The Christian and Sin Part 1
1 John 1:8-2:2
Sean Kelly

Intention is not necessarily to get through the notes this week. So we'll probably do half of it this week and then get the other half next week. But since it's one, it's one basic thought here that John's talking about.

I wanted to keep it together in one lesson instead of trying to split apart in two lessons and have an awkward break. So my intention is try to get through points one through three, I think this week, which would be the first three pages. And then next week we would do a quick review of those three points for those who aren't here and just refresh us, and then do points four and five.

That's kind of my intention. But if one and two take too long, because one and two are two of the longer points, we'll just go through one and two this week. Wherever we end up breaking, we'll end up breaking.

But I know you're all willing to stay to like 1130, so I don't think that's going to be a problem. Right. Okay, let's go ahead and get started.

Ryan, would you open us up in prayer? Absolutely. Let's pray. Lord, we love you.

We thank you for your grace every day. We thank you for a good sermon this morning. I pray that you help us take that heart.

Help us to be attentive to your word. He would be able to teach your word. Teach the word.

Okay, let's go ahead and read our passage here first. John 1822. Who would like to read? Nathan, you'd like to read? If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.

If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just 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. 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, and he himself is the propitiation for our sins and not for ours only, but also for the whole world. Okay, so, John, after reminding us that we are to walk in the light just as God is in the light, turns to dealing with our sinful nature and behavior. Knowing that we still struggle with sin, we see that God has both a past and present plan for us to deal with that sin so we can continue in the light.

Knowing that God has already made provision for our sin helps us to have joy even when we fail to do what's right so during this first point, I put in verses seven and eight. We're starting in eight in the lesson we studied seven yesterday. If you have your bibles, let's look at one.

John. I want to look through chapter one, verses five through seven, because that's going to help us get the context here. And I'm forgetting what order the books of the Bible are in, which is different.

Okay, so in verse five, we read, this is the message which you have heard from God and declare to you that God is light and in him is no darkness at all. Remember, we were talking about light being kind of the truthfulness, the holiness, that part of God. So the darkness being anything that's not truthful, anything that's sin.

Here, verse six says, if we say we have fellowship with him and walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. So when we say that we are Christians, we are walking with God. We are part of God's plan and program, but we act in a sinful manner.

The Bible says that we lie. We don't practice the truth. Verse seven says, but if we walk in the lightest heathen, the light, we have fellowship with one another.

And the brother of Christ, Jesus Christ, his son, cleanses us from all sin. So there's a two ways we can live. We can be walking in the light or we can be walking in darkness.

Later on in John, it talks about that those who are of God do not sin. And so there's a lot of. Okay, well, how much darkness is too much darkness before we're walking in darkness? And how much light do we have to be in? Maybe this kind of idea.

So when it comes to verse eight, eight is kind of refreshing. Eight, nine and ten here, because it does deal with our sin and it deals with the Christian who's sinning, not that they're living habitually in sin, but what do we do when we do sin? What do we do because we have this sin nature in us? What do we do? Because even though if you read pastor, like Romans seven, where Paul talks about, he wants to do the things that are right, the things that are good and accomplish God's will, but his flesh wars against him, and he finds that he's doing the things he doesn't want to do, and he's doing the things that displeases God, and it's this constant struggle in his life. And that's the apostle Paul, you know, that's the guy that wrote 13 books of the New Testament, and he's struggling with sin.

Well, what happens when we struggle with sin, what happens when we're not doing what's right, even though we want to, even though we're trying to walk in the light, what do we do with that? And that's kind of where John's coming to in this passage, because he does lay out this idea that there is this dichotomy between walking the light and walking darkness. And the true child of God will walk in the light. But if we're not doing that perfectly, what then? So in verse eight, he starts out saying, if we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.

Now, this sounds like a negative statement, but this kind of puts us on the same board, right? And so the first thing we need to do is we need to acknowledge our sin nature. So the condition here in the verse is that we say we have no sin. If you're going around saying, I don't have sin in my life, what does that mean? Now notice here that.

And you're going to see us in this passage, there's singular sin and there's plural sins in the passage. This is important. Grammar is important.

The little s at the end of the word is important. You know, if I say I have had a piece of pie today, that's one thing. If I say I've had pieces of pie, that's a totally different thing, right? Maybe it's like, well, maybe you should stuck with the singular piece.

