mean?
Therefore we do not give out; though our outer person is worn through, yet our inner person is made new day after day.
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 which cause we faint not; but though our outward man perish, yet the inward man is renewed day by day.THE KEY
The outward person can be decaying at the very same time the inward person is being made new.
THE MEANING
Your outward person is wearing down, while your inward person is being renewed day by day. Both are happening together; bodily decline does not erase the renewal taking place within.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that outward decline means all of you is only being diminished.
THE ROOT
ἀνακαινοῦται
anakainoutai
GROWS FROM
καιν- (kain-), from καινός (kainos)
newness; new or fresh
The verb carries the word-family of newness: the inward person is being made new continually. Renewal here happens day by day, alongside the outward person’s decay, rather than waiting for that decay to end.
ALSO GROWS
anakainoō: to renew, make new
ἀνακαινόω
This is the verb family behind the inward person’s ongoing renewal in this verse.
anakainōsis: renewal
ἀνακαίνωσις
The same word family names the renewing of the mind in Romans 12:2, connecting this inward change with continual transformation.
διαφθείρεται
diaphtheiretai
GROWS FROM
φθείρω
phtheirō
to corrupt, decay, or wear away
“worn through” in this verse is diaphtheiretai. The word translated “perish” belongs to a family that speaks of corruption and decay. The verse holds that real wearing away beside real renewal, without pretending the outward decline is unreal.
ALSO GROWS
phthora: corruption, decay
φθορά
This noun from the same root names the decay that marks what is perishable.
phthartos: perishable, subject to decay
φθαρτός
This branch makes explicit the outward person’s vulnerability to wearing away.
THE PATTERN
Scripture places bodily weakness beside an inward life that is strengthened or renewed.
My flesh and my heart run out, and God is the rock of my heart and my portion for the ages.But those who wait upon the LORD exchange their strength; they rise on wings like eagles; they run and do not tire; they walk and do not faint.That he would give you, according to the riches of his weight, to be made firm with strength through his breath in the inner humankind.THE THREAD
And have put on the new human, which is being made new in full knowing, after the image of him who created him.“Renewed” here and in Colossians comes from the same Greek verb family, ἀνακαινόω (anakainoō), meaning to renew or make new. Colossians adds that this renewal unfolds in knowledge after the Creator’s image, opening the inward renewal as an ongoing change.
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