To vaunt (in a good or a bad sense)
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G2744 is the verb for boasting, glorying, exulting, or taking pride in someone or something. Its current corpus evidence totals thirty-eight inflected instances, distributed through thirty-three passages and eight New Testament books.
Reader summary
Full entry for καυχάομαι (G2744) · Open the biblical lexicon
G2744 is the verb for boasting, glorying, exulting, or taking pride in someone or something. Its current corpus evidence totals thirty-eight inflected instances, distributed through thirty-three passages and eight New Testament books.
The BSB source-word alignment has 38 aligned rows for this entry. Common renderings include boast (7), I will boast (3), boasts (2), may boast (2), we also rejoice (2).
The source-word alignment first shows this entry at Romans 2:17. Its strongest book concentrations include 2 Corinthians (20), 1 Corinthians (6), Romans (5), Galatians (2).
G2744 is the verb for boasting, glorying, exulting, or taking pride in someone or something. Its current corpus evidence totals thirty-eight inflected instances, distributed through thirty-three passages and eight New Testament books. The object and setting determine whether the action is condemned or rightly ordered. Romans and 1 Corinthians exclude confidence grounded in law, human leaders, or self-made distinction. Galatians contrasts opponents who boast in circumcision with Paul's boast in the cross. Second Corinthians uses the verb within strained ministry relationships, including Paul's deliberately reluctant discussion of credentials, suffering, weakness, and the Lord's power. James can call a lowly believer to exult in exaltation and can condemn arrogant plans.
The word therefore does not authorize a rule that every positive statement about ministry fruit is pride, nor does it permit self-promotion whenever God is mentioned. Teachers should ask who or what receives the weight of confidence, how the immediate argument qualifies the boast, and whether grace, truth, and accountability govern the speech.
G2744 occurs in passages that reject self-grounded confidence, direct boasting to the Lord or the cross, express joy in hope and ministry fruit, and expose arrogant speech. Its thirty-eight current-witness forms include concentrated use in 2 Corinthians, but the other seven books keep the verb from being reduced to that controversy.
But as for me, may I never boast, except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, through which the world has been crucified to me, and I to the world.
The letter's climactic boast-declaration and one of the great sentences in Paul. Three things are stated: (1) Paul's boasting has a sole object — the cross of Christ; (2) the cross has effected a mutual crucifixion between Paul and the world; (3) this is not a statement of world-rejection but of reorientation — the world-system's values (including the circumcision-standing Paul's opponents advocated) have no hold on the crucified-with-Christ person.
The cross as boast-object inverts every human value system that measures standing by achievement.
For the circumcised do not even keep the law themselves, yet they want you to be circumcised that they may boast in your flesh.
The Judaizing teachers' boasting is exposed: their motivation for demanding Gentile circumcision is not theological consistency but kauchēma — they want to count the Galatians as trophies of their ministry. This exposes the pastoral heart of the Galatian crisis: the false teachers are using the Galatians as grounds of their own confidence before others ('to boast in your flesh'). Paul's boasting in the cross and their boasting in flesh represent two completely different orientations of the self.
Through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we stand. And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God.
Romans 5:2 adds the dimension of eschatological boasting: believers boast in hope — the confident expectation of the glory of God as their ultimate destiny. This is not wishful thinking but a ground of confidence as secure as the access to God they already have. Boasting in hope and boasting in the cross are not competing; hope is the forward form of what the cross has secured.
Not only that, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance;
Paul extends kauchaomai to sufferings — the believers boast even in tribulations because of what tribulations produce. This is the most counterintuitive application of the word: taking one's stand on suffering as the ground of confidence. The logic is that tribulation is the training ground for the hope that does not disappoint. Boasting in suffering is only possible when the cross has reoriented what counts as gain and loss.
Therefore, as it is written: “Let him who boasts boast in the Lord.”
Paul cites Jeremiah 9:24 (via LXX) to establish the OT prophetic ground for his boasting-theology: the only legitimate boasting is boasting in the Lord. This makes explicit what is implicit throughout: the Pauline reorientation of kauchaomai is not a NT innovation but the fulfillment of the prophetic tradition's demand. The Galatians 6:14 cross-boast is the specific christological form of this Jeremianic principle.
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. To boast or glory; in NT primarily means righteous exultation in God or Christ, not human pride.
Textus Receptus witness, full corpusGreek token appearances from Scrivener 1894 Textus Receptus in the full New Testament corpus.
16 of 38 Greek text appearances shown. Linked morphology labels have verse guides.
I boast, glory
Read verseI boast, glory
Read verseI boast, glory
Read verseI boast, glory
Read verseI boast, glory
Read verseI boast, glory
Read verseI boast, glory
Read verseI boast, glory
Read verseI boast, glory
Read verseI boast, glory
Read verseI boast, glory
Read verseI boast, glory
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Read verseI boast, glory
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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 mood, tense, and voice shift the force of this verb in context.
This verb appears through different tense, voice, mood, or stem patterns. Those forms help readers see how the action is presented in context.
Verse guides are not available for this word yet, so verse references remain plain evidence markers.
How this verb appears across 36 occurrences in the NT discourse index (MACULA Greek SBLGNT).
Aspect reflects grammatical form — not authorial emphasis. Participles and infinitives are verbal adjectives and nouns respectively.
Clause data: MACULA Greek (Clear Bible, CC BY 4.0) · SBLGNT (Logos/SBL, CC BY 4.0)
Selected passage-level study witnesses for this word. This section is not the full occurrence list.
Showing 5 selected witnesses from 36 lexical occurrence verses.
καυχάομαι is built from this root:
Compound and idiomatic phrases that include this word. Follow a link to study the phrase and how its parts work together.
Kauchaomai is Paul's word for what every human being does: they find something to point to as their ultimate ground of confidence and identity, and they build their life on it. The diagnostic Paul performs in Galatians is to ask: what are the Judaizing teachers boasting in? They boast in flesh — in the religious-ethnic identity markers that the circumcision system maintains (Gal.
6:13). And Paul exposes this as the same fundamental movement as every other form of self-grounded confidence: something other than the grace of God in Christ is functioning as the bedrock. His counter is not to say 'don't boast' but to say 'boast in this' — the cross. The cross is the supreme anti-boast object for human achievement because it represents total human bankruptcy meeting total divine gift.
No one can boast about the cross as though they contributed to it. But it is also the supreme boast-object because it is the most comprehensive statement of God's love, power, wisdom, and grace ever made in history. To boast in the cross is to say: 'the most important thing about me, the deepest ground of my standing, the center of my identity, is not what I have done but what God has done for me in the death of his Son.'
The preacher who handles Galatians 6:14 will help people see that this reorientation addresses the deepest human drive — not to eliminate confidence but to relocate it. The question for every congregation member is not whether they boast but whether they have found the one boast that will not give way: the cross.
Gal.6.14
G2744 is a verb represented by seventeen parsing patterns in the governed current-edition witness. Middle or passive-looking forms commonly carry the active sense of boasting, glorying, or exulting. The construction often identifies the object or sphere of the boast, such as the Lord, the cross, hope, suffering, weakness, or another person. That complement and the surrounding argument are essential because the same verb can describe condemned self-confidence or properly directed rejoicing.
First Corinthians 1:31 and 2 Corinthians 10:17 quote the scriptural call for the one who boasts to boast in the Lord. Jeremiah 9:23-24 contrasts wisdom, strength, and riches with knowing the Lord. Paul applies that boundary within arguments about God's saving work and accountable ministry; the citation redirects honor without making every claimed religious success a faithful boast.