What Does Philippians 3:21 Mean in the King James?
Who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body, according to the working whereby he is able even to subdue all things unto himself.
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
What the KJV calls a “vile body” is the very body transformed to share Christ’s form.
THE MEANING
The body can bear humiliation now without humiliation defining its end. The one able to subject all things transforms this body into likeness with the body that bears his glory, its weight and honor. The promise is for embodied life.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
A body’s low or humiliated condition makes it worthless, or future life requires discarding it. The verse names this very body as what is transformed into Christ’s likeness.
THE ROOT
μετασχηματίσει
metaschēmatisei
GROWS FROM
σχῆμα
schēma
Form, shape, or configuration.
The verb describes a change of form: the body in its present humiliation is transformed, not erased. The verse names Christ’s body as the form toward which this transformation moves.
ALSO GROWS
schēma: Form or visible configuration.
σχῆμα
This noun gives the root beneath “change”; it keeps the focus on the body’s form taking a new shape.
syschēmatizō: Conform to a pattern or take its form.
συσχηματίζω
This related word shows how a form can be shaped in relation to another; here the body is brought into likeness with Christ’s.
σύμμορφον
symmorphon
GROWS FROM
μορφή (morphē), with σύν (syn)
Form or shape; the prefix σύν adds the sense “with.”
“Fashioned like unto” carries the sense of being formed with another: the body comes to share the form of Christ’s body. The verse’s destination is likeness in bodily form, not escape from embodiment.
ALSO GROWS
morphoō: Form or shape.
μορφόω
The same form-family appears in the image of Christ being formed within a person, joining inner formation with the bodily likeness named here.
metamorphoō: Transform in form.
μεταμορφόω
This related verb also speaks of transformation; it helps show that becoming like Christ involves a changed form.
δόξης
doxēs
GROWS FROM
δόξα
doxa
Weight and honor, the full significance carried by one.
“glorious” in this verse is doxēs. The body of Christ bears weight and honor; glory here is not merely a passing brightness. The contrast is between a body marked by humiliation and one bearing this weight, while both remain bodies.
ALSO GROWS
doxazō: Honor or glorify.
δοξάζω
This verb names the act of honoring, linking the body’s glory with the honor it bears.
endoxos: Honored or glorious.
ἔνδοξος
This related word describes what carries honor, giving texture to the body’s weight and glory.
THE PATTERN
God’s future for embodied life is resurrection and transformation, not the body’s erasure.
And many of them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt.But if the Spirit of him that raised up Jesus from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up Christ from the dead shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you.It is sown in dishonour; it is raised in glory: it is sown in weakness; it is raised in power:THE THREAD
For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren.The word behind “fashioned like unto” here reappears as “conformed” there: σύμμορφος (symmorphos), formed with. Romans names conformity to the Son’s image; Philippians shows that likeness reaching the body itself.
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