SATURDAY MARCH 14, 2020.
SUBJECT: CONFESSION OF SIN OF A CHRISTIAN!
Memory verse: "If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” (First John 1 vs 9.)
READ: First John 1 vs 5 - 10:
1:5: This is the message which we have heard from Him and declared to you, that God is light and in Him is no darkness at all.
1:6: If we say that we have fellowship with Him, and walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth.
1:7: 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.
1:8: If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.
1:9: If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
1:10: If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar, and His word is not in us.
1:10: If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar, and His word is not in us.
INTIMATION:
When we were without Christ, we were dead in sin and condemned before God. But when we believed in, accepted the sacrifice of Jesus Christ for our sins on the cross of Calvary, and confessed Him as our Lord and Savior we became Christians. We thereby establish relationship and fellowship the Lord. Yet, even after we become Christians, we still sometimes sin and still need to confess. Though we have a relationship with the Lord as His adopted children, but our sins deny us of the privilege of continued fellowship with Him.
Consequently, Christians must continually and humbly keep on acknowledging their sin (Psalm 32 vs 5). This is the nature of walking in the light. In other words, one who is walking in the light is continually confessing his or her sin. Reference here is to a demeanor of life. It is natural for the one who walks in the light to recognize and confess his or her sin to God. This is the condition upon which one receives the continual cleansing of sin by the blood of Jesus. Sin refers to transgression of God’s law, and thus confession of sin is to God, not to man. Confession of sin is the nature of those who walk in the light. It is the evidence that they are in the light.
God’s attributes of being faithful and just is inherent in His promise of forgiveness because He is righteous and just. God is proclaimed righteous because He has offered the sacrificial atonement for sin through the blood of Jesus (Roman 3 vs 25). He is faithful because He did not create man a free-moral being without a plan of atonement for man’s problem of sin (Ephesians 2 vs 8 - 12). He is thus just because He has offered atonement for all humans through the cross, for no one could atone for his or her sins by either law-keeping or good works. God both forgives and cleanses. Forgiveness refers to forgetting (Hebrews 10 vs 17). Cleansing refers to sanctifying one’s soul in order that he or she be able to approach God.
Therefore, the confession of sin by a Christian is not offered to gain God’s acceptance, but to remove the barrier to fellowship that our sin has put between the Christian and Him. Broken fellowship does not break the relationship, but it mars it and robs of its richest blessings and benefits—fellowship with the Lord. We need not fear revealing our sins to God, He knows them already. He will not push us away, no matter what we have done. Instead, He will draw us to Himself. He has given an ‘Helper’ in the person of Holy Spirit, and the Holy Spirit has given us the way to restore broken fellowship in the epistle of John. This short epistle was written to tell us how to maintain our fellowship and how to restore it when it is broken.
God is light, and as long as you are in fellowship with Him, you are in light. But the instant your fellowship is broken, you go into the dark. As long as we walk in the light; as long as we are in fellowship with Him, the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses all the blunders and mistakes that we make. But if we sin, we are out of fellowship with Him and we are walking in darkness, deceiving ourselves. The moment we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins, and cleans us from all unrighteousness. The broken fellowship is restored.
Prayer: Abba Father, my utmost heart desire is to continually be in full fellowship with You. Though the human factors my cause the fellowship to be impaired from time to time, I pray that You endue me with the spirit of constant and immediate confession of any sin I may commit so as to ever restore my fellowship with You, in Jesus’ Name I have prayed, Amen.
PRAISE THE LORD!
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