Title: What Keeps Us From Christ?
Scripture: 1 John 1:5-10
Speaker: Nate Pickowicz
Well, last week we finished up a years-long exposition of the Gospel of Matthew. Now beyond the novelty of merely saying, well, we went through a whole gospel, I think we need to be asking ourselves an important question, namely, what did we learn? Because week after week we encountered the glory of Christ through His words and His works. Perhaps even more important to consider is, have we changed by this? Do we love Him more? Is our fellowship with Him any stronger? Is our Christian walk at all improved? See, my concern pastorally always is that you would not merely come to me after and say, pastor, thank you for the sermon, but then turn around the next six days of the week and not follow anything that has been disclosed to you from God's Word.
That we would not be a people who would hear on Sunday morning one way and live contrary the rest of the week. And sadly, I think this is an all too common thing for many churchgoers because it's very easy to recognize divine truth for believers to know and understand, okay, that's from God when they hear it, but then they're unable to appropriate the power of that into their own lives. I think a lot of believers struggle with this, and there is a danger.
The danger is this, that we are to encounter Jesus Christ in the Gospels, but totally be unmoved by Him. To walk away unchanged. However, in the providence of God, He does inspire one of His Gospel writers to address this problem, a problem that I'm referring to as Christian dichotomy.
What does that mean? Christian dichotomy is living one way while believing another. However, this Gospel writer who addresses this problem is not Matthew, but rather it's the Apostle John. And after penning the Gospel of Jesus Christ according to John, he wrote three letters to believers to ensure that what they had beheld would actually transform them.
How do we know that God's Word is having its desired impact on us? That's what I want to consider this morning from the first letter from John. So go to 1 John chapter 1, it's toward the end of the New Testament, 1 John. Now we've been through this letter several years ago, I mean probably at this point seven or eight or maybe even nine years ago.
1 John deals with many issues. 1 John deals with true versus false Christianity. It deals with Christian living.
It deals with the issue of obedience to the commands of God. But in his opening paragraph, John reminds the reader of the revelation of Jesus Christ that they have received, followed by essentially three reasons why they're being hindered from a deeper fellowship with God. I want to look at that introduction first with you.
So 1 John chapter 1, this is the very beginning of his letter to the churches. He says, what was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands concerning the word of life, and the life was manifested. And we have seen and testify and proclaim to you the eternal life which was with the Father and was manifested to us.
What we have seen and heard, we proclaim to you also, so that you too may have fellowship with us. And indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son, Jesus Christ. These things we write to you, or excuse me, these things we write so that our joy may be complete.
We'll stop right there just for a second. So here John is opening with the testimony of all the apostles who had heard and seen, and they say even touched, they even touched the Lord Jesus Christ. And John calls Jesus the word of life, which He has been appointed to proclaim to God's people.
So yes, Jesus is the word, the incarnate word, but He's also proclaiming the very word of God. So it's not just the person of Jesus, but it's also the gospel of Jesus, the good news of Jesus, and that He has offered eternal life to us through the cross. And so in verse 3 here, John testifies that everything he has seen and heard from Jesus, he has proclaimed to the people.
He says, I proclaim this to you. We have proclaimed this to you. Because that's the essence of Christian testimony, isn't it? We talk about the testimony, everybody uses that word these days, testimony, testimony.
What does that mean? Well, your testimony is what you share of Christ to other people. So there is evangelism, there is sharing the gospel, the good news message, how a person can be reconciled to God through Jesus Christ, that they can be saved from the consequences of their sin, they can be saved from condemnation of sin through the work of Christ on the cross. That's the gospel message.
But testimony also includes what Jesus has done in my own life, what I have seen and what I have heard and what I have experienced in terms of spiritual realities, truth in Jesus Christ. It's not just for you, it's for you to share with other people, and we see that modeled by the apostles. They didn't just meet Jesus and say, okay, this is a personal thing for only me.
They met Jesus and they went and they worked for Him, they labored for Him. And that is the purpose, even for me today, of preaching Christ. John says, so that you too may have fellowship with us.
That's Christian community built on truth. The church here is not built because we have a likeness or an affinity for one another. We certainly love one another, we like one another, we have many friendships here.
But the essence of Christian community is built on truth. We're bound together by a doctrinal statement. What is that? Well, that's just a summary of what the whole Bible teaches about the Christian life.
