Sin vs. Knowledge of the Truth

This note is interpretation, not translation. It sets two things apart that are easily run together: sin, which the blood of Jesus washes, and turning from the knowledge of the truth, for which Hebrews says no sacrifice remains. It begins with Jon’s own words, written for a friend and reworded here for everyone, and then sets out the scriptures under each point. Revelation draws the same line. It names sin in only three verses, and in the one about believers the sins are already gone: “the one who loves us, and who released us from our wrongs at the cost of his own blood” (1:5). The people it leaves outside are named by the lie they love and by what they would not do: “I gave her time to change her mind, and she does not want to change what she is doing” (2:21); “Outside are … everyone who loves and practises what is false” (22:15).

What sin is — Jon’s reading. Sin, what is sin? It is the word for missing the mark. Jesus’ law is love and trust, so there are really only two sins that matter, and neither of them takes you out of relationship with God if you trust that the Son’s blood is greater than your actions. It is simple: the blood is the cleansing power and your actions are the sinning power. Which is greater? If you throw a dart at a dartboard and miss, that is a sin, but it does not matter. If you punch someone in the face, that is harm, and it matters, but Jesus’ blood is greater. You might still be charged: the blood keeps you in relationship with God and righteous, but the other person can still press charges if they want. And if you are saved and you punch someone, it will hurt you too, because what you judge in another you condemn in yourself. Your heart will hurt. That is how the relationship works. Jesus is the Way; He leads you; He is the good shepherd. This is Paul’s argument in Romans: you are now a slave to righteousness. People are offended by salvation through trust alone because they do not understand it. The power is Jesus, not you, which is why He gets all the praise, and why people who do not trust Jesus never seem to learn. What they have is an endless cycle of doing foolish things and saying sorry, or mental gymnastics to convince themselves they are good, and it is miserable, so they treat everyone else badly. That is what works-based religion produces: people pretending to be good and treating other people badly. Read this carefully. The sin is against the truth: counting the blood of the covenant a common thing and asking for another sacrifice, which is trampling the Son of God underfoot and insulting the Spirit of grace (Hebrews 10:26–29). Do not teach if you do not know what you are talking about, whoever you are.

Missing the mark. The Greek verb for sinning, hamartanō, is used in older Greek of a throw or a shot that misses; that use is outside scripture. Scripture’s own example is a sling, not a bow. Seven hundred chosen men of Benjamin “could each sling a stone at a hair and not miss” (Judges 20:16), where the Hebrew is velo yachati, from chata, the ordinary Hebrew verb for sinning, and the Greek translation has ouk examartanontes, from the same family as hamartanō. Proverbs uses it of feet: “the one who hurries with his feet misses” (Proverbs 19:2, chote; the Greek translation of that verse is a different text). So the plain meaning of the word is missing a target, in both languages.

Trust and love. Jon’s two sins answer to the two parts of one command: “this is his commandment, that we trust in the name of his Son Jesus the Anointed and love one another” (1 John 3:23). Each half is called sin on its own. Of trust: “everything that is not from trust is sin” (Romans 14:23, pan de ho ouk ek pisteōs hamartia estin); the Spirit convicts the world “concerning sin, because they do not trust in me” (John 16:9). Of love: “love does no harm to a neighbour; so love is the fulfilment of the law” (Romans 13:10); “the whole law is fulfilled in one word, ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself’” (Galatians 5:14). Jesus himself hangs everything on two: “on these two commandments hang the whole law and the prophets” (Matthew 22:40, after 22:37–39). Paul says every other commandment “is summed up” in love of neighbour (Romans 13:9, anakephalaioutai), and he calls it “the law of the Anointed”: “carry one another’s burdens, and so fulfil the law of the Anointed” (Galatians 6:2; 1 Corinthians 9:21). The two Jesus names are love of God and love of neighbour; the two John names are trust in the Son and love of one another; Jon’s are trust and love.

