sin: an offense against God, whether the wrong deed itself or the guilt it leaves behind
TranslatabilityPartialCertaintySettled
This is the word's home ground, and it is far broader than any one English term. By the time the New Testament writers use it, the word had already spent two centuries as the Greek Bible's standard rendering for a whole Hebrew vocabulary of wrongdoing. So it covers
the concrete act (a thing done or left undone)
the lasting condition of guilt it creates
the load of guilt that God forgives, removes, and cleanses away
The shades hang together because they are one movement seen at different points: a person does wrong, the wrong attaches to them as guilt, and that guilt is what mercy lifts. The Gospels and Acts dwell on the last point, making the forgiveness of sins the heart of what Jesus brings. Hebrews views the same guilt as a defilement that bars a person from God and has to be purged, not merely pardoned.
John presses the idea to a single point: at its root, sin is the refusal to believe in Christ, the rejection of the light once it has come. That is not a different word but the sharpest expression of what sin is.
Nuances
1aa wrong act, a specific offense against God, including failing to do the good one knows to do
1dsin understood as the refusal to believe in Christ
Jhn 16:8Jhn 16:9
2
Sin as a ruling power: a force that masters, enslaves, and brings death to those under it
TranslatabilityPartialCertaintyStrong
In a cluster of passages, above all in Romans 5 through 8, the word stops naming a deed and starts naming something that acts. Sin enters the world, reigns like a king, takes up residence inside a person, seizes its opportunity, deceives, and kills. People are spoken of as enslaved to it, sold under it, set free from it. You cannot do any of that to a single wrong act. Here the word points to wrongdoing gathered up into a hostile force that holds the whole human race in its grip until Christ breaks its rule.
This is the same evil the first meaning describes, now seen as a power rather than as an act or a stain. John shares the picture in his own words when he says that whoever keeps on sinning is a slave of sin.
Whether the writers picture Sin as a literal cosmic ruler or as a vivid way of dramatizing a very real bondage is one of the most debated questions in current scholarship. Either way the point stands: the New Testament treats human sin as something far larger and more enslaving than the sum of individual choices.
Whether the personified Sin of Romans 5 through 8 is a real cosmic power or a forceful rhetorical personification of a moral and historical predicament is a live debate. An apocalyptic-power reading treats Sin as a ruling agent analogous to Satan, while a traditional-moderate reading treats the personification as a vivid dramatization of bondage rather than a literal cosmic being. A recent mediating proposal treats Sin as a real emergent power arising from human transgression yet constraining people from above.
contestedSin is a real cosmic ruling power; Ernst Käsemann, Commentary on Romans, ET, Eerdmans, 1980; Beverly Roberts Gaventa, The Cosmic Power of Sin in Paul's Letter to the Romans, Interpretation 58, 2004, 229-40
contestedSin is a rhetorical personification of a real moral predicament; C. E. B. Cranfield, The Epistle to the Romans (ICC), T&T Clark, 1975, 1979; Douglas J. Moo, The Epistle to the Romans (NICNT), 2nd ed., Eerdmans, 2018
minoritySin is a real emergent quasi-personal power; Matthew Croasmun, The Emergence of Sin: The Cosmic Tyrant in Romans, Oxford University Press, 2017
3
a sin-offering: the sacrifice presented to deal with sin
TranslatabilityPartialCertaintyStrong
The Greek Bible regularly used this word, and especially the phrase rendered "for sin," to translate the Hebrew term that can mean both the wrong itself and the offering presented to remove it (חטאה). A few New Testament passages carry this sacrificial use across, so that the word names not the offense but the sacrifice that answers for it.
