1 John 3:4 Everyone who makes a practice of sinning also practices lawlessness; sin is lawlessness.
Life offers us a choice about choosing the light or darkness. Choosing the way of darkness has serious consequences for our well being. Since God is light, the darkness is the rejection of God’s light. God points the way to and through the light by revealing his will to us, particularly in the commands of the Bible. These commands should not be viewed as a burden. The ancient Israelites saw God’s law as a gift to light the path (Psalm 119:11). God’s laws show the way of righteousness (Psalm 1). If Israel obeyed, they would experience many blessings, but disobedience brought curses (Deuteronomy 27-28).
The literal translation of the verb is “everyone who does the sin does lawlessness.” The verb tense is present tense, thus the ESV translation “practices.” Make sin a lifestyle or something that we do on a continual basis will lead to pain and destruction of our lives now and for eternity. Sin always has consequences. John does not mean here that we will never sin but that we should not make sin an intentional things we do. It should become the rarer exception and not the daily occurrence.
This verse gives us one of the clearest definitions of sin in the Bible: sin is breaking the laws of God. We must understand the nature of sin in order to see the tremendous transformation offered through God’s grace in Christ.
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