“To the Son, God said, . . . ‘You have loved righteousness
and hated lawlessness;
therefore, God, even your God, has anointed you
with the oil of gladness above your fellows.’”
Hebrews 1:8–9
In the King James Bible, the word “iniquity” is used sixteen times in the New Testament. Ten of those times, “iniquity” is a mistranslation of the Greek word anomia, or “lawlessness”. The King James translators almost always translated anomia as “iniquity”, but that translation comes short of what was in the apostles’ minds concerning the law of Moses. Long after the Spirit came, the apostles were still defining sin as any deed contrary to Moses’ law, for they understood that sin is contrary to the kind of life prescribed by that law. In one verse, 1John 3:4, the King James translators did communicate the emphasis upon the law which is contained in anomia: “Whosoever committeth sin also transgresseth the law (anomia): for sin is the transgression of the law (anomia).” This is our translation of that verse: “Everyone who practices sin is also practicing lawlessness; sin is lawlessness.” The apostles all understood well that the law which God gave to Moses was holy and good, that the kind of life it prescribed was holy and good, and that if any person in any nation was living a righteous life, he was living as the law of Moses said to live. Paul plainly said this in a letter to the Romans: “Whenever Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature the things of the law, they, not having the law, are a law to themselves” (Rom. 2:14).
The New Testament standard for God’s people which Jesus instituted is not contrary to Moses’ law; it cannot be contrary to it because the law was “holy, and just, and good” (Rom. 7:12). The new standard confirms that the law was of God by taking it even further. Jesus loved the law and taught that it would not be destroyed (Mt. 5:17–18), but said that what he taught was better. Several times, concerning what the law taught, Jesus declared to the people, “You have heard it said, . . . but I say . . .” (cf. Mt. 5:21–48). He was not saying that what the people had heard was evil; he was only saying that God was about to give them a higher version of it.
To love whatever is righteousness is to hate whatever is not in accord with the law that God gave to Moses, and God richly rewarded His Son for doing so: “You have loved righteousness and hated lawlessness; therefore, God, even your God, has anointed you with the oil of gladness above your fellows.”
Next: Some New Testament scriptures where anomia is used.
