Victory Over Sin 2

To me, 1 John provides the best snapshot of the subject of sin in the New Testament. It is a virtual treasure trove of "memory verses" on the the topic.

Definitions of Sin
For example, 1 John gives us two definitions of sin:

"All sin is unrighteousness" (1 John 5:17).

"Sin is lawlessness" (1 John 3:4).

While it seems a little difficult at first to know what these verses really mean specifically, I especially like the NIV translation of 5:17 (whether it's a good one or not :): "All wrongdoing is sin."


Classic Calvinist Texts
John has several classic Calvinist verses:

"If we should say we do not have sin, we are deceiving ourselves, and the truth is not in us" (1:8).

"They went out from us, but they were not from us. For if they were [truly] from us, they would have remained with us. But [they left] so it might be shown that they were not [truly] from us (2:19)

The first one is the most classic text of all to justify that Christians cannot help but sin all the time, and that the Wesleyan tradition is deceiving itself if it claims a person can have victory over sin. The second text is a classic text in defense of a certain position on eternal security. The idea is that if a person commits mass murder after claiming to become a Christian, you can be sure that person was never really a Christian in the first place.


A Classic Wesleyan Text
John also has a classic "Wesleyan" verse:

"Everyone who has been born of God does not practice sin, because His seed remains in him. And he is not able to be sinning, because he has been born of God" (3:9)

The person from the Wesleyan tradition responds to the Calvinist. Wait a second, there must be something wrong with your interpretation of 1 John 1:8 if John can go on to say something like this verse. This verse clearly says that sin doesn't fit with being born of God. God places His "seed" in you and that should make all the difference.


Honorable Mention to a Roman Catholic Verse
So that no one is left out, we might finally mention an oldie, but goodie Catholic verse:

"If someone should see his brother sinning a sin not to death, he will ask and will give him live, to those who are sinning not to death. There is a sin to death. I'm not saying you should ask about that one. All wrongdoing is sin, and there is a sin that isn't to death" (5:16-17).

Woah! What was that all about?

The Roman Catholic Church builds its distinction between "mortal" and "venial" sins from this verse. Mortal sins are the ones that can't be forgiven--they invalidate your baptism. Venial sins are in contrast sins that are open for forgiveness.


Pre-Modern Readings of These Verses
What I mean by a pre-modern reading of the Bible is a reading that is largely unaware of its assumptions. In short, we read the words as if they are written as timeless truths from God to me. Now, on the one hand, this is the very stuff of what a Scripture is. On the other hand, reading the Bible this way automatically means I am not reading its words in context. In this instance, John's words were written to a specific Christian community with a specific history. For example, the verse we mentioned above, 1 John 2:19, tells us that this church had recently undergone a split of sorts and a group had left the church.

So when I read these words as universal truths about sin, I am changing their meaning slightly from what John originally intended the words to mean. Now I certainly don't want you to think I'm saying this way of reading is the wrong way to read the words. All I want to point out that it is a different way of reading the words than reading them for what they originally meant. Reading them for what they originally meant is the "modern" way of reading them. Finally one "post-modern" way of reading them--one I think is the way we will read Scripture in the future--reads the words as God's message to us, but is aware that when we read them in that way, we are taking the words differently from what God inspired John to say to some church in Asia Minor.

Like I implied above, the very nature of a Scripture is to loosen the meaning from its original moorings and universalize them somewhat. The words take on a more timeless quality. Too be sure, not all the words can do this as well as others (e.g., "Greet the brothers with a holy kiss" doesn't universalize nearly as well as "Love your neighbor as yourself"). It was at these points that the ancient church (as well as ancient Jews like Paul) downshifted into allegory and metaphorical meanings.

Enough of all that. I wish us to take a pilgrimage from our pre-modern readings of 1 John to a contextual understanding and then return to a reflective understanding of these words as Scripture.

As good pre-moderns, our tendency is to read these verses in isolation and "define" them with the "dictionary" of our tradition. For each of the traditions I mention above, some of these verses are "naughty" verses--verses that don't fit as easily into our paradigms. 1 John 1:8 is a naughty verse for us Wesleyans. 1 John 3:9 is naughty for Calvinists. And 1 John 5:16 seems naughty for Protestants.

Enter coping mechanisms. To explain 1 John 5:16, a Calvinist might argue that some sins are just so bad that God kills you, even though your spirit will still be saved. I'm not sure what a Calvinist would do with 3:9. The NIV translates it as "continue to sin," which is a fair rendition of the present tense of the Greek. Actually even Wesleyans would have a problem with the idea that it is completely impossible for a Christian to sin.

As a Wesleyan, I cope with 1 John 1:8 by watching the wording and the tenses carefully. 1 John 1:8 does not read "If we say that we do not practice sin, we deceive ourselves." Indeed, if it did it would flatly contradict 3:9. What it says is that "If we say that we do not have sin." In this sense it basically anticipates what John will say in 1 John 1:10: "If we should say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar and His word is not in us."

The perfect tense in Greek has the sense of something that was completed in the past. "I have been married seven years." The act of getting married is something that's been done for eight years. So to say that we don't have sin is to say that we have never sinned. This is the person who says, "I've never sinned." 1 John 1:8 and 10 are thus John's equivalent to Romans 3:23: "All have sinned and are lacking the glory of God."

Over the years I have perhaps gone slightly unorthodox (for a Wesleyan, that is) on my understanding of 1 John 5:16. To be sure, I have no systematic theology of this verse like Roman Catholics do. But on the whole it seems to me that John is saying some sins knock you out of the kingdom immediately and some don't. Of course I grew up with the "one sin you're out" approach. "Sin once in any way? You better pray; it's hell today." (I just made that up).