So we're bound together, we have fellowship together, and he says, and fellowship with the Father and with His Son, Jesus Christ. That's communion now with God. So John is talking about two huge realities, communion and fellowship with one another, but also communion and fellowship with the triune God.
He lists the Father and the Son, but he's also including, no doubt, the Spirit. And so to say it again, hearing and seeing and learning about Christ is desire to foster, number one, a deeper communion with God, and number two, a deeper fellowship with other believers. And so when that's taking place, when we're growing and we're understanding and we're learning, these other things will take place as well, the deeper relationship with God and the communion with other believers.
Yet all too often, both of these realities, they suffer, and they become huge issues for believers. People will say things like, I just don't feel very close to God right now. Maybe that's you, maybe that's what something you're feeling in the moment is, I just don't feel, I know God, I believe I'm saved, but I just don't feel close to Him.
That's one problem. The other one is this, I just don't feel connected to other believers. I just don't feel like I'm close to anybody.
I don't feel like they've got my back, I've got theirs, we're close together. There's a break in the fellowship. And yet God desires for us to experience both of those things, a fellowship with Him and a fellowship with the other believers that you know.
John says in verse 4 that this is His complete joy, that we would advance in both of these things, again, fellowship with God and fellowship with the body of Christ. And yet we know that there are problems that hinder that fellowship. In terms of my title this morning, I'm actually more focused on the communion with Christ, what hinders us from communion with Christ, but certainly that includes communion with other believers, as we'll see.
But there are real reasons that we feel distant with God and distant with other believers. And what follows in verses 5-10 here is John's diagnosis of why this takes place. And so I want to read these verses together and then we'll explore them just one at a time here.
So verses 5-10, building on what John has already said in verses 1-4 about the revelation, the appearing, the showing of Jesus Christ, he says this in verse 5. This is the message we have heard from Him and announced to you, that God is light and in Him there is no darkness at all. If we say that we have fellowship with Him and yet walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. But if we walk in the light, as He Himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin.
If we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar and His word is not in us.
Verse 5 here points to an underlying reality behind all of the Christian faith and really the entirety of the created order itself. The one penultimate reality here, the overarching reality is this, that God is light and in Him there is no darkness at all. Now to unpack that just slightly here, if you were to study out the themes that John talks about here, if you were to read the Gospel of John and then subsequently 1, 2, and 3 John, you are going to see a lot of repeating themes and one of those heavy themes is that John focuses on this dichotomy, this difference between darkness and light.
Over and over again we see light and darkness, light and darkness and that is a main focus for John. But here John's statement is meant to be an all-encompassing reality of who God is, especially in light of His opposition to wickedness, sin, and spiritual darkness. And so he says, God is light.
Now on one level you could say, well, light is how we perceive the glory of God. All throughout Scripture God's glory appears to believers as a bright and radiant light. For example, Jesus on the Mount of Transfiguration in Matthew chapter 17, when the disciples they see the incarnation of Christ sort of melt away for a second, they behold His glory, its bright, radiant light.
So in that way, and John was there with them by the way, so John's experience of God is God is light. To see Him is to see light. But John certainly intends more here.
He's not simply talking about his perception of what he has seen of God, rather light is a representative of truth. Light represents purity. Light represents righteousness.
And that's God. God is truth and truthfulness. God is pure.
God is holy. God is righteous. To add to that, 1 Timothy 6, 16 says that God dwells in unapproachable light.
Or as Psalm 104, 2 says, He is clothed with splendor and majesty, covered in light as a garment. It's as if God takes all of beauty and truth and righteousness and holiness and wraps Himself in it to the point where when you see Him, it is indistinguishable. All we see is God in His resplendent glory and in brightness and light.
But the thrust of the statement here is far more to do with the perfect holiness of God over and against the darkness of sin and wickedness. We're meant to see a stark reality between the God of light and the darkness of sin. And so if darkness is, in fact, wickedness, then John is right to say that in Him, in God, there is no darkness at all.
What follows here are three key problems that keep us from God. And as we're going to see, these problems come in verse 6, verse 8, and verse 10. Thankfully, we're also going to see some responses or some solutions as well.
But I want to focus here on what is keeping us from a deeper communion, a deeper fellowship with God. And so let's look at this together. What is the first problem, the first issue that keeps us from a relationship with God? Number one, ignoring our sins.
