someone who holds a share in the same thing as others: a partner, or a person who has come to have a real part in what is shared
This word names a person by what he holds a part of. It is built on the ordinary Greek verb for holding something along with other people (μετέχω), and it turns that verb into a label for the people who do the holding. So the weight falls on the thing shared: a boat's catch, a calling, a gift, a father's correction. People are grouped by what they hold in common, not by how close they feel.
That one idea stretches a long way in the New Testament:
- fishermen in another boat who work the same water and split the same catch
- those who stand alongside an anointed king and are outranked by him
- believers who hold one and the same heavenly calling
- people who have come to hold a real part in the Holy Spirit, and in Christ himself
- children who all receive the same correction from the same father
Hebrews carries all but one of the occurrences, and uses the word to argue. Twice the writer says people have "become" sharers, which makes the share something entered into rather than owned from the start, and once he ties it to a condition: they hold their part in Christ if they hold their first confidence firm to the end (Hebrews 3:14). The reasoning in Hebrews 12:8 runs the same way. Every real son holds a share of the father's correction, so a person with no share in it is no son.
Greek had a warmer word for a partner (κοινωνός), one that keeps the bond between the people in view. Luke 5 uses both words of the same fishing crews within three verses, so they genuinely overlap. But this word keeps the shared thing at the center, which is why it works so easily where what is shared is not a person at all, such as a calling or a course of discipline.
Nuances
Whether "metochoi tou Christou" in Hebrews 3:14 means that believers hold a share in Christ or that they have become Christ's partners and companions.
- contestedThe genitive names what is shared, so the clause says believers have come to hold a share in Christ, matching the sharing in a heavenly calling in 3:1 and in the Holy Spirit in 6:4.; BDAG, s.v. μέτοχος
- contestedThe word keeps its ordinary sense of a companion, so the clause says believers have become Christ's partners, sharing the standing of the anointed king whose companions are named in 1:9.; William L. Lane, Hebrews 1-8 (Word Biblical Commentary 47A), on 3:14