There's a difference by putting an s on something. So this sin is singular. So what does that mean? Well, that means that this deals not necessarily with our sinful actions, our individual sins, but the nature that's in us, the sin nature we have, the bent we have towards sin.

I put another set of blanks in here. I normally don't do that, but you're welcome. And this one you're going to help me out with, because this is something that Pastor Kevin taught for years and years and years.

And if you've been here, I hope you know this, but he had an acronym using the word sin to tell us where does our sin come from? So let's start with the s. And you guys got to help me. What does s mean? No, but it's a good guess.

No, but this could guess. Do you remember Nathan? Sure. What's that? It's not sin nature.

That's a different one. It's that short. Okay, so apparently only I remember this.

Lynn, you got it. Good job. I didn't hear you.

But it's our sinful actions that's what we normally think about when we talk about sins, right? We think about, well, I was told by God not to lie, but I lied to somebody. I sinned. This is our sinful action.

So, Romans 323, who would like to read for us? Lizabel, go ahead. So all have sinned. This is a point in time action.

We've all sinned before God. And you can go through, and I can start. One of the guys that I listen to once in a while about evangelism.

I don't know if I agree with everything he does, but Ray comfort, he has this thing where he goes out and he starts out with the Ten Commandments. He goes, let's go through some of the Ten Commandments with you. So he asks people, have you ever lied? And they're like, oh, yeah, I've lied.

Well, okay, you're a liar. Have you ever stolen. Yeah, I've stolen something.

You're a thief. He goes through just three or four commandments and say, according to God, you're a lying, thieving adulteress. He has these things that he goes through, and that's what we are.

We can go and say, hey, have you ever stolen anything? I stole a baseball card from my best friend when I was, like, eight years old. So I'm a thief according to God. Have I lied? Yes, I've lied.

You know, I've done all I can go through, and I can point out different times and places where I have not obeyed God. That's our sinful actions. That's one way that we're sinful.

Another way is the I. What is the I inherited guilt. What does that mean? What? Yeah, theologically, that is a correct statement, but basically because Adam sinned, because we're all in Adam, we're all sinners.

We've inherited that guilt because we come from Adam. And as Abigail pointed out, theological or theology is, it seems to come through the man. Which is one of the reasons why Jesus did not have this in nature is because he was conceived of the Holy Spirit, did not have that inherited guilt from Adam.

So that's there. But anyways, how do we know we have inherited guilt? Let's look at one. Corinthians 15 21 22, Josiah.

For since bi man came, death by man also came the resurrection of the dead. Whereas in Adam, all die. Even so in Christ, all shall be made alive.

So in Adam, all die. This idea is that we all die because we're all sinful. And if it's all, it's all.

So the baby who is born and dies within hours of being born is a sinner because they've inherited that guilt, not because they started lying to their parents or they stole something from the doctors in those 2 hours that they're alive. They're sinful because they have inherited it from Adam. Our sin comes from Adam.

So we have inherent guilt. Our third way in which we're sinful is the n. What's the n? Natural bent.

Natural. You see, you remember. I didn't remember the s.

It's faith. Natural. What does natural bent mean? We like sinning.

We like it because that's our nature. If we're left to ourselves, that's what we naturally go to. And you say, well, that doesn't seem right.

Well, I'll ask you to go look at unbelievers. And what do they do? They sin. You don't have to encourage them to sin.

You don't have to tell them, hey, look, buddy, you got a choice. You can do what's right. But I really strongly suggest maybe you try sinning.

I know you don't want to, but no, they automatically do it, right? They look for ways to sin, not that they know that it's sin or not that they know that they're disobeying God, but it just comes naturally. You don't have to teach a child how to lie to you. If they get in trouble, you know, that's the first thing they do, is they try to lie to get out of it, right? Those of you who have kids know this.

Those of you who have been kids probably know this, too. There's a natural event. Ephesians two one, three.

Who wants to read that? Ryan? Go ahead. The principle also, we all once conduct ourselves in the water lust of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the blood, and were by nature of their wrath. So Paul is talking to the Ephesians.

He's saying, this is the state you were once in. He talks about you walked according to the world's philosophy of the world's power. You walked according to what the world's desire.

Then verse three, he says, you also can tuck yourself in the lust of your flesh, of our flesh. So it's your own lust. You're fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind.

You're fulfilling your desires, and you're by nature your children of wrath. That's just the way you are, just as those who are not saved right now that are around them. And so we have sinned because we have done sinful acts.

