Key terms here are 'abides' (Greek: meno), and 'sins' (Greek: hamartano). John was speaking to a Jewish audience, so they were quite aware of what it meant to break or keep the Law. John here is describing the spiritual reality of the Christian's union with Jesus Christ, rather than a mere juridical status.

The root Greek word here is poieo, which can mean to do, to execute, or to continue. The text leans on the connotation to continue, practice or repeatedly do. In other words, the subject of the Greek here is a person who is in an ongoing, continual state of unrepentant sin, rather than one struggling toward holiness.