What Does 1 John 3:4 Mean in the King James?
Whosoever committeth sin transgresseth also the law: for sin is the transgression of the law.
The analysis reads the King James wording.
King James Version The King James Version, first published in 1611. Selah Verse shows the standard text.
THE KEY
John joins the inward miss to lawlessness: the failure and the life outside instruction are one condition.
THE MEANING
When you miss, John names that miss as lawlessness: it is not separate from a life outside the instruction that gives action its shape. The verse speaks of the miss and its disorder as one reality, not as two unrelated problems.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
It undoes the belief that a miss is harmless as long as it does not become an obvious rulebreaking: John calls the miss itself lawlessness.
THE ROOT
ἁμαρτία
hamartia
GROWS FROM
ἁμαρτ- (hamart-), the verbal base of ἁμαρτάνω (hamartanō)
To miss, err, or go wrong.
“sin” in this verse is hamartia. Ἁμαρτία (hamartia, “missing”) belongs to the word family of ἁμαρτάνω (hamartanō, “to miss, err”). When John equates this missing with lawlessness, he reveals the disorder of a life outside instruction beneath the act.
ALSO GROWS
hamartanō: To miss, err, or do wrong.
ἁμαρτάνω
The related verb shows the word family’s concrete starting point: a miss.
hamartēma: An error, fault, or offense.
ἁμάρτημα
This related noun keeps the sense of a particular failure within the same word family.
ἀνομία
anomia
GROWS FROM
νόμος (nomos), with the privative prefix ἀ- (a-)
Νόμος (nomos) means law, norm, or instruction; the prefix ἀ- negates it.
“transgression of the law” in this verse is anomia. John defines hamartia as anomia, joining “missing” to “lawlessness.” The Greek word also reveals life outside nomos, law or instruction, as the condition bound up with the miss.
ALSO GROWS
nomos: Law, norm, or instruction.
νόμος
This is the word anomia negates; it gives the verse’s lawlessness its reference point.
anomos: Lawless, outside the law or its order.
ἄνομος
This related form makes the condition explicit: the miss is joined to a life outside the given order.
THE PATTERN
Instruction makes the miss visible, while each choice gives it a threshold in lived action.
Thy word have I hid in mine heart, that I might not sin against thee.What shall we say then? Is the law sin? God forbid. Nay, I had not known sin, but by the law: for I had not known lust, except the law had said, Thou shalt not covet.If thou doest well, shalt thou not be accepted? and if thou doest not well, sin lieth at the door. And unto thee shall be his desire, and thou shalt rule over him.THE THREAD
If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.The same Greek word family for missing appears here as “sins,” followed by forgiveness and cleansing. This connects John’s diagnosis to a path of bringing the miss into the open and releasing it.
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