Church you may be seated. Today we are beginning a brand new series through the books of 1-3 John, entitled “Love One Another.” We’re going to be working verse-by-verse through these books in the coming months. So if you haven’t done this already, go ahead and take your Bible and turn with me to 1 John 1. This series is a series through all three of the Johannine epistles, 1 John, 2 John, and 3 John. But today, I want to focus strictly on the first of those letters—1 John.

Speaking of 1 John, the church father, Augustine, wrote the following: “This book is very sweet to every healthy Christian heart that savors the bread of God, and it should constantly be in the mind of God’s holy church.” A central theme in Augustine’s writing is love, and it’s not surprising that Augustine loved and emphasized the teaching in 1 John, because one of the great themes of this book is love.

The reformer, John Calvin, said this about 1 John, “This letter is altogether worthy of the spirit of that disciple who, above others, was loved by Christ so that he might exhibit Christ as a friend to us.” Not bad for the disciple whom Jesus once called “The Son of Thunder” (Mark 3:17) who wanted to call down fire from heaven to destroy the Samaritans (Luke 9:54-55). Additionally Martin Luther said, “This is an outstanding epistle.… It has John’s style and manner of expression, so beautifully and gently does it picture Christ to us.”

The famous Baptist preacher from England, Charles Spurgeon, said, “This epistle is specially perfumed with love. As you read it, you cannot help realizing that it was written by a very tender, gentle hand… And yet, when he had written concerning love to Jesus, he was moved to an intense jealousy lest, by any means, the hearts of those to whom he wrote should be turned aside from that dear Lover of their souls who deserved their entire affection.” In other words, John is tender in this book, but he’s also tough. This is a book about love, but it’s not a wimpy love. It’s a love for God and for others that is radically different from the world.  

This is a great book. And I’m excited about the opportunity to expound it with you in the next few months, and to drill down on this concept of love. But today, my goals are more modest. Today I want to begin this series by giving you some introductory information about this book. 

So let me answer three preliminary questions about this book.   

1) Who wrote 1 John? The answer to that question, as many of you know, is John the Apostle.

Not John the Baptist. That’s a different John. But John the Apostle, the son of Zebedee, the person who was fishing on the Sea of Galilee when Jesus came and said to him and his associates, “Follow me, and I will make you fishers of men” (Matt 4:19). 

And John, along with his brother James, and Peter, and Andrew left their fishing nets to follow Jesus. And they followed Jesus for three years before his prophesied death and resurrection. And John saw amazing things in that three year period. John was part of Jesus’s inner circle of disciples (Peter, James, and John) who witnessed Jesus’s transfiguration. John saw all of Jesus’s miracles in Galilee firsthand, and he was the only disciple who stayed by Jesus as he was crucified. Jesus even looked down upon John from the cross and told him to take care of his mother, Mary (John 19:26). All of this gave John a unique vantage point from which to write this book of Scripture.

And unlike Paul, who only had a few post-resurrection encounters with Jesus, John lived with Jesus for three years wandering around Judea with him as they preached repentance. Unlike Luke who wrote mainly second-hand information about Jesus (possibly from Mary and Peter among others), John was there when Jesus did his miracles. John was there when Jesus preached his sermons. John was even there when Jesus said Τετέλεσται from the cross (John 19:30). “It is finished.” 

Out of all the NT writers, except for maybe Peter, John had the most intimate connection with Jesus. John even identifies himself in his gospel as the “disciple whom Jesus loved” (John 20:2; et al.). He had a close personal relationship with Jesus. And so that’s why he emphasizes so strongly in the first few verses of this letter, “I saw him with my own eyes.” “I heard him with my own ears.” “I touched him with my own hands.” “I’m an eyewitness to these things that really happened, and I testify to the life that was purchased for us by the ‘Word of Life.’” More on that later!

So who wrote this book? John, the Apostle did. And you might ask a follow up question to that? 

2) When was 1 John written? Approximately AD 90-95.

Now just so you know, John never calls himself the author of this book, so technically this book is anonymous. And unlike Paul, John doesn’t address his book to anyone or open it with a letter of greeting or anything like that. He just gets into it.

