What Does 1 John 5:17 Mean?
All crookedness is a shortcoming, and there is a shortcoming not toward death.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
All unrighteousness is sin: and there is a sin not unto death.THE KEY
The verse separates the missing from its destination: sin is real, but death is not the destination of every sin.
THE MEANING
Every injustice or misalignment is a real missing, yet this verse says that not every missing leads to death. It holds the wrong and its possible outcome apart, so the reader does not have to mistake one for the other.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The belief that every wrong is already irreversible, with death as its only possible end.
THE ROOT
ἁμαρτία
hamartia
GROWS FROM
ἁμαρτ-
hamart-
To miss, err, or fail to hit the mark.
“is a shortcoming” in this verse is hamartia. The word names the missing itself; “not unto death” adds a distinction about where that missing leads. The verse treats sin as real without making death the inevitable outcome of every sin.
ALSO GROWS
hamartanō: to miss, err, or sin
ἁμαρτάνω
The verb shares the same word family and presents sin as the act of missing.
hamartēma: a wrong or sin
ἁμάρτημα
This noun names a particular instance of the missing, keeping the focus on the act rather than its final consequence.
ἀδικία
adikia
GROWS FROM
δίκη (dikē), with the privative prefix ἀ- (a-)
δίκη carries the sense of right, justice, or what is due; ἀδικία names injustice or what is out of right order.
“crookedness” in this verse is adikia. “Unrighteousness” can sound like a broad moral category; ἀδικία points to what is unjust or out of right order. John joins that breach of rightness to ἁμαρτία (hamartia, “missing”), showing how the two descriptions meet in this verse.
ALSO GROWS
dikaiosynē: righteousness or alignment
δικαιοσύνη
It belongs to the same δικ- (dik-) family and names the rightness that ἀδικία violates.
adikeō: to do wrong or injure
ἀδικέω
This verb carries ἀδικία into action, showing injustice as something done.
THE PATTERN
A real wrong can be distinguished from its final outcome; Scripture describes both sin that leads to death and sin from which a person turns toward life.
If you do well, will you not be lifted up? And if you do not do well, falling short crouches at the door. Its reaching is toward you, and you shall rule over it.But if the wicked turns from all shortcomings he has done, and guards all my statutes, and does judgment and alignment, he shall surely live, he shall not die.Then craving, when it has conceived, gives birth to falling short; and falling short, when it is full-grown, bears death.THE THREAD
Then craving, when it has conceived, gives birth to falling short; and falling short, when it is full-grown, bears death.James uses the same noun, ἁμαρτία (hamartia, “missing”), and traces its course: desire conceives sin, and completed sin brings death. That progression opens John’s distinction: a missing can be real without already having reached death.
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