SCRIPTURE 1 John 3:9 “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.”

COMMENTARY First of all, the word doth is in the continuous present tense so it is a case of practicing sin which is being discussed here, not the occasional sin.  This would seem to say that a true believer, that is one born of God, cannot practice sin.  However, we must be careful to at least consider the context here.   If we look back to v6 in the same chapter, we will see that this is related to those who abide.  But we must remember that elsewhere we are commanded to abide (John 15:4) meaning there is no reason for God to command us to do something which we cannot fail to do.  Furthermore Jesus even states the conditional of what will happen if we abide.  In doing so, if we continue to abide, we will not practice sin.  However we are warned about the deceitfulness of sin (Hebrews 3:13).

God does not quantitatively define what practicing sin actually is in Scripture.  But we are warned that we can be deceived by sin and harden our hearts through sinning, resulting in sinning more and more, failing to abide, and falling into apostasy.  Again, we would remind ourselves of all of the transitional verbs in Scripture.   But we must also ask ourselves if this statement in isolation is true (and that is never the way to read Scripture), why would God warn us of that which cannot occur?  For example, why would Paul tell the Romans in Romans 6:12-13 “Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, that ye should obey it in the lusts thereof. Neither yield ye your members as instruments of unrighteousness unto sin: but yield yourselves unto God, as those that are alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God”, if this can never occur.