1 That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we looked upon and have touched with our hands, concerning the word of life… 

In other words, forget the pleasantries and greetings and such, let’s go. Let’s get right into it. Coincidently John starts his Gospel in the same way. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God…” (John 1:1-2).

Bam! Let’s get into it! No greetings. No pleasantries. Buckle up. Hold on for dear life. “Let’s get right into the meat of what I want to communicate to you.” That’s how John starts his letter.  

But even though John never identifies himself in this letter, or in his gospel, the best internal and external evidence points to him as the author. Early church fathers including Clement, Tertullian, Eusebius, and especially Irenaeus attribute this book to the Apostle John. And there is very little debate among conservative Christian scholars that this book was indeed penned by John. So I will refer to the author of this book as John or John the Apostle throughout our series.  

But keep this caveat in mind even as I refer to John as the author. And this is true of all of Scripture, whether we know who the human author is or not. All of Scripture was co-authored by the Holy Spirit. And that caveat is important because as we believe here at VBVF, “All Scripture is God-breathed” (2 Tim 3:16) and men spoke “as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit” (2 Pet 1:21). 

Now as far as the date of this epistle is concerned, the best internal and external evidence points to John as the author and to a date of approximately 90-95 AD. And that’s important for you to know. It’s important because that’s 60 years after Jesus’s death and resurrection. That’s something like 40 years after Paul wrote his letters to the churches. That’s something like 30 years after Luke wrote Luke and Acts and Matthew wrote the Gospel of Matthew. If Peter and Paul died in the days of Nero, the Roman Emperor, around 68 AD, than this book was written long after Jesus’s other apostles had died off. 

And John, who by now is in his eighties (an octogenarian) or maybe even his nineties (a nonagenarian), writes this letter. He’s an old man. And he writes like an old man to his “little children.” He says at the end of this book, “Little children, keep yourself from idols” (1 John 5:21). 

In 2 John and 3 John he calls himself, “the elder” (2 John 1; 3 John 1). Not “elder” in the sense of one of the church elders (Greek: πρεσβύτερος) leading a local church. But “elder” in the sense of the longstanding elder in the church community, i.e. the old man apostle who’s still ticking and still leading the church. 

And John at this later date was dealing with issues that were different than what Paul and others were dealing with earlier. Church tradition suggests that John spent his latter days at Ephesus ministering to the surrounding churches. If he’s writinWe’re continuing today with our Series through the Johannine Epistles entitled “Love One Another.” And let me encourage you now to open up your Bibles and turn to the passage that was just read, 1 John 1:5-10… a tremendously challenging and yet at the same time comforting passage of Scripture. 

9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

What a precious resource that verse is to us as Christians. What a comforting verse! And yet it’s surrounded by a context that is more sobering than comforting.

6 If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth.

  A few years ago I read a book by J.D. Greear entitled Stop Asking Jesus into Your Heart, and in the first chapter of that book Greear talks about a guy he played basketball with one time. And this character cursed like a sailor, boasted continually about how many women he was sleeping with, and conveyed an all-around non-Christian persona. So Greear made a noble attempt in the midst of playing basketball to evangelize this guy. And as he began to share his story about how he came to Christ, the guy stopped him and said, “Dude, are you trying to witness to me?”

And in response Greear somewhat awkwardly said, “uh… well yes.” The guy responded, “That’s pretty awesome. No one has tried to witness to me in a long time… But you’re wasting your time. I grew up in a Baptist church. I went to youth camp when I was 13 and I asked Jesus to come into my heart. And for the next couple of years, I was a super-Christian. I went to youth group every week, I did the “true love waits” commitment to not have sex until I was married, I memorized verses and I went on mission trips. I even led other friends to Jesus. 

About two years after that, however, I ‘discovered’ sex. One thing led to another and a year or so later I decided I didn’t believe in God anymore. So now I don’t go to church, I don’t pray, and I do whatever I want.”

He then added: “But here is what is awesome: the church I grew up teaches once saved always saved… That means that my salvation at age 13 still holds, even if I don’t believe in God anymore now.”

