What to do about your sins
Text 1 John 1:9, 2 Time 25 11 00 Place Childs Hill Baptist Church
(1 JOhn 1:8-10) If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is
not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will
forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. If we
claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word
has no place in our lives.
There
are many famous verses in the Bible. Among the most famous is 1 John
1:9. It is one of the most quoted and best loved. Many of you here know it off by heart. I’ve never preached on it. In fact 1 John
is a difficult book in some ways and so I may never have preached
from it. Whatever, this is a great text and one not to be neglected
by me or any preacher or by any of us, whether we are Christians or
not. Most books of the New Testament are written by Paul but there are also
other books by Luke and Matthew and Mark and Peter and James and Jude
and may be someone else. There are five books written by John.
Besides the Gospel of John there is Revelation at the very end and
then three letters we know as 1-3 John. They are what we call
‘General epistles’ – not written to specific churches but
general letters to all Christians. John’s letters were written at
the end of the first century AD when the church had been around for
some while. There were problems with heretics and apostates and many
believers were in need of help in knowing the truth and being sure
about the truth. The teaching in 1 John is both simple and profound;
both basic and fundamental and of the deepest and most difficult
sort. We will just concentrate tonight on one verse, or rather the three verses 8-10.
1.
Sin - The great problem that confronts us all
Sin
is mentioned in all three verses – sin, sins,
sins, sinned. Now what is sin? Different
people have different ideas. For many sin = serious wrongdoing. For
some it equals the sin of fornication or adultery (living in sin). For others religious word
for doing wrong or religious wrongdoing. But what does the Bible
say?
It is a big
subject but, thankfully, in two places in this little letter John
tells us what he means by sin.
1
John 5:7 All wrongdoing (unrighteousness)
is sin.
1 John 3:4
Everyone who sins
breaks the law; in fact, sin
is lawlessness.
The Shorter Catechism 14 says: What is sin? Sin is any want of conformity
unto or transgression of the Law of God. Not doing what God commands
or doing what he forbids. Disobeying or not conforming to God’s
Law in any way. Examples would be not honouring your parents (not conforming
to/neglecting to do what God requires) or adultery (disobeying, doing
what God forbids).
To
sin is to break the Law of God then in any way – falling short or
going over. God has given us his Law, summed up in the Ten
Commandments. Whenever we do anything or say anything or think
anything against the letter or especially the spirit of the
Commandments then we sin.
For example stealing; using God’s name in an unthinking way; coveting
something.
Not
honouring God on one day in seven; Lying, hateful thoughts.
It can eb summed
up as Love the Lord your God with all
your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with
all your mind {Deut. 6:5} and, Love your neighbour as yourself. {Lev. 19:18}. Wherever
we fail to do that we are guilty of sin.
2.
How to deal with sin – the two alternatives
So
that is what sin is. Now in the light of this there are really only
two possible ways of dealing with sin.
1.
The wrong way – Claim you have no sin
That is the first alternative. We can claim
to be without sin, that we have not sinned. Now there are various
ways of doing that. In John’s day some said there was a great difference
between body and spirit – what the body does has nothing to do with the spirit
so even though the body may commit adultery, it is not a sin as it does not affect the spirit. Only the spirit can
sin. Over the centuries there have been many other people,
especially religious people, who have claimed to be perfect. Now it
sounds rather difficult and it is. What you need to do is to
redefine your definition of sin. Most ‘perfectionists’ claim
that they are guilty of ‘no known sin’ which is not nearly the
same as no sin at all. More common is to redefine sin as only
serious wrongs – really bad things. Some are more sophisticated
and say there is no God to sin against or no Law of God to break.
However you attempt it, this is a hopeless way of dealing with sin.
It is what psychologists call denial. Being
in denial is when you live and act as though something were not true.
Your best friend dies but you go on as if they were still living.
Along with this we find some of the other defence mechanisms
psychology has labelled, repression pushing
down those feelings of guilt you have; distortion
reshaping reality to suit your ideas;
rationalisation justifying
sinful behaviour or thinking by blaming others; blame-shifting which is similar, etc.
Anyone here doing that?
You know you have sinned. You know you are guilty of breaking God’s
Law but you will not admit it.
2.
The right way – Confess your sin to God
That
is the answer – confess your sin. Own up. Acknowledge your sins.
