to call alongside, comfort, exhort
Parakaleo is the verb that gives us paracletos. It means to call alongside, and depending on context it can be translated as comfort, encourage, exhort, urge, plead, or summon. The shape of the word is always the same. Someone calls someone else to come and stand near. Sometimes for comfort. Sometimes for a hard conversation. Sometimes to rally them for action. Sometimes simply to keep them company. Paul uses it constantly. He parakaleos the Romans to present their bodies as a living sacrifice. He parakaleos the Corinthians to be reconciled to God. He tells Timothy to parakaleo with great patience and instruction. Jesus tells the disciples that the Spirit will be sent to parakaleo them. The 2 Corinthians blessing names God himself as the God of all parakaleo, the God who is constantly calling us alongside. What the word resists is the modern split between 'comfort' and 'challenge.' Parakaleo can be either. Real love does both. The friend who only comforts you is sentimental. The friend who only challenges you is harsh. The Bible's parakaleo holds them together. The same hand that puts a blanket around your shoulders can also turn you back toward the road you are supposed to be walking.
Most of us have a too-narrow definition of comfort. We think it is soft words and a warm drink. Parakaleo says comfort is whatever a real friend would call you alongside them to do. Sometimes that is silence. Sometimes that is a hard conversation. Sometimes that is being told to get up. I spent a long time wanting the soft-words version every time. The Bible's God parakaleos in all of them. He has given me a blanket and he has put a hand on my back and turned me around, and both have been mercy. And here is the part that should reorder how you love people. You have been parakaleo'd, the verse says, so that you can parakaleo others. The comfort you have received is meant to be passed on. Your hardest seasons are training for the friends you will one day call alongside yourself.
Para means alongside. Kaleo means to call. Combined: to call to one's side. Same root as paracletos (the noun, the one called alongside) and ekklesia (the called-out assembly, the church). Classical Greek used parakaleo for summoning a witness, exhorting troops, or pleading with a friend. The New Testament keeps all three flavors and adds the Spirit's presence to the picture.
Where parakaleo appears in Scripture, and why each verse showcases it.
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction.
Parakaleo and its noun parakletos appear repeatedly here. The pattern is comfort received becoming comfort passed on.
I appeal to you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice.
'Appeal' here is parakaleo. Paul is calling them alongside, urgently, by the weight of God's mercy.
But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called 'today,' that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.
Parakaleo as a daily mutual practice. Hardening happens to people who go too long without a friend calling them alongside.
Therefore encourage one another with these words.
Paul has just described the return of Christ. The right response to apocalyptic hope is parakaleo each other with it.
Words in the same semantic family.
Every video where Adam teaches on this word, in publication order.
This word is studied in depth in the following monthly Bible studies.