We have sinned because we've inherited from Adam. And we have sin in our lives because we just have a natural desire and want to sin. So that's where our sin comes from.

So when John here is talking about, when we say we have no sin, he's not talking about the acts at this point. He's going to cover that in just a second. But right now he's talking about someone who would say, I don't have any sin nature, or I don't have any sinful bent.

I don't have any inherent guilt. If you say you have no sin, here's the result. First of all, you deceive yourself.

You're fooling yourself. If you say that there's no sin in you, you're fooling yourself. This word deceive means to lead astray, to mislead.

And God tells us the truth, that we are sinful individuals. And if we don't believe that, we have deceived ourselves. So we need to come to terms with that.

Well, what does that mean? Well, I'm a Christian now. I don't have that anymore, right? Wrong. Why do I still sin if I'm a Christian and I'm still lying and I'm still stealing and I'm still doing the things I'm not supposed to be doing? Why is that? Because I still have that natural bent in me.

Now, God, hopefully, is working through his holy spirit, through his word, to help me overcome that. And we're going to talk about that a little bit later here. But we still have that if we say that we don't have sin.

And remember, John's talking to believers in this passage. So if they're going around saying, I don't have sin anymore, I'm a believer, John is saying, no, you're deceiving yourself. You still have that.

And the truth is not in it, is the other thing. So you've deceived yourself and the truth is not in you. We need to acknowledge the fact of our sin, and if we are able to deal with it and live for God.

So you have to realize it's there. You have to realize that that's a struggle. You have to realize that there is a part of you that doesn't want to do what's right, that doesn't want to obey God.

And if you're not going to do that, you're deceiving yourselves and you're not living by the truth. Romans 611 14. Who wants to read that? Abigail, go ahead.

Make way. As you cross, direct yourselves to be dead indeed, but alive to God in Christ Jesus our Lord. Therefore, do not let sin reign in your mortal body that you should obey.

Present your members as instruments of unrighteousness to sin, but present yourself to God as being alive from the dead and your members as instruments of righteousness to God, for sin shall not have dominion over you, for you are not under the law, but under grace. How many commands are in that passage that we just read? I was counting because I knew what the passage said, so I was able to do that. Several.

Correct, Ted? Correct but vague. There's four or five, depending on how you count it. Right.

So you reckon yourselves dead indeed to sin. Well, why would you be commanded to reckon yourselves dead to sin if there was no sin in you? So you need to consider yourself dead to sin. You need to say that sin that's in me, that doesn't have the effect on me.

It has anymore because of what Christ has done for me. I need to reckon myself dead. I need to consider that dead, even though it's there, even though I'm struggling with it, I need to consider dead and realize that I don't have to obey that anymore.

Verse twelve. Therefore, do not let sin reign your mortal body. Well, why is he commanding that? Because we naturally let sin reign in our mortal body.

So he's telling you, don't do that. Don't let sin reign in your mortal body. You have a choice.

Verse 13. Do not present your members as instruments of unrighteousness. Why? Because that's what we naturally do.

We present ourselves as instruments of unrighteousness. And he's saying, don't do that anymore. You don't have to.

Christ has freed you. Stop doing that. And then the next one.

Present yourselves to God as being alive from the dead. This is where it can be one or two, if you take it as one and your members as righteousness. Or you could have them like, these are two different things, to present yourselves.

Why? Because we don't naturally do those things. We don't present ourselves alive from the devil. We don't present ourselves as an instrument of righteousness.

And so we need to acknowledge that and realize there is a struggle there in order to go, okay, now I know what I need to do. I need to trust Christ. I need to trust his word.

I need to live by his spirit. I need to reckon myself dead to sin. Reckon myself alive to God, because that's what Christ has made me.

So when he says that if we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and truth is not in us, this is actually an encouraging thing because it lets us be free to say, yes, I have the sin struggle in my life, but because John is talking about it, I know that God's doing something in my life. God's working. I can trust in that.

So John's really trying to be an encouragement here in saying this. So number one, we need to acknowledge our sin nature. Number two, probably one of the top five well memorized verses in the Bible.

One John one nine, right? If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. A great verse, a great promise to us. We cling on to that.

We're going to talk about this a little bit in context so we get even maybe a better idea of what it's saying here. So number two, and this word I made pretty easy, number two is we need to confess the sins we have. We need to confess the sins we have.

