Sin Unto Death; 1 John 5:16–17
What John is doing at the conclusion of this epistle is wrapping up some key principles that he has emphasised throughout. We need to remember that the overall context of 1 John is that of abiding in Christ, fellowship. The believer needs to abide in Him so that we are not ashamed at His coming. As a result of abiding and maturing to experience the full abundant life that Jesus talked about, John's concept of eternal life is not simply the ongoing life but we must go back to John chapter 10 where Jesus said He didn't come like a thief to destroy but to give life and to give it abundantly. "Give life" is phase one; "abundant life" is reaching the mature, adult spiritual life as a result of spiritual growth. So as a result of that it impacts our prayer life—1 John 5:14, 15.
1 John 5:16 NASB "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."
What is the context? The context is prayer, vv. 14, 15. There are two categories of sin in verse 16, that which leads to death and that which does not lead to death. The verse begins with an "if" in the English, which is a translation of the Greek word ean [e)an], an expression of a third class conditional clause in the Greek, if and it could be either yes, if you do, or no, you don't. It is the true hypothetical—maybe you will see your brother believer and maybe you will not. Part of the application of the principle of loving one another is recognising the fact that we need to pray for one another, and sometimes that involves prayer for someone when we see them get into sin and that is a sin not leading to death. That is what he is talking about, one specific application. This is not an authorisation to get involved in judging, or in gossipping and maligning. "…anyone sees his brother committing a sin…" Here we have a present active participle plus the accusative of hamartia [a(martia], the word which has the idea of missing the mark or falling short of God's standard. Then the phrase "not to death," literally in the Greek. This is the negative me [mh], the preposition pros [proj] and the word thanatos [qanatoj]—not leading to death. When we have pros plus the accusative there are several different emphases one of which is to indicate movement, direction towards someone or something, and it indicates direction in the sense of showing that one course of action results in another course of action—if you do one thing it will result in something else. This should be translated: "If anyone observes another believer sinning a sin not resulting in death."
That brings up another important question: What do we mean by death? We have to remember that in the Scriptures death doesn't mean cessation of existence. The basic idea in Scripture is of separation.
The doctrine of death if Scripture
1. The first kind of death mentioned in Scripture is in Genesis 2:17 when God announced to Adam and the woman that they could eat of any tree in the garden but if they ate from the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil then in that day they would certainly die. This is spiritual death.
2. The second kind of death is physical death. In physical death the soul does not cease existing, it is simply separated from the body. For the unbeliever it means continuing to have a conscious existence but in a place called torments. Luke 16, which is not a parable.
3. The third type of death mentioned in the Scripture is called the second death. This occurs at the great white throne judgment when all unbelievers are sentenced to eternity in the lake of fire. Those who are lost, those who didn't trust Christ, are evaluated on the basis of their works. Sin isn't the issue; none of them are good enough, their righteousness is as filthy rags (Isaiah 64:6) and is all rejected by God; they are judged, condemned and sent to the lake of fire. That is the second death, Revelation 20:12-15.
4. The fourth category of death in the Bible is sexual death, the loss of ability to procreate and to produce children. This was true of Abraham and Sarah, and it happened 10 years before the birth of Isaac to demonstrate that God can bring life where there was death.
5. The fifth kind of death is positional death of the believer—Romans 6:2. The believer is identified positionally and legally with the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Christ. The argument of Paul is that since we have died to sin positionally we must also do so experientially. That means that technically the power and authority of the sin nature was broken and separated at the instant of salvation.
6. The sixth kind of death is carnal death or temporal death. We picked up the term "carnal" from the King James version which issued it to translate the Greek word sarkinos [sarkinoj] in 1 Corinthians 3:1-3. It is a word meaning flesh, so this is a reference to the sin nature. sarkinos is simply the adverbial form meaning fleshly, to live in a way that is characterised by the sin nature. So when the believer is operating on the sin nature he is dead positionally. This is found in James 1:15. So when the believer is out of fellowship he is carnal or in temporal death. In that state he produces dead works.
7. The seventh kind of death in the Scripture is the production of dead works. Hebrews 6:1; Revelation 3:1. Whatever works are accomplished, no matter how good, now have no productivity because they do not originate from the work of the Holy Spirit in the life, so it produces dead works.
8. The eighth category of death in the Scripture is the sin resulting in death, 1 John 5:16. We all commit all kinds of sins that do not result in physical death, so obviously the sin unto death would exclude carnal death or dead works because any time a believer sins he is in dead works. The only option we are left with is that this is talking about a certain kind of physical death, a certain miserable death that is the result of divine discipline.
1 John 5:17 NASB "All unrighteousness is sin, and there is a sin not {leading} to death." The word for unrighteous there is the Greek word adike [a)dikh]. This defines what unrighteousness is; all unrighteousness is sin. And there is a sin that doesn't lead to death. So John wants to make it clear that some sins don't lead to death but there are some sins that do.
