Later text
1 John 3:5BSB
But you know that Christ appeared to take away sins, and in Him there is no sin.
Intertextuality Pair
Echo
Later text
1 John 3:5BSB
But you know that Christ appeared to take away sins, and in Him there is no sin.
Earlier text
Isaiah 53:5BSB
But He was pierced for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon Him, and by His stripes we are healed.
Earlier text
53:9BSB
He was assigned a grave with the wicked, and with a rich man in His death, although He had done no violence, nor was any deceit in His mouth.
Earlier text
53:12BSB
Therefore I will allot Him a portion with the great, and He will divide the spoils with the strong, because He has poured out His life unto death, and He was numbered with the transgressors. Yet He bore the sin of many and made intercession for the transgressors.
John's twofold statement — "Christ appeared to take away sins, and in Him there is no sin" — echoes the two defining notes of the Suffering Servant: he bears away the sins of others (53:5-6, 12, "He bore the sin of many") while being himself entirely without sin (53:9, "no deceit was found in His mouth"). The conjunction is the Servant Song's own logic: only the sinless one can be the sin-bearer. "To take away sins" (hina tas hamartias arē) recalls the sin-removal that runs through Isaiah 53 and that John the Baptist applied to Christ as the Lamb who "takes away the sin of the world" (John 1:29, itself rooted in Isa 53:7). John deploys the truth pastorally: because the sinless Servant came to remove sin, those abiding in him cannot make sin their settled way of life (3:6). The telos is not a moralizing ultimatum but the transforming sight of the sinless Sin-bearer: beholding the One who is pure and who carried away our impurity, the believer is drawn to purify himself "just as Christ is pure" (3:3) — holiness as the fruit of treasuring the spotless Servant, never its price.