I John 1:9 ... "If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness."
When a person obeys the Gospel, his soul is cleansed of the sins of his lifetime, (Acts 2:38; 22:16; I Pet. 3:21). He then walks before God in a new condition of justification, redemption, and righteousness "in His blood through faith," (Rom. 3:24-25). This condition does not, however, render the individual immune to sin. The New Testament contains abundant passages exhorting Christians to be aware of temptation, to resist evil, and to look unto God incessantly for protection, wisdom, and strength against the activities of sin in the world about them. Such Scriptures would be superfluous and meaningless if Jesus' disciples were impervious to sin. Christians, in fact, can and do sometimes fall to temptation and become mired in sin. The New Testament records specific cases when this indeed happened during the period of the early church.
This initial chapter of the epistle, which is not addressed to the unregenerate but to "children of God," (3:2), emphasizes the failure of Christians to defeat every temptation and remain perfectly free from all sin. The verse preceding 1:9 declares that to deny one's sin indicates that (a) he is self-deceived, (b) devoid of the truth, and (c) is a liar. Verse 10 adds that the person also makes a liar of God. This is very strong and serious language! Remembering that we are God's redeemed people, what must we do about it? Or, is there nothing we can do except admit final defeat and resign our destiny to the wrath of God?
We need not despair as we confess our sins, because God, who is fully aware of our weak nature, has provided just the help we need. His grace is greater than our sin, (Rom. 5:20b-21), and the blood of His Son is still efficacious to cleanse us of the sins we commit after it initially purges us in baptism from our pre-Christian sins, (I Pet. 3:21). To avail ourselves of the continuing purification of Jesus' blood, however, I John 1:9 requires that we must begin by confessing our sins. Whenever we perceive that we have sinned, we must immediately go to the Lord with our guilt, lay it out openly before Him, and beseech Him to remove it with His forgiveness.
Although this text does not explicitly mention it, there is no doubt that it assumes the prerequisite of repentance. As mentioned earlier, God's grace negates sin, but only that sin which is abandoned by the one who committed it. We read in Rom. 6:1-2, "Are we to continue in sin so that grace may increase? May it never be! How shall we who died to sin still live in it?"
Here we discover another area wherein the Gospel deserves the literal meaning of what the word denotes, "GOOD NEWS." God continues to extend His grace to His children, although at times we go astray and corrupt our souls with sin. He does not cast us off into the mass of the lost who are reserved for eternal punishment. To the contrary! He opens for us a way to be acquitted of our sins and restored to spiritual purity. This way incorporates two essential actions which we must perform, repentance and confession. Repentance involves the total abandonment of sinful practices because we understand they are indeed sinful and because we know they offend God. The confession, moreover, must be both comprehensive and specific. Not only must ALL SINS be confessed, but EACH ONE of them must be confessed. One who entreats God to cleanse him must bare his soul naked to reveal in utmost shame every ugly spot of sin. A perfunctory mumbling, "Forgive me of all my sins," is insufficient, and from God's vantage point, probably looks more like presumption than abject contrition. This does not mean, however, that the individual must expose the fact of sin with a full description of its nature to people. Very often our sins are known only to God, and then it is only to God that we need confess them. But if we have sinned before people, we must also confess those sins before them, (Jas. 5:16). The principle is that repentance must be as broad as the knowledge of the sin.
