1st John 5:11-13

1 John 5:11-13 “And this is the testimony: God has given us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life. I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life.”

If we believe in Jesus Christ we already have eternal life. It started the moment we believed. We don’t need to wait for it, work for it or worry about it. God has promised us!

My application Bible says, “this is true whether we feel close to God or far away. Eternal life is not based on feelings, but on facts.”

1st John 5: 9-10

1 John 5: 9-10 “We accept man's testimony, but God's testimony is greater because it is the testimony of God, which he has given about his Son. Anyone who believes in the Son of God has this testimony in his heart. Anyone who does not believe God has made him out to be a liar, because he has not believed the testimony God has given about his Son.”

In the book of Deuteronomy the people were told a single witness wasn’t enough in their justice system. (Deuteronomy 19:15) So here are three witnesses and divine witnesses at that!

John in the Gospel of John lists many more witnesses to Jesus. John the Baptist was a witness, Jesus’ deeds witnessed for Him, the scriptures witnessed to Him. Plus the Father and the Spirit. If we refuse to accept all of this, John says we call God a liar.

And notice where it says “he who believes in the Son of God” There’s a big difference between believing in a man and just believing a man. To believe someone is just believing a particular something he’s said to be true. To believe in someone is to believe everything they say is true and to accept the whole man as someone you would be willing to stand up for.

1st John 5:3-5

1 John 5:3-5 “Here is what it means to love God. It means that we obey his commands. And his commands are not hard to obey. That's because everyone who is a child of God has won the battle over the world. Our faith has won the battle for us. Who is it that has won the battle over the world? Only the person who believes that Jesus is the Son of God.”

This is another one of John’s central themes; obedience to God is the proof of our love. He says that His commandments are not burdens. This doesn’t mean they’re not hard! Christian love is not easy!

To love someone who hurts your feeling or insults you, to love someone you don’t even particularly like, is not easy. But, God isn’t going to give us a commandment without giving us the strength to carry it out. With God’s help all things are possible. Love makes all things possible.

Like the song “He Ain’t Heavy He’s My Brother” – if you do for someone you don’t like, it’s hard, but if you choose to love the person and then you do for him or her, it’s not a burden. God’s commandments are a privilege because to carry them out is an opportunity to show love.

So, difficult? Yes. Burdensome? No.

I read somewhere that there is something in the Christian, which makes him able to conquer the world. And remember when we talk about the “world” like this it’s the world apart from God and even in opposition to God. What this is that enables us to conquer the world is faith. Faith that Jesus is the Son of God.

That means we believe in the incarnation. And the reason that’s so important and so victory giving is that it means God cared enough for men to lay aside His glory and take upon Himself the limitations of humanity in an act of love and sacrifice that passes human understanding. It means God knows our trials, temptations and sorrows. It means He is involved in the human situation. It means that everything that happens to us is fully understood by God.

Once we have the faith that God understands and cares we have a defense to resist the temptation of the world, the pressures of worldly standards and motives; because Christ is now in us.

There are a lot of things in life, which try to take our faith away: sorrow, disappointment, failure…the six o’clock news! But, we know Christ will be victorious over all – because the Bible tells us so!

1st John 4:13-21

1 John 4:13-21 “We know that we belong to him and he belongs to us. He has given us his Holy Spirit. The Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. We have seen it. We give witness to it. God lives in anyone who agrees that Jesus is the Son of God. That kind of person remains joined to God. So we know that God loves us. We depend on it. God is love. Anyone who leads a life of love shows that he is joined to God. And God is joined to him. So love is made complete among us.

We will be bold on the day God judges us. That's because in this world we love as Jesus did. There is no fear in love. Instead, perfect love drives fear away. Fear has to do with being punished. The one who fears does not have perfect love.

We love because he loved us first. Anyone who says he loves God but in fact hates his brother or sister is a liar. He doesn't love his brother or sister, whom he has seen. So he can't love God, whom he has not seen. Here is the command God has given us. Anyone who loves God must also love his brothers and sisters.”