Ignoring our sins. Look at verse 6. If we say we have fellowship with Him, and yet walk in darkness, or in the darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. And so here, John is imagining a scenario where a professed believer, someone who claims to be a Christian, he says that he has, he or she has fellowship with God, and yet they're walking in darkness.
Let's unpack this a little bit. First, they claim to have fellowship, fellowship with God. Koinonia is the Greek word.
Koinonia refers to literally what is held in common. We talk about having fellowship with one another. It's a commonality, something that we share together.
And so to have communion, to have fellowship, to have koinonia with God is to have commonality with God. Something shared with God that certainly comes from Him is given to us. But the idea here is a person who professes to know God, they profess to be in a saving relationship with God, they profess to be close to God.
More than simply claiming to be a Christian, they're not just checking a box off and say, yep, if I had to choose between atheist or Buddhist or Christian, I'll say Christian. And there are a lot of people in this country who check that box. You read one study from Barna Research, and they'll say, oh, 65% of New England is Christian.
Well, that's not true at all. They check the box saying, I'm Christian. But when you examine the data, it's less than 2% of Bible-believing Christianity in New England.
There's a huge difference between claiming to be Christian, check the box, and actually living a life that is consistent with biblical principles. And so we're talking about more than that. This is a person who tells people that they have a personal relationship with the Lord.
They say they have fellowship with God. And all the while, however, John says, while they're telling people they have fellowship with God, they're walking in the darkness. This Greek word for walk is peripeteo.
It's referring to how a person's living. It's their spiritual walk. It's their daily life.
It's their practices, their habits, their conduct. In other words, they're living in darkness. But what does it mean to be living in darkness, walking in darkness? If we can import something, a concept from John 3, 19, Jesus refers to those who love the darkness rather than the light, and then He qualifies and He says, person who loves darkness rather than the light, He says they do so because their deeds are evil.
Their deeds. Walking in darkness means that a person is doing things, whether in thought or actual deed, they're doing things that are in darkness, that are opposed to God. Now, we tend to think of evil deeds, if I were to say write down a list of evil deeds, we tend to think about those as being the really bad sins.
If I were to ask you, do you do any evil deeds? You would undoubtedly say, no, no, I don't do any evil deeds. And we tend to relegate those to things like murder or stealing. But Scripture includes quite a number of sins that are considered to be deeds of darkness.
If you were to scan through 1 Corinthians 4 or 1 Corinthians 6, there are lists there just to kind of highlight or sort of lowlight, I guess I should say, several of those includes fornication, idolatry, adultery, effeminacy, homosexuality, stealing, coveting, drunkenness, abuse, extortion. Or if you were to survey deeds of darkness from Ephesians 4 or Ephesians 5, you could include in that list hardheartedness, sensuality, impurity, how about lying, cursing, slanderous speech, bitterness, anger, clamor, filthiness, and so on. Truthfully, any kind of sinfulness like that is against God.
Those are deeds of darkness. Now, when John is referring to those things, people who walk in the darkness, he's speaking not about a person who commits a sin, immediately feels regret, and then repents and turns away. Because certainly all of us have moments like that.
And maybe when you commit a sin, it is uncharacteristic of you. You say something, maybe you curse under your breath, and that's not something you normally do. You immediately recognize and you confess that sin, and you resolve to not do that anymore.
Now, I'm not minimizing those sort of situational sins. I'm not saying those are greater or lesser. A sin is a sin.
But what John is referring here to is a habitual walk, what is characterizing your life. A person who claims to be a Christian, and yet gets drunk every day. A person who claims to be a Christian, and yet does not stop gossiping and slandering other people.
A person who claims to love Christ, and yet they hate other people. They say they're obedient, and yet they're sexually immoral. Or they're greedy.
Or they're discontented. Or they're prideful and arrogant. Or they're hurtful to other people.
I think one of the most common ways that this manifests itself is in husbands and wives in marriages. A husband will say, oh, I love my wife, and yet they're mean to their wife. Or a wife that says, oh, I love my husband, but she nags him and she makes his life miserable.
Now, culturally, we sort of laugh at those things, but the bottom is there's a root of bitterness that exists in both realities. If you can't learn to love your spouse, then how are you going to obey the other commands of Scripture? How are you going to love your children? How are you going to love your neighbor? How are you going to love the Lord? If you can't do the most fundamental thing that's right in front of you, to love your spouse. Again, these are just areas of reality.
