1 John 5 -16 :- If you see any brother or sister commit a sin that does not lead to death, you should pray and God will give them life. I refer to those whose sin does not lead to death. There is a sin that leads to death. I am not saying that you should pray about that.

I recently had a mature brother share in my Church on the meaning of Sin leading to death. It was very prophetic. I never thought this sin was that serious and could lead to death.

Here John is asking believers to not pray for a fellow brother who is committing a sin leading to death. So whatever that sin is, it is does not demand prayer from fellow brothers.

1 John 4:20- If anyone says, “I love God,” but hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen.

1 John 3:15 :- Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that eternal life does not reside in a murderer.

So the sin that leads to death is a sin of hatred towards a fellow brother in Christ. John says he does not have eternal life. He might have had eternal life before, but not now. So when we find a fellow brother in Christ hating us, we should not even pray for this brother.

Where did John learn it from? He learnt it from Jesus. Jesus did not pray for Judas. Peter committed a serious sin of denying Jesus. But Jesus still prayed for him that his faith should not fail. But there is no record of Jesus praying for Judas after the sin to betray Jesus entered Judas. In fact Jesus asked him to do it quickly!

It is easy to imagine that we are good and never hate another brother in Christ, without being part of a local body of believers. But once you get into a local body and have to work with brothers who are different from you, then only you will be tested in this sin. I believe due to this hatred, many have already withdrawn from local body of believers. It is easy to love brothers in Christ who are persecuted in distant nation. But difficult to fellowship in a committed relation with a body of believers.

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Sreeram

I disagree on several points.

A man who hates his brother has never been born again to begin with. Divine love is proof of salvation. You can do miracles, understand all mysteries, prophesy, speak in tongues all day long, move mountains with your faith, memorize the Bible in 10 languages, but if you don't have love, you have nothing.

And I don't see why Judas could have not been forgiven. After all, we all were responsible for putting Jesus on the cross.

As I see it, the only unforgivable sin is a persistent, obstinate refusal of the work of the Holy Spirit when you know Him to be working. Only God knows when a person crosses that line.

In Christ,
-Nigel

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Nigel Holland

Some interesting thoughts, I always wished that John had given us a little more detail on "sin unto death." But I would tend to agree with Nigel, I have always thought that the "sin unto death" was described in these verses;

Verily I say unto you, All sins shall be forgiven unto the sons of men, and blasphemies wherewith soever they shall blaspheme: But he that shall blaspheme against the Holy Ghost hath never forgiveness, but is in danger of eternal damnation:(Mark 3:28-29)

I think we should be careful when it comes to stopping to pray for someone, when I remember that God saved a wretch like me I am hopeful for all people.

In Christ,

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Ron Halverson

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Sreeram

Matthew 12:31 says, "Wherefore I say unto you, All manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men: but the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost shall not be forgiven unto men."

With all due respect, I don't see anything about hating your brother in that verse.

1 John 4:20 says,"If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?"

So it would seem there are false converts, people called "brothers".

I don't believe in eternal security, but I do believe it is incredibly hard to lose your salvation. Jesus doesn't just drop us like a hot potato if we are unloving sometimes. I believe when the scriptures refer to people who hate other people (and in a broader sense every person on the planet is a "brother") or don't love other people, it indicates a heart condition. Lost people are incapable of divine love.

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Nigel Holland

You said,
“He might have had eternal life before, but not now."

Not so!


Jesus said,
I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish;
John 10:28

It's either eternal life,or it's not eternal life. You must remove the word eternal which preceeds the word life, to make it fit your doctrine.

And as for Judas Iscariot, he's called the son of perdition. Just as Jesus told the Pharisees that their father was the devil,so also with Judas.Neither Judas nor the Pharisees of whom He spoke, had ever been born from above.

He is both the Author and Finisher of our faith

Soli Deo Gloria

Why should everything be connected to losing salvation? I believe that Eternal life is a gift of God and like any gift, this gift can also be lost. I believe that is purely scriptural. But this post is not connected with losing salvation. Hence I am not interested in answering all the half quoted scriptures here. A brother who is committing a sin leading to death as mentioned in 1 John 5:16, can still repent and come back as Jesus mentioned in Mattew 18:15.

“If your brother sins, go and [l]show him his fault [m]in private; if he listens to you, you have won your brother. 16 But if he does not listen to you, take one or two more with you, so that by the mouth of two or three witnesses every [n]fact may be confirmed. 17 If he refuses to listen to them, tell it to the church; and if he refuses to listen even to the church, let him be to you as [o]a Gentile and a tax collector. 18 Truly I say to you, whatever you [q]bind on earth shall have been bound in heaven; and whatever you [s]loose on earth shall have been loosed in heaven.


But I see a great danger of Calvinistic view here, because of such a view, you see this scripture (1 John 5:16) as written to false brothers and not for them. That is a serious erroneous state to be in. Because their false theology has blinded their eyes, they start to think that this sin cannot be found in them and it should be a false alert!

