Mark
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The Greek noun stigma can name a mark, brand, scar, or identification mark made on a body. In ancient contexts, such marks could identify slaves, soldiers, or devotees, so the word carries the idea of visible belonging or ownership.
Reader summary
Full entry for στίγμα (G4742) · Open the biblical lexicon
The Greek noun stigma can name a mark, brand, scar, or identification mark made on a body. In ancient contexts, such marks could identify slaves, soldiers, or devotees, so the word carries the idea of visible belonging or ownership.
The BSB source-word alignment has 1 aligned row for this entry. Common renderings include marks (1).
The source-word alignment first shows this entry at Galatians 6:17. Its strongest book concentrations include Galatians (1).
The Greek noun stigma can name a mark, brand, scar, or identification mark made on a body. In ancient contexts, such marks could identify slaves, soldiers, or devotees, so the word carries the idea of visible belonging or ownership. In Galatians 6:17, Paul writes that he bears on his body the marks of Jesus. In the letter's argument, this contrasts with teachers who boasted in circumcision as a visible status mark.
Paul's appeal is not to a suffering trophy but to embodied apostolic allegiance: his body has carried the cost of preaching the cross he boasts in. The background imagery helps explain the force of the word, but Galatians 6:17 and Paul's own suffering catalog must govern the claim.
The local Greek index currently counts one NT occurrence of στίγμα, at Galatians 6:17. Paul's plural phrase, the marks of Jesus, is a closing personal appeal in the Galatian controversy. Related Pauline passages such as 2 Corinthians 4:10 and 2 Corinthians 11:23-27 help explain the bodily cost of apostolic ministry, but Galatians 6:17 itself must govern the interpretation.
From now on let no one cause me trouble, for I bear on my body the marks of Jesus.
The letter's closing personal statement. Paul's stigmata function as an embodied credential in the Galatian controversy. The marks are best read as physical scars from suffering for the gospel, set against the rival teachers' confidence in circumcision as a visible status mark. The tone is firm and personal: Paul's body bears witness to costly allegiance to Christ.
Five times I received from the Jews the forty lashes minus one.
Paul's catalog of sufferings in 2 Corinthians 11:23-27 helps explain the kind of bodily marks Galatians 6:17 may have in view: floggings, beatings, stoning, travel dangers, and costly apostolic labor. This is a canonical parallel, not a replacement for Galatians' own argument.
We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed in our body.
This passage gives theological language for bodily participation in the dying of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be revealed. It helps frame Paul's scars as more than personal hardship, while still leaving Galatians 6:17 to make the specific claim about marks of Jesus.
I have been crucified with Christ, and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me. The life I live in the body, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself up for me.
Galatians 2:20 is the theological root of Galatians 6:17's stigmata: the co-crucifixion with Christ (Gal. 2:20) produces the suffering-marks on the body (Gal. 6:17). Paul's scars are the physical evidence of what has been spiritually true since conversion: he has been crucified with Christ. The marks on his body are the external signature of the cross-event he has internally participated in.
I want to know Christ—yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death,
Philippians 3:10 names Paul's desire to know Christ, the power of His resurrection, and participation in His sufferings. It supports the broader pattern of conformity to Christ without making Galatians 6:17 a general requirement that every believer bear the same kind of apostolic scars.
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. A mark made by piercing or branding, carrying connotations of ownership, servitude, or deliberate identification.
A mark made by piercing or branding, carrying connotations of ownership, servitude, or deliberate identification.
(στίζω, to prick), [in LXX: Sng.1:11 (נְקֻדָּה) * ;] a tattoed mark or brand: τὰ σ. τοῦ Ἰησοῦ, Gal.6:17 (see Lft., in l; Deiss., BS, 349; LAE, 303; MM, xxiii).
Textus Receptus witness, full corpus Greek token appearances from Scrivener 1894 Textus Receptus in the full New Testament corpus.
1 Greek text appearance shown. Linked morphology labels have verse guides.
a mark or brand
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 1 case and number pattern. 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.
Stigma in Galatians 6:17 works best when the full rhetorical situation of the letter is kept in view. The rival teachers are pressing circumcision as a visible status mark. Paul points instead to the marks carried in his own body from suffering for the gospel of the cross. The preacher who handles this verse well will help people see the contrast between fleshly status and costly allegiance to Christ, while refusing to turn Paul's extraordinary apostolic suffering into a competition or universal template.
The pastoral question is not whether every believer bears identical marks, but whether faithfulness to Christ leaves visible evidence of belonging to Him in a life shaped by the cross.
Gal.6.17
Stigma from stizō (to prick, to tattoo, to brand with a pointed instrument). The plural stigmata is the technically correct Greek plural but in English the word often appears with its Greek plural retained (as in the mystical tradition of stigmata). In Paul's world the branding of slaves and soldiers was literal and common: a slave's stigma identified their owner; a soldier's stigma identified their unit.
The word was also used for the marks of initiation into mystery cults, identifying the devotee as belonging to the deity. Paul uses all of these connotations: his scars identify his owner (Christ), his service-unit (the gospel-mission), and his initiation (co-crucifixion with Christ). The word appears only this once in the NT, which gives it the weight of a carefully chosen final credential.
The OT background includes both the slave-marking and the prophetic servant-suffering traditions. Ezekiel 9:4 describes a mark (taw, the last letter of the Hebrew alphabet) placed on the foreheads of those who mourn over Jerusalem's abominations — a protective identification mark from God. Isaiah 44:5 describes those who write 'belonging to the Lord' on their hand — a voluntary mark of identification with God's people.
Most significantly, Isaiah 53's Servant is 'pierced for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities' — the Servant's wounds are his identification with the people's sin and his means of their healing. Paul in Galatians 6:17 stands in this prophetic servant tradition: his stigmata are the marks of one who has identified with the Suffering Servant, borne in his body the violence that the gospel provokes, and thereby carried forward the pattern of the one who was crucified for the world's sin.
The slave-marking tradition is also present in Exodus 21:5-6, where a slave who loves his master and chooses to remain in service forever has his ear pierced at the doorpost — a permanent mark of voluntary belonging. Paul's stigmata are this kind of mark: the self-giving to the master that a slave who loves freely chooses, and that has left its permanent trace on the body.
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