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*THE TRUTH ABOUT FORGIVENESS*
1 John 1:1-10
Today we begin a new series on 1 John.
It's called /Assurances: What God Wants You to Know/.
1 John is a book of certainties.
The word "know" appears frequently throughout its pages.
The key idea is that the Christian life is a life of knowing—a life of assurance.
John states that we can know God,
we can know where we stand with God,
we can know what God expects of us,
we can know God's will,
and we can know that our prayers are being heard.
He describes it this way:
The Christian life is a life of walking in the light.
We'll spend the next five weeks exploring exactly what it means to walk in the light.
Today, we begin with chapter one:
The Truth About Forgiveness.
Do you remember playing with an Etch-A-Sketch when you were a kid?
You try to sketch out your name or a house or a portrait of George Washington —
and when you mess up the masterpiece, you turn it over, shake it good and hard, and like magic you start over with a clean slate.
1 John 1:9 is the Etch-A-Sketch verse of scripture.
John said *(v. 9) *
*/If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness./*/
/
It's a simple no-nonsense promise stated in plain language for anyone to understand.
The condition is that we confess our sins.
The promise is that God wipes the slate clean.
It sounds too good to be true, doesn't it?
It can't be that easy.
When we hear about God's generous attitude toward forgiveness, we often come back with the question—
"If God guarantees my forgiveness, does that mean I can commit any sin I want, and God will forgive me?"
It's like the bumper sticker I saw once that said,
"How many sins can I commit and still get to heaven?"
The person who asks this is approaching the Christian life from the wrong direction.
That person understands very little about what it means to be a Christian.
The main focus of the Christian life is not about getting your sins forgiven so that you can go to heaven.
That's part of it, but not all of it.
God has more in mind for us.
It's like having a job.
Everyone who works is entitled to get paid —
but no customer or no employer wants to deal with a worker who is only there for the money.
We've all known people like that.
They don't like their work, they don't like who they work with, they don't like who they work for — they just want a paycheck.
We can agree amongst ourselves that this person isn't on the fast track to advancement, right?
With that attitude, they won't be effective in their job performance.
In fact, can you imagine taking that attitude into a job interview?
You say to your perspective employer,
"I don't really care about your product, or the goals of your company,
I just what to know what is the least amount of work I can do here and still get paid?"
And yet, some people think that way about the Christian life —
"What's the minimum I have to do and what's the maximum I can get away with?"
And though most people would never say it that way, if we're honest, we catch it ourselves thinking that way from time to time.
Today, as we explore 1 John 1, I want to challenge you to think the opposite way:
How can I maximize my relationship with God, and how can I minimize my sinful behavior?
A relationship with God is compared to "walking in the light."
As we will see in this series, this includes knowing where you stand with God,
knowing that you are forgiven,
knowing that your prayers are being heard,
knowing that you have the power to overcome temptation,
knowing that God is with you, and on and on.
This is what happens when you walk in the light.
Today we'll look at how to begin consistently doing this.
There are three areas we'll discuss.
First of all, to consistently walk in the light...
*1.
YOU MUST COME TO GRIPS WITH YOUR SIN*
There's an old joke about a children's Sunday School teacher who asked his class,
"Children, what we must we first do in order to be forgiven of sin?"
One little boy raised his hand and said,
"Well, first, you have to sin." That's true.
First you have to sin, and we've already accomplished that step.
Second, you have to acknowledge it.
You have to face it.
The truth is, we tend to be better at step one than we are at step two.
We often try to deny the existence of our sin.
Of course, few would say, "I'm not a sinner, I've never sinned" — generally speaking.
But when we begin to talk about /specific/ sins, we start making excuses.
"I know I lost my temper, but let me tell you why it wasn't wrong.
You made me do it...
I'm under so much stress at work...
I haven't been feeling well...
and you really deserved it."
Sound familiar?
When it comes to our specific sins, we have a tendency to try to explain them all away.
"There are extenuating circumstances," we say, "so it's not really a sin."
That attitude prevents us from experiencing God's forgiveness.
In /Blue Like Jazz/, Donald Miller tells the story of his atheist friend, Laura.
She had been struggling with the idea of God for sometime, and was now on the verge of believing.
Don was trying to persuade her to take that final step.
He said to her, "God is wanting a relationship with you and that starts by confessing directly to him.
He is offering forgiveness."
His friend said, "You're not making this easy, Don.
I don't exactly believe I need a God to forgive me of anything."
Therein lies the problem.
This is the obstacle to walking in the light—our unwillingness to face our sinfulness.
Don said to his friend, "The entire world is falling apart because nobody will admit they are wrong.
But by asking God to forgive you, you are willing to own your own [part of the mess]."
This is where walking in the light begins.
John said, *(v.
8) *
*If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.
*
And then he said, *(v.
10) *
*/If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word has no place in our lives.
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