Greediness
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πλεονεξία names greed, covetousness, grasping desire, the appetite that wants more than God has given and more than love permits. In Scripture it is not a minor personality flaw or a harmless ambition.
Reader summary
Full entry for πλεονεξία (G4124) · Open the biblical lexicon
πλεονεξία names greed, covetousness, grasping desire, the appetite that wants more than God has given and more than love permits. In Scripture it is not a minor personality flaw or a harmless ambition.
The BSB source-word alignment has 10 aligned rows for this entry. Common renderings include greed (4), a craving for more (1), begrudgingly (1), for greed (1), in greed (1).
The source-word alignment first shows this entry at Mark 7:22. Its strongest book concentrations include 2 Peter (2), Ephesians (2), 1 Thessalonians (1), 2 Corinthians (1).
πλεονεξία names greed, covetousness, grasping desire, the appetite that wants more than God has given and more than love permits. In Scripture it is not a minor personality flaw or a harmless ambition. Jesus warns against every form of it because life does not consist in abundance of possessions. Paul places it among sins that defile, among practices unfitting for saints, and in Colossians 3:5 he calls it idolatry. The word exposes desire that has become worship.
Colossians puts πλεονεξία inside the mortification list: sexual immorality, impurity, passion, evil desire, and greed. That placement matters. Greed is not merely financial mismanagement. It is a disordered hunger that can attach itself to money, status, control, pleasure, security, ministry success, or recognition. Paul calls it idolatry because the grasping heart treats something created as the source of life, identity, safety, or worth. The cure is not less desire in the abstract, but a new life hidden with Christ and a renewed self being conformed to the Creator's image.
πλεονεξία exposes grasping desire as a spiritual danger. Jesus warns against it, Paul places it among defiling sins, and Colossians names it idolatry within the sins believers must put to death.
Greed, wickedness, deceit, debauchery, envy, slander, arrogance, and foolishness.
Jesus includes greed among the evils that come from within and defile a person. The word is heart-level, not merely financial.
And He said to them, “Watch out! Guard yourselves against every form of greed, for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.”
Jesus warns against every form of greed because life does not consist in possessions. This verse gives the word one of its clearest pastoral diagnoses.
But among you, as is proper among the saints, there must not be even a hint of sexual immorality, or of any kind of impurity, or of greed.
Paul says greed must not even be named among saints in the sense of tolerated practice. It is incompatible with holy identity.
Put to death, therefore, the components of your earthly nature: sexual immorality, impurity, lust, evil desires, and greed, which is idolatry.
Colossians names greed as idolatry and places it among sins to be put to death. The grasping heart is a worship problem.
In their greed, these false teachers will exploit you with deceptive words. The longstanding verdict against them remains in force, and their destruction does not sleep.
Peter shows greed at work in false teachers who exploit others. The word can expose religious manipulation as well as personal desire.
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. Wanting more than one's share; aggressive acquisitiveness that violates fairness and exploits others for gain.
Textus Receptus witness, full corpus Greek token appearances from Scrivener 1894 Textus Receptus in the full New Testament corpus.
10 Greek text appearances shown. Linked morphology labels have verse guides.
covetousness, avarice
Read versecovetousness, avarice
Read versecovetousness, avarice
Read versecovetousness, avarice
Read versecovetousness, avarice
Read versecovetousness, avarice
Read versecovetousness, avarice
Read versecovetousness, avarice
Read versecovetousness, avarice
Read versecovetousness, avarice
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 3 selected witnesses from 10 lexical occurrence verses.
πλεονεξία is built from this root:
Identifies greed as the underlying heart sin. Colossians 3:5–11
Explicitly identified as idolatry, exposing heart-level sin. Luke 12:13–21
Compound and idiomatic phrases that include this word. Follow a link to study the phrase and how its parts work together.
This word helps a preacher expose idolatry where people often expect only stewardship advice. Colossians 3:5 does not merely say greed is unwise. It says greed is idolatry. That means the issue is worship, not only budgeting. The grasping heart believes that more possession, more control, more pleasure, more recognition, or more security can give what only God can give.
Preach πλεονεξία by showing that greed is deadly because it offers a false fullness and demands sacrifices from neighbors. Then show why the risen Christ frees His people to put it to death: their life is hidden with Christ, their future is glory, and their new self is being renewed according to the image of the Creator.
Col.3.5
The word carries the idea of grasping for more. In Colossians, Paul identifies that grasping as idolatry, which means the word must be handled as a worship diagnosis, not merely a money topic.
The Old Testament repeatedly warns against coveting, unjust gain, and idolatry. Colossians draws those lines together by naming greed itself as idolatry, the worship of what the heart grasps.
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