So the confession here is that there's an if. There's an if. If we confess our sins.

So the idea already assumes that, hey, guess what? You. You're not acting right. You're not doing whatever.

It's right. This is sins, plural. So this is our sinful actions that I was talking about.

As a believer. You're always going to struggle with that sin nature. You're always going to have that until we're glorified.

But your sinful actions, that's something you can point to and you can say, okay, yes, I disobeyed. Yes, I didn't do what was right. And so John is saying, if we confess our sins, if we see those sinful actions happen and we go and confess them, then something else can happen here.

So the word confess here, this is a confusing term. Some people are like, well, you have to be really sorrowful. You have to say you're sorry.

You have to say, I'm never going to do it again. Type idea. That's not what confess means.

Confess is simple. Confess is to admit, to declare, to say, it's the idea. We tell God what we have done is sin.

And by doing this, we agree with God's view of sin. By saying to God, saying, God, I sinned. I lied to you.

I know that's wrong. I know you hate it. There's a confession.

Now, the confession takes on this idea that you have the same view as the person that you're confessing this to. The idea that, okay, I'm confessing that I lied to God. And I know God hates lying.

I know God wants me to stop him to lie by confessing it, by agreeing with God with that. Then I want to stop lying because I already agree with God on that. So there is that there it would be like, you know, you have these like confessions that are on a coercion, like in legal cases and stuff like that, where somebody confesses because they feel like they're being pressured to or they're being forced to do it.

The court doesn't allow that because that's not a real confession. They don't really believe that. They don't really follow along with that.

This confession is the same way with God. It's telling God that I agree with you. I think you're right on this.

I think I'm wrong on this and been wrong. So I'm confessing that to you. Let's look at a few verses here.

Romans four, five, eight. Nathan, go ahead. But to him who does not work, but believes on him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is accounted for.

Righteousness. Just as David also describes the blessedness of the man to whom God imputes righteousness apart from works, blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven and whose sins are covered. Blessed is the man to whom the Lord shall not impute sin.

I think I put this in the wrong section here because I don't think I wanted to get there yet. We'll hold on to that verse. Let me look at the other one.

Yeah, so I think I just dropped these verses in the wrong section. So we'll move on because they hopefully make more sense later. So the confession is to agree with God here and then the forgiveness is based.

You know what? I think it does go there because I'm looking. I don't have a point on forgiveness. I think I somehow left that out or maybe I accidentally clicked on it and deleted it anyway.

But if we confess our sins, the result here is. Yeah, because I'm missing the result. Oh, it's at the bottom.

Okay. Who knows how I organize this? This is terrible. I'm going to move those down to part c because I think that fits there better.

So let's look at the nature of God. So if we confess our sins, it starts out that he is. And it gives us two things about God that we can trust and that we know are true.

So the nature of God, number one, he is faithful. He is faithful. What does the idea of faithful mean? Well, it has the idea of being reliable, of being trustworthy over and over.

In the New Testament I gave you most of the references here of where God talks about faithfulness or talks about God being faithful. And I just want to read a couple of these. I'm just looking to make sure I know which ones they are.

So one corinthians one seven nine is the first one I want to read. Go ahead, Jenny. So that you come short, in no gift, eagerly waiting for the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ, who will also confirm you to the end that you may be blameless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.

God is faithful, by whom you were called into the fellowship of his son, Jesus Christ our Lord. Here it talks about the end of the verse, God is faithful. This passage is actually talking about God's faithfulness and that we're going to be with God and he's going to reveal himself to us at the day of his coming, and that we're going to be found faithful then.

And God is faithful to do that. So it doesn't have to do with the forgiving of sin. In fact, there's another place where it talks about God being faithful to forgive sin.

This is the only passage, but God's faithfulness is shown in other ways, and we see that God is faithful in many things. So that's why I'm bringing a couple of these things up here. So he's going to be faithful.

That will also confirm to the end that you may be blameless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ, because you have trusted Christ, he's faithful to say that you're going to stand before God and you're going to be wholly forgiven. You're going to be holy, blameless before him, and you're going to be accepted by him. Yes, and I've had the same question answered a thousand times, and I just came across it for some reason.

So say I lied 20 years ago. Yes, and I don't remember it. And verse one nine says, if we confess our sins, if we don't confess our sins, are we forgiven? Yes, we are, because blood covers our sins and God doesn't see it.

