mortal sin

In John's 1st letter, we are exhorted to pray for one another in terms that are unusual:

If you see any brother or sister commit a sin that does not lead to death, you should pray, and God will give them eternal life.  I refer to those whose sin does not lead to death.  There is sin that leads to death.  I am not saying that you should pray about that (1 John 5:16).  The strange term is "sin that leads to death" or what might be called "mortal sin." 

One church tradition interprets this as willful sins, unforgivable apart from God's Grace and our repentance, as opposed to venial or forgivable sins, perhaps committed unintentionally.  Contemporary Christians might like to differentiate between small sins, those which aren't worth worrying about, and greater sins, which require some remedy.

As a whole, the Bible seems to make no such distinctions.  As John says, "all wrongdoing is sin," period (1 John 5:17).  His "sin that leads to death" is what Jesus calls "eternal sin," a pattern of repeatedly sinful and unrepentant behavior that has eternal consequences.  It "blasphemes against the Holy Spirit," Who is constantly appealing to the sinner to repent. It refuses the entreaties of The Spirit, thereby rendering the one who keeps on committing it unforgivable (Mark 3:28-29; Matthew 12:31-32; Lukle 12:10).  It is impossible, at least for us, to restore such a person to repentance and forgiveness (even though, with God, all things are possible).

So John advises us instead to focus our prayers on a sister or a brother whose sin is not yet in that downward, leading-to-death, mortal, eternal pattern.  We are to do the culturally unthinkable: to stick our noses into our brother or sister's sin and pray that they will repent, showing our love for them by correcting, challenging, or even rebuking that sin.  Our desire is to prevent them from sliding into a place from which there might seem to be no return.

May God give us the courage to pray and act boldly and redemptively for one another and be part of His plan to prevent all sin.