συνεργός

G4904 names a fellow worker or coworker. Its thirteen governed forms identify Prisca and Aquila, Urbanus, Timothy, Titus, Epaphroditus, Philemon, Mark, Aristarchus, Demas, Luke, Clement, women who labored beside Paul, other partners, and those who support traveling servants of the truth. First Corinthians 3:9 also applies the term within an agricultural and building argument about ministers, God, and the Corinthian church. The word honors shared labor without assigning every coworker the same role.

Paul's greetings make ministry visibly networked. Women and men, travelers and local hosts, public messengers and less-described servants receive recognition. This evidence should not erase women, reserve meaningful work for platform leaders, or turn a coworker label alone into proof for or against a particular office. Names should be honored without celebrity construction, and people omitted from surviving lists are not thereby less valuable to God.

First Corinthians 3 says that Paul planted, Apollos watered, and God gave growth before calling the workers God's fellow workers and the church God's field and building. The phrase does not make humans equal partners in divine power or ownership. Second Corinthians 1:24 adds an authority boundary: apostolic workers do not lord over another's faith but work with believers for their joy. Partnership under God therefore resists both passive spectatorship and spiritual domination.

Coworker language does not authorize unpaid overwork, blurred employment duties, financial opacity, unsafe service, coerced availability, or loyalty to a leader over truth. Third John connects supporting traveling servants with becoming coworkers for the truth, but support still requires wise stewardship and safeguarding. Philemon's coworker address cannot make slavery acceptable or pressure a harmed or subordinated person toward unsafe reconciliation. Healthy collaboration names roles, shares credit, compensates fairly where work is employment, protects rest and family duties, investigates harm, and lets people leave.

Thirteen governed forms name a broad network of ministry partners, define workers under God's ownership and growth, reject lordship over faith, and include material support as work for the truth.