So why does it say if we confess our sins? If we. That's a good question. I'm glad you're bringing it up, and I'm gonna cover it in about five minutes or ten minutes from now.

So if you just hold on to it just a second. You got four? I got four. I'm not gonna be.

I don't know if I'm gonna be in four, but it'll be a point c of here. So we'll get to it. So just hold on to that for just a second, because I want to get there and talk about that because that was actually one of the questions I had as I was studying this out.

So I'm thinking the same way you are. My dad answered, it's out of time. Okay, we'll try to do it again.

So let's look at this talking about God's faithfulness first. Then we'll get to that very important question which I think deserves answering first. Thessalonians 523 and 24.

Jonathan, go ahead. Now, may the God of peace himself sanctify you completely and may your whole spirit, soul and body be preserved blameless of the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. He who calls you is faithful, who also will do it.

So this is another passage talking about Christ coming, how we'll be sanctified completely, how our whole spirit and soul body will preserve blameless. At the day of Christ's coming. It says that God is faithful.

He's going to do it. So when it talks about God's faithfulness, it's a guarantee. And we're seeing this a lot in his second coming.

But it's saying here also, God is faithful to forgive us our sins. So God is going to faithfully do that also. One more passage.

Second, Thessalonians three. Three. Another reader, please.

Ryan, go ahead. But the Lord is faithful, who will establish you and God will evil. And so this is a more present tense, even the Lord is faithful.

What is he going to do? He's going to establish you and guard you from the evil one. So he's going to set you up. He's going to set you strongly and firm, and he's going to guard you from Satan's attacks.

And we can trust that that's true because of God's faithfulness. So God is faithful has the idea of trustworthy. The second part is one I struggle with.

I'm going to pose a question and not ask you for an answer because we're going to get to that. Why I think that is, this passage says if we confess our sins, he is faithful to forgive us our sins. That's pretty easy to understand.

If he says he's going to do, he's going to do it right, he's faithful to forgive us our sins. We can get our heads around. That also says he is just to forgive us our sins.

So I'm going to ask this question. How is God just to forgive us our sins? And I don't want to answer yet. I want you to think about this, because what's God's nature.

Is he a holy God? Is he set apart from sin? In fact, the Bible talks about sin cannot even be in his presence. So how can he just go ahead and forgive us our sins? How is he just to do that? I think this passage is why I include verses one and two of chapter two answers that question for us. So I'm just pointing you that question.

I want you to think about it. Let it float around your head, because these are important words in here. It doesn't just say God is faithful to forgive us our sins, but it says he's faithful and just.

So that must have some meaning here, why God can be just and forgive us our sins. Let's look at Galatians 311, twelve. Let's look at just.

I didn't define that just as conforming to the standard will or character of God. Upright, righteous, good. Is him doing what.

What God requires to be done. God is just. Because he's always going to do what's in his nature.

He's always going to do what's right and good according to what he defines as right and good, which is everything that is right and good. So he's going to be just. He's going to do the right thing.

And so that's where it really brings up in my mind, how can God just forgive our sins? How is that the right thing to do? And I think that's where some other religions struggle, like Catholics. Why do they have confession? Why do they say, well, you've done this. You choose 15 Hail Marys and ten our fathers, and they'll be forgiven.

Because you have to do something. God can't just forgive it. They kind of get the idea of God's justice.

But God says he's just. He will forgive our sins. All we have to do is confess it? I think it is.

I don't know if they understand that in their theology, but I believe that would be a work. That would be you doing something that appeases God's wrath. Yep.

Okay, so think about that. How is he just to forgive us our sins? But let's look at the result here, and then I think next week we're going to have to answer that question. So you have a whole week to think about it.

Nice of me to give you time to look at it. So the result is, if we confess our sins, he will forgive our sins. Nathan, did I.

Oh, yeah, we're going to get to that. Galatians 311 and twelve. Let's do that.

Who would like to read? Okay, go ahead, Lynn. I'm like all over the place here. Okay.

Galatians 311 twelve. But that no one is justified by the law and the sight of God is evident. For the just shall live by faith, that the law is not of faith, but the man who judges them to live by.

Now you're asking, when I put it in here, this is fueling the thought for the question. No one is justified by the law and the sight of God is evident. This is what it is saying is that you're not justified because you can't fulfill the law, you can't keep the law.

And so by the law you can't be justified. And here it says, the just shall live by faith. And there's the idea here that by faith, by belief, you're going to do what's right.

