A brother (literally or figuratively) near or remote (much like )
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ἀδελφός means brother — first in the natural sense of a male sibling, and then with extraordinary frequency in the NT for a fellow member of the Christian community. The local Greek index counts about 342 occurrences, making it one of the most common relational terms in the NT.
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Full entry for ἀδελφός (G80) · Open the biblical lexicon
ἀδελφός means brother — first in the natural sense of a male sibling, and then with extraordinary frequency in the NT for a fellow member of the Christian community. The local Greek index counts about 342 occurrences, making it one of the most common relational terms in the NT.
The BSB source-word alignment has 343 aligned rows for this entry. Common renderings include brothers (219), brother (93), brother’s (6), [him] (4), a brother (4).
The source-word alignment first shows this entry at Matthew 1:2. Its strongest book concentrations include Acts (57), 1 Corinthians (39), Matthew (39), Luke (24).
This entry includes 5 verse guides that explain exact original-language forms in context.
ἀδελφός means brother — first in the natural sense of a male sibling, and then with extraordinary frequency in the NT for a fellow member of the Christian community. The local Greek index counts about 342 occurrences, making it one of the most common relational terms in the NT. In the Epistles, 'brothers' (adelphoi — often understood as gender-inclusive, 'brothers and sisters') is the standard address for the church community, not a title or a formal category but the everyday language of how Christians address and speak of one another.
Romans 8:29 provides the theological foundation for the adelphos-community of the church: God predestined His people 'to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers.' Christ is the firstborn brother — the first among many who share the family resemblance of the Father's image. The church is not a voluntary association of like-minded people; it is a family formed by adoption into the same family as the Son of God. Every adelphos relationship in the NT community rests on this reality: these are people who share the same Father and the same elder brother.
Jesus' own redefinition of family in Matthew 12:49-50 is equally foundational: 'stretching out his hand toward his disciples, he said, "Here are my mother and my brothers! For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother."' The family of Jesus is constituted by obedience to the Father, not by biological connection. The NT's adelphos community is therefore eschatological — it is the family of the new creation, the firstfruits of a world where the relationships of the kingdom define belonging more fundamentally than the relationships of birth.
The practical weight of adelphos in the Epistles is enormous: Paul's ethical instructions about how to treat one another — the 'one another' commands (agapate allelous, bear one another's burdens, forgive one another) — are instructions about how to treat adelphoi. The standard is family, not collegial courtesy.
For the preacher, ἀδελφός is the word that insists the church is a family, not a service organization, a social club, or a spiritual consumer marketplace. The standard of community life is family commitment, and the ground is the shared Father and shared elder brother.
The local Greek index counts about 342 occurrences of ἀδελφός. The Gospels use it for natural brothers and for the redefinition of family around Jesus. Acts uses it as the standard address in the early community. The Epistles use it constantly as the common address for the congregation and as the relational category that grounds ethical instruction. First Corinthians and James are especially rich in the ethical application of the adelphos standard.
For those God foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, so that He would be the firstborn among many brothers.
The Christological ground of the adelphos community: Christ is the firstborn (prototokos) among many brothers. The community of believers is the family of the one who is himself the image of the Father — and their destiny is to be conformed to that same image. The brotherhood is not metaphorical; it is ontological. These are people who share a family resemblance that is eternal in its origin and eschatological in its completion.
For whoever does the will of My Father in heaven is My brother and sister and mother.”
Jesus' redefinition of family: the adelphos relationship is constituted by doing the will of the Father. Biological family does not define the primary community of belonging for the disciple. This is both freeing (those without strong biological families are fully in) and demanding (the adelphos relationship carries the weight of genuine family obligation, not mere association).
If anyone says, “I love God,” but hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen.
The love of the adelphos as the test of genuine love for God. John's logic is relentless: you cannot separate love for the unseen God from love for the visible adelphos. The brother is the concrete, particular person in front of you — not an abstraction. Love of God without love of the adelphos is not love of God at all but a spiritual pretense. This connects adelphos to the entire love-of-God command: the family relationship is the practice ground for the love that says it loves God.