I'm not saying, well, I don't even know what I'm saying. I'm just talking about spiritual realities here. John says, if we say that we have fellowship with God, and yet we're walking in darkness, living in the darkness, what does he say? He says, we lie and do not practice the truth.
Again, this is a person who knows the right thing. Intellectually, they know the truth. They know.
They read their Bible, they get it. They've heard sermons, they've listened to hymns, they know the deal, and yet they ignore their sinfulness. They pretend like everything's fine, despite walking in the darkness.
John says that those people are liars. Furthermore, they do not practice the truth. What does it mean to practice the truth? It means their lives are not marked by integrity.
To practice the truth is to live a life of integrity, that what you say is what you mean and what you do. There's not inconsistency with your testimony. And so, do you wonder why your relationship with God is struggling? Ask yourself the question, first and foremost, how am I living? How am I living? Are you walking in any kind of darkness? Are there habitual sins that are punctuating your life, that are nagging at your heels, that you're just ignoring? Are you lying about your sin to yourself? Are you convincing yourself in your mind, oh, it's not that big of a deal.
I mean, I'm not as bad of a sinner as maybe that guy. Are you lying to yourself? Is there anything in your life, and ask the question, what are my sins? Think about these things. Examine yourself.
Scripture says examine yourself. Am I living a lie? Am I a hypocrite? I'll tell you, it's much easier to ask yourself that question than it is for someone else to come along in a Matthew 18 kind of a situation and confront you. Church discipline begins in your own heart.
Examine yourself. And if you find the answer is yes, yes, I am living in a Christian dichotomy, a hypocrisy, where I say and I believe one way and I live another way. What do you do? Look at verse 7. Look at verse 7. He says, but if we walk in the light as he himself is in the light, what's the result? We have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus' Son cleanses us from all sin.
This is good news. Because verse 6, frankly, is depressing. That's hard to read, isn't it? I don't want verse 6 to be true of me at all.
And yet verse 7, this is the basis of hope here, to be walking in the light as he himself is in the light. Remember, God is light, and in him there's no darkness at all. And so, looking at Christ, looking at him in the light, John is presenting here the alternative to walk in the light as he himself is in the light.
What does that refer to? It refers living and doing what is pleasing to the Lord. We think about this in Ephesians chapter 5, verse 8. Paul says, for you were formerly darkness. He doesn't say you were in darkness, he says you were darkness, formerly.
But then he says, but now you are light in the Lord, so therefore walk as children of light. For the fruit of the light consists in all goodness and righteousness and truth. Goodness, righteousness, and truth, that's light.
Verse 10, learning or trying to learn what is pleasing to the Lord, that's the goal. To know God, but then to please him. Lord, I want to do the things that make you joyful.
What's another way to say that? Well, I want to do things that glorify you. I want you to be pleased with what I do. Now we understand, obviously, that that's not going to happen imperfectly in this life.
And yet, however, the good news even in that sullen promise is that the righteousness of Christ surrounds us. We're credited with the righteousness of Christ, and yet even though we're credited with Christ's righteousness positionally, there's also an experiential reality whereby I can do the things that are pleasing to God. Why? Because I'm walking in the light.
I'm obedient to him. I see the things that are pleasing to him, and I want to do those things. And here's the thing, believers desire to do those things.
We desire to please the Lord and not just please ourselves. But what he's talking about here is obedience to the Lord's commands to do what is good and right and true. So not simply ignoring your sins or pretending like they're not a big deal, and also trying to pretend like he can't see them.
We foolishly think, oh, God didn't see that one. We don't ever say that, but don't we live like that sometimes? Oh, no one else saw it, maybe he didn't see that. That's folly.
That's foolishness. God sees it even before it happens. He sees it when it's only a thought germinating in your brain.
He knows what you're doing. And yet the promise is if we walk in the light, John says it's evidence of two things. Two things, number one, we have fellowship with one another.
We will experience a unity, a loving unity with other believers. Well how does that work? Because if you're walking in the light and I see that you're walking in the light, what does that encourage me to do? I want to walk in the light as well because we have fellowship. What's the old proverb? Bad company corrupts good morals.
