1 John 5:16
If a man sees his brother doing a sin which is not bad enough for death, let him make a prayer to God, and God will give life to him whose sin was not bad enough for death. There is a sin whose punishment is death: I do not say that he may make such a request then.
Bible in Basic English
In The King James Version
In Context
17All evil-doing is sin: but death is not the punishment for every sort of sin.
Cross References
Genesis 20:17Then Abraham made prayer to God, and God made Abimelech well again, and his wife and his women-servants, so that they had children.
Exodus 32:31Then Moses went back to the Lord and said, This people has done a great sin, making themselves a god of gold;
Numbers 12:13And Moses, crying to the Lord, said, Let my prayer come before you, O God, and make her well.
Numbers 15:30But the person who does wrong in the pride of his heart, if he is one of you or of another nation by birth, is acting without respect for the Lord, and will be cut off from his people.
Deuteronomy 9:18And I went down on my face before the Lord, as at the first, for forty days and forty nights, without taking food or drinking water, because of all your sin, in doing evil in the eyes of the Lord and moving him to wrath.
2 Chronicles 30:18For a great number of the people from Ephraim and Manasseh, Issachar and Zebulun, had not made themselves clean, but they took the Passover meal, though not in the right way. For Hezekiah had made prayer for them, saying, May the good Lord have mercy on everyone
Matthew Henry on 1 John 5:15-18
The Sin unto Death. ( a. d. 80.) 14 And this is the confidence that we have in him, that, if we ask any thing according to his will, he heareth us: 15 And if we know that he hear us, whatsoever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we desired of him. 16 If any man see his brother sin a sin which is not unto death, he shall ask, and he shall give him life for them that sin not unto death. There is a sin unto death: I do not say that he shall pray for it. 17 All unrighteousness is sin: and there is a sin… Read the whole commentary →