God has given us His Holy Spirit. It is the spirit that in the beginning makes us seek God at all. It is the work of the spirit, which makes us aware of the presence of God and it is the work of the spirit, which gives us the certainty we are at peace with God. It is the spirit, which lets us dare to address God as Father. (Romans 8:15-16)

The reason we don’t need to fear God when we stand before Him is because Christ took our punishment and God loves us perfectly. (Romans 8:38-39)

My application Bible says it’s easy to say we love God when that love doesn’t cost us anything more then weekly attendance at church. But, the real test of our love is how we treat the people in front of us: family members, fellow believers, etc. We cannot truly love God while neglecting to love those who are created in His image.

1st John 4:7-12

1 John 4:7-12 “Dear friends, let us continue to love one another, for love comes from God. Anyone who loves is a child of God and knows God. But anyone who does not love does not know God, for God is love. God showed how much he loved us by sending his one and only Son into the world so that we might have eternal life through him. This is real love—not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to take away our sins. Dear friends, since God loved us that much, we surely ought to love each other. No one has ever seen God. But if we love each other, God lives in us, and his love is brought to full expression in us.”

Christian love is a choice and an action. Our source of love is God. Jesus is our example of how to love and the Holy Spirit living in us gives us the power to love. It’s been said that we are never nearer to God, then when we love. Since we are in His image and He is love: to be like God, to be what we are meant to be, we must love.

I read something interesting when I was studying this:

In this passage the statement, “God is love” is the explanation for many of the questions we have.

1. It’s the explanation to creation. Why did God create this world? Hasn’t it been heartbreak for Him? All the disobedience and rebellions. Why would He want something that’s nothing but trouble? Well, creation is essential to the very nature of God. If God is love, then there has to be something to love!

2. It is the explanation of free will. Unless love is a free response, it isn’t love. If we were like robots, programmed like machines, there would be no possibility for a personal relationship between God and man. God, by a deliberate act of self-limitation gave man free will so when we love God it’s real.

3. It is the explanation of providence. He didn’t just create the world and let it go. We are in His constant care and He sustains, upholds and broods over us.

4. It is the explanation of redemption. If God were only law and justice He would leave people to the consequences of their sin. He does this often during our lives, but remember the wages of sin is death. God seeks and saves the lost souls because He is love.

5. It is the explanation of the life beyond. If God were simply a creator, man like a flower, would live briefly and die and God would just create another. But, God loves us enough to want us with Him throughout eternity.

1st John 4:4-6

1 John 4:4-6 “But you belong to God, my dear children. You have already won a victory over those people, because the Spirit who lives in you is greater than the spirit who lives in the world. Those people belong to this world, so they speak from the world’s viewpoint, and the world listens to them. But we belong to God, and those who know God listen to us. If they do not belong to God, they do not listen to us. That is how we know if someone has the Spirit of truth or the spirit of deception.”

The world, we remember from the Old Testament, liked the false prophets because those prophets told them what they wanted to hear. Unbelievers reject a Christian teacher because they don’t want to change their behavior. My application Bible says, “people who faithfully teach God’s Word won’t win any popularity contests.”

Luckily we are only trying to please God!

1st John 4:1-3

1 John 4:1-3 “Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world. By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God; and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God; this is the spirit of the antichrist, of which you have heard that it is coming, and now it is already in the world.”

There are a lot of different teachings going around. There always have been. We shouldn’t believe everything we read and hear. In the past we’ve been told to compare it ourselves to scripture. John gives us the ultimate test. For him Christian belief can be summed up in one sentence, “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” And he wrote that in John 1:14. Any spirit, any teaching, which denies that is not from God.

If Jesus didn’t become man and live on earth, then we can’t use Him as our example. If He wasn’t God, then He didn’t have the power to save us!

In verse 3 John writes the spirit of the antichrist, even now is already in the world. The word spirit is important. It’s not the final antichrist. He’s not saying the guy was alive and walking around earth while he was writing this. The spirit was (and is) on earth: the kind of people who are against Christ and spreading false teachings.

1st John 3:19-24

1 John 3:19-24 “This then is how we know that we belong to the truth, and how we set our hearts at rest in his presence whenever our hearts condemn us. For God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything.

Dear friends, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God and receive from him anything we ask, because we obey his commands and do what pleases him. And this is his command: to believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as he commanded us. Those who obey his commands live in him, and he in them. And this is how we know that he lives in us: We know it by the Spirit he gave us.”

