proven genuine by testing: having withstood examination and been accepted as the real thing, and so trustworthy and esteemed.
In the ancient world this was a word from the assayer's bench. It described silver or gold that had passed inspection: full weight, unadulterated, the genuine article a merchant would accept without question. From tested metal it broadened to name any person or thing that had been examined and found real, and that is the sense it always carries in the New Testament.
What shifts from verse to verse is not the core idea but who does the testing and where it happens:
- the believer who has stood firm under trial and is so proven genuine
- the minister approved by the Lord rather than by his own self-promotion
- the true members of a church made visible when divisions expose who really belongs
- the worker who can present himself to God unashamed, handling the message of truth rightly
Most of the time the accent falls on being proven genuine. In one place, Romans 14:18, it leans instead toward the good reputation that follows: a life of righteousness, peace, and joy is "well-pleasing" to God (εὐάρεστος) and "respected" among people. Even there the respect is not mere popularity; it is the regard earned by conduct that stands up to honest scrutiny.
The opposite word is the quickest way to feel its force. Its negative twin, "adokimos," means failed-the-test: disqualified, rejected like debased silver melted out of the coinage. To be "dokimos" is what emerges once the fire has done its work: the real thing, fit to be received.
Nuances
Disputed
Whether the coin-and-metal testing background is part of the word's active meaning in the New Testament, or only a distant backdrop to be judged verse by verse.
- majorityThe refining and coin-assaying background is real but not automatically in play; whether it colors a given verse must be judged case by case, and in several passages the word simply means "approved" or "genuine" without the metal picture.; BDAG (Bauer-Danker-Arndt-Gingrich), 3rd ed. (2000), s.v. δόκιμος; Moisés Silva, ed., New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology and Exegesis (NIDNTTE), 2014, s.v. δοκιμάζω/δόκιμος; James Barr, The Semantics of Biblical Language (1961)
- minorityCoined money is the primary background from which the word's other uses grew, so the assayer's stamp of approval naturally informs its New Testament uses.; Joseph Henry Thayer, Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament, s.v. δόκιμος; G. Abbott-Smith, A Manual Greek Lexicon of the New Testament, s.v. δόκιμος