What is the man of lawlessness (man of sin)?

Question 10084.

The man of lawlessness is Paul’s name for the final world ruler who will dominate the Tribulation period, oppose God openly, and be destroyed by the appearing of Jesus. He is called the son of destruction in the same breath, and older translations know him as the man of sin. He is not a symbol of evil in general, not the papacy, and not a recurring type. He is a coming individual.

Paul brings him up for a pastoral reason rather than a speculative one. The Thessalonians had been rattled by a report that the day of the Lord had already arrived, and Paul’s answer is that certain things must happen first. That is worth remembering. The whole passage exists to steady frightened Christians, and it should still be doing that work today.

Where Paul introduces the man of lawlessness

The passage is 2 Thessalonians 2:3-4. Paul writes that the day will not come unless the rebellion comes first and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of destruction, who opposes and exalts himself against every so-called god or object of worship, so that he takes his seat in the temple of God, proclaiming himself to be God.

The Greek behind the title is anomia, lawlessness, meaning the settled refusal of God’s authority rather than the breaking of a particular statute. He is the man whose whole existence is defined by that refusal. The parallel phrase, son of destruction, is used elsewhere only of Judas, which tells you something about where this man is heading.

Notice the two verbs Paul uses of him. He opposes, and he exalts himself. This is not quiet unbelief. It is deliberate, public, escalating rivalry with God, culminating in a claim to deity made from inside a temple.

It is worth noticing what Paul does not say. He gives no name, no nationality in this passage, and no date. What he gives is a character sketch and a sequence, which is how prophecy generally works. The man of lawlessness is identified by what he does rather than by who he is, and that is a mercy, because it protects us from the endless guessing game that has occupied prophetic speculation for centuries.

Is the man of lawlessness the Antichrist?

I take him to be the same person John calls the Beast out of the sea in Revelation 13, and the same figure John’s letters call the antichrist who is to come. Scripture gives us several portraits and one man. Daniel calls him the little horn and the prince who is to come. Jesus refers to the abomination of desolation standing in the holy place. Paul calls him the man of lawlessness. John calls him the Beast.

Some interpreters keep these figures apart, and I understand the caution, because Scripture does not hand us a chart. But the overlaps are too close to ignore. Each portrait describes a ruler who arises before the end, makes and breaks an agreement with Israel, demands worship, persecutes the saints, and is destroyed at Christ’s appearing. The Antichrist question and this one are, in my judgement, the same question approached through different doors.

There is a helpful test here. When several passages describe a figure with the same career, the same timing, the same claims and the same end, the burden of proof lies with anyone who wants to make them different people. Daniel’s little horn speaks great things against the Most High and wears out the saints. Paul’s man of lawlessness exalts himself above every object of worship. John’s Beast is given a mouth uttering haughty blasphemies and makes war on the saints. That is one portrait painted three times.

What the man of lawlessness does

His career has a shape. He emerges as a political solution, apparently reasonable, offering security to a world in chaos. Daniel indicates that he confirms a covenant with the many for one week of years, which is the seven year period of Daniel’s seventy weeks. Israel receives what looks like a guarantee of peace and the freedom to worship.

At the midpoint he breaks it. The abomination of desolation is set up, sacrifice ceases, and the man of lawlessness takes his seat in the temple and proclaims himself to be God. This is the hinge of the whole Tribulation, and it is what turns the second half into what Jesus called great tribulation, unequalled before or since.

From that point his rule is enforced through economic control and open persecution. The mark of the Beast makes buying and selling conditional on allegiance, and refusal costs a man his life. Anyone who imagines this as a purely political arrangement has not read Revelation 13 closely. It is a religious system with a police force.

Where does he come from?

Daniel’s vision of successive empires places the little horn among ten horns arising out of the fourth beast, and that fourth empire is Rome. The prince who is to come belongs to the people who destroyed the city and the sanctuary in AD 70, and those were Roman armies. On that basis I take him to be Roman in background, arising from a revived form of that political sphere.

Beyond that I decline to speculate, and I would encourage you to do the same. Every generation has named its candidate, from Nero to Napoleon to a succession of modern politicians, and every generation has been wrong. The Church will not be here to identify him in any case. Naming names is a close cousin of date setting, and it fails for much the same reasons.

I would add a word about the fascination this figure exerts. Whole ministries have been built on identifying him, and the identifications age like milk. What Scripture wants from us is not detection but discernment, which is a different faculty. John says the spirit of antichrist is already in the world, at work in every teaching that denies the Son. That is the thing to watch for, and it can be recognised now without naming anybody.

The lie and the strong delusion

Paul says his coming is by the activity of Satan with all power and false signs and wonders, and with all wicked deception for those who are perishing (2 Thessalonians 2:9-10). The miracles are real enough to convince. This is not stage magic. It is genuine supernatural power exercised in the service of a lie.

Then comes one of the most sobering statements in the New Testament. Because they refused to love the truth and so be saved, God sends them a strong delusion so that they may believe what is false. Judgement takes the form of confirming people in the choice they have already made. The man of lawlessness does not create unbelief. He collects it.

That should make us careful about how we treat truth now. A settled refusal to love the truth is not a neutral posture. It hardens, and Scripture describes a point at which God ratifies the hardening rather than reversing it.

How his career ends

It ends quickly and without a contest. The Lord Jesus will kill him with the breath of his mouth and bring him to nothing by the appearance of his coming (2 Thessalonians 2:8). No prolonged battle, no uncertain outcome, no negotiated surrender. A word from Jesus, and the greatest tyrant in human history is finished.

Revelation adds the destination. The Beast and the False Prophet are thrown alive into the lake of fire, where they are still found a thousand years later when the devil joins them. Whatever else the man of lawlessness achieves, he achieves it on a very short lease.

The manner of his end repays a second look. Paul says Jesus will kill him with the breath of His mouth, and the image is deliberately understated. The man who commanded the worship of the world, whose image was set up in the sanctuary, whose mark controlled every transaction on earth, is finished by a breath. All the accumulated power of the man of lawlessness cannot survive a single word from the Lord he opposed.

So, now what?

Do not let this frighten you, and do not let it fascinate you either. Both reactions miss Paul’s purpose. He wrote to a church shaken by a false report, and his aim was to settle them, which is why the chapter ends with a call to stand firm and hold to the teaching they had received.

The man of lawlessness is coming, and the Church will be gone. What we owe our neighbours in the meantime is the truth, offered plainly and warmly, while there is still time for them to love it. Who is on your heart tonight who has not yet done so?

It also settles the question of who is actually in charge. The man of lawlessness appears only when he is permitted to appear, in his time, according to Paul’s own phrase, and he ends at a moment already fixed. Nothing in his career escapes God’s timing. If that is true of the worst man who will ever live, it is true of whatever is troubling you tonight.

And then the lawless one will be revealed, whom the Lord Jesus will kill with the breath of his mouth and bring to nothing by the appearance of his coming.

2 Thessalonians 2:8 (ESV)