What Does Philippians 2:16 Mean in the King James?
Holding forth the word of life; that I may rejoice in the day of Christ, that I have not run in vain, neither laboured in vain.
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 sets the word of life against empty labor: what you carry matters more than how hard you run.
THE MEANING
You hold out the word of life, and your effort takes its measure from the life it carries. Christ’s day stands as the horizon where your running and labor are seen for what they are: not empty when they bear this life.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The lie that effort alone proves a life well spent dissolves here: work can still be empty when it carries nothing living.
THE ROOT
λόγον
logon
GROWS FROM
λεγ-/λογ-
What is said; speech, telling, or an account.
The Greek holds together a spoken word and something that can be told or reckoned. Here, the word being held out is joined to life, so it is more than sound or information: it carries what the verse calls life.
ALSO GROWS
legō: Say, speak, or tell.
λέγω
This is the verbal root behind logos: the word of life is something spoken and made present.
logizomai: Reckon, count, or consider.
λογίζομαι
The related log- word for reckoning echoes the verse’s concern that labor not be counted as empty.
ζωῆς
zōēs
GROWS FROM
ζω-
Live; be alive.
The Greek joins logos, ‘word,’ with zōē, ‘life.’ The phrase is not only speech about life; it presents a word that bears the living reality named in the verse.
ALSO GROWS
zaō: Live; be alive.
ζάω
This verb makes the root’s active sense clear: life is living, not merely an idea.
zōopoieō: Make alive; give life.
ζῳοποιέω
This related word shows the same life-root in an action that brings life forward.
κενόν
kenon
GROWS FROM
κεν-
Empty; without fullness or content.
“vain” in this verse is kenon. The Greek phrase is ‘into emptiness.’ The verse places the word of life beside the possibility that running and labor may come up empty, making the contrast sharper than mere success or failure.
ALSO GROWS
kenodoxia: Empty glory; vain conceit.
κενοδοξία
This same empty-root appears in Philippians 2:3, where empty glory names effort emptied by self-seeking.
kenophōnia: Empty talk.
κενοφωνία
The word carries the same image of speech emptied of substance, setting up a contrast with the word of life.
THE PATTERN
Life is sustained and carried forward through the word that comes from God.
And he humbled thee, and suffered thee to hunger, and fed thee with manna, which thou knewest not, neither did thy fathers know; that he might make thee know that man doth not live by bread only, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of the LORD doth man live.Then Simon Peter answered him, Lord, to whom shall we go? thou hast the words of eternal life.That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word of life;THE THREAD
Then Simon Peter answered him, Lord, to whom shall we go? thou hast the words of eternal life.John 6:68 joins the same Greek words, logos and zōē: ‘words of life.’ Philippians shows those words being held out amid running and labor, where they keep the work from going into emptiness.
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