ἀδόκιμος (adokimos)
Definition
Adokimos (Greek: ἀδόκιμος; “reprobate”, “failing the test”) is a biblical-Greek term that describes a mind or spirit that has lost its capacity for discernment and cannot pass God’s test. Etymologically it is the negative of dokimos (“approved after examination”). Paul uses the term in two key texts: in Rom. 1:28 for the mind that has entirely expelled God, and in 1Cor. 9:27 for his own fear of becoming adokimos after his apostolic work.
The adokimos mind is the end-stage of spiritual departure: not merely a bad choice, but a structural loss of the capacity to distinguish good from evil. It is the condition to which God gives over the person who resolutely shuts Him out of their thinking.
Usage variants by author
Warnock
Warnock describes adokimos as the end-point of the three stages of apostasy (Rom. 1) and provides a detailed definition:
“They did not like to retain God in their knowledge (v. 28)… And God said: If you don’t want Me in your thoughts, I will blot out every trace of light you have ever known, and I will allow more darkness and evil than you will know how to handle. So they were given over to a reprobate mind (Gr. adokimos): the mind that cannot pass the test; it becomes worthless, rejected.” [Who Are You?, chap. 5]
The adokimos mind is for Warnock the result of the exclusion of God: whoever consistently shuts God out of their thinking loses the light God provided, and falls into a state of deepening darkness without even recognising how great that darkness is. This is not an external punishment but an organic consequence of the apostasy itself.
The reverse is the dokimos person (2Tim. 2:15): one who carries out the work for God with diligence and perseverance and passes the test in doing so. Paul uses this contrast in 1Cor. 9:27 to underline the seriousness of his own apostolic life: even the preacher himself can become adokimos if he neglects the discipline of the spiritual life.