I would like to start by bringing us back to 1 John. We are going to be in Chapter 1 and a little bit in Chapter 2. This time we are talking about being cleansed in the light, continuing in this section called walking in the light, or this experience of fellowship in walking in the light.
To begin, I want to bring up 1 John 1:7:
But if we walk in the light, as He is in the light,
we have fellowship one with another,
and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanseth us from all sin.
Notice the words, “cleanseth us from all sin.” Then 1 John 1:9 says:
If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins,
and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
Lord, we come to You thankful and grateful for the precious blood of the Lord Jesus. We come as Your people who have been bought and purchased and are in the good of the great work that You have done on the cross. Lord, we worship You and praise You. We pray that, as we are in the Word right now, You would fellowship with us. Meet with us, and may our hearts be open to You. In Jesus’ name, amen.
This is our third time in 1 John. In the past, we have looked at the overall concept of 1 John, and now we want to begin getting more verse by verse into this section of being in the light.
As a foundation, there is the reality that we have received eternal life. That is how 1 John begins: speaking of the eternal life, which is the person of our Lord Jesus, who appeared on this earth and gave eternal life to us. What we have received, we share with one another. That is the basis of fellowship.
We have something in common as we fellowship with one another. In the fellowship between the Father and the Son by the Spirit, we enter into that fellowship and join in it. That is our sharing together. That is the overall revelation in 1 John.
When we get into the details and practice of fellowship, there are three realities of how fellowship works. This is not merely an outline of 1 John; it is actually how fellowship works universally throughout the Bible:
You find these things by seeing something about God and then seeing what we do in fellowship in response to that reality. For example, God is light, and we walk in the light. God is light in 1 John 1:5, and walking in the light is found in 1 John 1:7.
This is the practice of sharing the eternal life of God. As we experience the eternal life that comes from God—His life—we walk in this light. Fellowship is connected to eternal life. It is the sharing of the very life of God.
The section concerning light begins in 1 John 1:5 and continues almost to the end of Chapter 2, through 1 John 2:28. You can call this entire section walking in the light.
Within that overall section, there are several smaller divisions:
The first section concerns being cleansed in the light. It keeps us on the path of walking in the light. If we step into darkness, we return to walking in the light by being cleansed through the precious blood. The emphasis is remaining in the light by being cleansed regularly.
The next section concerns abiding in the light. Throughout the passage, the overall theme of walking in the light remains. It says that we ought to walk even as He walked, and it warns negatively about walking in darkness. But the emphasis is on remaining and abiding in the path of light—remaining in the Lord and abiding in Him in the regular course of our walk.
Then, from 1 John 2:12 through 1 John 2:28, we have growing in the light. The passage speaks of fathers, young men, and little children. There is an exhortation to each group to continue where they are and to grow in their path of light.
Growing in light means growing in maturity—not only in light as revelation and understanding concerning God, or even convictions concerning sin, but also in our ability to manifest the life of the Lord Jesus. We discover more and more of eternal life and how that life lives through us.
For this time, we will be in 1 John 1, beginning in verse 5, and we will inch along through these verses. The basis of everything concerning walking in the light is that God is light.
The report in the opening verses of Chapter 1 was given so that we could have fellowship. Then John says:
And this is the message which we have heard from Him and announce unto you,
that God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all.
The declaration is simple: God is light. In Him there is no darkness at all. Last time we emphasized the reality of fellowship. This time, we want to look especially at what this means for being cleansed in the light.
With God, anything to do with darkness has no place. He is light, and in Him is no darkness at all. If you consider walking in darkness, as the next verse does, it has nothing to do with God.
Usually, when we think of something that has nothing to do with God, we think of sin or unrighteousness. Rightly so. If something belongs to walking in darkness, it has nothing to do with God. Therefore, if I want fellowship with God, I must have nothing to do with walking in darkness.
Any time I am walking in darkness, I cannot have fellowship with God, because God is light and in Him is no darkness at all.
John continues:
If we say that we have fellowship with Him and walk in the darkness,
we lie, and do not the truth.
If we claim fellowship with God but are walking in darkness, we lie and are not practicing the truth. Since God is light and in Him is no darkness at all, it is impossible for us to have fellowship with Him while actually walking in darkness.
This begins the first set of experiences concerning cleansing in the light. There are three sets in this passage. In each set, there is a negative statement, a kind of lie, and a corresponding way of cleansing.
Almost every verse in this passage has an “if–then” kind of structure: if we say, if we confess, and then a resulting experience or reality. We are dealing with fellowship, and there is a direct result to what we do.
