What Does Ephesians 3:13 Mean?
So I ask that you not give out in my pressures for you, which is your weight.
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
Wherefore I desire that ye faint not at my tribulations for you, which is your glory.THE KEY
The pressure borne for your sake is named as your glory: what constricts one life becomes weight in another.
THE MEANING
Hardship borne for your sake reaches beyond the one who suffers: this verse names it as your glory, a weight of honor in your life. Another person’s costly faithfulness can become part of the substance you carry.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that another person’s suffering for your sake can only mean you are a burden: the verse names that cost as your glory.
THE ROOT
θλῖψις
thlipsis
GROWS FROM
θλίβω
thlibō
To press or squeeze; pressure that bears down.
“pressures” in this verse is thlipsis. The word pictures pressure, not a vague setback. That pressure falls on the speaker “for you,” and the sentence names its outcome on your side as glory, weight and honor, so hardship and glory are joined here.
ALSO GROWS
thlibō: To press, squeeze, or afflict.
θλίβω
This verb gives the pressure image beneath “tribulations”: the hardship presses on the one who bears it for you.
thlibomenoi: Those being pressed or troubled.
θλιβόμενοι
This related form describes people under pressure, showing that tribulation is the experience of being pressed.
δόξα
doxa
GROWS FROM
δοξ-
Weight, substance, and worth; the honor accorded to what is esteemed.
Here glory carries weight: it is honor with substance, not mere praise. The verse calls the readers themselves the weight borne out of the speaker’s hardship.
ALSO GROWS
doxazō: To honor or glorify.
δοξάζω
This related word shows glory as the act of according weight and honor.
endoxos: Esteemed, held in honor.
ἔνδοξος
This branch describes someone regarded as weighty or worthy of honor.
THE PATTERN
Pressure borne in faith can become a weight of glory that reaches beyond the one who suffers.
For our light pressure, which is for a moment, works for us a heavy weight, the weight of the ages, overflowing measure upon measure.But rejoice, as you share in common the sufferings of the Anointed One, so that when his weight is uncovered, you may also leap with exceeding joy.THE THREAD
For our light pressure, which is for a moment, works for us a heavy weight, the weight of the ages, overflowing measure upon measure.The Greek text repeats the same words for tribulation and glory. Ephesians names the speaker’s pressure for your sake as your glory; Corinthians says affliction works toward a weight of glory, making that movement explicit.
This reading is from Selah Verse.
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