Honest Dealing with God

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1 John 1:8-10

If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.…

"God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all"; and consequently He cannot have fellowship with darkness. Our tendency to be false is illustrated in the chapter before us, for we find three grades of it there. There is first the man who lies: "If we say we have fellowship with Him, and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not the truth." We say and do that which is untrue if while abiding under the influence of sin and falsehood we claim to have fellowship with God. If this tendency is unchecked, you will find the man growing worse and doing according to the eighth verse, wherein it is written, "We deceive ourselves." Here the utterer of the falsehood has come to believe his own lie; he has blinded his understanding and befooled his conscience till he has become his own dupe. He will soon reach the complete development of his sin, which is described in the tenth verse, when the man, who first lied, and then, secondly, deceived himself, becomes so audacious in his falseness as to blaspheme the Most Holy by making Him a liar. It is impossible to say where sin will end; the beginning of it is as a little water in which a bird may wash, and scatter half the pool in drops, but in its progress sin, like the brook, swells into a torrent deep and broad. Our only safe course is to come to God as we are, and ask Him to deal with us, in Christ Jesus, according to our actual condition.

I. LET US CONSIDER THE THREE COURSES laid open before us in the text. I will suppose that we are all earnestly anxious to be in fellowship with God. Our deceitful heart suggests to us, first, that we should deny our present sinfulness, and so claim fellowship with God, on the ground that we are holy, and so may draw near to the Holy God. I mind not how honest your parentage, nor how noble your ancestry, there is in you a bias towards evil; your animal passions, nay more, your mental faculties are unhinged and out of order, and unless some power beyond your own shall keep your desires in check, you will soon prove by overt acts of transgression the depravity of your nature. It is not uncommon for others to arrive at the same conclusion by another road. They have attained to the audacity to say that they have no sin by divers feelings and beliefs which they, as a rule, ascribe to the Holy Spirit. Now, if any man says that all tendency to sin is gone from him, that his heart is at all times perfect and his desires always pure, so that he has no sin in him whatsoever, he may have travelled a very different road from the character we just now warned, but he has reached the same conclusion, and we have but one word for both boasters, it is the word of our text — "If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us." Some, however, have reached this position by another route. They plead that though it may be they have sin, yet they are not bad at heart; they look upon sin as a technical term, and though they admit in words that they have sin, yet they practically deny it by saying, "I have a good heart at bottom; I always was well intentioned from the very first. I know I have — of course we all have — erred here and there, but you cannot expect a fellow to be perfect. I can't say I see anything to find fault with." In so saying or feeling you prove that the truth is not in you — you are either deplorably ignorant as to what holiness is, or else you are wilfully uttering a falsehood; in either case the truth is not in you. A fourth sort of persons say the same thing, for albeit they confess that they have sinned, they think themselves now to be in a proper and fit condition to receive pardon. "We have prayed," say they; "we have repented, we have read the Scriptures, we have attended public worship, and are as right as we can be: we have tenderness and contrition, and every right and proper feeling; our wonder is that we do not receive salvation." The idea of fitness is only another form of the vain notion of merit, and it cannot find an inch of foothold in the gospel. True penitents can see nothing in themselves to commend them to mercy, and therefore they cast themselves upon undeserved favour, feeling both unworthy and unfit, but hoping to receive forgiveness freely. The second course which is open to us is the one which I trust the Divine Spirit may lead us to follow, to lay bare our case before God exactly as it stands. "Lord, I own with shame that as my nature is corrupt such has my life been; I am a sinner both by nature and by practice." Make the confession of the two things, of the cause and the effect, of the original depravity — the foul source, and then of the actual sin which is the polluted stream. When a sinner feels he has no natural fitness for receiving the grace of God; when a broken spirit cries, "Oh, what a wretch I am! Not only my past sin but my present feelings disqualify me for the love of God; I seem to be made of hell-hardened steel," he is confessing that sin is in him. It is in your vileness that sovereign grace o'er sin abounding will come to you and cleanse you, and therefore the sooner you come to the honest truth the better for you, for the sooner will you obtain joy and peace through believing in Christ. The text means just this — treat God truthfully, and He will treat you truthfully. The blood of Jesus Christ has made a full atonement, and God will be faithful to that atonement. He will deal with you on the grounds of the covenant of grace, of which the sacrifice of Jesus is the seal, and therein also He will be true to you. Now, there are still some who say, "Well, yes, I think I could go to God in that way, sir, but oh! my past sins prevent me. I could tell Him I am sinful, I could ask Him to renew my nature, I could lay myself bare before Him, but oh 1 my past sins; all might yet be well if I had not so sinned! Ah, that brings out a third course which lies before you, which I hope you will not follow, namely, to deny actual sin. The very thing which you cannot do would seal your doom, for it would lead you to make God a liar, and so His Word could not abide in you.

II. LET US NOW CONSIDER HOW WE CAN FOLLOW THIS COURSE, which is the only right one, namely, to confess our sin. Do not shirk the facts or shrink from knowing their full force, but feel the power of the condemning law. Then recollect your individual sins; recall them one by one — those greater sins, those huge blots upon your character, do not try to forget them. If you have forgotten them, raise them from the grave and think them over, and feel them as your own sins. Think of your sins of omission, your failures in duty, your short, comings in spirit. Repent of what you have done, and what you have not done. Think of your sins of heart. How cold has that heart been towards your Saviour! Your sins of thought, how wrongly your mind has often judged; your sins of imagination, what filthy creatures your imagination has portrayed in lively colours on the wall. Think of all the sins of your desires and delights, and hopes and fears. Let us take care that we confess all. And then let us try to see the heinousness of all sin as an offence against a kind, good, loving God, a sin against a perfect law, intended for our good.

III. LET US CONSIDER WHY WE SHOULD CONFESS SIN.

1. I shall say first, do so because it is right. Religious lie telling is a dreadful thing, and there is plenty of it; but if I could be saved by masking my condition before God, I would not like to be saved in that way.

2. Moreover, upon some of us it is imperative, because we cannot do anything else.

3. Besides, suppose we have tried to appear before God what we are not, God has not been deceived, for He is not mocked.

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