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.

1 John 2:29 & Concluding Thoughts on Chapter 2

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ii. 29-v. 12. GOD IS LOVE.

c. ii. 29-iii. 24.The Evidence of Sonship: Deeds of Righteousness before God.

• The Children of God and the Children of the Devil (ii. 29-iii. 12).
• Love and Hate: Life and Death (iii. 13-24).

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29 If ye know that he is righteous, ye know that every one also that doeth righteousness is begotten of him

29. "He is righteous . . . begotten of Him." The difficulty is to determine the antecedent of the pronouns "he" and "him." The last person mentioned is Christ the Judge. But "to be born of Christ" is not a scriptural idea. It is evident that John so firmly believed that the Father reveals Himself in His co-equal Son that he made the transition from one Divine Person to the other almost unwittingly.

"Is begotten of Him." He who in his character is like God is in Hebrew phrase begotten of Him. The habitually righteous man is a true son of the righteous God. Other points of likeness are faith and love.

CONCLUDING NOTE TO CHAPTER II

John's Conception of Sin

QUESTION: Does the word "sin" in I John I:7, "cleanseth us from all sin," refer to an act or a state?

ANSWER: According to John's definition of sin, "sin is lawlessness," it may refer to either. Here it is quite evident that it refers to a state. In the next verse the phrase, "have sin," is peculiar to John, and it always implies an act entailing guilt. See John 9:41; 15:22, 24; 19:11. Another peculiarity of John is that he does not trace sin along the line of heredity up to Adam, as Paul does, but he ascribes it to the devil. "He that committeth sin is of the devil." In this particular John imitates Christ, who emphasizes not so much the source of sin as its guilt and its cure; not the origin of the conflagration, but how to put it out. John does not contradict Paul; he only traces sin one step further back to the first sinner in the universe.

— Steele's Answers p. 132.have

"To Have Sin" (1 John 1:8)

QUESTION: In I John 1:8, "If we say we have no sin we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us," is John speaking of Christians or of the unregenerate?

ANSWER: Of persons called Gnostics, who believed that their bodies only were defiled by sin, and that their souls were perfectly pure, having no need of the blood of Christ and of the new birth. The phrase "to have sin" is John's strongest expression of such a transgression of the law as entails guilt. If all Christians are guilty, the profession of justification by anybody on the earth is a sad mistake, and Paul's declaration, "There is therefore now no condemnation to them that are to Christ Jesus" is a stupendous falsehood.

— Steele's Answers, pp. 98, 99.