House: home
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οἶκος means house in its most basic sense, but in the NT it operates simultaneously in three registers that the English word 'house' does not cleanly distinguish: the physical dwelling, the household as a social unit, and the temple or sanctuary as the house of God. Each of these registers is theologically active, and the NT writers move between them with intention.
Reader summary
Full entry for οἶκος (G3624) · Open the biblical lexicon
οἶκος means house in its most basic sense, but in the NT it operates simultaneously in three registers that the English word 'house' does not cleanly distinguish: the physical dwelling, the household as a social unit, and the temple or sanctuary as the house of God. Each of these registers is theologically active, and the NT writers move between them with.
The BSB source-word alignment has 113 aligned rows for this entry. Common renderings include house (43), home (24), household (14), [the] house (6), a house (5).
The source-word alignment first shows this entry at Matthew 9:6. Its strongest book concentrations include Luke (33), Acts (24), Mark (13), Hebrews (11).
οἶκος means house in its most basic sense, but in the NT it operates simultaneously in three registers that the English word 'house' does not cleanly distinguish: the physical dwelling, the household as a social unit, and the temple or sanctuary as the house of God. Each of these registers is theologically active, and the NT writers move between them with intention.
The household (oikos in its social sense) was the basic unit of ancient society in a way that has no modern equivalent. It included the immediate family, extended family members, slaves, freedmen, and sometimes business associates — all under the authority of the paterfamilias. When Acts records household conversions (Cornelius's household in Acts 10:2, Lydia's in Acts 16:15, the Philippian jailer's in Acts 16:31, Cornelius's household in Acts 11:14), the oikos is the natural evangelistic and social unit.
The early church met in oikoi (household churches), which is why Paul sends greetings to 'the church in your house' (Philm 2; Rom 16:5; Col 4:15). The temple register of oikos is the oldest theologically: the Jerusalem temple was consistently called 'the house of God' or 'the house of the Lord' (LXX: oikos tou theou, oikos kyriou). When Jesus drives out the money-changers and declares 'my house shall be called a house of prayer' (Matt 21:13, citing Isa 56:7), the oikos claim is a Christological act — he is asserting authority over the Father's house.
When the early community is called 'the household of God' (1 Tim 3:15, Eph 2:19) or 'a spiritual house' (1 Pet 2:5), the temple-oikos register is active: the community is the new locus of divine dwelling.
οἶκος appears approximately 114 times in the NT, operating across the physical, social-familial, and cultic-sanctuary registers. It is also closely related to G3614 οἰκία (also 'house/dwelling'), which tends toward the physical structure, while οἶκος more often carries the relational/household or theological-sanctuary sense. The NT use of oikos as the primary early church organizational unit (house church) and as a metaphor for the community of God is one of the most significant ecclesiological concepts in the NT.
They replied, “Believe in the Lord Jesus and you will be saved, you and your household.”
The Philippian jailer episode crystallizes the household-salvation pattern in Acts: the gospel enters a city through a householder, and the oikos becomes the first unit of the new community. The 'you and your household' is not a promise of automatic family conversion but a declaration that the oikos is the natural evangelistic unit — the apostolic preaching follows the household structure rather than requiring individuals to extract themselves from it.
And He declared to them, “It is written: ‘My house will be called a house of prayer.’ But you are making it ‘a den of robbers.’”
Jesus' citation of Isaiah 56:7 and Jeremiah 7:11 in the temple-clearing is an oikos Christological claim: he acts in and for 'my house,' asserting the authority of a son over his father's household (the logic explicit in John 2:17 — 'zeal for your house consumes me'). The incident is not primarily about financial ethics in sacred space; it is about the son's authority to reclaim what belongs to the Father.
In case I am delayed, so that you will know how each one must conduct himself in God’s household, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and foundation of the truth.
Paul's explicit identification of the assembled community as 'God's house' — the oikos theou — is the ecclesiological terminus of the temple-oikos register. The church is not meeting in a house; the church is the house. The implications for ordering behavior in the community (1 Timothy 2-3) are grounded in this architectural-theological claim: you are in the Father's house, and the Father's house has appropriate norms.
You also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood, offering spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.
Peter's 'spiritual house' (oikos pneumatikos) brings together the stone-building and household metaphors: the community is a living structure, both dwelling and priesthood simultaneously. The oikos here is not metaphorically applied to an existing institution; the metaphor defines the community's identity. God's people are what the Jerusalem temple was pointing toward — a dwelling place filled with priestly service.
