Praying for capital and non-capital sins.

1 John 5.16-17.

In going through the Law of Moses, you’re going to notice a few of the sins listed in there are capital crimes; capital meaning “liable to the death penalty.” If an ancient Israeli committed any of those sins, the city’s judges were authorized to sentence them to death. Most of American society figures murder, rape, and treason are the only capital crimes, although way too many of us are pretty murdery and have no problem with killing people for simply being in the wrong neighborhood. Or being the wrong color.

Some years ago I read an English translation of the Septuagint. The bit which in the KJV is translated “that soul shall be cut off from his people,” Ge 17.14, Lv 7.20, Nu 15.30 which we usually interpret to mean ostracizing them from society or banishment, got translated, “that soul shall be utterly destroyed from among his people”—emphasis mine. That certainly doesn’t mean banishment; that means death. I checked the original languages, and yep, the Greek says ἀπολεῖται/apoleíti, “will be destroyed.” But the Hebrew has נִכְרְתָ֛ה/nikhrétha, “must be cut off,” which doesn’t necessarily mean death; it can mean, as we usually mean, banishment. Considering how excessive death appears to be for these crimes, you can see why most of us think it only means banishment.

But clearly the ancient Jews who translated the Septuagint disagreed. They regularly interpreted “cut off” to mean death—which means they saw far more sins as capital crimes. So… having sex with a woman on her period was a capital crime. Lv 20.18 Skipping Passover would be a capital crime. Nu 9.13 Yikes. Good thing the Romans didn’t let the Judeans practice the death penalty!

Because of injustice—like the obvious injustice of Christ Jesus getting sentenced to death and crucified—a number of Christians believe there shouldn’t be any death penalty; our governments clearly can’t be trusted to apply it fairly. Roman Catholics, Quakers, and Anabaptists are decidedly against it. Other sects of Christendom have no problem with it, and their members gleefully reflect the popular culture’s attitudes about executing criminals.

Me, I believe some crimes certainly merit the death penalty… but I also firmly believe in grace, and believe it’s wholly inappropriate to execute a repentant sinner who wants to try to make restitution for their crimes. And I likewise don’t trust the government to execute people fairly. Time and again, people have been found to be falsely accused, unjustly imprisoned, and sometimes unjustly executed. There should be fewer executions, not more. But because of the many bloodthirsty Christianists in this country, some states are most definitely pushing for more.

But enough about them. The apostle John lived in the Roman Empire, where the death penalty was regularly enacted by the Romans. Beheading for their citizens; crucifixion for everyone else. Hence Paul was beheaded and Simon Peter crucified during the Neronian persecution (64–68CE). John himself was exiled, which is how he ended up on Patmos, having visions of the End. Rv 1.9 Their crime, of course, was being Christian; the Romans considered “disturbing the peace” a capital crime, and anything could be labeled “disturbing the peace” if they so chose.

I bring up capital crimes because John brings up capital crimes in today’s passages. Or, as he puts it, an ἁμαρτία πρὸς θάνατον/amartía pros thánaton, “sin unto death.” Roman Catholics have extrapolated this verse into their idea of deadly sins, but no, John is not talking about lechery, gluttony, greed, laziness, wrath, envy, and pride. He’s talking about sins where the legal consequence is the death penalty.

And, in context, he’s talking about boldness in prayer—in being able to come to our Father with our requests, and knowing our Father hears us. And in this passage, fellow Christians whom they can pray for. If they’re committing non-capital sins, go ahead and pray for them. If they’re committing capital sins… well, John’s not talking about that today. I’ll quote him, shall I?

1 John 5.16-17 KWL

16When anyone sees their¹ fellow Christian

sinning a non-capital sin,

one will ask

and God will give them¹ life—

to the one sinning a non-capital sin.

There is such a thing as capital sin;

I don’t say one should pray about that.

17Everything unjust is sin,

and sin which isn’t capital.

What constitutes a mortal sin?

Because ancient Christians didn’t necessarily know their Old Testament—and a number of ’em presumed they didn’t need to, because they wrongly figured Jesus did away with the Old Testament commands—they didn’t realize the Law of Moses made distinctions between capital and non-capital sins. And if they ever did read the OT, they’d read the Septuagint translation, and believe most sins were capital. The wages of sin is death, after all; Ro 6.23 aren’t all sins kinda capital?