This sense is narrow and tied to settings already steeped in the language of the altar. It matters most where a writer is deliberately drawing on the worship system of Israel to explain what Christ's death accomplishes.
in many passages the word names not an act but a ruling power that reigns, enslaves, and kills, which the bare English word does not signalRom 6:14Jhn 8:34
it can also name the sacrifice offered to deal with sin, a sense the English word never carriesHeb 10:6
Both
both name a wrong done against God, the basic offenseJas 4:171Jn 3:4
Only sin
English readers often hear sin as a private moral failing or a personal flaw, missing that the word is fundamentally relational, an offense against God within a covenant
in the plural the word usually points to the load of guilt that God forgives, removes, and remembers no more, not just to a list of bad deedsMat 26:28Heb 10:17
Both
both name concrete acts of wrongdoing that need forgivenessAct 2:381Jn 1:9
Only sins
the English plural can sound like a tally of separate offenses, obscuring the New Testament emphasis on sins as one thing lifted and washed away together
in the sacrificial passages the word denotes the offering itself, carried over from the Greek Old Testament where one word served for both the sin and the sacrifice for itHeb 13:11Rom 8:3
Both
—
Only sin offering
the English phrase reads as a fixed ritual label, hiding the wordplay by which the single Greek term lets sin and its remedy share a name
How hamartia differs from similar Greek words
παράπτωμαπαράπτωμα names the discrete false step or lapse, the specific act of wrongdoing, where this word more often reaches for the whole condition or the power behind the acts.
Paul makes this word a ruling power that does things: it enters the world, reigns, dwells inside a person, and enslaves. That active force is something the more concrete word never carries.Rom 5:21Rom 6:6Rom 7:17
John uses it for sin as a single condition or bondage gripping the whole world, not a list of separate deeds: the Lamb takes away the sin of the world, and the one who keeps sinning is a slave of sin.Jhn 1:29Jhn 8:34
It reaches into the sacrificial world as the offering that deals with sin, a cultic use the other word does not have. Hebrews and Paul press it toward what is presented or made to remove sin.Heb 10:62Co 5:21
Both
Both name a real wrong against God that has to be forgiven, and the Bible swaps them freely for the same thing. Paul says redemption is the forgiveness of our trespasses where the parallel verse says forgiveness of sins.Col 1:14Eph 1:7
They sit side by side as a paired description of the same lost state, with no real difference between them. Paul says people were dead in their trespasses and sins, stacking the two words together for fullness.Rom 7:5Eph 2:1
Both cover offenses people commit against one another that God then weighs, so the call to forgive uses either word interchangeably. Jesus speaks of forgiving others their trespasses, and elsewhere of God forgiving sins.Mat 26:28Mat 6:14
This word names the discrete, concrete act of going wrong, picturing a fall away from where one should have stood. Paul builds his Adam argument on the single deed Adam did, set against grace.Rom 5:15Rom 5:17Rom 5:18
It marks a specific failure as an event with consequences. Israel's stumble that opens salvation to the nations, and the particular fault a believer is caught in, are each a definite slip rather than a reigning force.Rom 11:11Rom 11:12Gal 6:1
παράβασιςπαράβασις is the overstepping of a known, published command, so it presupposes a law to break, while this word names wrongdoing whether or not a specific command is in view.
The broad, general word for sin that does not depend on any stated law. Paul says sin was already in the world before the law of Moses arrived, even where there was no explicit command to break.Rom 5:13Rom 3:9
Paul personifies it as a ruling power that masters and enslaves people, something that reigns, pays out death as wages, and must be resisted. It is a force a person can be a slave to, not just an act they commit.Rom 6:6Rom 6:12
Covers the whole religious range of wrongdoing as the thing Jesus takes away and forgives, spoken over individual people and crowds well beyond any single broken commandment.Jhn 1:29Mat 1:21
Both
Both name doing wrong against God's standard and incurring guilt for it, and Paul sets them side by side: transgression is the shape sin takes once a clear command is present to be broken.Rom 5:12Rom 5:14
Names the act of stepping over a known, published command, so it presupposes a law to break. Where there is no law, there is no transgression in this sense, even though sin can still be present.Rom 4:15Rom 2:23
Points to a specific, identifiable overstepping of a definite commandment, such as Adam's first disobedience or Eve being the one who crossed the line. It is the discrete deed, not a state or a power.Rom 5:141Ti 2:14
ἀνομίαἀνομία is lawlessness, defiance of God's order, and 1 John actually equates it with this word, though ἀνομία stresses the rebellion against law where this word is the broader term.
