A Reexamination Of Calvin’s Approach To Romans 8:17

By William N. W. Pass III

[William N. W. Pass III is Pastor, Grace Community Bible Church, Victoria, Texas.]

Romans 8:17 sets forth a remarkable concept: “co-heirs with Christ” (NIV). To contemplate the magnificence of a resurrection life is challenging in itself. But to add to this the idea of having a share in the inheritance with the One who is “heir of all things” (Heb. 1:2), the eternal Son of God, is even more challenging. And yet to motivate his readers Paul asked them to envision that “the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory that is to be revealed to us” (Rom. 8:18).

It is curious that the most widely accepted approach to Romans 8:17, as set forth by John Calvin,[1] undermines the motivational force of Paul’s exhortation by offering an explanation that raises doubt as to the certainty of his conclusion. For Calvin, being “co-heirs with Christ” is part of the salvation “package” and so is bestowed on all believers without distinction. This article examines Calvin’s approach with a focus on the problem that calls into question the reliability of this conclusion and offers an alternative.

Evidence Of An Unsolved Problem

Calvin’s commentary on Romans contains references to commentaries by Ambrose, Beza, Chrysostom, and Peter Martyr.[2] Calvin’s view, however, seems to have set the standard for the treatment of this verse by commentators in recent centuries, including Chalmers, Liddon, Godet, Meyer, Hodge, Moule, Parry, Barnhouse, Cranfield, Harrison, Dunn, Moo, Schreiner, and Jewett.[3] With some minor variations their views on this verse follow Calvin’s, namely, that salvation is the basis for co-heirship with Christ. From these authors Meyer and Barnhouse were selected for further evaluation because each takes a different approach to this verse. Meyer sees εἴπερ (“if”) in verse 17 as conditional, and Barnhouse sees it as unconditional.[4]

Calvin’s Approach

Calvin divided Romans 8:17 into two parts, indicated by the headings under which he discussed the verse: “If we are children” (v. 17a) and “if indeed we share in his suffering” (v. 17b).[5] (The authors noted above also follow this division.) Calvin took the words “if we are children” as the evidence (the protasis) on which to confirm the certainty of the inference that believers are also “heirs of God” and “co-heirs with Christ” (the apodosis). From this Calvin concluded that being heirs and being co-heirs with Christ are inferences from being “children,” both of which are related to salvation (vv. 15-16). “It is for children that inheritance is appointed: since God has adopted us as his children, he has at the same time ordained an inheritance for us.”[6]

Written as a first-class conditional sentence,[7] verse 17a assures the “children” of their salvation, but it also motivates them to “despise with boldness the enticements of the world”[8] in light of the coming resurrection glory (v. 18) as “heirs” and “co-heirs.” Calvin then discussed the εἴπερ clause (in v. 17b) separately. His division of this verse is as follows:

v. 17a Evidence (protasis): “Now, if children [of God],

Inference (apodosis): [then] also heirs; heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ,

v. 17b if indeed [εἴπερ] we share in his sufferings in order that we may also share in his glory.”

Calvin began his explanation of verse 17b by stating, “We are fellow-heirs with Christ, provided we follow Him in the way in which He Himself has led us, in discerning our inheritance.’ ”[9] By translating εἴπερ as “provided,” Calvin implied the presence of a condition. Later, however, he removed the conditional force of εἰπερ. He wrote that Paul was pointing out “the order which the Lord follows in ministering salvation to us, rather than its cause. . . . He does not argue about the source of our salvation, but the manner in which God governs His people.”[10]

But this presents a discrepancy. The translations of εἴπερ in the heading (“if”) and in his initial statement (“provided”) retain the conditional force commonly expressed by εἴπερ.[11] But Calvin’s explanation that Paul denoted “the order . . . rather than its cause,” removes the condition.

Herein lies the problem. To retain the conditional force of εἴπερ (“if”) is to add “suffering with him” to “children” as a condition of being “heirs” and “co-heirs,” which adds suffering to faith as a condition of salvation. But this contradicts Calvin’s view that justification is by faith alone.[12] To remove its conditional force by explaining “suffering with Him” in terms of how “God governs His people,” is to add “suffering with Him” to faith as a defining attribute of what it means to be a believer. “Suffering with Him” now becomes the test of saving faith, and the absence of suffering indicates the absence of saving faith.

By his explanation of suffering Calvin effectively restored the condition that his explanation of εἴπερ had removed. This approach undermines the certainty of his conclusion. So Calvin’s answer to the question, Is suffering a condition of salvation? is “no” with regard to εἴπερ but “yes” with regard to how “God governs His people.”

Meyer’s Approach

Although Meyer followed Calvin’s division of verse 17, he differed from Calvin on two key points. First, he understood that “co-heirs with Christ” is synonymous with “heirs of God.”[13] Second, he retained the conditional force of εἴπερ.[14] The latter solved one problem (Calvin’s “special pleading” for the nonconditional use of εἴπερ), but the former precipitated another: “suffering with Him” now became a condition for salvation. Although Meyer rejected this position,[15] his statements lead to that conclusion. He said, (a) if suffering is the “presupposition involved in [i.e., the condition for] joint-heirship,”[16] (b) and if “joint-heirship” is “in substance the same” as “heirs of God,”[17] (c) then suffering is the presupposition of (the condition for) “heirs of God.”

Meyer’s approach then rests on a syllogism that must be broken in order for his explanation to stand, that is, in order for suffering to be the basis of co-heirship with Christ, but not of “heirs of God,” even though the two are “in substance the same.”

While Calvin gave priority to the theology (justification by faith alone) at the expense of the grammar (εἴπερ not indicating a condition), Meyer gave priority to the grammar at the expense of theology. This is precisely the choice that confronts all who follow Calvin’s approach to this verse. Yet this dilemma is rarely viewed as a “red flag” that warns that such approaches and the resulting conclusions are suspect.

Barnhouse’s Approach

Within half a century Barnhouse and others had departed from Meyer and returned to Calvin’s nonconditional use of εἴπερ: “The last part of our text sometimes confuses people since it appears to present a condition.”[18] He evaluated the six other occurrences of the particle in the New Testament in support of his conclusion “that it is not a phrase implying doubt.”[19] However, his argument cannot be sustained, and ultimately his discussion demonstrates the difficulty of removing the word’s conditional force.[20]

However, Barnhouse differed from Calvin’s view on suffering when he wrote, “These sufferings are not the ordinary sufferings of this life”;[21] rather they are sufferings that stem from the fact that believers are united with Christ.[22] Barnhouse called this “sympathetic suffering.” This forced him to exclude voluntary suffering from his definition in an attempt to keep suffering from being added to faith as a condition of salvation.[23] This in turn was consistent with his conclusion that εἴπερ does not introduce a condition.

For Barnhouse then εἴπερ did not indicate a condition, but the fact of “sympathetic suffering” in the life of the believer. However, this did not solve the problem. Rather the “sympathetic suffering” view only confirms that without suffering there is no union with Christ. So, as with Calvin, Barnhouse has restored by his explanation of suffering, the condition he had removed by his explanation of εἴπερ.

The Nature Of The Problem

Those who like Barnhouse follow Calvin and assign a non-conditional force to εἴπερ inevitably reinsert the condition through their explanation of suffering. Those who like Meyer follow Calvin but assign a conditional force to εἴπερ, are left to explain how suffering is the condition of having co-heirship with Christ, but not the condition of being “heirs of God.”[24] Within Calvin’s paradigm this problem has yet to be solved.[25]

The Source Of The Problem

The problem derives from Calvin’s division of the verse. When εἴπερ is taken to express a condition (Meyer’s view), it cannot, as a dependent clause, stand alone. But neither can it be attached to the conditional sentence (in v. 17a) without adding works (suffering with Him) to faith as a condition of salvation. When taken not as a condition, but as the certain fact of suffering in the life of the believer (Calvin and Barnhouse), the clause can logically be attached to what precedes it. However, no example of this use of εἴπερ is in Greek grammars or lexicons.[26]

Calvin’s reason for dividing the verse as he did is based on his assumption that all of verse 17 speaks of salvation. However, nothing in the text requires it, and in fact this salvation-only reading creates a problem.

Calvin assumed this view because of his effort to reconcile James with Paul. “As Paul contends that we are justified apart from the help of works, so James does not allow those who lack good works to be reckoned righteous.”[27] In other words Calvin held that all believers will live righteously. This was later formalized into the doctrine known as the perseverance of the saints. As Hodge wrote, “The orthodox doctrine does not affirm certainty of salvation because we have once believed, but certainty of perseverance in holiness if we have truly believed . . . the only sure evidence of the genuineness of past experience [justification by faith, alone].”[28] For Calvin a person who does not suffer with Christ is an unbeliever. Therefore Calvin’s view on perseverance limited him to a salvation-only reading of Romans 8:17.

As a result Calvin’s view makes no allowance for a distinction between “heirs of God” and “co-heirs with Christ.” This distinction, however, is important for it means that while all believers will enter the kingdom by virtue of their being “heirs of God,” that is, His children, not all will necessarily enter as “co-heirs with Christ.” This view has substantial exegetical support, and this warning may well have been a key point in Paul’s larger argument.

An Alternative Approach

The starting point for this alternative approach is to forgo the assumption that all of verse 17 is to be understood as addressing the subject of salvation. The verse should then be divided as follows:

v. 17a “Now if children [of God, then] also heirs, heirs of God;

v. 17b [then] co-heirs with Christ, if [εἴπερ] we suffer with Him, in order that [ἵνα] we also might be glorified with Him.”

This approach reads as two first-class conditional sentences, not one. The first (v. 17) refers to salvation, but the second (v. 17) refers to an aspect of sanctification. And the ἵνα clause (“in order that”) relates only to the apodosis of the second conditional sentence.

The arguments for a nonconditional use of εἴπερ (Calvin and Barnhouse), are no longer necessary; εἴπερ does present a condition (Meyer), but not of salvation.

This division of the verse is not without precedent in Romans 8. Verses 9-10, and 13 include first-class conditional sentences. In each case these paired conditional sentences form a contrast. In verses 9 and 10 the contrast is emphasized by the chiastic structure, which places the emphasis on the central elements. In verse 9 the emphasis is on the contrast between the protases, the presence or absence of the Spirit, which gives evidence of the apodoses.

B (apodosis, inference): [Then] you are not in the flesh but in the Spirit,

A (protasis, evidence): if [and assuming it is true that] the Spirit of God is dwelling in you.

But

A´ (protasis, evidence): if [and assuming it is true that] anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ,

B´ (apodosis, inference): [then] this one is not of Him.

This order is reversed in verse 10, where the emphasis is on the contrast between the apodoses, death and life, which are inferences from the evidence that “Christ dwells in you.” The employment of μὲν . . . δὲ supports the conclusion that the protases of the two conditional sentences are identical, but that the restatement of the protasis has been elided and is to be supplied by the reader.[29]

A (protasis, evidence): Now if [and assuming it is true that] Christ [is dwelling] in you,

B (apodosis, inference): [μὲν, then], on the one hand, the body [is] dead because of sin, but

B´ (apodosis, inference): [δὲ, then], on the other hand, the spirit [is] life because of righteousness,

A´ (protasis, evidence): [if and assuming it is true that Christ is dwelling in you].

Except for the subject matter, the “redivision” of verse 17 is identical to that of verse 10, in which paired first-class conditional sentences are set in contrast to each other and structured as a chiasm, in which the contrast between the central elements (the apodoses) is attested by the μὲν . . . δὲ construction: “on the one hand heirs of God but on the other hand co-heirs with Christ.”[30]

v. 17 A (protasis, evidence): Now if [and assuming it is true that we are] children [of God],

B (apodosis, inference): [μὲν, then] on the one hand, [we are] also heirs, heirs of God,

B´ (apodosis, inference): [δὲ, then] on the other hand, [we are] co-heirs with Christ

v. 17 A´ (protasis, evidence): if [and assuming it is true that] we suffer with Him, in order that we might be glorified with Him.

Rather than accept Meyer’s conclusion that “heirs of God” and “co-heirs with Christ” are synonymous, it is better to see μὲν . . . δὲ as contrasting the two.[31]

“Co-heirship with Christ,” then, is not the result of being “heirs of God” (as Calvin taught), nor are the terms synonymous (as Meyer believed). “Heirs of God” is the inference (B) from the evidence (A), “if children [of God].” But in contrast to this, being “co-heirs with Christ, that we might be glorified with Him” is the inference (B´) from the evidence (A´), “if we suffer with Him.”

Paul, then, was not referring to the general resurrection glory as “heirs of God,” but instead he pointed to a glory unique to those who will be co-heirs with Christ because of having suffered with Him in obedience. This is what the believers were commended for by the writer of Hebrews, who exhorted his readers not to give up. “But remember the former days, when . . . you endured a great conflict of sufferings, partly by being made a public spectacle through reproaches and tribulations, and partly by becoming sharers with those who were so treated. For you showed sympathy to the prisoners and accepted joyfully the seizure of your property. . . . Therefore, do not throw away your confidence, which has a great reward. For you have need of endurance, so that [ἵνα] when you have done the will of God, you may receive what was promised” (Heb. 10:32-36).[32]

The exhortation in verse 36 shows the voluntary nature of the choices these believers made, knowing that suffering would accompany obedience. The “witnesses” (12:1) looked ahead by faith (chap. 11) to the “great reward” (10:35) as motivation to endure the suffering that comes with obedience, as did Christ (12:2).

Evidently some in the church at Rome, having had their sins forgiven through faith in Jesus Christ, concluded that personal sins were now of no real consequence. That this error was present, seems evident from the fact that each of the questions Paul raised was corrective in nature.

“So when you . . . do the same things, do you think you will escape God’s judgment?” (2:3). “But if our unrighteousness brings out God’s righteousness more clearly, what shall we say? That God is unjust in bringing his wrath on us?” (3:5). “If my falsehood enhances God’s truthfulness and so increases his glory, why am I still condemned as a sinner?” (3:7). “Why not say . . . let us do evil that good may result?” (3:8). “What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning that grace may increase?” (6:1). “What then? Shall we sin because we are not under the law but under grace?” (6:15) (author’s translations).

Each question reflects a point of view held by at least some of these saints (1:7-8). To the first question some evidently would have answered, “Yes! We will escape God’s judgment of personal sins,” perhaps pointing to the cross and the impossibility of “double jeopardy.” Some may also have reasoned that there is a sense of injustice in punishing believers who by their lies magnify the truthfulness of God; that there is a certain legitimacy to sin in the life of a believer when something “good” results; that because believers are not under the law, the prohibitions no longer apply and in any case violations cause grace to abound, for “where sin abounded, grace abounded more.”[33]

The attempt to justify personal sins by these rationalizations stems, Paul argued, from the “old self” that seeks to retain its control as “master” over the believer in order that sin might continue to reign in one’s mortal body so that he obeys its evil desires. Such rationalizations certainly revealed the lack of a “renewed mind” (12:2), apart from which the lifestyle exhorted by Paul is not possible—“that we should no longer be slaves to sin,” rather, we should “offer [our]selves to God as living sacrifices.”