What happens when our hearts condemn us – our conscience says we’re not good enough, we’re not showing all the love we should. John says, “God is greater then all these doubts.” He knows all things, not just our sins, but also our love, our longings, even the fact that we would love to be a certain way, but somehow always fall short.

He knows we are sorry. He knows all our dreams and when we struggle. And because of the greatness of His knowledge He not only knows what we did do and is either pleased or forgives it, but He understands what we meant to do and He can sympathize with us.

God knows exactly the way we are and why we are the way we are and He love us anyway! I think we get glimpses of this with our children occasionally; when they’ve done something wrong and because we now them so well and love them so much and we’ve been there too, we almost understand what they meant to do and how sorry they are and how they wish they could be good!

John goes on to say that we are to believe in the name of Jesus Christ. Psalm 124:8 says, “Our help is in the name of the Lord.” Remember in the Bible a name is not just what we call a person, but the whole nature and character of that person. So this means our help isn’t just in the fact that God is called God or Jesus is called Jesus or Lord, it means our help is in the love, the mercy, the power, the compassion, which is His nature and character. “I believe in the name of Jesus” is to believe He is the Son of God. He can perfectly reveal God to us and He is the savior of our souls.

So we are to obey Him and love other people. The Christian life depends on the right belief and the right action.

1st John 3:10-18

1 John 3:10-18 “This is how we know who the children of God are and who the children of the devil are: Anyone who does not do what is right is not a child of God; nor is anyone who does not love his brother.

This is the message you heard from the beginning: We should love one another. Do not be like Cain, who belonged to the evil one and murdered his brother. And why did he murder him? Because his own actions were evil and his brother's were righteous. Do not be surprised, my brothers, if the world hates you. We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love our brothers. Anyone who does not love remains in death. Anyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you know that no murderer has eternal life in him.

This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers. If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him? Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth.”

You can tell what a person is by their conduct.

We are told you should love one another. If you want to know how to do that, look to Christ for example. He laid down His life for us. (1 Peter 2:21) No man can see Christ and say he doesn’t know what a Christian life should be.

If we argue that the opportunity to die for someone else doesn’t come along that often, John tells us that when we see our brother in need and we have enough, we should give to him. To shut your heart and to refuse to give is to show that the love of God, which was in Jesus, isn’t in you. Any time we show self-denial or self-sacrifice for another person, we show this kind of love.

The little insert story about Cain and Abel is there to explain why bad people hate good people and why non-Christians hate Christians. Good people are a walking rebuke to evil people. The evil person will always show his flaws in comparison. And wherever a Christian is, if he’s living right – he acts as the conscience of society. That’s why Jesus was hated and why He warned Christians they would be hated.

1st John 3:9

1 John 3:9 “Those who are born again because of what God has done will not keep on sinning. God's very nature remains in them. They can't go on sinning. They have been born again because of what God has done.”

When we are born again we are given a fresh start in God’s family. God gives us power over sin. Again, it’s not that we will never sin again – we just won’t have the nature of continually sinning or treating sin lightly.

Because remember, earlier in this letter John said if we say we have no sin we deceive ourselves and in chapter 1 verses 8-10 he urges us to confess our sins and goes on to say that when we do sin we have an advocate with the Father in Jesus Christ.

Being sin free is our goal, which will be realized in the world to come and right now we are in the process of getting there.

1st John 3:3-8

1 John 3:3-8 “Everyone who has this hope in him purifies himself, just as he is pure. Everyone who sins breaks the law; in fact, sin is lawlessness. But you know that he appeared so that he might take away our sins. And in him is no sin. No one who lives in him keeps on sinning. No one who continues to sin has either seen him or known him.

Dear children, do not let anyone lead you astray. He who does what is right is righteous, just as he is righteous. He who does what is sinful is of the devil, because the devil has been sinning from the beginning. The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil's work.”

The man who knows that God is at the end of the road will make all of life a preparation to meet His God.

What do we know about Christians and sin? That we still sin; we just don’t enjoy it as much any more! Who John is talking about here is the person who continues to sin and isn’t sorry, doesn’t confess and won’t ask forgiveness. Our victory is not complete and we still struggle with temptation and sin.

