We have to learn to be able to use the words of the Bible in helping people, especially those who have been listening to messages for years and are still not clear about their salvation. We may start with a verse such as 1 John 1:7, which says, “The blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from every sin.” We can ask the one we are helping to read it several times until he becomes familiar with it. Then we can ask him, “Who spoke this word?” He will answer, “God spoke it.” Then we can ask, “Does God’s word count?” He will reply, “It counts.” Then we can ask further, “Then what does this word say?” He would say, “It says that the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from every sin.” If we ask, “Whose sin does the blood of Jesus cleanse?”, he would say, “It cleanses us from every sin.” Then we can ask, “Does this ‘us’ include you?” He may think for a while and then say, “Since it says ‘us,’ it includes me.” After this we should tell him, “Since the ‘us’ in this verse includes you, you should substitute it with your name and read it that way.” Then he may read, “The blood of Jesus His Son cleanses me from every sin.” The more he reads the verse, the more he will become familiar with it. Then we can ask him, “The blood cleanses how many of your sins?” He will then answer, “The blood of the Lord Jesus cleanses me from ‘every’ sin.” In this way he will become clear about his salvation. Moreover, he will be clear based on his knowledge of the truth.
You may meet someone who is saved and is also fully confident that he is saved. However, due to an insensitivity toward sins, he has never properly confessed his sins before God but only admits in a general way that he is sinful. How can we help this kind of person have a thorough confession of sins? To help remove someone’s doubts concerning salvation, we need to use the Bible, because the Bible is the only means for man to be saved. However, to help a person become conscious of his sins, we also need to touch his conscience. The doctrine concerning man’s sinfulness is easy to understand. After hearing it, a person can immediately understand it in his mind. Hence, he does not need a great deal of teaching. What he needs is for someone to knock on his conscience and touch his conscience so that it will become sensitive. This is the principle the Lord Jesus applied in John 4 while He was speaking with the Samaritan woman by the well.
On that day by the well in Sychar the Lord Jesus did not tell the Samaritan woman, “You were sinful from your mother’s womb.” John chapter four does not directly mention the matter of sin. It does not even mention the word sin. When the Samaritan woman asked the Lord for the living water, the Lord told her to go call her husband. She became afraid when asked about her husband, because her sins were all related to her husbands. Which one could she ask to come? One was divorced from her, another was finished with her, and the current one was questionable. So in answering the Lord she told a lie by speaking the truth, saying, “I do not have a husband.” The Lord Jesus then said, “You have well said, I do not have a husband, for you have had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband” (vv. 17-18). After the Lord told her this, her conscience was awakened. Then she said to the Lord, “I perceive that You are a prophet” (v. 19). It is not necessary to say so much about sin. As long as we can touch someone in his conscience, his conscience will give him a sense of pain, and this sense of pain will lead him to kneel before the Lord to confess his sins. We all have had this kind of experience. We may start by confessing one sin, but then we confess a second sin and a third. No one can claim in a loose way that he has no sin, for we all have sinned.
We have to lead a new believer to deal with the past step by step. If he has offended others, he has to ask for their forgiveness. If he owes others something, he has to make restitution. If he has cheated others, he has to confess to them. He has to deal with the past to such an extent that he can stand before God and men with a conscience void of offense.
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