Definition
Ἀνομία (Greek: ἀνομία) means literally “lawlessness” — living outside or against the law (νόμος). In 1 John 3:4 it is equated with ἁμαρτία: “Everyone who commits sin also commits lawlessness, and sin is lawlessness.” In the corpus anomia carries a sharply judicial character: sin is not merely moral shortcoming but a concrete transgression of an existing legal norm.
Bullinger notes that ἀνομία occurs 7 times in the Pauline corpus including Hebrews — a number he associates with completeness and rest, signalling that even the vocabulary of lawlessness is inscribed in the divinely ordered structure of Scripture.
Usage in the corpus
E.W. Bullinger
Bullinger records ἀνομία statistically: the word appears 5 times in Paul (excl. Heb.) and 2 times in Hebrews, totalling 7. That number in his system stands for completeness and holiness — paradoxically, even the language of lawlessness is numerically embedded in the inspired structure of the text. [Bullinger, Number in Scripture, Part I, Ch. II]
Stephen Jones
Jones makes anomia the hamartological key of his system via 1 John 3:4: “John says that ‘sin is lawlessness.‘” Sin is not arbitrary moral failure but a specific juridical reality: there is a law, that law has been transgressed, and the debt of that transgression must be paid. This is the foundation of his argument that the law cannot be abolished to eliminate sin: “The putting away of the law essentially had the effect of legalizing sin. […] Paul says, ‘where there is no law, neither is there violation’ (Rom. 4:15).” [Jones, The Restoration of All Things, Ch. 2]