To count
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Logizomai means to count, reckon, credit, or take into account. It is an accounting word: to place something in a ledger on someone's side, to count something as belonging to someone, to credit an amount to an account.
Reader summary
Full entry for λογίζομαι (G3049) · Open the biblical lexicon
Logizomai means to count, reckon, credit, or take into account. It is an accounting word: to place something in a ledger on someone's side, to count something as belonging to someone, to credit an amount to an account.
The BSB source-word alignment has 40 aligned rows for this entry. Common renderings include it was credited (5), [Abraham] reasoned (1), [righteousness] will be credited (1), [whom] I regard (1), are not credited (1).
The source-word alignment first shows this entry at Luke 22:37. Its strongest book concentrations include Romans (19), 2 Corinthians (8), 1 Corinthians (3), Philippians (2).
Logizomai means to count, reckon, credit, or take into account. It is an accounting word: to place something in a ledger on someone's side, to count something as belonging to someone, to credit an amount to an account. In the New Testament it carries enormous theological weight precisely because Paul uses it in Romans 4 — repeatedly and deliberately — to describe how God counts faith as righteousness.
The word appears eleven times in Romans 4 alone, building the case that Abraham's faith was credited (logizomai) to him as righteousness (Gen. 15. 6, quoted from the LXX). This is not God pretending something is true that is not. It is God acting in accordance with his own declaration — counting faith in his promise as the kind of righteous standing that he requires.
Logizomai also appears in Paul's great love chapter (1 Cor. 13. 5: love does not keep a record of wrongs — literally, love does not logizomai the evil) and in Philippians 4:8 (whatever is true, noble, right — logizomai these things, i. e. take them into your accounting, dwell on them). The word thus moves between the forensic (God's justifying verdict), the relational (love's refusal to tally), and the cognitive (the mind's deliberate dwelling on what is true).
Logizomai appears 40 times in the New Testament, with extraordinary concentration in Paul's letters — especially Romans (19x) and the Corinthian correspondence. Its most theologically decisive uses are in Romans 4's extended meditation on Abraham's faith and justification, where the word appears in every key move of Paul's argument. Its uses outside Paul are varied: ordinary counting or deliberation.
For what does the Scripture say? “Abraham believed God, and it was credited to him as righteousness.”
Paul's anchor quotation from Genesis 15:6 (LXX: elogisthē — it was counted/credited). The passive logizomai indicates that God is the one doing the crediting; Abraham does not credit himself. The counting is forensic and gracious — God's verdict that the one who believes his promise occupies the standing of the righteous.
Blessed is the man whose sin the Lord will never count against him.”
Paul quotes Psalm 32:2 (LXX: ou mē logisētai — will not count/reckon). The same verb, now in the negative: logizomai of sin means having sin placed on your ledger. Justification is not only the positive crediting of righteousness; it is simultaneously the non-crediting of sin. Both movements are logizomai.
It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no account of wrongs.
Love does not logizomai evil. The accounting metaphor is explicit: love refuses to keep a running tally of offenses received. This is not amnesia or moral indifference; it is the active refusal to maintain an account of wrongs that could be called up against the other. The forensic word becomes a relational virtue when love adopts it.
Finally brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable—if there is any moral excellence and if there is any praise—dwell on (logizomai) these things.
The cognitive use of logizomai: the deliberate taking-into-account of what is true, noble, and good. The mind's accounting shapes its orientation. Paul does not simply say 'think about good things' as generic positive thinking; he uses the reckoning word to describe a deliberate, chosen, sustained mental accounting.
I consider that our present sufferings are not comparable to the glory that will be revealed in us.
Paul logizomai the comparative weight of present suffering against future glory. The accounting yields a verdict: the glory outweighs. This is not denial of suffering but a theological calculation about proportions. The justified mind, shaped by the gospel, can reckon clearly about what ultimately weighs more.
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 reckon or impute something to someone's account, especially in forensic or covenant contexts.
Textus Receptus witness, full corpus Greek token appearances from Scrivener 1894 Textus Receptus in the full New Testament corpus.
16 of 41 Greek text appearances shown. Linked morphology labels have verse guides.
I reckon, count, decide
Read verseI reckon, count, decide
Read verseI reckon, count, decide
Read verseI reckon, count, decide
Read verseI reckon, count, decide
Read verseI reckon, count, decide
Read verseI reckon, count, decide
Read verseI reckon, count, decide
Read verseI reckon, count, decide
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Read verseI reckon, count, decide
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Read verseI reckon, count, decide
Read verseI reckon, count, decide
Read verseI reckon, count, decide
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 40 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 2 selected witnesses from 40 lexical occurrence verses.
λογίζομαι is built from this root:
It explains how righteousness is credited to believers apart from works.
Compound and idiomatic phrases that include this word. Follow a link to study the phrase and how its parts work together.
Logizomai is the word at the heart of the Reformation's debate about justification, but it is not only a doctrinal word. It is a word about how reality is counted — and who does the counting. Paul's use of it in Romans 4 is careful and repeated because he is making a precise point: the righteousness that stands before God is not produced by Abraham's performance.
It is credited by God to Abraham's faith. The crediting is God's act, the faith is Abraham's, and the righteousness that results belongs to Abraham by God's verdict. This is forensic and real simultaneously — not a legal fiction but God's authoritative declaration that the one who trusts him stands in the right. The word's range beyond Romans 4 adds pastoral richness.
Love does not logizomai evil — it refuses to keep accounts of wrongs received, to tally up the debt owed, to maintain the ledger of grievance. This is not the abolition of moral seriousness but its expression in a specific direction: toward the other person rather than against them. And the Philippians use is different again: a deliberate practice of the mind, choosing what to reckon with.
The justified person, whose account before God is settled, can bring that same spirit of settled reckoning to the accounting of suffering (Romans 8) and to the daily accounting of the mind (Philippians 4). The word connects justification, relational love, and cognitive formation in ways that no single English word captures.
Rom.4.3
Logizomai is from logos (word, reason, account) and means literally to put into an account, to reckon, to count. The related noun logos in accounting contexts means a ledger or account. English 'logic' derives ultimately from the same root. The word's basic domain is accounting and inventory — to take stock of, to credit or debit. Paul's use in Romans 4 draws on this accounting background deliberately: faith is credited to Abraham's account as righteousness, not purchased by performance.
The LXX of Genesis 15:6 and Psalm 32:2 uses the same Greek verb, connecting Paul's argument directly to the Old Testament's vocabulary of divine reckoning.
The Hebrew ḥāšab (to reckon, to think, to account — H2803) is the background of logizomai in Paul's key quotations. Genesis 15:6 ('it was counted/reckoned to him as righteousness') and Psalm 32:2 ('blessed is the man to whom the Lord does not count sin') use ḥāšab, which the LXX renders logizomai. Paul's argument in Romans 4 is that this crediting-of-faith-as-righteousness is the mode of justification before circumcision was introduced, before the law was given, and therefore available to all who share Abraham's faith.
The word's New Testament legacy is at the center of Protestant soteriology: imputed righteousness, counted not earned, credited by grace. Beyond doctrine, the word's relational use (love does not count wrongs) and cognitive use (reckon on these things) show that the justified mind is invited into a new way of accounting: measuring present suffering against future glory, measuring wrongs received against the One who did not count our trespasses against us.
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