In a society saturated with sin with little concern about it, we need a sermon to help us realize what sin is what it does. In our lesson for today it tells us that sin is walking in darkness and that sin breaks fellowship with God. Contrary to popular beliefs sin is a serious offense against God. And it does carry a hefty price tag. It is because of our sins that Christ suffered and died. It is because of our sins that we are here in church today. Sin is an offense that separates us from God. He builds up a wall that cuts us off from the Father. And apart from God, we die so that Paul can say, "the wages of sin is death." Once we acknowledge and realize the seriousness of sin, we need to know what to do about it. The answer is in the text.
"If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness." This is a very familiar verse to most of us it is the words of confession found in our liturgy. Today we are going to examine this verse and discover the true comfort that is found in this one sentence. The first thing we want to look at today is that first three words of this sentence: "If we confess." It is hard to confess your sins when you don’t thing you have a reason to confess. As I said in the opening statement our society is so full of sin that it is hard for us to get really concerned about it. We even in fact at times try to say that God has no reason to be upset about our little sins, when Joe over there is a much worst sinner than I am. We see such violence and corruption everyday that our sins seem pale in comparison to others. These are the times that we really need to remember what sin really is. Our text for today says, "If we claim to be without sin we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us." We do sin and because we do sin we are in need of repentance. We can’t leave our lives apart from God and sins separates us from God. So we need to confess our sin to God.
This brings us to the second part of this sentence: "He is faithful and just and will forgive our sin." If we confess our sins to God our Father he will not hold them against us, but our text for today tells us that he who is faithful and just will forgive our sins. God is a forgiving God. He pardons us for the most heinous of crimes, sin. He forgives us because of what Christ did for us on the cross. This ties us back to our theme of blood today that it is because of the fact that Christ did shed his blood for us that God can and does forgive us. Christ has redeemed us from our sins he has wiped away the stain of our sin with a cloth covered with is blood. And because of what he did God now looks at us through Christ and "He who is faithful and just will forgive our sin." Christ our Savior has torn down the wall that our sin build up. He repairs the separation that our sin cause between us and God. This is why we said that Christ is the mediator between God and man.
Baseball is a good example. When a team and a player cannot agree on what that player is worth and should be paid sometimes it comes before an arbitrator. Now this arbitrator sits down with the two sides and tries to make a fair and impartial ruling in the best interest of both parties. Well for us Christ was our arbitrator. God and man was so far apart that we could not bridge this gap. Our sins separated us from God and caused us to have unreconcilable differences, but Christ stepped in and close the gap between both sides. He repaired the rip and now God and man are together again. As our text reminds us, "he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins." Because Christ intervene with his death on the cross God can and does forgive us. Our relationship with God has been restored.
This brings us to the last part of the verse: "and purify us from all unrighteousness." This is where Christ blood comes in again. It is through Christ blood that we are purified from all of our sins. Christ sacrifice on the cross was not done for God’s pleasure. We sometimes feel that it was unnecessary after all God has the power to do anything why not just wipe out sin? That was not the way God wanted to do it. God’s plan required that someone follow God’s law perfectly. Christ accomplished that. But God’s plan also required that someone must make amends for the sins of all mankind. Christ did that also when he suffered the fires of hell for us. But God’s plan also required that someone must achieve victory over death, the devil and the grave. Christ did that also when he rose from the dead on Easter Sunday morning. God’s plan required that someone blood sacrifice would purify all of mankind. Christ’s blood does that. Our text reads, "The blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin." Yes it with the blood of Christ that our sins and our unrighteousness is purified.
So to answer the opening question what do we do about sin? First we confess our sin to God, the Father. Second, God who is faithful and just forgives our sins. And finally Christ purifies our sins with his own precious blood. That is what we do about our sin. We repent and Christ does the rest.