Paul, then, set forth the possibility of believers being “co-heirs” as motivation to righteous living, warning that although personal sins can never again bring the believer under eternal condemnation, that “to continue in sin that grace may abound,” or “because we are no longer under the law,” or “that good may result,” will incur God’s judgment, that is, the loss of co-heirship with Christ in His kingdom. This is consistent with Paul’s warning to the Corinthian believers: “If [and assuming it is true that] any man’s work is burned, [then] he shall suffer loss; but he himself shall be saved, yet so as [only escaping] through fire” (1 Cor. 3:15).[34]

The idea that some believers will “suffer loss” as a consequence of unrighteous living is inconsistent with Calvin’s view that all believers will persevere and enter the kingdom as co-heirs with Christ. The potential to receive or be denied co-heirship is more in line with Jude’s words that co-heirs with Christ will “stand in the presence of His glory blameless with great joy” (Jude 24). Also Paul wrote that Christ will present faithful believers “before Him holy and blameless and beyond reproach” (Col. 1:22). And John encouraged believers to “abide in Him, so that when He appears” they “may have confidence” (1 John 2:28). And Christ promised a measure of authority in ruling with Him in civil and spiritual matters, as a reward for faithfulness: “He who overcomes, and he who keeps My deeds until the end, to him I will give authority over the nations . . . as I also have received authority from My Father” (Rev. 2:26-27, italics added). And, “Hold fast what you have, so that no one will take your crown. He who overcomes, I will make him a pillar in the temple of My God” (3:11-12, italics added).

Conclusion

Calvin’s view of Romans 8:17 presupposed a salvation-only reading. This presupposition dictated his division of the verse, which in turn raised the question of how to explain the force of εἰπερ without adding works (through “suffering with Him”) to faith as a condition of salvation. The explanations offered by Meyer (that εἰπερ is conditional) and by Barnhouse (that εἰπερ is unconditional) demonstrate that this is not possible. These approaches lead to the erroneous view that co-heirship is both unconditional, an inference of being God’s “children,” while at the same time co-heirship is conditional, as implied by “suffering with Him.” This is a tenuous basis for concluding that co-heirship is unconditionally bestowed on all believers without distinction.

The alternative view presented in this article eliminates this conflict by reading Romans 8:17 as including two conditional sentences. The first, “heirs of God,” deals with salvation, a standing that is true of all believers, whereas the second, “co-heirs with Christ,” speaks of the believer’s sanctification, as a motivation for faithful living. This approach solves the problem, for it retains the conditional force indicated by εἴπερ, without adding suffering to faith as a condition of salvation. However, it requires abandoning Calvin’s paradigm, a salvation-only reading of the verse.

Notes

1. John Calvin, The Epistles of Paul the Apostle to the Romans and to the Thessalonians, trans. Ross MacKenzie, ed. David W. Torrance and Thomas F. Torrance (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1948), 171.
2. Ibid.
3. Thomas Chalmers, Lectures on the Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Romans, 2nd ed. (New York: Robert Carter, 1843); H. P. Liddon, Explanatory Analysis of St. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1961); F. Godet, Commentary on St. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, trans. A. Cusin, 2 vols. (Edinburgh: Clark, 1934); Heinrich A. W. Meyer, Critical and Exegetical Hand-book to the Epistle to the Romans, trans., rev., and ed. William P. Dickson (New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1884); Charles Hodge, Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1965). H. C. G. Moule, The Epistle of St. Paul to the Romans (New York: A. C. Armstrong & Son, 1899); R. St John Parry, ed., The Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Romans, Cambridge Greek Testament for Schools and Colleges (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1921); Donald Grey Barnhouse, God’s Heirs, vol. 7 of Expository Messages on the Whole Bible (reprinted in four volumes as Exposition of Bible Doctrine [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1963]); C. E. B. Cranfield, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, International Critical Commentary, 2 vols. (Edinburgh: Clark, 1987); Everett F. Harrison, “Romans,” in The Expositor’s Bible Commentary, vol. 10 (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1976); James D. G. Dunn, Romans 1-8, Word Biblical Commentary (Dallas: Word, 1988); Douglas J. Moo, The Epistle to the Romans, New International Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1996); Thomas R. Schreiner, Romans, Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 1998); and Robert Jewett, Romans, Hermeneia (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2007).
4. Chalmers (1823) followed Calvin (1539) in assigning a nonconditional force to εἴπερ. Approximately sixty years after Chalmers, Meyer, Liddon, Godet (in the 1880s), and Joseph H. Thayer in 1889 (A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament [New York: American Book, 1889], 172) argued for its conditional force. Parry, Barnhouse, and Cranfield (1899-1980s), shifted back to an nonconditional force. Then Dunn, Moo, and Schreiner (1988-1998) returned to the conditional force of εἴπερ, and Jewett (2007) returned again to an nonconditional force. Although both Dillow and López argue for the conditional use of εἴπερ, they are not included here because they do not use Calvin’s approach as their starting point. See Joseph C. Dillow, The Reign of the Servant Kings: A Study of Eternal Security and the Final Significance of Man (Hayesville, NC: Schoettle, 1993), 374; and René A. López, Romans Unlocked: Power to Deliver (Springfield, MO: 21st Century, 2005), 173.
5. Calvin, Commentaries on the Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Romans, 301.
6. Ibid. (italics added).
7. In this type of Greek conditional sentence the proposition (the “if” clause, the protasis) is assumed true as a basis for confirming the certainty of the conclusion (the “then” clause, the apodosis) (Daniel B. Wallace, Greek Grammar beyond the Basics [Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1996], 683).
8. Calvin, The Epistles of Paul the Apostle to the Romans and to the Thessalonians, 171.
9. Ibid.
10. Ibid. (italics added).
11. Walter Bauer, William F. Arndt, and F. Wilbur Gingrich, A Greek–English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, 3rd ed., rev. and ed. Frederick W. Danker (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 279.
12. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. Ford Lewis Battles, ed. John T. McNeill (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1960), 1:748-49 (3.11.19).
13. “Not something greater than κληρον θεοῦ (‘heirs of God’), on the contrary in substance the same, but specifically characterized from the standpoint of our fellowship with Christ” (Meyer, Critical and Exegetical Hand-book to the Epistle to the Romans, 317).
14. “This fellowship of suffering Paul regards as that which must be presupposed in order to the attainment of glory, of participation in the δόξα of Christ (εἴπερ, as in ver. 9),” pointing to His experience as evidence: “just as necessarily and truly . . . that in the case of Jesus Himself His suffering . . . was the condition of His glory” (ibid., 317-18).
15. Melanchthon’s view is evidence of this point: “not as indeed as meritum, or pretium vitae aeternae but as obedientia propter ordinem a Deo sancitum” (“Not as indeed as merit, or the price of eternal life . . . but, obedience on account of the order established by God”) (Philipp Melanchthon, quoted in ibid., 318).
16. Ibid.
17. Ibid., 317.
18. Barnhouse, God’s Heirs, 117.
19. Ibid., 117-18. The six other occurrences of εἴπερ are in Romans 3:30, 8:9; 1 Corinthians 8:5; 15:15; 2 Corinthians 5:3; and 2 Thessalonians 1:6. A seventh occurrence, perhaps in 1 Peter 2:3, is debated.
20. Barnhouse attempted to argue for the nonconditional force of εἴπερ in Romans 8:17 by noting that its presence in 1 Corinthians 15:15b did not raise doubt as to the resurrection (Barnhouse, God’s Heirs, 117-18). However, his argument fails because his paraphrase of 1 Corinthians 15:55 affirms the certainty of the resurrection while retaining the conditional force of εἴπερ (then “Christ is not raised, if you are going to adopt the argument that there is no resurrection at all” [ibid., italics added]).
21. Ibid., 119. Calvin said that “various afflictions . . . compared with the greatness of that glory, are of very little importance” (The Epistles of Paul the Apostle to the Romans and to the Thessalonians, 171).
22. Barnhouse, God’s Heirs, 119-20.
23. “It is very important to note that this suffering is not voluntary suffering” (ibid., 119).
24. Exegetical support for this position comes in the form of a syntactical “Gordian Knot.” This view requires that the condition introduced by εἴπερ (“if we suffer with Him”) modifies the apodosis of the previous conditional sentence (then “heirs of God” and “co-heirs with Christ”). Two distinctly different conditions now “share” the same apodosis, but only “if children” is taken as the protasis. In addition, it must be argued that the εἴπερ clause modifies the apodosis in such a way as to “divide” it, so that “if we suffer with Him,” modifies the second element (“co-heirs”), but not the first (“heirs of God”). The result is that “if children” stands as the condition of “heirs of God” and “co-heirs with Christ,” until the εἴπερclause is read. Then the clause “if we suffer with Him” severs the two and becomes the condition of “co-heirs with Christ.” Ironically the disjunctive force of μὲν . . . δὲ, denied by the division of the verse, is now required by the explanation.
25. “Paul then progressed in his argument that as children of God believers are also heirs—heirs of God and joint-heirs with Christ” (George C. Gianoulis, “Is Sonship in Romans 8:14-17 a Link with Romans 9?” Bibliotheca Sacra 661 [January–March 2009]: 74). Gianoulis’s comment seems to indicate that he accepted Calvin’s approach.
26. For example Thayer, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament, 172. Bauer, Arndt, and Gingrich include the idea of “since,” but they give no examples (A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, 220); and F. Blass and A. Debrunner give no examples (A Greek Grammar of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, trans. and rev. Robert W. Funk [Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961], 237, §§ 454).
27. Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 1:816 (3.17.12).
28. A. A. Hodge, Outlines of Theology Re-written and Enlarged (New York: Robert Carter & Brothers, 1878), 544. This position continues today. “Faith that does not result in righteous living is dead and cannot save (James 2:14-17)” (John F. MacArthur Jr., The Gospel according to Jesus [Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1988], 23).
29. E. W. Bullinger cites Romans 7:3 as an example of this need to supply a thought: “At the end of verse 3, therefore, the other hypothesis must be supplied (mentally if not actually)” (Figures of Speech Used in the Bible [London: Eyre and Spottiswood, 1898; reprint, Grand Rapids: Baker, 1984], 55).
30. No textual variation indicating an absence or alteration of the construction is cited in Kurt Aland et al., eds., The Greek New Testament, 3rd ed. (New York: American Bible Society, 1975); or in Kurt Aland, ed., Novum Testamentum Graece, 27th ed. (Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelstiftung, 1993); or Zane C. Hodges and Arthur L. Farstad, The Greek New Testament according to the Majority Text (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1982).
31. Dillow noted, “In every usage of these particles in this way in Romans, they are always contrastive and never conjunctive: 2:7-8, 25; 5:16; 6:11; 7:25; 8:10, 17; 9:21; 11:22, 28; 14:2, 5; 16:9” (The Reign of the Servant Kings, 376). López follows Dillow on this point (Romans Unlocked, 174-75). Wallace included μὲν . . . δὲin his translation of Romans 8:17, but his discussion of the verse is limited to illustrating a genitive of association. However, his comment supports the conclusion that co-heirship is associated with Christ in the δὲ clause (Greek Grammar beyond the Basics, 129). The second protasis (the εἴπερ clause) then specifies the nature of that association: “if we suffer with Him.”
32. The aorist subjunctive Μὴ ἀποβάλητε in verse 35 confirms the volitional aspect of the action of the verb “do not throw away” (Wallace, Greek Grammar beyond the Basics, 463, 469, 723). The ἵνα clause in verse 36 confirms that the obtaining of the promised “great reward” (v. 35) is conditioned on obeying the prohibition, “do not throw away your confidence.” The “great reward,” then, is not unconditionally bestowed on every believer, but is received only by those who do not lose heart and do not throw away their confidence. In throwing away their “confidence” they would be avoiding suffering by being disobedient. Believers then are encouraged to accept the suffering that comes with obedience, rather than choosing disobedience in order to avoid suffering, for then they would forfeit the “great reward.”
33. J. Budziszewski presents an insightful analysis of the dynamic that produces, sustains, and proliferates this mentality (The Revenge of Conscience: Politics and the Fall of Man [Dallas: Spence, 1999]).
34. Maximilian Zerwick noted, “Paul seems to be speaking in general . . . but the form [of the conditional sentence] is that of a concrete condition . . . which suggests that Paul is in fact thinking of a particular case or cases” (Biblical Greek Illustrated by Examples, trans. Joseph Smith [Rome: Scripta Pontificii Instituti Biblici, 1963], 102, § 347. It is probable that the “cases” were some of Paul’s readers and that he had set before them the consequence of perpetuating their spiritual immaturity (3:1), namely, that the works of such an “infant” lifestyle will not be rewarded but are destined for the “fire.” As F. Godet concluded, “Then he will see himself refused the reward of the faithful servant, the honorable position in Christ’s kingdom” (Commentary on St. Paul’s First Epistle to the Corinthians, trans., A. Cusin [Edinburgh: Clark, n.d.], 1:189).

ἱλάσκεσθαι: To Propitiate Or To Expiate?

By James E. Allman

[James E. Allman is Professor of Old Testament Studies, Dallas Theological Seminary, Dallas, Texas.]

Abstract

Evangelical discussions of ἱλάσκεσθαι tend to distinguish expiation, said to have a human focus, from propitiation, said to have a divine focus. This article responds to gaps in the major studies on ἱλάσκεσθαι by taking a fresh look at the English term “expiation” and the ἱλασκ- word group in both sacrificial and nonsacrificial contexts in the LXX and NT. The study finds that expiation and propitiation are bound up in each other: God’s merciful nature offers propitiation as a means of escaping his wrath by cleansing its cause. Expositors must be sensitive to a broader range of ideas represented by the ἱλασκ- word group.

* * *

Since at least the days of Socinus[1] the meaning of the word group surrounding the verb ἱλάσκομαι has been under debate. Traditionally translators gloss the word as “propitiate.” But especially since C. H. Dodd’s 1931 article, “ΙΛΑΣΚΕΣΘΑΙ, Its Cognates, Derivatives, and Synonyms, in the Septuagint,”[2] the debate has continued, and his argument has exerted strong influence on New Testament scholarship.[3] Major evangelical responses came from Roger Nicole and Leon Morris.[4] In these circles Morris has great influence. Indeed, in such circles it is common to distinguish the two ideas sharply by saying expiation focuses on humanity or on sin while propitiation focuses on God. Gomes explains, “Expiation [is] something that removes the barrier of sin. Specifically, expiation ‘implies the obliteration of sin through Christ’s atoning death’ (J. M. Gundry-Volf . . .). It can denote the cognate ideas of purgation, cleansing, etc. It is similar to propitiation, though in propitiation the emphasis is on the satisfaction of God’s wrath against sin.”[5] Pentecost can say, “When we come to consider this third great doctrinal word, propitiation, we are studying the God-ward aspect of the value of the death of Christ. While redemption was sinward, and reconciliation was manward, propitiation gives to us the third, or the God-ward aspect of the value of Christ’s death for us.”[6]

It is always appropriate in biblical studies to return to basic issues and restudy them. In the process one either reaffirms the foundations or finds reason to revise them. This article argues that Dodd’s and Morris’s positions each omit key data and that it is therefore time to examine again the meaning of ἱλάσκεσθαι and its related word group. The purpose is not to re-lay the foundational arguments, but rather to call for a rapprochement in the discussion. Pursuit of this goal begins by reviewing the arguments of Dodd and Morris. Then attention turns to the difficulty of defining “expiation,” and to a review of relevant usage of ἱλάσκεσθαι in the Septuagint, leading to some conclusions about the meaning of ἱλάσκεσθαι in the New Testament.

