Bible Synapse
Is there anyone who does not sin?
Hard question · Salvation and the Christian life · raised by 1 of the lists sceptics circulate
See the passages joined in the interactive mapThe passages
Solomon’s prayer: “If they sin against thee, (for there is no man that sinneth not,)”.
If they sin against thee, (for there is no man that sinneth not,) and thou be angry with them, and deliver them to the enemy, so that they carry them away captives unto the land of the enemy, far or near;
“Who can say, I have made my heart clean, I am pure from my sin?”
Who can say, I have made my heart clean, I am pure from my sin?
“For there is not a just man upon earth, that doeth good, and sinneth not.”
For there is not a just man upon earth, that doeth good, and sinneth not.
Job “was perfect and upright, and one that feared God, and eschewed evil”.
There was a man in the land of Uz, whose name was Job; and that man was perfect and upright, and one that feared God, and eschewed evil.
After losing his children and his wealth, “In all this Job sinned not”.
In all this Job sinned not, nor charged God foolishly.
Jesus was “in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin”.
For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin.
The objection
Solomon says there is no one who does not sin, and Proverbs and Ecclesiastes agree. Yet the book of Job calls Job “perfect” and says that he did not sin, John writes that whoever is born of God does not sin, and the New Testament says Jesus was without sin. Is everyone a sinner or not?
The answer
The Old Testament speaks with one voice: every human being sins. Solomon’s aside in his prayer, Proverbs 20:9 and Ecclesiastes 7:20 all say so, and the New Testament agrees that “all have sinned” (Romans 3:23). The texts set against them do not claim that any ordinary person was sinless.
Job is called “perfect” (Hebrew tam), a word that means whole, sincere and of complete integrity, not without any sin. When the book says “In all this Job sinned not” (1:22; compare 2:10, “with his lips”), it speaks of how he bore his losses: he did not curse God or accuse him of wrong. Job himself asks God, “why dost thou not pardon my transgression” (7:21), speaks of “the iniquities of my youth” (13:26), and at the end says “I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes” (42:6). John’s saying that whoever is born of God “doth not commit sin” (1 John 3:9) describes a settled way of life, for the same letter says “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves” (1:8). That question is answered under ‘Do those born of God still sin?’.
The one real exception is Jesus, and the New Testament presents him as exactly that: the one man who “knew no sin” (2 Corinthians 5:21), “in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin” (Hebrews 4:15). Solomon’s words describe the human race as he knew it and the people he prayed for. The New Testament’s claim about Jesus is a claim that he is unique, and it is this that fits him to bear the sins of others (1 Peter 2:22-24).
Other answers Christians give
‘No man that may not sin’
Adam Clarke argued that the Hebrew of 1 Kings 8:46, ki ein adam asher lo yecheta, can be rendered ‘there is no man that may not sin’: no one is beyond the reach of temptation, not that everyone must go on sinning. He noted that the same verb form is translated ‘if a man trespass’ in verse 31. On this reading the verse is a warning, and it fits the Wesleyan hope that believers may be freed from wilful sin in this life.
From the classic commentators
The idea seems to be that his piety, or moral character, was "proportionate" and was "complete in all its parts." He was a man of integrity in all the relations of life - as an Emir, a father, a husband, a worshipper of God.Albert Barnes, Notes on the Bible, on Job 1