αὐτός

Autos shows why pronoun reading is part of exegesis rather than a minor editorial task. In Luke 17, the surrounding story identifies the healed man who returns in praise. In Ephesians 2:14, the emphatic expression fixes attention on Christ Himself as the church’s peace. In Ephesians 5:25, self-reference serves the declaration that Christ gave Himself for the church.

Romans 8:16 draws attention to the Spirit Himself testifying with believers’ spirits. First Corinthians 1 and Ephesians 5 also use sameness language within appeals for unity and covenant love. None of these doctrines comes from autos alone, but each passage uses the pronoun to keep the right person or relation in view. Faithful teachers trace the referent, state the grammatical force modestly, and let the sentence bear its full personal testimony.

Autos inflects for case, number, and gender. Depending on position and syntax, it can function as a third-person pronoun, an intensive marker often rendered “himself” or “herself,” a reflexive-like expression in certain constructions, or an adjective meaning “same.” The local Greek artifact currently groups about 5,546 occurrences. Antecedents normally arise from grammatical agreement and discourse context, not from the interpreter’s theological preference.