There Is Sin Unto Death (I Jn 5:16-17)

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Text and Translation

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Graphical Grammar

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Weighty Words

• ἁμαρτάνοντα – pres. act. ptc. masc. sing. acc. ▶ ἁμαρτάνω: see discussion below.
• ἁμαρτίαν – fem. sing. acc. ▶ ἁμαρτία: see discussion below.
• αἰτήσει – 3rd sing. fut. act. ind. ▶ αἰτέω: see discussion below.
• δώσει – 3rd sing. fut. act. ind. ▶ δίδωμι: see discussion below.

Syntax Sense

You may have found verse 16 to be a tricky verse to translate because of futures and ellipses and an emphatic είμι. If you found it tricky, you are in good company. The difficulty here is not vocabulary; it’s future indicatives functioning procedurally, ellipsis,and John’s compressed style. That’s exactly why this verse has generated so much discussion historically.

Quick, without looking at the accent is τις interrogative or indefinite?

Remember, we discussed this very issue with αὕτη and “αὐτή in 1 Jn 5:1-3. Rather than trying to remember whether no accent was interrogative or indefinite, you can let the usage tell you. It’s not just easier—it’s how fluent readers actually do it. Right here, ἐάν τις ἴδῃ is a textbook indefinite conditional: “if anyone sees.”

An interrogative reading would make no discourse sense here.

ἁμαρτάνοντα ἁμαρτίαν – “having sinned a sin” vs. “committing a sin”?

This is a cognate accusative with a present participle. A cognate accusative is a construction where a verb takes a direct object that shares the same sense as the verb itself. (Think, “I ran a race,” “She sang a song,” etc.). Greek uses these freely; English has them, as you saw from my examples, but usually does handle them well. So “committing a sin” is preferable to “having sinned a sin.” Although, I’ll readily admit that the latter option is rather poetic, but almost cartoonishly so. It preserves the action and avoids awkward literalism. You lose nothing semantically, and you gain readability. This is a good place not to be wooden.

where i use the colon, i think some translations use “for.” instead it saying “having sinned a sin” (a cognate accusative in English), could i have just rendered as “committing a sin”? is there an object—elliptical or otherwise for ἐρωτήσῃ? 

The future indicatives: αἰτήσει, καὶ δώσει

The two futures are:

• αἰτήσει = he will ask; and
• δώσει = he will give.

Who gives? Grammatically, the subject of both verbs is τις (the one who sees). God is the implied agent behind the giving, but John does not make that express. John is not dissecting agency; he is describing process: the believer asks; and life is given.

Is the rendering “he will give life to him” valid?

Yes—but it needs to be understood instrumentally, not causally. The Greek allows (and expects) the reader to understand: God gives life, through the prayer of the one who asks.

Wait! Since “him” is not expressed, If someone told you that this sentence came from the Iliad and you had no other context, would you be able to know what the subjects were?

The test is fair, “if this were Homer, could you tell?

The short answer is, perhaps, what you’d expect. No, not from grammar alone. And that is precisely how Greek works. Greek frequently relies on discourse continuity, shared narrative knowledge, and conceptual cohesion. That’s okay—and expected. The determination that God is the giver here is discourse-level and contextual, not theological importation.

Purely at the level of syntax, Greek gives you the following. Two future indicatives: αἰτήσει and δώσει. No explicit subject change. No explicit subject supplied for δώσει. A dative indirect object: αὐτῷ. A direct object: ζωήν. Grammar by itself says only tell you this: Someone will ask, and someone will give life to him.

Greek allows subject continuity by default, but it does not require it when the verb is third person singular, the subject is semantically obvious from context, or the subject is intentionally left implicit. Grammar alone does not force same subject for both verbs, or different subjects for the two verbs. That’s an important constraint to respect.

The move to “God gives life” is not based on Trinitarian assumptions, systematic theology, or later doctrinal reflection. It is based on immediate discourse context within the same letter. Why?

Let’s stay strictly internal. Just a few verses earlier (5:11–12): “God has given us eternal life, and this life is in His Son.” That is not theology imported from elsewhere; it is John’s own explicit statement in the same chapter. So when, two verses later, John writes, “he will give him life,” the discourse memory of the reader already contains: God = giver of life; life = divine gift, not human agency. This is anaphora of concepts, not theological inference.

