What Does 2 Corinthians 6:18 Mean?
And I will be a Father to you, and you shall be my sons and daughters, says the LORD who holds all.
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 will be a Father unto you, and ye shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty.THE KEY
The verse places limitless rule and intimate kinship side by side: the Almighty is Father to you.
THE MEANING
You are addressed as family: the Lord is Father to you, and you are named among his sons and daughters. “Almighty” stands beside “Father,” joining complete authority with intimate belonging in the same promise.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the assumption that the Almighty must be distant: the verse names that same presence as Father.
THE ROOT
πατέρα
patéra
GROWS FROM
πατρ-
patr-
Father, progenitor; one from whom a family line is named.
The same Greek stem appears in words for a family line and a homeland. That root makes “Father” carry kinship and belonging with it, not only authority.
ALSO GROWS
patriá: Family, lineage
πατριά
The same father-root names the connected family line, showing that “Father” carries the idea of shared belonging.
patrís: Homeland, native country
πατρίς
The father-root extends into the place a family calls home; fatherhood here includes belonging, not only authority.
παντοκράτωρ
pantokratōr
GROWS FROM
κρατ-
krat-
To hold sway, exercise power, or rule.
“who holds all” in this verse is pantokratōr. The title joins “all” with ruling power, presenting the Almighty as all-ruling. In this verse, that authority stands beside Fatherhood: universal rule and intimate kinship belong together.
ALSO GROWS
krateō: To hold, seize, or keep
κρατέω
This verb carries the root’s active sense of holding or exercising power, giving “Almighty” more texture than abstract strength.
kratos: Might, power, dominion
κράτος
This branch names the power in the title; here, that power belongs to the same one who calls you family.
THE PATTERN
Scripture makes divine belonging concrete through parent-child language, joining God’s authority to care and identity.
And you will say to Pharaoh, Thus says the LORD, Israel is my son, even my firstborn.As a father has compassion on his children, so the LORD has compassion on those in awe of him.For you have not received a breath of slavery to return to fear; but you have received the breath that places us as sons, by which we cry out, Abba, Father.THE THREAD
Remain under the training. God bears himself toward you as to sons. For what son is there whom a father does not train?It repeats the Greek family words υἱός (huios, son) and πατήρ (patēr, father), linking the passages through their shared vocabulary. Here, that pairing expands to sons and daughters under the same Father.
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