Confession and Forgiveness
1 John 1:9
A Sermon by CH(CPT) Keith J. Andrews
All scripture marker ESV: The Holy Bible : English standard version. 2001 (Eph 2:3). Wheaton: Standard Bible Society.
The Bible says in 1 John 1:9,
9If 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, ESV)
We see in this verse the model verse of forgiveness from God.
We all need forgiveness. Forgiveness is the act of taking our dirty life-our lives that are full of sin and making them new again. Forgiveness, Harper’s Bible dictionary says is the "wiping clean" of our sin.
We need forgiveness because we are all guilty of sin in our life. The Bible is very clear of his law, and it is equally clear that we have violated this law in many ways.
Ephesians 2:3 says teaches that we are sinful by our very nature
Psalm 51:5 says teaches that we were born with sin
Ecclesiastes 9:3 teaches that we have sin in our hearts
We cannot enter heaven or be with the Father without forgiveness. We need to have forgiveness before we approach a Holy God.
So, then, we see in this verse that;
1. God is faithful and just.
When we see this verse, we are tempted to brush over this small descriptive phrase and say-ye, God is a very nice man. But this is not the picture that is painted at all. He is a Holy God and his faithfulness and his justice is demonstrated through the death of his son, Jesus Christ.
His faithfulness and his justice, first, is demonstrated by death itself.
How is that? Death is the punishment for our sin—the Bible says that wages or payment of sin is death (Rm 6:23). God’s justice is demonstrated through death itself.
All the way back to the first chapters of Genesis, when Adam and Eve sinned the punishment has been death. Satan knew it and used it against the people—he didn’t want Adam and Eve to accept that they would die because of our sin. This is a lie of the devil! We will all die because of our sin. Death, therefore, is a demonstration of god’s justice because he must obey that law and carry out the sentence.
We all have heard stories of the justice system in the US not carrying out the sentences that it is require to do—we let rapists loose on "good behavior", we let murders walk because we desire to be compassionate, and we let thieves be paroled because we simply don’t have the resources to keep them in jail. Each time this is done—it brings down the credibility and the effectiveness of the government. The people see that there is no justice.
All of us are sinners, we all deserve death—separation from God, and hell—separation from God for an eternity. This is God’s demonstration of justice on this world.
Then his faithfulness is demonstrated through his son.
The Bible says
23 For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Ro 6:23, ESV)
Yes, there is a punishment for our death—this is justice. We deserve it because of our rebellion against a Holy God. However, because God is also faithful he provided his son to take our place—“that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” (Jn 3:16). This is the example of the gospel.
Some of us have heard the story of the "whipping Boy". This is a young boy that took the whippings instead of the young prince who was the king’s son. As the story goes, the king did not want his son to be spanked, but he used one of the children of the servants to take all of the punishment for the young prince. The innocent whipping boy took the beatings for the unruly prince.
In an opposite manner Christ—the prince—take the punishment for each of us—the servants. God sent his son to die because God is faithful. And that faithfulness is demonstrated in God sending his son, to die in our place.
The Bible says God is “faithful and just” to forgive us of our sin. He is faithful by sending his son, but he is just because he continues to hold us to this standard, unless we confess. This the great teaching of the Bible—the Bible, Adrian Rogers used to say, is a Him book—it is all about Him, meaning Jesus. From the first word in Genesis, the Bible points toward the cross and after the resurrection the Bible looks back to the cross.
The cross where Jesus died is the perfect reflection of faithfulness and justice. A faithful God, sending his own son to free the world from the punishment of sin—on one hand. And a just God to actually allow His only son to be put to death—on the other.
Through this lens of the faithfulness and justice, we see that
2. Confession brings forgiveness.
We saw earlier that forgiveness is a wiping clean of all of our unrighteousness before God.
Oswald Chambers says,
“Forgiveness means not merely that I am saved from hell and made right for heaven (no man would accept forgiveness on such a level); forgiveness means that I am forgiven into a recreated relationship, into identification with God in Christ. The miracle of Redemption is that God turns me, the unholy one, into the standard of Himself, the Holy One, by putting into me a new disposition, the disposition of Jesus Christ.”
(Chambers, O. (1993, c1935). My Utmost for his Highest : Selections for the year. Grand Rapids, MI: Discovery House Publishers.)
Forgiveness is so much more that the frequently discussed "fire-insurance". This has become one of the biggest barriers to evangelism. We have preached the fire-insurance—this idea that the result of salvation and forgiveness is that we won’t see hell that we forget the important work of forgiveness on our lives. People who do not have Christ see nothing, in that answer that can help them with the here and now of everyday life.
