Sin in the Orthodox Christian understanding is "missing the
mark" (the literal meaning of the Greek word for sin, hamartia),
falling short of the glorious purpose for which God created
mankind. It is also understood as separation from God, since
intimate communion with God is the normal state of mankind from
which most people have fallen. Sin is imperfection, anything
which fails to live up to the fullness of life in Christ for
which man was created. The Bible sometimes uses legal metaphors
to refer to sin, likening it to crime, that is, crime against
God's law. For Orthodox Christianity, while making use of legal
imagery, the more dominant imagery used for sin is also drawn
from Scripture, and that is that sin is a kind of disease, an
affliction for which salvation is the cure. - the original sin