If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.
Near the start of his letter, John lists claims that people who call themselves Christians might make. He tests each one against the light. This claim is not about a past act but about what we are now. So what does it deny, who does it fool, and why does it prove itself false?
In this verse "sin" is singular. Commentators press that point: the claim denies not a record of wrongdoing, but the source it flows from.
This false claim would deny that we have a sinful nature, "We have no sin." It refers to sin in our nature. The next (v.10) refers to sins committed in practice. One of the very first principles of scripture is that of "trees bearing fruit … each according to its kind." (Gen. 1:12). Apples grow on an apple tree, plums on a plum tree and sins on a sin tree! If believers do not have a sinful nature then it is not possible for them to commit sins. What pathetic self-deception!
That distinction matters, because God does not treat the two the same way.
The evil principle we are born with is often simply called sin. The evil actions, words and thoughts that come from having this corrupt nature are called sins… This distinction matters all the more when we find in Scripture that God does forgive our sinful deeds — that is, our sins — through the shedding of the blood of Christ. Yet He never forgives sin in the flesh. He "condemns" or judges it.
Light shows what is really there. So it leaves us no room to hide what we are by nature.
The light requires us to confess what we are by nature. To say we have no sin is not only ignoring a truth; it is also deceiving ourselves. In that case the truth is not in us. If Christ, who is the truth, lives in us, we must know that we carry a sinful nature about with us.
Notice how far the claim actually goes.
This is the height of self-deception. We assume not only that we have not sinned, but that we are without sin — without even a leaning towards anything that displeases God. We imagine we have reached the stage of Christian life where sin is completely absent. This kind of false holiness is a foolish and evil delusion.
And notice who is actually fooled:
Note that we do not deceive God, or other people, but only ourselves.
The closing phrase is unusual. One writer reads it as more than simple ignorance.
But "the truth is not in us" seems to be a little different from the truth not being known by us at all. No doubt every Christian is expected to know the truth by God's teaching. Here, at any rate, the odd wording stands out. It traces the self-deception to the truth not being ours inside. The truth should be "in us," not just believed and admitted by us.
Kelly also weighs who actually talks this way.
This statement is so strong that it makes you doubt whether people so deluded could really be Christians… Yet quite a few hold these theories, and it would be wrong to think they were not Christians. They probably mean that they never give in to sin. Even that is a bold thing for them to say.
Admitting that sin is in us is not the same as saying it rules us. The verse before it supplies the answer.
No intelligent Christian says he has no sin. The flesh, in which there is no good thing, is always there. But as to salvation, if the Spirit of God dwells in us, we are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, even though the flesh is in us. And the words just before this verse are "the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin" — God's answer to the flesh being there.
The denial does not last, because life keeps disproving it.
The old nature stays unchanged and unchangeable, side by side, so to speak, with the new nature… And the folly of those who have deceived themselves in this way will show itself sooner or later. It has often come out in an outburst of temper, a display of pride, or a bad fall.
- Root — the claim John rejects denies our sinful nature, not just sinful deeds; sins grow on a sin tree, so denying the tree means claiming you cannot sin at all.
- Light — walking in God's light does not remove what is inside us; it requires us to confess what we are by nature.
- Deception — the claim fools no one but the claimant, and time exposes it through a fall, an outburst, or pride.
- Truth — the failure is not that they do not know the truth, but that it is not theirs inside; truth should be in us, not just believed and admitted.
- Cleansing — the honest admission rests on the sentence just before it: the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin. That is God's answer to the flesh still being there.
If we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous to forgive us [our] sins, and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
God is light, and the letter has just said that anyone who claims to have no sin is fooling himself — so how can people who still sin stay in real fellowship with Him? The promise turns on two things: what confession means, and why this verse calls forgiveness just instead of kind.
The verse does not say "if we ask to be forgiven." It names a different act, and commentators press the difference hard.
It is a much easier thing for a child to ask for pardon for some fault than to confess it. We may ask pardon for some particular sin, and Scripture gives us no ground to know it is gone. But when we confess it, faith knows it is gone. The moment I have judged myself about it, I am entitled to know that it is gone.
Asking for pardon leaves room for excuses. Real confession, one writer argues, strips those away and leaves only two facts in the room.
Coming to God merely to seek forgiveness may or may not be accompanied with full confession. If someone only wants forgiveness, he will plead his circumstances and his weakness as excuses. He wants God to have some ground for forgiving other than what is in God Himself. But in true confession there is no talk of the pressure of circumstances or of one's own weakness... It is a question solely of "Your grace" and my self-will. His grace would have kept me; I refused it.
The verse could have said God is merciful. It says He is faithful and just, and that raises the question: faithful to whom?
