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Friday, February 21, 2014

Sin is lawlessness


Explaining the sense in which a Christian can't sin according to 1 Jn 3:9, Karen Jobes says:

When "sin" is first mentioned in this passage in 3:4, it is identified there with anomia [lawlessness]…The [definite} article functions to designate a category of sin that is identified with lawlessness ("and sin is lawlessness"). This suggests that John is not referring to every sin as anomia, but is concerned with the sin that leads to eschatological judgment (i.e., apostasy). John will later say in 5:16-17 that there is sin that does not lead to death. 
But what sin is not anomia? It is sin that has been confessed and cleansed by the blood of Jesus Christ (1:9; 2:1-2). The sin of a believer who acknowledges and confesses it is of a different type than the sin of those who refuse to confess and submit to God's authority. It is the anomia sin that leads to death that the one born of God is not able to commit because God's seed remains in them and they have been born of God. 1, 2, & 3 John (Zondervan 2014), 147-48.

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