80 - 1Jn 5:16
Ἐάν τις ἴδῃ τὸν ἀδελφὸν αὑτοῦ ἁμαρτάνοντα ἁμαρτίαν μὴ πρὸς θάνατον, αἰτήσει, καὶ δώσει αὐτῷ ζωὴν, τοῖς ἁμαρτάνουσι μὴ πρὸς θάνατον. ἔστιν ἁμαρτία πρὸς θάνατον, οὐ περὶ ἐκείνης λέγω ἵνα ἐρωτήσῃ.
What follows shows that intercession has for its aim the winning of our brethren for the kingdom of God. But, before we look closely at the link between 1Jn 5:16-17 and what precedes, we must examine the meaning of the verses themselves. What are we to understand by the ἁμαρτίαπρὸςθάνατον [“sin unto death”]? At the outset it is clear that the apostle has in view sin which irrevocably shuts the gates of eternal life, the consequence of which is death in its most awful character. That there is such a sin, or that there are such sins, is affirmed by the New Testament in other places (Mat 12:31 and parallels; Heb 6:4 ff.); and this lies at the foundation of all such passages as proclaim an eternal condemnation. What is peculiar and startling in our passage is this, that our intercession is made to depend upon the question whether or not the sin is πρὸςτὸνθάνατον [“to the death”], thus indicating that its character as such may be and is discernible by us. Now our possible knowledge of this absolutely mortal kind of sin may be fairly questioned. In Mat 12:1-50 our Lord sees the Pharisees in the manifest act of committing a sin, or the sin unto death, πρὸςθάνατον [“unto death”] (which of the two let us at present leave undecided), because they would assign His works to the inspiration of Beelzebub; but, on the other hand. He prays for His murderers, and therefore did not, according to our present passage, regard the sin unto death as consummate in them: now in these cases would not human eyes have judged the very opposite? Saul heard the rejecting words of the prophet, while David’s sin was forgiven; but according to appearances, and therefore so far as men could judge, was not David’s sin much heavier than the sin of Saul? And, to speak generally, it is impossible to decide confidently the greater or less alienation of a sinner from eternal life on the ground of the more or less violent demonstration of his sin as an act. For, even as a hardened sinner may be brought round by the divine grace and saved from destruction, so may a man, devout in the eyes of his fellows, become perfectly reprobate to everything divine. Or are we to assume that there is one definite and definable sin which is absolutely πρὸςθάνατον [“unto death”]? But would not the apostle, in that case, have taken care to warn against it, and to mention it by name? Would he not at least have written ἔστινἁμαρτίατις [“there is a certain sin”] or μίαἁμαρτίαπρὸςθάνατον [“only one sin unto death”]? These difficulties can be solved only by observing what St. John elsewhere teaches concerning the ideas lying before us: first, that of the sin; and, secondly, that of the prayer. As to the former, it is demonstrable that St. John measures all sin by the relation it assumes to Jesus Christ. In Joh 1:5 he describes sin to the effect that the σκοτίᾳτὸφῶςοὐκατέλαβε [“darkness has not mastered the light”], and thus places it in direct opposition to the light which appeared in Christ. Our Lord says, in Joh 8:24, ἀποθανεῖσθε ἐν ταῖς ἁμαρτίαις ὑμῶν· ἐὰν γὰρ μὴ πιστεύσητε ὅτι ἐγώ εἰμι, ἀποθανεῖσθε ἐν ταῖς ἁμαρτίαις ὑμῶν [“you that you will die in your sins; for unless you believe thatI am,you will die in your sins”]. He thereby assigns the real ground of death—that is, of eternal death—to the state of unbelief towards Himself. Finally, in Joh 16:8-9,[N] He defines the judgment or conviction of the Spirit to be this, that He ἐλέγξει τὸν κόσμον περὶ ἁμαρτίας [“he will convict the world concerning sin”]; and what sin He has in view appears plain from the subsequent words, ὅτι οὐ πιστεύουσιν εἰς ἐμέ [“because they do not believe in me”]. In our Epistle, St. John defines the nature of the Antichrist, who is, however, the Pauline ἀνθρωπος τῆςἁμαρτίας [“man of sin” cf. 2Th 2:3], the incarnation of sin, as that of one who denieth the Son, 1Jn 2:21; and also, in 1Jn 4:3, as that of one who λύειἸησοῦνΧριστὸν ἐν σαρκὶ ἐληλυθότα [“to dissolve Jesus Christ has come in the flesh”]. From all this we must infer that the essential sin, which makes all other sin to be sin, is in the apostle’s estimation unbelief in our Lord. And no doctrine is more firmly established in the New Testament than this, that we shall hereafter be judged by the relation in which we stand to the Son. According to the measure in which any act betrays the mark that tins relation subsists aright, or does not yet subsist, or has ceased to subsist, according to the measure in which any action confirms, or interrupts, or entirely dissolves this relation, is the value of that action and its estimation before the divine judgment-seat.
