1 JOHN 1.7,9,2.1-2 THE TEST OF OBEDIENCE PART 2

Today there are many people who say they are Christians, they trust in Jesus and they are going to heaven, yet they still live in sin and do not intend to change.  This verse says that a person that says he knows Jesus, but still habitually lives in sin is a liar and does not live according to the truth of the Bible.  The bottom line is that if you live that way, you have not been saved, and you will not go to heaven.

Proverbs 28:13 says, “He that covers his sins shall not prosper, but whoever confesses and forsakes them shall have mercy.”

Psalm 51:4, looking to God he says, “Against thee, thee only have I sinned and done this evil in thy sight.”

So, the people who say you can be saved and live anyway you want have never been saved and will never make it to heaven.

The practice of concealing is a very refined art form among unbelievers. The practice of concealing sin, of covering sin, of redefining sin is characteristic of people who don’t know God, who, to borrow the language of John, are not in the fellowship. But that’s what they do, they cover and they conceal. Christians, on the other hand, are people who confess.

Here, to “walk in the darkness” means to sin habitually, the contrast being, not a sinless life (for John teaches that everyone sins, v. 8), but a progressive growth in godliness^{. Boice}

But we must not miss the fact that his rebuke applies to anyone who claims to know God while at the same time treats either sin or the need for establishing and maintaining a moral life lightly. ^[1]

The first man said, “Sin, what’s that?” The second man said, “Sin? Oh, I don’t do that anymore.” Third man said, “Yes, there’s sin, I’ve never sinned.” He claims he’s never sinned. If we say we have not sinned, never, we have a problem here. It’s evident that you don’t know the truth. You don’t know the truth about the gospel and you don’t know the truth about sin. And they go together.

Col. 1:13 “He has delivered us from the power of darkness and conveyed us into the kingdom of the Son of His love, 14 in whom we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins.”

Eph. 5:11 “And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather expose them.”

John 8:12, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me shall not walk in darkness but shall have the light of life.” If you say that you have fellowship with Him but you walk in the darkness, it’s a lie.

In verse 6, “They say they have fellowship with God, but they walk in darkness.” And so the first word that describes them is “darkness.” There is the absence of eternal life, characterized by the love of truth and the love of holiness.

1John 1:7 says But if we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin. This is better translated since we walk in the light.  This means we have truly been saved, we are habitually living according to the truth of the bible, we have a special bond with other believers because of the Holy Spirit that lives in us, and we are continually being cleansed from sin by the blood of Jesus Christ.

He does not understand “walking in the light” to mean perfection. Rather, he means a genuine and continuous pursuit of holiness out of which increased fellowship with other Christians and confession of sin will come. It is this that must characterize all who know God. Boice

John is merely saying that one who walks in fellowship with God will find forgiveness for any sin that might enter his life. Since this forgiveness is already provided for by the sacrifice of Christ. Boice

1John 1:9 If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

Rom. 8:31-34. The word “confess” means “to say the same thing.” To confess sin means to say the same thing about it that God says.

To understand the word “faithful” he must understand that God has promised to forgive sin when it is confessed to him. Thus, Isaiah wrote of God’s promise: “ Come now, let us reason together,’ says the Lord”. ‘Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool’ ” (Isa. 1:18). Through Jeremiah God declared, “I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more” (Jer. 31:34). Clearly, if God had spoken such promises and then had refused to forgive sin, he would have been unfaithful. But he is not. He is faithful to forgive in that he has promised to do so and He does.

The answer to the question of the justice of God in forgiving sins is found in Romans 3:20–28, where Paul explains how it is that God is both “just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus” (v. 26 kjv). It is possible, he says, through Christ, who, being God and therefore having no sin of his own, was able to and did die for us. God punished our sin in Christ. Jesus became the “propitiation” for our sins, meaning that by him God’s just wrath against our sin was satisfied. It is interesting in this context that the word “propitiation,” used by Paul in Romans, is used by John just three verses further on as he enters more fully into a discussion of Christ’s work. ^Boice

You ask why do we have to confess our sins if God has already forgiven us.  We can never lose our salvation, but we can mess up the relationship. If I slap you and ask you later to do something for me, I am sure you would say no.  You would at least want an apology, it is the same with God, we grieve Him when we sin, and we need to ask forgiveness to restore our right relationship and place in His will.

To confess means to say the same thing about our sin as God does.  We like to rationalize our sin. Others are conceited, but I respect myself. When others lose their temper, they are angry; me, I have righteous anger. Others are prejudiced; but I have convictions.” If someone else takes initiative, he is presumptuous; if I take initiative, I am creative. when I show indignation over something, it is righteous anger. The problem is not circumstance but sin. Nice labels do not change the poison inside the bottle. Don’t say God, I don’t know if I sinned or not, or if I sinned forgive me, but call it sin like God does. We need to admit and confess sin to be right with God.

John 1:29 “The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him, and said, ‘Behold! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!’”

Heb. 7:25 “Therefore He is also able to save to the uttermost those [believers] who come to God through Him, since He always lives to make intercession for them.”

2 Cor. 5:21 “For He made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.”

1 Peter 2:24 “…who Himself bore our sins in His own body on the tree, that we, having died to sins, might live for righteousness— by whose stripes you were healed.”

How does God provide for the sins of the saints? Through the heavenly ministry of Christ. We are saved from the penalty of sin by His death (Rom. 5:6-9), and we are saved daily from the power of sin by His life (Rom. 5:10). The word “advocate” means “one who pleads a case” and is the same Gk. word as “Comforter” in John 14:16.