Faithful and just towards whom? Towards Christ! Christ bore our sins in His own body on the cross (1 Peter 2:24). When you confess your sins to God, believing that Christ bore them on the cross, God would be unfaithful and unjust towards Christ if He didn't forgive you. It would be the same as if God said, "I am not satisfied with what Christ did when He died for your sins, so I must still hold them against you." Christ paid the debt in full. Can you imagine God being so unjust to Christ as to still hold you accountable?
If a believer's sins are already forgiven, why does this verse still offer forgiveness? One writer answers that Scripture uses the word in two senses, and this verse covers both.
Scripture speaks of forgiveness in a second sense too. A child of God sins, and his communion with God is broken. When he confesses that sin, he is forgiven — not in the sense that the sin was never charged to him, as in Romans 4:7-8, but in the sense that his communion and joy are restored. This verse (1 John 1:9) is a general statement. It fits the sinner who comes to God for the first time and confesses his sins: he is forgiven once for all, on the ground of Christ's death. It also fits the child of God who has sinned and confesses: he receives the Father's forgiveness as a child.
Forgiveness deals with guilt; the second half of the promise deals with defilement. Commentators are careful to say what this cleansing is not.
Unrighteousness in a Christian calls for confession. We need not only the sense of God's pardon, but also the removal of the stain that sin leaves on the spirit. This cleansing does not come by applying the blood to the believer again. It comes through the word of God working on the defiled spirit.
There is a practical result too. Confession does something to us as well as for us.
Confession of sin means the judgment in our own hearts and minds of what we confess. And that means cleansing from its influence and deliverance from its power.
Confession does not begin with us. The next verses of the letter introduce an Advocate with the Father. A second Advocate works inside the believer.
If anyone sins, the blessed Advocate above pleads with the Father for him. He presents the full worth of His atoning work. He prays for the one who has failed, because He Himself bore the judgment of that very sin. Then the other Advocate, the Spirit, works in the conscience. He produces repentance and confession. He brings the soul back into the light, with the sweet sense that the sin is forgiven, the unrighteousness cleansed, and the communion fully restored. "He restores my soul. He leads me in paths of righteousness for His name's sake." (Psalm 23:3)
- Light exposes. God's light shows the sin, and the Spirit works in the conscience so the sin is judged and owned rather than covered.
- Confession, not excuses. Excuses ask God to forgive on some other ground. True confession drops the defence and owns self-will against His grace.
- Justice, not pity. God is faithful and just because Christ bore those sins. To refuse a confessing soul would wrong Christ Himself.
- Two forgivenesses, one verse. The sinner coming for the first time is forgiven once for all. The child who has sinned receives the Father's forgiveness, and broken communion is restored.
- Cleansing, then restoration. God forgives the guilt and removes the stain. The Word does that cleansing, not a fresh application of the blood, and the soul comes back into the light.
If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.
John closes this chapter about walking in the light with a third false claim: someone denies ever having sinned. The charge is not that such a person is mistaken, but that he contradicts God Himself.
Three times in this chapter someone "says" something that the light exposes. Each answer is heavier than the last. One writer lays the sequence out side by side:
There are three points in 1 John 1... "If we say we have fellowship with Him"; "If we say we have no sin"; "If we say we have not sinned." In the first case, "we lie and do not practice the truth." In the second, "We deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us." In the third, "We make God a liar, and His word is not in us." In the first, what we claim contradicts how we live... In the second, we judge ourselves falsely and are self-deceived... "If we say we have not sinned," then "we make God a liar," for He has said we have. And His word, in which He has declared it, is not in us, though we may pretend to accept it outwardly.
Misleading yourself is bad. Calling God a liar is far worse:
To "mislead ourselves" was bad in the presence of the light that ought to show us as we are. Yet it was a small thing compared with making God a liar. There you dare to blaspheme. There you attack God recklessly at the most sensitive point of His honour. For what matters more to God than His truthfulness or His holiness?
Verse 8 and verse 10 are often blurred together, but the wording differs deliberately — one is about a present nature, the other about a past record.
To "say that we have no sin" (verse 8) is ignorance of myself. "If we say that we have not sinned" (verse 10) is a plain denial of God's testimony. But "have not sinned" looks back at the past; it does not speak of our sinning now. "We have no sin" is present, because it is a nature in me which the truth makes me know.
The same distinction shows why the second denial reaches further than the first — it touches what God has publicly said about the whole human race:
We can see therefore a necessary difference between this assertion that "we have not sinned" and that "we have no sin." The one speaks of acts committed; the other may go deeper, to search out the sin which is in our nature.
Verse 8 offers no test — self-deception exposes itself. Verse 10 does offer one, and it is a written statement you either accept or contradict.
