Trespass
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παράπτωμα names a particular kind of sin: the lateral fall, the step sideways off the path. The compound reveals its meaning — παρά (beside, alongside) and πτῶμα (a fall, from πίπτω, to fall) — giving the image not of rebellion against authority but of a person who loses footing, who slips off the road they were on.
Reader summary
Full entry for παράπτωμα (G3900) · Open the biblical lexicon
παράπτωμα names a particular kind of sin: the lateral fall, the step sideways off the path. The compound reveals its meaning — παρά (beside, alongside) and πτῶμα (a fall, from πίπτω, to fall) — giving the image not of rebellion against authority but of a person who loses footing, who slips off the road they were on.
The BSB source-word alignment has 20 aligned rows for this entry. Common renderings include trespasses (11), trespass (8), . . . (1).
The source-word alignment first shows this entry at Matthew 6:14. Its strongest book concentrations include Romans (9), Ephesians (3), Matthew (3), Colossians (2).
This entry includes 2 verse guides that explain exact original-language forms in context.
παράπτωμα names a particular kind of sin: the lateral fall, the step sideways off the path. The compound reveals its meaning — παρά (beside, alongside) and πτῶμα (a fall, from πίπτω, to fall) — giving the image not of rebellion against authority but of a person who loses footing, who slips off the road they were on. Abbott-Smith's first definition is 'a false step, a blunder.'
This is not weakness language intended to minimize moral failure — it is precision language that locates a specific category of sin distinct from ἁμαρτία (the general miss-the-mark noun) and πλημμέλεια (an offense against duty). παράπτωμα describes the deviation, the side-slip, the moment when a life that should have stayed on the path went off it. The NT uses of παράπτωμα run along two distinct tracks.
In the everyday pastoral register, it appears in the context of forgiveness and restoration: the Lord's Prayer cadence (forgive our trespasses — Matt 6:14-15), Galatians 6:1 (restoring the one caught in a trespass), and the Colossian baptismal imagery (forgiven all our trespasses — Col 2:13). In the theological register, it appears in Romans 5 and Ephesians 2 in the context of the Adam/Christ contrast and the doctrine of the Fall: the one trespass of Adam that brought condemnation to all, and the one act of righteousness that brings justification to many.
Paul's use of παράπτωμα for Adam's sin is a deliberate choice: he is not describing a rebellion so much as the original lateral deviation from the path God had set, and Christ's obedience as the restoration of what that deviation disrupted. The preacher who understands both tracks has a word for both the pastoral conversation about a congregant caught in sin and the doctrinal sermon on the Fall and the atonement.
παράπτωμα is counted by the local NT index at about 19 uses and appears across three distinct theological contexts: everyday interpersonal forgiveness (the Lord's Prayer cadence, Gal 6:1), the soteriological contrast between Adam's fall and Christ's righteousness (Rom 5:15-20), and the Pauline statement of redemption through forgiveness of trespasses (Eph 1:7, Col 2:13). All three contexts share the image of deviation from a right path.
But the gift is not like the trespass. For if the many died by the trespass of the one man, how much more did God’s grace and the gift that came by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ, abound to the many!
Paul's central use of παράπτωμα in the Adam/Christ parallel. The word appears five times in Romans 5:15-20, each time naming Adam's act as the originating lateral deviation. Paul's choice of παράπτωμα rather than ἁμαρτία or παρακοή (disobedience) throughout these verses is significant: he is describing sin in its structural, deviation-from-path dimension. The one παράπτωμα of the one man has a specific shape — it went aside from the appointed way — and Christ's work addresses it at that structural level.
Made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in our trespasses. It is by grace you have been saved!
Ephesians 2:1 and 2:5 bracket the statement of spiritual death with παράπτωμα — 'dead in your trespasses and sins' and 'dead through our trespasses.' Paul describes the pre-conversion state as a condition of accumulated lateral departures from the path of life, departures that have resulted in death. The movement from death to life (made alive together with Christ) is the reversal of the παράπτωμα trajectory.
The trespass-death logic runs from Genesis 3 through Romans 5 to Ephesians 2: deviation from God's way leads to death; the reversal of that deviation — life in Christ — is the gospel.
Brothers, if someone is caught in a trespass, you who are spiritual should restore him with a spirit of gentleness. But watch yourself, or you also may be tempted.
Paul uses παράπτωμα (translated 'fault' in many versions) in a pastoral context: the person 'caught in a παράπτωμα' is not described as a rebellious sinner to be confronted but as one caught in a lateral departure, a stumble, who needs restoration rather than condemnation. The verb 'restore' (καταρτίζω) is used for setting a broken bone or repairing a net — the image is mending, putting back on the path.
The person doing the restoring is warned to watch their own footing ('looking to yourself so that you also aren't tempted'). The spatial metaphor is consistent: paths, steps, falls, restoration.
