What does νεκρόω (nekróō) mean in the Bible?
νεκρόω means to put to death, make dead, or treat as dead. In Romans and Hebrews it can describe Abraham's body as as good as dead, emphasizing the impossibility from which God brings promise.
Greek · G3499
νεκρόω
To put to death
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νεκρόω G3499
Pronunciation nekróō
What does νεκρόω (nekróō) mean in the Bible?
νεκρόω means to put to death, make dead, or treat as dead. In Romans and Hebrews it can describe Abraham's body as as good as dead, emphasizing the impossibility from which God brings promise.
Reader summary
Full entry for νεκρόω (G3499) · Open the biblical lexicon
Questions this entry answers
How does the BSB render G3499?
The BSB source-word alignment has 3 aligned rows for this entry. Common renderings include as good as dead (1), decrepitness (1), Put to death (1).
Where does νεκρόω (nekróō) appear in Scripture?
The source-word alignment first shows this entry at Romans 4:19. Its strongest book concentrations include Colossians (1), Hebrews (1), Romans (1).
What This Word Actually Means
νεκρόω means to put to death, make dead, or treat as dead. In Romans and Hebrews it can describe Abraham's body as as good as dead, emphasizing the impossibility from which God brings promise. In Colossians 3:5, the verb becomes an imperative: put to death what belongs to the earthly nature. The word is severe because sin is severe. Paul is not calling believers to manage, decorate, excuse, or rename the old life. He is calling them to decisive Spirit-dependent mortification in light of their union with the risen Christ.
The command sits after Colossians 3:1-4, which says believers have been raised with Christ and their life is hidden with Christ in God. That order matters. Mortification is not self-salvation. The Christian puts sin to death because the old self has been put off and life is now bound to Christ. The word therefore protects discipleship from both passivity and moralism. Grace does not leave sin alive as a tolerated tenant, and holiness is not the price paid to earn resurrection life.
Lexical sourcePassage contextBook contextPastoral application
How the Bible Uses It
νεκρόω has a narrow but weighty NT witness. It can describe bodily deadness in Abraham's story, and in Colossians it becomes the sharp command to put earthly sin to death because believers have been raised with Christ.
- Rom.4.19
Without weakening in his faith, he acknowledged the decrepitness of his body (since he was about a hundred years old) and the lifelessness of Sarah’s womb.
Paul uses the verb to describe Abraham's body as deadened in relation to natural possibility. The setting highlights God's promise working where human capacity is exhausted.
- Col.3.5
Put to death, therefore, the components of your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires, and greed, which is idolatry.
The word becomes a command for Christian holiness: put to death what belongs to the earthly nature. It follows the declaration that believers have been raised with Christ.
- Heb.11.12
And so from one man, and he as good as dead, came descendants as numerous as the stars in the sky and as countless as the sand on the seashore.
Hebrews uses the deadness image in the faith chapter, again showing God's life-giving promise overcoming human impossibility.
Lexical sourceCanonical parallelPassage contextBook context
Source Word Evidence
BSB source-word alignment connects this entry to exact verse rows, English rendering, source form, transliteration, and parsing.
How English Renders It as good as dead 1× Hebrews 11:12
decrepitness 1× Romans 4:19
Put to death 1× Colossians 3:5
Show sample aligned rows
Romans 4:19 νενεκρωμένον to decrepitness Verb - Perfect Participle Middle or Passive - Accusative Neuter Singular Colossians 3:5 Νεκρώσατε to Put to death Verb - Aorist Imperative Active - 2nd Person Plural Hebrews 11:12 νενεκρωμένου to as good as dead Verb - Perfect Participle Middle or Passive - Genitive Masculine Singular
Usage map
A compact distribution from source-word alignment before the full evidence tables.
First aligned row Romans 4:19
Aligned rows 3
Books represented 3
Romans 1 Colossians 1 Hebrews 1
Source forms
Νεκρώσατε 1x Nekrōsate Colossians 3:5
νενεκρωμένον 1x nenekrōmenon Romans 4:19
νενεκρωμένου 1x nenekrōmenou Hebrews 11:12
Parsing patterns
Verb - Aorist Imperative Active - 2nd Person Plural 1x Colossians 3:5
Verb - Perfect Participle Middle or Passive - Accusative Neuter Singular 1x Romans 4:19
Verb - Perfect Participle Middle or Passive - Genitive Masculine Singular 1x Hebrews 11:12
Using This Word Well
Be careful not to...
- Teach this command as resurrection-shaped warfare against sin, not as a technique for earning God's acceptance.