That's true, isn't it? An old adage, an old homespun wisdom, you're a product of the company that you keep. If you spend your time, all your time with unbelievers who live wretched lives, and I don't mean in an evangelistic way, I mean if you're hanging out with people who are going to lead you away from the Lord, then that's where you're going to end up. But if you're spending your time building relationship with believers, and also I would even add believers who encourage you in the faith, some believers you ought to be pulling up and helping them to rise with you, but a lot of other believers you need to be gaining strength from them.
We're here to help each other. We read Titus chapter two last week talking about older men and younger men and older women and younger women, encouraging each other in the faith. I want you to help me to live righteously, and I want to help you to live righteously.
But here's the thing, believers, we need each other. I need your testimony. I need your godliness.
I need your example. I love, I love older believers. I love older believers, not just age-wise, but years in Christ-wise.
A believer who's been walking with Christ faithfully for 50 years, I love that. We've got some here. I love it because I want to look at what does a life look like that's been with Christ for a long time? How do you deal with trials? How do you deal with adversity? How do you walk faithfully during life's storms? What does it look like to be bathed in Scripture for 50 years? Older believers, I need you, and I would suspect the rest of us need you as well.
Don't think that because you're older that there's no more use for you. Quite the contrary. You got to get busy.
You got to pour into younger believers. We need your godliness. And younger believers, find somebody with a lot of gray hair who has gray hair because they've been a Christian for a long time.
And just cling to them. Spend time. Ask questions.
I'm kind of straying slightly away, but the point is, this is what John's talking about. Walking in the light and having fellowship with one another. I want to walk in the light and be with other people who are walking in the light.
Why? Because he is the light. And that leads to the second thing. If we're walking in the light, not only do we have fellowship with one another, number two, but the blood of Jesus, his son, cleanses us from all sin.
Now, theologically here, John is not saying if we do what's right, we're going to receive salvation and cleansing and the payment for sin. That's not what he's saying. Rather, he's saying, obedience to Christ reflects, it reflects the reality that we have been cleansed from all sin by his blood.
And there's about 500 verses that back up the idea that it's not our works that earn us salvation at all. John never makes that point, but when we do, when we're walking in the light, we see. We see the reality of our cleansing from sin.
See, believers, we want to walk in purity and forgiveness, while unbelievers, they continue in sin as though there is no cleansing or forgiveness to be found. Those who don't know Christ and don't love Christ, they just sin with reckless abandon. There's no desire at all for forgiveness because they don't even, it's not even on their radar.
But believers who understand the gospel and who have been saved and transformed by the gospel, I want and need the cleansing power of God's forgiveness through Christ's blood. That's attractive to me because I know I need it. And so, when you're walking in the light, we see the reality of Christ's blood cleansing us from our sins.
In other words, every step that you take, walking in light, because remember, you were formerly darkness, but now you're light. Every step that you take, walking in the light, is an evidence that that step has been bathed in the blood of Christ. Forgiveness after forgiveness after forgiveness, grace, grace, grace.
It proves it. And so, again, the overarching question today, why is your fellowship with God hindered? Ask the question, am I walking in darkness, ignoring my sins? If so, turn from them. Turn away and walk in the light.
Stop ignoring your sins. What else hinders you? Number two, not just ignoring sins, but denying our sinfulness, denying our sinfulness. John offers a second hypothetical here in verse 8. Look at verse 8. He says, if we say we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves, and the truth is not in us.
This is a different issue than verse 6. Not ignoring the sins that you know that you're committing, but rather instead, this is the claim that we're essentially good people. It's a claim to functionally transcend above the realm of sinfulness. Oftentimes, this is a problem for religious people.
Religious people really struggle with this. It's especially prevalent among those who like to compare themselves with other people, to look left and right. Believers ought to be those who primarily look up, and yet so many times we're looking around at other people.
Oh, I'm doing better than they are. That's how religious people deal with things. Some of the sins that we would be aware of are blatant, and religious people comparatively are not all that bad compared to a blatant sin.
You watch the news, and you hear about a person who's committed murder, and we say, oh, see? That's a sinner. My sins aren't as bad as all that, and on that level, yes, you're right. You have not, by God's grace, committed that sin.
But here's the thing. This denies the insidiousness of secret sins, or as Jerry Bridges calls, respectable sins. That's an interesting word to talk about sins, isn't it? But these are the subtle sins.
These are the sins that fly under the radar. These are sins like anxiety, discontentment, unthankfulness, pride, selfishness, a lack of self-control, ungodly anger, envy, jealousy, judgmentalism, sins of the tongue. These are all deceptive sins, because on the surface, when you just kind of think about them, they don't appear to be all that bad.
