The Deceit and the Declaration (1 John 1:8-10)

Ryan Strother

1 John • Sermon • Submitted 7 years ago

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You must recognize your condition and behavior of sin in order to be fully blessed by the declaration that God will forgive you of sin and cleanse you of all unrighteousness. You have a problem. God is the solution. Get past the sin and guilt--be encouraged by this sermon!

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Intro

If you go through your whole life and don’t know this truth that I will explain today, then you will face an eternity apart from God in the torment of hell.

These verses we are studying today are popular—you’ll find them on a coffee mug maybe—but don’t let their popularity blind you from their power.

These verses clearly tell you your problem and the solution to it. It talks about the Deceit and the Declaration. I want to tell you that the deceit is to fail to recognize your condition and behavior for what it truly is; and the declaration is God promising to forgive your sin and cleanse you from all unrighteousness. You need to listen to this!

Innately, people will feel guilty for their sin. Even if they’re not saved by Christ. But what happens with guilt is that it can be suppressed until the point where a person becomes desensitized to that feeling. They have gotten to the point of justifying their sinfulness in their hearts and they might feel that they have resolved their problem. But they’ve only gotten to the point where they’re hardened enough to not feel the burn when they place their hand over the fire.

Today, I want to be clear how you extinguish that fire. Let’s get to the root of the problem. Let’s talk about the deceit and the desire.

The Deceit is Failing to Recognize Your Condition & Behavior

Notice the similarities in v.8 and v.10: if we say something, then there are 2 results for each. V.8—if we say we have no sin. V.10- If we say we have not sinned. Is there any difference?

V.8- “sin” is a singular noun. V.10- “sin” is a plural verb.

is dealing with a state of being. This is our condition.

V.10 is dealing with our actions or our behavior.

Our condition is that we are sinners. It’s a state of being. We are sinners by nature. V.8 is a reference to our depraved nature, sometimes called original sin.

John is saying that if you say you have no sin—if you fail to recognize your depraved condition—then you deceive yourself. Deceived means “to lead astray”. You are leading yourself astray, off the proper path, if you fail to recognize your condition—you are a sinner by nature!

David said it like this in , “Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin did my mother conceive me.” (, ESV) The CSB translates it very clearly this way: “Indeed, I was guilty when I was born; I was sinful when my mother conceived me.” (, CSB)

No one can escape this condition because it is a result of the fall of man in the garden. What happened to Adam and Eve has been passed on to all of us. makes clear, “Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, in this way death spread to all people, because all sinned.” (, CSB)

We have a sin condition and you are deceiving yourself if you fail to recognize it.

We sometimes say about someone, “He’s a good man.” And I know what we usually mean when we say that. But that’s not true if we mean that he is inherently good or righteous. “as it is written: There is no one righteous, not even one.” (, CSB)

Much of secular counseling is built upon methods to get people to think that they are inherently good and do bad things only because of negative influences on them. A Christian approach doesn’t seek to make someone feel bad about themselves, but rather to be honest. Not to be deceived by ignoring their condition. Once you come to grips with this condition, then you can find true identity and purpose because you can start living in the ways of your Creator.

The Deceit is failing to recognize your condition, but also your behavior. If we say we have not sinned...

Now we are talking about our actions, the things we do. Sinners are gonna sin! We have to recognize we are sinners, or we’ll never see our need for a Savior.

If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar. How do we make God a liar? First, understand that this verse does not mean that we can change the character of God to turn him into a liar. The translation here is a causitive word. “We make” is a word meaning to cause to do or be. In the sense here, it is declaring oneself to be something or somebody.

In a sense, our actions are declaring God to be a liar. The NLT translates it: “...we are calling God a liar.” The NIV: “…we make him out to be a liar.”

We can infer here that we would be calling God a liar because God declares that we are sinners. Even in , John wrote, “In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.” (, ESV)

Why would God send the atonement for our sin unless He knew that we are sinners? Or I mentioned last week: “Behold, the Lord’s hand is not shortened, that it cannot save, or his ear dull, that it cannot hear; but your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, and your sins have hidden his face from you so that he does not hear.” (, ESV)

So if we claim we have not sinned, then we are calling God a liar, and His word is not in us. It obviously has no place in our lives if we would believe such a lie about ourselves.

When being interviewed by Anderson Cooper before his election, President Trump said, "Why do I have to repent or ask for forgiveness, if I am not making mistakes?" asked Trump. "I work hard, I'm an honorable person."

Have you known someone so blunt to speak out like that?

You cannot ignore the fact that you are by nature a sinner and that you have sinned in your life. This is the first step to understanding who you are and why you need our righteous God to save you.

Ravi Zacharias wrote this story in his book Can Man Live Without God, (Word Publ, Dallas: 1994), pp. 136-137:

One of the most powerful stories I have ever heard on the nature of the human heart is told by Malcolm Muggeridge. Working as a journalist in India, he left his residence one evening to go to a nearby river for a swim. As he entered the water, across the river he saw an Indian woman from the nearby village who had come to have her bath. Muggeridge impulsively felt the allurement of the moment, and temptation stormed into his mind. He had lived with this kind of struggle for years but had somehow fought it off in honor of his commitment to his wife, Kitty.

