If We Confess our Sins
By John R. Gavazzoni

According to John in the opening of his first epistle confessing one's sin is integral to walking in the light. Study John's prologue. Study it in many translations, noticing, "If we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses us from all sin," and he adds, "If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us." John equates the truth in us with our walking in the light, and equates our being cleansed from all sin by walking in the light with our being forgiven and cleansed from all unrighteousness by confessing our sins.

I know for a fact, and that from much observation of talk among brethren on the subject of the forgiveness of sin, that what John wrote here presents quite a puzzlement to many. What is the truth: are all our sins forgiven, past, present, and future by Christ bearing our sins in His own body on the tree? Well, that depends on what one understands forgiveness of sin to be. If being forgiven means that God undergoes a change of attitude towards us, from angry displeasure at being offended by our sins against Him, to absolving us of all guilt "by the merits of Jesus Christ," then what John wrote seems to indicate that God relates to us, in regard to our sin, in a very fluctuating way.

We, as it were, walk out of the light and then sin, resulting in God frowning upon us in displeasure, until we confess our sin and/or sins, and the frown changes to a smile. This is what some call keeping short accounts with God. Don't let unconfessed sin(s) build up or you lose out on fellowship one with another and, most importantly, with God. In the early days of my fundamentalist mentoring, for a believer, having been forever forgiven of sin, and rescued from ever going to hell, plus being guaranteed a place in heaven, confessing my sins was only a matter of fellowship, not of my soul's everlasting destiny. It was Calvinistic, basically....once saved, always saved.... but with the specter of losing fellowship along the way, and losing rewards in heaven.

In the opposite extreme form of Arminianism, you could have your sins forgiven by praying the sinner's prayer, "be merciful to me, a sinner, and save me for Jesus's sake," and for that moment, you were OK with God, and God was OK with you, you'd been yanked from the path leading to hell, and set on the path to heaven, that is, UNTIL you sin. You could be "saved," but succumb to some sin just as you stepped off a curb in heavy traffic, get hit by a bus, and, "sorry, Bub, it's hell for you."

That's, of course an extreme of the Arminian position. A more moderated form has it that if you continue willfully in sin long enough that you lose your faith in Christ, then you, once saved, will be in a lost condition, headed for hell until you regain saving faith, for we're saved by faith: lose faith; lose salvation.

I intend in this article to join the apostle John by encouraging my readers not to sin, but be assured, that if you do sin, you have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ, the righteous, which means the Father and Son are together advocating the unchangeability of the love and grace toward you. So where does confessing our sins for forgiveness and cleansing fit into this arrangement?

First of all, possibly to the deep surprise of some, or many, reading this article, forgiveness of sin has nothing to do with a change of attitude on God's part toward the sinner. Sin does not change God's relational attitude toward us when we sin. He is always, in Christ, not reckoning our sins against us, and by that non-reckoning of sins against us, He breaks down our enmity against Him and reconciles us, the whole world, to Himself.

Forgiveness is about God aligning our conscience with the truth that our sin does not, so to speak, cause the slightest blimp on the screen of God's love for us, nor does our sin disqualify us from that love, somehow. Forgiveness, is not about a change occurring in the heart of God. Forgiveness is about a change in our heart's conscience. Forgiveness is not about God moving our name from one list to another. It's not about going from being worthy of love to being unworthy. It's not about our sin evoking from God His displeasure at our offending Him. He, above all, knows that, "the spirit is indeed willing, but the flesh is weak."

Let me sum it up this way: we lose nothing of our preciousness to God through sin. Sin does not disqualify us from His purpose, plan, and destiny for us. In fact, I'll dare to say, that, if you were to ask God, "How can I qualify for your salvation," His answer would be, "You're already qualified; you've sinned; for I sent my Son not for the righteous but for the unrighteous."

You see, forgiveness sends sin away out of our hearts, beginning with the guilt there in our conscience from "the accuser of the brethren," moving on to deliverance from the power of that sin, on finally to deliverance from the very presence of sin. The Greek, conventionally translated as forgive, forgiveness, forgiven, has the meaning of sending away, of divorcing from, not about absolution from guilt on God's part. Please, let that sink in. God doesn't at one point, hold us guilty before Him, and then changes to absolving us of guilt according to our response to His offer of salvation.