Lawlessness — Jon’s answer. John also writes “sin is lawlessness” (1 John 3:4), and that could be read as a wider rule than trust and love. Jon’s answer is that Jesus calls the Pharisees lawless, and the text bears him out. In the Gospels the word anomia is found only in Matthew, four times, and Jesus says it each time. He says it of the keepers of the law: “outwardly you appear righteous to people, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness” (Matthew 23:28). He says it of people with works to show: “Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name … and do many mighty works in your name? And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from me, you who work lawlessness’” (7:22–23). He says it of those who set stumbling blocks (13:41). And he sets it against love: “because lawlessness increases, the love of many will grow cold” (24:12). John’s own next lines do the same: “anyone who does not do what is right is not of God, nor the one who does not love his brother; for this is the message you heard from the beginning, that we love one another” (1 John 3:10–11), and then the one commandment, trust and love (3:23). So in Jesus’ mouth and in John’s, lawlessness is not measured by law-keeping; the law-keepers are the lawless ones, and the measure is love and knowing him. And “their lawless deeds I will remember no more” (Hebrews 10:17) is part of the forgiveness. John’s other line, “all unrighteousness is sin, and there is sin not leading to death” (1 John 5:17), says that not all sin carries the same weight, which is the nearest text to Jon’s dart.

What causes the works of the flesh. Paul’s list in Galatians 5 comes with its cause and its cure on both sides of it. Before the list: “you were called to freedom, brothers; only do not use the freedom as an opening for the flesh, but through love serve one another. For the whole law is fulfilled in one word, ‘You shall love your neighbour as yourself’” (5:13–14); “walk by the Spirit, and you will not carry out the desire of the flesh” (5:16); “the flesh desires against the Spirit, and the Spirit against the flesh” (5:17); “if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under law” (5:18). Then the works: sexual unfaithfulness, impurity, licentiousness, idolatry, sorcery, enmities, strife, jealousy, outbursts of anger, selfish ambitions, dissensions, factions, envy, drunkenness, carousing (5:19–21). Of the fifteen, eight are against other people, two are against God, and five are of the body. After the list, the fruit of the Spirit, which begins with love and includes trust, pistis: “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, trust, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law” (5:22–23). And “those who belong to the Anointed Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires” (5:24). So in Paul’s own order the cause is the flesh’s desire, the cure is the Spirit and not more law, and the Spirit is received by trust: “did you receive the Spirit by works of law or by hearing with trust?” (3:2; 3:14). He says the law is what gives the flesh its power: “while we were in the flesh, the passions of sins, which came through the law, were at work in our members” (Romans 7:5); “sin, taking its opening through the commandment, produced in me every desire” (7:8); “the power of sin is the law” (1 Corinthians 15:56). And in Galatians “the flesh” is also the word for the law-keeping Paul is arguing against: “having begun by the Spirit, are you now being made complete by the flesh?” (3:3), and the circumcisers who “want to make a good showing in the flesh” and “boast in your flesh” (6:12–13). What is fulfilled instead is the law’s own aim: “so that the just requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not by the flesh but by the Spirit” (Romans 8:4). Paul does warn that “those who practise such things will not inherit the kingdom of God” (Galatians 5:21), a present participle, the same shape as Revelation’s “loves and practises” (22:15).

Which is greater. Paul answers Jon’s question in a single verb: “where sin increased, grace overflowed beyond it” (Romans 5:20, hypereperisseusen). John answers it of the conscience: “if our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and he knows everything” (1 John 3:20), and of the enemy: “greater is the one in you than the one in the world” (4:4). The blood keeps on cleansing: “the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from every sin” (1:7, a present tense); “how much more will the blood of the Anointed … cleanse our conscience from dead works” (Hebrews 9:14). And Revelation shows the contest won the same way: the accuser “who accused them in front of our God day and night” is thrown down, “and they came through and beat him by the blood of the Lamb and by the message they testified to” (12:10–11).

Harm done to someone else. Jon’s line between God and the person wronged is drawn in the scriptures too. Jesus put the person first, even ahead of an offering: “if you are offering your gift at the altar and there remember that your brother has something against you, leave your gift there before the altar and go; first be reconciled to your brother” (Matthew 5:23–24). Zacchaeus repaid what he had taken (Luke 19:8). Paul wrote to Philemon that if Onesimus had wronged him or owed him anything, “charge it to me; I will repay” (Philemon 18–19). The courts are still the courts: the authority “is God’s servant … an avenger for anger on the one who does wrong” (Romans 13:4), and “none of you should suffer as a murderer or a thief or a wrongdoer” (1 Peter 4:15). This is the same line Who Can Forgive Sins? draws: God forgives the sin against himself; the wrong against a person is that person’s to forgive.

