1 John 3:4

As so often, the Apostle emphasizes his statement by giving the opposite case, and not the simple opposite, but an expansion of it. Instead of saying -every one that hath not this hope" he says every one that doeth sin. The A. V. not only obscures this antithesis by changing -every man" to -whosoever", but also the contrast between -doing righteousness" (1 John 2:29) and -doing sin" by changing from -do" to -commit". This contrast is all the more marked in the Greek because both words have the article; -doeth the righteousness", -doeth the sin".

transgresseth also the law This is very unfortunate, destroying the parallelism: Every man that doeth sin, doeth also lawlessness. It is imperative to have the same verb in both clauses and also in 1 John 2:29: to do sin is to do lawlessness, and this is the opposite of to do righteousness. The one marks the children of God, the other the children of the devil. -Lawlessness" both in English and Greek (ἀνομία) means not the privationof law, but the disregardof it: not the having no law, but the acting as if one had none. This was precisely the case with some of the Gnostic teachers: they declared that their superior enlightenment placed them above the moral law; they were neither the better for keeping it nor the worse for breaking it. Sin and lawlessness, says the Apostle, are convertible terms: they are merely different aspects of the same state. And it is in its aspect of disregard of God's law that sin is seen to be quite irreconcilable with being a child of God and having fellowship with God. See on 1 John 5:17.

Note that throughout these verses (3 15) S. John uses the strong expression, - Everyman that" and not simply -He that." It has been suggested that "in each case where this characteristic form of language occurs there is apparently a reference to some who had questioned the application of a general principle in particular cases" (Westcott): comp. 1Jn 2:23; 1 John 2:29 1 John 4:7, 1 John 5:1; 1Jn 5:4; 1 John 5:18; 2 John 1:9.