What Does Hebrews 9:14 Mean in the King James?
How much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without spot to God, purge your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?
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
The verse moves service out of dead work and into life: the conscience is cleansed first, then the living God is served.
THE MEANING
The anointed one’s self-offering reaches your conscience through the Breath of the ages, cleansing it from works that belong to death. You are freed from that dead labor to serve the God who is living now. The movement is from a conscience occupied by death toward service rooted in life.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
This undoes the belief that doing more work can cleanse a conscience burdened by dead works; the verse places cleansing before service.
THE ROOT
καθαριεῖ
kathariei
GROWS FROM
καθαρίζω (katharizō), stem καθαρ- (kathar-)
To make clean by removing what defiles.
“purge” in this verse is kathariei. The cleansing reaches the conscience itself, removing what keeps it occupied with death. The verse presents this as release from dead works, not another work added to the pile.
ALSO GROWS
katharos: clean, pure
καθαρός
The shared family links purging with the resulting state of cleanness.
katharismos: cleansing, purification
καθαρισμός
This branch names the cleansing process that the verse says frees the conscience.
συνείδησιν
syneidēsin
GROWS FROM
συν + οἶδα (syn + oida)
Knowing with oneself; inward awareness.
Greek names conscience as a knowing-with: an inward witness, not merely a list of acts. The cleansing reaches this inner knowing itself, releasing service from a consciousness occupied by death.
ALSO GROWS
oida: know, perceive
οἶδα
This knowing element lies within the word for conscience, locating the verse’s cleansing in inward awareness.
syneidenai: know with oneself, be conscious
συνειδέναι
The verb form makes the word’s ‘knowing with’ structure visible.
προσήνεγκεν
prosēnenken
GROWS FROM
προσφέρω (prospherō), from πρός + φέρω (pros + pherō)
To bring or carry toward.
The word translated ‘offered’ carries the movement of bringing toward God. The verse holds approach and release together: the anointed one is brought to God, and the conscience is freed to serve the living God.
ALSO GROWS
pherō: bring, carry
φέρω
This base verb preserves the movement of carrying or bringing within the offering.
prosphora: offering, presentation
προσφορά
This related noun names what is brought toward God.
THE PATTERN
God’s life clears death’s hold so service and movement can rise from within.
And I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and ye shall keep my judgments, and do them.Neither yield ye your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin: but yield yourselves unto God, as those that are alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God.For they themselves shew of us what manner of entering in we had unto you, and how ye turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God;THE THREAD
But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin.Both verses use καθαρίζω (katharizō), ‘cleanse’: here the blood cleanses the conscience from dead works; there Christ’s blood cleanses from all missing. The shared root connects the cleansing of the inner witness with release from what burdens it.
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