What Does 1 Corinthians 4:6 Mean in the King James?
And these things, brethren, I have in a figure transferred to myself and to Apollos for your sakes; that ye might learn in us not to think of men above that which is written, that no one of you be puffed up for one against another.
The analysis reads the King James wording.
King James Version The King James Version, first published in 1611. Selah Verse shows the standard text.
THE KEY
When you set one person above another, the text calls the swelling in your sight what it is: being puffed up.
THE MEANING
This verse speaks to the impulse to make one person the measure and another the lesser. It places that ranking under the limit of what is written and calls its swelling effect being puffed up. The comparison enlarges one person in your mind by lowering another.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that honoring one person requires diminishing someone else, or that choosing sides reveals who is truly greater.
THE ROOT
φυσιοῦσθε
physiousthe
GROWS FROM
φυσι- (physi-); verb φυσιόω (physioō)
To inflate or puff up; figuratively, to become conceited.
“puffed up” in this verse is physiousthe. The Greek keeps the image of swelling something beyond its actual size. Here that image attaches to setting one person over against another: rivalry can inflate a person’s stature in the mind by making someone else seem smaller.
ALSO GROWS
pephysiōmenos: Having become puffed up; 1 Corinthians 4:18 uses this form for someone swollen with conceit.
πεφυσιωμένος
The same root describes an inflated state a person has taken on, deepening the verse’s image of distorted stature.
physioutai: Is puffed up; 1 Corinthians 13:4 says love is not puffed up.
φυσιοῦται
The same root shows that love does not need to enlarge itself or diminish another to hold its place.
THE PATTERN
When people become measures of one another, rivalry inflates one and diminishes another beyond what is written.
Let another man praise thee, and not thine own mouth; a stranger, and not thine own lips.For I say, through the grace given unto me, to every man that is among you, not to think of himself more highly than he ought to think; but to think soberly, according as God hath dealt to every man the measure of faith.I tell you, this man went down to his house justified rather than the other: for every one that exalteth himself shall be abased; and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted.THE THREAD
Now as touching things offered unto idols, we know that we all have knowledge. Knowledge puffeth up, but charity edifieth.“Puffeth up” translates the same Greek root as “puffed up” here. In this verse, rivalry inflates one person against another; there, knowledge inflates the knower, while love builds up.
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