Whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin. — The Cambridge MS. and some of the Fathers omit the words “of sin”; but this is clearly to avoid the difficulty of the connection of thought, and they must be regarded as an integral part of the text.
Committeth sin. — The Greek word is a present participle, expressing the continuance of the deeds of sin. It means, not simply the committing individual sins, from which no man is free, but the state of the life which is sinful; the state which is opposed to doing the will of the Father, and is expressed in other words as “working iniquity” (Matthew 7:21; Matthew 7:23.) The truth is taught in the generality of a well-known maxim, but it has for them a special application. They claimed to be Abraham’s seed, and therefore free. Let their lives decide the question of their freedom. He could appeal (John 8:28-29) to a perfect harmony with the divine will, and therefore had a perfect freedom. For many of them the voice of conscience must have spoken in terrible words, and must have revealed the chain which had bound them, hand and foot, in the slavery of sin.
Is the servant of sin. — The word means bondservant, or slave. It has been rendered by “bondman,” and this brings out the connection of the word with that for “was in bondage,” in the last verse.
It is striking that we have this same thought in the letters of both St. Paul and St. Peter. (See margin.)