So if you’re only using the New Testament to deduce what a capital sin, or “mortal sin,” or “deadly sin,” is… well, Jesus taught everything can be forgiven, so are there any mortal sins? Um… well, Jesus did make a few exceptions.

Matthew 6.14-15 KJV

14For if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you: 15but if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.

Matthew 12.31-32 KJV

31Wherefore I say unto you, All manner of sin and blasphemy shall be forgiven unto men: but the blasphemy against the Holy Ghost shall not be forgiven unto men. 32And whosoever speaketh a word against the Son of man, it shall be forgiven him: but whosoever speaketh against the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven him, neither in this world, neither in the world to come.

Unrepentant sinners are likewise probably boned. So, put these categories together, and ancient Christians deduced some biblical principles about what constitutes a deadly sin. St. Bede the Venerable (672–735) said this in his Commentary on the Catholic Epistles:

John is talking here about trivial, everyday sins which are hard to avoid but which are easy to put right. The question of what constitutes a mortal sin is very difficult, and it is hard to accept that there are people whom John tells us not to pray for, when our Lord tells us that we should pray for those who persecute us. Mt 5.44 The only answer to this is that there must be sins committed within the fellowship of the brothers which are even more serious than persecution from outside enemies. Mortal sin therefore occurs when a brother opposes the fellowship after he has come to acknowledge God by the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ given to him and when he starts to fight against that grace, by which he has been reconciled to God, with the weapons of hatred. A nonmortal sin is one which does not infringe on brotherly love but merely fails to show it adequately because of some weakness of the mind.

Obviiously Bede wasn’t thinking of a literally mortal sin; something that’d get you the death penalty. He was thinking about eternal sins, things which would keep you out of God’s kingdom. And when Christians write about mortal sins, most of the time that’s what they mean: Sins that’ll send you to hell.

Which is not what John meant. He’s not writing about the second death. He only means the first one. He’s not talking about the eternal consequences of sin; he means the temporal results. The mortal results, not the immortal ones.

How’d Christians leapfrog the idea of mortality, and go off on sins that’d send us to hell? Well like I said: All sin appears to be mortal. And God forgives darned near everything. And Christians will regularly obsess about what might get us to lose our salvation, ’cause we definitely don’t wanna do that. Hence “mortal sins” got redefined into “sins that’ll bollix our immortality”—sins that’ll deny us eternal life. Not just sins that’ll deny us life—which is all John meant.

Mortal sins have temporal consquences.

Murder, for example, is a capital sin. Most societies figure murderers should die. And God has always forgiven murderers. He forgave Cain, Moses, David, and probably Paul. He’s forgiven people who violated every last command he gave. It’s only when we quit Jesus—when we reject God’s forgiveness, and deny God’s every attempt to save us—that we truly commit a sin which results in the second death. But we’re getting off subject here: John’s not writing about the second death but the first one. He’s only writing about the temporal results of sin. Which in the Roman Empire consisted of corporal punishment, fines, slavery, exile, or death.

When someone commits a sin which doesn’t ordinarily get us into legal trouble—when people are unjust to one another, as John mentions in verse 17—the proper Christian response is to pray for them. Pray for their repentance. Pray God forgives ’em. It’s wholly appropriate to petition God, because the state isn’t involved at all. And God will grant these people life: They don’t have to suffer temporal consequences for their sins.

Now, in cases where the state does get involved, and should—in the cases where there are legal consequences to our actions—of course we can still seek God’s forgiveness and get it. But if you’re under the delusion that now that God’s forgiven you, the state should set you free, you’ve got another think coming. Far too many criminals have presumed this was all they had to do: Repent, beg God’s forgiveness, and now that God’s pardoned us, the state should pardon us too. That’s not how the state works, you know.

This, I figure, is why John says he’s not saying we should pray about capital sins. Those who commit such sins will have to suffer consequences. And usually should! When pastors molest children, they absolutely should go to prison for it. When they plunder the church’s bank account, or murder a deacon and bury ’em in the prayer garden, we don’t just pray those sins away; we call the cops. Yes, we can still pray—we can ask God for justice to be done, we can personally forgive the evildoer, we can pray for their repentance and salvation—but the state needs to deal with them.

John isn’t writing about them lest Christians think Christianity gives us a free pass to indiscriminately break the state’s laws. It does not. Christianity does not make us exceptions to the laws of the land. There are consequences. Even when we intentionally break unjust laws, don’t expect there to not be consequences.