What Does Romans 6:21 Mean?
What fruit did you have then in those things of which you are now ashamed? For the end of those things is death.
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
What fruit had ye then in those things whereof ye are now ashamed? for the end of those things is death.THE KEY
The verse names death, not shame, as the outcome those things were bringing to completion.
THE MEANING
You can see now what those things were yielding. Shame is present recognition; death is the outcome the verse names for that path. The question asks what lasting fruit those things actually produced.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that what once seemed worth pursuing must have produced a lasting gain; the fruit and end tell a different story.
THE ROOT
τέλος
telos
GROWS FROM
τελ-
completion, outcome, goal
“end” in this verse is telos. The word can name the point a thing reaches, not only the moment it stops. Here, death is named as the outcome those former things reach.
ALSO GROWS
teleō: finish, complete, bring to fulfillment
τελέω
The shared stem links an end with what a course completes.
teleios: complete, mature
τέλειος
This related word also describes a reached state, echoing the sense of an outcome.
καρπός
karpos
GROWS FROM
καρπ-
fruit, produce, yield
“fruit” in this verse is karpos. The image asks what these things actually yield. The verse sets that yield beside their end, making the outcome visible rather than assumed.
ALSO GROWS
karpophoreō: bear fruit, produce
καρποφορέω
This verb makes explicit the producing action implied by the question about fruit.
akarpos: unfruitful, barren
ἄκαρπος
The same word family can describe a life or course by whether it yields.
ἐπαισχύνεσθε
epaischynesthe
GROWS FROM
αἰσχ-
shame, disgrace
The verb describes shame as present: you are ashamed now of those things. The verse sets that recognition beside their yield and end; it does not call shame itself the fruit or the outcome.
ALSO GROWS
aischynē: shame, disgrace
αἰσχύνη
The noun names the feeling that is present in the verse’s question.
aischros: shameful, disgraceful
αἰσχρός
This related word describes what brings disgrace, connecting the feeling to the things now seen differently.
THE PATTERN
A path is disclosed by the fruit it produces and the end it reaches.
There is a way straight before a man, but its latter end is the ways of death.So every good tree makes good fruit, but the rotten tree makes evil fruit.For the one who sows into his own flesh reaps decay from the flesh, but the one who sows into the breath reaps from the breath the life of the ages.THE THREAD
But now, unbound from falling short and made bound servants of God, you have your fruit unto being set apart, and the end, the life of the ages.The same Greek words for “fruit” and “end” return in the next verse, now alongside a different outcome. The contrast shows that the yield and the end belong together, with the end here rendered as the life of the ages.
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