In a cluster of passages this word names not a deed but a ruling power that reigns over people, enslaves them, and brings death; lawlessness is never personified as a master in this way.Rom 6:14Jhn 8:34
This word can also name the sacrifice offered to deal with wrongdoing, the sin-offering, a use carried over from the Greek Old Testament; lawlessness never names an offering.Heb 10:6Heb 13:11
It is the broad, default word for wrongdoing of every kind, so the gospel of release from it is announced as the forgiveness of sins, the heart of what Jesus brings.Mat 1:21Act 2:38
Both
First John 3:4 actually equates the two, saying that sin is lawlessness, so at their core both name the same defiance of God; the verse uses both words side by side.1Jn 3:4
Both name what God forgives and remembers no more; the new-covenant promise of mercy lists them together, lawless deeds and sins alike washed away.Heb 8:12Rom 4:7Heb 10:17
This word stresses defiance of God's law and order, and it gathers a special end-times force: the final outbreak of rebellion and the coming man of lawlessness who sets himself against God.2Th 2:32Th 2:7Mat 24:12
It exposes a contradiction between outward show and inward reality: people can look righteous on the surface while being full of lawlessness underneath, and so be rejected by Christ.Mat 23:28Mat 7:23
ἀδικίαἀδικία is unrighteousness, wrong done against what is just, often toward other people, where this word centers on offense against God himself; 1 John 5:17 calls all ἀδικία a form of this.
ἀσέβειαἀσέβεια is ungodliness, the failure to give God his due reverence, naming the Godward direction of wrong, where this word covers the offense itself in its full range.
Names sin as a thing that can be carried, confessed, forgiven, and washed away, which is why it is the word paired with forgiveness and cleansing.Mrk 1:4Mat 26:28Jhn 1:29
Can speak of sin as a ruling power or condition that grips a person, not just a single wrong act.Jhn 8:34Rom 5:13
Both
Both describe falling short of God's will, and in the same passages one names the doing of it while the other names the wrong that results.Rom 5:12
Both stand for the deliberate, ongoing wrongdoing that the New Testament warns believers against.Heb 10:261Jn 3:8
Names a concrete individual sin, a specific wrong deed that was done, rather than sin in the abstract. The word is built to mean the thing committed.Mrk 3:28Rom 3:25
Points to one discrete act a person performs, weighed on its own. Paul uses it for the single act of sexual immorality set apart from every other kind of wrong.1Co 6:18
Names sin itself, the act of falling short of God and breaking his will, whatever form it takes, not the resulting obligation.Mat 1:21Jhn 1:29
Can name sin as a ruling power that enslaves and produces death, not merely a single liability on a ledger.Rom 5:12Jhn 8:34
Is the wrong that sacrifice and atonement remove, language tied to guilt before God rather than to a sum owed.Heb 10:41Pe 2:24
Both
Both name a wrong against God that must be released and forgiven: the Lord's Prayer asks God to cancel our debts, where the parallel petition asks him to forgive our sins.Mat 6:12Luk 11:4
Both fit the bookkeeping picture of guilt as something reckoned to a person's account, which God in grace declines to charge.Rom 4:4Rom 4:8
Can mean a literal, lawful debt, what one party genuinely owes another, including a wage due to a worker for labor done.Rom 4:4
hamartia in the other biblical languages
חַטָּאתHebrew“sin”חַטָּאת is the main Hebrew word the Greek Bible renders with this one, and like it can mean both the sin and the sin-offering presented to remove it.