But it's also saying that you can't do what's right because the law tells you what's right and you can't do it. Now, I left out what comes after this because that also helps answer the question. I'm not trying to answer the question quite yet for you, but the idea is that the just thing for us if we're sinners and sin offends God, is not that God goes and out forgives us sin.

There has to be something else to it. And there is. Okay, so now let's look at the result.

Forgiveness. The forgiveness of our sins. So this is a humongous result.

God forgives our sins as we confess them. So let's look at a couple verses talking about God's forgiveness. Psalm 86 five.

You want to read or are you? Okay, go ahead. Grace for you, Lord, are good and ready to forgive, and abundant in mercy to all those who call upon you. Okay, so I was talking about God here.

He's good and he's ready to forgive. He desires to forgive, right? And he's abundant in mercy to all who call upon him. So everybody who calls upon God, God's ready to forgive.

This sounds like. Well, this could be kind of like confession. Maybe they relate.

Okay, that's good. But God's ready to forgive. He wants to forgive.

Let's look at Colossians 213 14. Another reader, please. Ted, go ahead.

And you be dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh. He has made a life together with him having forgiven you all trespasses, wiped out that handwriting requirement that was against us, which was contemplated to us, and he has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross. Okay, now look at this, because this is where your question comes in.

Dave, if I forgot to confess a sin 20 years ago, am I still under that sin? Well, here in Colossians two, it says, and you being dead in your trespasses. So this was previous to salvation. This is what I was talking about.

An uncircumcision of your flesh he has made alive together with him. So this is talking about our salvation. This is talking about our point of being saved.

Right. So he's made you alive with him having forgiven you, how many of your trespasses? All of them. All of them.

So all of our trespasses are forgiven. Right. Going on, having wiped out the handwriting, the requirement of the.

That was against us. This is wiping out the things of the law that were held against us. The things that were accounted against us.

God has wiped that out. When we're saved. That's no longer accounted for us.

Right. Which is contrary to us. And he's taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross.

So all of our trespasses have been nailed to the cross. They're taken care of. We're forgiven.

He's forgiven all of our trespasses. And if you don't believe me, let's read one more verse just for the fun of it. Is it on the sheets? Oh, am I looking at the wrong page? Oh, yeah.

Ephesians 170. Right. I was looking at the wrong line.

Sorry. Okay. Yeah.

Ephesians one seven. Go ahead, Ryan. So Ephesians one seven.

This is talking about, again, our redemption. We have redemption. That's a present state idea here.

We have redemption. And not only that, through his blood we have. Present tense.

What we have right now is the forgiveness of sin. So our sins are forgiven. Confess our sins.

He is faithful to forgive us our sins. So what does this mean? So I struggled through this, and my thought is here is that there is the idea of standing before God, that our sins are never going to be held again against us, right? Because our sins are all forgiven. So before God, we're guiltless, we're blameless before him.

You know, Christ comes back, he's like, you're my child. Christ has taken care of the sins, the forgiveness of sins. Here is a point in time idea that, okay, I have this sin on me.

I know I disobeyed God. I have this guilt. I need to go to God, confess that, restore the relationship, fix things between myself and God, and get my spiritual life back together.

It doesn't affect my standing for God. It affects my relationship with God that I have now. It's kind of the idea, like if I go out and do something, like when I was a kid, if I broke something on my dad's, maybe one of my dad's tools, because I wasn't supposed to be playing with it, I might feel sorry, I might confess that to God and, you know, that sin is taken care of with God, but I still have to go to my dad and fix that relationship and say, hey, dad, I broke your tool.

I'm sorry. I shouldn't have been playing with it. I did what's wrong? And so I think it's.

That's not a great analogy, but it's this idea that, you know, when we know we've sinned against God, we have the guilt, we have the shame of doing that. And this forgiveness comes and that kind of idea of our life that deals with our relationship with God and not necessarily our standing before God. When your hand went up a little bit ago, the other thing I was thinking about when Jesus was watching the disciples feet and give the example, Peter basically sending me a bath, it's like, no, you're not altering this party.

Showing that, you know, we walk through this world and we get sin in our lives, basically dirty feet and you go through and vessels and get to the. Yeah, yeah. I think another way even to look at it is let's say you're out walking around and you have a thought, like a hatred type film thought, which we know is sinful.

Right. And as you're doing this, you step on the road, get hit by a car and die. You don't really have time to react and confess that sin to God.