When the saved do harm. Paul’s argument in Romans is the one Jon names: “set free from sin, you were made slaves to righteousness” (Romans 6:18), and Paul raises the obvious objection himself: “shall we go on in sin so that grace may increase? Certainly not. We who died to sin, how shall we still live in it?” (6:1–2; again at 6:15). The hurt Jon describes has its texts: the heart that condemns (1 John 3:20–21); “do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, in whom you were sealed” (Ephesians 4:30); “grief that is God’s way works a change of mind that leads to salvation and is not regretted” (2 Corinthians 7:10, with 7:9); and the Father’s training “for our good, so that we may share his holiness” (Hebrews 12:10–11). The shepherd leads: “he calls his own sheep by name and leads them out … and the sheep follow him” (John 10:3–4, 27); “I am the way and the truth and the life” (14:6). The principle Jon leans on is stated twice. Jesus: “do not judge, so that you are not judged; for with the judgment you judge you will be judged, and with the measure you measure it will be measured to you” (Matthew 7:1–2; Luke 6:37). Paul: “in what you judge the other, you condemn yourself, for you who judge do the same things” (Romans 2:1). Jon does not say Romans 2 describes a believer’s heart; he says the principle is why the heart hurts. The harm you would condemn in someone else, you condemn in yourself when you do it. The texts carry each step. The law is written on the heart, “their conscience bearing witness, their thoughts accusing or else defending them” (Romans 2:15). Paul calls the one blessed “who does not condemn himself in what he approves” (14:22), the verse just before “everything that is not from trust is sin” (14:23). And John, writing to his “little children” about loving “in deed and in truth” (1 John 3:18), says what happens next and what answers it: “if our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart” (3:20), and “if our heart does not condemn us, we have boldness toward God” (3:21).

What trusting yourself produces. By works-based religion Jon means what Luke names in so many words: trusting in yourself, which is trusting your own works rather than God’s. Jesus told a parable “to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and treated everyone else with contempt” (Luke 18:9, exouthenountas). The trusting and the contempt are in one sentence, said of the same people, and the Pharisee in the parable shows both: he thanks God he is “not like the rest of people … or even like this tax collector” (18:11), and the tax collector is the one who goes home declared right (18:14). The difference between their own works and God’s is Jesus’ own: asked “what shall we do, so that we may work the works of God?”, he answered, “this is the work of God, that you trust in the one he sent” (John 6:28–29). Paul says the same of himself, “not having a righteousness of my own from the law, but the one through trust in the Anointed, the righteousness from God” (Philippians 3:9), and of everyone: “not from works, so that no one may boast; for we are his making, created in the Anointed Jesus for good works which God prepared beforehand” (Ephesians 2:9–10). And Paul gives Jon’s “never seem to learn” its reason. Israel pursued a law of righteousness and did not arrive, “because it was not from trust but as if from works” (Romans 9:31–32); “they have a zeal for God, but not according to knowledge, for not knowing the righteousness of God, and seeking to set up their own, they did not submit to the righteousness of God” (10:2–3). The word “knowledge” there is epignōsis, the word of “the knowledge of the truth”. Paul, writing to people being pulled back under the law, says “if you bite and devour one another, watch out that you are not consumed by one another” (Galatians 5:15), one verse after the whole law is summed up in love (5:14). The cry of the man still under the law in Romans is “wretched man that I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?” (Romans 7:24, talaipōros), answered in the next breath, “thanks be to God through Jesus the Anointed our Lord” (7:25), and “no condemnation now” (8:1). Jesus’ word for the show of goodness is hypocrisy: “outwardly you appear righteous to people, but inside you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness” (Matthew 23:28). And Paul describes people “always learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth” (2 Timothy 3:7), which is Jon’s “never seem to learn” in Paul’s words, and the same phrase as Hebrews 10:26.

The knowledge of the truth. The phrase epignōsis alētheias is in five verses of the New Testament, and together they say what it is. God “wants all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth” (1 Timothy 2:4). It is God who gives the way into it: “perhaps God will give them a change of mind leading to the knowledge of the truth” (2 Timothy 2:25). Some never arrive: “always learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth” (3:7). It belongs with trust: Paul is an apostle “for the trust of God’s chosen and the knowledge of the truth” (Titus 1:1). And the fifth is Hebrews 10:26, the sin committed after it has been received. In John’s writing the truth is a person: “I am the way and the truth and the life” (John 14:6); and Revelation calls him “the holy one, the true one” (3:7), “the trustworthy and true witness” (3:14) and “Faithful and True” (19:11).