If I say that I have fellowship with Him but walk in darkness, then I am lying. I am not practicing the truth. Truth is practiced when light is experienced.
John’s Gospel tells us that when the Word became flesh and tabernacled among us, He was full of grace and truth. As light touches the earth, truth shines everywhere. When you turn on the lights in your room, the truth is revealed. You see the mess in your bedroom. Everything is exposed when light shines.
In fellowship, we practice truth. But when we walk in darkness, there is no practice of truth. The light cannot be experienced.
Who are we saying these things to? When John says, “If we say that we have fellowship with Him,” we might assume this only means that we are tricking ourselves. But that comes more directly in the next set. Here, I think the emphasis is on how we portray ourselves to one another among believers.
The following verse speaks of fellowship with one another. If we walk in the light, then we have fellowship with one another. So the negative side is this: I tell you that I have fellowship with God, but there is hidden darkness in my life. I am not really in fellowship with God right now.
Everything we are talking about has to do with fellowship right now. We are talking about being in the good of our salvation. These verses are not about whether someone is saved or not saved; they are written for believers. They do not mean that someone suddenly loses eternal life. They ask whether we are sharing eternal life right now—whether we are experiencing it.
A believer can walk in darkness. A believer can hide from God, almost like Adam and Eve when God said, “Where art thou?” Sometimes we are hiding something. More regularly, perhaps, we hide from one another what is really going on with us.
It is tempting in a church gathering. Who wants to come in looking like they actually feel spiritually? Nobody does. Even if you are doing terribly spiritually, you may not dress that way or put your face that way. Occasionally, you meet a believer and ask, “Hi, how are you?” and they unload on you: “Can’t you tell that everything is terrible?”
There is a place where it becomes darkness—where we are hiding. Fellowship has room for us to be in the reality of our own situation. The worst thing to do, as far as walking in the light and being cleansed in the light, is to hide.
The worst thing is to say that you have fellowship with God while pretending—putting on an outward form. Even in a Bible study, you may say good things that you remember in your mind, while your heart is disconnected from God.
Have you ever been around believers and tried to talk to them about the Lord, but there seems to be a chasm between you? You cannot reach fellowship. It does not matter how mature they are. Unfortunately, this may happen more often with those who have matured somewhat.
With a new believer, failure is often obvious. They regularly come back, are cleansed, apologize, and receive help. There can be regular fellowship with a new believer. But when you have matured somewhat, it can be embarrassing for people to know that you are not doing well, and then you begin to walk in darkness and hide what is going on.
Walking in darkness is not always directly living in some obvious sin. To say that we have fellowship with Him means that we are saying everything is right between us and the Lord. The question is not merely, “Am I living in some regular big sin?” The question is, “Is there something distant between me and God?”
When you are walking in darkness, you may feel almost stunned. You are coasting, but in the depths of your being you know something is not right. There is a distance between you and God. You may not always be able to identify a specific sin, but you know that something is wrong.
Now consider the positive side:
But if we walk in the light, as He is in the light,
we have fellowship one with another,
and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanseth us from all sin.
Walking in the light is the opposite of walking in darkness. The phrase “as He is in the light” shows that we are in fellowship with God Himself. We walk in the light as He is in the light, and then we have fellowship with one another.
God Himself is light. In Him is no darkness at all. That is glorious and wonderful. Think of the glory of God, the cleanness, clarity, and purity of His light. Think of everything connected with God, and you think, “This is amazing. This is heaven.”
But when you think of yourself in the light of God, you realize that light exposes everything. Then you think of your sins and shame, of being naked before God and exposed.
What we must realize is that the Lord wants us to be cleansed in the light. The precious blood cleanses us when we walk in the light. We need to stop being afraid of the light and see that when we come to the light, everything is repaired, everything is fixed, and everything is cleansed.
The failures can be handled. It is when you are not in the light that nothing can be helped. When you hide in shame and distance yourself from God, you cannot be cleansed or brought through.
What do you hide from other people? What would you be ashamed of in front of others? That can give you a small sense of what darkness is.
This morning, I was reading this passage, but it looked like I was just lazily sitting on the couch doing nothing because I did not have my Bible with me. I happened to have these verses in my mind. Still, I was sitting there with a cozy blanket, and when I heard someone coming in, I quickly grabbed my Bible to make it look like I was reading it.
