There are more and more people teaching that the first chapter of 1 John was written to the Gnostics in the church at Ephesus, and then the second chapter is where John starts addressing Christians.
Holding this position is very convenient if one wants to evade any talk of needing to confess our sins. In fact I am speaking from personal experience for I too taught that 1 John was not for the church. But God gave me grace to see and to repent.
I had wrestled with the Holy Spirit for a long time. I initially refused to tell someone close to me how I had sinned against them. Over time I fell into depression and despair, with bouts of self-hate and anger. I forgot what the real issue was, my rebellion against the Holy Spirit, and tried to white wall it by preaching a Gospel of full righteousness.
All this served to do was harden my heart and white over the darkness in my heart. I had been a believer for 23 years. But this issue was like being born again all over again.
In December 2011 God brought me face to face with the ugliness of my sin all over again. I confessed all my sins which I had committed against my loved one. I asked for forgiveness, I owned it…I told all…I was ashamed…embarrassed…but relieved to finally obey God.
The fear of bringing my sins into the light had stopped me from telling her sooner. Yet God had spoken to me saying things will get far worse if I did not confess.
Have a look at the verse in 1 John…
1Jn 1:9 If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.NKJV.
Notice that John is not saying we need to confess our sins to God here. We can confess to God of course.
To confess means we agree with God’s summation of our sin. Yes God has forgiven us all our sins already at the cross…so there is the positive agreement with God on that score. Thank you Father that you have forgiven me
all my sins in Jesus.
BUT!!
We do need to own up to those we have sinned against, we do need to confess our sin to the one we have wronged asking for forgiveness. That is usually where we try to dodge the bullet.
It is quite easy to own up to God, for He knows already what we have done before we do it. It is another matter to humble our self before the one we have hurt, sincerely apologising to them and telling them all that we did.
I was actually told by a pastor not to tell my wife what I had done. That advice was the beginning of the worst time of my life. Death invaded me and brought such a hardness to my soul.
It is better to obey the Lord than men. No matter what the results or the cost. I am not saying we should tell every thought we may have that comes from the flesh. Sin is Lawbreaking. We know when we have broken a law.
As I was saying above…there are many teaching that we do not have to confess our sins for they are all forgiven.
They are saying that we are fully righteous now because of Jesus’ death and resurrection.
They are are saying we are actually the righteousness of God.
I preached all these things myself…but it suited me to do so because it let my unconfessed sins stay hidden.
1Jn 1:5 This is the message which we have heard from Him and declare to you, that God is light
and in Him is no darkness at all.
1Jn 1:6 If we say that we have fellowship with Him, and walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth.
Now that I have no unconfessed sins on my conscience, and the Holy Spirit is not prompting me to come clean, I see these verses as they are without trying to evade their clear meaning.
God is Light and in Him is no darkness at all.
We cannot even imagine what it is to be totally light with no darkness at all….yet that is what many are trying to imagine! It is not true!
We are not yet perfected, we are not yet actually righteous…we are called righteous by God for He calls those things that be not, as if they are. God has imputed Christ’s righteousness to our account so that we can fellowship with Him.
We must wait until the glorification of our lowly body before we are totally righteous within and without. Christ’s righteousness is what we have by faith, it is conferred on us by the grace of God.
But it is not ours yet. When we are glorified we will be actually righteous for death will no longer be in us.
Until that day when we are changed into His likeness in an actual way, we must receive cleansing.
When we sin, for we all do, we need to make it right.
Yes we can easily deal with God for He is forgiving. But even the Law teaches us that the sinner
must make it right between himself and the aggrieved person.
If we say we have fellowship with Him and walk in darkness we lie and do not practice the truth.
We might fool ourselves with our grace-scriptures and our righteousness-confessions but God is not pleased when we resist Him. When we sin against a brother or sister, be they in a congregation or online or our spouses, our children…we need to repent, apologise and humbly admit our fault. Then the cleansing of the Spirit and Blood takes effect in your here and now.
There must be many, many Christians who are denying that they have sinned. They are going around saying they are the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus, that they are forgiven all their sins…yet the Holy Spirit withholds the TRUE peace of God from them.
