Bring It to the Light

“If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”
1 John 1:9 (KJV)

Have you ever messed up and almost immediately wanted to hide?

Maybe you said something you knew you shouldn't have said. Maybe you lost your temper, went back to an old habit you thought you had overcome, or knowingly did something you knew wasn't pleasing to God.

Then comes that awful feeling afterward.

“I knew better.”

“Why did I do that again?”

Sometimes you don't even want to pray. You feel embarrassed before God, ashamed of what you've done, and part of you thinks it would be easier to avoid Him for a while.

I've come to realize how backwards that is.

The moment I want to hide from God is usually the very moment I need to come to Him.

That's what makes 1 John 1:9 so comforting. God doesn't tell us to clean ourselves up and then come back. He tells us to confess.

Bring it into the light.

God Already Knows

One thing I've had to understand about confession is that I'm not telling God something He doesn't already know.

David wrote:

“O LORD, thou hast searched me, and known me.
Thou knowest my downsitting and mine uprising, thou understandest my thought afar off.”
Psalm 139:1–2 (KJV)

God already saw what happened.

He heard what I said. He knows what I was thinking. He knows what was going on in my heart before I even acted on it.

So when I confess my sin, I'm not giving God new information.

I'm agreeing with Him.

I'm saying, “Lord, You already know what I did, and I know it was wrong. I'm not going to defend it or try to make it sound better than it was.”

That's a very different thing from making excuses.

And if we're being truthful, excuses come pretty naturally to us.

We've Been Hiding Since the Garden

Think about what happened after Adam and Eve sinned.

“And Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God amongst the trees of the garden.”
Genesis 3:8 (KJV)

Their first instinct was to hide.

Then, when God confronted Adam, he said:

“The woman whom thou gavest to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat.”
Genesis 3:12 (KJV)

There's something painfully familiar about that.

We may not hide behind trees, but we still hide. And we still blame.

“I wouldn't have reacted that way if they hadn't done what they did.”

“I've been under a lot of stress.”

“They hurt me first.”

“Everybody struggles with this.”

Some of those things might be true. Circumstances can explain why we were angry, tired, frustrated, tempted, or vulnerable.

But an explanation doesn't make sin right.

There comes a point when repentance has to stop explaining and simply say:

“Lord, I was wrong.”

That's hard on our pride, but it's also freeing. When I stop trying to defend myself, I can finally deal honestly with what God is showing me.

Don't Let Shame Push You Away From God

This is where I think we can get ourselves into trouble.

We sin, then feel ashamed about it. Because we're ashamed, we don't pray like we normally would. We might stop reading Scripture because we already know it's going to confront something in us. Sometimes we even start pulling away from other believers.

Before long, we're spiritually isolated.

And what made us start pulling away in the first place?

The very sin we should have brought to God.

John writes immediately before his promise about confession:

“If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.”
1 John 1:8 (KJV)

Scripture isn't pretending Christians never struggle with sin.

We do.

The answer isn't to pretend otherwise, and it isn't to hide until we feel worthy enough to pray again.

The answer is to come back to God.

When you fall, run toward Christ, not away from Him.

Confession Isn't an Excuse

I've noticed how easy it is to confess something while still defending it.

“Lord, I know I shouldn't have said that, but You know how they treated me.”

“I know I lost my temper, but I've been dealing with so much.”

“I know it was wrong, but…”

That word “but” can carry a lot.

Again, circumstances matter. They can help us recognize our weaknesses and understand what led us into temptation. But eventually we have to call sin what God calls it.

“Lord, regardless of what they did, my response was wrong.”

That's confession.

It isn't always comfortable, but grace means I don't have to come before God pretending to be better than I am.

I can tell Him the truth.

He Is Faithful

This part of 1 John 1:9 really stands out to me:

“If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins...”

Notice where the faithfulness is.

He is faithful.

That's important because we aren't always faithful.

We stumble. We make promises and sometimes break them. We can have a great week spiritually and then suddenly find ourselves struggling with something we thought we had dealt with long ago.

None of that makes sin unimportant.

But our inconsistency doesn't make God inconsistent.

At the same time, grace should never become an excuse to live however we want. Paul dealt directly with that:

“What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound?
God forbid.”
Romans 6:1–2 (KJV)

Grace isn't permission to keep sinning.

But grace does mean that when we fall, we know where to go.

We go back to Christ.

