1 John 3:6
Brian Swedburg
brian at discoveryhills.org
Mon Oct 7 18:35:00 EDT 2002
on 10/7/02 9:10 AM, SDBIBLESTUDY at aol.com at SDBIBLESTUDY at aol.com wrote:
> Greetings!
> I am wondering about the translation of 1 John 3:6.
> Everyone who remains in him sins not; everyone who sins has not seen him nor
> known him.
>
> Does this mean that a person that is in him never sins anymore? (Surely
> not!) And if not, then how could we better translate this verse or explain
> its Greek tenses? Any help you can give to enlighten me on this verse would
> be greatly appreciated.
>
> Thanks for your time
>
>
> Jeff Fisher
> Minister, Church of Christ
> San Diego
>
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Greetings B-Greek and Jeff,
I haven't posted anything in ages, but...
I am guessing that there is plenty of discussion on this passage in the
archives( ?). Certainly, you are not alone in questioning how this verse
should be translated. I am also assuming you have noted a similar difficulty
in 3:9 as well.
My advice to you is that nailing down a particular function or category
of the present tense verbs in these verses will not provide the pure,
objective grounds for translation and interpretation of these verses.
The verses say what they say, I would translate them roughly as follows...
3:6 the one abiding in Him, he does not sin. The one sinning has not seen
Him and has not known Him (Jesus). 3:9 The one who has been born of God does
not practice sin...
The question is, what does John mean when he says this. Context and
flow of thought bring more definition here than grammatical categories.
I raise all this because I too appreciate when the syntax of the Greek
text narrows my interpretive choices or forces me to look objectively at the
text. Yet in this case, as with many others, even though the sense of
continuous action of the present tense may have been John's intent (just an
example), I am not sure this possibility objectively, grammatically,
provides the only possible interpretation.
If you want to talk more, we will end up outside the scope of this
forum, so e-mail me off line.
Thanks,
and always grateful for B-Greek!
Student, etc...
Brian P. Swedburg
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