Passage

Philippians 3.21

Book: Philippians · ASV / WEB / KJV / YLT

Immediate context (±2 verses)

ASV

19. whose end is perdition, whose god is the belly, and whose glory is in their shame, who mind earthly things. 20. For our citizenship is in heaven; whence also we wait for a Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ:

21. who shall fashion anew the body of our humiliation, that it may be conformed to the body of his glory, according to the working whereby he is able even to subject all things unto himself. (Philippians 3:19-21, ASV)

WEB

19. whose end is destruction, whose god is the belly, and whose glory is in their shame, who think about earthly things. 20. For our citizenship is in heaven, from where we also wait for a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ;

21. who will change the body of our humiliation to be conformed to the body of his glory, according to the working by which he is able even to subject all things to himself. (Philippians 3:19-21, WEB)

KJV

19. Whose end is destruction, whose God is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame, who mind earthly things.) 20. For our conversation is in heaven; from whence also we look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ: ^{conversation: or, we live or conduct ourselves as citizens of heaven, or, for obtaining heaven}

21. Who shall change our vile body, that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious body, according to the working whereby he is able even to subdue all things unto himself. (Philippians 3:19-21, KJV)

YLT

19. whose end [is] destruction, whose god [is] the belly, and whose glory [is] in their shame, who the things on earth are minding. 20. For our citizenship is in the heavens, whence also a Saviour we await, the Lord Jesus Christ

21. who shall transform the body of our humiliation to its becoming conformed to the body of his glory, according to the working of his power, even to subject to himself the all things. (Philippians 3:19-21, YLT)

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Setting

Speaker: Paul the Apostle, writing with Timothy named as co-sender (Phil 1:1).
Audience: The church at Philippi, a Roman colony in Macedonia and the first congregation Paul planted in Europe (Acts 16:11-40). The letter names overseers and deacons at 1:1 and thanks the church for repeated financial support.
Location: Written from imprisonment. Paul refers to his bonds and to "Caesar's household" (Phil 1:13, 4:22); the traditional identification is Roman custody, with Ephesus and Caesarea proposed as alternatives.
Time period: c. AD 60-62 on the traditional Roman-imprisonment dating.

Theological reading

Hos metaschēmatisei to sōma tēs tapeinōseōs hēmōn symmorphon tō sōmati tēs doxēs autou, kata tēn energeian tou dynasthai auton kai hypotaxai autō ta panta.

Two verbs of form, precisely chosen. Metaschēmatisei is built on schēma, outward configuration, and symmorphon on morphē, the form expressing what a thing is. The same pair appears in the hymn at 2:6-8, where Christ is in the morphē of God and is found in schēma as a man. Paul is saying the transformation of the believer's body corresponds to the shape of the incarnation run in reverse.

"The body of our humiliation." To sōma tēs tapeinōseōs is not a body that is humiliating, and the verse is not contempt for embodiment. Tapeinōsis is the noun matching etapeinōsen heauton at 2:8, where Christ humbled Himself. The body is described by the condition it currently shares with His, not by a defect in materiality. This matters, because the verse is regularly misread as Platonic disparagement of the flesh when its logic is the opposite: the body is not discarded but transformed.

Conformity to a glorified body, not to spirit. The destination is tō sōmati tēs doxēs autou, the body of His glory. Whatever resurrection means here, it terminates in a body corresponding to Christ's risen body, which places this verse alongside 1 Corinthians 15 as a primary text against a purely spiritual resurrection hope.

The ground of the promise. Kata tēn energeian tou dynasthai auton kai hypotaxai autō ta panta, according to the working by which He is able to subject all things to Himself. The guarantee is not the believer's condition but Christ's competence, and the scope named is universal. The allusion is to Psalm 8:6 and its christological application, the same background as 1 Corinthians 15:27 and Ephesians 1:22.

Key words

Theologically-loaded Greek or Hebrew words in this verse may have entries in the lexicon. Curated to roughly 100 contested terms across the corpus, not every word; see Lexicon Roadmap.

G4983 - soma, soma, Strong's G4983
G1391 - doxa, doxa, Strong's G1391
G1096 - ginomai, ginomai, Strong's G1096
G3956 - pas, pas, Strong's G3956

Quoted in

Arguments and defeaters:

Concepts:

Lexicon:

Why these four translations

ris3n chose ASV, WEB, KJV, and YLT for two reasons together. They are the most literal English translations available (formal-equivalence: word-for-word renderings that preserve the Hebrew and Greek grammar rather than smoothing it into modern dynamic-equivalence idiom). And they are in the public domain in the United States, which means fair-use quotation at any length requires no publisher license. Modern licensed translations (NASB95, ESV, NIV) restrict volume of quotation under their copyright terms, so they are not used at stub-level coverage here. NASB95 appears only on hand-curated rich passage hubs under Lockman Foundation's fair-use allowance.

The four:

ASV (American Standard Version, 1901). The basis of the modern critical-text English tradition.
WEB (World English Bible, contemporary). Public-domain revision in the ASV line, in current English.
KJV (King James Version, 1611). Reformation-era, Textus Receptus base.
YLT (Young's Literal Translation, Robert Young, 1862). Hyper-literal preservation of Hebrew and Greek grammar; useful for word-study work even where English reads stiff.

See Bibles for the full per-translation history, translators, textual basis, strengths, and weaknesses.