What Does Philippians 3:21 Mean?
Who will reshape the body of our lowness, that it may become shaped together with the body of his weight, according to the working by which he is able even to set all things under himself.
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
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 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.
“reshape” in this verse is metaschēmatisei. 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.”
“shaped together with” in this verse is symmorphon. “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.
“body of his weight” 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 those who sleep in the dust of the ground shall awake, some to the life of the ages, and some to exposure and contempt for the ages.But if the breath of him who raised Jesus from the dead makes its home in you, then he who raised the Anointed One from the dead will also make your death-bound bodies alive through his breath that makes its home in you.It is sown without weight; it is awakened in weight. It is sown in weakness; it is awakened in strength.THE THREAD
For whom he knew beforehand, he also marked out beforehand to be shaped together into the image of his Son, so 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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