The Problem: The Contributions Of Dodd And Morris

Dodd’s Position On ἱλάσκεσθαι

Dodd says, “In classical Greek and in the Koine ἱλάσκεσθαι, ἐξιλάσκεσθαι, have regularly the meaning ‘placate’, ‘propitiate’, with a personal object.”[7] He identifies a secondary meaning of “expiate” with an impersonal object. Since he finds the terms ambiguous in classical Greek, he pursues the problem to clarify the meaning of the word group for the Septuagint and the New Testament.

He reviews three types of evidence to evaluate the meaning of the verb ἱλάσκεσθαι: (1) the various words used by the Septuagint to translate the verb כִּפֵּר; (2) the various Hebrew words that ἱλάσκεσθαι was used to translate; and (3) “the numerous instances where words of the ἱλάσκεσθαι class are used to translate כִּפֵּר and its derivatives.”[8]

Summarizing his argument about the meaning of the ἱλασκ- word group, Dodd indicates that

the general usage of words of the ἱλάσκεσθαι class to render כִּפֵּר and its derivatives corresponds with the conclusions we have drawn from their use to render other Hebrew words . . . viz., that the LXX translators did not regard כִּפֵּר (when used as a religious term) as conveying the sense of propitiating the Deity, but the sense of performing an act whereby guilt or defilement is removed, and accordingly rendered it by ἱλάσκεσθαι in this sense.[9]

Further he adds, “Thus Hellenistic Judaism, as represented by the LXX, does not regard the cultus as a means of pacifying the displeasure of the Deity, but as a means of delivering man from sin, and it looks in the last resort to God himself to perform that deliverance, thus evolving a meaning of ἱλάσκεσθαι strange to non-biblical Greek.”[10] Finally, he states, “The common rendering ‘propitiation’ is illegitimate here [i.e., 1 John 2:2] as elsewhere.”[11] The effect of this study can be seen in the Revised Standard Version rendering of Romans 3:25, which designates Jesus as the one “whom God put forward as an expiation by his blood, to be received by faith.”

Part of Dodd’s motivation in arguing against propitiation is his commitment to a particular understanding of God: “Thus we take love, grace, and faithfulness, without hesitation, as describing—anthropomorphically, no doubt, in a sense—the personal attitude of God to men.”[12] It became necessary to expunge the concept of propitiation, “the idea underlying it . . . [being] characteristic of primitive religion.”[13] Consequently, the Greek expression in Romans 3:25 must be read as “a means by which guilt is annulled” with the proper gloss, expiation.[14] “The rendering propitiation is therefore misleading, for it suggests the placating of an angry God, and although this would be in accord with pagan usage, it is foreign to biblical usage.”[15]

Evidence he gives from Leviticus (and elsewhere) shows that the כפר word group and its translation by the ἱλασκ- word group does indeed communicate something approximating expiation. The usage of the noun כֹּפֶר to mean “ransom” and the usage of the verb in reference to both the sin or purification offering and the guilt or reparation offering (Lev. 4:20, 26, 31, 35; 5:6, 10, 13, 16, 18, 26) points in this direction. What is not clear is that there is no wrath of God impending on the sinner for breach of the Law.

Morris’s Position On ἱλάσκεσθαι

Morris commends significant advances that Dodd’s work achieved:

These are important conclusions and they are being increasingly accepted, for it is a relief to know that we have solid grounds for our conviction that the God of the Bible is not a Being who can be propitiated after the fashion of a pagan deity. That this point has been conclusively demonstrated is certain. The Bible writers have nothing to do with pagan conceptions of a capricious and vindictive deity, inflicting arbitrary punishments on offending worshippers, who must then bribe him back to a good mood by the appropriate offerings. Dodd’s important work makes this abundantly clear.[16]

Nonetheless he disputes the basic premises of Dodd’s work, for he is intent to show that the wrath of God is not some impersonal force in the world. Hughes comments on the unfortunate fact that people translate ὀργή by anger, but he also argues properly that “the holier love is, the more difficult is it to separate from it the idea of anger, or at any rate, indignation against sin.”[17] Certainly, the Hebrew Bible has multiple terms for God’s wrath. Hughes further points out, “It is begging the question to assert such anger is quite impersonal. It is not sin in the abstract, but the sinner sinning that calls for the resentment of divine wrath.”[18]

To make his case Morris begins with an examination of the wrath of God in the Old Testament. Then he turns to the use of ἱλάσκομαι in the Septuagint, which takes up the bulk of his chapter 5. There he reexamines Dodd’s evidence, including data that Dodd thought inappropriate to include, primarily non-theological usage of the verb. Another observer agrees with Morris that this is a weakness in Dodd’s argument: “Dodd was inclined to dismiss instances like Gen. 32:20 (21) and Prov. 16:14, where he admitted that the meaning was to appease or placate, since the usage here was not strictly religious and thus belonged to the non-cultic use (Dodd, op. cit., 92), but Hill (op. cit., 31) and Morris (op. cit., 161-67) argue that the non-cultic use is fundamental, since it enables us to ascertain the general, basic meaning of exhilaskomai.”[19]

In his conclusion to this part of his argument Morris makes a telling statement: “But it is important to note that the removal of this wrath is due not to man’s securing such an offering that God is impressed and relents, but to God Himself. This alone is sufficient to show that we are not dealing with the pagan idea when we speak of propitiation. Such a passage as Leviticus 17:11, ‘For the life of the flesh is in the blood: and I have given it to you upon the altar to make atonement for your souls’, clearly indicates the position.”[20]

Chapter 6 in Morris’s book extends the argument to the New Testament following the same pattern, taking up first God’s wrath and then an examination of the word group represented by ἱλάσκομαι. Concluding his study of wrath and commenting on Romans 1:24, 26, and 28, Morris says, “It is true that sin has its consequences; but for St. Paul this does not take place apart from God, for His activity is to be discerned in those consequences. Indeed the whole of this section might be regarded as an expansion of the opening words, ‘For wrath of God is being continually revealed from heaven upon all impiety and unrighteousness of men.’ ”[21]

He takes up the three Greek words of this group that occur in the New Testament, ἱλαστήριον (Rom. 3:24; Heb. 9:5), ἱλάσκομαι (Luke 18:13; Heb. 2:7), and ἱλασμός (1 John 2:2; 4:10). Predictably, the course of the argument leads Morris to conclude that in all uses, propitiation is the best sense given the context.[22] In his lengthy conclusion to the study, he includes these crucial remarks: “If we are to retain the Christian conception of God with its insistence on the divine activity in the affairs of men, and the divine abhorrence of sin, it seems necessary to retain some such conception as propitiation. Certainly we must retain the idea of the wrath of God, for, as Edwyn Bevan has pointed out, the idea that God cannot be angry is neither Hebrew nor Christian, but something borrowed from Greek philosophy.”[23]

Conclusion

Dodd has made a good case that the Hebrew and Greek vocabulary can be used in the sense of expiation. Morris makes a good case that the appearance of this language, כפר and the ἱλασκ- word group, in the sacrificial laws of Israel finds its rationale in the wrath of God. But, as Morris further shows, there remains the “question of the meaning to be given to expiation.”[24] What is expiation intended to communicate?

Difficulty In Defining Expiation

If the translation “expiate” has any validity, it is important to determine what the English word means, since a key responsibility of exegesis is to find the right English expressions to explain the meaning of texts. Using a word that is traditional but is itself ambiguous is of no value to exposition. Morris, as we have seen, alerts us to the problem of definition.

The Meaning And Etymology Of The Term

The problem becomes evident when looking at major English dictionaries, and none can be more significant than the Oxford English Dictionary. That source gives seven senses to the word, of which six are significant here:

1. to avert (evil) by religious ceremonies . . .
2. To cleanse; purify (a person or city) from guilt or pollution by religious ceremonies . . .
3. To do away with or extinguish the guilt of one’s sin; to offer or serve as a propitiation for . . .
4. To pay the penalty of . . .
5. To make amends or reparation for . . .
6. to extinguish (a person’s rage) by suffering it to the full; to end (one’s sorrows, a suffering life) by death.[25]

If these are the options, then Dodd really does not accomplish much in proposing “expiation” as the proper translation for כפר and ἱλάσκομαι, since expiation can refer to averting wrath. On the other hand Morris’s rebuttal may not solve much, either. In a given context the word can mean whatever the context requires in the atonement field of meaning.

Not even the etymology of the term is exceedingly helpful. Most theological terms are derived from either Greek or Latin, in this case the root word pio and its derivative expio. The two major Latin dictionaries (Lewis and Short, A Latin Dictionary, and Glare, Oxford Latin Dictionary) agree substantially on the meaning of the two words.

The Oxford Latin Dictionary gives five senses for expio:

1. To make atonement to the gods for; b. to make amends, atone for (a wrong done to a person).
2. To take vengeance for, punish.
3. To purify from ritual uncleanness; b. (transf.) to cleanse thoroughly.
4. To avert (an omen, curse, or sim[ilar]) by expiating rites, to avert the misfortunes of.
5. To appease, propitiate (gods, spirits, their anger, etc.).[26]

The two major exegetical theological dictionaries, Theological Dictionary of the New Testament and New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology, both give the same range of meanings for כפר and ἱλάσκομαι.

From these definitions one can see why there is not unanimity in the use of the word in English. One wonders, as well, why Dodd made such an issue of the meaning of propitiation, since expiation is amenable to the same interpretation. Yet this variety in meaning explains in some measure the variety in theological usage of the term expiate.

Usage In Theological Literature

Only representative examples are needed here. In the nineteenth century, Keil and Delitzsch could speak of expiation in varied ways. On the one hand, “That the smearing with blood was to be regarded as an act of expiation, is evident from the simple fact, that a hyssop-bush was used for the purpose (v. 22); for sprinkling with hyssop is never prescribed in the law, except in connection with purification in the sense of expiation (Lev. 14:49ff.; Num. 19:18, 19).”[27] On the other hand, “But the offerer of the sacrifice was covered, on account of his unholiness, from before the holy God, or, speaking more precisely, from the wrath of God and the manifestation of that wrath; that is to say, from the punishment which his sin had deserved, as we may clearly see from Gen. 32:20, and still more clearly from Ex. 32:30.”[28]

More recently, Gane, writing on Leviticus, said, “Because a purification offering uniquely emphasizes blood in this way, and application of blood to an altar signifies expiation (piel of כפר; cf. Lev 17:11), it is clear that a purification offering emphasizes the expiatory value of blood.”[29] About a passage dealing with an unsolved murder, Greengus wrote, “In the Bible (Deut 21:1-9), there is ‘guilt’ attached to the magistrates (elders and judges) of the nearest neighboring community. They remove this guilt by an expiation ceremony which includes the killing of a heifer at a nearby stream, the washing of hands, and an exculpatory declaration by the magistrates.”[30] Nicole distinguishes expiation and propitiation: “ ‘To expiate’ views sin as a failure to meet obligations, a failure for which a reparation, or satisfaction, must be provided. . . . ‘To propitiate’ reveals that sin awakens on the part of God a displeasure or anger which must be set aside, before God can and will deal with the sinner without taking judicial cognizance of his sin.”[31] On these lines, expiation can remove guilt, propitiate, and purify! While the meanings are clear in the contexts,[32] the word is not sufficiently definable to serve satisfactorily as an opposition to propitiation. Thus the standard distinction, given earlier, is inadequate.[33]

LXX Usage Of The ἱλάσκεσθαι Word Group

This unsatisfactory state of the question calls for a reexamination of the basic evidence. The goal here is to see whether a hard and fast distinction can be maintained between propitiation and expiation and then in light of the study to propose emendations appropriate to the evidence. Before entering on this review, we stop to affirm the strength of Morris’s case for belief in the personal wrath of God. This is a given; and because it is a given, we assume that propitiation is a valid theological conception, though perhaps in need of broadening. We also strongly affirm with Dodd God’s deeply loving and merciful nature. The question that occupies attention here is whether the term propitiation is broad enough to be a consistent gloss for ἱλάσκομαι.

It is unfortunate that the word group is used so infrequently in the New Testament, appearing only six times (Luke 18:13; Rom. 3:25; Heb. 2:17; 9:5; 1 John 2:2; 4:10), because its rarity makes it harder to understand. But it is far more frequent in the LXX, represented by seven different words: ἐξίλασις (twice), ἐξιλάσκομαι (105 times), ἐξίλασμα (twice), ἐξιλασμός (16 times), ἱλάσκομαι (12 times), ἱλασμός (6 times), and ἱλαστήριον (28 times).[34] This study does not intend to revisit the well-established conclusions argued by both Morris and Nicole. The aim is to see if the word group is used in contexts that add connotations that the denotation may obscure.[35]

The word group in the LXX appears in two major settings, sacrificial and nonsacrificial. The nonsacrificial uses have two sub-categories: to appease and to ransom.

Nonsacrificial Uses Of ἱλάσκεσθαι And Related Terms

To appease. The first, and most obvious, place where ἐξιλάσκεσθαι means “to appease” is Genesis 32:21. Jacob, returning to his homeland, must meet Esau, who is coming with four hundred men. Within the limits of the story, this cannot bode well for Jacob. The last thing he heard from Esau twenty years earlier was his plan to kill his cheating brother (27:42-43). Consequently, in 32:7 and 21, Jacob concocts another scheme to receive God’s blessing and entrance to the land by sending waves of animals to Esau as a מִנְחָה, a tribute offering (32:19; LXX, δῶρα).[36] In verse 21 he expresses his purpose: “I shall propitiate [ἐξιλάσομαι; MT, אֲכַפְּרָה] his face with the presents . . . perhaps he will accept my face” (NET Septuagint). By the ἐξίλασις he hoped to win a welcome from Esau. Jacob’s purpose was not to share his bounty from the Lord but to keep Esau from killing him: “Perhaps he will welcome me.” Thus the sense “appease” is the necessary point in this context. Certainly Morris and Nicole have already argued this. But it is a kind of groundwork that Dodd rejected, since it is a nontheological usage. Yet this sort of nontheological use provides the foundation for understanding the theological usage of the word group. A similar sense is found in Proverbs 16:14, where a wise man knows how to “appease” the wrath of a king.[37]

To ransom or bribe. A second sense of the ἱλάσκεσθαι word group is “ransom” or “bribe.” Exodus 30:15 and Psalm 49:8 (LXX 48:8) are the most important. The first reference occurs in a context where Israel is preparing the contribution for the tabernacle. They must count the adult males and collect a half shekel from each as a ransom for their lives: ἐξιλάσασθαι [MT, לְכַפֵּר] περὶ τῶν ψυχῶν ὑμῶν. Durham comments that the passage assumes “that such a head count might result in harm, and harm brought by Yahweh unless the atonement sum was paid. Given such a possibility, why would the count be made in the first place? And how would the payment of a half-shekel a head, a payment that sounds very much like a bribe, avert Yahweh’s anger?”[38] Since God commands the head count and the payment, “bribe” would seem to be the wrong word. “Ransom” fits the context better and is certain because of verse 12, which uses λύτρα τῆς ψυχῆς αὐτοῦ to describe the gift.

Similar, but in a substantially different field of meaning, is Psalm 49:8 (LXX 48:8). Here the LXX translation departs somewhat from the MT, but the important issue is the word ἐξίλασμα that translates כֹּפֶר. Craigie calls the psalm “A Wisdom Psalm on Life and Death.”[39] It discusses what might deliver someone from death and determines that no ransom can ever suffice to redeem a life from death, even using the Greek verb λυτρόω to convey the idea. So the meaning “ransom” is well established.

