What Does James 1:21 Mean?
Therefore, taking off all dirt and the overflow of wickedness, in gentleness take in the planted word, which is able to deliver your living souls.
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 lay apart all filthiness and superfluity of naughtiness, and receive with meekness the engrafted word, which is able to save your souls.THE KEY
The word able to deliver your living self is already described as planted within you; what remains is its reception.
THE MEANING
Filthiness and excess are laid aside as the implanted word is received in meekness. It is pictured as planted within you, and it is able to deliver your living self, the person in the fullness of life.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that deliverance can begin only when something life-bearing is added from outside, because the word is already described as implanted within.
THE ROOT
ἔμφυτον
emphyton
GROWS FROM
φύω
phýō
To grow, spring forth, or bring forth.
The word is described as planted within, already growing inward rather than merely laid on from outside. “Receive” and “implanted” hold together welcome and prior planting: what delivers is present to be received.
ALSO GROWS
phytón: Plant; a growing thing.
φυτόν
This branch makes the growth carried by “implanted” visible: the word is like something planted and growing.
phýsis: Nature; what has grown into a thing’s constitution.
φύσις
It echoes the movement from a seed taking root to something becoming part of the living whole.
σῶσαι
sōsai
GROWS FROM
σῴζω
sōzō
To deliver, rescue, or bring safely through.
“deliver” in this verse is sōsai. The word rendered “save” belongs to the same family as deliverance and deliverer. Here its reach is the living self: the implanted word can bring the person through what threatens life.
ALSO GROWS
sōtēria: Deliverance; rescue.
σωτηρία
It names the deliverance expressed by the verb in this verse.
sōtēr: Deliverer; rescuer.
σωτήρ
This branch gives the same root a personal form: the one who brings another through.
ψυχάς
psychas
GROWS FROM
ψυχή
psychē
Living soul; a person, self, or life.
“living souls” in this verse is psychas. The Greek word rendered “souls” can also name a person’s life. It gathers the whole living self into the verse’s promise of deliverance, rather than pointing only to an abstract inner part.
ALSO GROWS
psychikos: Pertaining to the living self or natural life.
ψυχικός
This adjective carries the same root into a description of a person’s lived nature.
empsychos: Living; animate; having life.
ἔμψυχος
It makes the root concrete as a living being, the kind of life this verse says can be delivered.
THE PATTERN
The life-bearing word is near and planted within, while what chokes its growth can be cleared away.
But the word is very near to you, in your mouth and in your heart, that you may do it.And the cares of this age, and the deceit of riches, and the hungers for other things, going in, choke the word, and it becomes fruitless.Having been birthed again, not from seed that can be ruined but from what cannot be ruined, through the word of God, living and remaining for the ages.THE THREAD
By his own will he bore us forth through the word of truth, so that we might be a kind of firstfruit of his created things.Both verses use λόγος (logos), meaning “word” or “message.” James 1:18 connects this word with being brought forth; 1:21 calls it implanted and able to deliver the living self, linking its life-giving beginning with its continuing work.
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