The doctrine of the sin unto death
1. The term that we have seen already, pros plus the accusative, indicates result, something resulting in something else. The function of the accusative case there is best described as sin resulting in death. This is the most extreme form of divine discipline that comes from the integrity of God. The integrity of God includes the righteousness of God, which is His absolute standard, the justice of God, which is the application of that standard. So when the righteousness of God rejects something the justice of God must judge or condemn it. So in the life of the believer, when the believer becomes involved in extended sin (carnality) then God in His justice must discipline the believer. So there are different stages of divine discipline but the most extreme and painful form is when the believer stays out of fellowship for a lengthy period of time or commits certain horrible sins that God decides it is time to take him out of the game. That believer is no longer going to be growing and maturing, God may leave him alive for a while to be a test in other people's lives, but eventually he will be taken out.
2. God as a loving Father, as part of His love, executes discipline on believers. It comes from His justice because He loves us—Hebrews 12:5-7 NASB "and you have forgotten the exhortation which is addressed to you as sons, 'MY SON, DO NOT REGARD LIGHTLY THE DISCIPLINE OF THE LORD, NOR FAINT WHEN YOU ARE REPROVED BY HIM; FOR THOSE WHOM THE LORD LOVES HE DISCIPLINES, AND HE SCOURGES EVERY SON WHOM HE RECEIVES.' It is for discipline that you endure; God deals with you as with sons; for what son is there whom {his} father does not discipline?"
3. Certain sins are far worse as far as divine discipline is concerned. Some sins carry triple compound discipline, such as judging—Matthew 7:1, 2.
4. Generally speaking, for the believer in rebellion there are three stages of divine discipline. The first stage is a warning discipline, Revelation 3:20. The point there is that Jesus is outside, He has been excluded from the life of the church, they are out of fellowship and in carnality, and God is going to bring a certain level of discipline in the life to get attention, to confess sin, to get back in fellowship, and to begin applying doctrine. But if that doesn't get attention there will be an intensified discipline and this is the second stage of divine discipline where God takes the believer through suffering for discipline. If that doesn't get the believer's attention then the third stage then the third stage is the sin resulting in death, 1 John 5:16.
5. There are two categories of suffering. First, there is suffering for discipline. Just because we are going through suffering and adversity doesn't mean we are under divine discipline. There are different reasons in life for which we go through adversity. We go through adversity because we are living in Satan's cosmic system and there is going to be random adversity and suffering. Other times we go through suffering for blessing. God allows us suffering in our lives to give us opportunities to trust Him and to apply doctrine so that we can mature and grow spiritually and so that our spiritual growth might accelerate.
6. The sin unto death is related to the stages of reversionism, where the believer reverts to his former manner of life as an unbeliever. The first stage is reaction and distraction. Something happens in life. We go through something that we think is unjustified and so we react to it in anger, hostility, bitterness, etc., and we are distracted from spiritual advance because of a negative reaction to suffering in our life. Rather than be transformed through doctrine we start letting the sin nature control and we are out of fellowship. We can recover through confession of sin, 1 John 1:9, but if we continue to react through wrong decisions then eventually we give up on doctrine and rather than using doctrine to find stability we start looking for stability in something else in life, which we call the frantic search for happiness. When that continues it results in soul poverty—Psalm 106:15, referring to leanness of soul, emptiness, non-satisfaction. The more we search for happiness, the more it become elusive and the more the believer becomes bored, disillusioned, frustrated, and it becomes a terrible cycle between soul poverty and the search for happiness. This eventually leads to an emotional revolt of the soul where the believer is just operating on emotion all the time, constantly trying to find happiness, constantly making decisions based on what makes him feel better and what gives him some measure of happiness or pleasure. This then leads to ingrained negative volition. He becomes more and more negative as he reacts to God, nothing makes him happy, it is all God's fault, and by this stage his reverse is almost impossible because he has dug himself into such a pit of carnality and bitterness and anger and resentment toward God that he now completely turns away from the truth. This leads to a blackout of the soul based on the Greek word mataiotes [mataiothj] in Ephesians 4:17 where Paul talks about the gentiles who are walking around in the emptiness or vacuum of their souls. Once one has rejected doctrine and the soul is empty there is a vacuum and all kinds of false ideas are sucked in, false teaching, any kind of philosophical system that says it can provide happiness and meaning in life. But on the inside there is just a miserable person. He is developing scar tissue on the soul, which is called the hardness of heart or neck in John 14:20; Nehemiah 9:16, 17, and hardening the face in Proverbs 21:29-31. There is no longer any sensitivity to the convincing ministry of God the Holy Spirit through the Word of God and the believer ends up in full-blown cosmic degeneracy where he is thinking and acting like the world and there is absolutely no difference between him and many unbelievers. In this final stage of reversionism God will often pull the believer out of the angelic conflict game, as it were, to the sin unto death.