What does it mean that, if we confess our sins, He is faithful and just (1 John 1:9)?

Notice the verse says that God "is faithful and just to forgive." 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 still have to hold them against you." Can you imagine God being so unjust toward Christ, after Christ paid the debt, as to still hold you accountable for it? Perish the thought! Christ's work is perfect and God's Word is sure.

Notice the verse says that God "is faithful and just to forgive." 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 still have to hold them against you." Can you imagine God being so unjust toward Christ, after Christ paid the debt, as to still hold you accountable for it? Perish the thought! Christ's work is perfect and God's Word is sure.

1 John 1:9. Having a sinful nature, the fruits of it manifest themselves, even in the Christian, when he is not walking in communion with God. But our sins are not to be covered up; they are to be confessed. Coming in confession to God, we learn that He is faithful and righteous to forgive. We can have the fullest confidence in God: His faithfulness is known in the forgiveness we receive. With each other, we may be very slow to forgive, and very grudgingly pardon those who confess to us their wrongdoings. But God is faithful in His forgiving; we can come to Him perfectly assured that He will forgive, if we confess our sins. Without the confession, the guilt lies upon the conscience, and the defilement on the spirit. Forgiveness on God's part is also a righteous thing, and this because of the work of the cross. God could not pardon the sinner in righteousness apart from the work of Christ; therefore His forgiving of sins magnifies the great work of propitiation accomplished by the Lord Jesus. Then there is the cleansing from all unrighteousness. Unrighteousness in the Christian calls for confession, not only that we might have the sense of Gods pardon, but also that the defilement produced on the spirit might be removed. This is not cleansing by a fresh application of the blood to the believer, but is produced through the action of the word of God on the defiled spirit. Our first coming to God as guilty sinners could not rightly be excluded from this verse; its abstract nature leaves room for this; but it is good for us as failing Christians at all times.

We have seen that, in the last verse of the chapter before, is first introduced the subject of our righteousness. For here begins our righteousness in principle and practice: because we have had God righteous in 1 John 1:9; and a wonderful truth it is that God is there declared faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from every unrighteousness. Man's notion of His righteousness would be His strictness in condemning evil. But Christ has changed everything for the believer by His atoning death, and made it not merely a question of grace in God but of righteousness to forgive him. The ground of this is Himself — Jesus Christ the righteous, and His death for our sins; the effect of which is that God is able to act not merely graciously in our favour when we do not deserve it, but righteously to forgive that which is so offensive to Him as sins. It is true that when born of God we too abjure sins; we have learnt to condemn sin itself, and ourselves for having been guilty of sins. Is it not verified in the believer from his first turning to God? He abhors himself and his sins as before Him. He knows very little, but he knows it personally and truly by God's teaching. When the work of the Lord Jesus is received in the Spirit's power as well as His person, then even the young believer sees things clearly as they are in the sight of God. He begins to know not only things in God's sight, but God Himself in His feeling of perfect love towards those that are His.

The priesthood of Christ comes in to maintain me practically where the blood of Christ has set me. As in the expression in the Epistle of John, "If any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous [Jesus Christ is at God's right hand on all principles of righteousness], and He is the propitiation [the mercy-seat] for our sins." "If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." It is a much easier thing for a child to ask for pardon for some fault than to confess it. We may be asking for pardon for any special sin, and we have no Scripture warrant to know that it is put away; but when we confess it, it is a matter of faith to know that it is put away. I am speaking now of a believer: were it the question of an unconverted person, the blood of Christ meets that. God is "faithful and just (not gracious and merciful merely), to forgive us our sins," etc. The moment I have judged myself about it, I am entitled to know that it is gone.

But many have thought, "If we have the 'forgiveness of sins,' why do we read, in 1 John 1:9, 'If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins'?" There is another sense in which Scripture speaks of forgiveness; when a child of God has sinned, and his communion has been interrupted, and he confesses his sin, he gets forgiveness, not in the sense of non-imputation, as in Rom. 4:7-8, but of communion and joy being restored, which had been interrupted by the sin. The above verse (1 John 1:9) is a general statement, and would apply either to a sinner first coming to God and confessing his sins, and so getting forgiveness once for all on the ground of the death of Christ, or to a child of God who has sinned and confesses, and gets forgiveness as a child by the Father. The one might be called justifying forgiveness in the case of the sinner; and the other, Fatherly, or governmental, forgiveness in the case of a saint; and it is very important to distinguish between the two.