Afterward, I wondered, “Why did I do that?” I was reading my Bible—I was just going through it in my mind. But I looked like a slob on the couch doing nothing. I think this has happened in my backyard as well. I was sitting in a hammock preparing a message, but someone looking into my backyard might think, “Jeffrey is just lazy out there.”
Sometimes what we look like is not the reality of what is going on. That example is silly, but the picture is this: if someone is around, I do not want them to see me like this. When we are doing something we would truly be ashamed of in front of others, that is walking in darkness. Those are hidden things of shame in the darkness.
You can ask the Lord, “If somebody were videoing me all day, if I accidentally left Zoom on and the whole assembly was watching, what would be revealed?” Aside from ordinary matters such as needing a shower or dealing with some personal habit, how do I walk in the light?
We should not live in the strange fear that people are always watching us. But we should know that God is with us. He is the light, and we are walking with the Lord. It would be good for people to find us in our private time and see us walking in the light as He is in the light.
When a family lives together, or when you have roommates or housemates, they see you all the time. That can be a reality check. My children draw pictures of me all the time, and I can see from those pictures what they catch me doing. What do they think of me when they think of what I am doing? Those things can reveal whether we are walking in darkness.
When we meet a believer and are actually walking in the light, we have fellowship with one another. You can often tell when you speak with another believer. It does not matter whether you are discussing their job, the weather, or something else—you can sense that they are in fellowship with God Himself, if you are in fellowship as well.
If you are not doing well, the problem is not merely that you are not doing well. The question is whether you are walking in the light. Walk in the light with your problems, and you will be okay. You will have fellowship. You will ask someone to pray with you. You can be honest and receive help.
If you do that, the blood of Jesus Christ, God’s Son, will cleanse you in your fellowship with brothers and sisters. We cannot overcome all our sins by ourselves. We need brothers and sisters.
There are some sins that you probably notice you do not commit when you are in fellowship with brothers and sisters. This even has to do with gathering with the saints. When you gather regularly with the saints and have fellowship outside the regular meetings, many sins are not committed and much darkness is not walked in.
Perhaps it is because you are preparing to gather with the saints. Perhaps it is because you know you will be gathering with them. Perhaps it is because you have had fellowship with someone, you know they are praying for you, and the Lord reminds you of that. We overcome many sins simply by having fellowship with one another.
Our fellowship is centered in Christ, and we share eternal life. But when I am struggling to lay hold of Christ, that becomes my fellowship because I am in the light and asking for help to come through to Christ. As someone prays with me, the blood cleanses, they are refreshed, and all around is the light and cleansing of the precious blood.
When we come and break bread together, this is happening regularly. A mature believer may come without being in some particular bad condition, yet still be called into deeper fellowship with God. Perhaps they have not been walking in that fellowship.
Then a struggling believer may come in, having confessed a terrible sin and been cleansed by the precious blood. As that believer prays and thanks the Lord for the cleansing of His blood, they wash the feet of older believers—believers who have forgotten the reality of fellowship with the Lord. They are reminded again.
It is not necessarily deliberate walking in darkness. It is simply the need for fellowship with believers. We all need each other. If you feel your prayer is simply the prayer of a sinner coming to Christ, that may be exactly the prayer that saints need as they are refreshed in Christ.
Another thing happens when we fellowship: we discover more light. You may hear something in someone’s prayer or in a Scripture. You may discover more of Christ through the fellowship. Someone may say something that is more light—more Christ—than you have been experiencing.
As soon as they say it, because you are in fellowship with the Lord, you receive it and say, “Yes, that is Christ, and I have not been walking in that.” As you receive that fellowship, there is an increase in your measure of light.
What happens to the old missing part—the dark area, perhaps an accidental darkness? Remember, we are walking in the light, but God is light. Our measure of light is still growing. It is like walking up a staircase where each next step is dark until light shines on it.
His Word is a light to our feet, shining on one step at a time. As light shines on the next step in my maturity, I take that step, and the blood cleanses me from sins I did not know about until you and I were having fellowship and you shared what the Lord had taught you.
I receive it and say, “Amen. I want to walk that way.” I may not even know exactly what just happened, but I sense, “I have just been cleansed from darkness I did not know was there.”
The verse says that we have fellowship with one another and the blood cleanses us. You might think the blood cleanses us first and then we have fellowship, but it does not always happen that way. Often we are fellowshipping, and then the blood cleanses us.
The main thing to grasp from this first set is not to hide in darkness. We are not saying that we must confess every sin to one another. We are saying that before the Lord we should not walk in darkness or hide. We should willingly be open before God and before one another, living in the reality of where we are.
