Themes in 1 John 1 (5): Does John Contradict Himself?

"The law of non-contradiction." 

This is one of the fixed and cardinal rules of interpretation. The words of an author must be so explained as not to make him contradict himself in the same letter, the same page, the same paragraph. Some understand John to say that every Christian has sin in the sense of guilt in verse 8. But this contradicts: 

(1.) The preceding sentence, the blood of Jesus His Son cleanseth from all sin. If he has sin he is not cleansed from it. If he is cleansed from sin and gives Christ the glory by declaring his deliverance he deceives himself and the truth is not in him. An infallible cure for pulmonary disease is advertised. If the healed consumptive testifies to his cure, do not believe him for he is a liar. This is a jumble of contradictions into which this erroneous interpretation leads.

(2.) It contradicts the design of this Epistle — "that ye sin not" If divine grace is unable to lift a soul out of the miry pit of sin, and keep him out, by establishing his goings farther and farther away from this bottomless quagmire, why does a man wise enough to be one of the twelve apostles deliberately sit down to perform an impossibility?

(3.) It contradicts the whole tenor of this Epistle as found in numerous declarations scattered from beginning to end. In verse 9 we are cheered by the assurance of the double cure, "forgiveness of sins and cleansing from all unrighteousness."

In ii. 3, 5 there is implied the possibility of keeping continuously God's commands which exclude every sin and introduce us into the state in which love toward God is perfected. This is inconsistent with sin. John in ii. 14 of his First Epistle writes to the young men because the Word of God abides in them and they have overcome the wicked one. How can this be made to quadrate with constant sinning? We are told in iii. 6 that "whosoever abideth in him sinneth not: whosoever sinneth seeth him not neither knoweth him." (Alford.) 

We know that it is said that it is the old man that sins and the new man does not and cannot. But the old man, if he sins, becomes the ego, the sinning subject under the wrath of God. "Generally," says Haupt, "this view cannot be psychologically sustained which would introduce a total cleavage of the one human constitution, making half the man a sinner — that is, the old man — at the very time that the other half is under the influence of the Holy Spirit. All subterfuges of this and similar kinds are exploded by a touch of this passage itself." It follows that every sin sunders the soul from God and makes communion with him and sonship or assimilation to him impossible.

Again, in iii. 8 John solemnly avers that "he that committeth sin is of the devil. Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin." Finally this is the great criterion by which men are classified as children of God or children of the devil, sinning or abstaining from sin. Age after age, many mistaken scholars have toiled to harmonize John's alleged contradictions and have failed.

Yet not a few exegetes have found that there is not the least contradiction in this Epistle, that John has been sadly slandered by the failure to note that in the first chapter antinomian objectors appear with the plea that as all sin exists in the body, the soul is perfectly pure and needs no hyssop branch, nor bleeding beast, nor sprinkling priest. Thus the contradictions which were found clouding John's crystal style evaporate when we consider the historical setting of this precious love letter of John to believers in all comings generations. The exegetes who avoid self-contradiction in this Epistle by noting its anti-Gnostic aim are Hammond, Grotius, Bengel, A. Clarke, Bishop Westcott, Dr. A. Plummer; Haupt, Whedon and others. 

In general it may be said that annotators who have inherited a freedom from the bias of predestinarianism find in this Epistle nothing inconsistent with perfect holiness in him who claims his full heritage in Christ. On the other hand those who have imbibed the five points of Calvinism will be found insisting with the Gnostics that men must sin so long as they are in the body.