The only passage that might fit into the category of “bribe” is 1 Samuel 12:3 where Samuel, defending his own integrity (in the face of the injustice of his sons) called Israel to testify whether he had ever acted unjustly toward anyone. In the list of injustices he mentioned that he had never taken an ἐξίλασμα (MT, כֹּפֶר). The obvious goal of כֹּפֶר or ἐξίλασμα in such a context is to influence decisions in the giver’s favor.

Sacrificial Uses Of ἱλάσκεσθαι And Related Terms

The sacrificial uses of ἱλάσκεσθαι go well beyond the mere distinction between propitiation and expiation. While they clearly include the concept of averting wrath, they also add other dimensions of connotation to the word group. Herrmann clearly recognizes a propitiatory role to sacrifice, for he says, “It is naturally perceived, of course, that sacrifice is pleasing and acceptable to God, and that it is thus calculated to propitiate.”[40] But, in line with the argument here, he also sees what he calls a loose sense of expiation: “There can be no doubt, however, that expiation is linked with the manipulation of blood. This blood is the blood of animals. In particular, although not exclusively, there are two specific offerings, of which the one, םאָשָׁ, is much less prominent than the other, חַטָּאת, This must be our starting-point.”[41] So this material is not really new, but it has not received the attention it deserves. It remains now to study three kinds of usage for the word to see how context affects its meaning.

Ἱλάσκεσθαι that results in forgiveness. In four places the word group based on ἱλάσκεσθαι translates the Hebrew word סלח, “to forgive.” In Solomon’s prayer at the dedication of the Temple, the New English Translation of the Septuagint translates the key word as “grant expiation” in 2 Chronicles 6:30. Perhaps this is the way an ancient Greek would have understood the word. Yet ἱλάσῃ does translate the Hebrew word “forgive,” and for the purposes of this study it is important to consider why the translators believed this was an appropriate word in this place.

No one should suggest that the word is simply reduced to the meaning of the Hebrew, but it cannot be separated (at the translator’s level) from the meaning of the Hebrew. Furthermore, סלח appears forty-seven times in the Old Testament. Of those the LXX translates twenty-eight with a word from the word group ἱλάσκεσθαι (very commonly ἵλεως εἶναι or γίνεσθαι [17 times], ἐξιλάσεσθαι, ἱλάσκεσθαι, ἑξιλατεύειν twice, or its related word ἱλατεύειν[42]). Something suggested this word group as appropriate for the translators to use in such a context. It may be treated as a metonymy of the cause. The propitious attitude of God leads him to forgive sin. This will adequately explain most of such usage.

So in Psalm 25:11 (LXX 24:11), with סלח and ἱλάσκομαι, David can plead with God for forgiveness “for the sake of your name, O Lord.” So also the psalmist at a festival in Jerusalem, knowing his own sinfulness, pleads for God to listen to his prayers because “with you is forgiveness” (Ps. 130:4; LXX 129:4). Even confronted with his sin the psalmist can hope in a God who is favorably disposed to his people. It is interesting that Isaiah 54:10 uses ἵλεως to translate the Hebrew verb רחם, a probable support for the position taken here. Finally, Lamentations 3:42 is a departure from the pattern seen above, and yet it ends up supporting our conclusion. God has delayed his wrath at Jerusalem’s sin so long that he cannot justly delay any longer. Thus, he has not been favorable toward the people to forgive their sin (סָלָחְתָּ לֹא and οὐχ ἱλάσθης). Yet even within the context, God’s covenant mercy remains. At the heart of this chapter is the great affirmation, curiously omitted in the Septuagint, “The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness” (3:22-23).

These are not the only places where forgiveness is likely in view,[43] but enough has been said to show that the word group can go beyond the “simple” idea of propitiation to its effects on humanity or on human sin, one of which is forgiveness. Further, while Dodd acknowledged this kind of usage, he did not take seriously the implication of forgiveness relating to the wrath of God.[44] Forgiveness entails the removal of punishment that would otherwise justly fall upon the forgiven. Now, as Dodd pointed out, the language of forgiveness is often couched in the passive (thus, the niphal of סלח). Yet this observation need not lead, and in light of the total context of the Law of Moses, should not lead to the conclusion that the punishment is the operation of an impersonal force embedded in creation. The divine passive is a well recognized category of Hebrew (and indeed of Greek) grammar.[45] In light of all this and summarizing in the words of Michael Bird, “We might say that when sin is expiated, then God’s wrath is propitiated. When sin is removed, God’s wrath is appeased.”[46]

Ἰλάσκεσθαι in the אשם sacrifice. The word םאָשָׁ is rightly translated “guilt.”[47] As the verb is used, it can refer either to objective guilt, incurred when an infraction is committed, or to subjective guilt that one becomes aware of at some later time (Lev. 4:22-23).[48] It may be useful to define guilt at this point. Berkhof has a helpful discussion:

The word “guilt” expresses the relation which sin bears to justice or, as the older theologians put it, to the penalty of the law. He who is guilty stands in a penal relation to the law. We can speak of guilt in a twofold sense, namely, as reatus culpae and as reatus poenae. The former, which Turretin calls ‘potential guilt,’ is the intrinsic moral ill-desert of an act or state. This is of the essence of sin and is an inseparable part of its sinfulness. . . . The usual sense, however, in which we speak of guilt in theology, is that of reatus poenae. By this is meant desert of punishment, or obligation to render satisfaction to God’s justice for self-determined violation of the law.[49]

These two elements of guilt both function in the usage of םאָשָׁ. When one commits one of the sins for which the sacrifice םאָשָׁ is necessary, one becomes guilty. Such a view is not reflected in the English Standard Version in Leviticus 4:13-14: “If the whole congregation of Israel sins unintentionally and the thing is hidden from the eyes of the assembly, and they do any one of the things that by the Lord’s commandments ought not to be done, and they realize their guilt [וְאָשֵׁמוּ], (13) when the sin which they have committed becomes known [ וְנוֹדְעָה] , the assembly shall offer a bull from the herd for a sin offering and bring it in front of the tent of meeting.” Verse 14 makes it clear that וְאָשֵׁמוּ in verse 13 cannot mean, “realize guilt.” There it must mean “become guilty,” that is, subject to blame (reatus culpae) and penalty (reatus poenae). But in verses 22 and 23 the subjective dimension enters, for verse 23 offers an alternative means (אוֹ) of knowledge. So in verse 22 subjective guilt is in view.

The distinction that Berkhof makes helps in understanding what happens in the םאָשָׁ sacrifice. The defining nature of the offenses requiring the םאָשָׁ is that by them the offender has caused someone a loss.[50] And the distinctive nature of the sacrificial ritual is that the offender must make restitution, which also required a twenty-percent fine.[51] The restitution, though, was not by itself sufficient; the offender must offer a sacrifice so that there might be forgiveness (Lev. 5:16, 18; 19:22). The forgiveness, in light of the nature of guilt and the significance of the root אשם, would include both reatus culpae, the liability to blame, and reatus poenae, the liability to punishment. It would be primarily subjective for those who trust the promise of God, the removal of the sense of blame for the infraction. For the unbeliever the forgiveness is still provided, but in that case it would be the cancellation of objective blame before the law. What is important here, then, is that the use of ἐξιλάσκεσθαι in this sacrifice implies both the removal of the need to bear the penalty and the removal of wrath, both divine (because the penalty is paid) and human (because the challenge to the conscience is removed). Thus we have both expiation and propitiation in the context for the word group. This is likely what Hebrews 9:13-14 describes.[52]

Ἱλάσκεσθαι in the “Sin” Offering. Especially important for understanding the usage of the ἱλάσκεσθαι word group is the “sin” offering. Like the םאָשָׁ the name חַטָּאת needs consideration. Milgrom argues, “It has long been recognized that the biblical terms for good and bad behavior also connote their respective reward and punishment.”[53] Thus the appropriate name for this sacrifice, in Hebrew, is חַטָּאת, but the translation is open to question. Milgrom states, “Lĕḥaṭṭāʾt is a piʿel formation derived from the verb ḥiṭṭēʾ, which is synonymous with ṭihar ‘purify’ (e.g., Ezek 43:23-26) and kipper ‘purge’ (Ezek 43:20, 26). The ḥaṭṭāʾt, therefore, is to be rendered ‘purification offering.’ ”[54]

The Hebrew Bible uses the word group in a large number of contexts, in dealing with childbirth (Lev. 12:7-8), the ritual for the restoration of the person with a serious skin disease (14:18-21, etc.),[55] bodily excretions (15:15, 30), in the ordination of the priesthood, preparing the altar for use (Lev. 8:15), and in rituals for the Nazirite (Num. 6:11). Yet almost one sixth of the uses (20 of 117 occurrences) occur either in Leviticus 4 (the “sin” or purification offering, 4 times) and 16 (16 times, the Day of Atonement where the sin or purification offering is foremost). It appears, additionally, in the important section Leviticus 12-15 (the purity regulations) a further 11 times so that more than a quarter of all the Old Testament uses of this word group appears in a restricted portion of Leviticus, while Leviticus as a whole accounts for over forty percent of its appearances. Clearly, this material is central to thinking about the connotations of the word group.

Ἱλάσκεσθαι In The Day Of Atonement (Lev. 16) [56]

Since the baseline for the word group is propitiation, it is surprising that, in some places in Leviticus 16, removing wrath is the obvious point of ἱλάσκεσθαι. Any wrath in the passage would arise from unclean things, wrongs, sins of the people and thus imperil the people. This is the specific point of verse 30, with its use of ἐξιλάσεται connected with cleansing. One could argue, rightly, that God’s wrath toward the people, unpropitiated, would cause him to withdraw from the holy place. Yet something crucial in verse 16 focuses the work of ἱλάσκεσθαι on the holy place.

Verse 16 makes the rationale for ἱλάσκεσθαι the uncleannesses and iniquities of the people, and verses 18-19 add a description of extensive sprinkling of blood. Important in all this are the repeated references to the sacrifice for sins and the allied sprinkling of blood.

Here it is necessary to take a backward glance at Leviticus 4. The ritual of the purification offering is not unique. It includes the laying on of hands, the gathering and manipulation of blood, burning appropriate pieces on the altar, and the outcome of God’s acceptance. Some of these similarities are even mentioned in the text (Lev. 4:10, 15, 24, 26, 31, 35; note that the blood of the peace, or fellowship, offering is poured out, זרק,57 around the altar in 3:2, 8). About sprinkling, 16:19 stipulates that the priest must sprinkle blood on the altar in order to cleanse it from the Israelites’ uncleannesses. Sprinkling cleanses what is defiled. Thus the sin offering is well called the purification offering.

This accounts for the use of ἱλάσκεσθαι language in the Day of Atonement ritual. The uncleannesses and iniquities of Israel were “powerful enough to penetrate the shrine itself.”[58] Only successive purification offerings, one for the priesthood (whose own uncleanness naturally invaded the holy place), and one for the whole people (see 4:13-21), who though they were lay people, nonetheless as the whole congregation they impel their uncleanness into the innermost shrine. The whole ritual of the Day of Atonement to accomplish ἱλασμός, then, was aimed at purifying people, priesthood, and shrine from all contagion of sin. This is the precise point of Leviticus 16:30, a kind of summary of the purpose of the day. What the priest did (ἐξιλάσεται) was “to cleanse you from all your sins before the Lord, and you shall be clean.”

The outcome of this discussion is to identify another connotation of the word group ἱλάσκεσθαι, “to purify” (one of the meanings of the word expiate). So in a sense Dodd was right. Expiation is an aspect of ἱλάσκεσθαι, for in order to remove the wrath of God from his people, and by extension, from his dwelling (so Morris and Nicole were right, too), it is necessary to remove the effect of the cause of wrath, in this case Israel’s contagious uncleanness that penetrated to what was otherwise the most inaccessible symbol of God’s holiness, the holy place.

Implications For The New Testament

The New Testament uses three words from the ἱλασκ- group in six places, ἱλάσκομαι, Luke 18:13; Hebrews 2:17; ἱλασμός, 1 John 2:2 and 4:10; and ἱλαστήριον, Romans 3:25 and 9:5. When the publican prays in Luke 18, ὁ θεός, ἱλάσθητί μοι τῷ ἁμαρτωλῷ, he is likely pleading for forgiveness.[59] But smitten deeply as he is about his sin, he likely senses the impossibility of making restitution (contrast Zacchaeus, ironically named “the pure one”).[60] Thus he may have in mind something like the need (and perhaps the impossibility) to make proper restitution.

Hebrews 2:17, in speaking about dealing with the sin of the people (εἰς τὸ ἱλάσκεσθαι τὰς ἁμαρτίας τοῦ λαοῦ), surely includes the forgiveness of sin.[61] But it also resides in a passage where priestly language is present (2:10, τελειόω, the normal word for expressing, in Exodus and Leviticus, the concept of ordination, and in v. 11 consecration language, ἁγιάζω). Since priestly status is part of the position of the recipients (the intended audience) of Hebrews (13:10, 15-16), it is not improper to think of Jesus’s ἱλασμός as involving cleansing, fitting his people for their priestly service.

The noun ἱλασμός occurs in 1 John 2:2 and 4:10. The purpose of 1 John, though widely discussed, appears to be to reassure believers whose faith is wavering because of the departure of some who had turned out to be false teachers. They had been trusted but were shown to be false by John’s teaching, especially concerning the humanity of Jesus and the proper role of love and obedience in the Christian life. The people who remained were now confused about their own spiritual condition. Trusted members of the community are shown to be false; where does that leave the people who formerly trusted them? There is even indication within the book that the “little children” who remained after the schism might have had some of the same traits as were found in the false teachers (3:18-20). John writes to assure them that Jesus is a sufficient ἱλασμός for any sin, indeed for the sin of the world (2:2). What is required, initially, is trust in the work of the Savior.

But for the present study 1 John 4:10 may be even more important, for it addresses precisely one of Dodd’s arguments against the concept of propitiation. How could God “become favorable” because of sacrifice, when he already was favorable before? The effect of our study is to demonstrate that all divine commands for sacrifice came from a loving God in the first place. The righteous justice of God must impose penalty for sin. It is not merely the way God created the world. It is the nature of God that he must justly destroy whatever contaminates his holiness. But the equally merciful nature of God requires him to offer escape to the objects of his wrath.[62] Thus God’s love sends God’s Son to release God’s creation from the peril of God’s wrath, and it is by his work in ἱλασμός that he accomplishes all this. The false teachers had renounced the apostolic teaching about Christ, for they were not of God, but the readers (the implied audience of 1 John) are of God and can be certain that any flaws in their lives are dealt with by Jesus’s work. For believers, the penalty is paid (expiation) and the wrath of God is averted. They now live in the favor of God. “In Christ, God himself absorbs the destructive consequences of sin.”[63]

The last of the terms, ἱλαστήριον, occurs in Romans 3:25 and Hebrews 9:5. In the latter verse the reference is clearly to the “mercy seat” in the Holy of Holies and can therefore be passed by without further comment. But Romans 3:25 would demand a great deal of discussion, whether the word should be a reference to the ministry of Jesus as the mercy seat, the place where atonement is accomplished, or as a metonymy for what is accomplished there, namely propitiation.[64] Both views end at the same place, though. Jesus has accomplished what is needed to deliver us from our sin. The long preceding passage in Romans has shown that our sin has exposed us to God’s wrath, both temporal (1:18-32) and eschatological (2:6-8), with the capstone being 3:20-21, that all the world is held guilty before God.