And so God's not going to go, well, you did pretty good, but that last sin, sorry, you didn't get that one. I'm going to have to punish you for that. No, you're standing before God is secure and that your sins are forgiven.

But again, this is like fixing that relationship before between you and God. The Bible talks about grieving the Holy Spirit when we sin, fixing that and getting things back into order with God. Go back to my question.

Okay, so all my sentences before I saved, say a year after I got saved, I said don't confess. I didn't ask forgiveness for that. Yeah, I asked the best asset.

Right. But if I just pray as my savior, all my sins are forgiven past the present, future. Yes.

So why do I have to forgive past for the goodness again? Yeah. If I can go back to the thing with my dad, you know, I broke his tool, I still need to go to him and fix it. He never stops loving me.

I never stopped being his son. And so, you know, as a father, you think, you know, I'm not gonna, you know, yeah, disown him or kick him out of the house because he broke my tool. But he still needs to come and make that relationship right.

He still needs to bring it to you and say, dad, I'm sorry I did this. I broke this. So that's maybe a better analogy than when I first started out with that.

You don't cease to be a son. Your sins are forgiven. Again, I use this term positionally, that we stand before Christ forgiven, but relationship wise, there's still a broken relationship between you and God.

Forgiveness needs to happen in order for you to be walking with God and be walking in the light. Because remember, this passage is about walking in the light and not walking in darkness. This isn't about being saved.

This isn't about being judged for your sins. It's about what your walk is. Like, what Sean was saying, I was trying to think of a flight.

Psalm 51. David was repentant towards God. So heading by us, professor, preserved, and we are repented.

That's where right direction. Every believer needs to be right, or else we are walking right. And even more than that, God's already forgiven us.

But there's still a relationship aspect that needs that actual forgiveness. However, God still has grace for him or her to return back to him. And they just need to make the choice to confess sin, to repent.

And like what David said, great spirit within. So it's a pride. Yes.

And I think even going back in this passage here, you know, going back to verse five or verse six, we say we have fellowship with him. This passage about fellowship with God and walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. This is the idea of getting the darkness out of our life, confessing it, getting rid of that darkness so that we can continue to have fellowship, so we can continue to walk with him.

Verse seven, we walk in the light as he is in the light. We have fellowship with one another in the blood of Christ Jesus Christ, his son cleanses us from all sin. Again, it's dealing with our walk if we walk in the light.

And so when we sin, we're letting that darkness, and when we confess it, we're getting rid of that darkness and getting ourselves back in the light. And so this confession is not a judgment type confession, where this forgiveness here is not a judgment type forgiveness, where we're throwing off God's judgment of us. This is a.

A relationship type forgiveness, where we're now walking back into light with God and he's forgiving us and saying, I'm bringing you back into the light. I'm bringing you back into a proper walk with me. Thank God.

Our faith is not always works. Yes. If we didn't have forgiveness of sins from salvation, then there's that work element.

So again, and this is like a judicial forgiveness, this is like you don't have any crimes set against you. And, you know, I may be able to break my dad's tools and anything. You're never going to stop being my son.

But there is some stress in that relationship until it's taken care of and resolve that. And that's kind of the same thing I see here with, with us and God. You had your hand up.

Pastor George Jordan if you know that you sin against Christ and then you're walking along and you're not asking for heals for that, and that's where if you sin and it's by accident, that may be something where you fall fellowship man to admonish you one another and say, look, you have sin. He realized that and then that's at that point he will ask forgiveness because, yes, psalm 119 talks about that too. But who knows your own error? You might not even realize that you sinned.

So obviously you can't confess that, but God will cover that. I'm going to try one more way to summarize. Yeah, I'm going to try one more way to summarize this.

So when you trust Christ as your savior, are you going to be condemned for any sin you have committed, are committing, or will commit in the future? Why is that? Because Jesus Christ died for all of them. He paid for all those sins. Right? So in that sense, you are forgiven everything you've ever done when you trust Christ as savior.

Now, if I'm a Christian, I've trusted Christ as savior and I start sinning again, am I going to have the power of the Holy Spirit working in me? It's going to be hurt, right? That relationship is going to be hurt. Am I going to be excited about reading the word of God? Am I going to have the joy of God in my life? Am I going to have peace from God? The answer is no. And that's why you have to have the forgiveness, because you make that relationship right, and then God can start working your life again.