Therefore you are no longer strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints and members of God’s household,
The Gentile inclusion argument in Ephesians 2 reaches its social resolution in oikos language: formerly excluded foreigners are now oikeioi tou theou — members of God's household. The shift from 'strangers' to 'household members' is not merely relational warmth; it is a change in constitutional status, grounded in the demolished dividing wall (v.14) and the new access to the Father through the Spirit (v.18).
But Christ is faithful as the Son over God’s house. And we are His house, if we hold firmly to our confidence and the hope of which we boast.
Hebrews uses the Moses/Christ contrast through the oikos metaphor: Moses was faithful as a servant in God's house; Christ is faithful as a Son over his own house. And then the startling turn: 'We are his house.' The community is not merely in the house or shaped by the house — it is the house over which Christ exercises the authority of a Son. The conditional ('if we hold fast') is the pastoral application: oikos membership is not a passive status but an active endurance.
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. Physical dwelling expands metonymically to household, family, lineage, and the Church as God's spiritual household.
Textus Receptus witness, full corpus Greek token appearances from Scrivener 1894 Textus Receptus in the full New Testament corpus.
16 of 114 Greek text appearances shown. Linked morphology labels have verse guides.
a house, household
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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 this word appears across different grammatical cases and numbers.
This word appears as a noun across 8 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 4 selected witnesses from 112 lexical occurrence verses.
οἶκος is of uncertain origin - no further derivation.
Refers to covenant community, not a physical building. 1 Timothy 3:14-16
The early church often gathered within households, highlighting the relational structure of Christian fellowship. 2 Timothy 4:19-22
The church is portrayed as God’s family, emphasizing relational identity and ordered responsibility. Hebrews 3:1-6
Compound and idiomatic phrases that include this word. Follow a link to study the phrase and how its parts work together.
The oikos theology of the NT recovers something that modern individualism has obscured: the primary unit of Christian community in the apostolic world was not the gathered assembly of disconnected individuals but the household. Salvation entered through households, the church met in households, and the community's identity was framed with household language — not because family relations are automatically Christianized but because the oikos as a committed relational unit was the natural social vessel for the gospel's communal implications.
Preachers in highly individualistic cultures can use oikos to challenge the reduction of Christian life to a personal relationship with God that has no social address. But the pastoral move is more demanding than simply urging 'community.' The NT oikos language is also cultic: the community is God's house, the new temple, the dwelling place of the Spirit. That means the assembly is not just a support system for individual faith — it is the place where God dwells, where priestly service is offered, and where truth is displayed to the world (1 Tim 3:15).
The preacher's task is to make this identity feel real rather than institutional: we are not attending a building where God may or may not show up; we are the building in which he has taken up residence.
1Pet.2.5
οἶκος and οἰκία are often used interchangeably in the NT, but Abbott-Smith notes a tendency for οἶκος to carry the household-lineage or sanctuary sense while οἰκία leans toward the physical building. The compound words built from the oikos root are theologically rich: οἰκοδομέω (to build up, used extensively for community edification in Paul), οἰκονομία (household management/stewardship, the root of 'economy' and of the NT theology of divine administration), and οἰκουμένη (the inhabited world, the oikoumene).
The oikos root thus underlies simultaneously the language of the church (spiritual house), the language of spiritual growth (edification/building up), the language of mission (the whole oikoumene), and the language of divine governance (oikonomia).
The OT is saturated with oikos-as-sanctuary language: the temple is consistently 'the house of the Lord' (beit YHWH), and the covenant community's relationship to God is mapped through the spatial theology of who may dwell in God's house (Psalm 15, 24, 27). The promise in Ezekiel 37:27 — 'My dwelling place shall be with them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people' — uses the oikos promise to frame the new covenant hope.
When Revelation 21:3 announces 'the dwelling (skene) of God is with men,' it is fulfilling the same promise, now at the eschatological level. The NT's application of oikos to the gathered community in the present age (1 Pet 2:5, Eph 2:19-22, 1 Tim 3:15) situates that community between the OT temple as shadow and the new Jerusalem as consummation — the place where, right now, God genuinely dwells by his Spirit, making the community something the Jerusalem temple was always pointing toward.
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