1 John 3:5-7

1 John 3:5-7. And in him is no sin. Whosoever abideth in him sinneth not: whosoever sinneth hath not seen him, neither knoweth him. My little children, let no man lead you astray: he that doeth righteousness is righteous, even as he is righteous. Here first enters the apostle's high testimony to the sinlessness of the estate of fellowship with Christ: a testimony which recurs again and again, and is finally made one of the three summary points of the whole Epistle. Interpretations of his testimony differ according to the doctrinal views of those who offer them: their classification is needless here, as each will appear in its place. Suffice it to say that St. John in every case explains his own meaning in the context; and we shall find that the leading methods of exposition have each its measure of truth when itself is rightly expounded. In this passage the keynote is the danger of being led astray. St. John addresses his readers by the affectionate term which bespeaks the solemnity of the subject, and warns them against a deception which he regards as even in their case possible. The deceiver is no other than the worker of iniquity who thinks himself released from law, and would and might induce them to follow him. To say ‘that we have no sin' is in chap. 1 John 1:8 self-deception; to say that we may know Christ and ‘continue in sin' (using St. Paul's phrase) is, after being saved, to be deceived by another: in the former case the Christian life has not begun, in the latter it is endangered from without. The deception looks back to the negative assertion of 1 John 3:6, and forward to the positive assertion of 1 John 3:7, and might have occupied its own verse between them. With regard to the former, the whole argument is in that grand negation: ‘in Him there is no sin,' the ‘is' is the eternal present of that Son of God ‘whose glory is that of the Only-begotten, full of grace and truth.' The deceiver might not challenge that: although both in ancient and in modern times a certain germ of unrighteousness has been supposed to have been taken with our fallen nature which the Redeemer expelled from Himself; or it has been deemed necessary to maintain at least the possibility of sinning in the tempted Saviour. We may be sure that neither of these notions ever beclouded the apostle's apprehension of his Lord, the Son of God manifested in flesh. ‘Whosoever abideth in' this sinless Being himself sinneth not: ‘out of His fulness he receives grace upon grace,' in continuous and sufficient measure to keep him from sin: the abiding is the condition, and it is the explanation of this wonderful word. This is admitted by many, who speak of it as the ideal state of a man in Christ: an ideal it is, just as it is an ideal in Christ; but no more. The word is inappropriate, however true in itself, if it is regarded as distinguished from the realization. The converse follows, as usual with changed terms: ‘he that sinneth,' as the characteristic of his life, and sinneth while professing to believe in Jesus, ‘hath not seen Him, never saw Him nor sees Him now, with that spiritual eye that ‘beholds the glory of the Only-begotten, full of grace and truth,' for it seems evident that St. John is thinking of his own Prologue; nor indeed has ever come to any saving knowledge of Him whatever. So far from abiding in Him, he has never had any spiritual fellowship with Him-: the order with St. John is to know, to see, and to abide in the Son of God, who is eternal life. With regard to the latter deception, St. John adopts the positive tone, though a negation is implied: declaring what had been the issue in his mind from the beginning of this section, that the righteousness of Christ is through regeneration imputed to the believer. What then was the delusion to which they were exposed? That, evidently, of supposing that a man might be in a state of righteousness, accepted as ‘righteous,' without doing the works of righteousness. Here then the apostle identifies the works of righteousness and the character of righteousness; still in such a way as to make the deeds evidence of the state. He whose practice, inward and outward, in thought and word and spirit, is conformed to the law, and only he, is in the sight of God righteous. There is some difficulty in the final words ‘as He is righteous.' We cannot suppose that they are intended to obviate perversion of the Pauline doctrine of our ‘being made the righteousness of God in Him,' as if the meaning were that we are as well as are accounted righteous in Jesus, that is, through seeing Him and knowing Him and abiding in Him. The simplest view is that Christ is the standard, as of our holiness and of our filial dignity, so also of our righteousness. ‘Even as He is' refers to all the three, and in the most marked manner. How far we may conform to that standard is a question that must be answered with caution: ‘as He is' does not refer to a participation in the Lord's perfect righteousness in the most absolute sense; but, on the other hand, the righteousness as a principle of universal obedience to the law is by the whole strain of the present argument suppose I to be reflected in us. As our regenerate life is His life in us, so our purification is to be as He is pure, and our righteousness as He is righteous.