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4. As so often, the Apostle emphasizes his statement by giving the opposite case, and not the simple opposite, but an expansion of it. Instead of saying ‘every one that hath not this hope’ he says every one that doeth sin. The A.V. not only obscures this antithesis by changing ‘every man’ to ‘whosoever,’ but also the contrast between ‘doing righteousness’ (1Jn 2:29) and ‘doing sin’ by changing from ‘do’ to ‘commit.’ This contrast is all the more marked in the Greek because both words have the article; ‘doeth the righteousness,’ ‘doeth the sin.’ Equally unfortunate is the A.V. rendering of καὶ τὴν ἀνομίαν ποιεῖ, ‘transgresseth also the law:’ which destroys the parallel between ποιῶν τ. ἁμαρτ. and τ. ἀνομ. ποιεῖ. Note the chiasmus, and render with R.V.; Every one that doeth sin, doeth also lawlessness. To bring out the contrast and parallel it is imperative to have the same verb in both clauses and also in 1Jn 2:29 : to do sin is to do lawlessness, and this is the opposite of to do righteousness. The one marks the children of God, the other the children of the devil. ‘Lawlessness’ both in English and Greek (ἀνομία) means not the privation of law, but the disregard of it: not the having no law, but the acting as if one had none. (Comp. the Hebrew pesha and the LXX. rendering of it, Isa 43:27; Amo 4:4 : it implies faithless disregard of a covenant. This was precisely the case with some of the Gnostic teachers: they declared that their superior enlightenment placed them above the moral law; they were neither the better for keeping it nor the worse for breaking it. Sin and lawlessness, says the Apostle, are convertible terms: they are merely different aspects of the same state. (Hence the predicate as well as the subject has the article: see below.) And it is in its aspect of disregard of God’s law that sin is seen to be quite irreconcilable with being a child of God and having fellowship with God. See on 1Jn 3:17.
The ‘for’ of A.V. is sanctioned by no reading or ancient Version: it comes from Tyndale, Beza, and the Genevan. The Vulgate preserves the chiasmus as well as the καί: Omnis qui facit peccatum, et iniquitatem facit; et peccatum est iniquitas. So also Tertullian, but with the African rendering delictum in each case for peccatum. So also, quite naturally, Luther: Wer Sünde thut, der thut auch Unrecht, und die Sünde ist das Unrecht. For instances in which both terms in a proposition that can be converted simply have the article comp. ἡ ἐντολὴ ἡ παλαιά ἐστιν ὁ λόγος ὂν ἡκούσατε (1Jn 2:7): ἡ ζωὴ ἦν τὸ φῶς τῶν ἀνθρώπων (Joh 1:4): ἡ πέτρα ἦν ὁ Χριστός (1Co 10:4; comp. 1Co 11:3; 1Co 15:56). Winer, 142, note. Green, 35, 36.