Tensions in 1st John

At Bible Study last night, we were looking at first John, as we have been in church, and it struck me that there are tensions throughout the book. For example, the tension in John 3 is that those born of God cannot sin (verse 9), but our experience is that we sin, and quite a bit.

It really begins in chapter 1, where we read that if we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and in chapter 2, where we read that if we say we know God and don't keep his commandments, we are liars.

We're in a heap if we equate keeping God's commandments with "not sinning."¹ Doesn't that mean that saying "I know him" is the same as "I have no sin"? Aren't these two statements mutually contradictory?

We get another sense of this in 1.7, where we read that if we walk in the light, his blood is cleansing us from all sin. If "walking in the light" means "not sinning," then where is the sin to be cleansed? Doesn't the verse imply that walking in the light includes sin?

How do we approach 3.9, which says that those who are born of God cannot sin?²


I'm not sure that I have the answers to any of these questions (in fact, I'm more sure that I don't), but what interested me some yesterday in the study is the historical context of the book.³ As I understand it, the book is considered a treatment of Gnosticism (Wikipedia article / Catholic Encyclopedia).

Gnosticism is a bit complicated, and I am no expert. As I understand it, the Gnostics generally treated the world as understable through two avenues: a "fleshy" one and a "spiritual" one. This is not entirely out of line with Christian though (see Ga 5, Ro 7, and others). As I've been taught, the Gnostics essentially denied the reality of the flesh and exalted (in their minds) the spiritual realm. This provoked rather licentious living (as mentioned in the "Antinomian School" of the CE article linked above) while simultaneously denying the reality of sin.

And I think perhaps that what we're seeing here is that sin is real, that the flesh is real, and that there is connection between the two more corporeal than we might think at first. (We read of glorified bodies in 1 Co 15, but not glorified spirits.) And so walking in the light (an important concept, I think, for the Gnostics) co-exists with sinning (which the Gnostics disallowed). Our fellowship with God is based on the admission of guilt (1.9), which implies the reality of sin.

And so I wonder if perhaps part of the tension in John is really that it's an explanation of how the spirit and flesh co-exist. In Galatians we read that the flesh fights against the spirit, and that it prevents us from doing what we want to do. In Romans seven, Paul laments that he doesn't even practise (PRASSW) the good he would like to do, but he completely does (POIEW) the evil that he wouldn't.⁴

Perhaps what we see in 1 John is a description of the spirit (the righteous, incorruptible part of our nature) and the flesh (the unrighteous, corrupted, and dying part). It has given me a lot ot think about, and hopefully will help crystallize some of my thoughts tomorrow when we finish the second chapter.


[1] I'm certainly not persuaded this is the connotation of "to keep" here—the word is more complicated than that—but there's a certain moralistic tone here that can't be denied. Doing the Right Thing is a part of this.

[2] I personally find the grammatical justification for "cannot continually sin" a little weak. I understand why the NIV translates 1 John 3 the way it does—and I'm pretty sure almost everyone else follows suit—but it's difficult to push POIEW into such a translation, and it really makes for some singular translation practices.

[3] I'm not a huge fan of the historical method of exegesis, primarily because it teaches people that we can make some cultural or historic adjustments to doctrine. E.g., there are people I've met who take the Corinthian prohibition against sexual contact as somehow limited to that single church, to that single culture, or that single time period. The same sort of thing happens with any number of sins (most of which I've committed, for whatever it's worth) that are culturally more acceptable today.

[4] One of the reasons it's very difficult follow the translation as mentioned in [2] is that the word POIEW is one that indicates completeness, not habit. We get our word "poem" from POIEW; one does not half-write a poem.