Now the mere word ἱλαστήριον, in light of this context, could pointedly refer to the removal of wrath, and that it does. It does more, though. For wrath is not the only datum in the context. The work of Jesus designated ἱλαστήριον is accomplished by his blood, or received by faith in his blood. Both are possible, and both, as Morris argues, have the sacrificial death of Jesus in view. The death of Jesus, though, is not a flat concept. It is textured and contoured by the Old Testament teaching on sacrifices, for there were five of them that God gave to Israel to teach them about his work of salvation. Jesus’s death accomplishes all that all five of the sacrifices accomplished, at minimum. If that is true, which of the sacrifices had blood most prominent? Was it not the purification offering? We should not argue here for a one-dimensional exposition of the blood of Christ, but rely on the rich tapestry of ideas that God included in the Levitical offerings. If blood is a sign of life violently taken, as it is, it can equally be, and all the more readily so, a reference to the purifying work of Jesus in light of the concentration of ἱλάσκεσθαι and blood language in Leviticus 4 and 16. For God to be favorable to sinners, he must solve the problem that he, a God more merciful than we ever dared imagine, caused for himself in creating people who could fall into sin and thus into liability to his wrath. He must remove the entailments of his wrath, the objective just penalty required for any and all sin. He must remove the subjective defilement of his own dwelling (Heb. 9:22-24) and of humanity too so that he may enter into fellowship with them. All of this is expiation. The result of this work is propitiation. God is now favorable toward the forgiven and cleansed, loving them even as he loves his Son Jesus (John 17:23).

Conclusions

If this is a sound study of the issues, we must jettison the hard distinction between expiation and propitiation. The contexts in which ἱλάσκεσθαι is used require that the word group assume more than removal of wrath. The contexts tie the word group to three ideas. First, ἱλάσκεσθαι includes forgiveness because God has removed his wrath through a substituted penalty. Second, God has removed guilt and personal shame for an infraction by cleansing our conscience from dead works to serve the living God. And finally, he has accomplished purification, not only of the human conscience, as important as that is. He has purified heaven itself from any stain on his reputation for being lax with sin. We do not suggest here that all three ideas are always present where the word group occurs, but any of them may be, and we must be sensitive to these ideas in our exposition.

Notes

1. Roger Nicole, “C. H. Dodd and the Doctrine of Propitiation,” Westminster Theological Journal 17, no. 2 (May 1955): 122.
2. Journal of Theological Studies 32 (1930-31): 352-60. He reissued the study in a chapter titled “Atonement,” in his book The Bible and the Greeks (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1935), 82-95.
3. “Dodd’s arguments have convinced many that the NT does not think of Jesus’ death as appeasing God’s anger; rather, God, through Jesus, deals with and nullifies sin and its effects” (C. M. Tuckett, “Atonement in the NT,” in The Anchor Yale Bible Dictionary, ed. David Noel Freedman [New York: Doubleday, 1992], 519).
4. Nicole, “C. H. Dodd and the Doctrine of Propitiation,” 117-57; Leon Morris, The Apostolic Preaching of the Cross (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1955). Citations in this article come from the third edition, 1965. His discussion of the issues appears in chapters 5 “Propitiation (1)” and 6 “Propitiation (2)” on pages 144-213.
5. Alan W. Gomes, “Glossary 1: Technical Terminology,” in William Greenough Thayer Shedd, Dogmatic Theology, 3rd ed., ed. Alan W. Gomes (Phillipsburg, NJ: P & R, 2003), 955. See also Culver’s discussion, in Robert Duncan Culver, Systematic Theology: Biblical and Historical (Ross-shire, UK: Mentor, 2005), 554.
6. J. Dwight Pentecost, Things Which Become Sound Doctrine (Grand Rapids: Kregel, 1996), 95.
7. Dodd, “ΙΛΑΣΚΕΣΘΑΙ,” 352. A standard example of this is Iliad 1:93-100.
8. Ibid., 356.
9. Ibid., 359.
10. Ibid.
11. Ibid., 360.
12. C. H. Dodd, The Epistle of Paul to the Romans (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1932), 32. Erickson comments on a point that Dodd omitted: “While the word [ἱλάσκεσθαι] is seldom used in the Septuagint with ‘God’ as its direct object, it must also be noted that it is never used in the Old Testament with the word sin as its direct object” (Millard J. Erickson, Christian Theology, 2nd ed. [Grand Rapids: Baker, 1998], 828).
13. Dodd, Romans, 78.
14. Ibid., 78-79.
15. Ibid., 79.
16. Morris, Apostolic Preaching, 148.
17. H. Maldwyn Hughes, What Is the Atonement? A Study in the Passion of God in Christ (London: James Clarke, 1924), 51, cited by Morris, Apostolic Preaching, 149.
18. Hughes, What Is the Atonement?, 51-52.
19. New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology and Exegesis, ed. Moisés Silva, s.v. “ἱλάσκομαι” (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2014), 2:536.
20. Morris, Apostolic Preaching, 177.
21. Ibid., 184. His point in suggesting that expiate is an unclear term is that “as commonly used the term seems to signify the removal of sin or guilt, but neither of these is a thing which can be objectively removed.” In fact, as used in our literature, both biblical and theological, the term is unclear.
22. Once again, it is important to realize that our purpose is not to survey all the evidence, but to review the discussion and further it. Below, the section titled “LXX Usage of the ἱλάσκεσθαι Word Group” entertains the evidence in new connections.
23. Morris, Apostolic Preaching, 212.
24. Ibid., 211. The problem that Morris sees here is not with the definition of the word itself, but with its use in a nonrelational context. However, he has spoken more truth than his context required. A problem of defining expiation does exist that calls for exploration.
25. The Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971), s.v. “expiate,” 1:931, column 433. Other dictionaries are less exhaustive, but they give similar or related explanations of the word.
26. P. G. W. Glare, ed., Oxford Latin Dictionary (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982), 1:650.
27. Carl Friedrich Keil and Franz Delitzsch, Commentary on the Old Testament (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1996), 1:328-29, emphasis added.
28. Ibid., 506-507, emphasis added.
29. Roy E. Gane, Cult and Character: Purification Offerings, Day of Atonement, and Theodicy (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2005), 62, emphasis added.
30. Samuel Greengus, “Law: Biblical and ANE Law,” in The Anchor Yale Bible Dictionary, ed. David Noel Freedman (New York: Doubleday, 1992), 4:249.
31. Nicole, “Dodd,” 120.
32. “Usage of the word כִּפֶּר demonstrates that the meaning is ‘to expiate, pacify, atone,’ and should not be translated ‘to cover.’ Although there is some debate whether the emphasis should be on propitiation or expiation, the effect of these sacrifices is clear—by offering them the worshiper found forgiveness. The idea to be drawn from Leviticus, then, is that these sacrifices were efficacious” (Allen P. Ross, “The Biblical Method of Salvation: A Case for Discontinuity,” in Continuity and Discontinuity: Perspectives on the Relationship between the Old and New Testaments: Essays in Honor of S. Lewis Johnson, Jr., ed. John S. Feinberg [Westchester, IL: Crossway Books, 1988], 175).
33. See again Gomes, “Glossary 1: Technical Terminology,” 955.
34. The word counts are taken from Accordance. The words ἱλατεύω (used once) and ἵλεως (34 times) in phrases with either εἰμί or γίνομαι can be added to the list. These last two counts come from J. Lust, J. Eynikel, and K. Hauspie, eds., A Greek-English Lexicon of the Septuagint, rev. ed. (Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 2003).
35. Hence, for example, we will not attempt to address the problem of the meaning of ἱλαστήριον in Romans 3:25.
36. “Abigail’s present is a bᵉrāḵá (1 Sam. 25:27), and Jacob’s is a minḥá. One significant difference between a minḥá and a bᵉrāḵá is that the former is given to another only by one who is in some sense subservient (Jacob to Esau, the worshiper to God)” (Victor P. Hamilton, The Book of Genesis, Chapters 18-50, New International Commentary on the Old Testament, Accordance electronic ed. [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995], 325).
37. In a few other places the verb ἐξιλάσκασθαι translates words that would mean appease, for example in Zechariah 7:2 and 8:22, where the verb translates Hebrew לְחַלּוֹת and the lexicon gives the meaning “b) to appease God Ex 32:11; 1S 13:12; 1K 13:62K 13:4; Jr 26:19; Zech 7:2; 8:21; Mal 1:9; Ps 119:58; Da 9:13; 2C 33:12” (Ludwig Koehler, Walter Baumgartner, Johann Jakob Stamm, et al., The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament, s.v. “חלה,” 1:317).
38. John I. Durham, Exodus, Word Biblical Commentary. Accordance/Thomas Nelson electronic ed. (Waco: Word Books, 1992), 402.
39. Peter C. Craigie, Psalms 1-50, Word Biblical Commentary, Accordance/Thomas Nelson electronic ed. (Waco: Word Books, 1983), 356.
40. J. Herrmann, “ἱλάσκομαι, ἱλασμός,” in Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, ed. Gerhard Kittel, trans. and ed. Geoffrey W. Bromiley (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1964-1974), 3:305.
41. Ibid.
42. These last two words do not appear in the New Testament, but they appear three times in the LXX. Both by usage and by apparent etymology, though, they belong to this study. See Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon, rev. Henry Stuart Jones (Oxford: Clarendon, 1996).
43. We might extend the study to Leviticus 19:22; Numbers 15:28 (a peculiarly interesting passage that follows on Israel’s great failure at Kadesh Barnea); 2 Kings 5:18 (Naaman!); 24:4 (the sinfulness of Jehoiachin); 2 Chronicles 30:18 (Hezekiah’s irregular Passover); Psalms 65:4 (LXX 64:4) and 78:38 (LXX 77:38).
44. The only person who does סלח in the Hebrew Bible is God (“forgive, pardon, alw. with Y. as subj., sin as obj” [Dictionary of Classical Hebrew, ed. D. J. A. Clines (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic, 1993), s.v. סלח]). This is not an impersonal wrath that is being assuaged. It is the wrath of God, which only God can remove.
45. Waltke can say, “Section B is framed by ‘was firmly established’ (1 Kings 2:12, 46b), a divine passive in Hebrew grammar” (Bruce K. Waltke and Charles Yu, An Old Testament Theology: An Exegetical, Canonical, and Thematic Approach [Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2007], 705). He further comments, “The parallel, ‘you caused me to trust’ (Hiphil) shows the incomplete passive I was cast (hošlaktî, Hophal) as the typical divine passive: God is the agent” (Bruce K. Waltke, James M. Houston, and Erika Moore, The Psalms as Christian Worship: A Historical Commentary [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010], 403).
46. Michael F. Bird, Evangelical Theology: A Biblical and Systematic Introduction (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2013), 406-7.
47. Thus the first meaning of the word is given as “1. guilt Gn 26:10; Jr 51:5; Ps 68:22; Pr 14:9” (Koehler et al., The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament, s.v. “םשָׁאָ” 1:96).
48. Levine wants to avoid this implication. In his note on verse 22, he translates “a chieftain who incurs guilt” (Baruch A. Levine, Leviticus, JPS Torah Commentary, Accordance electronic ed. [Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1989], 24). However, verse 23 nearly requires the sense given above, that he becomes aware of his guilt, since the alternative (אוֹ) is that “his sin is made known to him.” Earlier in the same chapter, Levine comments on “and they realize their guilt” and says, “Rather, ‘and thereby incur guilt.’ The precise sense of ve-’ashemu here and of the singular form ve-’ashem in verses 22, 27 and in 5:2, 4, 17, and 23, has been the subject of extensive scholarly argument. These forms all occur in the transitional verses of chapter 4, following descriptions of various hypothetical offenses. When certain transgressions occur—ve-’ashemu. If subsequently the offenses become known, special rites are to be performed. And so the entire process of ritual expiation hinges on this pivotal verb” (p. 22). This is likely correct for verse 13, given its immediate context, but not for verses 22-23. Ross seems to agree: “At times, if they were not sure an offense or a fraud had actually been committed, some people with a sensitive conscience might bring a reparation offering just to be sure” (Ross, Holiness to the Lord: A Guide to the Exposition of Leviticus [Grand Rapids: Baker, 2002], 147).
49. Louis Berkhof, Systematic Theology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1938), 245-46.
50. Ross, Holiness to the Lord, 147.
51. For the noun the second and fourth meanings given are “2. restitution Nu 5:7f; . . . 4. gift of atonement, compensation 1S 6:3f, 8, 17; Is 53:10” (Koehler, et al., The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament, s.v. “םאָשָׁ,” 1:96). See also Leviticus 5:16.
52. For a fuller discussion of the םאָשָׁ offering, see especially Gordon J. Wenham, The Book of Leviticus, New International Commentary on the Old Testament, Accordance electronic ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1979), 103-13; and Ross, Holiness to the Lord, 146-54. On Hebrews 9:14, see William L. Lane, Hebrews 9-13, Word Biblical Commentary, Accordance/Thomas Nelson electronic ed. (Dallas: Word Books, 1991), 240-41; B. F. Westcott, The Epistle to the Hebrews with Notes and Essays, Westcott’s Commentaries on the Gospel of John, Ephesians, Hebrews, and the Epistles of John, Zondervan/Accordance electronic ed. (London, 1903; electronic ed., Altamonte Springs: OakTree Software, 2006), 262.
53. Jacob Milgrom, Cult and Conscience: The Asham and the Priestly Doctrine of Repentance, Studies in Judaism in Late Antiquity, ed. Jacob Neusner (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1976), 3. The same discussion occurs in Milgrom’s commentary on Leviticus, Jacob Milgrom, Leviticus 1-16: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, Anchor Yale Bible (New Haven; Yale University Press, 2008), 339.
54. Milgrom, Leviticus 1-16, 232. Baruch A. Levine, Leviticus, 20, gives the same interpretation. On the privative piel see also Ronald J. Williams, Williams’ Hebrew Syntax, 3rd ed., rev. John C. Beckman (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007), 146.
55. “Confirmation that כפר for the offerer in 14:19 results in the change of his state to one of purity (root טהר) is found in identification of the offerer as הַמִּטַּהֵר, ‘the one who is being purified.’ Compare the next verse, where the summary formula following instructions for accompanying burnt and grain offerings that complete the same ritual complex is: וְטָהֵר הַכֹּהֵן עָלָיו וְכִפֶּר ‘And the priest shall make expiation for him. Then he shall be pure’ (v. 20)” (Gane, Cult and Character, 115).
56. While the verb is prominent in Leviticus 16, the noun ἱλαστήριον, traditionally translated “mercy seat,” appears seven times (Lev. 16:2, 13-15). But clearly the verb takes preeminence.
57. BDB glosses this word as meaning “to toss or throw (in a volume), scatter abundantly” (Francis Brown, S. R. Driver, and Charles A. Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament (Oxford: Clarendon, 1907), s.v. “זרק,” 284). It is, though, sometimes translated “sprinkle.” The word in Leviticus 4 is נזה, which one can do with one’s finger. It is not clear why sometimes God instructed the pouring and sometimes the sprinkling of blood, but see Gane, Cult and Character, 62.
58. Ross, Holiness to the Lord, 132.
59. So John Nolland, Luke 9:21-18:34, Word Biblical Commentary, Accordance/ Thomas Nelson electronic ed. (Waco: Word Books, 1993), 877. See also François Bovon, Luke 2: A Commentary on the Gospel of Luke 9:51-19:27, ed. Helmut Koester, trans. Donald S. Deer, Hermeneia (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2013), 550: “It suggests more the end of vindictiveness and the reestablishment of a relationship than compassion. That was also the purpose of the morning expiatory sacrifice offered in the temple: to have God hold out the offer to persons to rejoin his people and benefit from his pardon.”
60. Cf. A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, s.vv. “זַךְ,” “זכה,” and “זַכַּי,” “innocent, pure,” 1:269.
61. “The ‘propitiation’ acts on that which alienates God and not on God whose love is unchanged throughout” (Brooke Foss Westcott, ed., The Epistle to the Hebrews: The Greek Text with Notes and Essays, 3rd ed., Classic Commentaries on the Greek New Testament [London: Macmillan, 1903], 58).
62. These concepts may seem foreign because we have never known a genuinely righteous wrath in our own experience. In any case, even the best of human thinking about God only approximates, though approximating truly, the actual nature of God. “Wrath” may not be the best word, but human language may not have a better. It is a wrath born, of all things, of love. This appears to be the sense of the Hebrew concept of קנאה.
63. Stephen H. Travis, “Wrath of God: New Testament,” in The Anchor Yale Bible Dictionary, ed. David Noel Freedman (New York: Doubleday, 1992), 997.
64. For a fuller discussion of the meaning of ἱλαστήριον, see C. E. B. Cranfield, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans, International Critical Commentary (London: T & T Clark, 2004), 1:214-18. See also the generally accurate discussion in Bruce A. Demarest, The Cross and Salvation: The Doctrine of Salvation, Foundations of Evangelical Theology (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1997), 179-80.

