to change the form of something: to refashion how it looks or is presented
Paul is the only New Testament writer who uses this verb, and he stretches it across three very different situations. Underneath all of them lies one plain idea: to change the form of something, to refashion how it looks or how it is presented. In ordinary Greek the word was used for very concrete refashioning, such as remodeling a house or reshaping an object, and Paul puts that everyday idea to strikingly different work.
The three settings are worth seeing side by side:
- a genuine, deep change, when Christ will remake our lowly bodies to be like his own body in glory
- a deceptive disguise, when false teachers, and even Satan, dress themselves up as servants of righteousness
- a figure of speech, when Paul recasts a general lesson by applying it to himself and Apollos
English Bibles pull these apart with different words ("transform," "disguise," "apply"), which hides that one and the same verb links them. That link can carry real weight: in the disguise passages the false teachers are set up as a counterfeit of the very transformation God actually promises, described with the closely related verb μεταμορφόω.
Nuances
Whether the verb here means the false apostles merely put on an outward disguise as apostles, or whether Paul chose a "transform" word deliberately to cast them as a counterfeit of genuine transformation.
- majorityOutward disguise: they adopt the appearance of apostles while remaining servants of Satan, with no real change of nature.; Harris, The Second Epistle to the Corinthians (NIGTC), 776-81; Thrall, The Second Epistle to the Corinthians (ICC), vol. 2, 707-11; Furnish, II Corinthians (Anchor Bible), 507-10
- minorityA rhetorically weighted "transform themselves" that mirrors, as a counterfeit, Paul's own language of genuine transformation.; Young, JSNT (2025)
Whether Paul's "I have applied these things to myself and Apollos" is the Greco-Roman rhetorical figure of "figured speech" (veiled criticism of the real Corinthian leaders under substitute names) or simply a plain illustration using himself and Apollos as examples.
- majorityPaul is speaking with deliberate, tactful indirection, substituting his own name and Apollos' name for the real factional leaders in order to spare them public shame.; Thiselton, The First Epistle to the Corinthians (NIGTC), 348-51; Fiore, "'Covert Allusion' in 1 Corinthians 1-4," CBQ 47 (1985): 85-102; Garland, 1 Corinthians (BECNT), 132ff.
- minorityPaul is simply using himself and Apollos as plain examples of the principles he has taught, with no concealment of anyone.; Fee, The First Epistle to the Corinthians (NICNT), rev. ed., 166-69; Barrett, The First Epistle to the Corinthians (BNTC), 106
Disputed
Whether the choice of this verb, built on the schema root ("outward form, fashion"), signals a merely outward or superficial change, as opposed to the deeper change carried by the related verb metamorphoo.
- majorityThe root does not fix the depth of the change; context determines the verb's force, and Philippians 3:21 pairs it with a "form" word for one and the same deep, essential transformation.; Silva, Biblical Words and Their Meaning, 2nd ed., 113-14; Barr, The Semantics of Biblical Language; Fee, Paul's Letter to the Philippians (NICNT)
- minorityThe schema root denotes outward, changeable fashion, in deliberate contrast to morphe, which denotes essential, intrinsic form.; Lightfoot, St Paul's Epistle to the Philippians, Detached Note, 127-33; Trench, Synonyms of the New Testament, section lxx