What Is the ‘Sin Not Leading to Death’ in 1 John 5

Introduction

First before exegeting any passage of the Bible it needs to be understood its historical context, authorship, and intended audience. In the Introduction to 1 John in the NIV Study Bible, Donald W. Burdick writes:

Author:
Unlike most NT letters, 1 John does not tell us who the author is. The earliest identification of him comes from the church fathers: Irenaeus (A.D. 140-203), Clement of Alexandria (A.D. 155-215), Tertullian (A.D. 150-220) and Origen (A.D. 185-253) all designated the writer as the apostle John. As far as we know, no one else was suggested by the early church.1

Purpose:
John’s readers were confronted with an early, first century, form of Gnostic teaching of the Cerinthian variety…This heresy was also libertine throwing off all moral restraints.2

Date:
Irenaeus and Clement of Alexandria suggest the letter was written after John’s Gospel (circa A.D. 85) and before A.D. 95.3

Text to Consider:

1 John 5:16-17 - LSB

If anyone sees his brother committing a sin not leading to death, he shall ask and God will for him give life to those who commit sin not leading to death. There is a sin leading to death; I do not say that he should make request for this. All unrighteousness is sin, and there is a sin not leading to death.

Physical Death or Spiritual Death?

Physical Death

If John is speaking about physical death, then the interpretation goes like this: Not all sins lead to physical death. If you see someone doing something that will hurt them physically, then pray for them. But if someone sins, and as a result of their sin they die, then there is no need to continue praying for them after they are physically deceased.

In the broader context of this epistle there is a large emphasis made by John that Christians are not enslaved by sin. 1 John 3:9: “No one born of God makes a practice of sinning.” Everywhere else where John talks about sinning (1:8ff), (2:1-2), (3:4ff), (5:16ff), nowhere does John makes reference to a physical death. It is for this reason that I find this interpretation lacking.

Spiritual Death

Unlike the first interpretation, I believe that this death, which is spiritual, is based on what John has been saying throughout this epistle.

When we read in v. 16 that if someone is “committing a sin not leading to death…” the original text is not referring to any specific sin. This is because there is no indefinite article in Greek (a/an). In Greek, it’s all the same.

ἁμαρτάνοντα ἁμαρτίαν

John Piper, in his article: What Is the Sin Not Leading to Death? says that in v. 16 the passage is talking about “sin” in general, not “a” particular sin specifically.

He goes on to explain:

We need to make sure that we see these two verses as part of the larger balancing act that John is doing in this letter. On the one hand, there’s a strong emphasis in 1 John that those who are truly born of God don’t go on sinning. On the other hand, John warns against misunderstanding that in a perfectionistic way as though Christians don’t sin anymore.

On the one side, you don’t keep on sinning if you’re born again. On the other side, you don’t ever stop sinning in this world. In other words, John is trying to strike a balance between the absolute necessity of the new birth, which necessarily gives a significant measure of victory over sin. That’s the one side. On the other hand, there’s the reality that we do in fact as Christians commit sins and can find forgiveness as we confess them.

John is striking the note firmly that we should not take anything he has said in a perfectionistic way that implies Christians don’t sin or that all sin leads to damnation. It doesn’t.

Christians do sin, and not all sin leads to damnation. But right there in the middle, verse 16, near the end of the verse, he puts in a disclaimer. He says, “When I tell you to pray for sinners I recognize that Jesus taught about unforgivable sin, and I recognize that Hebrews taught about Esau, and I do acknowledge that there is sin that does lead to death and damnation. It puts you beyond repentance. And I’m not talking about that.” That’s the point of that verse. “I’m not talking about that when I tell you to pray for those who have sinned.” He doesn’t tell us not to pray for such sin, he simply says, “That’s not what I’m talking about when I tell you to pray for sinners that God will give them life.”

So What is This Sinning That Leads to Death?

Any sin we commit that we are, by grace, capable of truly confessing and repenting from does not lead to death.

References

1. Donald W. Burdick, NIV Study Bible, 2002, p. 2573

2. Burdick, p. 2575

3. Burdick, p. 2574