Whosoever commits sin transgresses also the law: for sin is the transgression of the law.
All Commentaries on 1 John 3:4 Go To 1 John 3
Cornelius a Lapide
AD 1637
Whosoever committeth sin, also doeth iniquity, for sin is iniquity. "For whosoever sins," says Bede, "acts contrary to the equity of the Divine Law." The faithful ought to sanctify themselves in order to be like Christ, and on the contrary sin is α̉νομία, a breaking of the Divine Law, and makes us utterly unlike God, and hateful to Him. He means "deadly sin." S. Augustine (contr. Faust. xxii7) says, that "sin is anything we say, do, or desire, against the Divine Law." And S. Ambrose (de.Parad. cap8), "Sin is disobedience to the Divine commands." In like manner iniquity is a departure from the equity which the law prescribes, and injustice is contrary to justice, and α̉νομία is what is contrary to law. Sin and iniquity mean, in S. John , the same thing, though in popular speech iniquity has a worse meaning than sin. See S. Gregory, Mor. xi21. S. Ambrose (Apol. Dav. cap13) says the exact contrary, regarding sin as the worse of the two.
But every sin, even against human or ecclesiastical law, is contrary to God, as being contrary to His eternal law, which is the source of all law. As S. Thomas says (12 , qust91), "Law is the highest reason existing in the Divine mind, according to which He directs the actions of all creatures to their own proper ends. For as there is in God the reason for His creating things, so also is the law by which they are to be governed. And as the one is the conception in the Divine mind, which decided how they were to be made, so is the other that eternal law, by which every creature should discharge its own functions, together with the will which obliges them, or at least impresses on them an inclination, to follow it.
