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He that committeth sin: the apostle’s notion of committing sin may be interpreted by his own phrase, 3Jo_1:11, o kakopoiwn, a doer of evil; and by that, used in both Testaments, a worker of iniquity; which is not every one that doth any one single act of sin; as his o poiwn dikaiosunhn, 1Jo_3:7, a doer of righteousness, and o agayopoiwn, 3Jo_1:11, a doer of good, is not every one that doth any one righteous or good action; any more than we call him a worker or maker of any thing, (as signifying a manual occupation), who only makes a single attempt, but him who hath acquired the habitual skill, and doth ordinarily employ himself accordingly. A worker or maker of sin, (as we may fitly render this o poiwn thn amartian), is an habitual or customary sinner; one that sinneth with deliberation, not by surprise, from a prevailing habit, that either continueth him in a course of actual known sin, or that withholds him from repenting sincerely, and turning to God from the sin which he hath committed; by which repentance he should not only refrain from further gross acts of sin, (which an impenitent person upon other inducements may do), but mortify and prevail against all sinful habits and inclinations. In the same sense he useth the expression of sinning, 1Jo_3:6,9. And such a sinner, he says,
is of the devil; as if he were born of him, were his child, really conformed to him, and having his sinning nature. As our Saviour tells the Jews, having applied to them the same phrase before of committing sin, Joh_8:34, that they were of their father the devil, Joh_8:44. As also this apostle, 3Jo_1:11, says: He that doeth good is of God, i.e. born of God, or his child; as we find he uses the expressions of being born of God, and being of God, promiscuously, and with indifference, 1Jo_3:9,10 5:18,19, the latter being elliptical in reference to the former. Whereas sin was therefore originally the devil’s work, he adds, (as a further engagement against it), that
the Son of God was manifested, ,{ as 1Jo_3:5} appeared in the flesh, showed himself in this world of ours, on purpose
to destroy, or (as the word signifies) that he might dissolve the frame of all such works.