“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

1 John is a letter that was written to a group of Christians who were struggling with their original faith in Jesus as the Messiah. They had been influenced by the prevailing Gnosticism of the Greek culture to believe that physical matter is evil, and only the spirit is good. They concluded, therefore, that God had not come to earth as Messiah in a human body. Instead, they believed that their salvation was rooted in a special spiritual insight they had received. They reasoned that since anything they did in their bodies had no spiritual significance, they could indulge in acts that they had been taught were sinful, without spiritual consequence. The author of this letter, believed to be John, wrote to these believers to reassure them that what they had originally been taught about Jesus was true. As an eyewitness to the resurrected Jesus, he testified that Jesus truly is the Son of God. He is the light of the world, and in him there is no darkness at all.

If you have confessed Jesus Christ as Lord, and believed in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you have the Spirit of Christ living within you (Rom 10:9-10; Gal 2:20). You have received forgiveness of all your sin and are counted as righteous by God (Col 2:13-14). You have been adopted into his family (Rom 8:15-16).  Do you wonder, then, why John says you must continue to confess your sin to receive forgiveness and cleansing from unrighteousness?

Before you received Christ, your sin condemned you to spiritual death. The only way to redemption was through the blood of Christ which he gave as payment in full for your sin. Now that you belong to Christ, you are no longer condemned by your sin. The penalty of sin has been removed. But you still sin. As much as you wish you didn’t, the fact is that you do, and I do. We all continue to sin because we are still imperfect in our flesh.

When we walk in the darkness of sin, we cannot fellowship with God because there is no darkness in him (1 John 1:5-6).

God does not break his fellowship with us when we sin. He knows that our sinful flesh will not be eradicated until his second coming, and he is gracious to not forsake us when we sin. It is we who break our fellowship with him when we choose to walk away from him in the darkness of sin. To restore our fellowship with him in the light of his righteousness, we must confess our sin.

We often view confession as something other than what it truly is.

A famous comedian illustrates (perhaps unintentionally) what we often view as confession. He will say something terribly offensive, then pause to tell God he is sorry and ask God’s forgiveness for what he just said. Then he will launch right back into another offensive comment, and confess to God again. Has your confession ever looked this way? You knew you had sinned and you begged for God’s forgiveness with no intention of walking away from that sin. It was simply an attempt to alleviate the guilt by confessing your sins to God, yet you continued to walk in sin.

Confession is more than simply saying “I’m sorry, please forgive me.”

When we walk in sin, the Spirit living within us convicts us of our sin, prompting us to confess it. If our confession merely consists of acknowledging our sin and asking for forgiveness, and we then continue in the path of sin, how can we say that we have truly confessed our sin? When John speaks of confession, he is speaking of repentance. When the Spirit convicts us of our sin, we must not only acknowledge our sin. We must confess by turning away from the darkness and turning toward the light of God’s righteousness. 

When we turn away from our sin, and turn to God, he is faithful to forgive. He will not turn us away. Just as a parent would forgive and accept a wayward child, he will cleanse us of the stench and stain of sin and restore us to fellowship with him. We are not restored simply because we ask for forgiveness. It is impossible to have fellowship with God while we continue in sin. Restoration requires confession that leads to repentance.

If you belong to Christ, but have allowed sin to break your fellowship with God, take comfort in his promise to restore you. Confess your sin to God by turning away from it and walk again in the light of his righteousness. He gave his life so that you could have fellowship with him forever. He will never turn you away.

Note: This template does not support footnotes. Background information to 1 John is from “Invitation to 1 John” in The Books of the Bible, NIV (Biblica, Inc., Grand Rapids, 2011).