We should not keep hidden things of shame. We should own everything that is sin and call it sin. Then we will be cleansed by the precious blood and have fellowship with one another regularly.
In the first set, John says, “We lie.” Each of these three sets has a lie-type experience and a cleansing-type experience. The second set begins in 1 John 1:8:
If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves,
and the truth is not in us.
Here, the lie is directed toward ourselves. We deceive ourselves. We lie to our own conscience. Something is wrong in our conscience.
The conscience can become confused. Romans 14 speaks of a weak conscience, or someone weak in faith, whose conscience becomes convicted concerning matters that are not necessarily sins before God. The conscience is delicate.
If your mind is too active, or if you are confused concerning some Scriptures, you may become convicted about strange things—such as stepping on cracks in the sidewalk. But God is always right. Our conscience is usually right, yet the Lord is still training our conscience through His Word, showing us what is sin and what is not sin.
On the negative side, we can deceive ourselves and create confusion in our own conscience. We can lie to ourselves until we say that we have no sin.
The extreme form of this is to adopt a theology that says we do not need to confess sins. When I was a new believer, about a year old in the Lord, a pastor told me that he had not confessed sin for years.
He had seen one true thing: when Jesus died on the cross, He died for all sins, for all time. Every sin in our whole life has been paid for at the cross. Even future sin has already been borne by Christ, and forgiveness is settled eternally.
But he became confused in his reasoning. He practiced something like this: “Oh, I sinned. Well, I am glad He already forgave me for that sin.” There was no fellowship experience of confessing his sin. It was almost as though he were saying, “I have no sin.”
The contrast is found in 1 John 1:9:
If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins,
and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
The proper practice is that we confess our sins. But if we say that we have no sin, what is happening is that we are not in the regular habit of confessing sins. Whether this comes from a confused teaching or merely from slipping into a practice, the result is the same.
At my college, some professors came from a holiness-movement background. They believed in a second blessing in which a person is sanctified and no longer sins. They would speak about weakness—“the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak”—but when what they called weakness was actually sin, they would not call it sin.
If they yelled at somebody, lost their temper, or did something wrong, they called it weakness rather than sin. But this destroys fellowship.
I remember speaking with the pastor I mentioned. I was a sinner who had learned to confess sins regularly, and I could sense that I could not fellowship with him. There was a sadness—a distance between him and the living God—even though he preached regularly.
He would say he had fellowship with God, but he was walking in darkness because he was not bringing these things to God. He had deceived himself. A conscience can become very confused, until a person believes that they have no sin problem.
I do not think that is most of our problem. I think most of our problem is that we stop confessing our sins. We stop treating failures as sins. We fail to pause before the Lord, name a sin as sin, and receive forgiveness and cleansing.
Instead, we say, “I messed up again. Sorry. I will try better later.” We may think that we somehow confessed it, but we do not stop in the reality of the living God, who is in the light, bringing the matter before the face of Jesus and confessing it as sin.
We stop using the word sin for some of our mistakes, weaknesses, habits, or parts of our personality. But before the living God, would He call it sin? If He calls it sin, then we should call it sin.
If instead we say that we have no sin, we begin to deceive ourselves. The conscience becomes dull, and we coast into darkness accidentally. We are not necessarily purposing to rebel against God, but we have lied to our own conscience and stopped the regular practice of confessing sins.
When we confess our sins, we may be dealing with something that seems small: “I should not have done it that way. I should not have snapped like that. I should not have said it that way.” If we recognize that it was not Christ, that it was sin, and confess it as sin, we are forgiven and cleansed.
Even a small white lie or a little exaggeration can be confessed. You are forgiven, and you are cleansed. Another thing happens as well: your conscience is not deceived.
Every confession of sin, rather than deceiving our conscience, awakens it. Your conscience grows a little with every confession. This will not only help us to be in fellowship right now; it will help us overcome specific sins.
One reason we sin repeatedly is that we do not call something sin. When we are tempted, there is often a parallel temptation in our mind to reason that it is not really sin. We bend the issue and find some way to say that it is acceptable.
If someone turned on the light at that moment and asked, “Are you going to do this in front of ten of us?” we would likely say no. We would not walk in that kind of shame and darkness. But when it is just us, when God seems quiet and the world seems loud, we begin to call the thing not sin.
We do mental backflips and say, “This is really okay right now, with all that has been going on.” Then we commit the deed. Afterward, our conscience, perhaps with only a small voice because we have been deceiving it, convicts us. We become uneasy. We realize, “That was a sin.”