So Greear goes on to ask in his book, “What do you say to a person like that? He had prayed to ask Jesus into his heart, and all indications were that he was very sincere. He showed immediate “fruit,” afterwards. So was he right? Can he, because he made a decision at some point in the past, live with the assurance that he is saved forever, regardless of how he lives now?”

  Here’s the answer that Greear gives. No, he cannot! Let me ask this another way. Can someone, “Live like hell all of the days of their life and then claim heaven after death?” No! And unfortunately that false theology gets promoted and circulated in churches too much in our day. And you know what, that’s where 1 John 1:5-10 comes in. That’s why we need this passage of Scripture recited and preached and believed and assimilated into the Body of Christ. There are other Scriptures that speak to this error of false assurance as well. But for today we are going to study this one. 

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Church, today we’re going to look at Five Basic Truths for Believers from 1 John 1:5-10. And you might think, “O, man we’re going to get into some deep water today talking about eternal security.” No, actually this isn’t deep water. This is actually pretty simple. This is the essence of a life that has been transformed by the grace of God. That grace doesn’t leave you unchanged. The grace that saves you, changes you. 

I know it may seem like a complex topic because some have over-preached the doctrine of assurance to give false assurance to unrepentant people. But the Bible never does that. Assurance is meant as a precious blessing to those who are saved by the blood of Jesus, so that when the accuser accuses us in our sin, we can say, “No sir, I belong to Jesus.” 

The doctrine of Assurance or Eternal Security (if you want to use that term) was never meant to give people who live lives of blatant sinfulness and godlessness, assurance of salvation. 

Here’s a great truth, church. “If you haven’t been changed by God’s grace; you haven’t been saved by God’s grace.” The grace of God is life-changing eternally, but it is also life-changing temporally. It will inevitably produce fruit in the life of a Christian. Let me put it in Johannine language for you. 

6 If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. 7 But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin.

1 John gives us hard contrasts.

Light

Darkness

Saved 

Unsaved

Forgiven

Unforgiven

God’s Grace

God’s Wrath

Fellowship with God

Enmity with God

Cleansed by the blood of Jesus

Uncleansed and condemned by our sin

Living a life that is pleasing to God and imitative of Jesus Christ

Living a life that is unpleasing to God and imitative of Satan

Those are the two options that John presents to us. And one of the reasons that I love this book, 1 John, is because John is black and white with these things. There are no shades of gray with John. And John presents these truths in such strong terms, because in his day, there were false teachers and Gnostics who were compromising these basics of the faith. And John, the old man apostle, who is the last living witness to Jesus Christ and his teaching has to set the record straight for the church, and say, “This is it, church.” “This is the truth.” “These are the basic tenets of our faith.” 

So I’m calling this message today “Basics for Believers.” And I’m going to give you five of them. Here’s #1. And this first point sets the paradigm for all the rest. 

1) God is dark-less light (1:5) 

John writes in vs. 5:

5 This is the message we have heard from him 

Who’s the “him” in verse 5? Do you know? It’s Jesus. Jesus is the most recent referent in verse 3. To disregard John here is to disregard Jesus. And I assume the “we” is a reference to the apostles and possibly all the others who saw Jesus after his resurrection and before his ascension. And it’s possible that there may be one or two people out there in addition to John who are still alive who saw this. But because of the late-date of this book, and because of the persecution of the church, I assume that John is the last one living. Everyone else is dead. Everyone else is dead or has been killed off. 

And so John has a message. And this is the message that Jesus delivered to him. 

5 This is the message we have heard from [Jesus] and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.

This is a key statement that John is making here. All the rest of the points that I’m going to give you today are subordinated under this main point. God is light with no darkness. God is dark-less light.

You can see that even in the grammar of this passage. John makes this statement “God is light” and then all that follows in verses 6-10 is “if statements.”

6 If we say we have fellowship with him… 

7 if we walk in the light…

8 If we say we have no sin…

9 If we confess our sins… 

10 If we say we have not sinned…

So what’s the key statement in this passage that drives everything else? It’s this, “… God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.”

John said in his gospel, “In him (that is “The Word”) was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it” (Jn 1:4-5). 

John said in his gospel about the other John, John the Baptist, “He came … to bear witness about the light, that all might believe through him. He was not the light, but came to bear witness about the light” (Jn 1:7-8). 

