Truth is not just something to believe; it is to be obeyed. James says that there is every possibility that the members of the family of God will stray. As the hymn says, "Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it. Prone to leave the God I love. Do you understand this?
There are many believers who don't. Many think that if someone is a true Christian, they will never stray form the truth. This is not biblical!
Obedience in the Christian life is not automatic, and it is not guaranteed. Who is to do this? Someone, anyone who is aware of it. This is every believer's responsibility. When we see a brother or a sister who is falling, it is our responsibility to go to him, to pick him up, to support him, to encourage him, and to turn him back to the truth.
The phrase that James uses here, "sozein ten psuche" save a soul , is a standard and normal way of saying, "to save the life.
To turn someone from sin to obedience is to save his life. Now, those two actions—salvation from death and forgiveness of sins—are the actions of God. Only God can save a soul from death. And only God can forgive sins. And yet we are given the privilege of being co-laborers with God.
We can do what He is doing in the lives of people and can share with him in the ministry of restoration. James closes this epistle by saying that not only are we to walk in obedience be doers of the Word and save our lives from damage, but we also are to notice how others are doing so that when someone errs from the truth, we can go after him and turn him around. But they can sin to the point that God will physically take their lives.
I am not saying he should pray about that"— this is something only an unbeliever can commit. It is the sin of rejecting Christ. I think we can be sure of this because of what John says in the beginning of verse They know because John is restating the same point that he made in The ESV says,. Well, we could just pick the one we like the best. Or we could be Bereans and study this out. Because the Greek uses the present tense, it is asserted that this tense necessitates a translation like, "everyone who has been born of God does not keep on sinning" ESV.
This would mean that those born of God may sin somewhat how much is never specified! But on all grounds, whether linguistic or exegetical, the approach is indefensible.
It has been pointed out by more than one competent Greek scholar, that the appeal to the present tense invites intense suspicion. No other text can be cited where the Greek present tense, unaided by qualifying words, can carry this kind of significance.
For this purpose, there were Greek words available, words actually used in the New Testament. Hodges goes on to say, "The Greek present tense did not by itself convey the idea of continually or habitually or of a practice. If John wanted to say, No one born of God makes a practice of sinning he would have used the available Greek words to make his point.
No first century Greek reader or hearer was likely to get a meaning like practice sin. Smalley also unmasks this misuse of the present tense when he points out that, " uses the present tense to describe specific sinful acts, not chronic transgression. Now that we know that the CSB has translated the text correctly, we know that John says, "everyone who has been born of God does not sin.
So, let me ask you something: Do you sin? Let me ask your spouse. Yes, you do sin. Then, according to this verse, you have not been born of God.
How does that make you feel? Pragmatically we have to question what is being said here because we all sin. This verse is not only a problem pragmatically; it is also a problem doctrinally. It does not fit with the primary rule of hermeneutics—The Analogy of Faith. The Analogy of Faith is the rule that Scripture is to interpret Scripture. This means that no part of Scripture can be interpreted in such a way as to render it in conflict with what is clearly taught elsewhere in Scripture. Does Scripture anywhere teach that believers sin?
It continually calls believers to stop sinning. What John wrote earlier seems to contradict what he writes here. So, here he says if we say we have no sin we are deceiving ourselves.
But in our text he says, "everyone who has been born of God does not sin. Look at what he says in1 John:. Here Christians are told not to sin; but if they do sin, they have an advocate with the Father. So, which is it? Ligonier Ministries. Supporting Ligonier. Renewing Your Mind. Ligonier Connect. Reformation Study Bible. Reformation Bible College.
Stay in Touch. The part that makes it much better is that it was staring right at the ocean with the moonlight on the water that makes it better. It's still a parking lot, but it was a beautiful parking lot. We can go back to other places. I can go back to look at that school and and I can remember in high school. An awful lot of my life and later years goes back to theological questions and arguments that began when I was in especially the 10th, 11th, and 12th grades, because I was a part of a trio.
This is the age of South Florida ridiculous liberal experimentation and education. Basically, we were set loose. There was a special program and some of us were chosen for it. We're just kind of set loose to come up with our own curriculum, at least for a lot of the day, and do what we wanted to do. We actually did a lot of good things with it, but I was paired with a Jewish boy and a Catholic boy.
A we're not talking about a little bit Jewish in a little bit Catholic. So this is like real Roman Catholicism, this is like Council-of-Trent-Catholicism in a 16 year old, and this is Reform Judaism in a 16 year old, and this is Southern Baptist 16 year old, and we are together every day, and we're talking about things every day. I find out the reformed Jewish kid, who is the son of the rabbi, doesn't believe in God, and neither did the rabbi.
