But a more serious objection to this method of explaining these
difficult verses in First John is that it contradicts the very
point that the Apostle is making. If close attention is paid to the
conclusion of First John 3:9 it should guard from these errors:
“Whosoever is begotten of God doeth no sin, because his seed abideth in
him: and _he cannot sin_, because he is begotten of God.”
That seed which is born of God is, as Dr. A. J. Ramsey has pointed
out, the Child of God himself, not a seed _in_ him. While he abides he
cannot sin. (As Moffatt also translates: “The offspring of God remain
in Him.”) The whole argument of the Epistle of John, and particularly
of this portion, is that a normal Christian is one who is free from
sin. The Apostle does not mean to say that a child of God does not
“deliberately” sin, or that he does not “continue in sin” as the rule
of his life, or that he does not let the inward impulses of sin express
themselves: he means that the Christian, while he abides in Christ,
where he belongs, does not sin. He is God’s new creation, and walks in
the light having fellowship with God. For “God is light, and in him is
no darkness at all” (1 John 1:5).