Jesus said, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life” (Jn 8:12). All throughout John’s Gospel and John’s Epistle, 1 John, light is an important concept. And John wants you to know that “God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.” 

Now I want to be really clear about this, because this is important. God is not literally light. Does everybody understand that? John is speaking in metaphor. And the way we know that is because God created light. In the beginning God said, “Let there be light” (Gen 1:3). God cannot be his creation, just like God cannot be literally a “Word” or “the Word” (John 1:1). These statements are symbols used to communicate in human language what God is like. 

So the question is this—what aspect of God’s character is John communicating by calling God dark-less light? Well, here’s the answer to that. I think there is a two-fold answer to that. 1) The first answer is that “light” represents eternal life. And that’s understood by Jesus’s own words, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life” (Jn 8:12). And of course, Jesus is speaking there of eternal life. 

2) But in 1 John the “light” that John is referring to is more than just infinity and eternity; there is a moral aspect to it. When John says God is light, he is intimating God is holy. God is pure. God is righteous. God is sinless. God is not dark. And we know that because, the great contrast in this passage is not primarily eternal life and eternal death, but sin and sinlessness. God is light (i.e. God is sinless). God has no darkness in him at all (i.e. God has no sin in him at all). He’s perfect. He’s perfectly righteous. 

You need to have that down before we can move on to the other four points for this message. If you don’t have this first point, you won’t get anything else. So let me reiterate it. “God is dark-less light.” In other words, God is perfectly and sinlessly holy. Everybody got it? 

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Now watch how John builds on that first point in verse 6.

6 If we say we have fellowship with [Jesus] while we walk in darkness we lie and do not practice the truth. 

Here’s a second Basic Truth for Believers. Write this down:

2) Believers increasingly walk in the light (1:6)

Walking implies activity. It intimates movement. You are growing. You are moving. You are emanating and reflecting God’s light more and more. You are like the moon, that reflects the light of the sun. 

You might say, “Why, Tony?” “Why is that the case?” Because, if you are saved, you are connected to the light. The Holy Spirit resides within you and will inevitably produce character that is more light and less dark every day. 

Tell me if you heard this before. “This little light of mine. I’m gonna let it shine.” Anyone heard that before? That’s so good someone should write a song about it. 

6 If we say we have fellowship [there’s that word “fellowship” again] 

6 If we say we have fellowship with [Jesus] while we walk in darkness [i.e. If we say that we belong to Jesus but live an anti-Jesus lifestyle] we lie and do not practice the truth. 

That’s why I mentioned that guy earlier who was playing basketball. That person’s not saved. That person is not a believer. Because he’s walking in darkness. He’s not increasingly walking in the light. He’s like the seed in Jesus’s parable that is cast onto rocky soil. He shoots up quickly but there’s no fruit in his life. The sun scorched it because it had no root (cf. Matt 13:1-23). It’s only the fruit-bearing seed that is a genuine disciple of Jesus Christ. Believers, according to Jesus’s parable grow increasingly fruitful. 

Or to switch the metaphor here, Believers increasingly walk in the light. They get brighter like a Christmas tree. They don’t get darker.

I had a good friend in college who I had to confront about this issue. Before he came to Christ he was pretty messed up. And as a new Christian he was still struggling with some bad habits. One of them was marijuana. And he also was a bit of a womanizer as well. On occasion he would lapse back into illicit sexual sin with women he didn’t even care about.

And at one point I just challenged him and said, “Listen man, you are a follower of Christ. We are called to walk in the light. Why do you keep running after darkness? Don’t you know that compromises your fellowship with Christ?”

And you might say, “O that’s easy for you to say, Tony. You’re a pastor. You grew up in the church. You grew up with a father. You grew up singing songs like, ‘This little light of mine.’” Listen, I get that. We’ve all got to start somewhere. And some of us were exposed to more darkness before we came to Christ than others. That’s why I framed this second point the way that I did. “Believers increasingly walk in the light.” God meets you where you are at. And God works with you to distance you from the darkness of this world. And he helps you to walk in the light as he is in the light. And God is gracious and patient and supportive of us along the way. 