Accordingly, the sin unto death can be no other than consummate enmity to Christ. It is obvious how perfectly this thought is in accordance with the tenor of our Epistle: the kingdom of the world and the kingdom of God, Christ and Antichrist, life and death, are the fundamental ideas and inseparable antitheses which govern it throughout. But however clear it is, that in harmony with his general views St. John might have regarded unbelief in Christ as the conclusive and consummate sin, yet this is not here expressly stated; the words have too general a bearing to be a mere paraphrase of “Antichrist;” they lead our minds rather to practical errors than to an intellectual ἀρνεῖσθαι [“denial”]. Moreover, while the antichrists, according to the second chapter, certainly ἐξῆλθανἐξἡμῶν [“they went out from us”], they are at the present time sundered from the church, and no longer are regarded as belonging to it; and those who are the ἁμαρτάνοντες πρὸς θάνατον[“sinners unto death”]; are supposed to be still living in the bosom of the community. The sinner is described as an ἀδελφός[“brother”]; and we have seen that throughout the Epistle this name indicates Christians alone. The world comes into St. John’s view in this document only as to be avoided; the intercession which may be urged on behalf also of the children oi the world is never alluded to here. Thus we have reached the twofold result: first, that, on the one hand, St. John must, in harmony with his whole system of thought, have regarded the determinate sin as apostasy from Christ; and, on the other, that he here at least speaks not of any theoretical denial of Him, and not of any external apostasy. We must not, therefore, accept the sin unto death and the antichrist nature as ideas of the same exact import.
Let us, for the sake of a more thorough understanding of the matter, look at the development of sin in men generally. If every man is consigned in biblical teaching either to salvation or perdition according to his conduct during his bodily life, it is clear that he must on earth have become ripe for one or the other; that no man dies without being a child of heaven or a child of hell. The latter case is then only possible when the accesses of the converting grace of God are effectually closed, and every possibility of its influence cut off; for, so long as this is not the case, the final decision and full maturity cannot be predicated. In other words, every organ for the reception of the Spirit of participation in the kingdom of God must have withered and died; and that moment in which the decision follows, in which the evil principle attains the absolute supremacy, is that which is the essentially condemning crisis. That act, external or internal, which in this crisis is consummate, is the ἁμαρτίαπρὸςθάνατον [“sin unto death”]: the sin, which finishes irrevocably the soul’s death. It is involved in this, that no deed as such, in virtue of its external character and quality, is the ἁμαρτίαπρὸςθάνατον [“sin unto death”]; for no sin—be it named what it may—is in itself too great for the mercy and the might of the Lord; but a sin becomes the ἁμαρτίαπρὸςθάνατον [“sin unto death”] in virtue of the interior quality out of which it springs and of which it gives the fatal evidence. Such a central position, one that determines the whole life of man through eternity, can be assumed by no sin of infirmity; only a sin of presumptuous wickedness, that is, such a sin as is committed in spite of the power to resist it,—such a sin as man commits not only in resistance to the protest of conscience, but in contempt of the gracious power proffered to avoid it,—such a sin as he is not seduced into, but commits in the pure love of sinning: thus it is not simply a human sin, but sin that is essentially devilish. The Old Testament analogue of our ἁμαρτίαπρὸςθάνατον [“sin unto death”] is found in those passages where sins בְּיַדרָמָה [“with a high hand”fn] are spoken of, on which rests the curse, נִכְרְתָ֛ההוֹּאנֶּ֥פֶשׁהַ [“that person will be cut off”]. Excommunication from the people of God was in the old covenant what now exclusion from the kingdom of God is. Thus every sinful act may be an ἁμαρτίαπρὸςθάνατον [“sin unto death”], while no act is such in itself; hence the apostle does not use the article, nor could he use it. Ἔστινἁμαρτίαπρὸςθάνατον [“it is a sin unto death”]: in the domain of sin there is such a kind as is absolutely mortal. But when Christ calls Himself the door of the kingdom of God, ὁ ἔχων τὴν κλεῖδα τοῦ Δαβίδ, ὁ ἀνοίγων καὶ οὐδεὶς κλείει, καὶ κλείει καὶ οὐδεὶς ἀνοίγει [“the one who has the key of David, who opens and no one will shut, and who shuts and no one opens” cf. Rev 3:7], it is plain that absolute death can be reached only when all relation to Him is broken off. If the apostle, as we have seen, thinks here of members of the congregation, the sin unto death can consist only in their having internally and in act—if it were externally done, and by words, they would indeed be no longer members of the congregation—burst the last bond of their fellowship with Christ. According to Joh 1:14, Christ brought grace and truth. As truth the antichrists rejected Him, as grace the sinners unto death: more precisely, the antichrists were introduced by the apostle in the aspect of their rejection of Christ the truth; and the sinners unto death in the aspect of their rejection of the grace. This extended observation has demonstrated that sin unto death does not signify any definite external form of sin, but the sin through which the internal link between God and man is severed and the gulf fixed absolutely.’’ But this infers how difficult it must be to discern whether any man can in such a sense have sinned πρὸςθάνατον [“unto death”] or not. How then can it be introduced as a test for the offering or the withholding of our intercessory prayer? If this question is not solved by studying the idea of ἁμαρτίαπρὸςθάνατον [“sin unto death”], it may be solved by studying the nature of the prayer. In His last discourses our Lord exhibits prayer in His name as something that the disciples had never hitherto exercised, but which must be unconditionally answered with acceptance. The promise is perfectly unrestricted; if one single exception were possible, the promise would be invalidated. On the other hand, Scripture testifies that many men enter into the way of eternal death: is not a prayer ever to be offered up to heaven on their behalf? According to the Lord’s word it stands eternally fast, that if such prayer ever did go up ἐν τῷ ὀνόματι Ἰησοῦ [“in the name of Jesus”], ἐνπαρρησίᾳ [“with boldness”], as our passage terms it, that is, if the petitioner ceased to be the mere man, but were the Spirit of Jesus Christ dwelling in him, and moving his heart to such intercessory prayer; thus, if his petitions were like the petitions of the Lord Himself, already in their essence thanksgivings,—these all being the signs of prayer in the name of Jesus,—then must his supplication be heard and answered, and it were impossible that the soul interceded for should perish.
It follows, conversely, that if a soul perishes, that soul has never been thus prayed for, and never could have been thus prayed for. Many petitions, indeed, in the ordinary and more general sense may have been offered for him,—such petitions, for instance, as we offer for temporal things, uttering our wishes as children to our heavenly Father,—but not prayers in the name or in the person of Christ, in the full and inwrought consciousness that they are heard, not such prayers as offer violence to the kingdom of heaven. Prayers of the higher order like these are, however, the proper Christian prayers, and such are inwrought of God alone; but He cannot inspire them in regard to men concerning whom He knows that they will perish. Such considerations as these will help to make our verse intelligible. The apostle says that if any man sees τὸνἀδελφὸναὑτοῦ [“his brother”], his own brother bound to him by the bonds of the most interior love, sinning,—ἁμαρτίανἁμαρτάνειν [“to sin sin”] is quite general, without limitation to any particular kind of sin,—and has the conviction (the subjective μὴ [“may not”] is used) that the sin is not unto death, then—and now follows not an exhortation, but a declaration—he will pray, he will, simply because it is his brother, feel himself constrained to pray for him. We must not interpret the future αἰτήσει [“he will ask”], like the futures of the ten commandments, as the strongest form of the imperative speech; for it must certainly be understood in the same sense as the future δώσει [“he will give”] near at hand, and that would not tolerate any such imperative meaning. A Christian, the apostle tells us, cannot do otherwise than run by intercession to the help of an erring brother. And, as definitely as this prayer will be offered, the result of it will also be definite, δώσειαὐτῷζωὴν [“he will give to him life”]. The subject in δώσει [“he will give”] cannot be God; that would be harsh, in immediate view of the preceding αἰτήσει [“he will ask”], which has man for the subject, especially as God is not mentioned anywhere else in the whole verse. Nor is the thought that man may by his prayer give life to his brother a repellent one; in Jas 5:20, and in a perfectly similar connection, we read that σώσειψυχὴνἐκθανάτου [“he will save his soul from death”]. We have here, therefore, no direct contradiction to the seemingly opposite statement that no man can redeem his brother; for believing prayer, and consequently its result also, the δοῦναιζωὴν [“to give life”], rests essentially on divine operation, and impulse from above. The expression δώσειζωὴν [“he will give life”] shows, however, how the ἁμαρτίαπρὸςθάνατον [“sin unto death”] must be taken; to wit, that a sin so named is left to death irredeemable. In a sense, every sin must be exposed to death, otherwise there would be no giving of life to be thought of. The explanatory words that follow, τοῖςἁμαρτάνουσιμὴπρὸςθάνατον [“those sinning not unto death”], introduce really nothing new, for the preceding conditional clause has already brought forward the same element; but the repetition is intended to impress more deeply on the readers two things: first, by means of the plural τοῖςἁμαρτάνουσι [“those sinning”], that the result indicated will follow, not in isolated cases, but in every one; and, secondly, that the limitation must be ever remembered which is bound up with it, μὴπρὸςθάνατον [“not unto death”].