Lexicon

G0863 - aphiemi

Strong's: G0863 · BLB lookup Pronunciation: af-ee'-ay-mee Part of speech: verb Root: from apo (G575, "from") + hiēmi (to send), literally "to send away from" Noun cognate: G0859 - aphesis, aphesis ("remission, release, forgiveness") Hebrew equivalents (LXX): nāśāʾ (to lift, carry away, Ps 32:1, "blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven"); sālach (the priestly forgiveness verb of Lev 4-5); kāphar (to cover, atone) in cognate-loaded contexts. NT occurrences: ~143, distributed across all four Gospels (heavy in Synoptics), Acts, the Pauline corpus (sparser), and the Johannine letters.

Semantic range (Thayer / BDAG)

To send away / dismiss / release, the pragmatic core sense. A crowd is sent away (Matt 13:36), a wife is put away (1 Cor 7:11-13), a fever leaves the patient (Mark 1:31).
To forgive (a debt or sin), the dominant theological sense in the NT. The same verb covers monetary debt (Matt 18:27, the king forgave the slave's debt) and moral/covenantal debt (Matt 6:12, "forgive us our debts as we have forgiven our debtors").
To leave / abandon / let alone, disciples leave nets (Matt 4:20, 22), a husband leaves a wife (Mark 10:11-12), the dead are left to bury their own (Matt 8:22). Mark uses it for the negative case as well: at Gethsemane the disciples abandon Christ (Mark 14:50).
To permit / allow / let, "let it be so now" (Matt 3:15, of the baptism), "let the little children come to Me" (Mark 10:14), "allow them to perform sacrifices" (Acts 6 contexts). Often paired with imperative force.
To remit / cancel / yield up, a technical-legal sense in fiscal contexts; the king cancels (aphēken) the debt (Matt 18:27, 32).

Theological force, forgiveness as remission

The forgiveness sense underwrites the entire NT theology of remission of sins. The Greek verb is the same lexeme in:

"forgive us our debts" (Matt 6:12) and "forgive us our sins" (Luke 11:4), the Lord's Prayer, with its two-clause petition-and-warrant structure ("as we have forgiven our debtors")
"Father, forgive them" (Luke 23:34), Christ's intercession from the cross
"Son, your sins are forgiven" (Mark 2:5), the Capernaum absolution that the scribes recognize as a divine prerogative
"if we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins" (1 John 1:9), the apostolic absolution promise
"if you forgive the sins of any, their sins have been forgiven them" (John 20:23), the post-resurrection commissioning

The verb sits at the structural center of the NT's atonement vocabulary. Its noun-cognate G0859 - aphesis (aphesis, "remission") supplies the term in the Pauline summary at Ephesians 1:7 / Colossians 1:14 ("in whom we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins"); the verb itself supplies the personal-relational form.

Stream 1, Forgiveness as divine prerogative (the Capernaum absolution)

The Synoptic centerpiece is Mark 2:5-10 (paralleled Matt 9:2-8; Luke 5:17-26), where Christ's pronouncement "Son, your sins are forgiven" (aphientai sou hai hamartiai) provokes the scribes' theological alarm: "who can forgive sins but God alone?" (tis dunatai aphienai hamartias ei mē heis ho theos, Mk 2:7). The narrative trades on the recognition that forgiveness-of-sins (aphienai hamartias) is a divine prerogative no human agent possesses; Christ's claim therefore functions as a Christological self-disclosure, and the healing-miracle that follows authenticates the claim. The aphiēmi lexeme is doing the load-bearing work in the controversy.

The same divine-prerogative logic surfaces at Luke 7:47-49 (the sinful woman anointing Christ's feet, "her sins, which are many, are forgiven", with the same shocked reaction: "who is this who even forgives sins?") and at John 20:23 (Christ delegating the proclamation of remission to the apostles).

Stream 2, The forgiveness-and-debt structure (Matthew 6 / 18)

The Lord's Prayer petition (Matt 6:12) and the unmerciful servant parable (Matt 18:21-35) deploy aphiēmi with a debt-metaphor that the parable then makes explicit. The same verb covers (a) the disciple's plea for divine forgiveness, (b) the disciple's obligation to forgive others, and (c) the king's cancellation of a literal financial debt. Matthew underscores the structural reciprocity: failure to aphiēmi (cancel/release) the brother's offense reveals that one has not received the divine aphiēmi in the way it was given. The lexical unity ties forgiveness, debt-remission, and release into a single covenantal-economic frame. (See Forgiveness for the broader concept hub.)

