What Does 1 John 3:9 Mean in the King James?
Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin; for his seed remaineth in him: and he cannot sin, because he is born of God.
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
The verse locates the impossibility of sin in a seed that stays within you: the source of your life shapes what your life can produce.
THE MEANING
God’s life is present within you and remains there. The verse names that inner source as incompatible with missing the mark: the one born of God cannot sin, because God’s seed stays in them. What is deepest in you is the life whose source is God.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
This undoes the belief that sin is the deepest source of the person born of God: the verse locates God’s seed, still present within, as the source of that life.
THE ROOT
σπέρμα
sperma
GROWS FROM
σπερ-/σπειρ- (sper-/speir-)
To sow or scatter seed; by extension, seed or offspring.
A seed is not only a beginning; it carries the life it can reproduce. Here, that source remains within the person, so the verse describes an origin that continues to shape what can come from them.
ALSO GROWS
speirō: To sow or scatter seed.
σπείρω
The related verb makes the seed an active source of life, not merely a label for where life began.
spora: Sowing; seed.
σπορά
This branch keeps the image tied to what is planted and what grows from it.
μένω
menō
GROWS FROM
μένω
menō
To stay, remain, or abide.
“remaineth” in this verse is menō. The seed is not simply a trace of the past; it stays present within the person. The verse describes an origin that continues to dwell there and shape the life that follows.
ALSO GROWS
monē: A dwelling place; a place to stay.
μονή
This related noun shows how remaining can become dwelling, echoing the seed’s continuing presence within.
paramenō: To remain or continue.
παραμένω
This compound preserves the sense of staying on, underscoring the seed’s ongoing presence.
ἁμαρτία
hamartia
GROWS FROM
ἁμαρτάνω
hamartanō
To miss or fail.
“sin” in this verse is hamartia. The word carries the sense of missing; it reaches beyond a tally of broken rules to the image of a life departing from its mark. Set beside the seed that remains, the verse presents missing and God’s indwelling source as incompatible expressions.
ALSO GROWS
hamartanō: To miss, err, or sin.
ἁμαρτάνω
The verb makes the sense of missing active, clarifying what the verse says the life born of God cannot do.
hamartēma: A fault or error.
ἁμάρτημα
This noun names the result of missing and keeps the verse’s contrast focused on what the inner source produces.
THE PATTERN
Life continues to bear the character of the source that gives it.
And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so.For as the rain cometh down, and the snow from heaven, and returneth not thither, but watereth the earth, and maketh it bring forth and bud, that it may give seed to the sower, and bread to the eater: So shall my word be that goeth forth out of my mouth: it shall not return unto me void, but it shall accomplish that which I please, and it shall prosper in the thing whereto I sent it.Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which liveth and abideth for ever.THE THREAD
Being born again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God, which liveth and abideth for ever.Peter uses the same word, σπέρμα (sperma, seed), and calls it incorruptible. That makes the image in 1 John more than an origin story: its seed remains present within the person.
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