To subdue (literally or figuratively)
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Νικάω means to overcome, to conquer, to win the victory — and in the New Testament it carries a weight that its ordinary English translation rarely conveys. The word is not about athletic achievement or military dominance in its NT usage.
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Full entry for νικάω (G3528) · Open the biblical lexicon
Νικάω means to overcome, to conquer, to win the victory — and in the New Testament it carries a weight that its ordinary English translation rarely conveys. The word is not about athletic achievement or military dominance in its NT usage.
The BSB source-word alignment has 28 aligned rows for this entry. Common renderings include overcomes (10), have overcome (2), you have overcome (2), [and] overpowers (1), be overcome (1).
The source-word alignment first shows this entry at Luke 11:22. Its strongest book concentrations include Revelation (17), 1 John (6), Romans (3), John (1).
This entry includes 1 verse guide that explain exact original-language forms in context.
Νικάω means to overcome, to conquer, to win the victory — and in the New Testament it carries a weight that its ordinary English translation rarely conveys. The word is not about athletic achievement or military dominance in its NT usage. It is a word for the irreversible triumph of Christ over the powers that hold human beings captive, and for the participation of the believer in that triumph through faith.
Jesus claims the ground at John 16:33: 'In the world you will have tribulation. But take courage; I have overcome the world.' The perfect tense (nenikēka — I have overcome) signals a completed action with lasting effect. The world is already overcome. The disciples are not awaiting a future victory; they are living in the aftermath of a victory already won. Their tribulation is real, but it exists within a framework of accomplished conquest.
This is the christological anchor for everything else νικάω carries in the NT. First John deploys νικάω with remarkable confidence: the community has overcome the evil one because 'greater is He who is in you than he who is in the world' (1 John 4:4). The victory is grounded in indwelling, not in human moral strength. First John 5:4-5 makes this explicit: the victory that overcomes the world is faith — specifically, faith that Jesus is the Son of God.
Overcoming is not moral heroism; it is the result of being united by faith to the one who has already overcome. Romans 12:21 then draws the ethical consequence: 'Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.' The word flips from threat to imperative. The conqueror's victory expresses itself in the counterintuitive practice of returning good for evil — which is itself the pattern of the one who overcame the world's enmity by love and sacrifice.
Revelation uses νικάω as the organizing word for the promises given to the seven churches (chapters 2-3): to the one who overcomes, specific eschatological rewards are given — the tree of life, freedom from the second death, the hidden manna, the morning star, white garments, a pillar in God's temple, the right to sit on Christ's throne. Each promise ties the believer's νικάω to Christ's own: 'just as I overcame and sat down with My Father on His throne' (Revelation 3:21).
The pattern of Christian overcoming is shaped by the pattern of Christ's overcoming — through faithfulness under pressure, not through force.
Νικάω is counted about 28 times in the local NT index, concentrated heavily in 1 John and Revelation, with pivotal uses in John's Gospel and Romans. The NT usage divides between Christ as the one who has overcome (past, accomplished) and believers as those who overcome through him (ongoing, by faith). The two are inseparable: believers overcome only because and insofar as they participate in Christ's completed victory.
I have told you these things so that in Me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take courage; I have overcome the world!”
The christological foundation of νικάω in the NT: Jesus announces his victory over the world in the perfect tense — a completed act with ongoing effect. The disciples' tribulation is real and expected; what it cannot be is final. They face the world from within the one who has already conquered it. The location of peace ('in Me') is the key — overcoming is not experienced apart from union with Christ.
To the one who overcomes, I will grant the right to sit with Me on My throne, just as I overcame and sat down with My Father on His throne.
The most theologically precise Revelation νικάω statement: Christ's overcoming and the believer's overcoming are structurally parallel. Christ overcame and was enthroned; the overcomer will be enthroned with Christ. The promise does not describe a separate achievement but a shared participation in Christ's own victory. Revelation's repeated 'to the one who overcomes' (Rev 2-3) points not to competitive winners but to those who persevere in faithfulness through the patterns of the book.
Because everyone born of God overcomes the world. And this is the victory that has overcome the world: our faith.
The most direct definition of what overcoming consists in: faith — specifically, faith that Jesus is the Son of God (5:5). νικάω here is not a mark of the spiritually elite but the characteristic of everyone born of God. The victory is not achieved by effort but received through birth (divine) and expressed through faith. This verse forbids competitive or hierarchical readings of 'overcomer' language in the NT.
You, little children, are from God and have overcome them, because greater is He who is in you than he who is in the world.