Then we confess: “Lord, that thing I did—this specific issue—was sin.” We want to use the word sin, because the Lord teaches us that sin is shameful, against God, darkness, and unrighteousness. Sin is always bad. It begins with the devil and belongs to the fall of man.
When we call it sin, the next time we face that temptation, our conscience remembers that we confessed this exact action as sin. Even while our mind is reasoning, “Is it really sin?” the depths of the conscience can speak louder than the unrenewed mind: “Yes, that was sin, and the blood of Jesus Christ, God’s Son, cleansed you of it. Let us not do it again.”
Suppose you sin again. I do not know if any of you have ever committed the same sin more than once, but probably. Suppose you have confessed it as sin and now you are at the tenth time.
If you have confessed those sins—not merely put them aside by saying, “I should not have done it; I will try harder next time”—then something has happened. You have said, “That was sin. Forgive me of my sin. Cleanse me of my sin.” You have known that God is faithful and righteous and that He has forgiven and cleansed you.
When temptation comes again, the world is still tempting you. The flesh may still desire the world. But the mind is quieter, because the conscience is louder: “No, I know this is sin. I have confessed it as sin. Every time the blood of Jesus Christ has cleansed me of it.”
You know that it works like sin, acts like sin, and brings you into darkness like sin. When you are forgiven and cleansed, you come back into the light. Your conscience tells you, “This is sin.” You are no longer deceived.
This is how we keep a clear, cleansed conscience that can help us overcome sin. When temptation comes, the conscience—the voice of the Holy Spirit within us—speaks before we sin, not merely afterward.
Our conscience is not intended only to help us after we sin. It is meant to convict us when temptation comes, so that we do not sin. It says, “Do you really want to sin against the living God with whom you have been fellowshipping today?”
In the light of that reality, we say, “No, I do not want to sin,” and we reject the world. Scriptures that helped us in times of repentance become useful as weapons against the world’s temptation.
But if the conscience is dull and deceived, the sins will keep coming, and we will keep committing them as long as we treat them as though they are not sins. In this second set, the lie happens within ourselves. The way of walking in the light is to confess our sins and name sin as sin.
Sometimes we need to understand that our definition of sin must correspond to the measure of light the Lord has given us. Whatever step the Lord has shown you, that is the step you call sin if you refuse to walk in it.
This may concern something you ought to do. James 4:17 says:
To him therefore that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not,
to him it is sin.
That is a stair step in your walk with the Lord. You have to walk in it, whether it is difficult or not. Or perhaps something is not of faith. Romans 14 teaches that whatever is not of faith is sin.
The Lord may show you something that other believers are free to do, because He has not shone light on that particular step for them. Some of your steps may be especially personal because of your personality and the way the Lord is leading you.
It is all Christ, but the Lord may limit you in matters where others are free. That becomes your light. Because it is personal fellowship with the Lord, and because He has called something not of Him, then it is sin to you.
It may not be stealing or something universally recognized as sin among unbelievers. But if it is not Christ for you, then it is sin to you. If we begin to confess such things as sins, we may feel that we are confessing all the time.
Yet it does not feel crazy when we confess to the living God, have fellowship with Him immediately afterward, and are cleansed by the blood immediately afterward. This is different from being under the law, where everything becomes a confused, swirling accusation: “Did I just sin? Everything seems to be sin. This is crazy.”
Yes, that is crazy. The law is meant to bring us to our knees and lead us to Christ. But when we are led to Christ, He touches our conscience, His light shines, and in His light we see light. He says, “Yes, that is not Christ. That is sin.”
We should not anxiously search our lives trying to uncover countless sins. Rather, we look to the Lord and say, “Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts; and see if there be any wicked way in me.” When the Lord speaks and shows us something, then we know it is sin.
The Lord will shine the light and show us what to confess. When confession is connected with fellowship with Him, it is not a crazy experience. It is joyful fellowship—walking in a cleansed way and remaining cleansed regularly.
It is like walking on a path in the light, having learned that outside the path is lava. As soon as you step into another area, you sense it. You immediately confess the sin and return to the path.
You do not jump off the path of light. But as soon as your toes touch another area—as soon as you commit a sin or do something wrong—you confess it immediately in order to maintain close fellowship. You are cleansed regularly.
If you have not been cleansed by the precious blood in a week, or even in a couple of days, you are probably not walking in this way. The Lord is shining light and maturing us. This does not mean that everyone is committing gross and terrible sins all the time. It means that the Lord touches small things regularly.