We need to see forgiveness as what it is. It is an opportunity to forge a relationship with God and allow him to transform your life. It is an opportunity to have a clean slate with your life, to allow God to transform your work into a glorious sacrifice of worship to him.
It is an opportunity to salvage the debris from the wreckage of life and to turn it into a witness of the mighty work that God can do—the change he can bring, and the hope that he can provide.
It all begins with confession.
Confession brings forward forgiveness through the acceptance and acknowledgement of what Jesus paid for on the cross.
On the cross Jesus paid for our fresh start. He paid the penalty of death to wipe our slate clean. Confession is the opportunity to express exactly what was on that slate.
Does God get any benefit from confession? No, he already knows the sin that is in your life—he has watched you commit time one by one. But, confession is for us to see and acknowledge our dependence on him to carry us through.
Don’t be trapped into thinking that confession is a spiritual After Action Review of yourself, or an opportunity for you to ponder your shortcomings and figure out ways to get better. After action reviews are nice, but aren’t particularly useful when it comes to receive God’s grace. God doesn’t want us to do better. This is because he know that we can’t do better, on our own. God wants us to depend on him.
The Bible says we are sheep without a shepherd—we don’t know enough to get better, we need the Holy Spirit to guide us to make things right regarding our sin.
In this post-modern age, we seem to think that we can think ourselves out of temptation. We can’t simply get better—it is our deprived nature to rebel against God. However, it is through the guidance of the Holy Spirit that we may prevail over sin.
Confession is the acknowledgment that we accept the payment of the death of Christ as the payment for our sin. Confession, then, is the result of understanding of our depravity and our dependence on him to resolve our sin problem through forgiveness, which is achieved through the death of God’s son, Jesus Christ.
3. We then see that confession doesn’t only bring forgiveness but it brings cleansing as well.
Cleansing is the washing that takes the stains away. Cleansing is the step beyond forgiveness. While forgiveness wipes our sin away, cleansing takes us and washes us to be presentable before the Lord.
It is a way showing that we are pure and undefiled before God.
We’ve heard the story from Luke chapter 17
11 On the way to Jerusalem he was passing along between Samaria and Galilee. 12 And as he entered a village, he was met by ten lepers,6 who stood at a distance 13 and lifted up their voices, saying, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us.” 14 When he saw them he said to them, “Go and show yourselves to the priests.” And as they went they were cleansed. 15 Then one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, praising God with a loud voice; 16 and he fell on his face at Jesus’ feet, giving him thanks. Now he was pa Samaritan. 17 Then Jesus answered, “Were not ten cleansed? Where are the nine? (Luke 17:11, ESV)
Leprosy in their day was considered a disease caused by the sin of the person’s life or the families life. When Jesus healed the Lepers—he cleansed them—the same Greek word for cleansed in this story is the same used by John in 1 John 1:9—"cleansed from all unrighteousness."
The confession of sin brings cleansing for the stains of sin in our life. Sin has a habit of staining our lives with the after effect of the sin itself—whether it would be the habit that was formed, or the damage that the sin caused in a relationship. The sin stains. When we confess our sin this stain goes away. We still must fight the habits or mend the broken relationships—it doesn’t go away all at once but before God our stains are cleansed and he will empower us to make the other areas right as well.
Confession brings cleansing into our lives. It washed the dirt and the grime away form our lives. Many times people say that don’t want to come to Christ because they must do something to clean themselves us—we have that since that we are not good enough or clean enough to come to Christ. What we forget is that the cleansing comes after the confession. Trying to cleanse ourselves is one of the problems that we have of not depending on him to set things right. We need to simply trust in him.
Conclusion
The Bible says
9If 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, ESV)
It all begins with coming before God and accepting his payment for our forgiveness.
I said this before, a little earlier, that we are all sinners. All of us must pay for our sin through death. But, Christ died in our place, so that we wouldn’t have to. All that we must do is to accept this payment as our own.
You can do that this morning, I will happy to talk with you about this after the service. I invite you to do that without delay, to place your trust in Him for your forgiveness and, consequently, your salvation.
What are you going to do with this message this morning?
In his letter to the Romans, Paul answers this question:
Romans 6:1-14
What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it? (Romans 6:1-2, ESV)
Verse 10
10 For the death he died he died to sin, once for all, but the life he lives he lives to God. 11 So you also must consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus.
12 Let not sin therefore reign in your mortal body, to make you obey its passions. 13 Do not present your members to sin as instruments for unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life, and your members to God as instruments for righteousness. 14 For sin will have no dominion over you, since you are not under law but under grace. (Romans 6:10-14, ESV)
Let us pray
