What is Abide? | Listen to this Episode | Watch this Episode

This week’s Abide comes from the passage in the Our Daily Bread devotional from Monday 3 June, and the passage is 1 John 1:5-10. 

As I was reading this passage, verse 10 stuck out to me. John writes, “If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word is not in us.” It reminded me of a conversation I had with someone a few years ago. I might share it before we get back into this passage.

I was at church and the service had just finished. I got chatting with the guy next to me and he said something striking. He said, “I thought you people were the good people, but during the service, you all said you were sinners”. The man said he was new to church and was surprised to hear everyone asking God for forgiveness.

He was referring to the traditional “prayer of confession” that everyone had said during the service when we all acknowledged our sin before God; the good things we hadn’t done and the bad things we had done. He said it sounded very honest to admit that we are broken people. Sometimes as believers, we can pretend to have it all together but if we’re honest, we all know we haven’t. We all know we continue to sin. And this honesty about sin struck this non-believer. Isn’t that interesting? Confessing our sins can be… evangelistic!

In this passage, John unpacks various ways we can be dishonest about our sin and the implications that flow from that. In verse 10 he even says that if we claim to have no sin, we’re calling God a liar.

It’s a striking and impacting verse to read, right?

As I’ve chewed it over and read forward in John’s letter, it seems to me that John is saying something like this: God has revealed that we are sinners. God has told us that we have turned from Him. God demonstrated that by sending His Son into the world to die on our behalf. As John writes in chapter 2, “But if anybody does sin, we have an  advocate with the Father – Jesus Christ, the Righteous One. He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins” (1 John 2:1b-2a).

The cross doesn’t just reveal the cure for our sins, but it also reveals the need for the cure! So, to say we have no sin in us, is to call God a liar. It’s to say that what God reveals to us through the cross is just simply not true.

It leaves us with a simple question to ask ourselves: do we know we are sinners? Of course, in Christ, we’re new creations, but that doesn’t mean we don’t continue to need God’s mercy. If we’re honest with ourselves, we all still turn from God, don’t we? But the good news is, as John writes in verse 9, that “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.”

As I read through these verses I found it was prompting me to do just that: to confess my sins. In fact, I’ve found this passage to be a helpful guide to doing just that. So I thought we might pray through it together as a way of confessing our sins to God.

Let’s pray to God using these words He’s spoken to us.

Verse 8: “If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.”

Our Father, help us, by your Spirit, to be honest with you and honest with ourselves. You are light and there is no darkness in you. Please show us the ways we have failed you and others. We know we are sinful, yet we do not appreciate the depth of our sin.

Verse 9: “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.”

Father we are sorry for the wrong things we have done and the good we have failed to have done. Lord God, we have failed to love you with all our heart and failed to love one another as you have called us to. Thank you Lord for being a forgiving God.

Chapter 2, verses 1 to 2: “My dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin. But if anybody does sin, we have an advocate with the Father – Jesus Christ, the Righteous One. He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world.”

Thank you Jesus Christ for being our friend and brother and being the sacrifice for our sins in our place. Thank you Father that you forgive us in your Son. And thank you that you are our hope and the hope of the world.

I hope praying through these verses together has helped us bring our sin to God in repentance. As John says, we can trust that God is just to forgive us. As we go about this week, why don’t we try using these verses to guide our prayer in the presence of our kind Father?