So the two terms relate to two kind of different areas, if that makes sense. I don't know if that helps any. That's how I've come to terms with it.

That's probably similar to what your dad said for years and years and years. If I'm not convinced you today, I don't know if I can convince you over on your dad. I disagree with that completely.

Yeah, yeah. It uses brethren over and over. It talks about that.

We. If we walk in the light, that wouldn't be for unbelievers. Unbelievers be walking the light.

Chapter two, verse one. My little children. Yeah, I think first John is completely written to believers.

I don't know who's saying that, but I would disagree with him. I looked up to see what it said. What verse says? The first man.

Okay, well, then hopefully maybe I'm on the right track, although I disagree with the other stuff. Let's move on because I know you guys don't want me to be talking for another 2 hours. So we have forgiveness.

And it also says that he just forgives our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Now, that sounds very similar. At first.

I want to go back because I've just been thinking about this because we've read it a couple of times. Verse eight, verse seven. I'm sorry.

If we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another. In the blood of Jesus Christ, his son does what cleanses us from all sin. So again, this is something that has to do with our walk.

This has something to do with our sanctification. It's not being cleansed. As soon as we're saved from all our sins forever and standing guiltless before God, this has to do with how we're living now.

So the idea here, being cleansed, it says, cleanse from all unrighteousness. So God, as we confess our sins, as we agree with God, hey, this is what my sin is. You hate it.

I hate it too, because I'm agreeing with you. Now God's going to start removing that sin from our life. Now, again, not perfectly, we saw the sin nature, the sinful bent.

But God's going to be working in our life to cleanse us. And I think that's what it's talking about here, that as we keep those short accounts, as we're confessing our sins, we start to just even get this focus on, okay, I'm going to start doing what's right and stop doing what's sinful. I'm going to start focusing on the things of God.

I'm going to be more committed to these things, because when we're truly confessing, we're truly saying God I know you hate sin, and I hate it, too. I agree with you. I'm saying the same thing you are about my sin.

And so then we start changing the way we live because we want to please God. So cleansing there. So a couple verses.

A couple more verses here. Ephesians 525 27. Nathan, go ahead.

Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church, gave himself for her, that he might sanctify and cleanse her with the washing of water by the word, that he might present her to himself. Glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she should be holy and without blemish. Here the word cleansing is used again, that he cleansed her.

This was talking about Christ in the church. Mainly. We use a lot with husbands and wives, but the main focus is Christ.

Paul is talking about Christ in the church, and he's saying that Christ loved the church. And remember, the church isn't the building he doesn't love. This brick building that we have here.

The church is the people. It's the saved people that are here. And in this case, the church is the whole group of saved people across all nations, across all times.

God loves the church. His goal for her is that. And I want to say this right, he gave himself for her.

So these are people that are saved that he might sanctify, that he. He might purify them, that he might help them to grow into his image and cleanse. So this idea of cleansing goes along with sanctification.

This goes along with our growth and our walk. Verse 27 says that he might present to himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing. So it deals with how we present before people.

It's our walk here. So this cleansing here in one John one nine, I think, also deals with our walk as we're confessing our sins. That's something that's beneficial to help us walk, walk in the light, to walk with God.

Another verse. Where was I at? I kind of lost my place here. I have, like, six pieces of pieces of paper up here.

Titus 214, I believe. Go ahead, Josiah, who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from every lawless deed and purify for himself. His own special people tell us for good work.

So he gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from every lawless deeds, so that this idea is buy us back from lawless deeds. He wants to change us, that we're no longer doing things that are bad. So he's redeemed us from every odyssey and he's purified for himself, his own special people.

What kind of people are these people that are zealous for good works. So the purification has to do with how we're acting, what we're doing. That he's purifying us for good works.

So I think here again, I think this forgiveness and cleansing has to do with our walk. It has to do with walk in the light. That we need to be forgiven so we can walk under the power and authority of God and that we can be cleansed.

We can grow in Christ so that we're no longer encumbered by the sin. We're no longer prone to sin because we're walking in the way God wants us to. So that's why I think this confession is important.

I was hoping to get it to verse three. I'm assuming you guys would like me to be done for a day. Almost 12:00 so I'm going to stop here.

Three, four and five. I guess they're not any shorter. Maybe we'll do three weeks.

We'll see. I think I can get it done next week. But I think we have some good discussion today.

So any thoughts or questions?