1 John 1:5-10

“This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light and in him there is no darkness at all. If we say that we have fellowship with him while we are walking in darkness, we lie and do not do what is true; but if we walk in the light as he himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin. If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he who is faithful and just will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.”

Forgiveness is everything. Without it we cannot have a relationship with God. Oh, we can talk about being a Christian. We can go to church. We can even be a professional pastor. But without forgiveness, we really have nothing.

There is so much truth in this small passage. The apostle John hits on a number of different, but tightly related, truths:

• God is without sin (is light).
• If we have sin in our lives, we cannot have fellowship with Him.
• If we have sin in our lives, we cannot have true fellowship with each other.
• If we are claiming to have fellowship with Him while we have sin in our lives, we are lying to ourselves.
• Only the blood of Jesus cleanses us from sin.
• If we claim to have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves.

These premises are very important because they seem to contradict a lot of current teaching today. The fact is, we don’t talk about sin a lot. We talk about self esteem and salvation and fellowship and dysfunction and past hurts. But we don’t talk about sin.

According to John, it’s not dysfunction or self esteem that is the problem with our relationships. It’s not past hurts or trauma in our lives. It’s sin. Our sin. Plain and simple. We don’t need to learn how to live together nor to learn how to live rightly until we learn how to confront and deal with our sin. Everything else follows.

We have sin our lives. (If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves.)

We need to confess our sins to God. Sins, not sin. Sins, not sinfulness. There is a value in learning to confess, to say, the specific sin. When we simply say “sins” without listing the individual sins, it seems that we tend to ignore that something actually is a sin. It’s like selling a house that has “flaws” without actually listing them. When we force ourselves to list we are aware of, one by one, we become even more conscious of our need for forgiveness and how much we have missed the mark of righteousness.

Once we have confessed our sins, God is faithful and does forgive us and cleanses us from all unrighteousness (even those sins we were unaware of). And even if we leave the Throne with a strong sense of our unworthiness, we also leave knowing how much we need Him. Without Him, we simply cannot go on.

© 2008 Robin L. O’Hare. All Rights Reserved. International copyright reserved. This study may be copied for nonprofit and/or church purposes only without permission when copied in its entirety (including this notice).