So what is that area of darkness in your life right now Christian that you need to distance yourself from? What darkness in your life do you need to lay down right now and say God come and lead me out of the darkness and into the light? Is it bitterness? Is it pride? Is it worry? Is it a sinful addiction? Trust me, you don’t want to stay in the darkness. Life is better in the light. Life is better when it’s lived in fellowship with God. 

And let me say something else about verse 6. John writes, 

6 If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness we lie and do not practice the truth. 

I do think there is a way in which we can rob ourselves from true κοινωνία-fellowship or communion with God if we seek darkness over light. I do think there’s a way where we can rob ourselves of the assurance of salvation that God gives if we choose darkness over light. Assurance is part of that κοινωνία-fellowship with God that we experience in the light. 

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So “Believers increasingly walk in the light.” Here’s a third basic truth for believers:

3) Believers walk together in the light (1:7)

I love this verse—1 John 1:7. This is a great verse for us to memorize as a church. John writes, 

7 But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with…

And you might think the next word would be “God” or “Jesus.” If we walk in the light as God is in the light we have fellowship with… “God?” Is that what it says? Doubtless that’s true. But that’s not what John says. He says instead, 

7 But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin. 

Here’s how this works! You belong to God. I belong to God. You walk in the light. I walk in the light. You have your sins cleansed by the blood of Jesus. I have my sins cleansed by the blood of Jesus. Let’s be friends! Could a friendship be based on anything more precious than that? We have fellowship together because of Christ. We are light bearers together because of Christ.

Here’s another reason why this is such a marvelous passage of Scripture. One of the things that John is saying here is we don’t have to do this alone. We don’t have to lone ranger our way through this thing called the Christian life. We have a built-in family, a fellowship with one another that is thicker than thieves and thicker even than blood-family relationships.

That’s fellowship, church! That’s real community, real relationship, real togetherness in the body of Christ. That’s brothers and sisters in Christ walking in the light as Jesus is in the light and averting darkness together.  

Several years ago, I led a small group through this book together called How People Change by Paul Tripp and Timothy Lane. It’s a great book, and it facilitated some great discussion in our group. And I want to read a short section to you from this book. 

The authors write, “At one level we want friendships. At another level we don’t want them! In creation, we were made to live in community, but because of the fall we tend to run from the very friendships we need. Quite often, our longing for them is tainted by sin.” 

“We pursue them only as long as they satisfy our own desires and needs. We have a love-hate relationship with relationships. The Bible recognizes this profound tension, but still places our individual growth in grace in the context of the body of Christ.” 

“The Scriptures call us to be intimately connected to our brothers and sisters in Christ. Our fellowship is an essential ingredient for lasting change. The work of redemption involves our individual relationship with Christ alongside our relationships with others.”  

How are you doing with this, church? Are you intimately connected to your brothers and sisters in Christ, doing life together with them? I heard Tim Keller say once, “Everyone says they want community and friendship. But mention accountability or commitment to people, and they run the other way.”

Here’s the point. Sanctification (i.e. walking in the light) doesn’t have to be a “me against the world” kind of thing. You don’t have to do it alone. In fact, let me say it stronger than that, you weren’t meant to do it alone. God has given you a local body of believers to leverage the collective strength of togetherness. 

You might say, “I’ve got Jesus, that’s all I need.” Well the problem with that mentality is that Jesus instituted the church. And Jesus loves the church. And he believes that corporately we are stronger than we are individually.

You might say, “Relationships are messy and complicated… and I’ve been hurt before by people in the church.” Yeah, relationships are messy. And they are complicated. And dealing with people is difficult. But you know what? If you were honest you would say, “Yeah but dealing with me is no picnic either.” We all have to work at this fellowship thing to make it successful. And I would say to you that the positives outweigh the negatives. And the benefits outweigh the drawbacks. And besides, this is how God wants it. 

7 … if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus … cleanses us from all sin. 

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Now some of you right now may be struggling with some of these things. You might say, “Pastor Tony my life is more darkness than light.” “And I don’t have deep fellowship with Christ.” “And I’m not experiencing victory over sin like I want to or like I should.” What do I do about that? 