As He matures us, every small thing that is not Christ becomes a taste of darkness. God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all. When we encounter something that is not of God, the Lord says, “Then confess that as sin.” This is not to make us crazy. It is simply to keep us cleansed and regularly with the Lord.
I want to remain here for a moment because 1 John 1:9 is my favorite verse in the Bible. Accidentally, it is the verse I use most often with unbelievers, but it should be a verse believers experience regularly.
If you have no verses memorized, we should at least memorize this experience, and perhaps memorize this Scripture. We need to understand how it works.
When you confess your sin, there is an absolute standard with God that He will never undo. God is faithful, and God is righteous.
These two parts are so important because when you confess your sins, you do not always feel forgiven and cleansed. Maybe half the time you do not feel it immediately. You have to stand on the Word of God.
What can you know? Is God faithful? Is He faithful to His Word? Does His Word say that He will forgive and cleanse? Yes. All I need to do is confess my sin.
And God is righteous. Here is the stance on which I fix my eyes: the righteous God sees Christ, the Righteous One, standing there—the One who has died for my sins in a righteous way.
When I bring my sins before God, before Christ who died for my sins, the righteous God has no choice but to forgive and cleanse me. I do not say that in some way against God. God Himself wants us to know, “I am a righteous God.”
He is righteous. He is faithful. He will never change His mind concerning this. He will never undo the work His Son has done on the cross.
He will never look at His Son with pierced hands and shed blood for our sins, then look at us as we confess our sins to be forgiven by the blood of Jesus, and say, “I do not feel like it today. I do not feel very loving today. I do not feel very merciful today.”
I do not think it is possible that God could be without mercy or love toward us, but even if we imagined it, He will never be unrighteous. Jesus Christ the Righteous has died for us. Therefore, it is impossible for God to withhold forgiveness and cleansing.
The Lord Jesus has made it possible for us always to approach by the precious blood. He has made it possible.
Can we confess in a false way? Of course. We can say words without truly confessing our sins. Confession is not merely admitting, “Yes, that was sin.” It is saying, “That is sin. I am on God’s side, and I hate this. I have sinned.”
But when we truly confess, we know that God is faithful and righteous. Therefore, He will forgive us and cleanse us.
When working with unbelievers, sometimes we use this verse because a light has to come on: God will be true to His Word, and He is doing it at this very moment. Sometimes it is not in the first prayer of confession that someone truly believes, but when they come back and thank Him for forgiving their sins.
I think it is the same with believers. Suppose you confess your sins today and afterward think, “I do not know whether I am cleansed.” Ask: “Do I believe this is the Word of God? Do I believe God is faithful? Do I believe God is righteous? Do I believe He will not change His mind today about what Jesus has done on the cross?”
If you believe that, then take the Word back to the Lord and thank Him. On your knees, after confessing your sins, thank the Lord for forgiving you and cleansing you from all unrighteousness.
It is a genuinely thankful heart. We do this by faith in the living God before we feel forgiven or cleansed. We are forgiven and cleansed by faith in the reality of what happened on the cross.
Sometimes emotionally and spiritually you feel the cleansing happening. It is wonderful—an amazing experience. Sometimes we feel it when we sing a great song with other believers and say, “Yes, I am cleansed.”
But regularly, our habit is to be cleansed by the precious blood by faith. Then we walk on. We walk with the Lord as believers.
The third set begins again with an “if” experience. Again, there is a lie, but this time the lie concerns God:
If we say that we have not sinned,
we make Him a liar,
and His word is not in us.
This is strange—to call God a liar and for His Word not to be in us. But this can be a regular experience with all of us. We would never stand up and teach that God is a liar. We know verses saying that it is impossible for God to lie.
But in fellowship, do we know that God does not lie? He does not lie about who we are in Christ. That may be where we most often feel that God is lying, and where we reject His Word from dwelling in us and being manifested through us.
The Word is meant to become flesh and tabernacle among us. His Word is meant to be received in us—all that He has commanded and all that He calls us to walk in as we walk in the light.
Yet we sometimes do not allow His Word to dwell in us and produce the reality of who Christ is within us. To understand this, we need to see the other side of the set.
The positive answer begins in 1 John 2:1–2:
My little children, these things write I unto you that ye may not sin.
And if any man sin, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous:
and He is the propitiation for our sins;
and not for ours only, but also for the whole world.
The chapter division is useful but not divinely inspired. This continues the thought. “These things I write to you in order that you may not sin.” All this cleansing, confession, and walking in the light has the purpose that we would not sin.
