So, this morning Jon Powers was blowing up my twitter feed with 1John3. I really like that so many people I follow on twitter post so much scripture... it really makes the day so much better. Well, of course, 1 John 3:9 is a difficult and powerful verse. The NIV says, "no one who is born of God will continue to sin."
The King James says, ""Whosoever is born of God doth not sin."
Adam Clarke, probably Methodism's most erudite Scripture scholar said this in his commentary (published 1831? that's what the edition I have says, but was there an earlier one?):
"some say 'he does not sin habitually, as he used to. This is hanging the influence of the heavenly birth very low indeed. we have the most indubitable evidence that many of the heathen philosophers had accomplished, by mental discipline and cultivation, an entire ascendancy over their wonted vicious habits. Perhaps my reader will recollect the story of the physiognomist who, coming into the place where Socrates was giving a lecture, his pupils, wishing to put the man's principles of the man's science to proof, desired him to examine the face of their master, and say what his moral character was. After a full contemplation of the philosopher's visage, he pronounced him the most gluttonous, drunken, brutal and libidinous old man that he had ever met. As the character of Socrates was the reverse of this, his disciples began to insult the physiognomist. Socrates interfered and said, 'The principles of his science must be very correct, for such I was, but I have conquered it by my philosphy.' O ye Christian divines! ye real or pretended Gospel ministers! Will ye allow the influence of the grace of Christ a sway not even so extensive as that of the philosophy of a heathen who never heard of the true God?"
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