When you were dead in your trespasses and in the uncircumcision of your sinful nature, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our trespasses,
Colossians 2:13 uses παράπτωμα twice: the death-state of trespasses, and the forgiveness of all trespasses in Christ. The baptismal imagery (2:12) makes the context explicit: the forgiveness of παράπτωμα is the content of what happens in union with Christ's death and resurrection. The plural 'all our trespasses' frames the whole debt of trespasses as addressed by the single act of forgiveness in the cross.
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. A specific wrongdoing or misstep, distinct from ἁμαρτία's broader concept of missing God's mark
A specific wrongdoing or misstep, distinct from ἁμαρτία's broader concept of missing God's mark
(παραπίπτω), [in LXX for מַעַל, פֶּשַׁע, etc. ;]
Textus Receptus witness, full corpus Greek token appearances from Scrivener 1894 Textus Receptus in the full New Testament corpus.
16 of 23 Greek text appearances shown. Linked morphology labels have verse guides.
a falling away, sin
Read versea falling away, sin
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Read versea falling away, sin
Read versea falling away, sin
Read versea falling away, sin
Read versea falling away, sin
Read versea falling away, sin
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Read versea falling away, sin
Read versea falling away, sin
Read versea falling away, sin
Read versea falling away, sin
Read versea falling away, sin
Read versea falling away, 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 this word appears across different grammatical cases and numbers.
This word appears as a noun across 6 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.
Selected passage-level study witnesses for this word. This section is not the full occurrence list.
Showing 2 selected witnesses from 19 lexical occurrence verses.
παράπτωμα is built from this root:
Describes Adam’s act that brought condemnation and death.
Compound and idiomatic phrases that include this word. Follow a link to study the phrase and how its parts work together.
παράπτωμα describes sin as a spatial event before it is a moral category: the step sideways, the fall off the path. That physicality is not accidental — it is precisely the image Paul needs in Romans 5. He is not describing Adam's sin as defiance of a rule. He is describing it as the original departure from the road God had set for humanity, a departure whose consequences are structural and universal: the many fell with the one who fell first.
The corresponding image for Christ's work is the free gift, the act of righteousness, the obedience — the path walked correctly, the road that was departed from now traversed faithfully. The preacher who holds the spatial image of παράπτωμα has access to the most concrete way of explaining original sin that Paul offers: it is not primarily a legal verdict (though it has legal consequences), it is a direction of travel that went wrong.
The pastoral register of the word in Galatians 6:1 adds the communal dimension. The congregation's responsibility toward the member caught in a παράπτωμα is restoration, not condemnation — the imagery is of returning someone to the path they slipped off, not punishing them for leaving it. This does not minimize the seriousness of the fall; it does specify the posture of the community toward it.
The preacher can move between the doctrinal weight of Romans 5 and the pastoral tenderness of Galatians 6 because both passages are describing the same thing from two angles: what παράπτωμα is, and what the community that has been forgiven its own παράπτωμα owes to those still caught in theirs.
Rom.5.15
παράπτωμα is a compound noun: παρά (beside, alongside, away from) and πτῶμα (a fall), the latter deriving from πίπτω (to fall). The spatial metaphor embedded in the etymology — falling sideways off the path — distinguishes παράπτωμα from the other major NT sin terms. ἁμαρτία (G266) images missing a target; παρακοή (disobedience) images failure to hear and comply; παράβασις images crossing a line.
παράπτωμα images stepping off the road. Abbott-Smith notes the word's classical usage for a 'false step' or 'blunder' (Polybius), which preserves the accidental or stumbling quality that the NT pastoral uses (Gal 6:1) retain while the theological uses (Rom 5) apply the same word to the deliberate first departure of Adam. The LXX uses the word to translate מַעַל (unfaithfulness, treachery) and פֶּשַׁע (transgression), showing that the range can include deliberate moral failure as well as accidental deviation.
The OT background of παράπτωμα runs through the שׁוּב (return/repentance) vocabulary and the imagery of the path (דֶּרֶךְ, derek) that Israel is called to walk. Deuteronomy and the prophets repeatedly describe Israel's sin as a departure from the way God commanded: 'they have turned aside quickly from the way I commanded them' (Exod 32:8). The spatial metaphor of leaving the road is native to the OT moral vocabulary.
παράπτωμα imports that imagery into Greek: the LXX uses it for מַעַל (unfaithful departure, treachery) and for פֶּשַׁע (transgression). When Paul uses παράπτωμα for Adam's sin in Romans 5, he is drawing on an OT tradition that described sin as deviation from the appointed way rather than merely violation of a rule. The NT's matching concept is ἐπιστρέφω (G1994) — the turn back, the return to the path — which corresponds to the OT שׁוּב (to return, repent).
The παράπτωμα and the ἐπιστρέφω together form the structure of the biblical repentance narrative: departure and return, fall and restoration.
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