First John 1:9: Confession As A Test, But Of What?

By James E. Allman

[James E. Allman is Professor of Bible Exposition, Dallas Theological Seminary, Dallas, Texas.]

Abstract

A reexamination of 1 John 1:9 has found a range of options available for its interpretation. This study proposes that the following reading best accounts for the data reviewed to this point. False teachers had left the congregation, but they seem to have been at one time trusted leaders. Their departure left those who remained confused about whom to trust. John—after a statement of one of his basic theses—offered tests for leadership to assist believing readers to know whom to trust among their leaders.

Trustworthy leaders pass certain tests that are introduced in 1 John 1:6-10. First, they walk in the light. This means that they live by faith and practice righteousness, but also that their message coheres with that of other authoritative teachers of the church. Second, they are able to publicly admit their sins. These tests (and others given by the apostle) demonstrate who is credible and dependable as a teacher for the church.

* * *

Νo biblical book demonstrates more obviously the impact of context on meaning than 1 John. Choice of a hypothesis for its purpose determines the options for its interpretation in a more obvious way than for some other books of the Bible. This study suggests a refinement on other proposals of purpose for the book, a refinement that redirects the interpretation. The special aim is to suggest a significantly different reading of 1:5-10 and particularly of verse 9. The thesis is that verse 9 in John’s argument gave evidence to use to identify reliable teachers in view of the recent secession of false teachers from the community. The importance of 1 John 1:9 in Christian life teaching must surely make the study crucial. But if the thesis of this study is correct, it bears profoundly upon one’s conception of Scripture and ecclesiastical practice.

The Purpose Of 1 John

Students of 1 John cite 5:13 as stating the book’s purpose: “These things I have written to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, in order that you may know that you have eternal life.” Some add other statements of purpose, such as 1:3, “that you may have fellowship with us,” or 2:1, “that you may not sin.”[1] From these and similar references, the implication is that John’s book aims at one of two goals, to give either tests of fellowship or tests of life. The test of fellowship view[2] addresses the question of intimate relationship with God, or how one may live in close fellowship with God. The test of life addresses assurance of salvation, or what is a genuine Christian.[3]

Rarely do commentators include 1 John 2:26 as a purpose statement, “These things I have written to you concerning those who are trying to deceive you.”[4] Is this a statement of purpose? In form, it is not, but in function it is, and the immediate context supports this. Chapter 2:18-25 prepares the reader for verse 26. And 4:1-3 adds to this emphasis. The readers must guard against false prophets and test “to see whether they are from God; because many false prophets have gone out into the world” (v. 1).[5] Akin acknowledges this, but he sees the major issue differently: “Whereas the Gospel of John is written with an evangelistic purpose, 1 John is penned to provide avenues of assurance whereby a believer can know he has eternal life through the Son.”[6]

But why was this assurance necessary? What role does 2:26 play in explaining the purpose of John in writing? Material from 1 John 2 and 4 suggests that questions had arisen in the minds of the original audience about their own relationship with God in view of the departure of the false teachers. Those who left seem to have been trusted members of the community, even leaders (4:1-3). Their departure resulted from charges of being false prophets, even antichrists: “Even now many antichrists have arisen; from this we know that it is the last hour. They went out from us, but they were not really of us” (2:18-19). This departure left the audience without clear understanding of two decisive issues. First, if these formerly trusted teachers were so wrong, how is right relationship with God determined? Second, who now can be trusted? These are the questions that John must address and bring to resolution.

What contextual data impel such a reading? Several points need to be addressed. First, to whom does “we” refer in chapter 1? Second, what does verse 3 mean? Why is it necessary for the reader to have “fellowship with us”? Does this express cause-effect or something else? Third, what is the relationship between the subordinate clauses and main clauses of verses 6-10? Fourth, what do the terms “confess,” “forgive,” and “cleanse” mean? Several implications grow from answering these questions.

Addressing The Difficulties Of 1 John 1:9

The Referent Of “We”

The referent of the pronoun “we,” common in this passage, may seem so rudimentary as to be needless to address. Some commentators simply ignore it in favor of more theological concerns. It becomes important in verses 5 to 10, where differing views arise about the identity of the pronominal reference. In verses 1 to 5 it is much clearer. Thus Strecker says, “One could more correctly judge that the author uses ‘we’ in order to assert membership in the ‘circle . . . of “apostolic” witnesses.’”[7]

Expositors of 1 John consistently assume a change in the referent in the first chapter.[8] They argue for a broadening of the referent of the pronoun “we.” Hiebert is representative: “The claims indicated in verses 6, 8, and 10 seem clearly to represent views advanced by the false teachers. John’s ‘we’ is inclusive, embracing himself and his readers, as well as the false teachers.”[9] Only rarely do the authors explain why they make this shift. Christie offers five reasons, one of which is most cogent for this study: an exclusive view of the referent “‘we’ has difficulty explaining how the apostles could ever be characterized as not having the truth or the Word in them, as well as the fact that it does not harmonize with the other tests, or with John’s purpose.”[10]

But the problem Christie raised remains. How could the apostles be included? Two comments will suffice here. First, the syntax assists in understanding how the apostles are involved. Verses 6-10 are, after all, examples of a third-class condition. Debate goes on whether one should analyze the conditions as present general or future more probable. Given the discussion to follow, the condition is present general. It relates to all time (to all who present themselves as “tradition bearers”), and this conclusion leads to the second comment. Apostles are not less subject to confirmation of their divine appointment than are other tradition bearers. No further evidence for the truth of this idea is necessary than Paul’s second Corinthian epistle. People do make claims to apostolic authority, even today. Their claims must be open to testing.

How should this material be evaluated? In response to Christie’s argument, it is not at all necessary that the testimony be solely apostolic. Paul mentioned over five hundred brothers (1 Cor. 15:6) who saw the risen Jesus. More narrowly, in seeking a replacement for Judas, the apostles identified two men from the number of those who “accompanied us all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us” (Acts 1:21). Any number of people who had witnessed the incarnation and resurrection appearances of Jesus may have been present in Ephesus as John was writing. These would be authoritative witnesses, but they would not be people for whom apostasy was impossible. In short, John addressed a situation that involved a group of tradition bearers or authoritative teachers of the church, which might include even second-generation believers who had heard the consistent testimony of the apostles. Wider issues, though, also need to be surfaced.

In this passage determining the referent of “we” affects the interpretation of the whole passage. If it is an inclusive “we,” then the choice for understanding 1 John 1:9 is between the “tests of fellowship” and “tests of life” approaches. Yet neither of these tests resolves the difficulty of addressing 2:26 and 5:13 in the construction of the message and purpose of the book.

In the book’s opening verses, it seems best to identify the referent of the pronoun as original apostolic witnesses of the resurrection.[11] Kruse rightly states, “When he [John] writes about having heard the message from the lips of Christ, or having seen him and touched him, or about bearing witness to the message of eternal life, he always uses the first person plural form.”[12] At least for verses 1-5 there is wide consensus in identifying “we” as apostolic witnesses. Meanwhile, the referent of this pronoun does not change throughout chapter 1.

It is theoretically possible that at some point in chapter 1 John could have had a different referent in mind. However, if there were a change, one would expect a contextual marker. Just such a marker comes in 2:1-2. Those verses give three key indications that the author is moving on from the concepts he developed in chapter 1. First, is the personal address that begins verse 1, τεκνία μου. While the audience is surfaced in the first chapter (with references to “you” in verses 3 and 5), 2:1 contains the first direct identification of the audience and address to them. Second, the chain of first-person plurals is broken with ταῦτα γράφω ὑμῖν, establishing a new development in the discourse. Third, the text moves away from the simple opposition of “we—you” with the new conditional clause, καὶ ἐάν τις ἁμάρτῃ, the indefinite pronoun generalizing the reference beyond the twofold pattern established in the first chapter. Without obvious contextual markers to the contrary, chapter 1 is best understood if one allows the first-person plural to remain consistent through verse 10. The authoritative teachers of the church are in view. It is their credibility that is at stake with the bona fides that mark them out.

The importance of these observations cannot be overstressed. As 1:7 states, it is the testimony of these authoritative witnesses of the Word of Life that causes the scales to turn in favor of John’s teaching against the views of the secessionists. Without the consistent testimony of the eyewitnesses, the debate between John and his opponents becomes merely a balance of probabilities between two options. The consistent testimony and life pattern of the apostolic witnesses confirm the truth of John’s position.

This study proposes that the following reading best accounts for the data reviewed to this point. False teachers had left the congregation, but they seem at one time to have been trusted leaders. Their departure left John’s readers confused about whom to trust. Thus John—after a statement of one of his basic theses—offers tests for leadership. How could believing readers know whom to trust among their leaders? John uses “we,” not because he was in danger of going astray himself, but because some with whom he had been allied had gone astray in practice and doctrine, and he feared others would do so in the future. “We” then refers to authoritative teachers of the church. The conditional sentences in 1:6-10 are third class, not warning that John himself would go astray, but that there might be others in the future who would.

This approach does not rule out relevance or application to those who are not leaders or in authority, but it does allow the reader to see three things. First, it explains why John included himself. Second, it explains what impact the false teachers had on the message of the book. And third, it explains why John wrote “so that you might know that you have eternal life” (5:13).

The Meaning Of “Fellowship”

“The word fellowship is difficult to define. Various suggestions for English translations have been ‘fellowship,’ ‘partnership,’ ‘communion,’ or ‘community.’”[13] Harris, rightly suggests that the word implies some shared reality, in particular, “the apostolic (eyewitness) testimony about who Jesus is.”[14] The word is relatively rare in the New Testament, occurring only seventeen times, and only four times in John’s writings, all of them in 1 John 1:3, 6, 7. This makes determining John’s meaning all the more difficult.

This κοινωνία is something that John wants the readers to maintain (note the present subjunctive ἔχητε), but by implication, the false teachers did not have it. To fellowship with John and the other authoritative teachers of the church (all of whom bear the testimony about the incarnate Son of God) is in fact to fellowship with God and His Son (1:3). One may infer from this, then, that κοινωνία is relationship with God, beginning with salvation. Akin insightfully addresses this very issue with three points. First, the apostolic preaching of the incarnation was the means of bringing about fellowship with God for John’s readers (v. 3). Second, fellowship expressed itself as they walked in the light as God is in the light (v. 6). This implies loving the brothers, since God himself is love (4:7-8, 16). Akin concludes, “Fellowship with the Father and his Son, then, is essentially the same thing as having eternal life.”[15] The implication is that one who claims “fellowship” with God but has none with the authoritative teachers actually has no relationship with God. This interpretation fits well with 1:5, which introduces what is likely John’s opposition to basic positions of the false teachers. So, to shun fellowship with the authoritative messengers is to reject fellowship with God.

Verses 6 and 7 draw out this conclusion. If apparently authoritative teachers claim fellowship with God, but they “walk in darkness” (in the context, they reject the interpretation of the message of God that other apostolic teachers have given),[16] it is obvious that they have rejected fellowship with God. There can be no fellowship with God without the apostolic testimony.[17]

If this is the correct reading, then 1:3 offers no support for the idea of “losing fellowship”[18] with God that is advocated by such commentators as Duffy, who states, “Unconfessed sin results in a barrier between God and the Christian as far as fellowship is concerned.

It has eternal consequences only in that being out of fellowship with God reduces one’s opportunities for reward.”[19]

The Protases And Apodoses In 1 John 1:6-10

Verses 1:6-10 share a common syntactical arrangement. Each begins with a conditional clause (a protasis with ἐάν and the subjunctive) followed by the apodosis at the end of each verse. In English readers tend to think of them as expressing cause and effect. On the condition that “A” happens, the result, “B” will follow. It is difficult to break free of this framework. It results in statements like the following: “This forgiveness and cleansing, issuing from the faithfulness and justice of God, are conditional upon confession.”[20] Akin comments, “There are basically three kinds of relationships between the ‘if’ part (protasis) and the ‘then’ part (apodosis) of all conditional sentences. The relationship can be cause and effect, evidence and inference, or equivalence. . . . In 1 John 1:6 the effects of ‘lying’ and ‘not doing the truth’ are caused by the claim of fellowship with God and yet living in death.”[21] Even those who propose other categories of relationship have difficulty removing from their discussion of this passage the cause-effect relationship. What follows examines these verses to see if cause-effect will work.

After the statement of his first thesis, “that God is light, and in Him there is no darkness at all” (v. 5), John proceeds to apply it to the circumstances he addresses in the book. In verses 6, 8, and 10 he takes up claims made by his opponents and shows them to be false.[22] He intersperses statements that give his own point of view in verses 7 and 9.

In verse 6 John offers the (negative) claim: “If we say that we have fellowship with Him and yet walk in the darkness.” For modern English readers this clause can be slightly confusing, but it is offering two claims. The first part of the conditional clause claims fellowship with God. The second claim of the clause is that the person making the claim walks in darkness. From John’s point of view, walking in darkness includes at least three things: that darkness is the sphere of sin, false teaching about Christ, and hating the brothers. These are the charges that John will continue to bring against the false teachers. His readers would likely agree with him as to his definitions.[23] What is essential is to compare the statement with verse 5: “there is no darkness in God at all.” One who has fellowship with God should be in the light, yet the claimant is in the darkness.

