FBC Morning Light – November 1, 2022

Well, good Tuesday morning to you. Here we are on the first day of November, in the final couple of months of the year, November, the month of Thanksgiving. And then before you know it, we're going to be celebrating those holidays that are coming up very, very quickly.

Well, we begin this new month of November with really one of the, I think, great precious promises for those of us who are in Christ Jesus. Let me ask you this. Have you come to the place in your life where you just don't sin?

You just don't sin anymore. You're free from all that sin stuff. It's completely eradicated from your life. You have arrived at the level of sinless perfection. Well, if you think so, then I'm sorry to inform you, but you haven't.

Such a claim would be a claim of such spiritual pride that would demonstrate in and of itself that you haven't arrived. I feel sorry for those traditions in the Christian faith that think you can achieve such a level of sinless perfection in this life, and I feel sorry for those who claim to have arrived there.

There have been a few. I haven't run across any of them in a long, long time, but I was in a church early in my ministry, just working and helping out while I was actually in college. It was a church that believed that you could lose your salvation, but also believed that you could achieve sinless perfection.

I didn't meet anybody in that church who claimed to have arrived there. In fact, I remember one prayer meeting with some men, and this one guy admitted, he said, you know, it takes me so long just to get done praying about myself and my own sin and problems.

I thought, that's pretty refreshing to hear that. Well, anyway, the reason I bring that all up is what we read here in 1 John, verse 8, says, look, if we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth isn't in us.

So I hope you don't go there. But the next verse, that next verse, is that great precious promise of forgiveness. If we confess our sins, He, the Lord, is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

Think about what this verse entails, what it holds out for us. It holds out for us the promise of forgiveness of sin. It holds out the promise not only of forgiveness of sin, but of cleansing from all unrighteousness.

What are the conditions for such forgiveness and such cleansing? Do you have to go to your pastor or to some priest and tell him the things you've done and then let him tell you, okay, here's what you've got to do to be absolved from this guilt and this sin?

I don't see that anywhere in here. In fact, you don't find that anywhere in the Bible. There is no such teaching in the Scriptures. But what you do find is this confessing to the Lord. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us.

What's involved in that confession? The word itself simply means to say the same thing, to agree with. The word communicates to us that confession, we have to agree with God's assessment of our behavior, of our attitude, of our words, or whatever the nature of that particular sin is that we need to confess, of which we are guilty and of which the Holy Spirit has convicted us.

We need to agree with God in the matter. That doesn't always happen, does it? How many times have you been confronted perhaps by another brother in Christ or perhaps by the Spirit of God in his conviction and you've come up with some kind of rationalization, some kind of an excuse where you didn't agree with God?

Eventually, you have to come to that point of agreeing with him, and I hope that your argument against him didn't last for long. No, we have to agree with God in his evaluation, in his assessment of our guilt and our sin, of our behavior, of our attitude, of our words.

We agree with him, but I believe there's more to it than that. That confession is simply the verbal expression of repentance. Repentance has a change of mind that results in a change of action, a change of direction.

In repentance, you change your mind about your behavior or your words or your attitudes that are sinful. You used to think it was okay. The Spirit of God has convicted you, and now you've changed your mind about that and you realize, oh, this is wrong, this is sinful, this is egregious, God hates this.

You change your mind about your sin, but it doesn't just stop there in a mental activity. If you agree with God about that as sin, then you're also going to want to change your behavior. It's going to affect your behavior.

This confession that is wrapped up in verse 9, this confession is simply the verbal expression of that which has been going on in your mind and is going to affect your behavior. If we confess our sins, that's the condition, that's it.

There's no penance that has to be performed before you can be absolved, nothing of that nature. Simply confession. If we confess our sins, then God promises in his faithfulness and his justice to forgive our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

I think what that last part of the verse means is we are not overwhelmed with conviction. We are not overwhelmed about every specific sin that we commit. I really don't think we are. We are often convicted, daily probably, I'm sure, I know I am, about one thing or another, and yet we all sin daily.

We even sin in our repentance sometimes. We can't get over ourselves. But the promise is that as we confess our sin, that of which we've been convicted, that God is faithful to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

What a wonderful promise. Do you need to claim that promise today? Well, if so, I hope that indeed you will. Our Father and our God, we thank you for your grace, we thank you for your mercy, we thank you that you are ready to forgive.

May we be eager and quick to confess. We pray in Jesus' name. Alright, well have a good rest of your Tuesday. Now today, I hope your month gets off to a good start. Good day.