1 John 5:16,17

1 John 5:16-17. The transition from prayer in general to intercessory prayer seems to be abrupt; but it must be remembered that brotherly love is made identical with Christian life, and its offices with doing the will of God. Passing by innumerable other objects of intercession on behalf of a fellow-Christian, the apostle at once rises to its highest function, prayer for his sinning soul. Two phrases just used are still in his thoughts: ‘whatever we ask' and ‘eternal life,' which the regenerate has in himself, and may obtain by prayer for others.

If any man see his brother sin a sin not unto death: already the exception is stated, the solemnity of which requires enlargement upon it afterwards. The sin not unto death is supposed to be seen in a brother, as an act and a state in which he is continuing. He shall ask: this is the imperative future, and implies more than is expressed, the admonition and penitence of the offender and the joining him in prayer; these are omitted because the great point is here, as with St. James, the power of one in close fellowship with God, who is supposed in this wonderful sentence to be the very administrant of the Divine will. And shall give the same he in union with God shall give him life: according to the high doctrine of the Epistle, he who sins at all is by the sin cut off from spiritual life; that life is, as it were, suspended. The words that follow, for them that sin not unto death, do not simply repeat and generalize the former words, but at the same time qualify the ‘life' given and prepare for what follows; the life is only suspended in this case. The ‘him' is changed into ‘them,' to show the commonness of the fault and the universality of intercession.

There is a sin unto death; which is not only suspended life, but the actual rejection of the Son of God in whom the life is, and whose rejection has been the supreme sin aimed at throughout the Epistle. It is not asserted that the Christian can know that sin to be committed; nor was it said that he knows the brother for whom he prays to have sinned not unto death: He shall give him life if he have not so sinned. The fellowship with God in prayer does not imply fellowship with God's omniscience. The sin unto death is unto eternal death, as the opposite of ‘eternal life,' though death and eternal are never combined. No other death is mentioned once in this Epistle; nor is the apostle referring, as St. James does in his similar close of his Epistle, to bodily sickness and recovery of physical health. As there was in our Saviour's time an unpardonable blasphemy against the Holy Ghost, which was unto death because it rejected the Spirit's appeal on behalf of Christ, and as in the Epistle to the Hebrews there is a rejection of the atonement which cuts off necessarily all hope, so in this Epistle the same sin is referred to in the light of its final issue. Those who harden themselves against the Spirit's revelation of the Son are sinning unto death; and prayer for them is unavailing, because they have shut their hearts against the only power that can save them.

Not of that do I say that he should make request. With deep tenderness the apostle excludes this object of intercession, two shades of his expression pointing to his deep feeling: he changes the ‘asking' into ‘requesting,' as if the awful urgency of the case might prompt a stronger prayer, which would be unavailing; and he simply says, ‘Concerning that I do not speak in what I say concerning intercessory prayer.' Now the difference of sins seems to require explanation, especially after what the apostle had said in chap. 1 John 3:4, ‘Sin is transgression of law,' and ‘He was manifested to take away sins,' and ‘He is faithful and just, to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.' Hence St. John quotes himself, inverting the phrase, and says here, All unrighteousness is sin, substituting the deeper word ‘unrighteousness' for ‘lawlessness.' Even the slightest deviation from law and from the perfect principles of right is sin, whether in the believer or in the unbeliever; and therefore the possessor of eternal life must never think lightly of it, but must abhor it as contrary to the life that is in him. Nevertheless there may be traces of death that must be cleansed away, and there is a sin not unto death. In the old law there was ‘sin unto death,' transgression which was punished with loss of life (Numbers 18:22); and the Rabbins made the very distinction which St. John here makes. The apostle, however, carries it into the eternal sphere; and leaves the subject with a consolatory word which is itself very stern. He does not say that ‘all unrighteousness is sin, but there is sin not unto death. What he says is that such sin only as is forgiven and cleansed away is not unto death.