This brief note documents a second contradiction in the New Testament (for the first, click here), thus undermining the view of some Christians, that the Bible is perfectly without error. We begin by taking a closer look at the two passages (for a check-up of different translations, go to The WWW Bible Gateway).

• 1 John 1:8, 10 (KJV): "If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. ... If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us."
  
  
• 1 John 3:9 (KJV): "Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin; for his seed remaineth in him: and he cannot sin, because he is born of God."
  

What do these two passages, both directed to believers, say? The first one states that Christians are not without sin, and the second one that Christians are without sin. This is a clear contradiction, in that both these statements cannot both be true.

But is it possible for the Christian inerrantist to offer some possible re-interpretation such that the contradiction disappears? I shall take a closer look at four such attempts.

First, one may question that "born of God" refers to being a Christian. If it means something else, then the first passage may still be said to hold as a general description whilst the second one merely refers to some specific case, dealing with a subset of Christians "born of God". But this interpretation is flawed, since 1 John 5:1 (KJV) defines the term in question: "Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born of God." Surely, all Christians are implicated.

Second, one may attempt to change the meaning of some of the terms. Such an attempt has been made by one modern translation, the NIV, which renders the second passage in the following manner: "No one who is born of God will continue to sin, because God's seed remains in him; he cannot go on sinning because he is born of God." Now, on this reading, it seems as if the two passages are not necessarily contradictory. Perhaps the second passage now does not say that a Christian is without sin but that he has given up a life of sinning for one in which he may occasionally sin, but where sin is not a habit. Alas, for the Christian, this attempt is also a failure, for four reasons.

1. The NIV operates on a suspicious translating principle, presented in its preface. On the one hand, it is admitted that changes of the wording - even insertion of words not in the original texts - are commonplace, and on the other hand, the scholars were all committed to the idea that the Bible is infallible. Hence, that means that if they identified a contradiction, they felt free to alter the text, in opposition to the original text, so that their a priori determination, that there are no contradictions in the Bible, was upheld. (One wonders if they have pondered upon Rev. 22:18, 19.) Clearly, such manipulative practices are not to be trusted, especially in light of almost all other translations, which are in agreement with the KJV quoted above.
   
   
2. The Greek original text totally undermines this interpretation. The first part of 1 John 3:9 partly reads: "hamertian u poiei" which literally means "sin not commit", whilst the second part partly reads "u dynatai hamartanein" which literally means "not he can sin". The wordings "continue" and "go on" are nowhere to be found. Strong's Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible (Old-Time Gospel Hour Edition) assists us in finding out what the Greek words stand for. First "poiei": "to make or do (in a very wide application, more or less direct). Comp. prasso." And if we look up "prasso", we find: "to 'practice', i.e. perform repeatedly or habitually (thus differing from poiei, which prop. refers to a single act)." [italics in the original] Second, "harmatanein" is a verb which means "to miss the mark, i.e. to err, esp. to sin". Thus, we see that the Greek explicitly destroys the suggested argument claiming that 1 John 3:9 refers to repeated acts or habits.
   
   
3. Even if the two points just mentioned were incorrect (which they are not), one may wonder how one is let off the hook by the NIV translation. Consider the first part of the verse. It says that no Christian will continue to sin. What does "not continue" mean? It means that one stops doing something. If we sit in a car and say: "We will not continue any more", that means that we stop our journey. It does not mean that we go a little longer from time to time in the near future - it means that we stop, period. Hence, it seems as if even the NIV, upon careful consideration, suggests that a Christian cannot commit sin. Also, the wording in the second part of the verse, that a Christian cannot go on sinning, implies the same thing: if we do not go on doing something, it means that we stop doing it entirely. It does not leave room for occasional lapses in the future. It implies that we have sinned in the past but that when we became Christians, that ceased altogether.
   