Say ‘Yes, I have sinned’. More specifically not to men but to
God. Most people find it very hard to bottle up everything and never
to admit their sins. So instead what they often do is to confess it
to men. Many go to men who claim to be priests. You know it is an
important part of Roman Catholicism, confession is one of their seven sacraments. Done in various ways (not always in a box sometimes more
like group therapy). Others go to modern gurus like psychologists
and psychiatrists and various other therapists who, although they may
deny the very existence of sin are nevertheless father confessors to
their ‘clients’. Similarly there are group therapies that
involve similar things. ‘My name is Gary Brady and I am an
alcoholic/gambler/sex addict/shopaholic, etc’. Some never go
anywhere near such things but they still have a best friend who they
confess to. You may have heard someone say ‘I just had to tell
someone’.
Now
what John is talking about here, of course, is not human confession
but confessing to God, owning up to sin before him. Never easy but
absolutely vital for us all to do. Without defending ourselves or
justifying ourselves we need honestly and openly face up to our sins.
We need to say ‘Yes, there are no excuses. I have broken the Law
of God and I deserve to be punished. I am guilty.’ The word sin
is in the plural – our sins are many and we need to confess not
just the general fact that we have sinned but the specific sins we
have committed. We will not remember them all but those that are
particularly on our consciences should be confessed first. We need
to dig a little too. Go through the Ten Commandments or the
Beatitudes – soon you will think for sins you have committed but
have forgotten about. We need to confess them all. Easy to say ‘I’m
a sinner’ but what sins? Obviously when we are in public we
confess in a more general way but in private we ought to be specific.
It literally says If we keep confessing our
sins …. It should be a daily (even hourly)
part of life.
Are you confessing your sins? Have you ever?
Some of us find saying sorry very difficult. To admit we are wrong
is very painful indeed. But the only alternative is to deny reality,
to pretend we are not guilty. Suppressing guilt cannot be good for
you. Even the world acknowledges that.
3.
What happens when you deny your sin
Verses
8 and 10 remind us of the consequences of denying our sins. If you
pretend not to be a sinner …
1.
You deceive yourself and the truth is not in you
You
say ‘I have never sinned’. Such a person can’t see how proud
and foolish he is. Another says ‘there is no such thing as sin’.
Such a person is very ignorant indeed and is sinning in the very
statement he is making. To say you are not a sinner is to fly in the
face of one of the plainest truths in all the universe. It is to
argue that black is white and yes is no. Utter nonsense. Yet so
many do it. Have you been doing it? Saying ‘I’m not so
bad’, ‘I’m not a real sinner’, ‘I’m not guilty before
God’.
2.
You make God out to be a liar and his word has no place in your life
Worse, people who claim to be without sin
make God
out to be a liar and his word has no place in their
lives. To confess sin is (literally) to say
the same thing about it as God. Not to confess is not only to deny
it but to say God is a liar. God says ‘You have sinned’ but you
say you have not. Is God a liar? God says ‘That is a sin’. You
say ‘It is not’. You are making God out to be a liar. You are
rejecting his word. It has no place in your life. You are rejecting
it.
Don’t you see what you are doing? Not to confess your
sins is a great blasphemy against God. Go to God like the six burghers of Calais went to Edward III and pleaded for their city.
4.
What happens when you confess your sin to God
You may
wonder how confessing sin to God can make a difference. Because
he is faithful and just - that is the key thing here.
All the way through the Bible far from suggesting that God is a liar
(he cannot lie indeed) the Bible is clear that God is faithful and
just – he keeps his promises; he is absolutely fair. Now because
God is like that, if we confess our sins he (in faithfulness and
justice) will forgive and purify. NB faithful
and just not faithful
and merciful. The word just
comes in because God forgives on the basis of
what Jesus has done. By his death he has secured a just salvation
for all who trust in him. Cf 4:10
This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent
his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.
1.
He will forgive you your sins
All
God requires is that we own up to our sins and he will forgive them.
If we deny them they cannot be forgiven but if we will own up them
and say ‘ Yes, I have sinned’ then we can be forgiven. We do not
forgive ourselves; we do not receive absolution from a man but God
himself forgives. He cancels the debt outstanding. He wipes the
slate clean of every sin we confess.
2.
And purify you from all unrighteousness
More
than that he purifies from all unrighteousness. Whether we remember
certain sins or not he still purifies – he washes clean. Every
stain is removed. No man can do such a thing.
The word
if is important in these
verses – these are conditional sentences. What you do makes all the
difference. What will you do? Deny or confess. Think of a man who owes a
thousand pounds slowly agreeing he does (a hundred, two hundred, three and so on). That is not a great illustration perhaps but we must admit our sn.