“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?