The apodosis of the sentence follows in verse 6: “we lie and do not practice the truth.” Here it becomes important to test Akin’s view that the protases and apodoses of the passage should be read as cause and effect.[24] Did the claimants suddenly become liars by claiming to have fellowship with God, all the while walking in darkness? Or, were they already liars? Is that the reason they claimed fellowship though walking in darkness? It seems reasonable to conclude that they were already liars. What, then, does it mean that they were lying and not doing the truth?

John’s writings are rich in use of the ἀληθ- word group. Accordance lists 93 instances in John’s works (55 in John; 16 in 1 John; 10 in Revelation; and the rest in the remaining two letters). But John’s use of its antonym, ψευδ- terms, has only 14 recorded instances (once in John; four times in 1 John; and nine times in Revelation). They classify anyone described by the term with Satan (John 8:44; Rev. 3:9; 16:13) or with false prophets or false apostles (1 John 4:1; Rev. 2:2). Is this a result of an accomplished condition?

Rather than cause and effect, the relationship between the protasis and apodosis must be “evidence-inference,” what Cotterell and Turner call a “Grounds-CONCLUSION relationship.” They state, “In the case of grounds-CONCLUSION relations, one kernel offers the evidence on the basis of which the second is to be accepted.”[25] It turns out that there are quite a few of these in the New Testament. One example will illustrate the point: “For if we believe that Jesus died and rose again, even so God will bring with Him those who have fallen asleep in Jesus” (1 Thess. 4:13). Faith in the resurrection of Jesus is evidence that one should believe in the resurrection of those who have already fallen asleep in him. It is the contention here that all of the conditional statements in 1 John 1:6-10 should be read this way. Thus, in verse 8, the claim that one “has no sin”[26] is the evidence that the claimants were self-deceived and had no truth in themselves (on this compare John 8:44, again, and Satan, again!). In the same way one could read 1 John 1:7 and 9 with the pattern of evidence-conclusion. These verses have a structure parallel to the other verses in the context, so the reader would naturally assume a parallel relationship.

Verse 7 becomes much more important because of this approach. The protasis gives information, not about the Christian life in general, but about the reliability of leaders in the Christian community. How do Christians who are troubled about their own relationship with God, troubled especially because of false teaching, know whom to trust? How do they know what message to embrace? The seventh verse provides an answer: “but if we walk in the light as He Himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin.” Again, the pronoun “we” retains its referent from verses 1-6: the authoritative teachers. Those who may be trusted are people who walk in the light because God is light, and they meet the three tests of 1 John: they practice righteousness (e.g., 2:1-6);[27] they teach truth about Jesus (e.g., 2:18-25); and they love the children of God (e.g., 3:10-12). A reliable teacher is one whose way of life coheres with the way of life that the apostles pursued. Accordingly, they fellowship with John and the apostolic band and, more importantly, with the God the apostles represent. Furthermore, their doctrine also coheres. These two evidences make it clear that “they walk in the light,” and more, “that the blood of Jesus God’s Son cleanses them from all sin.” Walking in the light is the evidence that they are cleansed through the continuing work of Jesus in their lives. Von Wahlde’s comment is apt: “The most extensive means of refuting the opponents is by providing tests and ways to know if the claims are true and actual. Specifically the author insists that every prerogative claimed by the opponents . . . has to be tested in terms of both correct belief and ethics.”[28]

The Meaning Of Confession, Forgiveness, And Cleansing

The most important issues of this study revolve around the key concepts in verses 7 and 10—confession, forgiveness, and cleansing—though few commentaries on 1 John spend much time explaining forgiveness or cleansing. This leaves several options for interpretation.[29] Often in devotional literature confession is counted as a means of restoring or maintaining fellowship with God.[30]

The view of this study is that 1 John 1 aims to identify those who in reality have relationship with God so that the people of the community will know whom to follow. What then would forgiveness and cleansing mean in such a setting?

Forgiveness and cleansing. As to cleansing, John uses the verb καθαρίζω and related words only a few times.[31] Perhaps the most important uses are in John’s Gospel. In John 15:2-3 Jesus uses the image of “cleansing” or “purifying” to convey the idea of preparation for fruitfulness. The vinedresser “purges” (καθαίρει) the branch so that it will be καθαρός. The effect is that the branch will bear more fruit. The branch was not fruitless before; its purging is not punitive but enhancing. A leader who walks in the darkness is not fit for the life of the community and will not be fruitful in it.

Forgiveness, by contrast, would seem to be a simple issue. It is the cancellation of the penalty due to sin. Yet the Bible uses the word in a variety of contexts. Two are immediately important. One relates to the cancellation of the eternal penalty for sin (because it has been paid by the work of Christ). Key references on this are found throughout the New Testament, but especially in Matthew 26:28 and Colossians 2:13. The other category of forgiveness is temporal, the cancellation of the temporal consequences of sin. The evidence for this is more limited in the New Testament, but a case can be made from passages such as James 5:15[32] and John 5:14. To the man healed at the pool of Bethesda Jesus said, “Behold, you have become well; do not sin anymore,” so that nothing worse happens to you.” The implication of Jesus’ statement appears to be that the malady from which the healed man suffered was initiated by his sin. Now that he is healed, the temporal consequence of his sin is removed. But there remains the possibility that further sin would bring worse suffering into his life. The Old Testament contains abundant evidence for the category of temporal forgiveness, especially in Leviticus 4 and 5, since the penalties remitted to the worshiper who brings either the sin (or purification) offering or the guilt (or restitution) offering would be temporal.

One other category is possible, derived from the difficult passage in Matthew 6:12-15. There Jesus grounds forgiveness on the sinner’s prior forgiving of others (see the parallel in Luke 6:17; see also Mark 11:25). If God’s forgiveness in Matthew 6:12-15 is eternal forgiveness, a problem arises. Faith alone is no longer enough for salvation. If the forgiveness is temporal, it is not clear what the temporal consequence would be. The Sermon on the Mount appears to be talking, not about specific Christian life issues but about the conditions for entry into the kingdom (see Matthew 5:17-20 and 7:13-27).[33] If this is the context, forgiveness could be eschatological, amounting to permission to enter the kingdom. Only those who forgive have the righteousness that goes beyond that of the Pharisees and so are allowed to enter the kingdom. This category may help solve the problem posed in Matthew 18:35.

One result of this study is recognition of the lack of a passage that clearly defines forgiveness as restoration to intimacy in the family. The question is, which category of meaning for forgiveness best fits the context of 1 John 1:9? It appears that the first is best—the eternal cancellation of sin’s penalty. If fellowship is a synonym in John’s works for salvation; if the issue is the distinction to be made between light and darkness, categories that exclude one another, especially in John; if the problem is false teachers who are the spirit of antichrist—then the proper way to read forgiveness is as eternal, the cancellation of the eternal penalty for sin because Jesus has paid the penalty by his work. This forgiveness cannot, then, be conditioned upon confession.

Confession. The Greek word ὁμολογέω is often treated etymologically. The λογ- part of the word means “to say,” and the ὁμο- part means “same.” Thus Hiebert can say, “To ‘confess’ means literally ‘to say the same thing, to agree with.’”[34] To be sure Hiebert does not hold that simple agreement is all that is necessary. Anyone who follows this view has sensed that more is needed than agreeing with God. Thus, Hiebert explains,

More is involved than a general acknowledgment of one’s sinfulness; it is the confession of sinful deeds to God. . . . A believer must frankly be willing to say the same thing about his sins (the sins he is conscious of having committed) that God says about them. Christians must acknowledge their sins for what they are, rather than using some flowery designation that conceals their true character. The present tense calls for such confession as their standing practice. The confession should be as wide as the actual guilt.[35]

For those who see 1 John 1:9 as a key to gaining forgiveness from God, simple confession is never enough; what is required is true confession.[36] It is an act of prayer in which one acknowledges sin to God. After all, the verse continues that God is faithful and righteous in forgiving sins and cleansing from all unrighteousness. Consequently, true confession, brings about cleansing and forgiveness of sin.

Is this, though, a sound way of approaching the meaning of a word? It is clear that ὁμολογέω can mean “to agree,” as in ἐξομολογέω in Luke 22:6, where Judas “agreed” to the plan to hand Jesus over to his enemies for pay. The standard lexicon for New Testament Greek, though, records for ὁμολογέω itself only one example of such a meaning in the New Testament, Acts 23:8 (where it may not mean “agree” at all; it appears to fit with the lexicon’s third category better than with the second[37]). The various forms of ὁμολογέω and ἐξομολογέω occur thirty-six times in the New Testament. The lexicon lists most of the uses of the uncompounded verb (nineteen out of twenty-six), not as meaning confess in prayer but “to acknowledge someth., ordinarily in public, acknowledge, claim, profess, praise.”[38] The compounded verb occurs ten times, none of which occurs in prayer in the New Testament. All are used, one way or another, to refer to a public acknowledgement. The word group does appear in the context of confession of sin, but in the New Testament (1 John 1:9 aside) never in prayer. In the Septuagint confession in prayer using this word group does occur, but rarely, as in 1 Kings 8:31-35; 2 Chronicles 6:24; Daniel 9:4 and 20. But out of 135 occurrences of the various forms of the word group, these are the only places where such usage occurs. Most of the time the reference is to some sort of public proclamation with special reference to public praise of God (and this includes virtually all of the references in Psalms where ἐξομολογέω translates ידה).

In the New Testament the rarity continues:

Confession of sin is not a theme that is found often in the NT. It is found in only four other places. It occurs in the Synoptic accounts of the ministry of John the Baptist when people came confessing their sins to be baptised by him (Matt 3:6; Mark 1:15). It is also found in James 5:16, where, in the context of praying for the sick, people are urged to confess their sins and pray for each other that they may be healed. People in Ephesus confessed their ‘evil deeds’ and burned their magical books during the ministry of Paul in that city (Acts 19:18). In each of these cases confession of sin was public, not private (i.e., not just between the individual and God). It may then be the case that here in 1:9 the author also has in mind public confession of sin.[39]

To make matters even more pointed, John never elsewhere uses the word group for prayer. He uses it most often in one of two ways. For example, John 1:20 says, “And he confessed, and did not deny, and he confessed, ‘I am not the Christ.’”[40] Here the expression seems to mean something like “he went on record” or “made a public statement for the record.” The other major usage is common in 1 John, of making public statements, as in 1 John 4:2-3, where a prophet may be tested by his statements about Jesus. One last use may be mentioned that appears in both testaments and also in John’s writings, where it describes publicly identifying with someone (e.g., John 9:22; Rev. 3:5; compare also Matt. 10:32 and the opposite 7:23). The Septuagint’s language of prayer may be preserved in Matthew 11:25, where the New American Standard reads, “I praise Thee, O Father,” translating ἐξομολογοῦμαι as “praise.”

This discussion prompts doubt that 1 John 1:9 is even about prayer. John never uses the “confess” word group that way, and the Bible broadly only rarely does.[41] This means that reading the word “confess” should not lead to a default assumption that prayer is in view.[42] Additionally it should be clear that 1 John 1:9 does not say that confession is made to God.[43] What else could it be, then? This review of usage suggests one option: the public acknowledgement of one’s sins. Can it be that God expects of everyone, as a condition of being forgiven, public acknowledgement of sins?

The course of the argument in this study leads in another direction altogether. “We” in 1 John 1 refers to authoritative teachers, and the relationship between the clauses in verses 6-10 is evidence-inference or grounds-CONCLUSION, to use the terms introduced earlier. The implication is that confession is a public act of leaders that alerts the hearers that they are reliable teachers.[44] Kruse supports at least this part of the argument: “The author projects a situation in which people acknowledge their sins in an ongoing way. He portrays authentic Christian living as involving honest and ongoing acknowledgement of one’s sins.”[45]

Then what must Christian leaders do? Must reliable leaders publicly announce all their sins? Of course not. However, it is a mark of authenticity when Christian leaders allow people to enter their lives, know some of their weaknesses, identify with them in their struggles.

In this area, discernment is necessary. “Need to know” must be the standard. People do not need to know every possible failing and struggle, but they need to know some. When in public ministry, whether pulpit, lectern, or counseling room, a personal acknowledgement of weakness, an anecdote of failure will actually serve the purpose of communication, illustrating the very point at issue.

Summary And Implications

John wrote to a community that had seen schism. False teachers who were the spirit of antichrist (4:3) had left the church, but they had gained a hearing before they left and apparently had been trusted. Their departure left people troubled, not knowing whom to trust or what to believe about themselves and their relationship with God. Thus John had two goals in writing—to show readers how to identify reliable teachers, and to confirm believers in their faith (5:13; cf. the poetic passage in 1 John 2:12-14).

The tests for reliable teachers begin, but do not end, in chapter 1 and they include walking in the light and confession (that is, public acknowledgement) of sins. It now seems clear that walking in the light includes verse 9. Those who live by faith make it plain that they do not deserve the status they have. They make it plain that they live depending entirely upon Jesus by their freedom to discuss their sins. It is that freedom that makes it clear that they are forgiven and cleansed from all sin. Additionally, walking in the light includes fellowshipping in the doctrine of Christ with the apostles and other authoritative teachers of the church. So, as verse 7 says, by walking in the light they prove, not only that they are cleansed, but also that they share fellowship with the apostles, whose fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ (v. 3). Therefore both their doctrine and their behavior cohere with the apostolic doctrine and life.

No church and no ministry group can claim to be genuinely Christian that does not meet these criteria. Christians are indeed called to service, and that service must be rooted in a commitment to the apostolic message and the apostolic life pattern. These are tests of reliable ministry.