Instead, one brother goes to law against another, and this in front of unbelievers!
The scandal of adelphos conflict: taking a brother to a public court in front of unbelievers. Paul's outrage is not at the use of courts per se but at the betrayal of the family standard. If these are adelphoi — members of the same family — then disputes should be resolved within the family, not before outside parties. The adelphos relationship comes with obligations that secular litigation undermines.
Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food.
The practical application: adelphos need creates adelphos obligation. The naked and hungry person who is a brother or sister in the community is not a recipient of pious words but of practical provision. James is sharp here: the religion that can see an adelphos in need and respond only with warm wishes has not understood what adelphos means. Family obligation includes material provision, not only spiritual encouragement.
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. Brother encompasses literal kinship, fellow-nationals, neighbors, and crucially, fellow-Christians in Christian community.
Textus Receptus witness, full corpus Greek token appearances from Scrivener 1894 Textus Receptus in the full New Testament corpus.
16 of 346 Greek text appearances shown. Linked morphology labels have verse guides.
a brother
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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 10 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.
Selected passage-level study witnesses for this word. This section is not the full occurrence list.
Showing 3 selected witnesses from 342 lexical occurrence verses.
ἀδελφός is built from this root:
Defines spiritual kinship in the kingdom. Acts 28:11-16
Highlights the presence of established Christian community. Luke 8:19–21
Compound and idiomatic phrases that include this word. Follow a link to study the phrase and how its parts work together.
ἀδελφός is the NT's primary community word — used frequently because the NT writers want the community to know what it is and what it owes one another. The church is not a gathering of spiritual consumers, a club of like-minded people, or a service provider for religious needs. It is a family — the family of those who share the same Father and have been adopted into the same family as the eternal Son.
When Paul writes 'brothers and sisters' at the beginning of every major section of his letters, he is reminding the community of its identity before he tells it anything about its behavior. The behavior flows from the identity: because you are adelphoi, you bear one another's burdens, forgive one another, love one another, prefer one another, provide for one another.
These are not excellent practices for building a good community; they are the natural expressions of the relationship you already have. First John 4:20 is the diagnostic text: if you say you love God but hate your adelphos, you are lying to yourself. The visible community of adelphoi is the concrete, practical arena in which love for the invisible God is tested.
Rom.8.29
ἀδελφός is built on delphys (womb) — literally 'from the same womb,' a blood-sibling. The word's etymology emphasizes the organic, bodily, familial connection rather than a merely legal or relational category. In NT usage, adelphoi (brothers) is the standard address for the community — inclusive of women, as Paul makes clear when he writes to 'the brothers' in congregations that demonstrably include women.
Some modern translations render adelphoi as 'brothers and sisters' to restore the gender-inclusive force. The frequency of 342 NT occurrences is striking: this is not a theological technical term but the ordinary relational language of the NT community. The related adelphe (sister) and the compound word philadelphia (brotherly love — G5360) extend the family metaphor.
The OT background for adelphos runs through the covenant community language of Israel: 'brother' (ach in Hebrew) is used for fellow Israelites as covenant siblings, those who share the covenant relationship with the same God (Deut 15:7, 12; Lev 25:25). The Torah's care-for-the-brother commands — not charging interest from a brother (Deut 23:19), not turning away from a brother's need (Deut 15:7-11) — establish the economic and social obligations of the sibling relationship within the covenant community.
Psalm 133 celebrates the blessing of brothers dwelling together in unity — a picture that the NT community lives out in the eschatological family of the church. Proverbs 17:17 — 'a friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for a time of adversity' — gives the OT's practical wisdom about what brotherhood means: presence in adversity, not just fairweather association.
The NT's adelphos community inherits all these obligations and elevates them: now the community is not an ethnic-covenant family but a new-creation family, constituted by the Spirit and the blood of Christ, with all nations as potential adelphoi.
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