‘Every one who practises sin practises also lawlessness, and sin is lawlessness, and you know that he was manifested to take away sins; and in him is no sin. Whosoever abides in him does not sin. Whoever goes on sinning has not seen him, nor knows him.'
To continue sinning without regard, says John, is to be lawless. It is to reject the will of God, and to refuse to walk in His ways. It is to reject His authority. To go on sinning without regard to God's commandments (whether old or new) is lawlessness. For sin is lawlessness. And those who walk in that way are rejecting God, however religious they may be. And the one who has received such a gift as has been described cannot be like that. It is impossible.
Those who believe that He was manifested, openly revealed through His life and teaching and subjected to His self-humiliation, in order to get rid of sin and lawlessness, and to take them away (John 1:29) through His sacrifice on the cross, and that He was and is Himself sinless, can surely not themselves cling to sin? It must surely be abhorrent to them, as it is abhorrent to Him. Thus those who claim to know Him and to remain with Him, to dwell with Him, will if it is true not practise sin, they will not ‘go on sinning' without regard, and those who do continue ‘going on sinning' with little concern simply reveal that they have not seen Him nor known Him. For the effect of ‘seeing' Him is to want to be like Him, and the effect of ‘knowing' Him is to be aware that He is light, and that sin cannot dwell in His presence, and that therefore all darkness must be done away.
John was not self-deceived. He was well aware that he and his fellow-disciples had sinned often while they travelled with Jesus during His earthly manifestation of Himself, and equally often had had to be rebuked, but he also knew well that it was not because they were careless about sin. They wanted not to sin but were hindered both by their own weakness and by ignorance. The same had continued to a lesser extent after the resurrection (Galatians 2:11-13; 1 Timothy 1:15). They had not suddenly become totally sinless. But the point is that they had wanted not to sin (compare Romans 6:12-14; Romans 7:14-25), and when they discovered that they had, they had been ashamed of their sin, and they had sought forgiveness. They had wanted to be done with sin. (Compare 1 John 1:7 to 1 John 2:2). It is another thing totally to practise sin without regard, or as a religious statement as a result of wrong belief.
These words conform quite clearly with Jesus own teaching. ‘Why do you call Me Lord, Lord, and do not do what I say?' (Luke 6:46; Matthew 7:21-22). Such people deliberately do not seek to do the will of God, and the end of such is the ruin of the house that they have built, the ruin of their lives (Luke 6:49), and they suffer rejection from the Kingly Rule of God because they do not want His rule (Matthew 7:21-23). It is clear that Jesus did not make a differentiation between a superior and an inferior kind of Christian, one who abides and one who does not abide. It is one thing to struggle against sin and fail, it is another not to be concerned about sin. The latter is to reject the will of God.
Some have tried to argue that the present tense cannot have this meaning unless qualified in some way. But that is not so. The present tense can mean precisely this, and as with much language its meaning must be determined by its whole context.
‘In Him is no sin.' The theme of Jesus' sinlessness appears in John 8:46, where Jesus asked his adversaries, “Which of you is able to convict me of sin?”, a question to which his adversaries gave no answer. The same theme of the sinlessness of Jesus is found in, for example, 2 Corinthians 5:21; 1 Peter 2:22 and it is directly affirmed by the author's words here. He was the perfect Lamb of God. There was no blemish in Him.
We must remember that one reason for this contrast between those who go on sinning and those who do not is the false teaching of their opponents. It seems that some of them taught that sin was not important, it was simply a manifestation of the flesh, and they believed the flesh was not important. One day the soul would discard the flesh. Thus the flesh could do what it liked. It was thus not really sin at all. So they could go on ‘sinning' as much as they liked. (Others, though not involved here, sought to deal with the flesh by punishing it, by asceticism). What mattered was to purify the soul by obtaining esoteric knowledge. Some even taught, ‘let us continue in sin that grace may abound' (Romans 6:1; Romans 6:15). No, says John, those who practise sin and go on sinning without regard are not of God, and are in direct contrast with those who recognise that sin is important, and though weak and failing (1 John 1:8-10), have done away with sin in Christ (1Jn 1:7; 1 John 1:9; 1 John 2:1-2) and seek to do away with sin in their lives.
Show me a man who says, ‘It does not matter whether I sin or not' and I will show you a man who has not received God's life within him.