Repentance Means Turning

There is also a difference between feeling bad about sin and repenting of it.

It's possible to be sorry because we got caught. We can be sorry because our actions had consequences or because we don't like the guilt we're feeling.

Repentance goes deeper.

It says, “Lord, I don't want to continue in this direction.”

And sometimes that requires us to actually do something.

If I lied, I may need to go back and tell the truth.

If I hurt somebody, I may need to apologize.

If I know something repeatedly leads me into temptation, maybe I need to stop giving myself easy access to it.

If I'm holding bitterness against someone, I need to deal with that before God rather than feeding it.

Repentance isn't about becoming perfect overnight.

It's about turning.

Instead of protecting my sin, I begin agreeing with God about it and asking Him to help me walk differently.

Conviction Is Not the Same as Condemnation

This distinction has helped me tremendously.

Conviction brings sin into the light.

It says, “This is wrong. Deal with it. Confess it. Come back to God.”

Condemnation pushes us toward hopelessness.

“You did it again.”

“You'll never change.”

“God must be tired of you.”

“Just stay away.”

But Scripture says:

“There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus...”
Romans 8:1 (KJV)

That doesn't make sin less serious.

It makes the cross more precious.

Christ took the condemnation our sin deserved. So when God exposes sin in my life, I don't have to run away from Him.

I can run to Him.

And the cross is the reason why.

Why Can God Forgive Us?

There's something about 1 John 1:9 that's easy to read past.

John doesn't only say that God is merciful to forgive us.

He says He is “faithful and just” to forgive us.

That raises an important question: How can a just and holy God forgive guilty people?

The answer is Jesus Christ.

“For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God;”
Romans 3:23 (KJV)

That's all of us.

And Scripture doesn't treat sin as a minor problem:

“For the wages of sin is death...”
Romans 6:23 (KJV)

We can't excuse our way out of that. We can't hide it from God, and we certainly can't pile up enough good works to erase what we've done.

But this is where the Gospel becomes such good news.

“But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.”
Romans 5:8 (KJV)

Jesus didn't wait for us to become righteous before He came for us.

He lived the sinless life we could not live. He willingly went to the cross and bore our sin. He suffered and died, was buried, and on the third day He rose again.

Our forgiveness isn't based on God simply overlooking sin.

There was a cost.

Christ paid it.

“In whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of his grace;”
Ephesians 1:7 (KJV)

That's why the answer to sin isn't “try harder until God accepts you.”

Our hope is Jesus.

“That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved.”
Romans 10:9 (KJV)

Christianity isn't about eventually becoming so good that we no longer need grace.

We need Christ.

And thankfully, Christ saves sinners.

Maybe You've Been Hiding

Maybe there's something you've been avoiding bringing before God.

He already knows.

Maybe you've stayed away from prayer because you're embarrassed by something you did.

Pray anyway.

Maybe you've been trying to convince yourself that something really isn't sin even though you know what Scripture says about it.

Stop defending it.

Maybe this isn't even the first time you've confessed the same thing. Maybe you've fallen again and you're embarrassed to come before God with it one more time.

Come anyway.

Not because the sin doesn't matter.

It does.

But because Jesus Christ is still your only answer.

John writes:

“My little children, these things write I unto you, that ye sin not. And if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous:”
1 John 2:1 (KJV)

I love the balance in that verse.

John doesn't say, “Sin isn't a big deal because Jesus will forgive you.”

He says, “that ye sin not.”

But then he immediately reminds believers that when we do sin, we have an Advocate.

Jesus Christ the righteous.

Stop Hiding

Ever since the Garden, hiding has been one of our natural responses to sin.

We mess up and pull away.

We tell ourselves we'll pray later. We'll get serious with God again once we've gotten ourselves together. Maybe after we've had a few “good” days, we'll feel worthy enough to come back.

But that's not the Gospel.

You don't clean yourself up and then come to Christ.

You come to Christ because you need Him to cleanse you.

“...he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”
1 John 1:9 (KJV)

So if you've fallen, don't stay there.

Don't hide.

Don't let shame convince you that avoiding God is somehow going to fix what happened.

Bring it to Him.

Call the sin what it is. Confess it. Turn from it. If you've wronged somebody, make it right where you can.

Then keep walking with Christ.

Your failure doesn't change His faithfulness.

And that's exactly why we don't have to hide.