1 John 1:9 Confessing our sins to be cleansed

We are given reassuring words that if we admit our sins to God that he will forgive us and we will have that unrighteousness removed or cleansed.

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

The mercy and forgiveness of God

The mercy and forgiveness of God are abundantly bestowed upon those who come to Him in acknowledgement of their transgressions and in humble submission to His will. God talks about His mercy in Exodus 34:6-7:

The Lord passed before him and proclaimed, “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty,…

This clear statement of God’s merciful, compassionate and forgiving nature is very striking. It was meant to be significant for Israel, and it is just as significant for us. He is definite in his message to us.

The mercy and forgiveness is dependent on a person’s genuine repentance. This was the case of David, after his sin with Bath-Sheba and in the death of her husband, Uriah. When the sin is brought out into the open by Nathan, David’s immediate response was, “I have sinned against the Lord”—notice “against the Lord”, not just against Bath-Sheba and Uriah, thus indicating the genuineness of David’s repentance. As a result, we are told that God was prepared to put David’s sin behind Him, to remember it no more. The mercy of God came into immediate operation. The sin was forgiven and the repentant servant was restored to right relationship with his God.

David’s reflection on his experience

Upon what principle does God give mercy and forgiveness to those serving him? David understood this principle upon which God acted. The answer is provided very simply in David’s own words as he reflected upon his experience:

Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man against whom the Lord counts no iniquity, and in whose spirit there is no deceit. Psalm 32:1-2

So it is possible, then, for a mortal man to be in that blessed state with God where his sins are forgiven. But there must be a spirit of no deceit or hypocrisy.

David then explains how it cannot, and how it can, be done:

For when I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night your hand was heavy upon me; my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer. Psalm 32:4-5

In other words David is saying: When I kept silent about my sin, when I refused to confess it, I suffered. But then he says:

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. Psalm 32:5

So there we have it: God will forgive our sins when they are freely and unreservedly confessed to Him, in a genuine spirit of humility and repentance, and with a real desire to forsake them. He does not insist on our waiting some time to prove the how genuine is our desire; He knows our hearts and restores us to fellowship with Himself. As a result, David can write in another psalm:

Bless the Lord, O my soul,…. who forgives all your iniquity,…. The Lord is merciful and gracious,    slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. He will not always chide, nor will he keep his anger forever. He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities. Psalm 103: 1, 3, 8-10

We must forgive others

In like manner to what God does, we must also forgive others who sin against us.

The Lord told the Parable of the Unforgiving Servant (Matthew 18:21-35). The lord forgave his servant an enormous debt (10,000 talents) because he was “moved with compassion” when the servant “fell on his knees, imploring him”. This pardoned servant is then condemned because he would not extend mercy to his fellow servant over a comparatively tiny debt, and the parable is applied to the believers:

Then his master summoned him and said to him, ‘You wicked servant! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. And should not you have had mercy on your fellow servant, as I had mercy on you?’ And in anger his master delivered him to the jailers, until he should pay all his debt. So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart.” (Matt. 18: 32-35)

The lesson is clear to us, we must forgive others who sin against us.

Deliberately sinning

The words in Hebrews chapter 10 and verse 26 speak of sinning deliberately or wilfully.

For if we go on sinning deliberately after receiving the knowledge of the truth, there no longer remains a sacrifice for sins,

But when we think of the words of 1 John chapter 1 and verse 9 how do these two verses relate to each other. They seem to be contradicting each other. What does it mean to sin deliberately or wilfully? The answer is given in verses 28 and 29 of the same chapter in Hebrews:

Anyone who has set aside the law of Moses dies without mercy on the evidence of two or three witnesses. How much worse punishment, do you think, will be deserved by the one who has trampled underfoot the Son of God, and has profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and has outraged the Spirit of grace?

To sin wilfully describes declining in faith and practice back to the old ways before you were enlightened of God’s ways. It is an utter “forsaking” of the ways of righteousness. Such a return to the ways of sin will lead to death.

But what about the words recorded in 1 John 1:9?

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

John is talking about a different sort of sin. He is speaking of the errors made by those who are baptised believers and who deeply regret their sins and ask for forgiveness. The person referred to in 1 John 1:9 is a different type of person to the one spoken of in Hebrews 10:26. The ones in Hebrews 10:26 are those who have sunk to such a depth of wickedness that they are past praying for. This is what John says and it is also what God says as He forbade Jeremiah to pray for his wicked contemporaries. On the other hand, God commanded Job to pray for his “friends”. And the Lord Jesus prayed for his enemies. In a sense, all sin is “wilful,” but this is not what is meant in Heb. 10:26.

The key principle

From our consideration then we can see the absolute importance of genuine repentance. It involves the  bowing of our own will and a humble acceptance of the judgement of God on our sin; a willingness to acknowledge this, and equally a resolve to live our lives in harmony with His will.

In the New Testament, we are taught to strive and to endure but it is important to remember that despite this sin will nevertheless occur. This brings us back to the main verse we are considering in this article.

8 If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. 9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. 1 John 1: 8-9

Sometimes believers who have recovered from an error, find themselves suffering its consequences and as a result think that God cannot have forgiven them. But if believers think this way they should remember the case of David. God forgave him, but did not remove the consequences of his sin, of which the rebellion of Absalom was the most obvious illustration. The same applies to us: the fact that consequences remain does not prove that God has forsaken us. Indeed, it is the very reverse, for they are often the means of His bringing us to a humbler frame of mind, as was undoubtedly the case with David.