The ground of νικάω in 1 John: the greater one who indwells the community. The comparison is direct — not 'you are stronger than the false spirits' but 'the one in you is greater than the one in the world.' Overcoming is relational and indwelling, not intrinsic to human moral capacity. This passage prevents any reading of νικάω as self-generated spiritual achievement.
Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.
The ethical imperative derived from Christ's pattern: νικάω describes the shape of Christian engagement with evil in the present age. The overcomer does not retaliate or absorb evil passively — they actively defeat it through the practice of good. This mirrors Christ's own pattern of overcoming (through sacrifice and love, not superior force) and situates the Christian in that same pattern of counterintuitive victory.
Then one of the elders said to me, “Do not weep! Behold, the Lion of the tribe of Judah, the Root of David, has triumphed to open the scroll and its seven seals.”
Christ as νικάω in Revelation's throne room: the Lion who has conquered is revealed as the Lamb who was slain (5:6). The overcoming of Christ is accomplished through sacrificial death, not military conquest. This image controls Revelation's entire use of νικάω and shapes how the believer's overcoming is to be understood: not through power over enemies but through faithful witness even to the point of death (Rev 12:11).
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.
Verse-level guides showing how this original-language form works in its specific context, including grammar, verse function, and guarded interpretation.
Greek word. To overcome or conquer through decisive victory, often with eschatological significance in Revelation and John's epistles.
Textus Receptus witness, full corpus Greek token appearances from Scrivener 1894 Textus Receptus in the full New Testament corpus.
16 of 28 Greek text appearances shown. Linked morphology labels have verse guides.
I conquer, overcome
Read verseI conquer, overcome
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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.
How this verb appears across 28 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 3 selected witnesses from 28 lexical occurrence verses.
νικάω is built from this root:
Shows that good triumphs over evil through faithful obedience. 1 John 2:12-14
Believers participate in Christ’s triumph over Satan, reinforcing confidence amid spiritual conflict. 1 John 5:1-5
Victory over the world is tied directly to faith in Christ. Romans 12:9-21
Compound and idiomatic phrases that include this word. Follow a link to study the phrase and how its parts work together.
Νικάω is one of the NT's most misread words because contemporary culture reads 'overcoming' as personal achievement — muscular, triumphant, self-generated. The NT reads it entirely differently. In John 16:33, the one who overcomes is Christ, in the past tense, already. In 1 John 5:4, the victory that overcomes the world is faith. In Revelation 5:5, the conquering Lion is revealed as a slaughtered Lamb.
The pattern of NT overcoming is consistently the pattern of the cross: victory through suffering, conquest through self-giving, triumph accomplished by the one who laid everything down rather than the one who seized everything. That means a sermon on νικάω must resist the pressure to make overcoming sound like winning in the ways the world counts winning. The NT's overcomer is not the one who escapes tribulation.
Jesus was explicit: in the world, there will be tribulation. The overcomer is the one who faces tribulation from inside union with the already-victorious Christ and continues in faithfulness to the end. Revelation's seven churches are not promised a tribulation-free path; they are promised that faithfulness through the path of the Lamb will share in the Lamb's own throne.
That is a different and far more costly and far more glorious word than any version of overcoming that avoids the cross.
John.16.33
Νικάω derives from νίκη (victory), which in classical Greek named the goddess of victory and more broadly any kind of winning or conquest. Abbott-Smith notes the range in NT: absolute use (Christ conquering, Revelation), with accusative of person (Luke 11:22, Revelation), and as a legal term in Romans 3:4 (cited from Psalm 51:4 — 'that you may be victorious when you judge').
The LXX uses the word for זָכָה (to be clear/clean, to be victorious in legal dispute) and חָמַד (to desire/covet, in Proverbs — an unusual connection). The NT usage in Revelation is the most theologically dense: the verb appears 17 times in Revelation alone, making it the primary book for understanding how νικάω functions in the eschatological framework.
The OT background for νικάω runs through the warrior-king tradition and the servant-sufferer tradition, and the NT holds these together in the figure of Christ. The Davidic king who overcomes enemies is a recurring OT motif (Psalm 110; 2 Samuel 7), and Revelation 5:5 explicitly identifies Christ as 'the Root of David' who has conquered. But the manner of conquering upends the expectation: the Root of David is a Lamb bearing the marks of slaughter.
This reversal echoes Isaiah's Suffering Servant (Isaiah 52:13-53:12) — the one who wins through apparent defeat, who justifies many through his bearing of their iniquity. The NT's νικάω is therefore the convergence of these two OT traditions in one person: the royal conqueror who wins through the servant's path. Believers share in this victory not by power but by the same pattern — faithful witness through suffering, trust in the God who vindicates.
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