But if anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father: Jesus Christ the Righteous. He is the propitiation for our sins, not only for ours but also for the whole world.
What is in view here is the person of Christ. The answer to this dark way of walking is to see who is standing before the Father. We have an Advocate with the Father.
My translation says “patron”; yours may say “advocate.” This is related to the Greek word Paracletos, which is often translated “Comforter” in John 14–17 concerning the Holy Spirit.
Just as the Holy Spirit is the Comforter or Advocate who brings the things of Christ to us, Christ is our Advocate before the Father, bringing the reality of His salvation before the Father.
As Hebrews 7 says, He ever liveth to make intercession for us. He stands there as Jesus Christ the Righteous. He is the Righteous One standing before the Father.
Remember 1 John 1:9: God is righteous, so He forgives and cleanses. He does this because Jesus Christ the Righteous stands before the Father as our Advocate, standing on our behalf and pleading our cause with His precious blood.
He is not only praying that we would be forgiven; He is praying that we would overcome our sins. He intercedes for us to grow, that we may not sin. These things are written so that we would not sin.
But we have sinned, and we have sinned regularly. We can become depressed because of habitual sin. Then we begin to doubt all that the Lord Jesus has called us into. We doubt the height of who we are in Christ and what He is praying for us to walk in.
He sees who we are in Christ. The Father sees Christ, and then He sees us in Christ. But we begin to doubt that. Yet that is the Word God is speaking to us: “Here you are in Christ. Walk with Me. Fellowship with Me. This is who you are.”
When we say, “We have not sinned,” we make Him a liar. Here is what often happens: there is one thing we lack, one matter we cannot overcome, one place where we repeatedly struggle.
God has spoken to us about it, but we begin to say that we have not sinned. I am not merely saying that we are deceived. I am saying that we can give up on the reality into which the Lord has called us.
We may feel we must deceive ourselves just to keep going. We may feel we need to lower the standard a few steps, moving back to a cozy place where we can coast. But if you find yourself coasting, you are probably several steps backward.
You may be having this dialogue in your conscience: “Did God really say that I should walk that way?” It is like the voice of Satan in the garden: “Yea, hath God said?” We ask, “Is this really the Word of God?”
The Word the Lord has spoken to you may concern the height He has called you to walk in. It may concern something you should stop doing, or something you should begin doing. Sometimes we fail to walk in something He has clearly shown us.
Then we do not want to call it sin because we wonder, “Am I ever really going to overcome this issue?” The rich young ruler could keep the commandments, but there was one thing he could not do—sell all, give to the poor, and follow the Lord Jesus.
But Jesus said that what is impossible with man is possible with God. Because we are depressed over the place in our life where we cannot overcome, we begin to call God a liar.
We do not say the words, “God, You are a liar.” But the Word He has spoken to us, the height He has shown us in Christ, begins to feel like a lie. We think, “All that I have been believing seems like a lie because I can never do it. I will never live up to this.”
Then we are tempted to turn away from the calling of who we are in Christ—from the full measure of walking in the light. We take the Word that should dwell in us, which we should lay hold of by faith, and we say, “I am not even sure God wants me to walk that way. It seems impossible.”
Perhaps we blame it on the law. But it is not really the law in a bad sense. It is God’s Word. It is what He has shown you that you should walk in.
This is why many mature believers can accidentally walk in darkness. They have been shown something higher than they can walk in without the person of Christ. In maturity, we encounter this depressing experience and begin to say, “I am not sure that is God’s Word.”
Then we make God a liar. We are not pointing a finger at God; we are looking at ourselves and our depression. But His Word does not remain with us. We begin to say, “I have not sinned. I do not know whether that is really God’s calling. I do not know whether that is really sin. I will stop confessing it as sin.”
The issue is precisely the thing we cannot overcome without Christ Himself. But that is why it is there. We are not meant to walk in the light and be cleansed by the precious blood merely to deal with minor sins in our lives. We are meant to walk in fellowship with Him.
The Lord is showing us that with man it is impossible, but with God it is possible. Sometimes we discover that merely confessing the sin in our own strength does not seem to work. We realize that the only thing that works is the person of Jesus Christ.
Have you ever said, “Lord, I have sinned,” but heard a loud noise in your heart saying, “You are not really confessing. You do not even believe that you will ever overcome this sin. This is not working”? Then you wonder whether you even want to confess.
The only way to deal with that sin is to fix your eyes on Jesus Christ the Righteous. He is the only way through. He is the answer—not making God a liar, but having God’s Word proven true and our experience exposed as the lie.
