8 If we say
that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. 9 If we
confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse
us from all unrighteousness.
1 John 1:8-9.
NKJV.
Believers are well-versed with 1 John 1: 9. It
is often quoted to encourage Christians to confess their sins with the
assurance of God’s forgiveness. But such admonition implies this: if believers
don’t confess their sins they won’t be forgiven. Too many today hold this view
citing 1 John 1: 9 as the authority. So, confessing sins become a prevalent
“Christian” practice, whether at the table of The Lord’s Supper or at an
individual’s private prayer time. Many have been taught to start their prayer
with confessing sins. They become sin-conscious. But is this what the verse is
trying to tell us? Not necessary so. Let us examine briefly.
The main contention is whether 1 John 1:9 is
for believers. The problem is that unlike most letters in the New Testament the
author did not name the intended recipients. So are we to accept that all that’s
written is to us and for us as believers? If we don’t know who the original
audience was and for what purpose the letter was written we cannot be sure how
to apply the words in the epistle to our life. Some exegesis is in order.
Notable Bible scholars hold the view that 1
John was addressed to Gnostics, or to believers who were confused as a result
of the infiltration of Gnostic beliefs into the church. Here I quote Professor F.F.
Bruce (in bold):
What 1 John is all about? In form and content it is a
message of encouragement and reassurance, sent to a group of Christians who
were perplexed and bewildered by recent happenings in their midst.
What happenings? … their most talented brethren had left them in order to form a new
community or communities devoted to a specially attractive line of teaching
which was represented as an advance on anything that Christians had been taught
thus far.
What teaching? In its theory it closely
resembled the docetic brand of Gnosticism; in particular, it denied that Christ
had ‘come in the flesh’. …On the practical level these new teachers claimed to
have reached such an advanced stage in spiritual experience that they were
‘beyond good and evil”. They maintained that they had no sin, not in the sense
that they had attained moral perfection but in the sense that what might be sin
for people at a less mature state of inner development was no longer sin for
the completely ‘spiritual’ man. For him ethical distinctions had ceased to be
relevant.
What was the result of the divergence in
understanding? In such a situation it was impossible for those who propagated and
embraced the new teaching to continue with those who believed that the old was
better. So they left the fellowship.
The Christians who remained in their former
fellowship were hard hit and shaken by the secession of these others, and
needed to be assured.
To Christians in this perplexity, then, the
First Epistle of John was written.
This is a most logical and reasonable
reconstruction of the situation that led to the writing of 1 John. It helps
make sense of many passages in the epistle. For instant, ‘They went out from
us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have
continued with us …’ (1 John 2:19, NKJV). Also, ‘every spirit that does not
confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is not of God’. (1 John 4:3,
NKJV). And most importantly for our case
at hand, ‘If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is
not in us’ (1 John 1:8, NKJV).
We don’t want to go into too much detail about
Gnostic teachings here, but from what we have learned, we can reconstruct 1
John 1:8-9 this way: ‘If we, like the Gnostics, insist that we are beyond good
and evil and have no sin – for sin holds no meaning to us - we deceive
ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we, unlike the Gnostics, accept and agree
with God that we of ourselves have fallen short of His glory and have need to
be saved from our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to
cleanse us from all unrighteousness.’
From the simple exegesis, we know that verse 9
must be read together with verse 8, it is not stand-alone. Although the “we” in
verse 9 could refer to or include believers, the “we” in verse 8 alludes to
people holding the Gnostic view. The author is not saying that believers must own
up to what they have done wrong before they can be forgiven. Such rendering is far-fetched
and is no different from taking the verse out of its context. The author is
talking about people whom he doubted were true believers in the first place!
This is wrong application!
Reference
F.F. Bruce, The
Epistles of John. W. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.
