What About 1 John 1:8?

 

1 John 1:8 - "If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us."

Question: I'm sure this verse has surfaced many times with Calvinists who don't believe a Christian can live without willfully sinning. How would you interpret this verse? Are those who believe in "living above sin" all liars?

Answer:  This verse alone is used quite often to pound in a Christian's mind that he cannot live above sin, when in fact, the Bible says we have that capability and encourages us to do so by commands like, "sin no more," "awake to righteousness and sin not!"  God has been against sin and lets us know this throughout the whole Bible.   Those under the delusion of Calvin's teaching will always argue in favor of sin.  Walk in any church building and 99.9% will argue in favor of of sin - that we sin in thought, word, and deed every single day, that there is no escaping this awful condition while we are alive.  What God makes possible, man says it is impossible where it concerns stopping sin.  Calvinism has destroyed the church, but some are opening their ears to the truth found in Scripture; however, somewhere along the line will hold to at least one point of the T.U.L.I.P.   They misquote texts of Scripture and wrest it from its passage to prove something that is not there.  For instance, here is a tiny example of how the OSAS (Once Saved, Always Saved) advocates misquote Romans 8:35-39 where we are told nothing can separate us from the love of God, and tells us it has to do with salvation instead of love as the passage states.  So this leaves us believing that God's love eliminates the power of man's own decisions in causing him to fall away.  To them falling away is impossible for the Christian when the Scriptures state otherwise.  The last few passages of Romans 8 has to do with a Christian under all sorts of trials.  It is not dealing with sin which does separate us from God! (Isa. 59:1-2)

We know that when we come to Christ, ALL our sins are forgiven, because the Bible tells us we are cleansed from ALL unrighteousness.

To get at the true meaning of the verse in question, let us suppose a conversation between a Christian depending, as all must, on the blood of Christ for salvation, and a self-righteous sinner, who thinks he is good enough and has no sin, consequently no need of the cleansing blood.

Christian: My friend, did you know that "if we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin?" I have proved this to be true, and if you will come to Him as I did you may prove it for yourself, and be cleansed from all sin.

Self-Righteous: But I have no sin to be cleansed away; I have no need of the blood of Jesus.

Christian: What? You say you have no sin? "If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us." Surely you are wrong and self-deceived. You should repent, confess your sins, and be saved, for we read in I John 1 :9. "If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness."

Self-Righteous: But I have never sinned, and do not feel that I have anything to confess or repent of. I pay my honest debts, and treat my neighbors well, and support my family, and I believe I am just as good as anyone. I am not a sinner, and have never done anything wrong.

Christian: Surely, in saving that, you are making God a liar, for in I John 1:10 it says: "If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him. liar, and His word is not in us."

Thus we get at the meaning of the last four verses of I John 1. The text in question, then, does not have any reference whatever to one who has been cleansed from all sin, but to one who says he has no sin to be cleansed from, when he really has sin in his heart.

Why should we turn lawyer and plead for sin as if the atonement was a failure and sin a necessity? How some people fly to these wrested Scriptures and there pillow their heads, and slumber on in their carnal security, when God is thundering in tones of Sinai, "Sin no more !" He is swinging the awful danger signal down the ages, "Stand in awe, and sin not."

A professing Christian lady, living in the 7th chapter of Romans, doing things that she ought not, and leaving undone the things she ought to do, because she was carnal, sold under sin, and it was no more she that did it, but sin that dwelt in her - pleading her cause one day in a conversation with a sanctified lady, asked her to read a verse in the 7th chapter of Romans, as she supposed, for her vindication. The sanctified lady, knowing that she had made a mistake in the chapter and verse, nevertheless read the one cited, when lo, it read: "What shall we say then? Shall we continue in sin, that grace may abound? God forbid. How shall we that are dead to sin live any longer therein?" Whereupon the pleader for sin exclaimed, "That is not the verse I meant." An unsaved person, overhearing the conversation, spoke out and said, "Hold on! That's Bible, just the same."

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