1 John 1:5-10

[Editor’s note: after our summer break, the CD team is delighted to be back to work!  Starting today, you’ll receive fresh-baked, sermon-series-aligned Connect Devotionals each and every weekday.  Think you might like to join the CD team?  Get in touch!  And keep in mind: every single person who’s ever written for Connect Devotionals began by saying, “I don’t think I’m qualified.”]

If we confess our sins … doesn’t sound delightful on first hearing, right?  What’s a passage like this week’s (1 John 1:5-10) doing in a Delight in the Lord series?

To confess means to face up and own up to the bad I have done or the good I have neglected to do.  That’s hard and I don’t like it.

John sets before us a choice: to confess or to claim.  When we resist or refuse confession, we make the following claims – and John points out the accompanying costs:

• If we claim to have fellowship with him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live out the truth (v 6). 
• If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us (v 8).
• If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word is not in us (v 10).

John then contrasts these “claims” with two promises from God:

• But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all[a] sin (v 7).
• If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness (v 9).

To confess means to say the same thing as, to agree with.  Always a good idea to agree with God, instead of claiming

• “I’m good!”
• “Nothing to see here!”
• “Mind your own beeswax!”
• [crickets]

When we confess our sins, we are not telling God anything God doesn’t already know, and that more fully and far better than we.  And God’s purpose for our confession, its goal, is restored and renewed fellowship with God and one another, experiencing the purifying power of Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross for us, and receiving and being embraced by Christ’s forgiveness and cleansing.

Yes, repentance needs to be acted upon and acted out.  Yes, there may be restitution of some kind for us to make.  But instead of claiming sin isn’t a reality in our lives, we get to come out from under its power and penalty.

That does sound pretty delightful!

Confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you might be healed (James 5:16).

[Editor’s note: We welcome Ben Waldstein to our CD writing team!  Look for his first-ever CD tomorrow morning.]