Stream 3, Forgiveness as cruciform intercession (Luke 23:34)

Christ's words from the cross, "Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do" (Luke 23:34), deploy aphes autois (aorist active imperative). The cry models the forgiveness Christ teaches: aphes is unilateral, asked of the Father, offered toward perpetrators in the moment of the offense itself. Stephen repeats the pattern at Acts 7:60 ("Lord, do not hold this sin against them"), making explicit the Christ-to-Stephen forgiveness-imitation chain that the early church preserved as paradigmatic.

The textual question, some early manuscripts (𝔓⁷⁵, B, D*, W, Θ) omit the saying, is contested; the patristic citation (Irenaeus, Origen, Eusebius) is early and broad, and the saying coheres with the Lucan-Stephen pattern. The longer reading is retained by NA28 in double-brackets; most English translations include it.

Stream 4, The Pauline / Johannine aphesis summary

Outside the Gospel narratives, the verb yields ground to its noun-cognate aphesis in the Pauline summary formulae:

"in whom we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses" (Eph 1:7, tēn aphesin tōn paraptōmatōn)
"in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins" (Col 1:14, tēn aphesin tōn hamartiōn)
Acts 2:38; 10:43; 13:38; 26:18, the apostolic kerygma uses aphesis hamartiōn as the standard summary of the gospel's offer

The verb-noun pairing means the Gospel narratives' personal absolutions (Christ forgives) and the apostolic preaching (the gospel offers forgiveness) are lexically the same act, distributed across encounter and proclamation.

Notable verses

Forgiveness, divine prerogative

Mark 2.5-7, "Son, your sins are forgiven... who can forgive sins but God alone?"
Matthew 9:2-6, parallel Capernaum absolution
Luke 7.47-49, the sinful woman: "who is this who even forgives sins?"
John 20:23, "if you forgive the sins of any, their sins have been forgiven them"

Forgiveness, the disciple's obligation

Matt 6:12, "forgive us our debts as we have forgiven our debtors"
Matt 6:14-15, the warrant clause: forgiveness withheld is forgiveness lost
Matt 18:21-22, "seventy times seven"
Matt 18:23-35, the unmerciful servant
Mark 11:25, "whenever you stand praying, forgive"
Luke 11:4; Luke 17:3-4, "if he sins seven times in a day, and turns to you seven times, saying 'I repent,' forgive him"

Forgiveness, cruciform intercession

Luke 23.34, "Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do"
Acts 7:60, Stephen's parallel: "Lord, do not hold this sin against them"

Forgiveness, apostolic absolution promise

1 John 1.9, "He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins"
1 John 2:12, "your sins are forgiven you for His name's sake"

Leaving / abandoning sense

Matt 4:20, 22; Mark 1:18, 20, disciples leave nets
Matt 19:27; Mark 10:28, "we have left everything"
Mark 14:50, at Gethsemane, the disciples abandon Christ
Mark 10:11-12, the divorce question, husband putting away wife

Permit / let sense

Matt 3:15, "let it be so now" (the baptism)
Mark 10:14, "let the children come to Me"
Rev 11:9, "will not permit their dead bodies to be laid in a tomb"

Patristic / scholarly note

The patristic engagement with aphiēmi concentrates on the Capernaum absolution (Mk 2:5-7) as a Christological text. Athanasius (Orationes contra Arianos 2.14) cites the verse for the Son's divine prerogative, the scribes' own admission ("who can forgive sins but God alone?") supplies the major premise; Christ's act supplies the minor; the Son's deity is the conclusion. Chrysostom (Homilies on Matthew 29) develops the same logic on the Matthean parallel. Cyril of Alexandria (Commentary on Luke, on 5:17-26) reads the controversy as the Synoptics' equivalent of John's "before Abraham was, I am", the divine self-disclosure embedded in act.

The Reformation tradition leans heavily on the aphesis hamartiōn (forgiveness of sins) clause of the Apostles' Creed, anchored lexically in aphiēmi and its noun. Luther (Smalcald Articles) treats aphesis hamartiōn as the heart of the gospel; Calvin (Institutes III.4-5) builds the doctrine of justification on the forensic-remission sense of the verb (sin sent away / not reckoned) against the Tridentine infusion model.

Modern lexical work (BDAG; Moulton-Milligan papyri evidence; D.A. Carson on Luke 23:34's textual question) confirms the verb's range from pragmatic-release through fiscal-cancellation to theological-remission, and confirms that the same lexeme covers all three, the NT's choice of aphiēmi for both the debt-image and the sin-image is deliberate and load-bearing.

Verses in this codex

See Obsidian's backlinks pane for every verse page linking here. Anchors: Matthew 6.12 (Lord's Prayer), Mark 2.5-7 (Capernaum absolution), Matthew 18.21-22 (seventy times seven), Luke 7.47-49 (the sinful woman), Luke 23.34 (the cry from the cross), 1 John 1.9 (apostolic promise), Ephesians 1.7 / Colossians 1.14 (Pauline summary).