First John 1:8

The Apostle John wrote in First John 1:8, “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.” John is continuing the subject of the sin problem and Christians. One of the great differences between God and man is sin. God is holy, but man is sinful. Man is full of sin. Man easily sins, much too easily. May God have mercy on us. There is a first step that must be taken in order to find oneself under the mercy of God that is in Christ Jesus. That first step is honesty about ones own sins. Of course, that is true when we first come to know Christ as Savior, “Except ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish,” and it is also true concerning our daily walk with Christ. “There is no man who doeth good and sinneth not.”

Everything in Christianity has to do with my sinfulness, and the mercy of Christ that is given to me in spite of my sinfulness. But the mercy is never automatic and should never be taken for granted. The mercy is associated with confession and repentance. But you cannot have confession and repentance unless you have honesty about the sins that you have committed. We can only continue to walk in fellowship with Christ as we continue to confess our sins. The Christian who says, “I have no sin,” according to the Apostle John is deceiving himself. The word that is translated “deceive” in verse eight comes from a word that means to wander or to go astray. It is important that we go the right way and get on the right path. Without the confession of sin, we get off on the wrong path, and of course that means that we will end up in the wrong place. Your sins of pride, of arrogance, and of self-will are terrible sins. Just one sin gets you in the place where you are no longer walking in fellowship with Jesus Christ. No wonder that there are so few supposed Christians who are spiritually minded. They are of the wrong spirit because they do not continually confess their sins: they are not honest about their sins; and they go astray from the spiritual life.

The principle of the confession of sin in order to stay in fellowship with God and with Christ is stated wonderfully well in First John 1:9. Hopefully you have memorized this verse because of having to constantly rely upon its truth and its promise. It says, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” That is a big “if” evidently because some believers are not daily confessing their sins. To confess means to say the same things about our sins that God says about them. God says that they are wrong, that they should not have been done, and that they should not be done again. We confess our sins when we have that kind of honesty about what we have done or thought before God and Christ. The Bible says, “he is faithful and just.” To find out who is being talked about, we must go back to verse seven: Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is the One who forgives sins. Remember in the gospels when after Jesus said, “Thy sins be forgiven thee,” the question was asked, “Who can forgive sins, but God only?” That is right. Only Christ, who is God, can forgive sins.

Jesus is faithful and just. You and I are not. Jesus is faithful. In other words He will always forgive sins. You can rely on that, you can believe that, and you can count on that. It is interesting that it says that He is “just” to forgive sins. God’s justice demands that sin be punished. Only an unjust judge allows wrong-doing to go unpunished. But God’s justice now requires that sins be forgiven. Sins were punished in Christ on the cross of Calvary. Therefore, Christ is a safe refuge from the holy wrath of God. “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins…” The word “forgive” is a wonderful word. It means in a sense “to depart from” and “to separate from.” When we are forgiven, Christ separates us from our sins. If you associate someone with the sinful things that they have done, then you have not forgiven them. Christ does forgive us when we confess, and that is why He is able to regard us as though we had not even sinned. His forgiveness is complete. That is why forgiveness is compared to cleansing. This verse says that Jesus cleanses “us from all unrighteousness.” By the way, that is the significance of water baptism. Forgiveness from Christ gives the spiritual cleansing that your soul needs. Water baptism comes after the spiritual cleansing because water baptism is symbolic of the spiritual cleansing that Jesus already gave to you when you confessed to Him.

This idea of being honest about your own sinfulness is obviously very important because First John 1:10 states it again in saying, “If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.” It is a very serious thing to say that you have no sins that you need to confess. That points a very condemning finger at anyone who claims that they have reached a state of sinless perfection. To make such claim would be to call Christ a liar.

Christianity practiced out day by day has everything to do with the sinfulness of man and the forgiveness that Christ alone can give. Anyone who departs from talking about how sinful they are and how much they depend upon the continual cleansing from sin, is someone who is departing from true Christianity. That is why it is such a dangerous thing and a sinful thing when people talk about Christianity in the terms of how much they have accomplished or how much someone else has accomplished. These people would go to hell if it were not for Jesus and what He accomplished on the cross of Calvary.

You can be forgiven of all your sins no matter how many they are or how great they are. That is a wonderful message. It is the message of the gospel, but it is never a license to sin. It is not okay to say, “I am only human and therefore I know I will fail.” That would be wrong to give any acceptance to any sin for any reason. That is why John wrote in the first part of chapter two and verse one, “My little children, these things write I unto you, that ye sin not.” The goal for a Christian is the highest of goals. The goal is to not sin ever. That is possible. Jesus did it. Jesus lived on this earth as a man, filled and led by the Holy Spirit. Jesus showed us how life can be lived and should be lived by every human being. There is no excuse other than to be exactly the way that Jesus was. Do not ever give an excuse for your sins. You are without excuse. It is not any one else’s fault. It’s your fault that you sinned.

But of course, in our minds and in our hearts we keep going back and forth between these two ideas. That is exactly the way the scripture does it, because that is the way it is. We have the highest of standards and there are no excuses for failure, and yet when we fail there is mercy and forgiveness and cleansing available always and forever because of Christ. And so the last part of First John 2:1 says, “And if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.” Constantly in the New Testament we are given new ways of describing what Jesus has done for us. He has done so much that we will be spending eternity finding out about Him and all that He has done for us. In this verse we are told that Jesus is our advocate.