If I see Jesus Christ the Righteous praying for me right now, if I see that He is alive and stands as my Advocate and as the provision for my sins, then I believe God’s Word.
He is the propitiation—the atoning sacrifice. He is all that is needed to deal with my sins and the sins of the whole world. If I see Him, if I see the face of Jesus, then I believe God’s Word.
In the face of Christ, I believe God’s Word, and I recognize that my experience is the lie. This does not mean I deny that I have failed. It means that failure is a lie concerning who I really am in Christ.
Who you are in Christ is who you are in Christ. That is who God is calling you to walk in. That is the truth. That is the Word implanted within you. That is the fellowship you have.
When temptation comes, or when the call comes to obey God, we find at least one thing that we lack—one thing possible only with God. This is meant to bring us into fellowship.
It brings us into being crippled and leaning on a staff. It brings us to a permanent place in life where we know we cannot be who we are in Christ except by leaning on Christ Himself—unless the face of Jesus is before us, unless we hold on to Him and call out to Him.
But there He stands: Jesus Christ the Righteous, before the Father, praying for us. He has cleansed us by His precious blood. As we lean on Him and walk with Him, it is Christ in us who overcomes.
“No longer live I, but Christ liveth in me.” You discover that you can overcome the greatest sins in your life—the sins you have never been able to overcome, even the regular problem—only through the person of Christ.
We are cleansed to sin no more. I do not mean that we reach a point in this body where we cannot sin. I mean that we can overcome sin, even the sin that has been a repeated problem.
All the earlier experiences of cleansing are never separated from the person of Christ. We may think of the blood as one thing and the person of Christ as another, but it is always the blood of Jesus Christ, His Son, that cleanses us.
When I confess my sin, God forgives and cleanses me, but Christ is right there. God is faithful and righteous because He sees Jesus Christ the Righteous. None of our cleansing is ever separated from the person of Christ.
The Lord leaves us with at least one thing where we must call out to Him in order to bring us into that reality. The Lord has cleansing.
Let us return to 1 John 1:7:
The blood of Jesus His Son cleanseth us from all sin.
All sin. Consider even the sin in which we have fallen into depression. That sin is cleansed by the precious blood. These things have been shared that we may not sin, and the way that sin is cleansed is by looking away to the Lord Jesus.
The Israelites failed to enter the promised land because of unbelief. It was not merely that they were carnal people; they stopped believing that God Himself could do the impossible.
Unbelief kept them from entering rest and from entering the promised land. It is the sin of unbelief that we may fail to recognize as sin. It is the sin of not believing that God is able to work through us to overcome sin.
But we want to rest in this reality: His blood cleanses us from all sins. The blood of Jesus Christ, His Son, cleanses us from every possible sin.
If we have fallen into depression, we can confess: “Lord, I know I have failed many times. It does not seem like I can even finish this day doing well. But I see You. I believe on You, and I do not believe in my experience. I confess that as sin.”
What are we confessing? We are confessing every doubt of what God can do through us. We should confess it as a lie: “I have believed in unbelief. I have hoped and lost my hope. I have thought that I cannot do this. Lord, I repent of that.”
“I believe that You are able to do and work in me.” God is able, and God is faithful.
As we come to Him in that way, we are thoroughly cleansed—not only cleansed from darkness or cleansed for a clear conscience and the overcoming of sins, but cleansed to walk in the full measure of our life, walking in the light together with the Lord in fellowship.
Let us come to Him, believe on Him, see Him before us, and be cleansed by the precious blood.
Oh Lord, I pray for all who may be walking in darkness even now. I pray for all of us who have hidden things of shame, that we would freely and willingly bring them before You, confessing our sins.
Wash us clean with the precious blood of the Lord Jesus. Lord, I especially pray for those mature brothers and sisters in the room whom You have called into more maturity, overcoming, and something far beyond our abilities.
Lord, reveal Your precious Son to us right now. Show us who we really are in the face of the Lord Jesus. Lord, we believe on You. Cleanse us from all darkness and all unbelief.
I pray concerning these sins that keep repeating among the saints. Lord, we bring them before You, not to look at those sins, but to look at Jesus Christ the Righteous, who stands before the Father and who has died for all sins, even the sins of the whole world.
Lord, You have paid the price, and Your price counts. It is the price that matters and matches the sins. You have overcome, Lord, and You have given us the victory in Christ.
We worship You, believe on You, and come to You. Cleanse us from all this darkness. Wash us with the precious blood. We thank You, Lord, in Jesus’ name, amen.