   
4. Furthermore, one may question what habitual sinning is, exactly. Most Christians seem to have the idea that they do sin on a continual basis. This is confirmed in Rom. 7:19 (especially interesting translation in the NIV, for those who invoke that translation). So what is habitual sinning? One sin a year? One sin a week? One sin a day? Might one not divine that Christians differ vastly on this count, such that some Christians sin more than a non-Christian? Take, as an example, the sin of having sexual fantasies (see Matt. 5:27-30). Who seriously thinks that Christian boys and single men do not masturbate to sexual fantasies for years, possibly several times a day? Is that habitual sinning? If so, 1 John 3:9 states that the people who commit these acts are not Christians, for Christians cannot sin habitually. So even on the erroneous reading of 1 John 3:9, that it refers to habitual sinning, it does not really solve the problem, since most Christians probably sin habitually, on any reasonable definition of that term.
   

Third, it can be suggested that what 1 John 3:9 really takes into account is forgiveness, in the sense that even if a Christian commits a sin, in accordance with 1 John 1:9 he is cleansed and forgiven if he confesses it. In this sense, it could perhaps be said that a Christian, after having confessed a sin, is on record as not having sinned at all. But this actually violates what the verse says - that a Christian cannot sin - and it also fails to distinguish between an act of sin and a situation where the Christian has been forgiven for a sin. These are certainly not automatically equivalent. In fact, a Christian may commit a sin and not ask for forgiveness, which makes the suggested equivalence fallacious.

Fourth, is it possible that what 1 John 3:9 talks about is only one part of a Christian, namely, his born-again nature (his "spirit"), and that this nature cannot sin? This view is incorrect, for two reasons.

1. Whilst the nature of a person may be sinful or not, the concept of committing a sin, as is discussed in this verse, necessarily entails a volitional act. Only a conscious act of the will can be deemed to constitute a sin. Someone's nature, which is a condition, cannot sin - it can only be such as to induce sin. A sin requires free will, and the free will is an integrated part of a whole human being as such, superseding possibly conflicting natures. If this is held not to be so, it is also held that man does not have free will. Therefore, as most Christians claim that man has free will, it is wrong to suggest that the passage deals with the born-again nature of a Christian. If a Christian commits a sin, it is true, on the Biblical account, that his "old nature", or flesh, may influence him to do so, but the actual decision to commit the sin is the result of that whole person's will.
   
   That this reasoning holds is obvious when considering 1 John 3:9 in conjunction with 1 John 5:1. The first verse states that "no one" who is born of God commits sin, and the second verse states that "everyone" who believes that Jesus is the Christ is born of God. Now the point here is to realize what it is that believes, since it is that thing which does not commit sin. Take a human being. Before becoming a Christian, he is without spiritual life - the only part of his nature is his flesh. But it is exactly that non-Christian person who begins to believe, without before having a born-again nature. That nature comes immediately after the belief (1 Pet. 3:18). Therefore, invoking reasoning by transitivity, the born-again nature cannot in itself believe that Jesus is the Christ and, hence, neither can it be what does not commit sin in 1 John 3:9. This view is reinforced by Rom. 7:25, which states that Paul himself serves the law of God and that he also serves the law of sin with the flesh. It is the whole person Paul, not his flesh, which commits sins.
   
   
2. The problem with inferring that the verb "to sin" means that "a Christians 'old' nature, or flesh, sins" is that it is completely arbitrary. Since both passages discussed here use the very same Greek verb for "to sin", are we at liberty to introduce a very restrictive interpretation of the word in one place and not in the other? This does not seem a very plausible Biblical principle of interpretation. Rather then, to be consistent we should render both 1 John 1:8, 10 and 1 John 3:9 such that they talk about the born-again nature of the Christian committing or not committing sin, rather than the Christian committing or not committing sin, as an autonomous, whole person. But then the contradiction remains.
   

To conclude, the presentation has shown that two passages in 1 John contradict each other and that suggested attempts to remove this contradiction fail utterly. Hence, the Bible contains yet a documented error, the implication of which is outlined in my essay "The Errancy of Fundamentalism Disproves the God of the Bible".

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