And yet, secretly, they're rotting away your soul. Because while you're focused on, well, I don't do the big stuff, it's the small ones, the underlying ones, that's the cancer that's eating you. And not only rotting away your soul, it's also angering the Lord.
Romans 3.10 says that none are righteous, not even one. Not even one. Yet a person who manifests a denial of their overall sinful claims says, we have no sin.
Even if a person won't say that, they tend to live as though that were true. They think to themselves, well, I'm really not that bad. But John says, if we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves, and the truth is not in us.
This Greek word for deceiving literally refers to being led astray or wandering off. If you believe that your sins are minimal or barely existent or not all that bad, guess what? You've wandered off the reservation. But more than that, you're being self-deceived.
You're devoid of truth. You're living a lie. Jesus talks about this very thing.
When you're spending your time pointing out the big sins in other people and ignoring the sins in yourself, that's the height of waywardness and self-deception. Jesus talks about this. You're worried about the speck in your brother's eye, but what you don't realize is that you have a huge log or a plank in your own eye.
Now, we understand this. We looked at this when we were in Matthew. He's not saying don't ever address the speck in your brother's eye.
If we don't do that, then how can we ever encourage one another in the faith? So yes, acknowledge the speck in your brother's eye. But before you do that, you have to look at the log in your own first. It's important.
We're bound by Scripture and we're bound by conscience to acknowledge our own sins. Because if we don't do it, it's going to eat away at our souls and it's going to destroy our conscience altogether. And I fear that that's happening to a lot of believers.
That we tend to think as long as I'm not doing the big ones, that I'm okay. That is so deceptive. Be careful of this.
Be careful. Examine yourself. Examine yourself.
Ask the Lord. I'll tell you, that's a scary prayer. When you get alone with God and say, Lord, I want you to show me all my sins, it's a scary thing to ask for.
But it's so important that you do it. Because the Lord is faithful. He will reveal to you sins if you're willing to see them.
And when you do see them, what do you do? Verse nine. Verse nine. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
I probably quote that verse once a month from this pulpit. Sometimes I think to myself, they must be tired of hearing me quote 1 John 1.9. I saw someone shaking their head no, thank you for that. But why? Why is this verse so important? I think this verse, careful, is more important than John 3.16. Why? Well, because we have, this is the promise here.
If you confess your sins to God, He is faithful and just to forgive you and to cleanse you. How can He do that? Well, John 3.16, for God so loved the world, He sent His Son for you, that whoever believes in Him will not perish but have everlasting life. But what is the mechanism by which He's doing that salvation? It's the forgiveness of sins.
If you want to stick a verse on your visor to memorize, 1 John 1.9. Own this verse, beloved. Because if you don't memorize it, I'm just going to keep on quoting it every week until you get it. No, I need this verse too because we forget these truths, don't we? We forget that if we confess our sins, He will forgive.
We don't remember that we can be cleansed from sin. Literally this word confess, the Greek word is homolugeo, it literally means to say the same thing. It's to agree with God about what He's already saying.
And since God has already told us in His Word what is sinful, when we sin in the ways that God says are sinful and then we talk about it to Him and tell Him through confession, this is not confession in general, by the way, it's specific. But when we do that, we're agreeing with God and we're confessing to Him. That's what He wants us to do.
He wants us to confess, to agree, to tell Him what He already knows is sinful, but we're confessing and saying, Lord, I have sinned. I've done what is evil in Your sight. And not again, just in specific.
Don't go to Him and say, Lord, I know I did some bad things today. Don't do that. Because that's really nothing.
But rather, go to Him like this, Lord, I tore down my brother in Christ today. I tore him down and I judged him in my heart. And I spoke evil words against him in my mind and in my heart.
I thought the worst of him. And I know that I've been spiteful. I know that I have a heart that's bitter right now.
And I want to confess that to You. You hate my bitterness. You tell me in Scripture to be kind to others, tenderhearted, and forgiving one another because You forgave me.
So Lord, will You please forgive me for my bitterness in my heart and my judging my brother? That's the kind of thing. Owning your sin for what it is. Calling it by name.
Don't gloss over the edges of it. Tell Him the truth. And if you do, the good news is that He is faithful, He is righteous, He will forgive you and He will cleanse you.