Ro 14:23 “But he who doubts is condemned if he eats, because he does not eat from faith; for whatever is not from faith is sin.”

First, If God’s light is really shining on us, we will rather say, as did Isaiah, “Woe to me! I am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty!” (Isa. 6:5); or with Peter, “Go away from me, Lord; I am a sinful man” (Luke 5:8); or with Paul, “I am the worst [of sinners]” (1 Tim. 1:15). Boice

Second, if God is our light and if we walk in the light, we will be growing spiritually. The Bible will be becoming more precious, for God is revealed in it. We will love godliness. And we will be finding fellowship with God’s people more and more delightful and valuable.

Finally, we will also be finding it increasingly desirable to serve the Lord Jesus Christ. Indeed, we will yearn to serve him, for we will know him more and more as the one who brought us out of the bondage of our darkness into his marvelous light. Wesley wrote of this desire:

Long my imprisoned spirit lay,

Fast bound in sin and nature’s night:

Thine eye diffused a quickening ray,

I woke, the dungeon flamed with light:

My chains fell off, my heart was free,

I rose, went forth, and followed Thee.

To follow Christ is the natural desire of the one whose life has been illuminated by him. Boice

1 John 2:1 My little children, these things I write to you, so that you may not sin. And if anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.

Nothing that John has written thus far can be taken as an endorsement of sin. But it is possible that some might misunderstand his statements and thereby reach that conclusion. Has he not argued that all men sin? “Well,” they might argue, “if sin is inevitable, why struggle against it? You will sin no matter what you do. So resign yourself to the facts.” Or again, has John not said that there is forgiveness for sin through what Jesus has done and, indeed, continues to do? “All right,” they might add, “why worry about committing sin? If God forgives it, the outcome is assured. As a matter of fact, why not sin more, for God can forgive more and get greater glory in such circumstances.”^[1]

Ro 6:1 What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound? 2 God forbid. How shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer therein?

These things I write to you,

The first part of 1John 2:1 says My little children, these things I write to you, so that you may not sin. This says that if we know Christ as our Lord and Savior then we do not have to sin because God has given us the Holy Spirit to overcome sin, suffering, and temptation, but we sin because we are weak and want to.  If you have not been saved, you are like Mic Jagger who says he is free, free to do what ever he wants.  But I say to you and Mic, you are not free to not do what you want to do and no matter how hard you try you will never be able to change or break those bad habits without Christ.

One purpose of writing 1 John is that believers would have a means for addressing sin issues. This is an argument against the idea that Christians must engage in inevitable habitual sinful behavior.

John does not write so that his readers have justification for their sin (1:6,8,10) but that they might conquer sin.

Although Christians sin (1:10), they can conquer sin – “so that you may not sin.”

John writes with the purpose that his readers will have a safeguard against sinning. If we practice sin, we will become more skilled in it.

There is no sin in being tempted but it is a sin to yield to temptation

The last part of 1John 2:1 says And if anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. If we are Christians we don’t look at salvation as a license to sin, but if we are truly saved, as we continue to follow Christ we will sin less and less as the pattern of our life.  But He also tells us that when we do sin that it is Jesus our Advocate, our ally, our intercessor who defends us before an accusing devil and a Holy God that He paid for that sin on the cross and it can never be held against us.

Jesus is more than a Savior and more than Lord, He is our Advocate or Lawyer. He is with the Father and intercedes on our behalf to the Father. An advocate is someone called along side to help. An advocate comes to someone’s aid. Secular Greek used “advocate” as a court term to mean a legal assistant, counsel for defense. Jesus as our Advocate pleads our cause; He is our Intercessor.

The word “advocate” occurs 5 times in the Greek New Testament. Other occurrences translate it by “comforter.” All 4 of the other occurrences refer to the Holy Spirit.

We have a Defense Attorney in Jesus Christ and another Defense Attorney in the Holy Spirit. Jesus defends us against the accusations of the Devil because of our sin (Re 12:10). The Holy Spirit gives us the power to live the Christian life

1Jo 2:2 And He Himself is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the whole world.

This means Jesus Christ died on the cross so that anyone who believes He died in their place, took their hell, and paid the penalty for their sins could go to heaven.  The word propitiation means satisfaction and Jesus satisfied the legal demands that someone had to be punished and die for our sins.  That is why when Jesus died, He said it is finished, it means He paid our sin debt in full and anyone who would call on Him for forgiveness would go to heaven.

Propitiator - the One who satisfies the holy demands of an absolute God

Propitiation refers to the full satisfaction of the absolute, holy and righteous character of God. The “Mercy seat” was the place of propitiation. In the New Testament it is the shed blood of the body of Christ.

Jesus as our Defense Attorney is His office but His role in propitiation is the satisfaction

Propitiation is a term of appeasement. Jesus’ death on the cross appeased the wrath of God against our sin. God must be just or consistent with Himself. He is absolute in His being and He can never compromise His character in any way.

Heb 9:22 And according to the law almost all things are purified with blood, and without shedding of blood there is no remission.

Romans 3:21-26 But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it— ²² the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: ²³ for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, ²⁴ and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, ²⁵ whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God's righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. ²⁶ It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.

Mark 8:36 "For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?

John 14:6 Jesus said to him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me. Have you trusted Him as your Savior? He can Save you if You ask Him based on His death, burial, and resurrection for your sins. Believe in Him for forgiveness of your sins today.

“And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”  -John 8:32

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^[1] Boice, J. M. (2004). The Epistles of John: an expositional commentary (p. 31). Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Books.