What is It "to have Sin"?

  SUPPLEMENTARY STUDIES IN THE FIRST EPISTLE OF JOHN - Part 3. 

 What is it to have sin?

We have examined the historical setting of this Epistle, and have shown it is aimed to refute an error destructive of both the spiritual life and the moral principles of Christians. We have shown from the opening words of the Epistle that John designed the extinction of this Gnostic error. We are now prepared to examine the text most frequently urged against the doctrine of perfect holiness in this life. "If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us " (i. 8). 

What class of people does John have in mind? When he says "we," does he mean all Christians, including himself, as some expositors say, Christians just described as walking in the light, and by the blood of Christ cleansed from all sin? Dean Alford answers this question thus, 

"St. John is writing to persons whose sins have been forgiven them (ii. 12), and, therefore, necessarily the present tense, 'we have,' refers not to any previous state of sinful life before conversion, but to their now existing state, and the sins to which they are liable in that state." 

But the answer is not satisfactory. It implies that "we have sins " which we have not committed, sins to which we are only "liable." It accuses every angel in Heaven, while keeping his first or probationary state, and Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden, before their first sinful volition, of having sin, because they were liable to sin. It asserts a palpable contradiction, that persons cleansed from sin still "have sin." It makes the beloved apostle stultify himself by such a self-contradiction and absurdity. Again he perpetrates the same paradox: "This state of needing cleansing from all present sin is veritably that of all of us, and our recognition and confession of it is the very first essential of walking in light." I can get no other meaning out of these words than that sin "is the very first essential" of holy living, for walking in the light is walking in holiness.

But the Alford school of interpreters may perhaps avoid contradiction by using sin in two different senses, actual sin, implying guilt, and what theologians call original sin, or proneness to sin, which is free from guilt, an impurity impregnating our being, for which there is no cure but death. 

But the very next verse denies any such doctrine as death sanctification, and asserts that the blood of Christ is the "double cure." "If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness, with no hint that the second cure, entire purification, is postponed to the dying hour, while forgiveness is attainable now." 

It is as plain as the midday sun that both blessings, pardon and purity, are attainable now. If both are experienced, why should not both be confessed? With the mouth, confession is made unto salvation. Why should the confession of one part of salvation be commended, and the confession of the other part be condemned as the product of self-deception and untruth? These are exceedingly difficult questions for the Alford expositors to answer. But this is not the worst of their case. 

Bishop Westcott, the great English scholar, whose commentary on this Epistle, on which he spent most of his life, takes rank with the commentaries of Bishop Lightfoot, as most thorough and exhaustive, exceeding even German accuracy, and used by German professors themselves — this exegete proves beyond all contradiction that the phrase, "to have sin," used only in two other texts in the Bible (John ix. 41, xv. 22, 24), and only in John's writings, always signifies, not a guiltless evil tendency, but guilt. "Like corresponding phrases, to have faith, to have life, to have grief, to have fellowship, it marks the presence of something which is not isolated, but a continuous source of influence. It is distinguished from 'to sin,' as the sinful principle is distinguished from the sinful act itself." "To have sin" includes the idea of "PERSONAL GUILT." Bengel says, "not to have sin denies guilt." 

With this light thrown upon the text, let us read it again: "If we say that we have no personal guilt at the present moment, although the blood of Jesus Christ has just this hour cleansed us from all sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us." According to this, every testimony to the remission of the guilt of sin is a deception and a falsehood. A large mistake is Paul's joyful declaration: "There is therefore now no condemnation, no guilt, no unremitted punishment to them that are in Christ Jesus." The knowledge of forgiveness which rings as a joyful sound through the Gospels and epistles is a hallucination of self-deceit and untruth. This use of what logicians call the reductio ad absurdum we have resorted to to prove that when John says, "If we say we have no sin," he means not Christians walking in the light of purity and perfect love, but any unregenerate man who declares that he has no sin to be forgiven, no guilt to wash away in the blood of Christ's atonement; especially any Gnostic who boasted that his spirit was pure by nature, and that sin could touch only his body, the husk of his soul.

The theory that this pernicious philosophy was damaging Christianity in Ephesus, where John spent his old age, lets the sunlight into his Epistle, explains every apparent contradiction, and illumines every obscurity. Above all, it relieves John of the charge that, by insisting that all Christians have sin, he extenuates that abominable thing which all the other Holy Scriptures brand with the Divine reprobation.

Multitudes of professed disciples of Christ have vainly justified acts of daily sin by perverting this text, wrenching it from its context and from the scope of this whole Epistle, which, from beginning to end, teaches that perfect love is in this life an attainable grace, and inspires its readers to aspire after perfect purity through faith in Jesus Christ. He who hurls this text against a soul panting to become holy, is possibly saved from blasphemy only by his ignorance, "because as he (Christ in Heaven) is, so are we in this world," if we fill out the highest possibilities of grace and obtain the full heritage of believers.