So, here's the importance of confessing our sin(s): first we need to be delivered from all the religious baggage associated with the need to confess our sin(s). It's not about pleading with God to overlook our sin so that He won't hold it against us. It's not even about qualifying for forgiveness by being sorry for our sins, as in the sense conveyed to me as a Roman Catholic, that before confessing my sins to a priest in the confessional booth, I was to pray, "Oh, my God, I am heartily sorry for having offended Thee; and I detest of all my sins because I dread the loss of heaven and the pains of hell. But most of all, because I have offended Thee, my God, who art all good and deserving of all my love. I firmly resolve with the help of thy grace, to confess my sins, to do penance, and to amend my life, amen."

I don't know if that's the way they do it today, but that was the standard confessional ritual back almost 70 years ago when I would "go to confession," on Sat., to be worthy of receiving the little wafer of bread as Christ the following Sunday morning. It's, of course, nothing like that. It's about....for our sakes, not for God's....that we bring our sin(s) out into the open rather than hiding them from ourselves. There are brethren who try to avoid the importance of confessing our sins as John instructs us, because they think, that to do so would be to surrender to "sin consciousness."

Jesus' blood sends sin away from us when its admitted, brought out into the open, confessed as Paul testified in his own experience, that while he concluded that his doing what he chose not to do, and not doing what he chose to do, it was no longer him doing it, but sin dwelling in Him, BUT nevertheless, sin, remained an existential actuality with Paul regardless of its origin. It had to be dealt with. As has been said, God accepts us as we are, but He (thankfully) doesn't leave us as we are.

I want to share personally, what a blessing it is to say to the Lord (for my hearing), "Yes, Lord, way back then, years ago, what I did, though it was sin in me doing it, it was sin. I'm through trying to make it out to be anything but what it was. And, that deviation from your will, just yesterday; yep, same thing. Bringing it out into the open, praise your name, just reminds me that You're my Father who loves me and doesn't hold it against me. Oh, thank you, Lord, I see it."

Sin, in the Greek, means to miss the mark. For one to miss the mark, he/she must have intended to hit the mark, otherwise it wouldn't be missing the mark. If I was aiming to hit other than the mark, I wouldn't have been engaged in missing the mark. Way back in the Garden of Eden, Eve was seduced into trying to hit the mark. What mark? Well, to be like God. God wants us to be like Him. That's what it means to be in Christ. In union with Christ, we share His perfect likeness to the Father. It's not, of course, becoming God instead of God, but it is about becoming like God.

Trying to be so is how we miss the mark, for we ARE what God is aiming for: "the temple of God is holy, which temple ye ARE." Trying to become what God has made us in Christ throws a monkey wrench into the process (though, even that is part of His plan). It's not original with me, but I've been quoted as if it were, but it's true that "we're not human doings; we're human beings." Our glorified humanity in Christ has nothing to do with performance, it's about being. "In Him, we live and move and have our being."

Just bring the problem to the Lord: "There I go again, Lord, missing the mark by trying to hit the mark. I'm joining my brother, Paul, confessing, 'oh wretched man that I am; who shall deliver me from the body of this death.'" "I need Thee, oh, I need Thee. Every hour I need Thee. Oh, bless me now my savior, I come to Thee." If it's your understanding that it's beneath your level of enlightenment and revelation to take seriously what Jesus said to the publican who prayed in the temple, "Lord, be merciful to me, as sinner," i.e., that he went away justified, then you're laboring under a false sense of possessing special revelation. Jesus said the man went away justified. That means, he went away having been made right.

Justification means rightification. Or as Jonathan Mitchell has it in his translation, being "rightwised." Confessing sin has the effect of rightwising us, that is, bringing our consciousness in alignment with His mind. Not facing the actuality of sin, keeping it (often) subconsciously tucked away in a dark corner of our hearts, is to be wrongwised, not rightwised.