to set free: to break another's hold on someone, so that the person no longer belongs to what was holding them
TranslatabilityApproximateCertaintySettled
This is the verb of the freedom family. The adjective ἐλεύθερος means "free" and labels the person nobody owns; the noun ἐλευθερία means "freedom" and names that condition itself; this word is the act that takes someone from the one to the other. In everyday Greek it was an ordinary word for releasing a slave. In the New Testament it never once describes that legal transaction. All seven of its uses are about rescue.
Two things run through every one of them. The first is that somebody else always does the freeing, and the sentence usually says who:
the truth that Jesus speaks, in John 8:32
the Son himself, in John 8:36
Christ, who set his people free, in Galatians 5:1
the life-giving rule of God's Spirit, in Romans 8:2
Nobody in these verses works his own way out. The second is that being set free is a change of owner rather than the end of belonging. Paul says his readers were set free from sin, and in the same breath that they were handed over to righteousness, and then to God. Galatians says Christ set us free for freedom, and warns at once against taking up a yoke of slavery again.
The widest use of the word reaches past people altogether. Romans looks ahead to the day the created world itself is set free from its slavery to decay and brought into the freedom that belongs to God's children, so the last thing this verb describes is a rescue on the scale of everything that exists.
Nuances
1aset free from sin's ownership: released from the master a person had been serving, and handed over to God
Jhn 8:32Jhn 8:36Rom 6:18Rom 6:22
1bset free from a ruling order that could only condemn: released from the law's claim and from the rule of sin and death
Rom 8:2*Gal 5:1*
Rom 8:2
What νόμος ("law") denotes in each half of Romans 8:2, and therefore what ἠλευθέρωσεν marks release from.
contestedBoth instances denote the Mosaic law, seen under two different masteries: the Torah as taken up by the Spirit of life, and the same Torah as commandeered by sin and death.; James D. G. Dunn, Romans 1-8 (Word Biblical Commentary 38A), on Rom 8:2; C. E. B. Cranfield, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans (International Critical Commentary), on Rom 8:2
contestedνόμος is used here in a weakened sense of "power" or "authority" rather than of the Mosaic law, so the release is from the reign of sin and death itself.; Douglas J. Moo, The Epistle to the Romans (New International Commentary on the New Testament), on Rom 8:2
1cthe created world's release from decay: a setting free still to come, promised to creation itself rather than to people
The Greek almost always names the power that had a hold, so what a person is coming out of travels with the word: out from under sin, out from under the rule of sin and death, out of slavery to decay.Rom 6:18Rom 8:2Rom 8:21
The freeing is always done by someone else, and the sentence usually names the rescuer: the truth, the Son, Christ, or the life-giving rule of the Spirit.Jhn 8:32Jhn 8:36
Both
Both name an act done to a person by someone else that ends another's hold on them.Jhn 8:36
Only set free
In English, setting someone free suggests leaving them to themselves with no new claim on them, which is the opposite of what these verses go on to say.
English often uses "set free" for an obstacle removed rather than an owner changed, so the picture of one master handing a person over to another is easy to lose.
“make free”
Comparison data is not available for this English gloss yet.
“deliver”
Comparison data is not available for this English gloss yet.
