(Properly, an adjective used as a noun) death (literally or figuratively)
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θάνατος is the NT word for death in its full range: the physical ending of bodily life, the spiritual condition of separation from God, and the personified power that holds humanity in bondage. The local Greek index currently counts about 120 NT occurrences for the word, and the spread of its usage reflects the seriousness with which the NT treats mortality ; not as a biological inevitability to be managed but as a.
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Full entry for θάνατος (G2288) · Open the biblical lexicon
θάνατος is the NT word for death in its full range: the physical ending of bodily life, the spiritual condition of separation from God, and the personified power that holds humanity in bondage. The local Greek index currently counts about 120 NT occurrences for the word, and the spread of its usage reflects the seriousness with which the NT treats mortality.
The BSB source-word alignment has 120 aligned rows for this entry. Common renderings include death (75), of death (17), . . . (4), [is] death (3), for a death sentence (2).
The source-word alignment first shows this entry at Matthew 4:16. Its strongest book concentrations include Romans (22), Revelation (19), Hebrews (10), 2 Corinthians (9).
θάνατος is the NT word for death in its full range: the physical ending of bodily life, the spiritual condition of separation from God, and the personified power that holds humanity in bondage. The local Greek index currently counts about 120 NT occurrences for the word, and the spread of its usage reflects the seriousness with which the NT treats mortality ; not as a biological inevitability to be managed but as a problem requiring a divine solution.
Romans 6:23 names the basic theological logic: 'the wages of sin is death.' Death is not merely an ending; it is an outcome ; what sin pays its workers. This framing makes death a moral and covenantal category, not only a physical one. The connection Paul draws is rooted in Genesis 2-3: the warning 'on the day you eat of it you shall surely die' was a covenantal declaration before it became a biological fact. Death entered through sin (Rom 5:12), and the full scope of death ; physical, spiritual, eternal ; is the consequence of that break in the human relationship with God.
The NT's treatment of death is shaped by Christ's own death and resurrection. Hebrews 2:14-15 names the pastoral logic: Christ shared in flesh and blood 'that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery.' Death held people in slavery through fear. Christ enters that domain and breaks its power from within. The resurrection is not merely a demonstration of life after death; it is the reversal of death's authority.
First Corinthians 15:26 calls death 'the last enemy to be destroyed.' It is still present in this age; its defeat is real but not yet fully visible. The Christian lives in the tension between the 'already' of Christ's resurrection (which has broken death's ultimate power) and the 'not yet' of death's final abolition. This is the frame within which the NT's grief texts, hope texts, and pastoral comfort texts should be read.
For the preacher, θάνατος is the word that makes the resurrection necessary and the gospel urgent. A gospel that minimizes death produces people who do not understand what they have been saved from.
In the local Greek index, θάνατος appears about 120 times in the NT, concentrated in Paul's letters (especially Romans and 1 Corinthians), Hebrews, and Revelation. It covers physical death, spiritual death (separation from God), and the eschatological 'second death' (Rev 2:11; 21:8). It is also personified as a power and an enemy that Christ will finally destroy.
For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
The theological summary: death as sin's wage and life as God's gift. The contrast is not only quantitative (life is better than death) but categorical: wages are earned; gifts are given freely. Death is what human choice toward sin earns; life is what God gives in Christ without merit. The single verse holds the entire gospel logic in compressed form.
The last enemy to be destroyed is death.
Death as enemy — the final one to be destroyed. Paul's eschatological sequence ends here: Christ reigns until every enemy is put under His feet, and the last of them is death itself. The resurrection of Christ has already dealt death a decisive blow; the full abolition is future. This tension — already defeated, not yet destroyed — is the frame for all NT grief and hope.
Now since the children have flesh and blood, He too shared in their humanity, so that by His death He might destroy him who holds the power of death, that is, the devil,
The mechanism of Christ's victory: He entered death's domain in order to destroy death's master from within. The Incarnation is purposive — He became mortal so that through His death He could disarm what gave death its power. The phrase 'bring to nothing' (katargesein) names a real defeat: the devil's power over death is functionally ended even if not yet finally visible.
For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor principalities, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers,
Death listed first among the powers that cannot separate the believer from the love of God. The placement is significant: death is the most fundamental threat to human existence, and Paul puts it at the head of the list to say — not even this. Not even death can sever the union with Christ. The confidence is not that death will not come but that death, when it comes, does not have the last word on the relationship.
‘He will wipe away every tear from their eyes,’ and there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the former things have passed away.”
