Sin in 1 John

Some of you have heard it all before, but since I had to crank this out for some Sunday School literature, I thought I would share it.
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1 John has several things to say about sin, some of which may seem confusing at first. On the one hand, most contemporary Christians do not bat an eye when they read 1 John 1:8: “If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.” Christianity today is very accepting of sin as a regular feature in a believer’s life. Accordingly, many think this verse not only confirms the presence of sin in the Christian life; they see it as a strong rebuke to anyone who would suggest the contrary.

This same person might then get a bit confused when they get to 1 John 3:9: “No one who is born of God will continue to sin, because God’s seed remains in him; he cannot go on sinning, because he has been born of God.” “Wait a minute,” we think. “How can 1 John 3:9 and 1 John 1:8 be in the same book? These two verses seem to say exactly the opposite!

The first thing we need to keep in mind is that 1 John is not a textbook about what Christians believe. It is a real letter written for real people in a real situation. When John says things like, “Anyone who hates his brother is a murderer” (3:15), both John and his audience pictured specific individuals in their minds. 1 John 2:19 clues us into the fact that this church had recently undergone a split. John says of those who left, “[T]hey did not really belong to us. For if they had belonged to us, they would have remained with us.”

So what does it mean to sin in this context? It does not mean, as we hear so often, “to miss the mark,” as if sin in 1 John referred to anything short of absolute perfection. 1 John itself tells us what it has in mind when it talks about sin: “All wrongdoing is sin” (5:17). Sin for John has to do with action, “doing” sin, doing wrong. In particular, it has to do with wronging others. “If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him?” (3:17).

John divides these “wrong doings” into two categories. First, he says, “If anyone sees his brother commit a sin that does not lead to death, he should pray and God will give him life” (5:16). Then John goes on: “There is a sin that leads to death. I am not saying that he should pray about that.” It is hard to know exactly what John means by “death” here, but in light of the recent church split, he probably means spiritual death. If so, then apparently some wrongdoing can completely sever our relationship with God. Other wrongdoing only harms it—that is if we confess it (1:9) or have godly brothers and sisters praying for us (5:16).

Who were these individuals who had committed sins that led to death? Most scholars think they belonged to a group called the Gnostics. Gnostics thought that the physical world was evil and so had difficulty believing that Jesus had truly taken on human flesh when he was on earth. John says, “Every spirit that acknowledges that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God, but every spirit that does not acknowledge Jesus is not from God” (4:2-3).

The problems with this belief went deep. If Jesus did not die in the flesh, then you could not find forgiveness for your sins. You had no “atoning sacrifice” (2:2). We do not know exactly how the Gnostics might have answered this objection. It is just possible that they responded by saying, “We have not sinned” (1:10) or “We are without sin” (1:8). In other words, “We do not actually need Jesus’ death to atone for our sins.”

Now we have come full circle. 1 John 1:8 pictures someone who in effect denies any need for Christ’s atoning death in the first place, someone who says they have never sinned at all. 1:8 does not say, “If we claim to never sin.” The Greek says, “If we say we do not have sin.” It pictures someone who sees no need for Christ’s atonement in the first place. The verse is not about doing sin. It is about having sin from the past.

1 John 3:9 does not contradict this claim in any way. Rather, it states straightforwardly what the default Christian standard is. Those who are born of God do not sin (3:9; 5:18). Instead, those who are born of God practice righteousness (2:29). John is giving us the caption under a Christian’s picture. The caption should read “doer of righteousness,” not “doer of sin.”

Throughout 2:28-3:10, John uses the Greek present tense to make these comments, which gives them an ongoing or habitual sense. When he says the person born of God does not sin, he means that his or her lifestyle in general is not prone to doing wrong. Rather, it is prone to doing the right thing. What is the right thing? It is “the message you heard from the beginning: We should love one another” (3:11).

1 John gives us the perfect balance in a Christian understanding of sinning. All have sinned; all have done wrong. Every single person needs Christ as an atoning sacrifice. At the same time, doing wrong is not the default mode for a believer. The very fact that we are born of God’s seed makes it obvious that wrongdoing should not be normal for a Christian. John writes so that the audience will not sin. “But if anybody does sin, we have one who speaks to the Father in our defense—Jesus Christ, the Righteous One” (2:1).