StrongerBible

energeia

ἐνέργεια

GreekG1753“working, power, ...”

Appears 8 times · tap a cell to see the verses

Eph 1:19Eph 3:7Eph 4:16Php 3:21Col 1:29Col 2:122Th 2:92Th 2:11
Root family
Word studyen-ERG-ay-ahnoun

What energeia means

power actually at work: the active operation of a power beyond the human, producing a real effect rather than sitting in reserve.

TranslatabilityPartialCertaintyStrong

Greek had several words for power, and this one names the working end of it. δύναμις is power a person or God has, whether or not it is being used at the moment. ἰσχύς is sheer strength. κράτος is power exercised as mastery or rule. This word is power in operation, which is why Paul can stack all four into one sentence about God raising Christ without repeating himself (Ephesians 1:19).

All eight appearances are in Paul's letters, and in every one the one doing the working is beyond the human. God's working raises Christ from the dead and will remake the bodies of his people. It labors inside a servant so that his exhausting effort actually accomplishes something, and it holds a whole community together as it grows. In Second Thessalonians the same word turns dark: once for the hostile working behind the lawless one, staging signs that are lies, and once for a working of delusion that God himself sends on people who have refused the truth.

The range holds together because the word itself says nothing about who is working or whether the outcome is good. It says only that a power is in operation and that something is really happening. That is what makes Paul's warning in Second Thessalonians 2 sharp: what the lawless one puts on display is not a stage trick but genuine working, from the wrong source. Paul also uses the matching verb ἐνεργέω, and in Colossians 1:29 he sets noun and verb side by side, so that God's working is what is working in him.

Nuances

1aGod's power in the act of doing what only God can do: raising Christ from the dead and remaking the bodies of his people.
Eph 1:19Php 3:21Col 2:12
1bthe same divine power at work inside people and among them: driving a servant's labor and knitting a growing community together.
Eph 3:7Eph 4:16Col 1:29
1cthe counterfeit working behind the lawless one: a hostile power staging signs and wonders that are lies.
2Th 2:9
1da working that produces delusion, sent as judgment on people who have already refused the truth.
2Th 2:11

What scholars say about energeia

The standard lexicons agree on the sense. BDAG gives "working, operation, action" and observes that in the New Testament the noun is used only of transcendent beings, whether divine or demonic; LSJ documents the far wider range of the word in general Greek, where it covers ordinary activity and, in Aristotle, actuality as opposed to mere potentiality. J. Armitage Robinson's detached note on ἐνεργεῖν and its cognates in his commentary on Ephesians argued that the whole word group in the New Testament denotes superhuman working, a judgment the later lexicons and EDNT largely follow; Bertram's TDNT article on the ἔργον group sets out the same contrast with δύναμις as capacity. All eight occurrences fall in the Pauline corpus (Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, 2 Thessalonians): five name God's working, one the working behind the lawless one (2 Thess 2:9), and one the deluding working God sends (2 Thess 2:11), which BDAG treats as a distinguishable use and which Malherbe discusses under the theme of divine hardening. The referent in Ephesians 4:16 is genuinely debated in the commentaries, between the power Christ supplies to the growing body (so Robinson's principle, and Hoehner) and the functioning of each individual member (canvassed by Lincoln); the debate concerns whose working is meant, not the meaning of the word.

Sources

  • BDAG (Bauer-Danker-Arndt-Gingrich), s.v. ἐνέργειαlexicon
  • LSJ (Liddell-Scott-Jones), s.v. ἐνέργειαlexicon
  • Georg Bertram, "ἔργον κτλ.," in Theological Dictionary of the New Testament (TDNT), vol. 2dictionary
  • Exegetical Dictionary of the New Testament (EDNT), s.v. ἐνέργειαdictionary
  • J. Armitage Robinson, St Paul's Epistle to the Ephesians, 2nd ed. (London: Macmillan, 1904)commentary
  • Andrew T. Lincoln, Ephesians, Word Biblical Commentary 42 (Dallas: Word, 1990)commentary
  • Harold W. Hoehner, Ephesians: An Exegetical Commentary (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2002)commentary
  • Abraham J. Malherbe, The Letters to the Thessalonians, Anchor Bible 32B (New York: Doubleday, 2000)commentary
  • James D. G. Dunn, The Epistles to the Colossians and to Philemon, New International Greek Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996)commentary

AI-generated word study · claude-opus-4-8

All attested forms of ἐνέργεια

accusative f s

ἐνέργειαν

Eph 1:19, Eph 3:7, Eph 4:16, Php 3:21, Col 1:29, 2Th 2:9, 2Th 2:11

genitive f s

ἐνεργείας

Col 2:12