To keep: observe
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Tēreō means to keep, guard, watch over, observe, or maintain. It carries the sense of attentive, protective custody over something valuable — not mere storage but active keeping that prevents loss or violation.
Reader summary
Full entry for τηρέω (G5083) · Open the biblical lexicon
Tēreō means to keep, guard, watch over, observe, or maintain. It carries the sense of attentive, protective custody over something valuable — not mere storage but active keeping that prevents loss or violation.
The BSB source-word alignment has 71 aligned rows for this entry. Common renderings include keep (7), keeps (7), we keep (3), does not keep (2), to obey (2).
The source-word alignment first shows this entry at Matthew 19:17. Its strongest book concentrations include John (18), Revelation (11), Acts (8), 1 John (7).
This entry includes 3 verse guides that explain exact original-language forms in context.
Tēreō means to keep, guard, watch over, observe, or maintain. It carries the sense of attentive, protective custody over something valuable — not mere storage but active keeping that prevents loss or violation. The word appears in the New Testament across a range of contexts: guarding prisoners (Acts), keeping the Sabbath (John), holding the body of Jesus (Matt.
27. 36), Keeping God's word, and keeping unity in the Spirit. John's Gospel and Letters use tēreō more than any other NT book, and they give it its most theologically concentrated sense: keeping the commandments of Jesus is the evidence of love for him (John 14. 15, 21), the mark of genuine discipleship (John 15. 10), and the criterion by which one knows if one knows him (1 John 2.
3-4). To keep (tēreō) in John's vocabulary is not grudging compliance but the active preservation of a relationship — the one who loves keeps, and the keeping is itself an expression of the love. The word also appears in the high-priestly prayer (John 17): Jesus asks the Father to keep (tēreō) the disciples in the Father's name. What Jesus has been doing for them — actively guarding, watching over — he asks the Father to continue.
Tēreō has a local Greek artifact count of about 71 NT occurrences. John, the Johannine Letters, and Revelation give the word a strong theological profile around keeping Jesus' word, commands, love, and witness, while Matthew and Acts also use it in concrete senses such as guarding a tomb or prisoners. Each passage decides whether the emphasis is guarding, observing, preserving, or holding fast.
If you love Me, you will keep My commandments.
The most concentrated statement of the love-keeping relationship in John. Tēreō is the verb that love produces. Jesus does not say 'if you obey me, you love me' (which would be moralism). He says 'if you love me, obey' — the obedience flows from and expresses the love. This is the relationship John develops throughout chapters 14-17.
I will no longer be in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to You. Holy Father, protect them by Your name, the name You gave Me, so that they may be one as We are one.
In the high-priestly prayer, Jesus asks the Father to tēreō the disciples in his name. The keeping he is handing over is the same active custody he has exercised: 'While I was with them, I kept them in Your name' (v.12). The word here describes God's protective, sustaining attention — not an impersonal preservation but personal keeping by name.
By this we can be sure that we have come to know Him: if we keep His commandments.
John's pastoral test for authentic knowing of God: tēreō of the commandments. This is not salvation by works — the Epistle's context is assurance to those who genuinely believe (1 John 5.13). The keeping is the evidence, not the cause, of knowing God. Those who claim to know him while not keeping his word are exposed as liars (v.4).
Because you have kept My command to persevere, I will also keep you from the hour of testing that is about to come upon the whole world, to test those who dwell on the earth.
The reciprocal structure: the church at Philadelphia has kept (tēreō) Jesus' word; he will keep (tēreō) them in the coming tribulation. God's keeping is the response to the community's faithful keeping. This is not merit-reward but covenant reciprocity — the same structure John 14-17 establishes.
And with diligence to preserve the unity of the Spirit through the bond of peace.
Paul uses tēreō for the active effort required to maintain (keep) the unity the Spirit has given. Unity is not self-sustaining; it requires deliberate, ongoing guarding. The word here is almost custodial: the church must protect what it has been given from the forces of fracture and division.
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. Watchful, active care to preserve or maintain something already entrusted to one's keeping.
Textus Receptus witness, full corpus Greek token appearances from Scrivener 1894 Textus Receptus in the full New Testament corpus.
16 of 75 Greek text appearances shown. Linked morphology labels have verse guides.
I keep, guard, observe
Read verseI keep, guard, observe
Read verseI keep, guard, observe
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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 68 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 2 selected witnesses from 71 lexical occurrence verses.
τηρέω is built from this root:
Divine protection over believers.
Affirms Christ’s preserving power over those born of God.
Compound and idiomatic phrases that include this word. Follow a link to study the phrase and how its parts work together.
Tēreō is a word for the active, ongoing work of holding onto what matters. It is not a passive word — you do not tēreō something by putting it down and hoping it stays. The root sense of guarding or watching over implies that the thing being kept is worth protecting and could be lost. When John builds his entire account of discipleship around this word, he is resisting two misunderstandings simultaneously.
Against the antinomian error (love without obedience), he insists that keeping the commandments is what love looks like when it expresses itself. Against the legalist error (obedience without love), he insists that the keeping flows from the prior reality of love — 'if you love me, keep' not 'if you keep, you love me.' The word's appearance in Jesus' high-priestly prayer is among its most moving uses.
Jesus has been keeping his disciples, naming them before the Father, watching over them, holding them in the Father's name. Now he asks the Father to take over that keeping. It is a prayer for custodial continuity — the same watchful, personal attention passed from Son to Father to Spirit. Communities formed by this word will understand discipleship not as compliance with a code but as the active, ongoing expression of love through the keeping of a relationship.
The Ephesians 4 usage adds the corporate dimension: the unity the Spirit gives requires constant, effortful guarding. Division is not merely unfortunate; it is a failure of the keeping the Spirit calls the church to.
John.14.15
Tēreō is related to tēros (a guard or watcher) and the noun tērēsis (custody, observance). The word's basic sense of watchful custody distinguishes it from the more military phulassō (to guard as a sentinel) and the legal/religious phulassō (to observe). Tēreō implies sustained, attentive care rather than one-time protection. In the LXX it translates several Hebrew roots including šāmar (to keep, guard — the primary Hebrew keeping verb).
The combination tēreō + logos or tēreō + entolē (to keep the word / the commandment) is distinctive to the Johannine literature and is the word's most theologically concentrated usage in the NT.
The Hebrew background for tēreō is primarily šāmar (H8104, to keep, guard, observe), which appears extensively in Deuteronomy for keeping the commandments and the covenant, and in Psalms for God's keeping watch over his people. The Aaronic blessing ('the Lord keep you,' Num. 6. 24) uses šāmar in exactly the tēreō sense: watchful, preserving attention from above.
The New Testament's concentrated Johannine use of tēreō brings this OT keeping vocabulary into the relationship of love between Jesus and his disciples. What Deuteronomy applied to covenant loyalty (keep my statutes, walk in my ways) John applies to the disciple's keeping of Jesus' commands as the expression of love. Revelation's eschatological uses ('those who keep the commandments of God and the faith of Jesus,' Rev.
14. 12) Bring the full arc to its final form: the faithful who are kept by God are those who, through that same faithfulness, keep God's word to the end.
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