Free Bible Commentary
“First John 5:16-17”
Categories: First John“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.”
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John assured us in verses 13-15 that if we are living faithfully as God’s obedient children through “the name of the Son of God,” we can have “confidence…that He hears us in whatever we ask.” But he lets us know in today’s verses that all prayer requests are not appropriate. We should not “make request” for a brother if we know he is “committing a sin…leading to death” (verse 16). When we know that a brother or sister in Christ is involved in something sinful, the appropriate impulse from a loving and righteous heart is to pray for the erring Christian. But the apostle of the Lord warns us to not pray forgiveness for the brother caught up in a “deadly sin”.
Before anyone can accurately interpret the meaning of this perplexing little statement, it must first be recognized that “all unrighteousness is sin” (verse 17). All sinfulness is a killer because sin is the transgression of God’s law (1 John 3:4), and it subjects us to His divine displeasure. Sin erects a wall between God and the sinner (Isaiah 59:1-2), and it required the Father to offer up His perfectly sinless Son to break down that barrier. “A sin leading to death” is not one particular sin, but any sin that a Christian refuses to turn from and let go of. Any and all sin has the potential to kill us spiritually for all eternity, but the eternal consequences can be avoided by confession (1 John 1:9), godly sorrow and repentance (2 Corinthians 7:9).
We should never expect God to forgive us of a sin that we refuse to turn from, and we should not pray for God to forgive a brother in Christ when he has fully given himself over to the way of unrighteousness. There comes a point in time when the heart can grow so calloused, and sin has such a tight death-grip that the sinner becomes “beyond feeling” (Ephesians 4:19). The Hebrew writer says that a sinner can be so far gone that it is essentially “impossible to renew them again to repentance" (Hebrews 4:4-6). But John gives us hope in today’s reading. He tells us we can effectively pray for the erring child of God whose conscience is still operative, and whose heart is soft enough to still be touched by the love of God and the word of truth, and he can find forgiveness.
There is ample reason to believe, based on the overriding issue being addressed in this letter, that John has a brother who is caught up in doctrinal error specifically in mind. He refuted the troublers who were teaching that Christ had not come in bodily form, that human flesh was inherently evil and therefore it was useless and unnecessary to even try to fight against the urge to sin. Undoubtedly there were some brethren who had not tested the spirits to determine whether they were from God (1 John 4:1), and had succumbed to the apostasy that the false teachers were fueling. Gross immorality and doctrinal impurity both fall within the class of “sin leading to death.” It matters what you believe. It matters what you teach. It matters what you practice. It matters how you worship. All doctrines are not acceptable to God, and, in fact only one is: “The doctrine of Christ” (2 John 1:9-11).
Please read 1 John 5:19-21 for tomorrow.
Have a great day!
-Louie Taylor
