The Strand Study Bible

I JOHN

I JOHN

2116

The word “confess” means “to admit, to acknowledge.” The Greek word is made up of two words, “to speak” and “the same,” thus “to speak the same thing that another does,” thus, “to agree with him.” Confession of sin on the part of a Christian is not merely the acknowledgment of that fact to God. It is the act of agreeing with God as to all the implications of its wrongness and the responsibility of the believer to put it out of his life. 1 1:9 b John 1:9 doesn’t say, “If we confess our faults.” It says, “ If we confess our sins .” John Macarthur in Found: God’s Will notes: Who wants to hear about sin? Most people mask it. Sin is not sin. Oh no. Sin is a “prenatal predilection,” psychologists tell us. Sin is an “idiosyncrasy of individuality.” Sin is “poor secretion of the endocrine glands”! 2 Question is: What is sin and why does it separate us from God? Charles Massegee in Sanity in a Satanic Society notes: NOTE – As humans, we often excuse our sins as faults. We even like to use euphemisms (cute little sayings) to explain away those faults. For example: We excuse the sin of gossip by telling God that we were just “passing along prayer requests.” We excuse the sin of slander by telling God that we were just “practicing constructive criticism.” We excuse the sin of lying by telling God that it was just “a little white one.” We excuse the sin of incessant talking by telling God that it’s just “the gift of gab.” We excuse the sin of not keeping our word by telling God that “it was an error ( Eccl 5:6 ); we really didn’t mean that.” J. Vernon McGee in Thru The Bible (I Cor. - Rev.) notes: It is interesting that in the parlance of our day sodomy is called homosexuality, adultery is called free love, the drunkard is a respected alcoholic, and the murderer is temporarily insane. Satan is doing a good job at indoctrinating the world with a new vocabulary. 4 As Christians, we need to stop “excusing” our sin and start “confessing” it for what it is ( Prov 14:34 ). Abbot Thomas Keating in Crisis of Faith notes: But He did not do so. And He did not do so because it was His will to show the power of His grace in our fallen human nature. He may also have wished to make sure that no human being would again make the same mistake that Adam made, which was to presume, through lack of experience of human weakness, on the gifts of God. Although our Lord by His passion and death has raised us to a much greater supernatural height and dignity than we had when Adam was the father of the human race, He has left our nature fully in the appalling weakness, blindness, and ignorance to which it fell through original sin . It is the triumph of Christ’s passion when the Holy Spirit places the tiny seed of grace in this pile of rotting manure, which is the way it sometimes feels, and causes that tiny seed to grow and transform all the rubbish and debris into a garden of paradise. 5 Until we embrace the reality of original sin, as it exists in ourselves, we will not experience spiritual progress. And sin is not only what we do that is wrong; sin is what we fail to do that is right (Jms 4:17 and Lk 12:47). 2:1 This word ( advocate ) is the same Greek word translated as “comforter” in John 14:16,26 & 15:26 & 16:7. In the Gospel of John, the word “ advocate ” refers to the HOLY SPIRIT ; but here in I John it refers to CHRIST . NOTE - Both CHRIST and the HOLY SPIRIT are part of the same Triune Godhead. 2:3 Assurance of one’s salvation ( And hereby we do know that we know him ) is the result of “righteous living” ( if we keep his commandments - Prov 14:32). Broken fellowship with God, due to disobedience to His commandments, results in quieting the voice of the HOLY SPIRIT within us, loneliness, and the lack of assurance that we are saved (Rom 8:16 and I Jn 3:24). 2:15 Sadly, here in America, there are a lot of Christians who have assumed a kind of reverse mission. Instead of being the church’s missionaries to the world, they have become the world’s missionaries to the church. They follow a social gospel instead of a scriptural Gospel and devote their moral energies to trying to make the church more democratic, to assure equal rights for women, to legitimize homosexual marriage, and so on. We are told to love the world’s people in order to win them to Jesus (Jn 3:16), not love the world’s philosophy. Sin is the attempt to get something in life that God does not intend for us to get. Sin is the attempt to be someone God does not intend for us to be. This was Lucifer’s sin in Heaven. Lucifer tried to get something God did not intend for him to get. He wanted God’s throne. Lucifer tried to be somebody God did not intend for him to be. He wanted to be God. Adam and Eve committed the same sin. 3 As a matter of fact, most of us are not really convinced of original sin , especially when things are going well. We spend a few years being kind to people, a few years without temptations of the flesh, and we think all our troubles are over. We have passed to the angelic life and will never more experience movements of anger or sensuality. In other words, there is no original sin . But there is original sin , and it is so real that to ignore it, practically speaking, is not to be humble. Humility consists in accepting the whole of reality, and original sin is at least half of it. When our Lord by His passion and death gave us back grace, He did not give us back integrity, that is to say, the perfect control of our lower nature by reason and will –that was the gift that He gave Adam. Maybe you would like to pick a bone with our Lord for not giving it back. The only trouble with that is that we are just the clay and He is the potter. There is no use saying, “Look here, why didn’t You complete the job? You did so much. You could have done one little thing more. You could have restored our fallen human nature to what it was before.”

1 Wuest, Kenneth S. Philippians through the Revelation , Grand Rapids, MI, Eerdmans Pub., 1959. Print 2 Macarthur, John. Found: God’s Will, Colorado Springs, CO: David C. Cook. 1973, 2012. Print. 3 Massegee, Charles. Sanity in a Satanic Society, Ranger, TX: Life Line. 1978. Print. 4 McGee, J. Vernon. Thru the Bible (I Cor. –Rev.), Nashville, TN, Thomas Nelson, 1983. Print. 5 Keating, Thomas. Crisis of Faith, Locust Valley, NY: Living Flame Press. 1970. Print.