Remember This

If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. 1 John 1:9

This is a good memory verse because we need to be continually reminded to confess our sin. It isn’t enough to live with the general understanding that we are all sinners. It isn’t enough to live with a private, passive awareness that I am personally a sinner. John says we must confess our sin - we must be specific, relentless, unrestrained in honesty about our unrighteousness.

If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. 1 John 1:9

This verse begins with an unsettling word, if. If we confess Jesus is faithful and just to forgive and cleanse us. Don’t be confused, John is not saying that we are unforgiven for everything left unconfessed. The grace and mercy Jesus purchased for us on the cross exceeds our ability to describe how unrighteous we are – so John is not suggesting forgiveness is tit-for-tat, “I’ll wait until you admit it to bless you” kind of thing. He is not talking about that at all.
John is talking about the difference between a person who will confess their sinfulness and one who won’t. I believe most people who confess no sin are people who believe deep down they have none, they have defined sin in such a way as to see it all over the lives of others and either absent in themselves or at least minimal in themselves by comparison. That is why John says in this passage “If we say we have no sin we deceive ourselves…” He is addressing our willing blindness to our own sin and the accompanying belief that we are somehow good enough in other ways to compensate for it apart from the atoning blood of Jesus.
I could be wrong, but I think we refuse to confess sin because we choose to view our sin as unimportant and less destructive than the grave sins we can so readily see in the lives of other people. But when we think like that we do much harm to our souls. When we refuse to confess we live with an abiding tension in our hearts between the holiness of God we long to know and the repressed knowledge of our active and continual sinfulness that separates us from him. It is a miserable way to be a “Christian.”
John is offering us freedom in Christ from the soul destroying weight of abiding sin and the relentless effort of hiding and blaming and defending ourselves. What good news! You don’t have to not be a sinner; you only have to have the faith to admit you are a sinner. You only have to believe God loves you the way he really loves you so you go to him and tell him the truth knowing his love for you is unchanged by your failures.
When you do you will find your love for God will grow, your desire for his presence will grow, and instead of hiding and denying your sin you will seek it out and present it to God – and you will be cleansed, forgiven, loved. You will know that you are truly loved.


If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. 1 John 1:9