My application Bible suggests three ways we can find victory over a prevailing sin:

1. Seek power from the Holy Spirit and from God’s Word
2. Stay away from tempting circumstances. Remember Joseph ran from Potiphor’s wife! If you are tempted by money, don’t volunteer to be the treasurer of your club! If you are married and someone of the opposite sex is looking good to you, you may have to cut that person out of your life.
3. Seek the help of the church or have a Christian friend who will hold you accountable and pray for you. And vice versa.

John says if we don’t abide in Christ, sin comes into our lives. This just means we need to continually remember His presence and deliberately walk the way we know He wants us to. It’s at least harder to sin if we picture Jesus standing right there.

1st John 3:1-2

1 John 3:1-2 “ How great is the love the Father has lavished on us, that we should be called children of God! And that is what we are! The reason the world does not know us is that it did not know him. Dear friends, now we are children of God, and what we will be has not yet been made known. But we know that when he appears, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.”

You’ve probably heard about couples that have lived together so long they almost start to look like one another. Some of the resemblance I think comes in actions and mannerisms they pick up from each other.

As we live daily with Christ we will become more and more like Him. He is the example of what we were designed to be and when Christ comes back to rule a new and perfect world we will be the way we were designed to be. It was God’s intention and it is our destiny.

Matthew 5:8 says, “Blessed are the pure in heart for they shall see God.” When we stand before Jesus and see Him we will finally be pure.

John says all Christians are children of God. It’s not that we will be when we get to heaven, we already are, right this minute. This life is the beginning once we are saved.

1st John 2:24-29

1 John 2:24-29 “As for you, let that abide in you, which you heard from the beginning. If what you heard from the beginning abides in you, you also will abide in the Son and in the Father. This is the promise, which He Himself made to us: eternal life. These things I have written to you concerning those who are trying to deceive you.

As for you, the anointing which you received from Him abides in you, and you have no need for anyone to teach you; but as His anointing teaches you about all things, and is true and is not a lie, and just as it has taught you, you abide in Him.

Now little children, abide in Him, so that when He appears, we may have confidence and not shrink away from Him in shame at His coming. If you know that He is righteous, you know that everyone also who practices righteousness is born of Him.”

“Let what you heard from the beginning abide in you.” What are the basic Christian doctrines?

1. Christ is God’s Son
2. He died for our sins
3. He was raised from the dead to give us new life
4. He will return and establish His Kingdom

John is encouraging them to hold onto the basics; the things they learned first. Nothing else you learn after this, if it’s true, will contradict those things.
Verses 26 and 27 really talk about the fact that as believers we have the Holy Spirit inside us and He is teaching us. When we listen to preachers and teachers, not only do we compare what they say to scripture, but also to what the Holy Spirit tells us.

Verse 28: the best way to prepare for Christ’s return is to live with Him everyday. To never forget His presence.

A commentator wrote, “We will all be called out of this world sometime and if we’ve never thought about God we will go and meet a stranger and it will be scary, but if we’ve walked with Christ and prayed to He and God and stayed in the Word, then we will really be going home and it will merely be entry into a nearer presence with God and Jesus.”

How we feel about that day depends on how we live now.

And again, in the last verse, what we say we believe shows by our actions.

1st John 2:19-21

1 John 2:19-21 “They went out from us, but they did not really belong to us. For if they had belonged to us, they would have remained with us; but their going showed that none of them belonged to us. But you have an anointing from the Holy One, and all of you know the truth. I do not write to you because you do not know the truth, but because you do know it and because no lie comes from the truth”.

John said this group did not belong in the church. CH Dodd wrote, “Membership of the church is no guarantee that a man belongs to Christ.” And AE Brooke wrote, “External membership is no proof of inward union.”

In verse 20 John reminds his readers they possess knowledge. Remember both the seemists and the Gnostics claimed to have higher/special knowledge. But John is saying his readers know the gospel. What John and Peter and Paul were all trying to do in their letters was not so much tell them something new, but to bring into active and decisive use the knowledge they already possessed. That’s what I really loved about the first part of this letter and all the letters Paul wrote – they confirm and encourage our faith and then they go on to tell us plainly, in practical ways, how we can, and should, live our faith. It’s not knowing that’s the problem, it’s doing!

