1 John 1:5-10 “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say we have not sinned, we make Him out to be a liar, and His word is not in us.”
This is an election year and politicians in several countries are making all kinds of promises. One cynic asked, “How can you tell when a politician is lying?” The answer was “When his or her lips are moving.” Unfortunately, this is frequently the case; however, most of us are no better than those politicians.
We deceive ourselves constantly. We tell ourselves that we are thinner, more successful, prettier, or more handsome than we actually are. Many parents choose to believe that their children are little angels, although now that COVID has forced parents and children to stay home together, that notion may have gone by the board! We choose to believe all kinds of fictions: we want to believe that we can eat any amount of rich food without gaining weight; we want to believe that we have exercised longer than we actually have; we want to believe that all of our motives are pure while we harshly criticize those around us; we want to believe that we are excellent drivers and that the problem is all those other idiots on the road. The list is endless.
By the time John is writing this letter, he might be in his seventies or eighties. John has a very accurate idea of the way humans behave and he lays it on the line. “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.” OUCH! But John is right; each and every one of us has sin in our lives. Unfortunately, getting rid of sin is another problem. Anybody who has lived in a rural area with tarred roads knows how tough it is to get fresh tar off a vehicle. That tar sticks fast! Sin is even worse than tar. None of us has any effective means of getting rid of our own sin. BUT there is a remedy! “ If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” What we cannot do for ourselves, God will do for us, if we will only confess our sins.
Confession brings problems. Before you can confess that you are a sinner, you must really believe that you have sinned and that you cannot free yourself. And this is where many people get stuck. “Who me? But I’m a good person! I don’t cheat and I don’t steal, and I don’t even watch filthy stuff on TV.” Well and good. But what do you do when someone cuts you off in traffic? How do you behave at a store when someone ahead of you hauls out 50 coupons and chooses that very moment to sort through them before paying? And what do you do when your colleague at work suddenly dumps the project he or she was supposed to have completed five days ago on your desk at 4:30 on a Friday afternoon when the deadline is Monday morning? No. We all have problems with sin.
We human beings are so funny. Despite the fact that the one true living God knows us better than we know ourselves and knows all our thoughts and the intentions of our hearts, we still want to believe that we can fake out God. We are like small children who have spilled purple grape juice all over a white rug; we hope that if we move something over the stain, our parents won’t see it! John tells us, “If we say we have not sinned, we make Him out to be a liar, and His word is not in us.”
Numbers 23:19 says, “God is not a man, that He should lie, or a son of man, that He should change His mind. Does He speak and not act? Does He promise and not fulfill?”God is light and in Him is no darkness at all. Lies require darkness, and God is perfectly holy and dwells in unapproachable light.
What can we do about sin? There’s really only one thing that we can do: confess our sins and ask God for forgiveness. But the good news is this: If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. One pastor put it this way: once we confess our sins, God throws them into the Sea of Forgetfulness and puts up a “No Fishing” sign.
What sins are you carrying today? Why struggle with those sins any longer? Confess them and let God forgive you and help you to start a new life.
PRAYER: Father God, we confess that we have sinned by the things we have thought, the things we have said, the things we have done and the things we have failed to do. We have not loved our neighbors as ourselves. We have not loved You with our whole hearts. Lord, forgive us! Clean us up! And help us to follow hard after you all the days of our lives. In the mighty and precious Name of King Jesus. Amen.
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