Well first I would say that you need to gather around yourself some fellow light-bearers that can help you with that struggle... people to come alongside you and walk together with you in the light. Maybe you need to increase light on the dark places of your heart, and have others come alongside you, not in a spirit of judgmentalism or condescension but in a spirit of fellowship and togetherness and say, “Alright let’s talk through this, let’s pray through this… Let’s chase the Light together.” We all need that. As our world grows increasingly dark, we need those pockets of light where we can be real and pursue God together. 

So if you’re struggling with more darkness than light in your life, that’s a first step. Get some light-bearers around you to help you. And here’s a second thing. Learn the power of confession. 

Write this down as a fourth point in your notes:

4) Believers confess the ways they fail to walk in the light (1:8-9) 

Look at verse 8 with me.

8 If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. 

That’s about as straight-forward a verse as you’ll find in the Bible, church. There’s nothing ambiguous or unclear about that. Let me cross-reference a passage from Romans for you, “All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God” (Rom 3:23). We are all sinners. There’s no need to pretend otherwise. 

And once you have that down, then you’re ready for verse 9.

9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

The actor Woody Allen, who claims to be an atheist, was once asked, “If there is a God, and if that God should speak to you, what would you most want to hear him say?” He answered, “If there is a God who should speak to me, I would most want to hear him say three words, ‘You are forgiven.’” And yet as Pastor David Allen points out, “the only way you will ever hear from God the words ‘you are forgiven’ is if you speak the words ‘I have sinned.’”

9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins 

Listen, church, this is a passage about believers. Believers confess the ways they fail to walk in the light (1:8-9). They don’t hide their sin. They don’t pretend like they are sinless beings. They don’t excuse their sin. They don’t try to make up for their sins with a bunch of good works. They confess.

9 If we confess our sins, he [that’s God] is faithful and just to forgive us our sins [he’s “faithful” because he’s promised Christ as our atoning sacrifice; he’s “just” because Christ bore the penalty for our sins, so that we don’t have to] and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

In Greek there’s a really nice wordplay in this verse. John writes that God is δίκαιος (“just” or “righteous”) to cleanse us from all ἀδικίας (“unrighteousness”). Our righteousness is not our righteousness, it’s his righteousness. His δίκαιος cleanses us from our ἀδικίας. Therefore his righteousness becomes our righteousness. 

Now I want to take a quick moment and explain here what exactly John is talking about. Because you might wonder, is John speaking about our justification? 

9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness

Or is he talking about our sanctification? In other words, is John talking about conversion here, that moment in time when we got saved, or is he talking about the natural outworking of our salvation that happens after our conversion, after our justification, which we call sanctification? 

Let’s deal with that. Just so you know confession is definitely a part of our conversion. We confess our sins. We repent of our sins, meaning we turn from them, and embrace by faith Christ as our Savior. That’s how a person gets saved. “[I]f you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved” (Romans 10:9-10). That’s how you got saved. If you pretended you didn’t have sin in your life, you didn’t get saved. 

But here’s the thing. Confession as a discipline doesn’t end at conversion. And by the way, sin doesn’t end at conversion either. Did anyone here never sin again after they got saved? No. There’s an ongoing battle that continues until we go home to be with the Lord. 

So the question is this—is John speaking about justification or sanctification in this verse? In 1 John 1:9? Is he speaking about how a person gets saved, or how a saved person lives after they’re saved? 

So for a few different reasons I believe John is talking about the latter. In other words, John is telling us how we, as Christians, should live and how we should, in a disciplined way, confess our sins before the Lord as an aspect of our sanctification.  

I’ll give you three reasons for that. 1) The context of this passage is “walking in the light.” John is trying to get the church to think in categories of sanctification, and the basic idea is this, “If you have been saved, you’re going to be more like Jesus every day.” If you have been transformed by light, you are going to increasingly distance yourself from darkness. 

2) John uses a present tense verb in verse 9. He doesn’t say “if we confessed” at a previous time and were converted. No, he says if we “confess” (present tense). If we continually confess our sins as a Christian then we will live in the light of that forgiveness and we will be cleansed temporally from all unrighteousness. Now, just to be clear. We are cleansed eternally at our conversion. But we still deal with sin. We experience the temporal manifestation of God’s cleansing and God’s forgiveness when we confess our sins as growing Christians.

