To solve the puzzle, we must begin by breaking down the passage. The context of the passage is John’s teaching on the Christian’s confident approach to prayer (1 John 5:14-15). Having already taught us that praying in accordance with God’s will guarantees us a hearing before God and an answer from God, John now assures us of God’s ear and of God’s answer to all of our prayers for God’s children.
When John speaks of us seeing our “brother sin,” he is definitely speaking about another believer. As he has previously taught in this epistle, we are obligated to act whenever we see our fellow-believers in need, whether their need is material (1 John 3:16-17) or spiritual (1 John 5:16-17). When it is material we are to practice philanthropy and when it is spiritual we are to practice prayer.
In James 5:14-16, Christians are taught how effectual our prayers can be for one another. Whenever a wayward and unrepentant church member is being chastened by the Lord with a life-threatening illness, he is instructed by James to “call for the elders of the church” to come “pray over him” and to “anoint him with oil in the name of the Lord.” If the backsliding brother will humble himself to do so, then James teaches that the elders’ “prayer of faith” will not only “save” his life and heal him from his sickness, but also result in the forgiveness of his sins.
Confessing their faults to one another and praying for one another to be forgiven of their sins and healed of their sicknesses appears to have been a common practice among Christians in the early church. It is this common practice, so powerfully advocated by James, the head of the church in Jerusalem, that the Apostle John appears to have had in mind in 1 John 5:16-17. This explains why John felt no need to elaborate on this passage, a passage that may be puzzling to contemporary Christians, but was perfectly understandable to Christians in John’s day.
Unlike today’s Christians, those early Christians understood the holiness of God and the awfulness of sin. They also understood, as John teaches in 1 John 5:17, that “all unrighteousness is sin,” regardless of whether it is committed by saints or sinners. Though their personal sin could not imperil their immortal souls, those early Christians understood that it could imperil their temporal bodies and lead them into premature graves (see: Acts 5:1-11; 1 Corinthians 5:1-5; 11:23-30). Thus, John instructed them to intercede on behalf of a sinning brother so that he would live rather than have his life cut short.
I believe it’s important to point out at this point that the difficult passage under our consideration is not dealing with the Christian’s daily shortcomings. As John has clearly taught in this epistle, we all sin, both saint and sinner (1 John 1:8-10). There is no such thing as a sinless saint. When we sin, we are to “confess our sins”; that is, we are to agree with God about them. Once we do, John promises us that God will “forgive us our sins, and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”
What happens, however, if a Christian refuses to confess his sin, insisting instead upon continuing in sin. It is at this point that our passage comes into play. The unrepentant believer whose egregious sin is bringing reproach upon the cause of Christ is the one in desperate need of prayer, lest his life be cut short and his body soon interred in a premature grave.
We now come to your question and to the crux of the matter, not to mention the most puzzling part of this passage. Although John instructs us to pray for our brother whose sin is “not unto death,” he goes on to advise against praying for “a sin unto death.” In the original language, there is no “a” in the text. Therefore, there is no reason to believe that John is speaking of a specific sin. Furthermore, the Greek employed in this passage implies that John is actually talking about sin that “leads to or leans toward death.”
It is sinners, not saints, whose sins lead to or lean toward death. According to John’s own teaching, as well as his account of Christ’s teaching, Christians “have passed from death unto life” (1 John 3:14; John 5:24). By placing our faith in Christ, who died in our place, we are no longer subject to death because of our sins. Granted, the Lord may cut a Christian’s temporal life short if he becomes an embarrassment to the cause of Christ over unconfessed sin. Still, the Christian’s soul is safe; that is, his “spirit” will still be “saved in the day of the Lord Jesus” (1 Corinthians 5:5). On the other hand, those who refuse to believe in Jesus Christ are “dead in [their] trespasses and sins,” not to mention “condemned already” (Ephesians 2:1; John 3:18). Having never been saved from their sins by Christ, they are still under sin’s dominion and being subjected to death by every sin that they commit.
In light of this, it would be foolhardy for Christians to pray for sinners the same way they pray for sinning brothers or sisters in Christ. For instance, since sinners cannot be forgiven of their sins apart from faith in Christ, it would be foolish for believers to pray for unbelievers to be forgiven of their sins. Likewise, it would be foolish for believers to pray for the condemned children of the devil the same way they pray for the chastened children of God—for God to spare them.
As Christians, we need to pray for the salvation of the lost. Until they are saved, they have no claim on Christ, and we have no grounds upon which to kneel in confident prayer for anything else in their lives, whether it be their forgiveness, healing or longevity. Whereas we are obligated to pray the prayer of faith over a fellow-believer in sin, since his “sin is not unto death,” we are advised against attempting to do the same for an unbelieving sinner, since his “sin [is] unto death.”
Undoubtedly, some will argue that my commentary on this perplexing passage cannot be correct. They will insist that its flaw is found in the fact that John identifies the one committing “a sin unto death” as a Christian brother. However, a closer examination of the text will reveal that such is not the case. Although John does identify the one committing a “sin not unto death” as a “brother,” he neither identifies nor describes the one committing the “sin unto death.” What’s more, he does not advise against praying for the one committing the “sin unto death,” just against praying contrariwise to the “sin unto death.”
Let’s conclude our consideration of this difficult passage with three safe assumptions gleaned from the above. First, it is our reading into this text of something that is not even there—Christians commit the “sin unto death”—that is the cause of all of our confusion. Second, John took for granted that the Christians of his day would understand that only sinners commit “sin unto death.” Finally, the passage in question is simply teaching that we may confidently approach God in prayer whenever we are interceding for our brothers and sisters in Christ. While we need to constantly pray for the salvation of sinners who are all under the condemnation of God, we are advised by John in this passage to confidently pray for the forgiveness, healing and longevity of any wayward saint who is under the chastening of God.