The eschatological abolition: death will be no more. This is the positive content of 1 Corinthians 15:26's 'last enemy destroyed' — the new creation has no place for death, mourning, crying, or pain. John does not merely name death's absence but the erasure of the whole cluster of realities that death produces: grief, loss, separation, pain. The pastoral vision is not merely survival of death but its total reversal.
Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in Me will live, even though he dies.
Christ's self-identification in the face of death: He is the resurrection and the life — not a provider of resurrection but its very source. The claim transforms death's frame: the person who believes in Jesus will live even if they die physically. Death is no longer a terminus but a passage for the one who is in Christ. Martha's grief is real; the comfort Jesus offers is not platitude but ontological claim about who He is.
BSB source-word alignment connects this entry to exact verse rows, English rendering, source form, transliteration, and parsing.
How English Renders ItA compact distribution from source-word alignment before the full evidence tables.
Greek word. Physical death contrasts with spiritual/eternal death; personified as a power opposing divine life
Textus Receptus witness, full corpus Greek token appearances from Scrivener 1894 Textus Receptus in the full New Testament corpus.
16 of 119 Greek text appearances shown. Linked morphology labels have verse guides.
death
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Read verseFull New Testament corpus: 260 chapters, 7,957 verses, 140,628 tokens. Data source: honza/textus-receptus (data only), with authority check against byztxt/greektext-textus-receptus.
How this word appears across different grammatical cases and numbers.
This word appears as a noun across 6 case and number patterns. The form changes show how the word functions in a sentence; they do not change the basic lexical meaning by themselves.
Verse guides are not available for this word yet, so verse references remain plain evidence markers.
Selected passage-level study witnesses for this word. This section is not the full occurrence list.
Showing 2 selected witnesses from 120 lexical occurrence verses.
θάνατος is built from this root:
Hatred reveals continued residence in spiritual death. 1 John 3:11-18
Distinguishing types of sin underscores the gravity of persistent rebellion. 1 John 5:13-17
Compound and idiomatic phrases that include this word. Follow a link to study the phrase and how its parts work together.
θάνατος is the word the NT will not minimize. Death is real, it is the enemy, and it is the consequence of sin — and the gospel's power is precisely that it addresses the problem at its most severe. A Christianity that avoids speaking plainly about death — biological, spiritual, and eternal — produces people who have not understood what Christ came to do. The preacher who softens death into a transition or a natural chapter of life has taken the edge off the gospel's own self-description: Christ came to destroy death (Heb 2:14), to abolish it as the last enemy (1 Cor 15:26), and to ensure that it will have no place in the new creation (Rev 21:4).
The pastoral significance of this is immense: the person sitting with grief, facing a terminal diagnosis, standing at a graveside — they are not in a situation the gospel finds awkward. They are in exactly the situation the gospel was designed for. Death is the problem Christ came to solve, and His resurrection is the firstfruit of the solution that will reach its completion when death itself is no more.
Rom.6.23
θάνατος is the standard Greek word for death, from the verb thnesko (to die). In the NT it covers a range that exceeds simple physical cessation: it includes spiritual death (separation from God while still physically alive — Jhn 5:24; 1 Jn 3:14), eternal death (the 'second death' of Revelation — Rev 2:11; 20:14; 21:8), and personified Death as a cosmic power (Rev 6:8; 20:13-14 where Death and Hades are paired).
The NT also uses the word for Christ's death specifically — the death that is the event of atonement (Rom 5:10; Heb 2:9) and the act through which resurrection becomes possible. The death of Christ is the central use of the word theologically: it is the death that reverses all other deaths.
Death enters the biblical story in Genesis 2-3 as the covenantal consequence of the creature's choice to live apart from God: 'on the day you eat of it you shall surely die.' The OT narratives unfold life lived under the shadow of that death: mortality, violence, grief, Sheol. The Psalms are the OT's most sustained engagement with mortality — Psalms 22, 49, 88, 90 speak from within the experience of death's nearness and God's apparent absence.
Yet the OT also contains seeds of hope beyond death: Isaiah 25:8 ('he will swallow up death forever'), Ezekiel 37 (the valley of dry bones as resurrection-like restoration), Daniel 12:2 ('many who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake'). The NT receives these seeds and declares their fulfillment in Christ's resurrection. Paul's argument in 1 Corinthians 15 reads Isaiah 25:8 and Hosea 13:14 ('where, O death, is your victory?
Where, O death, is your sting?') as texts now applicable to Christ's conquest. The OT's hope for death's reversal is what the gospel declares accomplished.
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