Eye-opening experience for the Southern Baptist kid who just assumed that rabbis believes in God. Meanwhile, on the other side, my classical Roman Catholic was sort of like having Benedict XVI for constant conversation. He had more answers than I had.
Even when he didn't have an answer, he came back the next day with the answer. He would come back with the Baltimore Catechism, which has since been replaced by a more modern catechism, but he had an answer to everything. It was the official teaching of the Roman Catholic Church and it was it was in enumerated paragraphs. I had Sunday School literature we threw away every quarter. I didn't have anything like this. I had a Bible and a Sunday School quarterly.
I did not have the Baltimore Catechism. He had the Baltimore Catechism; he was always ready with an answer; he had serious Christian, that is, Catholic parents; he had serious Catholic teachers; he went to a serious Catholic Church that thought all other churches were not seriously Catholic. So we got into a discussion about these things. Somehow we got on the unpardonable sin. Now, my Jewish friend doesn't believe in God, so sin becomes a non-theistic category of bad things which are incredibly elastic.
But on the other hand my Roman Catholic friend, he had an entire set of theological categories I did not have. Well, I can see two categories right here in 1 John chapter 5: there is a sin that leads to death, and there is a sin that does not lead to death.
Well, you can figure out mortal! Mortal is sin that leads to death. Give me that list! Give me that list, now! Okay, so give me a list of another one. What's a mortal sin? I'm following you now. There are sins in the Old Testament that are referred to as abominations, which does set them apart from other sins.
This is not to say that there is any sin that isn't sin worthy of death. It is to say that there are some sins that, in their effect and in their distortion and corruption of creation, in their defiance of God, are more visibly horrible, and thus an abomination. Besides that, we know that even in the Bible, in earthly consequences, there are different consequences given for different kinds of sins.
Even in the law! So, we can understand something like that. I can understand the difference. We would not put a kid who didn't mow the lawn in jail and throw away the key. There's no life sentence for not mowing the lawn, but for murder, well, yes, and even the punishment of death. Okay, so I get that. I went and checked it in the current catechism to make sure this hadn't changed. The three categories or conditions: 1 The object is a grave matter; 2 It is committed with full knowledge; and 3 It is deliberate in consent to the sin.
That's it! You got to go to the priest and in the confessional, when you confess these sins, the priest will judge whether this was a venial or mortal sin.
There's at least the risk of hell. It's hypothetical for these sins that are mortal sins that have not been confessed and of which there's been no absolution and no penance. This is where you understand that the Catholic Church lives in fuzzy. It's because we do not believe any human being is put in the position of being able to judge that way nor to be able to render any kind of forgiveness of sin by penance and then give absolution.
We don't believe any human priest can do that. We have a priest: Christ Jesus, our great High Priest. You can understand how this works. You can see the negotiation. I saw it constantly in the negotiation of the mind of my 16 year old friend, and sin in his life was a constant negotiation of figuring out how to do it in time to go to the confessional, in time to get absolution, in time to go to the mass, so that he was in a state of grace.
This whole scheme of venial and mortal sin still is very much the official teaching in the Roman Catholic Church and there are people all around us who believe this. It is in our contemporary culture and kind of the oxygen. You know, you have little sins and then you have big sins. That was a deliberate, grievous sin and a grave matter. This entire structure, the Roman Catholic understanding of venial-versus-mortal sin, this was very much in place when the Reformation came in the 16th century.
This was just a part of the theological air that they were breathing. You can call him a monk. It's not a problem. So just say Luther the monk. So, Luther the monk was tortured because when he thought about the definition of a venial-versus-mortal sin, and he looked at intent, and he considered the intent and consent that is what define the mortal sin , well, that's where Luther figured out that every single thing I do is of grave consequence! Every single sin I ever commit! How much is a little consent?
Please enter your email address associated with your Salem All-Pass account, then click Continue. We'll send you an email with steps on how to reset your password. I am not saying that you should pray about that" TNIV. I continue to think a lot about apostasy. No, not as an option for me! I also recently finished Robert Yarbrough's new Baker Exegetical Commentary on John and gave it a glowing review see under Denver Journal on our website. John has a lot to say about the topic in these little letters and the verse quoted above may be the most well known of all he has to say.
Ironically, his main point in this context is to encourage his congregations to pray for those who have committed all other kinds of sins besides the one that leads to death vv. But by setting up the contrast between the two kinds of sins, he naturally piques our curiosity about the more heinous of the two. It is unlikely that John is talking about sins that lead to physical death, as with Ananias and Sapphira in Acts Rather it is the simpler but subtler observation that those whom one category of "fake Christians" fail to love are called adelphoi "brothers and sisters," or "siblings" for those who prefer an accurate, one-word English equivalent.
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