Can Man Live Without God, (Word Publ, Dallas: 1994), pp. 136-137

On this occasion, however, he wondered if he could cross the line of marital fidelity. He struggled just for a moment and then swam furiously toward the woman, literally trying to outdistance his conscience. His mind fed him the fantasy that stolen waters would be sweet, and he swam the harder for it. Now he was just two or three feet away from her, and as he emerged from the water, any emotion that may have gripped him paled into insignificance when compared with the devastation that shattered him as he looked at her.

“She was old and hideous...and her skin was wrinkled and, worst of all, she was a leper....This creature grinned at me, showing a toothless mask.” The experience left Muggeridge trembling and muttering under his breath, “What a dirty lecherous woman!” But then the rude shock of it dawned upon him—it was not the woman who was lecherous; it was his own heart.

Galaxie Software, 10,000 Sermon Illustrations (Biblical Studies Press, 2002).

Don’t deceive yourself by failing to recognize your sinful condition or behavior. But now, here’s the best part—the declaration!

The Declaration is that God will forgive and cleanse

Here’s where Christianity is different than any other religion or system. There’s no hope in any other system!

You might wonder how that can be—you’d say that everything I’ve said so far sounds mean—you just told people that they have a condition and behavior of sin! And that’s the point: if we can’t get serious about our problem, then we can’t find a lasting solution.

You wouldn’t want to go to a doctor and have him treat you for something that didn’t address the real problem. 7 years ago, my dad went into his new physician to meet him and have a physical since his physician retired.

This new physician ran a test and found that dad's hearing was less in one ear than in the other. Thinking this was unusual, he ordered some scans. He could have just said, "you don't hear as well in one year. Let's get a hearing aid."

But the scans revealed the real problem. He had a tumor growing in his brain that was pressing into the nerves controlling his hearing. The day before Caleb was born, he went through a very long brain surgery to remove the tumor so that it would not cause more problems. He came out of it with the best case scenario for that surgery: deafness in that one ear, but no other complications. Can you imagine if the doctor would've just given a hearing aid to try and improve the situation but left the more devastating root of the problem untouched?

This is what is unique about Jesus. He has told us what is wrong with us. But he also tells us how we can be made right! Other religions will insist that we are inherently good, therefore, the way of salvation or being made right is found in our performance. Doing better. There's no hope here when we realize that the root cause is that we are sinners!

So what is the solution? It is to confess our sin and rely upon the righteousness that only God can give. This is what verse nine tells us. If we confess our sands, God will do two things: he will forgive us and he will cleanse us.

God's actions come out of his character. This verse tells us that God is faithful and he is just, or righteous.

God is faithful

In the OT, individuals speaking in later books (; ; ; ; ; ; ; ) keep harking back to

“The Lord passed before him and proclaimed, “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.”” (, ESV)

God said He would do it, so we can trust that He will do it.

God is Righteous

How can God be righteous when he forgives the guilty? This was the question Paul addressed in :

(ESV)

21 But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it— 22 the righteousness of God through faith in Jesus Christ for all who believe. For there is no distinction: 23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, 24 and are justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, 25 whom God put forward as a propitiation by his blood, to be received by faith. This was to show God’s righteousness, because in his divine forbearance he had passed over former sins. 26 It was to show his righteousness at the present time, so that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.

He is just because He sent forth the justifier. Only God could make it possible for a man to be made righteous, because He is righteous.

Now because He is faithful and just, God makes an incredible declaration:

God will forgive you of your sin

The word for forgive is a word that literally means “to send forth or away.” God will send away your sins. This sending away is not disregarding sin and doing nothing about it, but it is liberating a person from their sin, their guilt, and the power that sin had over them.

The Psalmist expressed it so well in (ESV):

(ESV)

11 For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him; 12 as far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us. 13 As a father shows compassion to his children, so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear him. 14 For he knows our frame; he remembers that we are dust.

Thomas A. Edison was working on a crazy contraption called a “light bulb” and it took a whole team of men 24 straight hours to put just one together. The story goes that when Edison was finished with one light bulb, he gave it to a young boy helper, who nervously carried it up the stairs. Step by step he cautiously watched his hands, obviously frightened of dropping such a priceless piece of work. You’ve probably guessed what happened by now; the poor young fellow dropped the bulb at the top of the stairs. It took the entire team of men twenty-four more hours to make another bulb. Finally, tired and ready for a break, Edison was ready to have his bulb carried up the stairs. He gave it to the same young boy who dropped the first one.

That’s true forgiveness.

God will let you carry that light bulb back up the stairs. He will send your sin far away to where it has no effect on you any longer.

He no longer holds that sin against you because the righteousness of Jesus Christ covers you. He alone has the power to forgive you of sin.

And not only that...

God will cleanse you from all unrighteousness

Cleanse, in a spiritual sense, means that God will purify us from the pollution and guilt of sin. That defilement that so easily separated us from God is removed. Our fellowship with God is no longer impeded.

This can be so difficult for people to really feel forgiven. If you don’t feel forgiven, it’s usually because of the lingering sorrow or guilt. But you can’t let your feelings distract you from the reality.

The Almighty, faithful God has forgiven you of your sin and cleansed you from all unrighteousness. Anything that separated you from God—it’s gone.

This is the declaration! God will forgive you and cleanse you of all unrighteousness. The deceit is to lead yourself astray by failing to recognize your sinful condition and behavior.