Hebrews 10:26–29 in its setting. Hekousiōs gar hamartanontōn hēmōn meta to labein tēn epignōsin tēs alētheias, ouketi peri hamartiōn apoleipetai thysia: “for if we go on sinning willingly after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins” (10:26). The verb is a present participle, a going on in it, not a single slip. Eight verses earlier the same letter said why no further sacrifice is needed by anyone forgiven: “where there is forgiveness of these, there is no longer an offering for sin” (10:18). The same “no longer”: no other offering is needed by the one who has the forgiveness, and no other is left for the one who turns from it. The word “willingly” is chosen against the law. The law’s sin offerings were for sin done akousiōs, unintentionally, in the Greek translation (Leviticus 4:2, 4:13, 4:22, 4:27; Numbers 15:27–29), and for the one who sinned “with a high hand” there was no offering: “he reviles the LORD … because he has despised the word of the LORD and broken his commandment, that person shall be utterly cut off” (Numbers 15:30–31, Hebrew). Hebrews uses the opposite word, hekousiōs, found elsewhere in the New Testament only at 1 Peter 5:2. Then it says what the wilful sin is. “Anyone who rejected the law of Moses dies without mercy on the word of two or three witnesses” (10:28, from Deuteronomy 17:6); “how much worse a punishment do you think he will deserve who has trampled the Son of God underfoot, and counted the blood of the covenant by which he was made holy a common thing, and insulted the Spirit of grace?” (10:29). Three acts, each against a person or a gift: trampling (katapatēsas, the verb used of the seed on the path, Luke 8:5, which is the word, 8:11–12), counting common (koinon, the word for unwashed hands, Mark 7:2), and insulting (enybrisas, found only here). That last word has a root Paul uses of himself: “formerly a slanderer and a persecutor and an insulter (hybristēn); but I was shown mercy, because I acted not knowing, in unbelief” (1 Timothy 1:13). The same insult met mercy in the one who did it not knowing; Hebrews says what remains for the one who does it after receiving the knowledge of the truth. The line is the knowledge, not the size of the act. Jesus draws it the same way: “all things will be forgiven the sons of men, their sins and their slanders, however much they slander; but whoever slanders the Holy Spirit never has forgiveness … because they said, ‘He has an unclean spirit’” (Mark 3:28–30). And the letter itself says the earlier passage of this kind, 6:4–6, where those who fall away are “crucifying again for themselves the Son of God”, is not said of its readers: “we are persuaded of better things concerning you, things that belong to salvation” (6:9), and “we are not of those who shrink back to destruction, but of those who trust to the keeping of the soul” (10:39).

The covenant it turns from. Hebrews does not use the words “against the truth,” but its own comparison says what the sin is turned against. “Anyone who set aside (athetēsas) the law of Moses dies without mercy on the word of two or three witnesses” (10:28) is Deuteronomy 17:6, and in Deuteronomy that rule is for one sin: the man or woman who “transgresses his covenant (la’avor berito), and has gone and served other gods” (Deuteronomy 17:2–3). So the wilful sin is set beside abandoning the covenant, not beside breaking a rule. The verb is the one Paul uses of grace, “I do not set aside (athetō) the grace of God” (Galatians 2:21), and Jesus of himself, “the one who rejects (athetōn) me and does not receive my words” (John 12:48). And the truth the readers had received is the covenant the letter has just set out. Hebrews defines it in full in chapter 8, quoting Jeremiah: “I will put my laws into their mind and write them on their hearts … and I will remember their sins no more” (Hebrews 8:10, 12, from Jeremiah 31:33–34), repeated at 10:16–17 with “where there is forgiveness of these, there is no longer an offering for sin” (10:18). Hebrews calls what that covenant stands in “true”: Jesus serves in “the true tent, which the Lord pitched, not man” (8:2), the holy places made with hands are “copies of the true” (9:24), and the readers draw near “with a true heart” (10:22). The word alētheia itself is in Hebrews only at 10:26, and epignōsis, knowledge, is there only too. Paul says the same covenant in his own words: “there is therefore now no condemnation for those in the Anointed Jesus, for the law of the Spirit of life in the Anointed Jesus set you free from the law of sin and of death” (Romans 8:1–2). Elsewhere the New Testament names it outright: “the truth of the good news” (Galatians 2:5), “the word of the truth, the good news of your salvation” (Ephesians 1:13).

