1 John 2:1-6 - Imitation of Christ

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 i. 5 - ii. 28. GOD IS LIGHT.

a. i. 5 - ii. 11. What Walking in the Light involves: the Condition and Conduct of the Believer.

• Fellowship with God and with the Brethren (i. 5-7).

• Consciousness and confession of sin [committed before forgiveness] (i. 8-10).

• Obedience to God by Imitation of Christ (ii. 1-6).

• Love of the Brethren (ii.7-11).

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Thus far John has treated sin as a reality, and has exposed the fallacies by which its repugnance to the character of God is concealed, and its significance is vainly done away by a false philosophy. He now proceeds to show that the purpose of this Epistle is the prevention and the cure of sin.

1. My little children, these things write I unto you, that ye may not sin. And if any man sin, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous

1. "That ye may not sin." This implies that sin is not a necessity, that under the dispensation of grace the believer may be always victorious over temptation. We know that he is addressing those who profess to be Christians by the endearing style of address, "My little children" and also by the fact that God is spoken of as Father, which is in the New Testament a relationship purely spiritual and belonging only to those who have been born of the Spirit. It is as evident as the cloudless midday sun that John does not regard sin as a normal element of the Christian life. In aiming to produce complete and constant victory over sin he was not endeavoring to set forth an abnormal character. An un-sinning Christian was in his estimation neither an impossibility nor an anomaly. John was not visionary but sober in his endeavor to edify and purify the church. He plainly asserts that sinlessness is the aim of his teaching, and that this is not gained by efforts on the plane of natural ability, but by the grace of our Lord Jesus who sends the Paraclete to "cleanse from all unrighteousness." We call attention to the aorist tense, "may not sin," — that ye may not commit a single sin. Says Bishop Westcott, "The thought is of the single act, not of the state (present tense). The tense is decisive against the idea that the apostle is simply warning his disciples not to draw encouragement for license from the doctrine of forgiveness. His aim is to produce the completeness of the Christ-like life. (Verse 6.)" Says Alford, "That ye may not sin (at all) implies the absence not only of the habit, but of any single acts of sin. The aorist tense alone refutes the supposition that John is exhorting the unconverted."

Believers Cannot Sin

QUESTION: Explain 1 John 3:9: "Whosoever is begotten of God doeth no sin, because his seed remaineth in him, and he cannot sin because he is begotten of God."

ANSWER: The verb "begotten" is in the Greek in the perfect tense, denoting the continuance of sonship. The verb "sin" is present, denoting not a single act, but a series of acts, a habit of sinning. He cannot be a sinner and a saint at the same time. Such a contradiction is an impossible character. In chap. 2:1: "If any (Christian) man sin (aorist denoting a single act) we have an advocate," etc. If any believer contrary to the tenor of his life under the pressure of some sudden temptation commits a sin, he is not to give up in despair, drop his oars and go over the Niagara of damnation, but to remember that he has a Friend at Court through whom he may find forgiveness. If he does not do this, but enters on a career of sinning, he is no longer a child of God, but a child of the devil, as 1 John 3:10 declares, and is on his way to the place where Judas is.

— From Steele's Answers p. 19.