pathēma

At its core this word names something you undergo rather than something you do. It is built on the ordinary Greek verb meaning "to suffer," and it points to a particular hardship experienced, a single affliction endured, rather than a general mood or state. That sets it a little apart from a closely related noun (πάθος), which names the inner condition of being stirred up; this word names the concrete thing suffered.

Outside the Bible the word ranged very widely, covering everything from public calamities to bodily symptoms. The New Testament writers narrow it almost entirely to human suffering, and above all to "the sufferings of Christ." That phrase became a near-fixed expression that ties the suffering Jesus endured to the ongoing suffering of his followers, who are said to share in it.

So the meaning splits into two shades. Sometimes it is plain human hardship: persecution, distress, the troubles of the present age. Other times it is the loaded, Christ-centered sense, where a believer's suffering is drawn into the pattern of Jesus' own. Scholars line up the same set of occurrences and agree on the wording; where they differ is on how deeply the believer really participates in Christ's suffering, which is a question of theology rather than of what the word means. Note too that this is a different word from another common term for hardship (θλῖψις), which pictures affliction as outward pressure.

In two of Paul's letters the word turns inward. It names not something done to a person from outside, but the sinful urges that rise up within, the impulses that belong to fallen human nature. Paired with the word for craving (ἐπιθυμία) and called "sinful passions," it means the pull of the flesh that the law stirs up and that believers are called to have put to death.

This inward use was familiar in Greek moral philosophy, where such terms named the passions a wise person tries to master. Paul borrows that sense for only these two verses, so it is a genuine but marginal meaning of the word, always signaled by its setting: either the phrase "sinful passions" or the pairing with the word for desire.