There is a test for this claim: the Word of God. To make such an absurd statement is to set ourselves against the Word of God and to make Him a liar. He states clearly that we have sinned, and that ends the matter. We cannot contradict His Word and still have His Word living in us.
God does not treat this claim as an honest mistake:
He does not say that they are mistaken, or ignorant, or deceived. He says that they call Him a liar. No one takes it lightly to be called a liar, even though all men are liars. How much more, then, does God — the God Who is light by nature — feel the insolent refusal of His creature to accept His word.
Commentators differ on the target. Some read it as a description of an unconverted person, however religious:
This again is the proud arrogance of unbelief, denying that its actions have been sinful. This superior, self-deceiving attitude belongs only to someone with no life at all... Honestly facing sin is one of the clearest effects of being in the light.
Others apply it to believers who claim a sinless life, and trace the claim to neglect of Scripture:
Some have applied this verse to the unsaved. It has nothing to do with the sinner. It relates to a true believer who presumes to claim that he lives without sinning. And the reason why children of God make such unscriptural claims is that they pay no attention to His Word.
Where His word is missing, the denial follows. Where His word is present, confession follows — and that is where every believer began.
Where His word is in us, we admit gladly and humbly that we have sinned... And what do we say, we who belong to Christ on high? What did we say as we came out of darkness into light? Did we not begin with that? Yes, we began with what we never forget. All truly converted souls say, "We have sinned."
- Three claims. "We have fellowship" while walking in darkness is a lie. "We have no sin" is self-deception. "We have not sinned" makes God a liar. The same light exposes all three, and each answer is graver than the last.
- Two words. "No sin" denies a present nature. "Not sinned" denies the past. The second denies God's own testimony that we have sinned.
- One test. His word is the test. To contradict that word is to prove it is not in us.
- The charge. God does not call such a person mistaken or ignorant. He treats the claim as calling Him a liar, at the very point of His honour.
- The reversal. Where His word is in us, we say what He says. Every believer's first words were "we have sinned" — the confession that verse 10 refuses.
My children, these things I write to you in order that ye may not sin; and if any one sin, we have a patron with the Father, Jesus Christ [the] righteous;
John sets a standard that leaves no room for sinning. Then he names the provision for the moment a believer does sin: an Advocate with the Father.
The words "these things" point back to what John has already written:
It is important to ask what he had been writing with this aim in view. His subject was fellowship with the Father and the Son, and the fullness of joy in it. For "the joy of the LORD is your strength," and this joy would be their safeguard. The two statements are closely linked: John writes so that their joy may be complete, and he writes so that they may not sin.
No one should turn this truth into an excuse:
And note, these truths are not given so that we may sin. God forbid that I should write one line that would make us careless in our walk.
Who does John mean by "my little children"?
In this letter John addresses the saints as the children of God. Older translations do not always keep the distinction between "children" and "little children." The first term covers the whole family of God. The second covers those in the family who are spiritually the youngest and least mature. Chapter 2:1 is one of the places where "little children" should really read "children"... Here it is easy to see that the appeal not to sin takes in not one class only, but the whole family of God.
John's Gospel uses the same word for the Holy Spirit:
The word translated "Advocate" here is the same word translated "Comforter" in John 14. It means "One called alongside to help." The risen One, Jesus Christ the righteous, is the One called alongside the Father in glory, to help His saints if and when they sin. The Holy Spirit is the One called alongside us here below, to help us.
This differs from His work as high Priest:
The high Priest has to do with our weaknesses, helping, supporting, sympathising. The Advocate has to do with the believer when he sins. There can be no sympathising with sin. But if the believer sins, how moving it is that the Lord does not give us up. On the contrary, He is active for our recovery.
John does not say the Advocate is with God, but with the Father:
"With the Father." Then the link of relationship, the family tie, we are assured, has not snapped. Thank God, it never can! And at such a moment He reminds us of it. He is our Father, and we are His children, however badly we have behaved. Yet restoring us to communion is no light matter. It takes the active service of the Lord Jesus Christ as Advocate to bring it about.
One writer pictures what that service looks like:
He who died for our sins is our advocate, our defender, our lawyer — the One who takes on the whole case of our restoration. We see it in that beautiful picture, when He took the basin and poured water and washed His disciples' feet.
Which comes first — our repentance, or His advocacy?
John does not say we shall have an Advocate when we repent. He says, "if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father." It is the settled possession that Christians always have. Sin is always inexcusable in a saint; but if one does sin, we have that Advocate with the Father. His advocacy brings us to repentance. It is not our repentance that makes Him our Advocate, but His grace which puts everything into effective action.
Why this title, and not one that speaks of His kindness?
