Transgression, Defined

After the fall of our first parents, boundaries were something to push past, to transgress. It’s worth pausing to note how we use the word transgression for “sin.”  With its Latin roots, “across” and “go,” to transgress means to exceed proper limits. Our first parents crossed over, transgressed, as they moved from seeing God’s good limits as the conditions for life to seeing them as barriers to human freedom.

I love how the early church father Athanasius writes of why God enters into his creation: “It was our sorry case that caused the Word to come down, our transgression that called out His love for us, so that He made haste to help us and to appear among us.”