1 John Chapter One

In his first epistle the Apostle John is writing to Christians. People who "walk in the light" and "have fellowship with one another and the blood of Jesus" are Christians not lost people.

1 John 1:7 "But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin."

The Epsitle of 1 John is written to the purified. To these purified, the inspired Apostle writes in verse 8, "If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us." It is possible to "decieve ourselves" into thinking we can be sinless. But a person who does not admit his sin cannot do two things. He cannot repent and thus he cannot be forgiven.

To think you will never stumble contradicts all experience, common sence, and more importantly the Word of God. James 3:2 says, "We all stumble in many ways." It makes you a liar and the truth is not in you. Anyone purified by the Blood and in fellowship with Jesus will be aware of their stumbling problem.

But one in fellowship with the Truth will also realize the way of escape and be a repentant person (1 John 3:6). 1 John 1:9 proclaims, "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness." Notice that the path to purity is forgiveness not living perfectly. If we would live perfectly, we wouldn't all sin and wouldn't need a savior. If we would chose not to ever sin, the Law would have been sufficant to save us but it wasn't. The Law of Moses was powerless to make us rigteous because we all obeyed our fleshly desires rather than God.(Romans 3:20 & Romans 8:3).

The law was something no one but Jesus would bear (Acts 15:10). Some say when we get the Holy Spirit, that allows us to do what we couldn't do before, live sinnlessly. But that would mean before we became Christians we HAD to sin because we were born incapable of doing right (That's Calvanism) not that we all CHOSE to sin because we are free will agents who decide to rebel because of temptation. Sin is something we choose to do (1 Peter 4:3). But the Bible teaches we didn't have to sin and there was a way not to sin (1: Corinthians 10:13). But no one chose to do that (Isaiah 53:6, Romans 3:11-12 & James 1:14-15). No one was without sin (Romans 3:23). The Bible teaches that we are without excuse (Romans 1:20) and accountable for our choices (Romans 3:19).

If that is true, then we all had the ability, even before we were Christians, to not sin but still chose by our own free will to violate our consciences and become sinners. We need some way to atone for sin when we are weak willed and stumble. There is a battle between the desires of our spirit and desires of our flesh (Galatians 5:17 & Romans 7:14-20). We need atonement for when our flesh wins out so that we can live by the Spirit (1 Peter 4:6). So we learn that if we confess our sins (as purified believers who are in fellowship with Christ) he will forgive us our sins and cleans us from ALL unrigteousness.

So don't fall for the lie that you can become sinless via your own will power. Only by forgiveness of grace and atonement of the blood by the sanctification of the Spirit with in you can you be purged of sinful guilt. We must view ourselves as sinners forgiven by grace (1 Timothy 1:15). It is knowledge of Grace that will teach us to say no to ungodliness not pridful delusions about our own unrealistic perfection. (Titus 2:11-13).

1 John 1:10 says, "If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word has no place in our lives."