A Word in Season: Confession and Cleansing (1 John 1:9)

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Are you a sinner? We need to be careful how we answer such a question because the answer that we give is going to reveal a great deal about our own hearts and our relationship to the

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God of heaven. The Apostle John in his first letter and in chapter one speaks about this in verses eight and ten.

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He says if we say that we have no sin we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.

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If we say that we have not sinned we make God a liar and his word is not in us.

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So to deny that we are sinners is to reveal that we don't actually understand ourselves and it's to reveal that we don't truly know

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God because when we see something accurately if not fully of the glory and majesty of a holy

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God one of the responses we always have is an increased sense of our own sinfulness.

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A bit like Isaiah in the temple in Isaiah chapter six when he saw

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God and then cried out that he was a man of unclean lips and he dwelt amongst a people of unclean lips.

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What then do we do with the fact that we are sinners? We can't deceive ourselves and deny it.

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We cannot make God a liar. It is simply the truth. The fact of the matter is that we are sinners against his holy law.

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What then are we to do about it? Well between verse eight and ten the apostle

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John makes this glorious declaration. If we confess our sins he that is

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God is faithful and just to forgive our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

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Now this confession is not some kind of formal churchly act.

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It's not something for which you need a priest or a pope or even actually a pastor.

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It is a confession to God. It's like the cry of David in Psalm 51.

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Against you you only have I sinned and done this evil in your sight that you may be found just when you speak and blameless when you judge.

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There's no point trying to hide our sin from God. He sees it all with his penetrating eye but if we confess our sins if we expose ourselves before God as it were if we pour out all our transgressions then he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins.

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That's a marvel of grace that it's God's faithfulness and justice that brings forth from his heart the forgiveness of sins to the confessing sinner.

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Now again it's not confession that entitles you to forgiveness. Your confessing doesn't earn

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God's favor but God has undertaken. Here is his faithfulness.

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He has promised that he will forgive the one who calls upon him for mercy. So God is faithful when we confess our sins.

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His word does not fall to the ground. He is ready to act in mercy toward us and there's also justice here.

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Now you might say surely justice condemns and damns the sinner but this is the justice of God in relation to and working out through the sacrifice of his son.

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The apostle Paul said that when it comes to the cross of Jesus Christ it is there that God is just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.

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He is just and he declares sinners to be righteous in his sight because of Jesus Christ.

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So here you have the confessing sinner. The man or the woman who pours out their heart before God and says this is what this is what is in and comes out of my sinful heart.

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Here is God faithful and just in responding to that and he is prepared then to forgive our sins, to put them away, to hide them from his own gaze and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

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The depths of our sinfulness, the degrees of our sinning, whatever it may be, if we confess before the

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Lord that this is what we are and what we do, God will be faithful and just to forgive us and that cleansing is sweet.

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That forgiveness stands, if you like, at the vanguard, it's the forefront of God's saving mercies.

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We come to him first and often afterwards burdened with a sense of our sins against him but we leave his holy presence washed and cleansed through the blood of the lamb and nothing is sweeter and nothing is more wonderful than the mercy of God in Jesus Christ.