A limb or part of the body
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Μέλος (mélos) means a member or part of a body. Jesus warns that losing one bodily member is preferable to the whole person being cast into judgment, using severe bodily imagery to demand decisive resistance to sin.
Reader summary
Full entry for μέλος (G3196) · Open the biblical lexicon
Μέλος (mélos) means a member or part of a body. Jesus warns that losing one bodily member is preferable to the whole person being cast into judgment, using severe bodily imagery to demand decisive resistance to sin.
The BSB source-word alignment has 34 aligned rows for this entry. Common renderings include members (8), parts (7), part (6), . . . (2), part of your body (2).
The source-word alignment first shows this entry at Matthew 5:29. Its strongest book concentrations include 1 Corinthians (16), Romans (10), James (3), Ephesians (2).
Μέλος (mélos) means a member or part of a body. Jesus warns that losing one bodily member is preferable to the whole person being cast into judgment, using severe bodily imagery to demand decisive resistance to sin. Paul develops the body's many members to teach differentiated service within one community: members do not share one function, yet no single member can constitute the body alone.
Ephesians grounds truthful speech in believers being members of one another, so deception wounds a shared life rather than only an isolated individual. James asks whether quarrels arise from pleasures waging war in a person's members, locating conflict within disordered embodied desire. The noun can name anatomy or, through the body image, persons joined in community.
Context determines whether it speaks literally, metaphorically, or about desires operating through embodied life.
Μέλος names a bodily member or a person understood as part of a body. Its passages address ruthless resistance to sin, diverse functions, mutual dependence, truthful speech, and desires warring within embodied life.
If your right eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell.
Jesus' warning about the offending eye uses shocking member-and-body language to insist that sin be opposed decisively rather than cherished until final judgment.
Just as each of us has one body with many members, and not all members have the same function,
Paul compares one body with many members whose functions differ, preparing believers to offer distinct gifts without turning difference into superiority or independence.
If they were all one part, where would the body be?
A body cannot consist of one repeated member, so uniformity would destroy rather than perfect the organism Paul uses to describe the church.
Therefore each of you must put off falsehood and speak truthfully to his neighbor, for we are all members of one another.
Believers must speak truth because they are members of one another, making honesty a covenant responsibility within shared life rather than a private preference.
What causes conflicts and quarrels among you? Don’t they come from the passions at war within you?
James locates conflicts in pleasures waging war within the members, tracing public quarrels back to desires that commandeer embodied persons.
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. Body part functioning within organic unity; Paul's dominant metaphor for Christians interdependently joined to Christ.
Textus Receptus witness, full corpusGreek token appearances from Scrivener 1894 Textus Receptus in the full New Testament corpus.
16 of 34 Greek text appearances shown. Linked morphology labels have verse guides.
a limb, member
Read versea limb, member
Read versea limb, member
Read versea limb, member
Read versea limb, member
Read versea limb, member
Read versea limb, member
Read versea limb, member
Read versea limb, member
Read versea limb, member
Read versea limb, member
Read versea limb, member
Read versea limb, member
Read versea limb, member
Read versea limb, member
Read versea limb, member
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 5 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 5 selected witnesses from 34 lexical occurrence verses.
μέλος is of uncertain origin - no further derivation.
Compound and idiomatic phrases that include this word. Follow a link to study the phrase and how its parts work together.
A member has meaning in relation to a body. Jesus' severe image refuses a casual truce with sin: no cherished function or desire is worth the destruction of the whole person. Paul turns anatomy toward ecclesiology without erasing difference. The church needs many members precisely because one repeated function would not be a body, and every gift remains accountable to the whole.
Ephesians makes mutual membership ethical: falsehood cannot be defended as private speech when it injures people joined to one another in Christ. James moves in the opposite direction, from public conflict to desires fighting within embodied members. Churches should honor bodies, confront sin, cultivate varied service, and tell the truth as people whose lives are connected.
Μέλος offers neither a machine of interchangeable parts nor a mystical excuse for control, but an organic picture of differentiated, responsible belonging.
Matt.5.29
Μέλος is a neuter noun for a limb, organ, or bodily member. Paul extends the concrete body-part sense to persons within a corporate body. Plural use can also locate impulses in the members of one's body.
The body is God's workmanship, bodily members can become instruments of righteousness or sin, and the church is portrayed as one body whose members receive distinct gifts under Christ.