Gallio said that if Paul had been brought up on charges for some “matter of wrong” (Acts 18:14), then he would have been willing to hear the case. But as it was, he threw the thing out of his courtroom — showing incidentally that a shrewd pagan had a better grasp of justice than many modern Christians. Later in Acts, when Paul was standing before the Sanhedrin, he invited his accusers to make their case about his alleged “evil doing” (Acts 24:20). If they had evidence, then they were invited to bring it on. And in the book of Revelation, the same word is used to describe the great iniquities of Babylon, and we are invited to see those iniquities as constituting a huge pile. Her sins have reached up to heaven, and God has “remembered her iniquities.” The word is adikema.
It is striking that the word is used three times in the New Testament. The first two instances in Acts concern false accusations of iniquities against Paul, as made by his Jewish persecutors. The third instance shows that Babylon, which is the image in Revelation of the city of Jerusalem, is actually the place where such iniquites resided in abundance. The false accusers, alleging iniquity, were up to their necks in it themselves.