Forgiven and Cleansed

God Will Keep His New Covenant Promises
(1 John 1:9, Preaching: Pastor Nathan Snyder, February 14, 2016)

If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

Come out of denial.

If you have cancer, it will not help you to pretend that you are cancer-free. Neither will it help us to deny the reality of our own spiritual cancer, what the Bible calls “sin.”  Last week we looked at 1 John 1:8, where John warns against denying the existence of our sin.  Let us not think there is no such thing as sin, or that the only people who are guilty of sin are those who are really bad, and we’re pretty decent on the whole and need not trouble ourselves about it.  John’s response to such folly is blunt.  “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.”  All of us are born rebels against God, prone to ingratitude, unbelief, and disobedience against him to whom we owe total allegiance.  We cannot escape this dark reality by living in denial.  The way to health begins by recognizing that we are sick.

Once we recognize that we are sinners, how will we respond?  One way we might respond is to ignore the problem.  We would rather God leave us and our sin alone.  This will not due.  The God who made us will bring our entire life into judgment and hold us accountable for it every thought, word, and action.  He who is holy, holy, holy does not ignore sin, because every sin is treason against him.  Every violation of his commands is a declaration that he is not worthy of our allegiance.  God will uphold his own honor.  Our sin makes us guilty before God and alienates us from fellowship with him.  Therefore all sin leads to eternal death and misery.  Sin is a spiritual cancer that we simply cannot ignore.

God has given us a remedy for sin.

If ignoring our sin will not help us, what will?  How can we remedy our cancer?  The fact is that we cannot.  We cannot save ourselves any more than we can pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps.  There is only one who can save us, and that is the One against whom we have sinned.  Doesn’t this make sense?  If we have sinned against God, which we all have, then the ball is in his court.  Praise God that he has provided a remedy for us through his Son, Jesus.  Jesus lived the life of obedience we should have lived, and died under the judgment of God we should have received, at the cross.  His blood can cleanse us from all sin (verse 7).  His death propitiates God’s wrath against sin (2:2), bringing us out from under God’s condemnation and into his everlasting kindness and favor.  There is only one remedy for the guilt and corruption of our sin.  That remedy is Jesus, God’s perfect provision for sinners like us.  Do not deny your sin.  Neither pretend it isn’t all that bad.  It took the death of the Son of God to remedy our sin.  Acknowledge it and come to him for salvation.

What do we do when we sin?

Suppose you have surrendered your life to Jesus, the Savior.  You have been forgiven your sins.  You have been washed clean.  Your debts have been paid.  Your record it clear.  Best of all, you now have fellowship with God.  You once lived under the frown of the Almighty.  Now you live in the sunshine of his smile.  You are living your life now as a Christian.  But you find yourself still committing sins.  So what do you do?  John’s words in verse 8 still apply.  No Christian should fool himself or herself into thinking that they are now sin-free.  It is important to understand that God does not remove us from his family every time we sin.  Nevertheless, sin is still damaging and defiling and it darkens our fellowship with God.  Think about children and parents.  When children disobey their parents, they do not cease to be children of those parents.  Yet their obedience, or lack thereof, does matter and does affect their relationship with their parents.  The same is true in our relationship with God as his children.  God does not throw us out of his family because we still sin.  But our sin affects our relationship with him and must still be addressed.

How do we deal with the sins we have committed as Christians, whether we have been a Christian for sixty seconds or sixty years?  First, we must realize that the basis for our ongoing forgiveness and cleansing, and the continual renewal of fellowship with God, has not changed.  The basis is still Jesus, our Savior.  Thus it is not a surprise that the way we are to handle our sin now is not fundamentally different from what it was when we first became Christians.  We come to Christ by acknowledging that we are sinners and that he alone is the Savior we need, and by turning from our sin to him in surrender.  This is essentially what we must continue to do.  As the Holy Spirit convicts us of sinful thoughts, words, and actions, God calls us to confess those sins and continue to look to Christ as our only Savior.  To confess our sins is to acknowledge them to ourselves and to God, and to ask for his grace and mercy.

God has promised to cleanse us from sin.

David has given us a good model in Psalm 51 where he confessed his horrendous sins of adultery and murder, asking for forgiveness and cleansing, and restoration of fellowship with God.  When David, or John, talks about cleansing from sin and unrighteousness, what does this mean exactly?  The language of cleansing is drawn from the rituals which God had established in Israel under the covenant made at Sinai.  It is clear from Psalm 51 that David recognized that cleansing through ceremonial rites and the sacrificing of animals was symbolic of a deeper heart cleansing which he needed from God.  That cleansing involved forgiveness, and the creation of a clean heart and renewal of a steadfast spirit within David, all with the goal of restoration of his joy in fellowship with God.  These are exactly the gifts God has promised to grant his people in the new covenant.  Listen to God’s words through his prophets:

But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the LORD: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts.  And I will be their God, and they shall be my people.  And no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’ for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the LORD.  For I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.  (Jeremiah 31:33-34)

I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you.  And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you.  And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh.  And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.  You shall dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers, and you shall be my people and I will be your God.  (Ezekiel 36:25-28)

To be cleansed is to be made fit for God’s presence.  God with us as our God, we with him as his people.  We must be cleansed of our sin in order to enjoy fellowship with God.  We are cleansed of our sin and idolatry by God’s forgiving us, and also by God renewing our desires and will so that we walk in obedience to him.  True cleansing always leads us into obedience to God.  This is the work of the Holy Spirit, given to us through Christ.  As the writer of Hebrews reasons, if the Old Covenant ceremonies purified a person ritually, “how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered himself without blemish to God, purify our conscience from dead works to serve the living God” (Heb. 9:14).  To be cleansed from all unrighteousness is to be set free from deeds which lead to death in order that we might serve the living God.

We are secure in God's faithfulness and justice.

What is the guarantee that God will forgive and cleanse us when we confess our sins to him?  John tells us that God is faithful and just to do so.  We often think of the justice of God as something from which we need to be rescued.  There is truth in that.  Yet as Christians we must understand that the justice of God also means that he will do what is right.  It is right for God to be faithful to his promises.  God has made new covenant promises to us and he will not go back on his word.  Furthermore, Christ has already satisfied the just demands of God by paying the punishment for the sins of those who come to God through him.  It would be unjust for God to condemn a person for sin when Christ has already borne their condemnation and they are clothed in his righteousness.

If you have come to believe the truth of the gospel for the first time, or if you have been a Christian for your whole life, never think that there is a point where the grace of God runs out.  God has made promises to you and secured them for you through his Son.  Christ is as much your Savior now as when you first believed.  Does sin mar our fellowship with our heavenly Father?  Yes.  But do not run from him when you have sinned.  Run to him and confess, that you might experience a fresh pouring out of his grace upon you, renewing your fellowship with him as he forgives and cleanses you yet again.  He is faithful and just.  He will do it.