Again, this is because God is faithful. Because God is righteous, He's able to forgive. What does it mean for God to forgive sins? The Greek word there is ephiami.
It literally means to send away or to remit or to cancel or to release. The idea of release is a prominent notion here connected to this word. The idea of lifting a burden and sending it away.
When you forgive somebody else, you know what you're doing? You're taking the burden off and you're removing it from them. You're saying you don't have to carry the guilt of what you did that's wrong. I'm going to take off the burden from you and I'm going to put it over there and it won't be on you anymore.
Does it mean in that situation that sin never happened? No. But you're treating it as though it never did. I'm going to remit, I'm going to cancel it out, I'm going to remove it from you.
That's what God does with us. He removes the guilt and the punishment of the sin. He takes it away.
David writes in Psalm 32 5, I acknowledged my sin to you, I did not cover my iniquity, and then he says, you forgave me the guilt of my sin. I got to think that in verse 5 when David says that, he says it with joy. I confess, O Lord, in you, you forgave me the guilt.
You removed it from me. I can breathe again because you've lifted the burden. But it's more than just forgiveness, sending the burden away.
John says it's also cleansing, cleansing. In forgiveness, he's cleansing us, he's restoring us. What does he mean by that? He's washing us.
God is able to wash your mind. He's able to wash your heart. He can purify you.
He can restore the soundness of your thinking. Let me just tell you, believers, sin makes you stupid. Sin destroys your ability to think and reason.
Look at the world. Why does the world believe insane things right now? And we can sit there and we can rattle our fists and say, oh, how come you don't understand the most basic things about biology and truth and soundness of thinking? Because it's sin. Sin makes you think terrible things and do terrible things and make you not even be able to think.
But God is able to restore soundness of thinking. Look at Nebuchadnezzar. His pride and his arrogance.
What did God do? He brought him down to the place where he was wandering around like an animal without sense. And then as soon as Nebuchadnezzar acknowledged his sin before God, what did he do? He restored his thinking. He stood back up.
All of a sudden now he could think and reason again. Sin destroys your ability to think and reason, but forgiveness, confession of sin, restoration by the Lord, it restores your ability to think and reason. He can sharpen your conscience.
Sin dulls your conscience. You do something sinful enough times at a certain point to you, it doesn't feel sinful anymore, just what you've been doing. But through confession, through forgiveness, through restoration, through cleansing, your conscience becomes sharp again.
And now all those things that were not sinful to you before because you were dull, now you recognize actually this is quite sinful and I don't want it in my life anymore. It restores your innocence. God can make you innocent.
He can give you the innocence of children again. You can experience true healing from the Lord when you confess your sins. But again, it is not based on your ability, your virtue, your striving.
It's based on God's own character. That God is able. He is faithful.
He is righteous. The Lord tells us in Isaiah 43, 25, I am the one, he says, who wipes out your transgressions for my own sake and I will not remember your sins. God does all this for His own glory.
But our problem is when we don't go to Him with our sins. We either pretend like everything is fine and we ignore the sin or we simply refuse to admit that we have done anything that needs to be forgiven. But again, I think this is why our relationship with God struggles.
It's why our intimacy, our communion with God is lacking. It's not that God is far off. God hasn't left.
And it's not that His heavenly realities and His truth have become less interesting. If the Bible seems boring to you, it's not the Bible's fault. It is our spiritual attunedness to it.
Furthermore, to add to that, not only does it feel like God is far off, but if it feels like you're at odds with other people, could it be that you have not confessed sins and not sought forgiveness? John says it's because we're not facing the reality of sin's consequences. Here's the thing. Culture will tell you that our problems are not your fault.
Your problems are someone else's fault. But the Bible tells us that our sins are what ruin everything in our lives and they must be dealt with. If we confess our sins, God is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
There's a third condition that keeps a person from Christ. Number three, attacking God's truthfulness, attacking God's truthfulness. Verse 10, if we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar and His Word is not in us.
So here's how the scenario plays out. It's not a person who ignores their sins or claims that their sin isn't that bad, but rather this is the case of a person who rejects the notion that they are a sinner who has anything at all to be forgiven. Not just they have no sin, verse 8, but rather they have not sinned, as in ever.
See the difference? It's not that I just don't. I never have and I don't need to be forgiven. This is a denial of sin nature.
