Liable to (a condition, penalty or imputation)
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G1777 describes being held or liable in relation to a judgment, penalty, offense, or binding condition. In Matthew 5:21-22 Jesus moves from liability before a human court to searching warnings about anger and contempt, pressing righteousness beneath outward restraint.
Reader summary
Full entry for ἔνοχος (G1777) · Open the biblical lexicon
G1777 describes being held or liable in relation to a judgment, penalty, offense, or binding condition. In Matthew 5:21-22 Jesus moves from liability before a human court to searching warnings about anger and contempt, pressing righteousness beneath outward restraint.
The BSB source-word alignment has 10 aligned rows for this entry. Common renderings include subject (4), guilty (2), deserving (1), guilty of sinning (1), He deserves (1).
The source-word alignment first shows this entry at Matthew 5:21. Its strongest book concentrations include Matthew (5), Mark (2), 1 Corinthians (1), Hebrews (1).
G1777 describes being held or liable in relation to a judgment, penalty, offense, or binding condition. In Matthew 5:21-22 Jesus moves from liability before a human court to searching warnings about anger and contempt, pressing righteousness beneath outward restraint. Mark 14:64 records the council's verdict that Jesus deserves death, but the Gospel narrative does not endorse their corrupt judgment.
First Corinthians 11:27 warns that contemptuous participation makes a person answerable concerning the Lord's body and blood. James 2:10 uses liability to show that partiality cannot be excused by selective obedience. G1777 is relational and construction-dependent: readers must identify liable to what, before whom, and on what stated basis. The word supports serious accountability, but it does not authorize leaders to invent guilt, bypass evidence, pronounce final condemnation, or keep repentant people under permanent shame.
G1777 joins legal liability, moral accountability, bondage, and verdict language. Its passages require attention to the governing noun or phrase, the judging authority, the evidence, and the larger canonical distinction between true guilt and false accusation.
You have heard that it was said to the ancients, ‘Do not murder’ and ‘Anyone who murders will be subject to judgment.’
Jesus recalls liability before judgment for murder and then deepens the disciples' attention to anger, contempt, reconciliation, and the heart.
You have heard the blasphemy. What is your verdict?” And they all condemned Him as deserving of death.
The council declares Jesus liable to death, yet Mark's passion narrative reveals the verdict as a grave miscarriage against the innocent Messiah.
Therefore, whoever eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of sinning against the body and blood of the Lord.
Paul describes unworthy eating and drinking as accountability concerning the Lord's body and blood within a community humiliating poorer members.
Whoever keeps the whole law but stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it.
James uses liability to reject selective obedience that honors some commands while practicing partiality against neighbors.
BSB source-word alignment connects this entry to exact verse rows, English rendering, source form, transliteration, and parsing.
How English Renders ItA compact distribution from source-word alignment before the full evidence tables.
Greek word. Liable to judgment or penalty; legally culpable before a tribunal or under divine law.
Textus Receptus witness, full corpusGreek token appearances from Scrivener 1894 Textus Receptus in the full New Testament corpus.
10 Greek text appearances shown. Linked morphology labels have verse guides.
involved in, liable
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Read verseFull New Testament corpus: 260 chapters, 7,957 verses, 140,628 tokens. Data source: honza/textus-receptus (data only), with authority check against byztxt/greektext-textus-receptus.
How this word appears across different grammatical cases and numbers.
This word appears as a noun across 3 case and number patterns. The form changes show how the word functions in a sentence; they do not change the basic lexical meaning by themselves.
Verse guides are not available for this word yet, so verse references remain plain evidence markers.
Selected passage-level study witnesses for this word. This section is not the full occurrence list.
Showing 1 selected witness from 10 lexical occurrence verses.
ἔνοχος is built from this root:
Compound and idiomatic phrases that include this word. Follow a link to study the phrase and how its parts work together.
G1777 names liability within a relationship or stated judgment; it is not a free-floating label for a person's entire identity. Matthew 5 confronts the roots of neighbor-destroying contempt, so teachers should not reduce righteousness to avoiding prosecutable violence. Yet Jesus' warning is not a tool for speculative grading of another person's eternal state.
Mark supplies an equally important check: an official body can pronounce someone liable to death and still be profoundly wrong. Authority and procedure do not guarantee justice. In Corinth, liability concerning the Lord's body and blood belongs to a meal where divisions and humiliation contradict the gospel being proclaimed. James exposes selective obedience and partiality, not a mathematical theory that every offense has identical social consequence.
These texts call communities to truthful confession, impartial judgment, repair, and reverence. They also require protection against manufactured guilt, spiritual abuse, coerced admissions, and permanent stigma. Pastors should distinguish conviction from manipulation, legal findings from ultimate judgment, consequences from rejection, and accountability from humiliation.
In Christ, grace does not erase harmed neighbors or necessary consequences, but neither does guilt have permission to become an unchangeable identity imposed by human power.
Mark.14.64
G1777 is a Greek adjective whose force depends heavily on its complement: liable to a court, penalty, offense, condition, or injured reality. Case construction and surrounding legal or relational language identify the precise liability being asserted.
The Old Testament repeatedly distinguishes truthful judgment from false witness and condemns partiality. The New Testament uses G1777 for liability and bondage, exposes the false death verdict against Jesus, confronts contempt and divided worship, and places final judgment in God's hands.