functions powerfully as a reigning force or quasi-personal power in Paul's letters, sin personified as a master that enslaves and must be resisted rather than merely a single wrong actRom 6:12Rom 6:14
can name the sinless moral condition of a person who does not carry guilt, as in Jesus being made a sin-offering though he himself had no sin2Co 5:21Heb 4:15
Both
both name sin as a moral failure that requires dealing with, something that must be forgiven or removed rather than simply ignored; the LXX regularly renders the Hebrew word with the Greek word, carrying the same sense of sin as a wrong demanding remedy across both testaments1Jn 1:7Gen 4:7
both appear in contexts of forgiveness and cleansing, the guilt that God removes when he pardons his peopleHeb 8:12Psa 85:2
designates the specific sacrificial animal prescribed to make atonement for inadvertent sin, uncleanness, or sanctuary contamination, functioning as a technical term of Israel's worship systemLev 4:3Lev 16:15
can carry the meaning of the punishment or consequence owed for sin, the liability sin creates rather than the act itselfPro 14:34Isa 5:18
עָוֺןHebrew“iniquity: crime”עָוֺן is iniquity, weighted toward the guilt and its consequences that wrongdoing leaves on a person, a load this word also carries in its sense of standing guilt.
פֶּשַׁעHebrew“transgression”פֶּשַׁע is rebellion, a willful breach of relationship with God, the sharpest and most defiant of the Hebrew sin words; this Greek word is broader and only sometimes carries that edge.
Names sin broadly as any failure to hit the mark, the wrong act and the standing condition behind it, not tied to one ritual remedy.Jhn 8:34Rom 5:12
Centers on sin being forgiven or taken away, released rather than repaid.Mat 1:21Jhn 1:29Act 2:38
Both
Both name wrongdoing that leaves a person liable before God and in need of atonement; the Hebrew names the guilt offering that covers the offense, while the Greek word for sin is what such offering points toward removing.Isa 53:10Heb 10:12
In the New Testament, sin is often pictured as a ruling power, a master that enslaves people and reigns over them until it kills. This personified force is a distinctly New Testament development that the Hebrew word never carries.Jhn 8:34Rom 6:6Rom 6:12
The Greek word can also name the sacrifice offered to deal with sin, the sin-offering itself. The Hebrew word here never means the offering (a separate Hebrew word does that job).2Co 5:21Heb 10:8Heb 13:11
In John's Gospel the word can pin sin specifically to unbelief, the refusal to trust Christ. That Christ-centered framing has no counterpart in the Old Testament word.Jhn 15:22Jhn 16:9
Both
Both are the ordinary word for a concrete wrong act, a specific offense that fails the standard God sets. The Greek word is in fact the standard rendering that carries the Hebrew word's core meaning across.1Jn 3:4Lam 1:8
Both name sin as guilt that God can forgive, blot out, and put away, so that the offense no longer stands against the person.1Jn 1:9Act 2:38Isa 38:17Isa 1:18
The Hebrew word can shift from the wrong act to the penalty for it, so that a person who "bears his sin" suffers its consequence, sometimes death. This use of the noun for the punishment itself is not how the Greek word works.Lev 20:20Num 9:13Num 18:22
The Hebrew word functions as a legal term for a punishable crime, an offense that can be "worthy of death." It names the concrete chargeable wrong in a courtroom sense that the Greek word does not carry here.Deu 21:22Deu 22:26Deu 24:16
It can name sin as a power that owns a person and gives the orders, not just a wrong action someone performed.Jhn 8:34Rom 6:14Rom 7:17
It can name the shared human condition, something that came into the world and has left everyone in the same position before God.Rom 3:9Rom 5:121Jn 1:8
It can be spoken of as one whole load that is carried off or put away by a single sacrifice, rather than as a list of separate offences.Jhn 1:29Heb 9:261Pe 2:24
It is the ordinary word for the everyday wrongs people confess and are cleansed of again and again, so it covers small failures as readily as great ones.Mat 3:6Jas 5:161Jn 1:9
Both
Both name a definite wrong that has to be forgiven or covered by God rather than simply regretted or outgrown.Psa 32:1Mat 26:28Luk 7:47
