To vaunt (in a good or a bad sense)
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The Greek verb kauchaomai means to boast, to glory in something, or to take pride in something as one's ground of confidence and identity. The noun family includes kauchēma (the thing boasted in) and kauchēsis (the act of boasting).
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Full entry for καυχάομαι (G2744) · Open the biblical lexicon
The Greek verb kauchaomai means to boast, to glory in something, or to take pride in something as one's ground of confidence and identity. The noun family includes kauchēma (the thing boasted in) and kauchēsis (the act of boasting).
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).
The Greek verb kauchaomai means to boast, to glory in something, or to take pride in something as one's ground of confidence and identity. The noun family includes kauchēma (the thing boasted in) and kauchēsis (the act of boasting). In secular Greek the word carried strong negative connotations — boasting was the mark of an arrogant self-promoter. In Paul the word is transformed.
He uses kauchaomai more than any other NT writer, and he does so to diagnose the central spiritual question: what is the ultimate ground of one's confidence and identity? Paul's sustained argument is that the question of boasting is not whether but in what. He does not call believers out of boasting into humility by eliminating the impulse; he calls them to redirect it.
The proper object of boasting is not human achievement (religious or otherwise) but the cross of Jesus Christ and the God who acts in grace. Galatians 6:14 delivers the climactic statement: '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.' This is not false modesty — it is a radical reorientation of the entire human drive to point to something as one's ultimate confidence.
For Paul, the cross is not an embarrassment to downplay but the only thing worth glorying in.
The local Greek index currently counts about 36 occurrences for kauchaomai in the NT. Its most theologically significant uses cluster in Paul's letters, especially Romans, Galatians, and 1-2 Corinthians, with James providing a pointed witness against arrogant self-confidence. Paul's most extended treatments are in 1-2 Corinthians (especially 2 Cor. 10-12, the 'Fool's Speech') and Romans 5.
The Galatians use in 6:14 is one of the most concentrated — a single verse that encapsulates Paul's entire theology of boasting. James uses it negatively (boasting in one's plans, James 4:16) and in a wisdom frame (the poor man boasting in his exaltation, James 1:9).
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 corpus Greek 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
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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.
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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
Kauchaomai is a middle/deponent verb (passive/middle form, active meaning) with no classical secular counterpart carrying the same range. The noun kauchēma can mean either the act of boasting or the content boasted in (the thing of pride). Paul distinguishes these carefully: he has kauchēma in Christ (Phil. 3:3) but he does not kauchasthai in the flesh (Phil.
3:4 — 'Though I myself have reasons to put confidence in the flesh'). The negative form katakauchaomai (to boast against, to triumph over) appears in James 2:13 (mercy triumphs over judgment) and Romans 11:18 (do not boast against the branches). The pervasive presence of this word-family in Paul signals that boasting — the orientation of the self's confidence — is a central anthropological and soteriological category for him.
The OT background is the prophetic critique of misplaced confidence. Jeremiah 9:23-24 is the central text: 'Let not the wise boast in their wisdom or the strong boast in their strength or the rich boast in their riches, but let the one who boasts boast in this: that they have understanding to know me.' This prophetic word identifies kauchaomai as the human act of pointing to one's ultimate ground — and then critiques the wrong objects (wisdom, strength, wealth) in favor of the right one: knowing God.
Paul's entire boasting-theology is an exegesis of this Jeremianic principle applied christologically. Psalm 20:7 offers the same diagnostic from the military domain: 'Some trust in chariots and some in horses, but we trust in the name of the Lord our God.' Isaiah 45:25 promises that all Israel's descendants will be justified and will glory (hishtabachu — the Hebrew equivalent kauchaomai) in the Lord.
Paul reads this promise as reaching its fulfillment when both Jew and Gentile, through faith in Christ, boast in the cross rather than in their respective ethnic-religious credentials. Galatians 6:14 is the fulfillment of Isaiah 45:25 in precisely this sense: the new creation community of Galatians 6:15 is constituted not by circumcision or uncircumcision but by the cross, which is its one boast.
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