Through the confessing of sins, the believers experience God’s redemption in being forgiven of their sins. First John 1:9 says, “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” The confessing of sins (plural) here denotes the confessing of our sins, our failures, after regeneration, not the confessing of our sins before regeneration. Even if we have been regenerated and are under the transformation of the Holy Spirit, we can still sin. Since we can still sin after we are saved, we need to confess our sins. In order to receive God’s forgiveness, we need to confess our sins. Forgiveness for the restoration of fellowship with God is conditional; it depends on our confession.
First John 1:9 tells us that God is faithful to forgive us our sins. God is faithful in His word. His word is the word of the truth of His gospel (Eph.1:13), which tells us that He will forgive us our sins because of Christ (Acts 10:43). If we confess our sins, He forgives us according to His faithfulness in His word. Otherwise, He would be unfaithful.
God’s forgiving us of our sins is not only according to His faithfulness but also according to His righteousness based on the cleansing blood of Jesus His Son (1 John 1:7). God is righteous with regard to the blood of Jesus His Son. The blood of Christ has satisfied the demand of God’s righteousness, allowing Him to forgive us of our sins (Matt. 26:28). Therefore, if we confess our sins, God, based on the redemption through the blood of Jesus, forgives us because He must be righteous in the blood of Jesus; otherwise, He would be unrighteous.
Since the Lord Jesus has shed His blood for us, God, in His righteousness, His justice, must forgive us. He has no reason not to forgive us. God forgave His people’s sin in the Old Testament through the offering of sacrifices. These sacrifices were types pointing to the coming Christ. In the New Testament God’s forgiveness is based on Christ’s death on the cross for our sins. Because the Lord shed His blood for us, God has the ground to forgive us according to His righteousness. If we confess our sins, God must forgive us in order to be righteous. This is His righteousness based on Christ’s act in redemption. This act was accomplished on the cross and conveyed to us through God’s word in the Bible. Because God is righteous, He must forgive us of our sins based on Christ’s shed blood.
The believers experience God’s redemption not only in being forgiven of their sins but also in being washed, being cleansed. First John 1:9 tells us that God cleanses us from all unrighteousness; this means that He washes us from the stain of our unrighteousness. Unrighteousness and sins are synonyms. All unrighteousness is sin (5:17). Both refer to our wrongdoings. Sins indicates the offense of our wrongdoings against God and men; unrighteousness indicates the stain of our wrongdoings, which causes us not to be right with God or men. The offense needs God’s forgiveness, and the stain requires His cleansing. Both God’s forgiveness and God’s cleansing are needed for the restoration of our fellowship with God so that we may enjoy Him with a conscience void of offense (1 Tim.1:5; Acts 24:16).
First John 1:7 says, “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 cleanses us from every sin.” When we walk in the divine light, we are under its enlightenment, and it exposes, according to God’s nature in us, all our sins, trespasses, failures, and defects, which contradict His pure light, perfect love, absolute holiness, and excelling righteousness. At such a time we sense the need of the cleansing by the redeeming blood of the Lord Jesus in our enlightened conscience, and it cleanses us in our conscience from all sins so that our fellowship with God and with one another may be maintained. The tense of the verb cleanse is present and denotes continuous action, indicating that the blood of Jesus the Son of God cleanses us all the time, continuously and constantly. Cleansing refers to the instant cleansing of the Lord’s blood in our conscience. Before God, the redeeming blood of the Lord has cleansed us once for all eternally (Heb. 9:12, 14), and the efficacy of that cleansing lasts forever before God, so that this cleansing need not be repeated. However, in our conscience we need the instant application of the constant cleansing of the Lord’s blood again and again whenever our conscience is enlightened by the divine light in our fellowship with God.
In 1 John 1:7 the phrase every sin denotes every single sin we commit after we are regenerated. Each sin we commit after our regeneration defiles our previously purged conscience and needs to be cleansed away by the blood of Jesus in our fellowship with God. The phrase the blood of Jesus His Son is very meaningful. The name Jesus denotes the Lord’s humanity, which is needed for the shedding of the redeeming blood, and the title His Son denotes the Lord’s divinity, which is needed for the eternal efficacy of the redeeming blood. Thus, the blood of Jesus His Son indicates that this blood is the proper blood of a genuine man shed for the redeeming of God’s fallen creatures, with the divine surety as its eternal efficacy, an efficacy that is all prevailing in space and everlasting in time. The blood by which we are cleansed is the blood of a wonderful person—Jesus Christ—who has both humanity and divinity. His humanity qualifies Him to shed His blood for our redemption. His divinity guarantees the efficacy of the power of this redemptive blood. The efficacy of the cleansing blood of Jesus is eternally assured by His divinity.