it is permitted: a stated action is allowed, rather than required or forbidden
This is an impersonal verb, the kind of word that fills the blank in "it is ___ to do this." It never describes a person; it describes an action, and says that the action is open to someone: allowed, free, sanctioned. English has no single verb that works this way, so translators reach for "it is lawful," "it is permitted," "it is allowed," or simply "one may."
The word turns on who or what grants the permission. Often a governing rule is in view: the Law of Moses in the Gospel arguments over the Sabbath and food, or Roman law and social custom in the book of Acts. At other times no particular code is named, and the word means only that a person is free to do or even to say something, as in Paul's saying that "everything is permitted" or his request to be allowed to speak.
Most of its appearances are questions, and pointed ones: Is it permitted to heal on the Sabbath? To pay taxes to Caesar? To put a Roman citizen to the lash? The word sits at the center of the Gospels' running dispute over what God's Law actually allows, and later at the edge of Paul's teaching on Christian freedom.