Our salvation is more than a legal ledger. It involves more than justification. It involves the work of the Holy Spirit in our hearts to unite us to Christ…We are children of the living God (1 John 3:1), born again of the Spirit. He is at work forming Christ in us, orienting our hearts to God as our Father, cultivating the fruit of repentance, faith, and new obedience. 

Does forgiveness enable sin?

Probably the most frequent go-to verse for assurance of pardon in a worship service is 1 John 1:9. “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”

This assurance is honey to our flagging spirits when they are weighed down by the guilt of sin. It bathes the guilty conscience with the refreshing waters of God’s grace.

We were reminded in our recent analysis (see here) that this verse points us to Jesus and His redeeming work on our behalf. God forgives us our transgressions not simply because we confess them but because we confess Christ as God’s provision for forgiveness of that sin (and every sin).

As John goes on to say: “And He Himself is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the whole world” (1 John 2:2). By His sacrifice on the cross, Jesus satisfied the wrath of God due us as lawbreakers. The cleansing from all unrighteousness we receive points us to the blood of Jesus (1 John 1:7) once shed at Calvary’s cross (Heb. 9:26).

In the thick of this discourse of deliverance about sin and its solution, John issues a statement that seems out of place. In the bridge between the first two chapters of his first epistle the apostle is explaining that though we are born-again children of God, we continue to sin. In fact, our increasingly painful awareness of that sin is an indication that we indeed possess eternal life (1 John 5:13).

He then explains God’s solution for our sin through the work of His Son who became our sin-bearer, paying our debt of guilt and suffering the penalty we deserve. 

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