Our lives would be immediately different if we put into practice what we already know. That doesn’t mean there isn’t a lot more to learn, but even as we are this very minute, we have enough light to walk by, if we use the light we have.

1st John 2:18

1 John 2:18 “Dear children, this is the last hour; and as you have heard that the antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have come. This is how we know it is the last hour.”

Over 2000 years have gone by and some people say, “Well, where is the final hour? The end times?”

Some think the end times are between Christ being on earth the first time and when He comes back the second time. In Biblical thought the last time or end time is the end of one age and the beginning of another. So it’s used more then once in the Bible and not always about the same period of time.

Men have the choice of allying themselves with the old world, which is doomed to destruction or allying themselves with Christ and entering into the new world. Here is the urgency for John: man has a choice and it depends on whether or not he has given his life to Jesus Christ.

So you may argue that every hour is the last hour, every minute in fact we are confronted with allying ourselves with God or with evil forces that are against God. I heard someone say once that one of the reasons we go to church is to show the world whose side we are on!

The antichrist John mentions here is not the one and final antichrist he talks about in Revelation. Here he uses it as a term for one who is an adversary of Christ or a false prophet or false teacher. Many men in history have been thought to be the antichrist, the one in Revelation: Nero, Hitler, the Pope (!), Stalin, Mussolini to name a few. But, in the letters of John he is not so much a person as a principle, the principal that is hostile to and actively opposed to God.

Show the world whose side you are on. Christian tees at:
Team Jesus

1st John 2: 12-14

1 John 2:12-14 “I write to you, dear children, because your sins have been forgiven on account of His name. I write to you, fathers, because you have known Him who is from the beginning. I write to you, young men, because you have overcome the evil one. I write to you, dear children, because you have known the Father. I write to you, young men, because you are strong, and the word of God lives in you, and you have overcome the evil one.”

John has been warning his readers the perils of the dark and the necessity of walking in the light. Now he says, that in every case their best defense is to remember what they are and what has been done for them.

Since they believe: no matter who they are, their sins have been forgiven. No matter who they are, they know Him who is from the beginning. No matter who they are, they have the strength, which can face and overcome the evil one.

The man who is a forgiven man, the man who knows God, the man who remembers that he can draw on a strength beyond his own strength has a great defense against any temptation by simply remembering who he is and what Christ did for him.

There are three gifts from God mentioned here: the first is forgiveness. In verse 12 some Bible translations say, “I write to you, dear children, because your sins have been forgiven on account of His name.”

Remember in Bible times the name described the nature of a person. And the names often were changed in the Bible: Simon became Peter, Jacob became Israel. So John is assuring his readers of forgiveness because we know the nature and character of Jesus. We know Jesus is the image of God and what we see in Jesus we know must be the same in God.

We see Jesus’ sacrificial love and patient mercy so we can be sure we are forgiven.

The second gift is increasing knowledge of God. And knowing isn’t just intellectual. It’s personal; as a friend. In Genesis “to know” is the most intimate of all relationships.

The third gift is victorious strength. Jesus doesn’t speak in general about conquering evil. He speaks about conquering the evil one. He sees evil as a personal power, which seeks to defeat us and to seduce us and to seduce us away from God. A commentator wrote that we all know there are some people in whose presence it is easy to be bad and some people in whose presence it is necessary to be good. When we walk with Christ, always remembering Him, always conscious of His presence with us, we are walking with the one in whose company we can defeat the assaults of the evil one.

1st John 2:7-8

1 John 2:7-8 “Dear friends, I am not writing you a new command but an old one, which you have had since the beginning. This old command is the message you have heard. Yet I am writing you a new command; its truth is seen in him and you, because the darkness is passing and the true light is already shining.”

The commandment is to love others. It’s old because it comes from the law. (Lev.19:18) And it’s new because Jesus interpreted it a new way. (John 13:34-35)
Jesus raised it to a new standard. Jesus didn’t just love His neighbors, He loved sinners and He loved His enemies. The Jews used to believe God wanted to destroy sinners. The rabbis said, “There is joy in heaven when one sinner is obliterated from earth.”

