Not All Sin Is Mortal
By Jean-Philippe Gabriel — frameworklove.com | December 28, 2025
An Essay on 1 John 5:17
“All wrongdoing is sin, but there is sin that does not lead to death.”
— 1 John 5:17 (NIV)
This single sentence quietly dismantles one of the most common assumptions in Christian theology: that every sin is equally lethal. John does not deny wrongdoing. He explicitly affirms it. But he refuses to treat sin as a flat legal category. Instead, he introduces a crucial distinction—one that is relational, not juridical.
John is not ranking sins by severity. He is distinguishing between moral failure and mortal rupture.
Throughout 1 John, the controlling contrasts are not obedience versus disobedience, nor compliance versus rebellion. The language John uses is far more existential:
light vs darkness
love vs hate
life vs death
abiding vs refusing to abide
These are not legal states. They are relational postures.
When John speaks of “sin that leads to death,” he is not referring to failure, weakness, fear, or even serious wrongdoing within relationship. In fact, the letter repeatedly assumes that believers will stumble—and insists that provision has already been made for that reality. Confession, advocacy, and cleansing all presuppose ongoing imperfection.
So what, then, leads to death?
John is consistent: refusal of love.
“Whoever does not love remains in death.” (1 John 3:14)
Death, in John’s theology, is not punishment imposed from outside. It is separation—a closing of oneself to light, relationship, and life. The sin that leads to death is not moral failure, but the posture that rejects healing altogether.
This is why the law, while good, is insufficient.
The law is excellent at detecting moral failings. It can name wrongdoing, expose injustice, and identify harm. But it is powerless to detect what is mortal. The law can tell you what is wrong; it cannot tell you whether the heart has closed itself to love.
John preserves the law’s diagnostic function when he says, “All wrongdoing is sin.” But he immediately qualifies it: “Butthere is sin that does not lead to death.” That sentence only makes sense if not all sin is fatal. If every failure were lethal, the distinction would be meaningless.
What John is safeguarding is hope—without trivializing responsibility.
Moral failure is real. It matters. It wounds. But it can be healed. Mortal failure, by contrast, is not about what one does, but about what one refuses: light, love, relationship.
In one sentence, John’s logic can be summarized this way:
Moral failure can be healed.
Refusal of love cannot.
This reframing dissolves fear-based Christianity. It removes the fantasy of sinless perfection while naming the true danger—not weakness, but withdrawal. Not stumbling, but closing the door.
John is not soft on sin. He is precise about death.