John stresses the righteousness of our Advocate. We might have expected His kindness and mercy to be stressed instead. Yet elsewhere, when sin is in question, the emphasis falls on righteousness, and so it is here. The One who takes up our case in the Father's presence when we sin will see to it that righteousness prevails. On the one hand, our sin shall not tarnish the Father's glory. On the other hand, He will deal with us righteously. So we come to a proper and righteous judgment of our sin, are brought to confession, and are forgiven and cleansed.
- Aim — John writes so that his readers will not sin. Their safeguard is fellowship with the Father and the Son, and the full joy it brings.
- Address — "My little children" takes in the whole family of God, not one class of younger believers within it.
- Advocate — the word means "One called alongside to help." Christ is that helper with the Father above; the Spirit is that helper in us below.
- Father — this is not a sinner coming back to God for salvation. It is a child, still in the family, being restored to communion.
- Righteous — He acts first, before we repent. And He acts righteously: He brings us to confession instead of passing over the sin.
and *he* is the propitiation for our sins; but not for ours alone, but also for the whole world.
This verse comes right after the promise of an Advocate for the believer who sins. It names the ground that Advocate stands on. It also widens the view from "our sins" to the whole world. How far does the death of Christ reach?
John does not present Christ pleading for mercy on our behalf. He presents Him as the One who has already settled the whole matter. One writer sets out the two questions, and the two answers:
The One who is our Advocate on high is also "the propitiation for our sins." This fact brings us back to the rock foundation upon which everything rests. His propitiatory sacrifice has met every claim of God against us, and He takes up His advocacy with the Father on that righteous basis. His propitiation has settled for us as sinners the eternal questions our sins have raised. His advocacy now settles the family questions that come up when we, as children of God, sin.
The word points back to the tabernacle, and to one day in Israel's year: the Day of Atonement. On that day the high priest carried blood inside and sprinkled it on the golden lid of the ark, called the mercy-seat.
Writers have often pointed out that the word translated propitiation in this passage really means "mercy-seat," or propitiatory — that is, the place where propitiation was made. This is easy to see if we remember what Aaron did on the great day of atonement. God told him to carry the blood of the sin-offering into the holiest place of all. There he sprinkled it on the mercy-seat, and in front of it too. Now it was the blood so sprinkled that made propitiation, as far as the picture goes. Aaron sprinkled it there for the eye of God, and it met all His claims on His people because of their sins. … In the tabernacle the mercy-seat was hidden behind the veil. In the gospel Christ, as the mercy-seat, is set out publicly before everyone. So whoever accepts God's testimony to the power of His precious blood may come near with confidence.
Some Bibles end the verse "for the sins of the whole world." Others simply say "for the whole world." Commentators differ over whether the words "the sins of" belong. One argues that the phrase implies them:
The words some want to leave out are necessarily implied; for what else does "not for ours only" do but imply them? Had it said, "not for us only," it would have been entirely different; but "not for ours only" must imply: then for the sins of others also.
Another insists on keeping the distinction, to guard the verse from proving too much:
Christ is a propitiation in a general way for the whole world, but only "for our sins." There is a marked distinction when he speaks of the whole world. So it is wrong to put in "the sins" when the world is in question… If the Lord had been the propitiation for the sins of the whole world, then the whole world would receive the fruit of it and go to heaven.
Both sides use the same distinction. Christ's death faces God, and it faces particular people. Scripture uses different words for each.
Being the Godward side of His death, the widest possible circle is in view — "the whole world." When the substitutionary side is stated, only believers are in view: it is "our offences," or "the sins of many." Only believers stand in the realised benefits of the death of Christ. Yet God needs to be propitiated about every sin men have ever committed, and about the whole great outrage sin has done. In the death of Christ He has been propitiated. Because of this He can offer forgiveness to men freely, without compromising one feature of His nature and character in the smallest degree. … God is not against man but for him. What righteousness demanded, love supplied. God Himself provided the propitiation: His own Son, who was God, became it.
This wide reach gives the evangelist something to say to every person.
The evangelist cannot go and tell every creature that Christ died as his substitute. But he can tell him that He died as a propitiation. Then, when through grace the soul believes on the Lord Jesus Christ, he can learn the further calming truth: He died as a substitute, and bore all his sins in His own body on the tree.
- Foundation. The Advocate stands on finished work. Propitiation settled the eternal question of guilt. Advocacy handles the family question when a child of God sins.
- Meaning. "Propitiation" is mercy-seat language. The blood was there for God's eye, and it met every claim He had because of sin.
- Reach. From that foundation the verse widens — the Godward side of the cross takes in "the whole world," not a select circle.
- Limit. That reach is not universal salvation. Commentators differ on the wording, but agree that the sins Christ bore are "our sins," "the sins of many."
- Result. So the invitation goes to every person alive. God can forgive anyone who comes without setting aside His righteousness. Whoever comes then learns that Christ died for him.