What the violation is — Jon’s reading. If you tell people they need a sacrifice for sins again, when the covenant says God remembers their sins no more, that is the violation. The covenant says “I will remember their sins no more” (8:12; 10:17) and “there is no longer an offering for sin” (10:18); to put an offering for sins back is to count the blood of that covenant common (10:29). Hebrews says the warning is about doing that willingly. In ignorance there is mercy, as there was for Paul, “because I acted not knowing” (1 Timothy 1:13), and for those Peter told “I know that you acted in ignorance … change your minds and turn back, so that your sins may be wiped out” (Acts 3:17, 19). But it is still dangerous. The same letter warns, “do not be carried away by varied and strange teachings, for it is good for the heart to be made firm by grace” (13:9), and Paul of the ones who brought the law back into the good news, “the one who troubles you will bear the judgment, whoever he is” (Galatians 5:10).

Teaching. Jon’s last line has two texts behind it: “not many of you should become teachers, my brothers, knowing that we will receive a heavier judgment” (James 3:1), and Paul’s description of some “wanting to be teachers of the law, understanding neither what they are saying nor the things they so confidently assert” (1 Timothy 1:7).

In this book. Revelation does not quote Hebrews 10 and never speaks of wilful sin, but it draws the line in the same place. It names sin in three verses only: once of believers, whose sins are already released by his blood (1:5, an aorist participle, a thing done), and twice of Babylon, whose sins “have piled up as high as the sky” and which God’s people are told to come out of so as not to share them (18:4–5). It never counts a believer’s sins. The ones inside and outside are told apart by washing and by the lie: “Happy are those who wash their robes … Outside are the dogs and the sorcerers and the sexually unfaithful and the murderers and the idol-worshippers, and everyone who loves and practises what is false” (22:14–15). Paul says of those who perish that “they did not receive the love of the truth so as to be saved” (2 Thessalonians 2:10); Revelation’s outsiders love the lie (philōn, a different word for love from Paul’s agapē, so the likeness is of shape, not wording). Those standing with the Lamb are the ones in whose mouths “no lie was found” (14:5). The deciding thing in Revelation is the will, as in Hebrews’ “willingly”: “I gave her time to change her mind, and she does not want to” (2:21, ou thelei); the same verb opens the door at the end, “let the one who wants it take the water of life free of charge” (22:17); and those who will not turn are shown not turning (9:20–21; 16:9; 16:11), until “let the one doing wrong go on doing wrong” (22:11). One word is shared outright. Hebrews’ sin is to count the blood “common”, koinon; the one thing that will never come into the city is “anything unclean”, pan koinon in the Greek, “only those written in the Lamb’s scroll of life” (21:27). That is one word, and the note says no more for it than that. And the wretchedness of Romans 7 is in the book once: the assembly at Laodicea, which said “I need nothing”, does not know “that you are the wretched one” (3:17), talaipōros, the word of Romans 7:24 and found nowhere else in the New Testament.

Where this stops. The verses are quoted where they stand, from the Greek of Nestle 1904 and the Hebrew of the Leningrad Codex, and Revelation’s from this translation. Hebrews 10:26 is read in more than one way: some read it of people who heard the truth and never trusted, some of believers who fall away, and the letter itself says “we are not of those who shrink back” (10:39). This note does not decide whether a true believer can commit it. It does not say that sin does not matter: Paul answers that with “certainly not” (Romans 6:2, 6:15), and Jon’s own words say harm matters. By works-based religion it means, as Jon does, trusting in oneself (Luke 18:9); it says what the texts say of those who did, and does not judge any particular person.

Red flag That telling people a sacrifice for sins is needed again is the wilful sin of Hebrews 10:26. What Hebrews states: the sin is set beside abandoning the covenant (10:28, with Deuteronomy 17:2–3, 6), it is against the Son, the blood and the Spirit (10:29), and the covenant says sins are remembered no more and no offering remains (8:12; 10:17–18). That teaching another sacrifice is that violation is the step Jon takes. Hebrews speaks of the reader’s own turning, not of what he teaches others, and the nearest texts for Jon’s reading are the priests who offer “the same sacrifices again and again, which can never take away sins” (10:11), “crucifying again for themselves the Son of God” (6:6), and “an altar from which those who serve the tent have no right to eat” (13:9–10).