Everyone who sins also commits lawlessness. Sin is lawlessness.
This will include everything in relation to which the law is given, and will embrace what we “omit” to do when the law has commanded a thing to be done, as well as a “positive” act of transgression where the law has forbidden a thing. This idea is properly found in the original word rendered “transgression of the law” - ἀνομία anomia. This word occurs in the New Testament only in the following places: Matthew 7:23; Matthew 13:41; Matthew 23:28; Matthew 24:12; Romans 4:7; Romans 6:19; 2 Thessalonians 2:7; Titus 2:14; Hebrews 1:9; Hebrews 8:12; Hebrews 10:17, in all which places it is rendered “iniquity” and “iniquities;” in 2 Corinthians 6:14, where it is rendered “unrighteousness;” and in the verse before us twice. It properly means lawlessness, in the sense that the requirements of the law are not conformed to, or complied with; that is, either by not obeying it, or by positively violating it. When a parent commands a child to do a thing, and he does not do it, he is as really guilty of violating the law as when he does a thing which is positively forbidden. This important verse, therefore, may be considered in two aspects - as a definition of the nature of sin, and as an argument against indulgence in it, or against committing it.