What Does Colossians 3:7 Mean?
In these things you also once walked, when you lived in them.
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
In the which ye also walked some time, when ye lived in them.THE KEY
The verse names the old pattern as both a path you walked and a place you lived.
THE MEANING
You can see your former desires as more than isolated acts: they once shaped both the path you walked and the life you inhabited. The verse places that way of life in the past, making room for the present change the surrounding passage describes.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that what once shaped your life must remain your identity; the verse calls it a former condition.
THE ROOT
περιπατέω
peripatéō
GROWS FROM
πατέω (patéō), the verbal base in περιπατέω
To tread or walk.
The Greek compound describes walking about, so “walked” carries the feel of a course of life, not just a series of steps. Beside “lived in them,” it shows how a repeated path can become a sphere someone inhabits.
ALSO GROWS
peripatéō: To walk about; the same verb used for walking as a way of life.
περιπατέω
It reveals that the verse’s “walked” can name an ongoing course, not an isolated act.
katapatéō: To tread down or trample.
καταπατέω
This compound shares the treading base and makes the physical force inside the walking imagery visible.
ζάω
zaō
GROWS FROM
ζάω
zaō
To live or be alive.
This word names life itself, rather than just an action. Beside “walked,” it shows the old pattern as both a course the person followed and a sphere in which life was being lived.
ALSO GROWS
zōē: Life; being alive.
ζωή
It makes clear that “lived” belongs to the language of life, not only conduct.
syzáō: To live together; to share life.
συζάω
This compound shows how the same root can describe life shared within a condition or company.
THE PATTERN
A way of life is described as a path someone walks and a sphere they inhabit, though Scripture can name that path as past.
Flourishing is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked, nor stand in the way of those who miss the mark, nor sit in the seat of the scoffers.In these you once walked according to the age of this world, according to the ruler of the authority of the air, the breath that now works in the children of the unleaning.For the time already gone of our life has been enough for us to have worked out the will of the nations, when we walked in unbridled acts, cravings, wine-soaking, revels, drinking bouts, and forbidden idolatries.THE THREAD
Again then Jesus spoke to them, saying, I am the light of the world; whoever follows me shall never walk in the dark, but shall hold the light of life.John uses the same Greek verb, περιπατέω (peripatéō), for walking. Colossians names a former path and habitat; John opens the image further by setting walking in darkness beside walking with the light of life.
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