1 John 1:10Meaning & Commentary from the Church Fathers

But if we shamelessly say that we have not sinned, we commit a twofold evil. We show ourselves to be liars and utter blasphemy against God. For He says through the prophet, "They repay Me evil for good" (Ps 35:12).

He Himself says in person, "If I have spoken evil, bear witness to the evil; but if well, why do you strike Me?" (Jn 18:23). If even then we say that we have not sinned, we reject His words, which are spirit and life.

For it is said, "The words that I speak to you are spirit and life" (Jn 6:63).

If you say, "I have not sinned," you make Him a liar while wishing yourself to appear truthful. How can it be that God is false and man truthful, when Scripture says the opposite: "Every man is a liar, but God alone is true" (Rom 3:4)?

Therefore God is true in Himself, and you are true in God, for in yourself you are a liar.

For is there anyone who has not had sin? As Scripture says, not even an infant whose life on earth is only one day. Such an infant has not committed sin, but has received it from his parents.

Truly, even the holiest cannot avoid falling into those small transgressions which occur in word, thought, desire, ignorance, forgetfulness, some extremity, or an unexpected event. Though they differ from the sin called sin unto death, they cannot be without guilt or condemnation.

If we say that we have not sinned, then we deny His word, which is Spirit and truth.

The Lord spoke through a man filled with His Spirit: "There is not a righteous man on earth who does good and does not sin" (Eccl 7:20). He Himself also made clear that we cannot be free from transgressions.

For He taught us to pray in this way: "And forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors" (Mt 6:12). Therefore let no one, according to the teaching of Pelagius, consider himself capable of a life free from sins and debts, since even the apostles, taught by the Lord, prayed concerning their transgressions.

The apostle said earlier: if we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us (1 Jn 1:8). Now he repeats the same truth and strengthens it. If we say that we have not sinned, then we not only deceive ourselves, but make God Himself a liar.

How is this so? From God's revelation we know that our first ancestors sinned. Through them all their descendants, that is, all men, became sinners, receiving ancestral sin by inheritance. "In iniquity I was conceived, and in sin my mother bore me," as the Psalmist says (Ps 50:7; cf. Is 64:6).

These words may be applied to those people who do not receive the Mystery of repentance. This is the same as saying that they do not consider it necessary to care for obtaining justification before God and cleansing from their sins.

Whoever does this has already become an enemy of God. He changes the truth of God into unrighteousness and makes Him a liar, Him who came to seek and to save that which was lost (Mt 18:11), and who was wounded for our sins and afflicted for our iniquities (Is 53:5).

Thus, not to acknowledge oneself a sinner means to estrange oneself from the light of grace. It means rejecting the word of God and the merits of Christ, with their saving effects upon the mind and heart.

"If we say," and so forth: here the truth expressed in verses 6 and 8 (1 Jn 1:6, 8) is repeated again, with new force and in a new form. Above, in verse 8, it was said: if we say that we do not sin. Here it is: if we say that we have not sinned. The latter expression refers to every moment when we begin to attend to ourselves. It means that we shall always find sins within ourselves, unless we give ourselves over to self-deception.

"We make Him a liar": this is stronger than the preceding saying, "we deceive ourselves." We do not merely deceive ourselves, but make God a liar. We do not merely lie ourselves, as in verse 6, but present God Himself as lying and false.

Then the conditions and laws on which communion with God rests are explained.

First, walking in the light (1 Jn 1:5-10): "If we say that we have communion with Him," that is, with God, "and walk in darkness," that is, in impiety and vices, "we lie" (1 Jn 1:6).

Second, communion with one another: "But if we walk in the light," that is, in the virtues, "as He," the All-holy One, "is in the light, we have communion," in love. "with one another." For we have one source of salvation, which should unite us all as brothers: the blood of Jesus Christ, which cleanses us from every sin (1 Jn 1:7).

Finally, wishing to prove the existence of sinfulness in general, and of the sinfulness of Christians in particular, the apostle directs their attention to this point. If there were no sin, there would have been no need for Jesus Christ to come into the world and proclaim His teaching on salvation, since it would have been out of place.

Likewise there would have been no need for the Mysteries or for all the ordinances of the Church. Christians, then, would have received nothing from Christ, and they would not even be Christians (cf. 1 Cor 1:5).

During the preaching activity of John the Theologian in Asia Minor at the end of the first century, heretics appeared there who were later called Gnostics. They introduced principles of Greek philosophy and Jewish views into pure Christian teaching, and denied the divine dignity of the Son of God.

At the same time as the Gnostics, other heretics, the Docetists, did not deny the divine dignity of Jesus Christ. Yet they did not acknowledge the reality of His Incarnation. They asserted that Jesus Christ had only the appearance of human flesh, and that His sufferings only seemed real. In truth, they said, as bodiless God, He did not suffer. The spread of such false teachings among the Christians of Asia Minor moved the Apostle John the Theologian to write his Epistle.