to be molded to a pattern: to let something outside you set the shape of your life
The picture behind the word is a mold. It is built from a Greek noun for the shape or outward figure a thing has, joined to a prefix meaning "along with," so its plain force is to be shaped along with something, to come out matching the form that was pressed on you.
It is a rare word, and in the Bible it turns up only twice, both times in a warning. What the warning amounts to depends entirely on what a person is being shaped to:
- In Romans 12:2 the mold is "this age," the present order of the world with its assumptions and loyalties, so refusing it is a question of allegiance rather than taste.
- In 1 Peter 1:14 the mold is the readers' own cravings from the time before they knew God, so refusing it is a clean break with an old way of living.
Both times the wording leaves open whether a person does the shaping or has it done to them, and many scholars favor the second reading: this is pressure from outside, quietly at work on anyone who is not resisting it. Either way the instruction is a standing one, a lifelong stance rather than a single decision.
Paul sets the word against another in the same sentence, "be transformed" (μεταμορφόω). The contrast is real, but it lies in the direction of the change and in what is doing the shaping, not in a rule that one word always means the surface of a thing and the other its depths.
Disputed
Whether συσχηματίζω, by virtue of its σχῆμα stem, denotes specifically outward or superficial conformity, in contrast to the μορφή word group as essential form. On the traditional analysis Romans 12:2 sets shallow fashioning after this age against a deep inward transformation; the counter-analysis holds that the two stems overlap substantially in Hellenistic Greek and that the contrast in Romans 12:2 is carried by the prefixes, the objects and the wider context rather than by any fixed lexical law.
- majorityNo systematic σχῆμα/μορφή distinction can be sustained; the verb means simply to be conformed or molded to a pattern, and appeal to the stem to fix a superficial nuance over-reads the word's components. Philippians 3:21 uses the two word groups almost interchangeably (μετασχηματίσει ... σύμμορφον), and Plutarch and Euripides pair the stems freely.; Moisés Silva, Biblical Words and Their Meaning: An Introduction to Lexical Semantics, rev. ed. (Zondervan, 1994); James Barr, The Semantics of Biblical Language (Oxford University Press, 1961); D. A. Carson, Exegetical Fallacies, 2nd ed. (Baker, 1996); C. E. B. Cranfield, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans (ICC, T&T Clark, 1975 and 1979), ad loc. 12:2; Douglas J. Moo, The Epistle to the Romans (NICNT, Eerdmans, 1996), ad loc. 12:2; James D. G. Dunn, Romans 9-16 (Word Biblical Commentary 38B, 1988), 712
- minorityσχῆμα denotes the changeable outward fashion or bearing, while μορφή denotes the form belonging to a thing's essence, so Romans 12:2 deliberately contrasts a merely external conformity to the present age with an inward, essential transformation.; J. B. Lightfoot, Saint Paul's Epistle to the Philippians, detached note on μορφή and σχῆμα, 127-133; R. C. Trench, Synonyms of the New Testament, §70; William Sanday and Arthur C. Headlam, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans (ICC, T&T Clark, 1895), ad loc. 12:2