Avoid claiming...
- Do not claim that putting sin to death means believers save themselves by severity. The command flows from being raised with Christ.
- Do not claim that grace allows believers to merely manage the sins Paul names. The verb calls for decisive putting to death.
- Do not claim that mortification is merely private willpower. The wider NT witness points to the Spirit, the body of Christ, truth, confession, and renewed identity.
Book contextPastoral applicationPassage contextCanonical parallel
Evidence Summary
Greek word. Mortify or deaden impulses, desires, and bodily members through spiritual discipline, not literal death.
Strong's G3499
Lexical occurrences 3 verses Greek text appearances 3 times Word forms 2 forms 3 references Verse guides 0 guides
Study link James 2:14-17 Source Gloss
to put to death
Extended definition Source: STEPBible TBESG + Abbott-Smith
Mortify or deaden impulses, desires, and bodily members through spiritual discipline, not literal death.
(νεκρός), to make dead, put to death; pass., to be dead: hyperbolically, of impotent age, Heb.11:12; σῶμα, Rom.4:19. Trop., of carnal impulses, τὰ μέλη, Col.3:5.
Greek Text Appearances
Textus Receptus witness, full corpus Greek token appearances from Scrivener 1894 Textus Receptus in the full New Testament corpus.
3 Greek text appearances shown. Linked morphology labels have verse guides.
Romans 4:19 Verb Perfect Passive Participle Accusative Singular Neuter
νενεκρωμένον nenekrwmenon
I put to death, render weak
Read verse Colossians 3:5 Verb Second Person Plural Aorist Active Imperative
Νεκρώσατε nekrwsate
I put to death, render weak
Read verse Hebrews 11:12 Verb Perfect Passive Participle Genitive Singular Masculine
νενεκρωμένου, nenekrwmenou
I put to death, render weak
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.
Grammatical Forms
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.
Form groups 2 Aligned forms 3 Tenses Perfect, Aorist Voices Passive, Active
Verse guides are not available for this word yet, so verse references remain plain evidence markers.
Tenses
Voices
Participle verbal adjective — the action as a modifying quality 2×
Perfect Passive Rom 4:19 · Heb 11:12 2×
Imperative command or strong request 1×
Aorist Active Col 3:5 1×
Discourse Aspect
How this verb appears across 3 occurrences in the NT discourse index (MACULA Greek SBLGNT).
Aspect
Tense
perfect 2 aorist 1
Voice
passive 2 active 1
Mood
participle 2 imperative 1
NT Occurrences
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 Scripture Witnesses
Selected passage-level study witnesses for this word. This section is not the full occurrence list.
New Testament Witnesses
dead
Additional Occurrences
dead
Showing 2 selected witnesses from 3 lexical occurrence verses.
Word Origins
νεκρόω is built from this root:
Why This Word Matters
Indicates absence of spiritual vitality rather than mere weakness. James 2:14-17
For the Preacher and Teacher
This word gives the preacher a stronger category than improvement. Colossians 3 does not say, reduce, manage, or gradually spiritualize sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed. It says put them to death. But the command is not raw severity. It comes after the announcement that believers have been raised with Christ and that their life is hidden with Christ in God.
That means mortification is resurrection ethics. The congregation must hear both edges: sin is not a pet to train, and holiness is not a self-salvation project. The believer kills sin because Christ is life, because the old self is no longer master, and because the glory to be revealed is worth more than the earthly desires that wage war now.
Anchor passage
Col.3.5
Doctrinal connections
- G4124 πλεονεξία - greed is named in the list to be put to death.
- G3820 παλαιός - the old self language in Colossians 3 frames mortification.
- G3501 νέος - the new self is renewed in knowledge after God's image.
- Rom.8.13 - putting deeds of the body to death by the Spirit supplies a canonical parallel.
- Col.3.1-4 - raised-with-Christ identity comes before the command to put sin to death.
The verb uses death language, not treatment language. In Colossians, that severity is aimed at earthly sins, but the theological frame is union with Christ and resurrection life.
From Old to New Testament
Scripture consistently treats sin as a deadly power, not merely a minor weakness. Colossians intensifies the call by placing death-to-sin language after resurrection-with-Christ identity.
Book contextPastoral applicationCanonical parallelLexical source
Sources
MorphGNT Strong's Dictionary XML — CC0 1.0 Public Domain
Open Scriptures Hebrew Bible (morphhb/OSHB) — CC BY 4.0
Open Scriptures Hebrew Lexicon — CC BY 4.0
Berean Standard Bible (BSB) source-word alignment - CC0 Public Domain