Anomia in the New Testament

The next claim is often spoken with real feeling: “Keeping the Torah is legalism, and that is another gospel.” We will come to both of those words in time. First, though, we need to look at the word on the other side, the one that names what happens when the Torah is set aside.

In Book 1, and again in Chapter 3, we explained what anomia ἀνομία an-om-ee'-ah means. This chapter does something simpler. Rather than gathering verses that sound alike, it goes only to the places where the word itself is written and reads them.

Two Ways to Break a Rule

Scripture makes one distinction that we need first.

Picture two drivers on a highway where the sign reads 65. The first drives 80, and when the police pull him over, he knows exactly what he has done. He broke the limit, and he hands over his license. The second driver also drives 80, but when he is pulled over, he says, “What limit? There’s no limit for me.”

Both have broken the law, but they do not stand in the same place. The first still acknowledges the sign. The second has decided that there is no sign.

Greek has a word for the first driver. Parabasis (παράβασις) is transgression, the stepping over of a line. Paul uses it here:

Romans 4:15 for the nomos νόμος nom'-os(law) produces orge ὀργή or-gay'(wrath) — but where there is no nomos(law), there is also no transgression.

James uses the personal noun from the same family, a transgressor:

James 2:11 For He who said, "Do not commit adultery," also said, "Do not murder"; if you do not commit adultery but you murder, you have become a transgressor of the nomos(law).

A transgressor breaks the law and still stands under it. Anomia (ἀνομία) is the second driver: being without law, without Torah, and living as if there were none. The two words differ, yet both are rebellion against the Torah, and the root of all rebellion, the breaking of it included, is the setting aside of the Torah. That is why John could say it in one short line: “sin is anomia(Torah-lessness)” (1 John 3:4). Scripture itself fixed the meaning.

Four Times from Yeshua

Yeshua used this word four times. The first we saw in the last chapter, where the people at the door who had done miracles in His name heard, “depart from Me, you who work the anomia(Torah-lessness)” (Matthew 7:23). Here are the other three.

Matthew 13:41 The Son of Man will send forth His angels, and they will gather out of His kingdom all skandalon σκάνδαλον skan'-dal-on(stumbling-blocks) and those who work anomia(Torah-lessness),

These people are gathered “out of His kingdom.” They were not outside it. They stood among the wheat, and the angels pull them out. The parable goes on to tell their end: the furnace of fire (Matthew 13:42).

Matthew 23:28 So you too outwardly appear righteous to people, but inwardly you are full of hypocrisy and anomia(Torah-lessness).

Yeshua spoke these words to the scribes and Pharisees (Matthew 23:27). From the outside they looked like the very picture of devotion, but inside, He says, they were full of two things, hypocrisy and anomia. Anomia, then, is not only the sin of people whose rebellion is plain to see. It can sit inside a man who appears righteous to people.

Matthew 24:12 Because anomia(Torah-lessness) is multiplied, most people's love will grow cold.

This is the fourth. When anomia multiplies, love grows cold. In Chapters 21 and 25 we saw John define the love of God as keeping His commandments, and here Yeshua shows the same truth from the other side. When the Torah is taken away, love does not grow warmer; it cools.

Luke records the scene at the door with the word adikia ἀδικία ad-ee-kee'-ah, unrighteousness (Luke 13:27), and as we saw in the last chapter, John joins the two: all unrighteousness is sin, and sin is anomia. This is why the Torah was given at all:

1 Timothy 1:9 realizing the fact that nomos(law) is not made for a righteous person, but for those who are lawless and rebellious, for the ungodly and sinners, for the unholy and profane, for those who kill their fathers or mothers, for murderers

The nomos is laid down not for the righteous but “for those who are lawless and rebellious.” In Greek the first of those is anomos ἄνομος an'-om-os, the adjective from the same family, used here of people. The Torah was given because of anomia, to stand against it. It was never the problem; it was the answer to the problem.

Read together, the four places speak with one voice: depart from Me, gathered out, hypocrisy and anomia, love grown cold. Prophecy was there, power was there, and “Lord, Lord” was there. The one thing missing was the Torah.

The Man of the Last Days

When Paul describes the man who will appear at the end, he reaches for the same word. We glanced at these verses in Chapter 23, and here we stop to read them.

2 Thessalonians 2:3 Let no one in any way deceive you, for it will not come unless the apostasia ἀποστασία ap-os-tas-ee'-ah(falling-away) comes first, and the man of sin is revealed, the son of destruction,

Many English Bibles call him “the man of lawlessness” in this verse, following other Greek manuscripts. In the Byzantine Majority Text (Robinson–Pierpont 2018), the reference text of the YLV, verse 3 says “the man of sin.” The passage continues:

2 Thessalonians 2:7-8 For the mystery of anomia(Torah-lessness) is already at work; only he who now restrains will do so until he is taken out of the way. Then that lawless one will be revealed whom the Lord will slay with the breath of His mouth and bring to an end by the appearance of His parousia παρουσία par-oo-see'-ah(presence-coming);

Verse 7 speaks of “the mystery of anomia(Torah-lessness),” and verse 8 of “that lawless one,” where the word is anomos once again. Paul calls him the man of sin, then names what is already at work as anomia and the man himself as the lawless one. John has already told us that sin is anomia. The name given to the man of the last days is this same word.

Where Messiah Stands

The New Testament also tells us how the Messiah stands toward anomia, and three verses give three answers.

Hebrews 1:9 you loved dikaiosyne δικαιοσύνη dik-ah-yos-oo'-nay(righteousness) and hated anomia(Torah-lessness); therefore God, your God, has anointed you with oil of gladness above the metochos μέτοχος met'-okh-os(fellow-participant) ones with you."

The first answer is that He hated it.

Titus 2:14 who gave Himself for us to redeem us from every anomia(Torah-lessness), and to purify for Himself a people for His own possession, zealous for good deeds.

The second is that He redeemed us from it. He redeemed us not from the Torah but from “every anomia(Torah-lessness),” and the people He redeemed are “zealous for good deeds.”

This verse deserves a slow reading, because many of us learned it the other way around. We were taught that Messiah came to set us free from the law, as though the Torah were the prison. Titus names the prison, and it is the opposite. Messiah gave Himself to buy us out of life without the Torah. A believer who then says, “I am free, so I don’t need the Torah,” is walking back toward the very thing from which he was ransomed.

2 Corinthians 6:14 Do not be bound together with unbelievers; for what partnership have dikaiosyne(righteousness) and anomia(Torah-lessness), or what koinonia κοινωνία koy-nohn-ee'-ah(fellowship) has light with darkness?

The third answer is that it has no share with righteousness. The word is metoche μετοχή met-okh-ay', a sharing or partnership, and righteousness and anomia have no part in each other.

He hated it, He redeemed us from it, and it has nothing in common with righteousness.

What the New Covenant Does with It

The word also stands in the promise of the new covenant, which Hebrews quotes twice (Hebrews 8:12; 10:17), and there it comes with comfort.

Hebrews 8:12 For I will be merciful toward their iniquities, and I will remember their sins and their anomiai(Torah-lessnesses) no more."

These are the words of the new covenant, quoted from Jeremiah, and they show what God does with anomia. He neither approves it nor calls it freedom. He forgives it and remembers it no more. In the new covenant anomia is something forgiven, not a way of life permitted.

The Places, Side by Side

Not one of these places uses the word in a good sense.

Nor was this a new idea in the New Testament. Long before the Greek word was written, the prophets had recorded what happened whenever Israel forsook the Torah.