How eleutheroō differs from similar Greek words
ἐλευθερίαnames the resulting freedom as a state a person lives in, and can even misuse, whereas this word is the act that puts them there
The verb, rendered "set free", always has a rescuer outside the person doing the freeing: the truth, the Son, Christ, or the life-giving rule of the Spirit. It is something done to people, never something they manage for themselves.Jhn 8:32Jhn 8:36Rom 8:2
The verb almost always names the specific power that had a hold, so the old captivity travels with the word: freed from sin, freed from the rule of sin and death, freed from slavery to decay. The noun is rarely tied to a named captor this way.Rom 6:18Rom 6:22Rom 8:21
Both
Both words work inside a picture of slavery, and each is defined by the bondage it stands against. Where the noun appears, a yoke of slavery or an enslaving corruption is usually in view; where the verb appears, people are released from one master and handed over to another.Gal 5:12Pe 2:19Rom 6:18
Both credit the freedom to God rather than to human effort. The noun places it where the Spirit of the Lord is present, and the verb makes the Son the one who does the releasing. Neither word describes a liberty people win by their own strength.2Co 3:17Jhn 8:36
In the two places the words stand side by side, they describe one single rescue from two angles: creation is released from decay into the freedom belonging to God's children, and Christ has released his people for the freedom they are told to stand firm in.Rom 8:21Gal 5:1
Only the noun "freedom" is treated as something a person now holds and can badly misuse. The warnings all attach to this word: freedom is not to become a licence for self-indulgence, not a cover for doing wrong, and it can even be dangled as a false promise by people who are themselves enslaved.Gal 5:131Pe 2:162Pe 2:19
Only the noun becomes a claim other people can question, judge, or try to strip away. Paul asks why his own freedom should be put on trial by someone else's conscience, and elsewhere describes outsiders inspecting the believers' freedom in order to reduce them to slavery again.1Co 10:29Gal 2:4
Only the noun names a settled condition you live inside, one that can be paired with the Spirit's presence or even with a rule you live under. Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom, and James can speak of a law of freedom by which people are judged. Freedom here is a place to stand, not an escape from every obligation.2Co 3:17Jas 1:25Jas 2:12
ἐλεύθεροςlabels the person who is free, most often as a social standing set against being a slave, whereas this word is the act that makes someone free
This word reports a change of condition rather than describing one. It marks the moment people are taken out of a power that held them, and it normally names the power they are taken out of: released from sin, released from the rule that sin and death enforced, and the created world released from its slavery to decay.Rom 6:18Rom 6:22Rom 8:2Rom 8:21
It is always something done to people by someone else, never a standing they can assert for themselves. The truth does the releasing, the life-giving rule of the Spirit does it, and Christ does it. Nobody in the New Testament is ever said to release themselves.Jhn 8:32Gal 5:1Rom 8:21
Both
The two words meet in one sentence: if the Son releases you, you will be free indeed. That single line shows how they fit together, one naming the act that changes a person's situation and the other naming the settled condition the act leaves behind. The same freedom is in view twice, first as something done and then as something you now are.Jhn 8:36
This is the word for a kind of person, the opposite of a slave, and it belongs to the standard lists of who people are: Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female, small and great. It labels a social standing anyone could see from the outside, and the lists exist to say that this standing no longer decides who belongs to Christ.Gal 3:281Co 12:13Col 3:11Rev 13:16
Only this word names a standing a person is born into and passes on to their children. The picture of Hagar and Sarah turns on it: one son is born to the slave woman and one to the free woman, the Jerusalem above is free and is called our mother, and believers are children of the free woman rather than of the slave.Gal 4:22Gal 4:26Gal 4:30Gal 4:31
It can mean nothing more dramatic than exempt, or at liberty to do one particular thing, with no rescue anywhere in view. The sons of a king are free from the tax, a woman whose husband has died is free of the claim that marriage had on her, and a widow is free to marry whoever she wishes.Mat 17:26Rom 7:31Co 7:39
This word can describe a freedom that is worthless, and it can be a claim people make about themselves that someone else would dispute. People who were slaves of sin are called "free" with respect to righteousness, which is a freedom worth nothing; the crowd arguing with Jesus insists it has never been enslaved to anyone; and Paul opens a defence of himself by asking whether he is not free.Rom 6:20Jhn 8:331Co 9:1