Now, you'd be hard-pressed to find a person today who believed that they were perfect. We even have the phrase, well, nobody's perfect. And most people, I've yet to find a person who actually thinks that they're perfect.
I know that they exist out there, they say that, but not many people that you know will say that they're perfect. But what is harder to find is a person who will admit that they're a sinner. Because if they did, that would mean that they would have to deal with the implications of that sin, namely the judgment of God, the reality of hell, and the need for salvation.
And so worldly people deny having a sin nature. However, this belief is a direct attack on the character of God who declares, Romans 3.23, that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. So, if God says that all have sinned, none are righteous, to claim to be sinless, to claim or to deny the need for forgiveness is to call God a liar.
And a person who functionally calls God a liar demonstrates that His Word is not in them. So, we're talking about the absence of a saving relationship with God. Furthermore, this kind of thinking reveals that a person is not a Christian because they reject God's free offer of forgiveness and salvation.
Now, I sincerely hope that that's nobody in this room, but experience tells me that's probably a few of you. See, it's not enough to believe that, A, nobody's perfect. Instead, you have to acknowledge the reality of sin.
And what is sin? It is rebellion against the Lord's righteous commandments. It is anarchy against the Lord. But if you really want to know what is keeping you from fellowship and peace and joy and maturity and intimacy with Christ, it's sin, plain and simple.
It is our sin, ignoring your sin, denying your sin, or worse, denying your sin nature, which amounts to attacking the truthfulness of God. And so, what do you do if you find yourself in that place? John actually gives us the answer here to close. 1 John 2, 1 and 2, he says to the church, My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin.
And if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ, the righteous. And He Himself is the propitiation for our sins and not for ours only, but also for those of the whole world. So, drawing near to Christ, He's called the righteous one.
He is our advocate with the Father. He's the one who takes our place on the cross. He goes for us, dies in our place.
He intercedes for us. And He says He has the propitiation for our sins. Well, what's propitiation? That's just an old school theological word for He stops the wrath of God.
He removes the wrath of God. He puts up His hands and He stops the oncoming train that is God's wrath that left unchecked would destroy us. That's what Jesus does.
He on the cross, He spreads out His arms and He stops the wrath of God. And He takes on the full cup of God's wrath for us. And He dies in our place.
And He says, John says, writing to the Jews, it's not just for ours only. This isn't just salvation and propitiation for the Jews. He says also, it is for the whole world.
In other words, every tongue, tribe and nation. Jesus Christ is not just the Jewish Messiah. He is the world's Messiah.
Any person anywhere can come to Jesus by faith. They can trust in Him. They can have their sins forgiven and they can receive eternal life.
And when they do and they walk in Christ and they walk in the light, they have fellowship with God and they have fellowship with other believers. And so my exhortation to you today is examine yourself, ask the hard questions. Go home, sit down with your Bible in a private place and just ask God, Lord, will you reveal to me my sin? And when you do, oh Lord, help me to confess.
I want to get right with you. And Lord, if I've sinned against other people, help me to get right with them. Confess my sins to them and find forgiveness from them too.
When we deal with our sins and we draw near to God by faith, He will draw near to you and you will have fellowship with Him in the beloved. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we are grateful to you.
We're grateful to you for your Word. Lord, your Word, it cuts like a knife. Your truth, your Scripture, it is like a scalpel that cuts deep into our hearts, oh Lord, and it reveals the inner recesses of our hearts.
And Lord, we know that when you are cutting us to the heart, it is not to wound us for the purpose of killing us, but rather it is divine surgery to remove the cancerous darkness that is there and to heal it up and to replace it with what is light. And so Lord, even though we know the Scriptures and the truth here is sharp like a knife, it is also like a pillow for our head. We can rest and find our peace in knowing that your promises for us are yes and amen in Christ.
The promise that if we come to you by faith and humility and confess that you are faithful, that you are righteous, you are just to not only forgive us and remove our burdens, but also to clean us up, to stitch us back together, to make us whole again, to restore our sanity, to restore our love, to restore our peace of mind so that we can walk righteously in you. You are so faithful to us, oh Lord. Help us to be faithful to you.
We know that we can't do it by our own strength and effort. We can only do this because Christ himself first came to us. Thank you, oh Lord, for sending your Son to give his life for us on the cross.
And I pray, Lord, that if there's anyone here who does not yet know you, they would turn from their sins and trust in Jesus Christ as Savior. We pray all these things in his name. Amen.