The word that is translated “advocate” is the same word that is used by Jesus Himself of the Holy Spirit in the Gospel of John and is there translated as “comforter.” The word means literally “one called alongside.” If someone is called alongside you to help you, they may be your comforter or they may be your advocate depending upon what they are doing for you. Jesus is our advocate in connection with the Father. Do not ever think of the Father without thinking of Jesus. Jesus is always before the Father in our behalf. That is why we can pray: because Jesus is there on our behalf. That is what it means to pray “in the name of Jesus.” When you pray, picture yourself as praying to Jesus and to the Father at the same time. Jesus is alongside of you and Jesus is “with” the Father. You could not approach the Father without Jesus because you are not righteous of yourself. As this verse reminds us, in contrast to you and to me, Jesus is righteous.

First John 2:2 says, “And he is the propitiation for our sins: and not for our’s only, but also for the sins of the whole world.” The reason that God can have mercy towards is because Jesus is the propitiation for our sins. In other words, Jesus by bearing our punishment; satisfied God’s demands for righteous justice against sin. A judge usually has several options on how to punish the guilty. The best option for a human being is to find refuge in Jesus. It pleased the Lord to bruise Him, because now we can find mercy. That is why He sees of the travail of His soul and is satisfied. His suffering made mercy possible.

Now is a good time to talk about the word “sin” that we have already seen used several times here in the book of First John and we will see it used several more times in this book. The word is used twenty-seven times in this writing of John’s: seventeen times as a noun and ten times as a verb. To sin is to miss the mark. Remember that the mark and the goal is to do what is right always. Every time that you fail to do the right thing whether by deed, by word, or by thought you have sinned. These sins include the sins of omission as well as the sins of commission. God must punish sins because He is Judge of all. He sees all, and He knows all; and everyone will give an account. What a wonderful God who has found the means of showing us mercy! Because Jesus satisfied the righteous wrath of the Divine Judge, we can find mercy. Jesus is “the propitiation for our sins.”

Of course, even this is a statement of the divinity of Jesus Himself. How could so many sins be paid for in one person? He is not only the propitiation for our sins, but also for “the sins of the whole world.” Only God Himself could pay the penalty for so many sins. How much mercy Christ has to offer! Of course, He can forgive all of your sins. He has enough mercy not only for your sins, no matter how many they are, but also for the sins of the whole world. Repent. He will forgive you. And then get the message out. Everyone needs this message.

Now once we repent, we are supposed to be serving Him. And to serve Him means to do the things that He says to do. In First John 2:3 He says, “And hereby we do know that we know Him, if we keep his commandments.” There are many reasons that we need to avoid sin at all cost. This verse tells us one of those reasons. Your confidence and faith will increase the more that you obey God. Your doubts and fears will increase the more that you disobey Him. As Bob Jones put it: “Behind every doubt there is a sin.”

Hopefully you believe a lot of good things: the good things of the Bible. But it does not do much good to claim to believe, if you do not obey. The ultimate plan of God for you is that you learn to obey Him. “Be ye holy for I am holy, saith the Lord.” Jesus said, “If you love me, keep my commandments.” And John writes in First John 2:4, “He that saith, I know him, and keepeth not his commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him.” This is an emphasis on the fact that the wonderful forgiveness that we have in Christ is not a license to sin.

The Bible says in First John 2:6, “He that saith he abideth in Him ought himself also to walk, even as he walked.” This is one more way of saying that the standard is perfection. The way that Jesus talked, the way that Jesus reacted to situations, the way that Jesus dedicated Himself to the will of the Father: that is just the way that you and I should be every moment of every day.

Someone might accept all of these exhortations concerning obeying God, following God, and walking the way that Jesus walked. And then the question might be asked, “Ok, give me some more information. More specifically what am I supposed to do in order to be like Christ in the ways that John is writing about?” First of all John is going to say, “This is not a new thing. It is something that every Christian probably has already heard. But in relation to the Old Testament it is a new commandment: the commandment to love other believers.” The Bible says in First John 2:7-10, “Brethren, I write no new commandment unto you, but an old commandment which ye had from the beginning. The old commandment is the word which ye have heard from the beginning. Again, a new commandment I write unto you, which thing is true in Him and in you: because the darkness is past, and the true light now shineth. He that saith he is in the light, and hateth his brother, is in darkness even until now. But he that loveth his brother abideth in the light, and there is none occasion of stumbling in him.”

Through the Holy Spirit the Apostle John had started in this great epistle making several things very clear. He made it clear that we can always be forgiven of our sins through Christ. He made it clear that no one can be walking in fellowship with Christ unless they are confessing their sins, and everyone has sins that they need to confess. He made it clear that this great forgiveness that is available through Christ is never a license to sin and that every believer should have as his primary goal to obey the commandments. Now starting in verse seven is an emphasis on just one of the commandments: the commandment for Christians to love one another. Evidently the believers to whom John was writing were failing at this commandment. It is an important commandment. Jesus Himself said, “By this shall all men know that you are my disciples that you have love one to another.” John wrote that if you have “hate” for a brother then you are walking in darkness. The believers in Christ are the special objects of God’s love. If your goal is to be like Christ, then the believers should be the special objects of your love also. If they are not, you are making a serious spiritual error that will lead you into further error. You have an “occasion of stumbling” in you. It is said of Jesus, “Having loved his own, He loved them unto the end.” How much do you love His own?

___________________________________________________