"Self-deception."
Says Haupt: The word 'deceive' used by John in verse 8 occurs in no other document of the New Testament so often as in the Apocalypse. But in all the passages it is employed with a very definitely stamped meaning, never for mere error with express limitations as such, but always for fundamental departure from the truth. It occurs concerning the artifices of Satan, of antichrist, of the beast, and once of the false teachers in Thyatira (Rev. ii. 20), whose work, however, is expressly marked by its signs as fundamental deception. It is employed in the same sense when the natural, unregenerate man declares, under the hallucination of Gnostic error, that he has no sin to be washed away and no need of the atonement in the blood of the Son of God.
Haupt calls attention
to the correspondence of verse 8 with verse 6 and verse 9 with verse 7.
If the cleansing from sin is an essential of our walking in light, so
the denial of its necessity is a token of being in darkness. Dark and
desperate, indeed, must be the condition of that hardened sinner who,
under the delusion of false philosophy, can declare that he has no
consciousness of sin.
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