4 Whosoever committeth sin transgresseth also the law: for sin is the transgression of the law.
4 Whoever commits sin also commits lawlessness, and sin is lawlessness.
This is rather important. Sadly, this plays into the hands of Satan to remove the simple truth that sin is the transgression of the law. Even in our church are those who deceive on the gospel by the confusion of what sin is. Very sad and a very bad change when no change was needed. The KJV was just to the point, an important point.
why did they have to change that which was perfect? They did not...
why do they need to change something, just to change it. The KJV was perfectly good and perfectly simple. In this case the translators have muddied the waters. Can you agree with me, dear brother?
I will have to disagree with you here, Bro Richard. The NKJV "changes" it because it is what the Greek says. It is what John wrote.
"a" = without (e.g. amoral, asynchronous)
"nomos" = law
"anomia" = without law -> lawlessness
Anomia is found 15 times in the NT, 2 times in 1Jn 3:4. Of the 13 other times, the KJV translates it as "iniquity" 12 times, and "unrighteousness" once. Only in the last part of 1Jn 3:4 is it translated "transgression of the law." Interesting, huh?
The first part of 1Jn 3:4 is even more interesting.
"Whosoever committeth sin transgresseth also the law."
Putting in some of the Greek, we see this: Whosoever
poieo sin
poieo also the law.
What is
poieo? Of the hundreds of times it is found in the NT, here's how the KJV translates it:
do 357, make 113, bring forth 14, commit 9, cause 9, work 8, show 5, bear 4, keep 4, fulfil 3, deal 2, perform 2, not tr 3, misc 43, vr do 3. We see that the KJV, in this verse, translates it as "do" the first time, and "transgresseth" the second time.
Does anyone think it strange that the two occurrences of
poieo in 1Jn 3:4 are translated as opposite of each other? I do. And looking at how it is translated the vast majority of the time, I see no reason why it should be translated as "transgresseth" in the verse. Until you look at the Greek hiding under "the law."
Under there, you will find our old friend
anomia. It turns out that instead of "the law," John was saying just the opposite - without law, lawlessness. With that clarification, we see that John did not use the same word,
poieo, in opposite ways in the same breath.
So now, here's what we have: Whoever
does sin
does also
anomia - lawlessness. And that's what the NKJV has.
So where does our beloved "transgression of the law" come from?
It is an interpretation, not a translation. And the NKJV, at least in this case, restores the verse to
what it says, not what the translators think it means.BTW, if anyone suspects that Westcott and Hort had something to do with this, they did not. You can find this in the Textus Receptus.
BTW2, 1Jn 3:4 is used by some to assert that "transgression of the law" only means a
willful violation of a known command. But the fact is that the Greek makes sin much more objective than that. Sin is not defined by what
we willfully do, but by what
God says.
Anomia - without law, lawless - makes that clearer. And a little analysis of what
transgress means - crossing over - shows that even the English carries the same meaning. But some people like to read the Bible based on what they believe, rather than basing their beliefs on how the Bible reads.
BTW3, 1Jn 3:4, when seen in the Greek, removes much of the excuse for committing
hamartia - missing the mark. It says, "
hamartia is
anomia." Yes, missing the mark is also against the law.
Was the KJV "just to the point"? I don't think so. That rendering can be, and has been, and will be, used to teach that sin is defined by what man does or does not
intend to do - a man-centered heresy. OTOH, the NKJV makes it clearer that sin is defined by what God commands in His law - a God-centered truth.
So why the change from the KJV to the NKJV rendering? Because it was
not perfect. Now, it is more perfect.
Caveat: All that is from a non-expert, so get your salt shakers out. 
