08 - 1Jn 1:8
Ἐὰν εἴπωμεν ὅτι ἁμαρτίαν οὐκ ἔχομεν, ἑαυτοὺς πλανῶμεν καὶ ἡ ἀλήθεια οὐκ ἔστιν ἐν ἡμῖν.
After the author has, in the two previous verses, illustrated the first deduction from the Θεὸςφῶς [“God is light”], and exhibited its special blessing, he goes on in this verse to exhibit the second result with its blessing also. This second consequence, the acknowledgment of our sinfulness, has in itself a close connection with what precedes; for we saw that it is involved in the very fact of walking in the light. But the connection is made still closer by the words καθαρίζεσθαιἀπὸπάσηςἁμαρτίας [“to be cleansed from all sin”] at the end of the foregoing verse. If the cleansing from sin is an essential element of our walking in light, so the denial of its necessity is a token of εἶναιἐνσκότει [“being in darkness”]. This inference is also unfolded, like the other, in two antithetical clauses, so that 1Jn 1:8 corresponds with 1Jn 1:6, and 1Jn 1:9 with 1Jn 1:7.
First, then, for the false position, the denial of sin. The expression ἁμαρτίανἔχειν [“to have sin”] requires consideration. It is specifically Johannaean; comp. Joh 9:41;[N]John 15:22, John 15:24, John 19:11. Obviously it says something different from, and indeed something less than, ἐνἁμαρτίᾳεἶναι [“being in sin”]. It is indeed impossible that he who abides ἐνφωτί [“in light”], in the sphere of light, should at the same time continue ἐνσκοτίᾳ [“in darkness”], in the precisely opposite sphere; but there may nevertheless be sin yet in him. Accordingly St. Paul also uses the peculiar form ἐνἁμαρτίᾳεἶναι [“being in sin”] only in the passage 1Co 15:17, where he is denying absolutely any connection with God. He who denies that he has sin, would by that very fact πλανάν [“deceive”] himself. The word occurs in no other document of the New Testament so often as in the Apocalypse. But in all the passages it is employed with a very definitely stamped meaning; never for mere error with express limitation as such, but always for fundamental departure from the truth. It occurs concerning the artifices of Satan, of the Antichrist, of the beast, and once of the false teachers in Thyatira, Rev 2:20, whose work, however, is expressly marked by its signs as fundamental deception. In precisely the same significance is the word used in the only other passage of our Epistle where it occurs, 1Jn 2:26,—that is, of the Antichrist. Finally, we find it twice in the Gospel said concerning the Lord, Joh 7:48, but in the mouth of those who in John 8:1-159 reproached Him with being of the devil, and therefore with the most pregnant meaning used it. Accordingly we must in our passage, too, assume that it is employed in the same sense: “If we say that we have no sin, we enter upon an altogether false course, a godless way of life;” not as if it were only that “we fall into an error.” The application of the word thus found is confirmed by what follows; St. John’s πλανάν [“deceive”] is illustrated by ἡ ἀλήθειαοὐκἔστινἐνἡμῖν [“the truth is not in us”]. As already remarked upon 1Jn 1:6, it is not the apostle’s meaning that in the present matter we have no truth, but ἡ ἀλήθεια [“the truth”] is the truth in the absolute sense. In such a case our whole life and being is fallen into the πλανάν [“deceive”], the empty appearance; we are lacking in any real substantial life. For, where there is even only a trace of life, and of the divine fulness, this must immediately manifest sin to be sin. Hence, where there is no consciousness of sin, there can be not even the beginning of the only true life and its rich substantial meaning.