Both can name the offering brought to deal with sin, and the New Testament quotes the Hebrew line about that offering directly, using the Greek word where the psalm used the Hebrew one.Psa 40:6Heb 10:6Heb 10:8
Both are used of wrongdoing that piles up until judgment falls on a whole people.Exo 32:311Th 2:16Rev 18:5
It turns up mostly in the set phrase "a great sin", which measures the seriousness of one specific act rather than describing sin in general.Gen 20:9Exo 32:21Exo 32:302Ki 17:21
It is typically guilt that one person brings down on other people, so a household or a whole nation ends up carrying the consequences of a leader's act.Gen 20:9Exo 32:212Ki 17:21
It can mark something being charged to a person's account as guilt, so that even his prayer is counted against him.Psa 109:7
What scholars say about hamartia
The lexical core of the word is settled in modern scholarship: not Homeric archery and not the tragic error of Aristotle's Poetics, but the covenantal vocabulary of wrongdoing that the Septuagint built when it used the word to render a cluster of Hebrew terms for sin. The standard lexica now lead with departure from divine standards (BDAG) or acting contrary to God's will (Louw and Nida), not with missing the mark, and Muraoka's Septuagint lexicon treats the word as covering wrongdoing, guilt, and sin-offering together. The genuinely contested questions are interpretive rather than lexical: whether Paul's personified Sin in Romans 5 through 8 is a real cosmic power or a forceful way of dramatizing bondage, how to read the sin unto death in 1 John, and whether the bare accusative in 2 Corinthians 5:21 means made sin or made a sin-offering. Methodologically, James Barr's critique of illegitimate totality transfer and the root fallacy, systematized for New Testament readers by Silva and Carson, is the reason scholars distrust the etymological sermon scheme that distinguishes this word from its neighbors by their supposed roots.
In-depth research
This is a research paper, so it may be hard to read without scholarly background. It is useful if you want to dig even deeper into this word.
Sources
Walter Bauer, Frederick W. Danker, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature (BDAG), 3rd ed., 2000, s.v. ἁμαρτίαlexicon
Johannes P. Louw and Eugene A. Nida, Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament Based on Semantic Domains, 1989, domain 88.289lexicon
Takamitsu Muraoka, A Greek-English Lexicon of the Septuagint, Peeters, 2009, s.v. ἁμαρτίαlexicon
Gustav Stählin and Walter Grundmann, ἁμαρτάνω κτλ., Theological Dictionary of the New Testament (TDNT), vol. 1, 267-316theological-dictionary
James Barr, The Semantics of Biblical Language, Oxford University Press, 1961monograph
Moisés Silva, Biblical Words and Their Meaning, rev. ed., Zondervan, 1994, 25-27monograph
D. A. Carson, Exegetical Fallacies, 2nd ed., Baker, 1996, 28-33monograph
John A. L. Lee, A History of New Testament Lexicography, Peter Lang, 2003monograph
Ernst Käsemann, Commentary on Romans, ET, Eerdmans, 1980commentary
C. E. B. Cranfield, The Epistle to the Romans (ICC), T&T Clark, 1975, 1979commentary
Douglas J. Moo, The Epistle to the Romans (NICNT), 2nd ed., Eerdmans, 2018commentary
James D. G. Dunn, Romans 1-8 (WBC 38A), Word, 1988commentary
Beverly Roberts Gaventa, The Cosmic Power of Sin in Paul's Letter to the Romans, Interpretation 58, 2004, 229-40article
Matthew Croasmun, The Emergence of Sin: The Cosmic Tyrant in Romans, Oxford University Press, 2017monograph
Stanley K. Stowers, A Rereading of Romans: Justice, Jews, and Gentiles, Yale University Press, 1994monograph
N. T. Wright, On Becoming the Righteousness of God: 2 Corinthians 5.21, in Pauline Theology II, ed. David M. Hay, Fortress, 1993article
Murray J. Harris, The Second Epistle to the Corinthians (NIGTC), Eerdmans, 2005commentary
Margaret E. Thrall, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Second Epistle to the Corinthians (ICC), T&T Clark, 1994, 2000commentary
Jacob Milgrom, Leviticus 1-16 (Anchor Bible), Doubleday, 1991commentary
Raymond E. Brown, The Epistles of John (Anchor Bible), Doubleday, 1982commentary
Judith M. Lieu, I, II, & III John (New Testament Library), Westminster John Knox, 2008commentary
Harold W. Attridge, The Epistle to the Hebrews (Hermeneia), Fortress, 1989commentary
Joseph A. Fitzmyer, Romans (Anchor Bible), Doubleday, 1993commentary