Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.comVincent Word Studies - Romans 2:23 - 2:23
(Show All Books | Show All Chapters)
This Chapter Verse Commentaries:
Transgression (παραβάσεως)
Trench remarks upon “the mournfully numerous group of words” which express the different aspects of sin. It is ἁμαρτια the missing of a mark; παράβασις the overpassing of a line; παρακοή the disobedience to a voice; παράπτωμα a falling when one should have stood; ἀγνόημα ignorance of what one should know; ἥττημα a diminishing of what should be rendered in full measure; ἀνομία or παρανομία non-observance of law; πλημμέλεια discord.
The primary sense of the preposition παρά is beside or by, with reference to a line or extended surface. Hence it indicates that which is not on its true line but beside it, either in the way of falling short or of going beyond. Thus, in the sense of going beyond, Rom 12:3, to think more highly than he ought (παρ' ὃ δεῖ), where the sense of beyond is fixed by ὑπερφρονεῖν to think beyond or over.” So Luk 13:2. In the sense of falling short, Thucydides, 3, 49: “Mitylene came near such peril” (παρὰ τοσοῦτο κινδύνου), as if parallel to the danger but not touching it. Hence παραβάσις differs from the Homeric ὑπερβασία transgression, in that the latter carries only the idea of going beyond or over. A mark or line as a standard is thus implied. Transgression implies something to transgress. With the law came in the possibility off transgressing the law. “Where there is no law there is no transgression” (Rom 4:15). Hence Adam's sin is called a transgression (Rom 5:14), because it was the violation of a definite command. Paul habitually uses the word and its kindred παραβάτης transgressor, of the transgression of a commandment distinctly given (Gal 3:19; 1Ti 2:14, Rom 2:25, Rom 2:27). Hence it is peculiarly appropriate here of one who boasts in the law. It thus differs from ἁμαρτία sin (see on sins, Mat 1:21), in that one may sin without being under express law. See Romans 5. Sin (ἁμαρτία) was in the world until the law; i.e. during the period prior to the law. Death reigned from Adam to Moses over those who had not sinned (ἁμαρτήσαντας) after the similitude of Adam's transgression (παραβάσεως). The sin is implicit, the transgression explicit.