John doesn't seem to see it quite so rigidly. All sin no doubt damages our relationship with God. But not all sins sever the relationship instantly. On the other hand, some sins do. With regard to return to Christ, I have faith in the belief early settled in the 200's that a person whose relationship with Christ has been severed can repent and return to Christ. I can relate this somewhat theologically to the belief that the Holy Spirit leads us to repentance. So if you are truly repentant, then you have not committed some "unpardonable sin."


The "Modernist" Reading: 1 John in Context
When I begin to read 1 John in its historical context, I read the whole book, rather than a few isolated memory verses. I had long found 1 John somewhat vague in its statements. I now feel pretty good about what I think John was trying to say, but I will acknowledge up front that it involves some "reconstruction" on my part. In other words, the meaning of 1 John was clear enough to its original audiences. But since I am only listening in on their conversation, I am missing a great deal of the puzzle. While reading the text of 1 John alone out of context is dangerous because it can come to mean almost anything, even reading it in context is a little unstable in its meaning--we just don't have complete information.

The "they left us" verse in 2:19 unlocks 1 John for me. Some group had left John's community. What did they believe? I think 1 John says enough for us to identify them as "Gnostics" of a sort. They didn't believe that Jesus had come "in the flesh" (2). They believed that Jesus came "by water" at his baptism, but not that he died "by blood" on the cross (5:6). They saw no need for Jesus as an atoning sacrifice for their sins (2:2). In a manner of speaking, they did not see a need for forgiveness for sins through Christ (1:8, 10) and thus rejected Jesus as Messiah (2:22). They were thus "antichrists," opposed to God's work through Jesus (2:18, 22).

1 John 2:19 is thus not some absolute statement about eternal security. It relates to a group that never truly believed in Jesus. They may have worshipped with John's community for a while, but they did not truly belong.

As with Paul, reading 1 John in this way reveals a certain danger in absolutizing and universalizing his words. Many of these comments are addressed at a particular situation. Space forbids me from going on more about my thoughts on the community. My basic point here is that some words in the Bible were never meant to be universal in scope. Some of the things Paul says in one context he would not have said in a different one.

I supect that in part, Paul tells the Corinthians not to take each other to court because he knows that the group taking the others to court are wrong in everyway, enacting unrighteousness through pagan power structures. On the other hand, I am not convinced that Paul would have put things the same way if those taking others to court had been ensuring that righteousness would take place. Herein are the dangers of pre-modern interpretation, universalizing contextual words in ways that can in some cases actually reinforce ungodly ends. (not so much in this case, since it would seem that sin is almost always involved somewhere when a Christian takes another Christian to court).


Reading 1 John Reflectively as Scripture
With some sense of what the original meaning might be, we can now return to what 1 John might mean for us as Scripture. To reach this meaning, we need a bit of Wesley's Quadrilateral to bring us from then to now. I submit the following theology of sin from 1 John:

1. There is no person who does not need Christ's atonement. All have sinned, and anyone who says they do not have sin deceives themselves.

This dictum has the support of Christian history and is the agreed position of Christians everywhere today.

2. But 1 John 3:9 similarly sees sin as incompatible with the fundamental character of a Christian. God's seed and word in us stands in direct conflict with a lifestyle of sinning. Sin should not be typical of a Christian.

Here I face an uphill battle when it comes to the consensus of Christendom. The Wesleyan tradition reflects the position of only a small portion of the church in its belief that God can provide victory over sin. Nevertheless, this is the biblical position and one that I feel represents the right conception of God as One who is able to empower believers. The pessimistic view that God gives up on us in relation to sin seems somehow to undersell God. On these warrants I stand with my tradition in laying a prophetic stake on this issue. 1 John, and as we will see the rest of the New Testament, does not in any way encourage or assume that sin will be a part of a believer's life, particularly in terms of concrete, intentional wrongdoing.

1 John in particular formulates sin in terms of love and hate. In its original context, these words had overtones of the Gnostics who had left the community and had shown hatred for their brothers and sisters. 1 John calls them murderers (3:15), something reflected in their refusal to help their brothers and sisters in need even though they had the resources to do so (3:17). However, as Scripture, we can formulate the "touchstone" of sin in relation to acts of love (4:7-8).

I say acts because 1 John and indeed the New Testament authors thought of love more in concrete than in attitudinal terms. I doubt I can be perfect in love from an attitudinal perspective (although that is what we are ultimately discussing here, so I am open to correction). But I think a person can be by John's standard perfect in concrete love--in always doing that which is loving when a choice to love or not to love presents itself.

3. It is possible to "die" as a result of your sin. I suspect that the New Testament authors generally assumed that a person who had truly come to Christ was in for life. However, extreme cases required them to see that a person could "sin unto death" and thereby lose their reservation for salvation on the Day of Judgment.

4. We have a good lawyer. 1 John expresses the fact that all have sinned (1:8, 10) and that sin is fundamentally incompatible with the character of a Christian (3:9). But I think 1 John 2:1 pretty much sums the whole thing up for John:

"My children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. And if someone should sin, we have an advocate with the Father: Jesus Christ the Righteous One."

To be sure, John probably has concrete actions in mind here. I'm writing these things so that you won't be deceived by this heretical group and sin by leaving us or withdrawing your support from us. But if you have gone astray in these ways or have dabbled with leaving the community, God will forgive you. I am writing these things so that you will have fellowship with us (1:3). After all, we are presenting to you things that we have seen with our own eyes and heard with our own ears (1:1-2).

So all have sinned in the past, but it would be inappropriate to continue sinning now as Christians. Sin in the life of a Christian can actually lead to death. But if you sin, we have a go-between named Jesus. He died as an atoning sacrifice for sins (2:2).

We could discuss many points of what I've written here. Some comments are more open to debate than others. But since this is a rather long blog entry, I'll stop and give anyone who might want a chance to speak...