Exploring the Meaning of Anomos in Greek

ἀνόμως means “without law.” It appears in Romans 2:12, where it frames Paul’s description of sinning and perishing apart from the law.

Root and Related Words

ἀνόμως corresponds to the adjective anomos (ἄνομος), “lawless” (Strong’s G459).

Occurrences

“For as many as have sinned without the law will also perish without the law. As many as have sinned under the law will be judged by the law.” (Romans 2:12)

Here ἀνόμως functions as an adverbial qualifier of the action “have sinned,” marking a way in which the sinning occurs: it happens “without the law.” The verse then echoes the same adverbial phrase with “will also perish without the law,” so that the manner or sphere of the earlier wrongdoing is matched to the manner or sphere of the resulting ruin. In the sentence as a whole, two groups are set in parallel: those whose sin is characterized as “without the law,” and those whose sin is characterized as “under the law.” The second group is described as being “judged by the law,” while the first group is described as perishing in the same “without the law” frame that characterized their sinning. The repetition tightens the logic: the descriptor is not incidental background but a key term that shapes how the sequence “sinned … will also perish” is understood in that first clause.

The verse’s balanced structure places ἀνόμως over against two other phrases: “under the law” and “by the law.” In the quoted wording, “under the law” expresses a different relation to law than “without the law,” and “judged by the law” names the standard invoked for judgment in that second case. Against those, ἀνόμως marks a contrasting relation, one that still fully supports moral accountability in the verse’s own statement (“have sinned … will also perish”), but does so without presenting the law as the expressed standard of judgment in that first clause. The adverb therefore carries argumentative weight: it helps the text distinguish kinds of sinners by their relation to law while still pairing each kind of sin with a corresponding outcome.

Sense and Usage

The basic sense “without law” is applied in Romans 2:12 as a relational description rather than as a label for a particular deed. It does not name the content of the sin; it names the circumstances in which the sinning is said to take place. In the verse, that circumstance is not a mere setting but a defining parameter, because it is stated twice: once for sinning and again for perishing. This double use makes the phrase function like a bracket around the first group’s experience: wrongdoing is characterized as occurring “without the law,” and the consequence is described in the same terms.

Because ἀνόμως is an adverb, it modifies verbs (“have sinned,” “will also perish”) rather than naming an object. This matters for how “without law” works in the sentence. It is not presented as an entity that one possesses or lacks; it is presented as a way in which actions occur. The text can therefore speak of real guilt (“have sinned”) and real consequence (“will also perish”) while still distinguishing the manner or sphere of those realities. In the structure of Romans 2:12, “without the law” becomes a way of locating the person’s sin-and-outcome in relation to law, and it does so with the same grammar in both halves of the first clause.

The parallel clause, “As many as have sinned under the law will be judged by the law,” sharpens the force of ἀνόμως by contrast. “Under the law” and “by the law” sound in different grammatical relations to law: one depicts the sinner’s condition (“under”), and the other depicts the instrument or standard of judgment (“by”). Set beside them, “without the law” is the opposite pole of “under the law,” yet it is paired not with “judged by the law” but with “perish without the law.” Within the verse as quoted, that pairing helps keep the argument from collapsing into a single flat statement about judgment. Instead, the word supports a two-track formulation: different relations to law are distinguished, and consequences are stated accordingly.

In Romans 2:12, then, “without law” is not a mitigating clause; it is a categorizing clause. The line “will also perish without the law” shows that the phrase can be used not only to describe behavior but also to describe the outcome attached to that behavior. The word thus supports a consistent conceptual link between the context of sin (“without the law”) and the context of consequence (“without the law”). That internal consistency is one of the clearest features of its usage here: whatever “without law” entails in the first half of the sentence, the same phrase is used to frame the second half for the same group.

Imagery

The imagery in Romans 2:12 is legal in its vocabulary and structure. The verse speaks in courtroom-like terms—“judged by the law”—and places ἀνόμως within that field of ideas as the contrasting situation where actions and outcomes are spoken of “without the law.”

Sources: Lexical data from Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance and the Translators Brief Lexicon of Extended Strongs for Greek (STEPBible, CC BY). Occurrence data from the Translators Amalgamated Greek New Testament (STEPBible, CC BY). Scripture quotations from the World English Bible (public domain).