Time/right time
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καιρός is the Greek word for time understood not as duration but as appointment. Where χρόνος measures time quantitatively — how long something takes — καιρός names the qualitative character of a moment: its readiness, its fitness, its theological weight.
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Full entry for καιρός (G2540) · Open the biblical lexicon
καιρός is the Greek word for time understood not as duration but as appointment. Where χρόνος measures time quantitatively — how long something takes — καιρός names the qualitative character of a moment: its readiness, its fitness, its theological weight.
The BSB source-word alignment has 85 aligned rows for this entry. Common renderings include time (30), times (8), seasons (4), . . . (3), [the] time (3).
The source-word alignment first shows this entry at Matthew 8:29. Its strongest book concentrations include Luke (13), Matthew (10), Acts (9), Revelation (7).
This entry includes 2 verse guides that explain exact original-language forms in context.
καιρός is the Greek word for time understood not as duration but as appointment. Where χρόνος measures time quantitatively — how long something takes — καιρός names the qualitative character of a moment: its readiness, its fitness, its theological weight. The distinction matters pastorally: a congregation anxious about how much time remains needs to hear χρόνος; a congregation that needs to understand what kind of moment they are living in needs καιρός.
In the NT the word carries an eschatological charge that its classical background alone cannot explain. When Jesus announces in Mark 1:15 that 'the time is fulfilled,' he is not reporting a calendrical fact — he is declaring that history has reached the appointed moment toward which the canonical story had been moving. The καιρός is not merely a favorable opportunity; it is a divinely ordained convergence point.
Paul's uses in Romans 13:11 and Ephesians 5:16 develop the pastoral implications of this eschatological καιρός: because we live in the overlap of this age and the age to come, every moment carries a seriousness that secular time does not. 'Redeeming the time' in Ephesians 5:16 is not time-management advice; it is an exhortation calibrated to the reality that the days are evil and the καιρός for action is now.
The Revelation 1:3 use — 'the time is at hand' — extends the urgency to the final horizon: the whole of redemptive history is pressing toward its appointed conclusion, and the church lives in the tension of a καιρός that has begun but not yet fully arrived.
καιρός appears in the local Greek index about 85 times in the NT, distributed across the Gospels, Pauline letters, Hebrews, Peter, and Revelation. It often carries the sense of a divinely appointed time or season rather than chronological duration. The word is used both for specific eschatological moments (the arrival of the kingdom, the time of the end) and for the ongoing 'season' of the present age in which the church lives and acts.
“The time is fulfilled,” He said, “and the kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe in the gospel!”
The programmatic announcement of Jesus' ministry is structured around καιρός: history has arrived at its appointed moment. The perfect tense 'is fulfilled' (πεπλήρωται) signals that the kairos was set in advance and has now been reached — not achieved by human effort but completed by divine appointment. Repentance and faith are the appropriate human responses to a kairos, not to chronological time.
And do this, understanding the occasion. The hour has come for you to wake up from your slumber, for our salvation is nearer now than when we first believed.
Paul's ethical exhortation in Romans 13 is grounded in καιρός-awareness. The urgency to love the neighbor (vv. 8-10) is calibrated by the recognition of what kind of moment the church occupies: the night is far spent, the day is near. This is not apocalyptic panic but eschatological orientation — knowing the kairos produces sober, deliberate love, not frenzy.
Redeeming the time, because the days are evil.
The phrase 'redeeming the time' (ἐξαγοραζόμενοι τὸν καιρόν) is a commercial metaphor applied to eschatological urgency: buying up the opportunity, treating each moment as a commodity of finite supply in a market where the currency of available time is being spent down. The reason given — 'because the days are evil' — identifies the kairos not as favorable but as contested: the church lives in a moment where the enemy is active and inattention is costly.
Let us not grow weary in well-doing, for in due time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.
The agricultural metaphor of a harvest καιρός — a season for reaping that will come at the appointed time — grounds perseverance in good works. The exhaustion that tempts the Galatian believers to quit is reframed by a kairos promise: the appointed season of harvest is coming and cannot be moved. Endurance is not willpower but trust in the timing of a faithful God.
Blessed is the one who reads aloud the words of this prophecy, and blessed are those who hear and obey what is written in it, because the time is near.
The opening beatitude of Revelation ties its blessing to the recognition that the καιρός is near. The entire book is framed as a disclosure given to a church living in an urgent appointed time — not to satisfy apocalyptic curiosity but to produce faithfulness under pressure. Keeping the words of the prophecy is the right action for people who understand what kind of moment they are in.
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.
Verse-level guides showing how this original-language form works in its specific context, including grammar, verse function, and guarded interpretation.
Greek word. A specific, opportune moment or season—not merely duration but the right time for action.
Textus Receptus witness, full corpus Greek token appearances from Scrivener 1894 Textus Receptus in the full New Testament corpus.
16 of 86 Greek text appearances shown. Linked morphology labels have verse guides.
fitting season, opportunity, time
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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 8 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.
Selected passage-level study witnesses for this word. This section is not the full occurrence list.
Showing 8 selected witnesses from 85 lexical occurrence verses.
καιρός is of uncertain origin - no further derivation.
Signals fulfillment of redemptive expectation.
Identifies the decisive redemptive moment of Christ’s presence.
Indicates redemptive periods determined by God.
Indicates divinely ordained moment of redemptive fulfillment.
Affirms divine sovereignty over redemptive timing. John 7:1–13
Compound and idiomatic phrases that include this word. Follow a link to study the phrase and how its parts work together.
The preacher who grasps καιρός has a word that does something very specific: it reframes ordinary moments as theologically weighted ones without manufacturing artificial urgency or apocalyptic anxiety. The pastoral problem καιρός addresses is not that people are unaware time is passing — it is that they live as though the present moment has no particular significance.
Mark 1:15 announces that this is false: history has been moving toward an appointed convergence, and the proclamation of Jesus has brought that convergence into the present. Every sermon preached after that announcement is preached in a kairos, not merely a chronos. Paul's use in Ephesians 5:16 takes this seriously enough to call it a reason for how to live: because the days are evil and the kairos is real, the church must live with deliberate attention to opportunity.
The practical shape of kairos-awareness is not frenzy but discernment — asking not 'how much time do I have?' but 'what kind of moment is this, and what does faithfulness look like in it?'
Mark.1.15
Abbott-Smith notes that καιρός in classical Greek carried the sense of fitness or proportion — the right measure for a situation — before developing its temporal meaning. This background enriches the NT use: the appointed time is not merely scheduled but fitting. The kairos of Mark 1:15 is not just 'now' but 'exactly right, calibrated by God to the readiness of history.'
The LXX primarily uses καιρός to translate Hebrew עֵת (ʿēt, time/season) and מוֹעֵד (mōʿēd, appointed time/feast), both of which carry the sense of divinely determined moments.
The OT theology of appointed times — the calendar of feasts as mōʿādîm, the prophetic announcements of a coming day of the Lord, Daniel's seventy weeks — provides the soil in which the NT kairos grows. Jesus' announcement in Mark 1:15 that 'the time is fulfilled' is not an independent claim but the declaration that the OT's network of appointed-time promises has reached its convergence point.
Paul develops the pastoral implications in two directions: eschatological sobriety (Romans 13, where kairos-awareness produces love) and perseverance (Galatians 6, where the harvest kairos grounds endurance). Revelation extends the kairos to the final horizon, framing the entire letter as disclosure given to a community that understands it lives in the penultimate appointed time before the final one.
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