Only this word describes a freedom a person can deliberately hand over. Paul is free of everyone and makes himself everyone's slave, someone who was already free when God called him is now the slave of Christ, and readers are told to live as free people while serving God.1Co 9:191Co 7:221Pe 2:16
λυτρόωsets someone free by paying what it costs, so the price is part of the picture, whereas this word names the release without pointing to any payment
Says nothing about a price. The whole weight falls on the resulting condition: the person was held, now they are free, and that freedom is itself the point.Gal 5:1Jhn 8:36
Sits inside slavery language, where the freed person does not end up masterless but passes out of one owner's control and into service to another.Rom 6:18Rom 6:22
Describes escape from a power that had been running a person's life from the inside, the pull of sin and the death it ends in.Rom 8:2
Reaches beyond people to the created world itself, which is promised release from its slow ruin.Rom 8:21
Can come about through learning something true, so the release arrives by way of what a person comes to know.Jhn 8:32
Both
Both describe someone being brought out of a hold they could not break on their own, with another person doing the acting and the freed person on the receiving end.Jhn 8:36Tit 2:14
Both name wrongdoing rather than a foreign ruler as the thing a person is rescued from, so each is about being freed from sin and not from an occupying army.Rom 6:22Tit 2:14
Carries the idea of a payment handed over to get someone out, and the text spells out what was and was not paid: not silver or gold, but the blood of Christ.1Pe 1:18
The rescuer gives up something of his own to do it, so the act costs the one who frees rather than simply happening to the one freed.Tit 2:14
Belongs to Israel's national hope of being bought back as a people, which is how the disciples on the road use it for what they had expected Jesus to do.Luk 24:21
ἀπολύωlets a person go: dismissing a crowd, releasing a prisoner, sending a wife away, whereas this word means breaking a power's hold on someone
Always describes rescue from a power that owns a person, above all sin itself, never a simple send-off or a change of address.Rom 6:18Rom 6:22Rom 8:2
Marks a lasting change of standing rather than a single act of letting go: the person stops belonging to one master and now counts as free.Jhn 8:36Gal 5:1
Reaches past people to the created world, which is promised release from its slow ruin.Rom 8:21
Both
Both can be rendered "set free" in English, because in both the person who was being held is no longer held.Act 26:32Jhn 8:36
In both, the freeing is always done by someone else who had the power to keep holding on, never something the freed person pulls off alone.Mrk 15:15Jhn 8:32
Covers ordinary send-offs that have nothing to do with slavery: breaking up a crowd, sending people home after a meal, ending a public meeting, or telling a healed man to go.Mat 14:22Mrk 6:36Luk 8:38Act 19:41
Is the ordinary word for a husband sending his wife away, so it is how the Gospels talk about divorce.Mat 5:31Mat 19:3Mrk 10:11Luk 16:18
Names the official act of letting a prisoner out of custody, the decision of a governor, a council, or a crowd choosing which man walks away.Mat 27:26Jhn 18:39Act 16:35Act 26:32
Can mean letting go of a claim rather than a person: cancelling what someone owes, or refusing to hold a wrong against them.Mat 18:27Luk 6:37
eleutheroō in the other biblical languages
פָּדָהHebrew“to ransom”the Hebrew verb for buying a person out of bondage, where the payment is part of what is said, whereas the Greek word states only that a hold was broken
The freedom is release from a power at work inside a person rather than from any human owner: sin and death themselves lose their grip.Rom 8:2
It marks a change of standing rather than a transaction. People are set loose from one master and described as now belonging to another, with no price mentioned at any point.Rom 6:18Rom 6:22
Freedom arrives through what someone says and is, not through anything handed over: the truth frees, and the Son frees.Jhn 8:32Jhn 8:36
Its reach goes past people to the created world, which is promised release from its long decay.Rom 8:21
The freedom it names can be surrendered again, so it comes with a warning to stand firm and not slide back under a yoke.Gal 5:1
Both
Both describe a rescue out of genuine bondage by someone strong enough to pull it off, and both treat that rescue as already accomplished for the people who benefit from it.Deu 7:8Gal 5:1
Both can speak of getting free from the claim of death, whether God pulls a life back from the grave or the life-giving Spirit breaks the hold of sin and death.Psa 49:15Rom 8:2
In both, the rescue ends in a new belonging rather than in being left to oneself: Israel is bought back to be God's own people, and those set free from sin become servants of God.2Sa 7:23Rom 6:22
