Sin No More

Be Born of God: Taste and See

You’re asking a good question. This is bigger than a “commentary” on this verse. This is about letting the gold get confused with the silver. It deserves a clear answer.

1 John 5:18 says:

“We know that whoever is born of God does not sin; but he who has been born of God keeps himself, and the wicked one does not touch him.”

“But that’s impossible,” the neophyte Lutheran armed with 10% of Walther parries. “We sin. We fall. We fail.”

(Notice the scrubbing away of the text in the assertion itself, the platonic field lain as a trap before the words really begin to commune?*📜)

So how can John say this?

Here’s the key: He’s not talking about your flesh. He’s not talking about the old man. He’s talking about the Spirit.

This isn’t Paul in Romans laying out justification by faith. This is John, the seer of the apostles, speaking the language of certainty and divine birth. John preaches in terms of light and darkness, truth and lies, God and the devil. He is not here giving you a system of gradual self-improvement or a diagram of sanctification. He is testifying that the new birth from God, the real regeneration of the Holy Spirit, is pure. It is holy. It does not sin. It does not want to sin.

And neither do you. Because you are born of God.

The “one born of God” is the new man in you, the one created in Christ Jesus, named in Baptism, raised from the dead already and seated with Christ in the heavenly places, a child, a priest, a King. That man cannot sin because he is of God. That man is you, by faith, the Spirit, in you, your life in Christ.

The danger is to confuse that with the old man still clinging to you. The flesh. The Adamic nature. Your experience with that guy you wake up as who sins daily and much. But John isn’t talking like you are really him. You are something more: a seed, a new hope, a creation becoming more than you are, not by your efforts, but as grace.

This isn’t equivocation, cheap grace or soft-anti-goonieism. It’s biblical anthropology—you are simultaneously sinner and saint, and the saint loves to be encouraged as well as exhorted by wisdom.

1 John is wisdom literature as high-apocalyptic theological-epistle (open letter.) But with our Lutheran jargon wielded more like a bludgeon or cudgel than a scalpel we often collapse such texts under the theoretical weights of our Americanized shorthand.

Engrish Ish a (p)Runny Ranguage

And ignoring the facts of dialectic babble as the strength of Christian Witness as unifier is rank stupidity.

A fool armed with CFW Walther can make Proverbs 3:7 into the worst kind of judgment, when it is the most beautiful statements of the pure Gospel of the justification of the sinner in the entire revelation.

When we say “saint and sinner,” we do not mean two halves of the same person, blended. We mean two wills in one body. One dying, born of blood, and of the will of man. The other, born from above, born of God.

So how do you live with that?

That’s the good news! You just do! No one else believes this! Only Christians. So stop finding self-condemnation between every pebble and start believing the promise that it is better for you that He went away.

Don’t make excuses for sin. Don’t wallow in that which your conscience steers you away from. But neither lose faith when sin living in you rears its head again. Self-control is the final fruit of the Spirit.

Chase it.

The new man in Christ clings to the Word, returns to the water, abides in the confession. And when the devil accuses you, you say, “That is not who I am anymore. That was crucified. I will get up. I may be nothing but dust, but I will not be ash. I stand. I see my God. I walk in Him. I walk on.”

That’s the “knowing” John’s talking about.

Not perfection in the flesh; the unbreakable love of Christ Jesus. For you.

*📜 Addendum: The Platonic Preemption—How Rhetoric Unwrites the Word

When the Apostle John declares, “We know that whoever is born of God does not sin,” he does not invite speculation or permission for relativizing. He states knowledge—“we know.” He assumes agreement within the fellowship of faith, not dialectical resistance. Yet the modern Lutheran, raised in a therapeutic age and armed with fragments of Waltherian simul language, quickly responds:

“But that’s impossible. We sin. We fall. We fail.”

Above, I claimed that while at first glance this appears to be a humble confession, in truth it functions as a rhetorical preemption, a subtle yet devastating scrubbing of Scripture’s force through psychological absolutism.

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🔍 The Rhetorical Move Dissected:

1. Premature Absolutizing:

   The phrase “that’s impossible” does not engage the text’s grammar or theology but shuts it down a priori. The reader substitutes personal experience of sin for the inspired claim about the regenerate state. This is existential override—a form of testimony that nullifies revelation in favor of felt truth.

2. The Platonic Trap—Idealism as a Weapon:

   Underneath this is a deep Platonic assumption: that the “ideal” cannot manifest in the material. The regenerate man ought to be sinless, yes, but since no one is “perfect,” the ideal is reclassified as symbolic, abstract, or only eschatological. This divorces Word from present-tense power. John’s apostolic indicative is reframed as a hopeless hypothetical—a thing “meant to be,” but never actually true now. This is a Gnostic ghost haunting the Lutheran pew.

3. Semantic Bait-and-Switch:

   The word “sin” in 1 John is typically aorist present active, indicating ongoing willful rebellion, not merely the faltering weakness of flesh. But the neophyte collapses the distinction. “We sin”—yes, in the body—but “does not sin” in 1 John references the spirit-born man, who does not remain in or choose to practice sin. By flattening this distinction, the hearer makes the text say what it does not.

4. Shifting the Battlefield:

   By asserting, “We fail,” the argument subtly shifts from the text’s doctrine of new birth to a general anthropology of weakness. This is a change of terms. The text speaks of the one born of God. The reply speaks of all people generally. The specific is smothered by the universal, the new creation by the old Adam.

5. The False Humility of Reflexive Denial:

   It feels pious to say “we sin, we fall, we fail.” But the effect is to deny the transformative power of regeneration. It denies the promise. It is akin to saying: “Christ cannot keep me from sin. I am stronger than the Spirit.” The rhetorical shield of humility becomes a sword of unbelief.

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💡 Counter-Move: Let the Word Speak

The correct move is to start with the Scripture and allow it to correct our assumptions. John is not saying the regenerate never errs, but that the regenerate is no longer under the dominion of sin. He keeps himself (τηρεῖ ἑαυτόν)—he guards his soul. He lives in repentance, faith, and spiritual vigilance. And therefore: “the evil one does not touch him.”

This is not a call to delusional perfectionism. It is an announcement of victory: that the one born of God is now enlisted in the war of holiness, and is equipped to stand, to keep, to overcome.

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✍️ Final Note for the Preacher or Writer

When handling such texts, beware the reflex of modern hearers to universalize failure and therefore deny victory. Bring them back to the text’s tense, the subject, and the promise. Preach “Christ in you, the hope of glory,” not “You’re still in Adam, but God likes you anyway.”

Fear not the clarity of the seer’s sight.

Rather tremble at our own tendency to explain away what we don’t yet understand—and so miss the gift of justified boldness that 1 John declares to all who are truly born of God: I fight against that which the wicked call “good,” even and especially when I find it in me.