NOTES for Jo1 5:18

Can you imagine an ordinary person, not the Son of Man, who would not sin? Great saints called themselves great sinners. And here the apostle John speaks about "sinlessness" as something fully known: "We know..."

Perhaps the solution to this paradox, as in many situations of the spiritual life, is contained in a formula of four words: "already yes, not yet." Birth from God, like salvation and like entry into the Kingdom, is a dynamic concept. It has not simply happened; it is happening in us, and as this happens we withdraw from sin, because both we ourselves keep ourselves from evil and the evil one has nothing in us to "catch hold of."