Something real is handed over in place of what is released. A firstborn donkey is bought back with a lamb, a firstborn son at a fixed sum of silver, and a dedicated animal at its assessed value.Exo 13:13Num 18:16Lev 27:27
It works in ordinary dealings between people, with no rescuing God in view: a household lets a slave woman be bought back, and soldiers buy Jonathan out from under his father's oath.Exo 21:81Sa 14:45
Because a price is involved, the price can be weighed and found impossible: no amount of money buys a brother's life back from the grave.Psa 49:7
It names a physical rescue out of one named country, remembered as history and then used as the reason Israel must treat its own poor and enslaved people well.Deu 15:15Deu 24:18
חׇפְשִׁיHebrew“free”the Hebrew word for a servant who is free, used of the slave the law says must be sent away free in the seventh year, so it names the standing a person is left in rather than the act of freeing
Names the act of freeing rather than the standing that results, so it always puts someone in the position of liberator: the truth frees, the Son frees, Christ has freed us.Jhn 8:32Jhn 8:36Gal 5:1
What people are released from is a power they cannot see rather than a human owner, so they are freed from sin and from the grip of death.Rom 6:18Rom 6:22Rom 8:2
The release hands a person over to a new allegiance instead of leaving them on their own, so those freed from sin become servants of righteousness and of God.Rom 6:18Rom 6:22
It reaches past people to the created world itself, which is promised release from its long decay.Rom 8:21
Both
Both take slavery as the starting point and name what is being left behind, whether six years of labor under an Israelite master or slavery to sin.Exo 21:2Rom 6:22
The Greek word names the act that produces exactly the condition the Hebrew word describes, so what Judah proclaimed for its Hebrew slaves is the same shape of release the Greek word states of Christ's work, and the two are commonly rendered "set free" and "free" in the same breath.Jer 34:14Gal 5:1
In both, a freedom once given can be undone: Judah took back the people it had released, and the Galatians are warned not to shoulder the yoke of slavery a second time.Jer 34:11Gal 5:1
Describes the condition a person is in rather than the act that put them there, so the servant goes out "free" in the seventh year and the injured slave leaves "free" as compensation for a lost eye or tooth.Exo 21:2Deu 15:12Exo 21:26
The freedom it names is an enforceable arrangement between people, held by a master and an owned worker, which is why Judah could grant it by proclamation and then withdraw it again.Jer 34:9Jer 34:10Jer 34:16
It can be a bleak or empty freedom rather than a gain: the wild donkey is turned loose in the wasteland, death leaves the slave free of his master, and the dead lie beyond God's remembering.Job 39:5Job 3:19Psa 88:5
It also covers exemption from obligation where nobody was enslaved at all, as when the king promises to make the household of Goliath's killer free of duty in Israel.1Sa 17:25
What scholars say about eleutheroō
ἐλευθερόω is the verb built on ἐλεύθερος, and in classical and Hellenistic usage it means to make someone free, most concretely the manumission of a slave; LSJ documents that legal usage, while BDAG glosses the New Testament occurrences as causing someone to be freed from domination, with the source of bondage regularly marked by ἀπό. Schlier's TDNT treatment of the ἐλεύθερος word group and the corresponding EDNT entry both stress that in Paul the verb never denotes self-emancipation: the agent is Christ, the Spirit, or the truth, and the release is from a named power (ἁμαρτία in Rom 6:18, 22; ὁ νόμος τῆς ἁμαρτίας καὶ τοῦ θανάτου in Rom 8:2; ἡ δουλεία τῆς φθορᾶς in Rom 8:21). Commentators on Rom 6:18-22 note the deliberate pairing of ἐλευθερόω with δουλόω, which construes freedom as a transfer of lordship rather than as autonomy, and the same construal governs Gal 5:1, where the aorist ἠλευθέρωσεν is followed immediately by the warning against the ζυγὸς δουλείας. The principal exegetical debate attaching to the verb is not lexical but concerns the referent of νόμος in Rom 8:2, on which Dunn and Cranfield take the Mosaic law and Moo a weakened sense of governing power.
Sources
BDAG, s.v. ἐλευθερόωlexicon
LSJ, s.v. ἐλευθερόωlexicon
Heinrich Schlier, "ἐλεύθερος, ἐλευθερόω, ἐλευθερία, ἀπελεύθερος," Theological Dictionary of the New Testament 2:487-502theological-dictionary
K. Niederwimmer, "ἐλεύθερος, ἐλευθερία, ἐλευθερόω," Exegetical Dictionary of the New Testament 1:432-434theological-dictionary
James D. G. Dunn, Romans 1-8 (Word Biblical Commentary 38A)commentary
Douglas J. Moo, The Epistle to the Romans (New International Commentary on the New Testament)commentary
C. E. B. Cranfield, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans (International Critical Commentary)commentary