Homer does this constantly too. Verbs of giving, striking, seeing, speaking, often shift subjects silently, because the narrative makes it obvious. So the fact that grammar alone doesn’t decide the subject does not mean we’re importing theology.
It means we’re reading Greek as Greek expects to be read—within discourse.

Here is a rule you can safely adopt. When Greek leaves agency implicit, you determine it by the author’s immediate discourse claims—not by later theology or systematics.

This is not a foreign concept in our mother tongue, either. When one is reading—say poetry in English—a metaphor may carry through the poem without being explicitly referenced in every verse. We know it because we have this tool called a memory; we understand subconsciously what the writer is trying to communicate once the boundaries are set up. Your take away from this may be “Wow! Communication really is compressed when you think about it.”

What is truly helpful here is that you don’t have to shut off your normally trained ability to identify contextual subjects. Another English example helps. Say you are reading (or listening to) somebody describe a situation involving the identity of two people, and then the narrator just refers to both as him afterward. You can frequently tease apart which him is him. Sometimes not, and we have a pronoun ambiguity. But since we cannot interview John, as to what was in his mind, we have to believe that he is intentional in what he was writing, and was intending a coherent discourse. 

The skill we are practicing here is reading for discourse coherence and semantic continuity. But more importantly, you’re practicing charitable reading: assuming the author knows what he’s doing unless the text forces you to conclude otherwise. That is the opposite of naïve. It’s intellectually honest.

I said above that we couldn’t interview John. True enough, but we can observe some things that get us plenty close:

• John’s discourse is consistent,
• that his concepts recur with precision,
• and that his ellipses are stable, not random.

This means we don’t need to interview him. We can listen to him. And right now, you’re doing exactly that.

τοῖς ἁμαρτάνουσι μὴ πρὸς θάνατον — apposition, not a new sentence

This phrase is what grammarians would call “epexegetical”; it’s not a fresh assertion. I greatly dislike the term epexegetical, but a lot of grammarians like to use it, so you may want to be comfortable with it. Epexegetical just means that the clause explains something previously stated. John is narrowing and specifying the category already under discussion, not introducing a second independent promise. Specifically, it clarifies who the promise applies to.

“All unrighteousness is sin”

John writes, “πᾶσα ἀδικία.” This is totalizing, not situational. And he has “ἁμαρτία ἐστί,” which is a categorical equation. English does best with the bare copula: “All unrighteousness is sin.”

“There is sin not unto death”

This clause is intentionally stark in Greek. You might see translations that add “yet,” “and yet,” or “but.” Those are interpretive. John uses καὶ, not ἀλλά. John is not softening or qualifying the first statement—he’s juxtaposing two truths.

Demystifying the Discourse

This passage does not expressly revisit the themes of continuity, permanence, or revealed identity. But it silently depends on them. Think back to the recurring discussions throughout the letter about what people hear, who they listen to, what they confess, and what resonates with them. Those themes form the backdrop for why the brother “committing a sin not unto death” can ask, and why life may be given to him. John’s point is not merely procedural prayer mechanics. The entire epistle has been building toward the reality that restoration, reconciliation, and renewed life remain available within the sphere of abiding fellowship. In many ways, this passage gathers together the relational logic that has been developing throughout.

Your turn!

• In verse 16, John writes, “ἔστιν ἁμαρτία πρὸς θάνατον.” What do you notice about the use of ἔστιν, if anything? Are there any modifiers, or explanations? Anything more than a bare assertion? Why?
• In verse 16, John writes, “οὐ περὶ ἐκείνης λέγω ἵνα ἐρωτήσῃ.” Is there an object of ἐρωτήσῃ?
• You will recall that in the last session, we looked at what might have been the culmination of the A stream. Here we we have what might be the culmination of the “B stream.” Why don’t you compare all of the passages in the B stream: 1 Jn 2:18-27, 4:1-6, 5:1-5:12. You’ve been doing it progressively already, so you are well positioned for this.

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See complete translation of I John here.

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