I do not hold such theology, every warning and alert in scripture is applicable to me as well. I believe that every born again believer can fall into the sin leading to death. John is not giving us a false warning here.

The reason I have posted this thread is to show the grievous nature of such a sin of hating brother. You might not have witnessed it, I have witnessed it. In the context of local Church, when a brother with whom we fellowship intimately might get offended with us and leave the Church. There is nothing wrong in leaving the Church, but they also try to make false claims to justify their stand against the Church. They try to impress other members of the body to leave like them as well. This is just the same stand that lucifer took when he pulled 1/3 of angels in Heaven with him, when he fell. We even see that in SI, when people get offended with SI moderators, they try to post a farewell post, often defending themselves and posting false accusation of how SI has lost favor with God etc! 1 John 5:16 talks about such brothers. It says not to even pray for such brothers.

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Sreeram

I know not any who'd have the understanding this person who visited your church has. And nothing I've read by any other believer has even alluded to such an understanding.

I thought the following had some insightful truths to consider regarding 1 John 5:16.


The following is by Henry Alford;

“Our first canon of interpretation of ‘the sin unto death’ and ‘not unto death’ is this, that the ‘death’ and the ‘life’ must correspond. The former cannot be bodily death, while the latter is eternal and spiritual life. This clears away at once all those commentators who understand the sin unto death to be one for which bodily death is the punishment, either by human law generally, … or by sickness inflicted by God.

“Our second canon will be, that this sin unto death being thus a sin leading to eternal death, being further explained to the readers here, must be presumed as meant to be understood by what the Evangelist has elsewhere laid down concerning the possession of life and death. Now we have from him a definition immediately preceding this, in verse 12, ‘The one who has the Son has the life. The one who does not have the Son of God, the life does not have.’ And we may safely say that the words ‘unto death’ here are to be understood as meaning ‘involving the loss of this life which men have only by union with the Son of God.’ And this meaning they must have, not by implication only, which would be the case if any obstinate and determined sin were meant, which would be a sign of the fact of severance from the life which is in Christ (see 3:14, 15, where the inference is of this kind), but directly and essentially, i.e., in respect of that very sin which is pointed at by them. Now against this canon are all those interpretations far too numerous to mention, which make any atrocious and obstinate sin to be that intended. It is obvious that our limits are thus confined to abnegation of Christ, not as inferred by its fruits otherwise shown, but as the act of sin itself.

“Our third canon. will help us decide, within the above limits, which especial sin is intended. And it is, that by the very analogy of the context, it must be not a state of sin, but an appreciable ACT of sin, seeing that that which is opposed to it in the same kind, as being not unto death, is described by ‘if anyone see his brother sinning.’ (The verb “see” is aorist subjunctive, speaking of a single act of seeing. K.S.W.)

“In enquiring what this is, we must be guided by the analogy of what St. John says elsewhere. Our state being that of life in Christ Jesus, there are those who have gone out from us, not being of us (1Jn 2:19), who are called antichrists, who not only ‘have not’ Christ, but are Christ’s enemies, denying the Father and the Son (1Jn 2:22), whom we are not even to receive into our houses nor to greet (2John 1:10, 11). These seem to be the persons pointed out here, and this is the sin, namely, the denial that Jesus is the Christ, the incarnate Son of God. This alone of all sins bears upon it the stamp of severance from Him who is the Life itself. As the confession of Christ, with the mouth and in the heart, is salvation unto life (Ro 10:9), so denial of Christ with the mouth and in the heart, is sin unto death.”

From the above we are led to the conclusion that “the sin unto death” refers in the context in which John is writing, to the denial of the Incarnation, and that it would be committed by those whom John designates as antichrists, who did not belong to the true Christian body of believers, but were unsaved.

It is possible for a Christian to hate his brother, but if this is the case it is impossible for this one to walk in fellowship with God. Hatred is listed in Galatians 5 as a work of the flesh. The true nature of a Christian is love. The love of God has been shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Spirit. We know that the Word of God has commanded us to forgive our brother if we have been offended, but if we don't forgive then bitterness and resentment can turn into hate.

I believe that the unpardonable sin is not a sin that is done in ignorance, but just as the Pharisees said that Jesus did miracles by the power of the devil knowing full well that Jesus was sent from God. The unpardonable sin is loving and holding on to the darkness and not coming to the light. There is no repentance when this is the case, and so there is no forgiveness.

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Mike

I do not believe unpardonable sin and sin that leads to death are the same. The only unpardonable sin for a believer is the sin that he does not confess and repent from.
All sin leads to death (James 1:15). But we can always come to our senses repent and come back to life again. Life is to know God, or to have fellowship with God. Sin breaks our fellowship with God.

In 1 John 5, John is talking about the Sin that leads to death for which other believers are not asked to pray for. So the hint is, it is a sin that does not require prayer. If we go with that hint, we can easily relate it to sin of hating a fellow brother.

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Sreeram