1 João 1
John Trapp · Citado em PreceptAustin
1 João 1:9
Trapp - No man was ever kept out of God's kingdom for his confessed badness; many are for their supposed goodness. A word of caution dear believer… Confessing your sins is no substitute for forsaking your sins! Or as someone else well said "Confession must be salted with contrition." (cp God's delight in a "broken spirit, a broken and contrite heart" - Ps 51:17+, cp Isa 57:15) Steven Cole in his discussion of walking in the light reminds us that… “To walk” points to the general tenor of one’s life. Since to walk in the light involves confessing our sins (1Jn 1:9), to walk in the darkness means ignoring or denying our sins. It is to block out the light of God’s holiness, as revealed in His Word, and to live as the world lives, making up your own ideas about right and wrong apart from God (see Eph 4:17, 18, 19; Eph 5:7-12). It is to justify your own behavior either by redefining sin, by blaming it on other factors, or by doing away with the entire concept of sin. To walk in darkness is to try to hide from God, rather than to expose your life to Him… But we need to apply this personally. If as a way of life, I am not allowing God’s Word to confront my sinful thoughts, attitudes, motives, words, and deeds, I am walking in darkness. If I dodge my sin by blaming others or making up excuses for why I sin, I am walking in darkness. And for John, to walk in darkness is not describing a “carnal” Christian. It is describing an unbeliever, no matter how much he may claim to have fellowship with God. To have fellowship with God, we must recognize that He is absolutely holy. And, we must not walk in the darkness. (Sermon) Spurgeon's gives us a striking example of an insincere confession - Pastor R., of Elberfeld, was once sent for to see a dying man. He found the patient really very ill, and entered at once into an earnest conversation about the state of his soul. The patient began, in the strongest terms, to describe himself as the very chief of sinners, and declared that his past life filled him with abhorrence. He continued so long in this strain that the pastor could scarcely find an opportunity to speak. At last, taking advantage of a pause, he remarked gently, “It was then really true what I heard of you?” The patient raised himself in the bed, stared in astonishment at the pastor, and demanded, “What, then, have you heard? No one, in truth, can say anything against me;” and continued, in a strain of unbounded self-satisfaction, to tell of his virtues, and recount all his good deeds, pouring out at the same time a torrent of execrations against the slanderers who had tried to injure his character. “It was not from foes or slanderers,” said the pastor, “that I heard it, but from yourself; and now it grieves me to hear that you do not believe what you said.” (Biblical Illustrator) Robert Rayburn gives us striking illustrations of sincere confession in the lives of Thomas Boston and Alexander Whyte… Whyte was a Scottish Presbyterian pastor who died in 1921. Whyte was a Christian who impressed all who knew him with the depth of his humility and with the many virtues which are simply the public expression of humility in one way or another: kindliness, modesty, reverence and so on. But you will not have to do much reading in Whyte to discover where that humility came from. Here is a man--as much as any man I know about, who refused to ignore the truth about himself and about his sin. His sin was always before him, his secret sins as well as his public sins--and he was always confessing those sins… And all of that confessing of sin had its perfect fruit in his so humble life. (The First of the Tests of Life) There is a piece of history that I have shared with some of you some years ago, and will no doubt, if God gives me years to come as your minister, will share with you again from time to time. I want you to remember it, and so I must repeat it. It is for me, it is so far in my life, at any rate, the Lord's great illustration to me of the truth of the necessity and the importance and the virtue and the benefit of a sense of one's own great sin and the constant confession of that sin. It strikes me so powerfully, because the man in question, Thomas Boston, is a man whose life and writings have made a deep and lasting and wonderful impression upon my own heart. He is a man I admire as much as any man I know about; he is a man such as I long to become. His autobiographical Memoirs, the story of his life, I consider to be one of the greatest books ever written, and one of the most profound textbooks in the Christian life and in true godliness that I know. It was Rabbi Duncan who said, you may remember, that he wished that he could sit at the feet of Jonathan Edwards to learn what true holiness is, and then at the feet of Thomas Boston, to learn how to obtain it. Boston was a man whose life, both in his own day and since, became renown for his fierce and passionate love for Christ, his fearless defense and service of the gospel, his humble affection for his brethren and his congregation, and his patience under intense hardship and suffering. So it may come as a surprise to some to read the end of his life story as he himself relates it. Near the end of his life, as he relates in his Memoirs, Boston, knowing that his end was near, conducted a thorough self-examination, to make sure that he was ready to leave this life and to meet the Lord. During the several days he spent at this solemn task, he recollected his long life as a Christian and the experiences he had had with God. He went over the gospel of Christ in every part examining his agreement with it and his commitment to and trust in Christ. But, then