But, Jesus was a friend to the outcast and sinners and He taught us there is joy in heaven when one sinner comes home.

Jesus widened the boundaries of whom we are to love until they included the whole world. Where John writes the darkness is passing away and the true light is already shining – remember darkness is identified with hate and light with love. We have been shown the light and it’s even now inside Christians. The world is already going through a process where it’s spreading. It may seem slow and we certainly see a lot of hate in the world, but it is progressing until Christ comes back and the reign of Christ will be a reign on love.

1st John 2:3-6

1st John 2:3-6 “We know that we have come to know Him if we obey his commands. The man who says, I know Him, but does not do what He commands is a liar, and the truth is not in him. But if anyone obeys His word, God's love is truly made complete in him. This is how we know we are in Him: Whoever claims to live in Him must walk as Jesus did.”

Christ’s example that we are to follow is His complete obedience to God and His service to others. John says the way we act can give us assurance that we belong to Christ.

If our search in religion is fellowship with God and if as Augustine wrote we are restless until we rest in God, then the people who are trying to find God or understand God through their intellect are missing the boat. Any intellectual effort has to be combined with moral action.

1st John 2:1-2

1st John 2:1-2 “My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. And if anyone sins, 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.”

A commentator once wrote that there are hardly any other two verses in the New Testament, which so succinctly set out the work of Christ. We don’t treat sin lightly even though we know God will forgive us because we’ve already learned that to know God goes hand in hand with obedience to Him. We know that God doesn’t want us to sin and we know that an obedient life follows the example of Christ and He was sinless.

The work of Christ that is spelled out in these verses is: He is our advocate with the Father. There is a story that what Christ does can be likened to a courtroom, where Satan, the great accuser is telling God all of our sins and demanding the death penalty. Christ is our defender who tells God that the punishment was already taken care of. The price has been paid and we aren’t eligible to be tried again. That would be double jeopardy.

But, even more than that the word advocate comes from the Greek word parakletos, which also translates as comforter, counselor, helper and supporter. It was such a common word that other languages back then didn’t translate it. It was the same word in Syriac, Egyptian, Arabic and Ethiopic. The Jews adopted this word and used it for someone to plead another’s cause. They used it as the opposite of the accuser. They even called their sin offering “a man’s parakletos before God” meaning that the sin offering pleads a man’s cause with God.

The word came into the Christian’s ordinary vocabulary and sometimes was used as “one who lends his presence to friends.” And that’s what Jesus is. Our friend.

He is also the propitiation for our sins. Propitiation comes from sacrifice and the Jews understand this better then the Gentiles. The great aim of all religions is fellowship with God. To know God as a friend and to come into His presence without fear. It is a personal relationship with God.

The great problem is sin and the fact it breaks our fellowship with God and it makes it impossible to enter the presence of God. It is to meet this problem that all sacrifice arises. By sacrifice God allows fellowship to be restored. The Jews offered sacrifices morning, noon and night. Over and over again. The idea is that God is placated by the sacrifice. Pacified. Some deed is performed that what Jesus did, placated God. Satisfied Him, so that He, Jesus, is our propitiation. What He did took away our guilt and our defilement and allowed us to come into God’s presence clean and pure.

And John says Jesus did this for the whole world. There is no limit to the grace and love of God or to the effectiveness and the work and sacrifice of Jesus Christ.

Click here to shop for all Christian T-shirts and gifts

1st John 1:8-10

1st John 1:8-10 “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.”

If we say that we have no sin we deceive ourselves. Men are sinful. All men! If we confess our sins, we can rely on God in His righteousness to forgive us our sins.

What John means by God’s righteousness is, God doesn’t lie. God would never break His word and He said if we repent and ask forgiveness He will forgive. But, we have to truly repent, which means we don’t plan on doing that same sin again!

We confess because by admitting our sins and receiving Christ’s cleansing, we are:

1. Agreeing with God that our sin truly is sin and that we are willing to turn from it. We make a commitment not to continue to sin.
2. We are ensuring we aren’t trying to hide sin from God or ourselves.
3. We are recognizing our tendency to sin and relying on Christ’s power to overcome it.