To sin
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G264 is the common New Testament verb for sinning or committing sin. The popular phrase 'miss the mark' can illustrate failure, but the verb's New Testament uses must not be reduced to an accidental near miss; contexts include guilt before God, deliberate acts, enslavement, repeated practice, and the need for forgiveness.
Reader summary
Full entry for ἁμαρτάνω (G264) · Open the biblical lexicon
G264 is the common New Testament verb for sinning or committing sin. The popular phrase 'miss the mark' can illustrate failure, but the verb's New Testament uses must not be reduced to an accidental near miss; contexts include guilt before God, deliberate acts, enslavement, repeated practice, and the need for forgiveness.
The BSB source-word alignment has 43 aligned rows for this entry. Common renderings include sin (5), sinned (4), I have sinned (3), sins (3), go on sinning (2).
The source-word alignment first shows this entry at Matthew 18:15. Its strongest book concentrations include 1 John (10), 1 Corinthians (7), Romans (7), John (4).
This entry includes 1 verse guide that explain exact original-language forms in context.
G264 is the common New Testament verb for sinning or committing sin. The popular phrase 'miss the mark' can illustrate failure, but the verb's New Testament uses must not be reduced to an accidental near miss; contexts include guilt before God, deliberate acts, enslavement, repeated practice, and the need for forgiveness. Romans 3:23 places all who sinned within Paul's argument that justification is God's gift through Christ.
Romans 5:12 places human sinning inside the Adam and death argument, while Romans 6:15 rejects the proposal that grace permits believers to sin. First John holds command and provision together: believers are addressed so that they may not sin, yet Christ is their righteous advocate if anyone does sin. Later warnings about ongoing sin must be read with the letter's calls to confession, cleansing, obedience, and abiding rather than turned into either permission or sinless-perfection tests.
G264 names the act of sinning across settings of universal guilt, individual responsibility, temptation, grace, judgment, and Christ's advocacy. Grammar and discourse determine whether a text describes a past act, a proposed action, repeated conduct, or a command not to sin.
For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,
All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, setting the stage for justification by grace.
Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, so also death was passed on to all men, because all sinned.
Sin enters through one man and death through sin, placing the word in the Adam-Christ framework.
What then? Shall we sin because we are not under law, but under grace? Certainly not!
Grace does not make sin acceptable; Paul rejects sin as a permitted response to grace.
My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you will not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate before the Father—Jesus Christ, the Righteous One.
John writes so believers will not sin and points to Jesus Christ the righteous as Advocate if anyone does.
No one who remains in Him keeps on sinning. No one who continues to sin has seen Him or known Him.
John warns against continuing in sin as a settled practice, not against honest struggle brought into the light.
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.
Verse-level guides showing how this original-language form works in its specific context, including grammar, verse function, and guarded interpretation.
Greek word. Violating God's law; missing the mark of divine standard through wrong action or omission
Textus Receptus witness, full corpusGreek token appearances from Scrivener 1894 Textus Receptus in the full New Testament corpus.
16 of 43 Greek text appearances shown. Linked morphology labels have verse guides.
I sin
Read verseI sin
Read verseI sin
Read verseI sin
Read verseI sin
Read verseI sin
Read verseI sin
Read verseI sin
Read verseI sin
Read verseI sin
Read verseI sin
Read verseI sin
Read verseI sin
Read verseI sin
Read verseI sin
Read verseI sin
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 mood, tense, and voice shift the force of this verb in context.
This verb appears through different tense, voice, mood, or stem patterns. Those forms help readers see how the action is presented in context.
How this verb appears across 41 occurrences in the NT discourse index (MACULA Greek SBLGNT).
Aspect reflects grammatical form — not authorial emphasis. Participles and infinitives are verbal adjectives and nouns respectively.
Clause data: MACULA Greek (Clear Bible, CC BY 4.0) · SBLGNT (Logos/SBL, CC BY 4.0)
Selected passage-level study witnesses for this word. This section is not the full occurrence list.
Showing 1 selected witness from 42 lexical occurrence verses.
ἁμαρτάνω is built from these roots:
Expresses genuine confession marking true repentance.Luke 15:11–32
Compound and idiomatic phrases that include this word. Follow a link to study the phrase and how its parts work together.
Teach G264 with enough precision to name wrongdoing and enough gospel context to prevent despair. Romans 3:23 does not end with universal sin; Paul's sentence continues into justification by grace. Romans 6:15 does not make grace lenient toward sin; it rejects sin because believers have changed masters. First John 2:1 does not normalize sin; it joins the purpose 'that you may not sin' to the assurance of an advocate when someone does.
Pastoral use must also distinguish conviction from coercive accusation. The word can name conduct that violates God's will, but a teacher should not infer hidden guilt, diagnose trauma as personal sin, or pressure a harmed person to accept blame for another's abuse. Where Scripture confronts sin, the church should pursue truthful confession, protection of those harmed, just accountability, repentance, and the cleansing promised in Christ.
Rom.3.23
The verb names the action of sinning. Tense-form, aspect, negation, person, and discourse context matter when distinguishing a completed act, a proposed act, or conduct presented as ongoing. The related noun ἁμαρτία can name sin in broader or personified ways, so claims made about the noun should not be transferred automatically to every verbal occurrence.
The Septuagint uses this verb across Hebrew passages about sin, guilt, and failure, but the Old Testament distinguishes several overlapping categories such as transgression, iniquity, guilt, and uncleanness. Romans develops Adam's disobedience and death from Genesis, while First John draws on confession and cleansing themes without collapsing those categories into a single etymological formula.