They are believing half truths. Yes they are righteous by what Christ did, BUT they must obey the Spirit and the Truth. It is not a matter of salvation, but of fellowship with one another and with God that is at stake.
When we are resisting Him, our relationships will suffer, our personality will change, things will go
bad for us. We are saying one thing with our mouth but acting differently with our life.
David said this.
Psa 51:6 Behold, You desire truth in the inward parts, And in the hidden part You will make me to
know wisdom.
David understood that our inward parts can harbour untruths and crooked things. We can go on for a long time with deceit and guile in our life. We can deceive our self that we really are right with God by all the religious things that we do.
I am talking about born again, Spirit filled Christians here. Praying in tongues, praising Jesus, witnessing
,preaching etc., can all be done to hide the darkness that lurks within.
1Jn 1:7 But if we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood
of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin.
BUT!!!
If we Christians walk in the light. To walk in the light is not to be born again as some preachers are saying. Our walk is akin to our behaviour, there is no way around that. If we behave like children of light and not like children of darkness, then the love flows to others horizontally. All those around us
will sense the flow of His love from you when you are walking right with God.
We cannot simply say because I have Christ’s righteousness given to me that I am walking right with God. Is He pleased with all that you do? Yes He loves you. Yes you are saved. No you will not lose your salvation…but are you being obedient to His voice?
When you look in the eyes of that loved one, that friend, that brother or sister is your conscience clear, does the Holy Ghost prompt you to fess up about anything? Is all right between you and those you love?
A sign that it is not is that there will not be a flow of love and fellowship towards them.
If our condemns us God is greater and knows all things. Yes. God knows all the things that have caused the condemnation from our heart towards us…and He convicts us of sin so we may deal with these things as they happen.
Many say that John 16:10 proves that the Holy Spirit does not convict the believer of sin…but instead He convicts them of being righteous!
Joh 16:8 And when He has come, He will convict the world of sin, and of righteousness, and of judgment:
Joh 16:9 of sin, because they do not believe in Me;
Joh 16:10 of righteousness, because I go to My Father and you see Me no more;
Joh 16:11 of judgment, because the ruler of this world is judged.
The Holy Spirit will convict us all of law breaking for that is what sin is. If we do not break any laws then we will not be convicted.
It is true that the list of things that the Law had against us have all been wiped off the board. We have been cleansed and forgiven and reconciled to Father through faith alone in Jesus Christ.
But then there is the sanctification process between Pentecost(being filled with the Spirit) and our glorification at Tabernacles.
We are saved, are being saved and will be saved in the end.
We were cleansed at our new birth. We receive further cleansing at our Pentecostal experience.
This cleansing goes on for the remainder of our life here as we walk in the light, obeying the Spirit
of God. Then finally we are totally cleansed of the death that still inhabits every cell of our body when we are changed in the twinkling of eye.
If we do not confess our sins we are not cleansed and the Holy Spirit will wrestle with us and use means to bring us to repent. Like David, a Nathan might be used to smack us around the chops, to wake us up! God will chasten us like the good Father he is. He will correct us. And it is painful.
1Jn 1:9 If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from
all unrighteousness.
1Jn 1:10 If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar, and His word is not in us.
God has promised to cleanse us if we confess our sins…why we would we not want to do that?
Pride loves to hide in the darkness, and instead it pushes a false humility forward. But our hearts are naked and open to the One with whom we have to do.
All this desperate confessing of our righteousness is so tiring. Agree with God when you fall…tell the one you sinned against you are sorry and receive God’s cleansing.
Do not be condemned if you have done all to remedy the situation. Accept the consequences of your sin.
We look forward to the day when God will transform these bodies of death. Then we will be like Him in every way. Then we will walk just as He walks without any faltering…but until that day, we all slip and slide and fall down occasionally.
Our God has made provision for every slip up and every sin…take advantage of it often!
He wants you to walk with peace in your heart not weighed down by any guilt. It does not hurt to be the one who says sorry often…or who apologises for small things.
Ask God to show you if there is anything you are refusing to come clean about…then ask Him to give you the wisdom and the strength to make it right no matter what the consequences.
Fear not…be strong for the Lord thy God is with you.
Dennis Rhodes