Notes

1. See Robert W. Yarbrough, 1-3 John, Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2008), 46.
2. For a brief survey of the tests of life and tests of fellowship views, with a listing of their proponents, see Gary W. Derickson, “What Is the Message of 1 John?” Bibliotheca Sacra 150 (January–March 1993): 89-105. A variant of the tests of fellowship approach comes from Yarbrough, who says that John “writes in order to stabilize and enhance the existence of ‘church’ in the locale he addresses: ‘The term “church” is not used, but koinōnia meaningfully interprets the reality of the believing community’ (Painter 2002: 128)” (1-3 John, 41).
3. A fuller treatment of these views follows in the discussion of verses 6-10.
4. Daniel Akin, 1, 2, 3 John, New American Commentary, ed. Ray Clendenen (Nashville: Broadman & Holman, 2001), 31-32, is an exception. Akin holds the tests of life view. Brown also identifies 1 John 2:26 as a major issue in the book: “Above (Introduction IV) the thesis was proposed that 1 John is a response to a struggle with Johannine adversaries” (Raymond E. Brown, The Epistles of John: Translated, with Introduction, Notes, and Commentary, Anchor Yale Bible [New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008], 180). Implicitly Stephen S. Smalley accepts this as an important theme for the book, though on page 17 he indicates his view of the book’s purpose as “concerned essentially with the conditions for true Christian discipleship. The two main divisions of the letter set out these conditions and exhort the readers to live in the light (1:5-2:29) as children of God (3:1-5:13)” (1, 2, 3 John, Word Biblical Commentary. Accordance/Thomas Nelson electronic ed. [Waco: Word Books, 2007], 15).
5. Urban C. von Wahlde, The Gospel and Letters of John: Commentary on the Three Johannine Letters, vol. 3, Eerdmans Critical Commentary (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2010), 17. He says, “At the time 1 John was written, there was an internal theological crisis dividing the Johannine community. This crisis was caused by two divergent interpretations of the community’s traditions. The crisis had gotten to the point that some in the community had left, evidently to form their own community guided by their own beliefs. “It is clear that 1 John was written to deal with this crisis. However, the Letter is not aimed primarily at the opponents but at the author’s own followers. The author speaks to those who have remained faithful to him and faithful to the tradition as he understood it. The author is not in direct dialogue with his opponents. Consequently, the majority of his Letter explains how his views differ from those of the opponents and why the opponents have no right to make their claims.” For similar views see also Colin G. Kruse, The Letters of John, Pillar New Testament Commentary. Accordance electronic ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000), 51; I. Howard Marshall, The Epistles of John, New International Commentary on the New Testament. Accordance electronic ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1978), 14-15; Georg Strecker and Harold W. Attridge, The Johannine Letters: A Commentary on 1, 2, and 3 John, Hermeneia (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1996), 19-20.]
6. Akin, 1, 2, 3 John, 31-32.
7. Strecker and Attridge, The Johannine Letters, 12. This interpretation for verses 1-5 is all but a consensus. Brown calls the group “the tradition-bearers and interpreters” (Epistles of John, 95). See also Yarbrough, 1-3 John, 40-41; and W. Hall Harris III, 1, 2, 3 John—Comfort and Counsel for a Church in Crisis (Galaxie Software, 2003), 59. However, Harris sees a change with verse 5: “The author goes on to explain the ethical implications of this description in the following verses, both for the claims of the opponents and for the author’s readers” (ibid., 60).
8. Yarbrough titles this section “C. Implications of God’s Character for the Christian Life (1:6-10)” (1-3 John, 52). See also for similar approaches Gary M. Burge, The Letters of John, ed. Terry C. Muck, NIV Application Commentary. Accordance electronic ed. (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1996), 64; W. Hall Harris III, 1, 2, 3 John, 60-61; Marshall, The Epistles of John, 109-110; Strecker and Attridge, The Johannine Letters, 28-29; and Brooke Foss Westcott, ed., The Epistles of St. John: The Greek Text with Notes and Essays, 4th ed., Classic Commentaries on the Greek New Testament (New York: Macmillan, 1902), 18; D. Edmond Hiebert, “An Expositional Study of 1 John: Part 2: An Exposition of 1 John 1:5-2:6, ” Bibliotheca Sacra 145 (July–September 1988): 332. References could be further multiplied. Marshall says concerning verses 6-10, “In each case, the writer’s reply is to compare the statement with the actual way of life of the persons who made it and hence to show that the claims were false. Then he goes on to indicate in each case how people who wished to have fellowship with God could really have it.”
9. Hiebert, “An Expositional Study of 1 John,” 332. For other representatives see also Westcott, The Epistles of St. John, 18-19; Marshall, The Epistles of John, 109-110; Strecker and Attridge, The Johannine Letters, 28-29; Brown, The Epistles of John, 197; and Smalley, 1, 2, 3 John, 20-21.
10. George Brian Christie, “An Interpretive Study of 1 John 1:9” (Th.M. thesis, Dallas Theological Seminary, 1975): 33-34.
11. For a good discussion of the alternatives for 1:1-4, see Brown, The Epistles of John, 158-61.
12. Kruse, The Letters of John, 61. He further argues (p. 52) that the editorial “we” is ruled out by the sense perception verbs that fill the opening three verses. Strecker likewise writes, “One could more correctly judge that the author uses ‘we’ in order to assert membership in the ‘circle . . . of “apostolic” witnesses.’ In any case, the emphatic backward reference to the past time of salvation and the stress on the eye- and ear-witness have a ‘historically’ accentuating function” (The Johannine Letters, 12). He continues, “It is not really possible to understand the terminology used in vv. 1-4 as nothing more than a transferred, spiritualistic manner of speaking” (ibid., 14). This he holds in spite of rejecting an eyewitness author for the book!
13. Harris, 1, 2, 3 John—Comfort and Counsel for a Church in Crisis, 55.
14. Ibid.
15. Ibid. Compare a similar view in Brown, The Epistles of John, 170, who commented on 1 John 1:3: “The ‘you’ are the ‘Those who have not seen and yet have believed’ of John 20:29.” See also Akin, 1, 2, 3 John, 56; Harris, 1, 2, 3 John, 55-56; and Kruse, The Letters of John, 60-61.
16. See Charles P. Baylis, “The Meaning of Walking ‘In the Darkness’ (1 John 1:6),” Bibliotheca Sacra 149 (April–June 1992): 221. Yarbrough comes to a similar conclusion: “This is the means whereby sinners become children of God; otherwise they are children of the devil, a state of affairs that Christ has come to undo” (1-3 John, 41).
17. See on this Kruse, The Letters of John, 57-58; and Strecker and Attridge, The Johannine Letters, 19-20. Von Wahlde extends the discussion. In commenting on verse 3 he says, “Within the context of the community dispute it has a specific polemical intent, for the author will explicitly argue later (2:22-24) that unless one believes properly in the Son one cannot be said to believe properly in the Father” (The Gospel and Letters of John, 34).
18. Contra Hiebert, “An Expositional Study of 1 John,” 336; and Thomas S. Baurain, “The Development of the Johannine Concept of Fellowship” (Th.M. thesis, Dallas Theological Seminary, 1980), 39.
19. R. Michael Duffy, Review of “The Judgment Seat of Christ in Theological Perspective, Part 1: The Judgment Seat of Christ and Unconfessed Sins,” by Samuel L. Hoyt, Bibliotheca Sacra, January–March 1980, 32-39, in Journal of the Grace Evangelical Society 5 (1992): 92.
20. John R. W. Stott, The Letters of John: An Introduction and Commentary, Tyndale New Testament Commentaries. IVP/Accordance electronic ed. (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1988), 83.
21. Akin, 1, 2, 3 John, 71, note 122; see also Marshall, The Epistles of John, 108. Consult Daniel B. Wallace, Greek Grammar beyond the Basics (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1996), 698-99. In addition to Wallace, see an extended discussion of the possible relationships between “kernels” in Peter Cotterell and Max Turner, Linguistics and Biblical Interpretation (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1989), 188-229. Akin is not entirely consistent in dealing with the relationship between the clauses. On page 56 he observes: “The reality of this fellowship is shown in the readers’ walking in the light as God is in the light (cf. 1 John 1:6-7). Loving one’s brothers and sisters in Christ is, in turn, evidence of being in the light (cf. 1 John 2:9-11; it is the equivalent of knowing God [cf. 1 John 4:8; also 4:16]).” This is the view that the present study takes (what he calls evidence and inference, but it is not the same as the cause and effect interpretation he offers. It is not uncommon among the commentaries to analyze the relationships between the clauses ambiguously, leaving the concept undefined. As an example, von Wahlde simply calls the apodosis the “consequence” of the protasis (The Gospel and Letters of John, 46).
22. See Marshall, The Epistles of John, 109-110.
23. Baylis makes a good case that faith in the gospel is at the heart of the idea: “Those who do not receive eternal life through Jesus Christ reject that revelation from God (light). They walk ‘in the darkness’; they do not believe His word” (“The Meaning of Walking ‘In the Darkness’ [1 John 1:6],” 221). If the main object of verses 6-10 were to teach about Christian life, his view would suffice. However, given the context of 1 John, there must be some moral element to walking in the light. Baylis’s view is sound but needs tweaking. Akin escapes the problem of his cause-and-effect reading of these verses by defining obedience out of “walking in the light,” a move that the very next section of the book makes impossible (1, 2, 3 John, 72-73). For the “morality view” see for example Smalley, 1, 2, 3 John, 23: “‘Living in the light’ thus implies a ‘conscious and sustained endeavour to live a life in conformity with the revelation of God’ (Brooke, 15). . . . In Pauline language this means living in complete openness to him who ‘searches our hearts’ (Rom 8:27), and meeting the challenge to behave morally while living ‘a new life’ (Rom 6:4; cf Matt 5:14-16; Luke 16:8b; Eph 5:8-14; Col 1:12-14; Phil 2:15; 1 Thess 5:5). It is in God’s light that ‘we see light’ (Ps 36:9).” See also Hiebert, “An Expositional Study of 1 John: Part 2: An Exposition of 1 John 1:5-2:6, ” Bibliotheca Sacra 145 (July–September 1988): 332; and Marshall, The Epistles of John, 110.
24. This study is not in debate with Akin. Most of the major commentaries treat the conditional sentences in this passage the same way. Akin, in a well-argued commentary, has simply given a very clear and concise discussion of the issues.
25. Cotterell and Turner, Linguistics and Biblical Interpretation, 211.
26. Though older commentators hold that the claim made in verse 8 is a claim to sinlessness (see David Smith, “The Epistles of John,” The Expositor’s Greek Testament: Commentary [New York: George H. Doran, n.d.], 172), it is far less common in more recent studies, since John’s usage is against it. Brown, for example, proposes the translation “We are free from the guilt of sin” (The Epistles of John, 205). His discussion properly refers the reader to the same phrase (ἁμαρτίαν ἔχειν) in John 9:41; 15:22, 24; 19:11 (ibid., 205-06). The implication of the phrase is that those who have committed sin are liable to punishment for it. The clearest of these references is 15:22. The penalty of those who have seen Jesus’s work without a response of faith is greater than if they had seen none of his works. The distinction made here between reatus culpae and reatus poenae goes at least as far back as Anselm, Summa Theologica (Rome: Forzani, 1894), Question 80, Article 8, Objection 4, and elsewhere; see also Richard Baxter and William Orme, The Practical Works of the Rev. Richard Baxter, vol. 12, The Life of Faith (London: James Duncan, 1830), 302.
27. Marshall holds that one must live “a life that is compatible with being in the light, a life that is free from sin” (The Epistles of John, 109-110). To his credit he attributes this to the cleansing work of Christ, not the believer’s moral strength.
28. Von Wahlde, The Gospel and Letters of John: Commentary on the Three Johannine Letters, 21. See also Marshall’s summary of 1:6-10 (The Epistles of John, 109-110).
29. A former student of mine believed that she was not saved unless she had confessed all her sins. More to the point, Brown says, “Perhaps the best explanation (Hoskyns, Schneider, B. Weiss, Wilder) is to stress that the author of I John is not worried about initial justification but about the forgiveness of sins committed as a Christian. When people first believe and come to the light, their sins are forgiven. They may sin again; yet if they try to walk in the light, the blood of Jesus, which cleanses from all sin, cleanses from these sins as well” (The Epistles of John, 202). There are two sorts of forgiveness here, but it is not entirely clear what Brown, a Roman Catholic, might mean by the distinction. Harris uses the same language as Brown but surely means something different: “The author is not worried about the initial justification (salvation) of the people to whom he is writing. Rather he is reassuring them about forgiveness of sins committed after having become Christians” (1, 2, 3 John, 63-64). See also Smalley, 1, 2, 3 John, 26. Yet these contrasting ends of the theological spectrum do not clearly spell out what is meant by forgiveness.
30. “From a human standpoint, our fellowship can be marred by sin. The promise of confession is forgiveness and cleansing” (Eric E. Kress, Notes for the Study and Exposition of 1st John [The Woodlands, TX: Kress Christian Publications, 2002], 35).
31. John 2:9; 3:25 for ritual purification; 13:10-11 and 15:3, with a pun on καθαίρω in 15:2; in the epistles, only in 1 John 1:7 and 9. Revelation has six more occurrences, but with substantially different senses.
32. See Daniel R. Hayden, “Calling the Elders to Pray,” Bibliotheca Sacra 138 (July–September 1981): 258-66, who argues for this position.
33. Entering the kingdom is not synonymous with entering salvation. Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount: “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. . . . Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. . . . Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God” (Matt. 5:3, 5, and 8). This is about entering into the final experience of salvation, future salvation, what Paul called in Romans 8:30, glorification. The only way to enter the kingdom, according to the sermon, is to have an “exceeding righteousness.” A full exposition of this concept would require more space than is available here, entailing reviewing the meaning of the introduction and conclusion of the sermon and a discussion of what “father” and “brother” mean in the sermon.
34. Hiebert, “An Expositional Study of 1 John,” 335. Against this view see Yarbrough, 1-3 John, 63, note 13: “The oft-heard claim that it means ‘to say the same thing as’ (Hiebert 1991: 66), while technically true in some Classical Greek passages (LSJ 1226), lacks lexical backing in NT usage. The claim owes its existence to a semantic root fallacy (cf. Carson 1996a: 28-33). In few if any NT passages where ὁμολογέω appears can one make sense of a text by using the translation ‘to say the same thing as.’” The etymology of a word may be useful if the context makes it clear that the author is playing on the etymological background of the word. Otherwise contextual usage must guide analysis of the meaning of any word.
35. “An Expositional Study of 1 John,” 335.
36. See also Marshall, The Epistles of John, 113; Yarbrough, 1-3 John, 64.
37. Walter Bauer, William F. Arndt, and F. Wilbur Gingrich, A Greek–English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, 3rd ed., rev. and ed. Frederick W. Danker (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 708.
38. Ibid.
39. Kruse, The Letters of John, 68. The comment applies only to the use of the verb ὁμολογέω, not to the concept, which is clearly implied in the so-called Lord’s prayer in both of its appearances. It should be added that the noun, ὁμολογία occurs only five times (2 Cor. 9:13; 1 Tim. 6:12-13; Heb. 3:1; 4:14; 10:23) and never relates to prayer or the confession of sin. It relates to confession of the faith or of Jesus.
40. Brown gives the same evidence: “The idea of public confession also receives support from the four uses of homologein in GJohn (1:20; 9:22; 12:42) which involve public professions in relation to Jesus” (The Epistles of John, 208).
41. “Confession of sin is not a theme that is found often in the NT. It is found in only four other places [he cites Matt. 3:6; Mark 1:15; Acts 19:18; and James 5:16]. In each of these cases confession of sin was public, not private (i.e., not just between the individual and God). It may then be the case that here in 1:9 the author also has in mind public confession of sin” (Kruse, The Letters of John, 68). Even in the Apocrypha, the one use associated with confession of sin (Sir. 4:26) is about public confession, not prayer.
42. “All the parallels and background given thus far suggest that the Johannine expression refers to a public confession rather than a private confession by the individual to God (although the latter view was held by Augustine, Oecumenius, Bede, and Theophylact)” (Brown, The Epistles of John, 207-08).
43. “The fact that in the rest of 1 John 1:9 God alone is the agent of forgiveness does not prove that the confession is to God rather than to the Community (pace Schnackenburg, Johannesbriefe 86), for both 1:7 (the previous ‘But if’ condition) and 1:3 show that relations to God are in a Community context” (Brown, The Epistles of John, 208; contra Akin, 1, 2, 3 John, 75, note 132, and Strecker and Attridge, The Johannine Letters, 32).
44. Dike takes a similar view: “After investigation the verdict was made that the individual walking in light is the one confessing his sins—the believer, while the individual walking in darkness is the person denying his sins—the non-believer. The conclusion was amplified further with the resolution that the believer could not be described as ever walking in darkness (denying his sins), but that he is always characterized as walking in light (confessing his sins)” (Darryl G. Dike, “The Confession Question” (Th.M. Thesis, Dallas Theological Seminary, 1986), 48. See also von Wahlde, The Gospel and Letters of John, 52-53: “In this sense, ‘confess’ does not refer to a ritual act. It is a public acknowledgment of one’s overall attitude and conviction regarding the possibility/reality of sin.”
45. Kruse, The Letters of John, 68.