he attends at some length to his sins. Let me quote briefly from the Memoirs: I [Boston] read over … "the larger catechism on what is required and forbidden in the Ten Commands; then thought on my ways in the several periods of my life, and in the order of the Ten Commands; by all which means I got a humbling sight of myself. Then bowing my knees before the Lord, I did silently read over the two confessions before him; which done, I prayed, and made confession of my sins as fully and particularly as I could; and there I got a view of my whole life as one heap of vanity, sin, and foolishness. It appeared a loathsome life in my eyes, so that my very heart said, "I loath it; I would not live always;" and I loathed myself on account of it. It cut to the heart to think of it, and cut off desire of returning to it, if that had been possible. But such as I was, I behoved to look again towards his temple." And when he was through with all of that, he turned his attention to a particular sin, a besetting sin, which had bedeviled him all of his life and over which he had still not gained the mastery. This sin required a special attention and a special confession, a special prayer for pardon and for purification. Here is the lesson I draw from all that, beloved! If such a man as Thomas Boston, beside whose Christian life yours and mine pale to virtually nothing, finishes his life in a paroxysm of confession of sin, then who are we to say that we do not need much more of that same acknowledgement and confession of sin than now we practice. Thomas Boston was giving himself the tests of life and he passed with flying colors, and in no test did he achieve a higher score than in this most important test of genuine faith and life in Christ: 'If we claim to be without sin we deceive ourselves… If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.' Is it negative to be so mindful of our sin and always confessing it? The Devil wants you to think so. But it is only negative, if it is negative to love Christ passionately and be always turning to him in trust and hope as your Savior, only negative if it is negative to be meek and lowly of heart before God and others; only negative if it is negative to live in this world with one's heart full of heaven and desire for the life to come. There is but one way to Thomas Boston's kind of Christian life--and that is the way of the Apostle John--the way of confessing our sins and turning from them to Christ for forgiveness and for deliverance--every single day of our Christian lives. (1John) Our sins (hamartia) - Personal possession - We must each "Own up" to our sins. It's not our brother, it's not our sister, etc, it's us to whom God is speaking. And although sins clearly refers to our conscious sins, it is not restricted to those, for as David asked and prayed in Psalm 19… Who can discern his errors? Acquit (cleanse - KJV) me of hidden faults (those of which I am not conscious). (Psalm 19:12)
1 João 1:9
Trapp - that this very text is a most heavenly promise of mercy to those that confess heartily, and not hollowly. The word faithful also refers to God's promises, as just doth to the blood of Christ (the ransom received) whereby the saints are cleansed, and it stands not with God's justice to demand the same debt twice, viz. of the surety and of the debtor. John
1 João 1:9
Trapp adds that all unrighteousness means "All without exception; why then should we put in conditions, and as it were interline God's covenant? He is a sin-pardoning God, Neh. 9:31; no God like Him for that in heaven and earth, Mic. 7:17; He multiplies pardon, as we multiply sin, Isa. 55:7; He doth it freely, for His own sake, naturally, Ex 34:6; constantly, Ps. 130:4, and here. The blood of Jesus Christ cleanses (not, he has cleansed [past tense] or will cleanse [future tense], but he does it [now and]) daily and duly, constantly and continually. This should be as a perpetual picture in our hearts. (Trapp's Commentary on the New Testament)Wayne
1 João 1:10
Trapp writes that "We make him a liar for the Scripture hath concluded all under sin, Ro 11:32." If we claim that we have never sinned and, therefore, do not need to accept the forgiveness provided by God through Christ’s death, we are making God appear to be a liar, for His Word clearly states that "all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God" (Ro 3:23). The Gospel is based on the sinfulness of all mankind (cf. Ro 3:9–18, 23; 5:1; 11:32). Vine - To profess not to have sinned is to deny the facts of human nature and the need of a Redeemer, and to impugn both the character of God and the whole scheme of His redemptive work. Hoke - When we reject God’s word, we reject Him. And finally, the result of denying sin is eventual judgment and condemnation. You see, when we deny sin we reject Jesus. Jesus came to save us from our sins. He is the great physician. If you never admit that there is something wrong with you, you will never go to the one who has the cure. If you are not sick, why do you need a physician? If you have no sin, why do you need a savior? You don’t need forgiveness if you’ve never done anything wrong. The problem is, when we deny the sickness, we die from it. When we deny our sin, we will eventually be judged for it. (1 John 1:8-2:2 What Do You Do With Sin?) THOUGHT - How does this truth apply to believers? Do we ever make God a liar? One way we do this is by blaming others for our shortcomings (sins), claiming that we have not sinned (in a sense "we make God a liar"). If you are married, I'm sure you have never taken this tact in an argument! John is saying that our dishonesty stands in stark contrast to the kind of honesty God calls us to exercise. Wayne