3) And thirdly, I think there is something to the use of “sins” in the plural as opposed to “sin.” “If we confess our sins, [God] is faithful and just to forgive us our sins.” Our “sin” has already been paid for by the blood of Jesus. Our sin-guilt, in other words, is atoned. But we still deal with “sins.” And to the extent that we deal with specific “sins,” we need to confess them. And there’s something cathartic about that. The word “cleanse” here in verse 9 is the Greek word καθαρίζω, which we get our English word “cathartic” from. There’s something liberating, there’s something therapeutic, there’s something cathartic about just coming clean and saying, “God I’ve sinned.” “I’ve sinned against you.” “Help me.” “Restore me.” “Heal me.” “Change me.”

John MacArthur says it this way, “True believers are therefore habitual confessors who demonstrate that God has not only pardoned their sin and is faithfully cleansing them daily from it, but has truly regenerated them, making them new creatures with holy desires that dominate their will.” “If one truly trusts in Christ as Lord and Savior… he will regularly admit his sins before God.” 

Proverbs 28:13 says, “Whoever conceals his transgressions will not prosper, but he who confesses and forsakes them will obtain mercy.” David says in Psalm 32:5, “I acknowledged my sin to you, and I did not cover my iniquity; I said, ‘I will confess my transgressions to the LORD,’ and you forgave the iniquity of my sin.”

And who do we confess to? We confess to God. We don’t need to confess to some priest in a shady confessional-booth somewhere. But I will say this, James tells us to “confess our sins to each other and pray for each other” (James 5:16). So I don’t want to make light of the idea that we confess to one another. I just don’t believe we need a priest mediator to bring our concerns to God. We can go straight to God with our confession. And we can carry each other’s burdens as fellow confessors and accountability partners. Here’s the bottom line: Shed light on the dark places of your heart. Amen, church? 

In other words, don’t hide your sin. Don’t be disingenuous with God or with your fellow believers. Be transparent. Be authentic. Be genuine one to another. And in doing that, God is willing and able to pour out his love and forgiveness to you. 

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And by the way. There’s no secret. We all sin. And you’re not doing yourself any favors by pretending there’s no sin in your heart. You’re not fooling God with that. And also you’re robbing yourself of the benefits of light by hiding in the darkness. Don’t do that! 

Here’s a fifth Basic Truth for Believers:

5) Believers don’t pretend that they are light without darkness (1:10)  

10 If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us. 

Charles Spurgeon said, “He who cannot find water in the sea is [less foolish] than the man who cannot [find] sin in his members.” We don’t become sinners because we sin. We sin because we are sinners. “A dog is not a dog because it barks; it barks because it’s a dog. A sinner is not a sinner because he sins; he sins because he is a sinner.” We’re all sinners. We inherited sin from our forefather and our foremother, Adam and Eve. And if we ignore our sin, if we deny our sin, if we obfuscate about our sin, we lie, and God’s word is not in us. Actually it says it stronger than that, If we deny our sin, we make God out to be a liar! That’s not something you want to do.

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So what do we do with all this? How do we respond in a godly way to 1 John 1:5-10? I think there’s a lot of applicational nuggets here in this passage. Walk in the Light. Walk together with other brothers and sisters in the Light. Acknowledge that God is pure light, and we are not! All of that has applicational potency that you can take and live out this week. 

But here’s where I want us to close today. I want us to close with this simple, practical, crucial application. Here it is… are you ready for it? DON’T HIDE YOUR SIN. Don’t hide it. Confess it before God. Confess it before others who are walking in the light as you are walking in the light. And let’s shed some light on the dark places of our hearts. Because God is light! And those who know him walk in light as he is in the light. 

Let’s bow in a word of prayer together. And let’s consider now. Let’s apply this passage right now. Church, are there any sins in your life that you are pretending to hide from God? Is there anything that you need to confess before him right now? 

9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

If we confess our “sins” not “sin.” Don’t be vague. Be specific. What specific sins do you need to confess before the Lord right now? Let’s just take a few moments and do that now.