If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” Here again is a broad, all‑embracing principle. If we” involves the same scope as does the expression in each one of these last five verses, that is, if anyone confesses his sins, there is in God perfect faithfulness, perfect justice in forgiving. As the light penetrates, it brings confession with it. Who can say whether repentance or faith is chronologically first? Are they not rather simultaneous? If one believes, it will be manifest in a spirit of confession: if one really repents, he will believe, for the evidence of faith is in his repentance. The confession here is real, of course, as being produced by the light, and cannot in any way be divorced from faith in the Son of God. If this is not specifically mentioned in the verse, yet it is clearly implied in God’s faithfulness and justice. Is God not faithful to His own Son, who has accomplished redemption for confessed sinners? And He is just in forgiving simply because the cross of Christ has satisfied every requirement of justice. Any sinner therefore may come to Him on the ground of this blessed verse, and find eternal forgiveness. On the other hand, a mere lip confession, such as King Saul’s (1 Samuel 15:30), which ignores the justice of God, is not even considered in this verse. Here rather is the reality that faces the facts of God’s faithfulness and righteousness, and frankly confesses. Compare the prodigal son (Luke 15:21,22). Forgiveness is the discharging of every offense against God, no holding it any longer against the offender. But there is cleansing from all unrighteousness also, in order that the soul may be in God’s presence in consistency with the purity of the light.

Well, now, it is as simple as possible. "Now Joshua was clothed with filthy garments, and stood before the angel; and he answered and spake unto those that stood before him, saying, Take away the filthy garments from him." That is the way sin is taken away, — just one word from God, "Take away the filthy garments from him." Beloved friends, is there anybody that would like to hear a voice like that tonight? God has written it there, that every soul that likes may hear it. Did God write that for that sinner's sake? Has He written the blessed words with which He met sinners of old, for their sakes? No but for ours. He is the selfsame God today. He never changes. He never has any exceptions. Never! He is the same God everywhere, in every case the same, thoroughly trustworthy, never changing. And if you are in His presence now, in your sins, He says, "Take away his filthy garments from him." Do you believe that? Well, He gives you His word. If you do not believe that, He will give you His oath. "He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." He is faithful, faithful, faithful. Do you know what "faithful" is? True to a pledged word. Faithfulness is in fulfilling a pledge. Somebody has a claim upon me in some way. I am faithful to my word, faithful to what I have promised. "If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." Do you claim that faithfulness of God? If you bring nothing but sins to Him, you can claim it.

The Brethren, certainly, are not in the habit, at least in public, of praying to God for the pardon of their sins. Not because they think it "unlawful," or because they were pardoned eighteen hundred years ago, or because they do not sin, but because it would be unbelief, as they are not in the position of sinners before God, but of children before the Father. When a sinner is converted — born again — he changes ground; he leaves, and leaves for ever, the ground of the natural man, and is henceforth on the new ground of eternal life and salvation; so that it would be unbelief, in the most inexcusable way, to go back to the old ground and ignore the gracious work of God in the new birth. "Verily, verily," says the blessed Lord, "I say unto you, He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that sent me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into condemnation; but is passed from death unto life."… "For ye are all the children of God," says the apostle, "by faith in Christ Jesus." (John 5:24; Gal. 3:26.) But if they do not pray as sinners to be pardoned, they confess their faults as children according to the mind of the Lord. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." (1 John 1:9.) Here, it is not said that God will be gracious and merciful to forgive if we pray to Him, but that He will be faithful and just to forgive us our sins if we confess them That is, He is faithful and just to Christ, who died for us, put away our sins on the cross, and whose blood is sprinkled on the mercy-seat; ever, as it were, before the eye of God. Surely, in the light of this text, we could not pray to God to be "faithful and just," that we know He must ever be to the finished work of Christ; but we could not too fully or freely confess our sins, and this in the deep sense of what they are in the sight of that blood which was shed for them, and in the presence of His holiness, whose children, though unworthy, we ever are. It is a thousand times more searching for a child to confess the details of his failure, than merely to ask — it may he mechanically — to be pardoned.

In verse 9 the apostle puts the believer on wholly different ground, as led by the Spirit of God. "If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins." "If we say we have no sin," how can we expect self-judgment and confession? There is no need or place for it. A perfectionist dream has a blighting influence on the soul. Here on the contrary we have no "If we say." To confess sins indicated a living reality, just as walking in the light, having fellowship one with another, with the blood that cleanses from every sin. It was not a question of "If we say." Those who are real do not parade their portion; they enjoy it. Christ lives in them, and as they were begotten by the word of truth, they do the truth. The truth is in them. Is not this what we are all called to, who really have Him as our light and life and the truth?

Here the Christian is characterised by a spirit wholly different from first to last. "If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from every unrighteousness." If we have been betrayed into sin, what do we do then? It is so at conversion; it remains so throughout when the need arises. For our God cannot bear sins. We do not hide them; we confess them to God, and, where it is necessary or edifying, to man too. Thus the pride of will is broken; and by grace one renounces his own poor reputation. We care for Christ's character whom we bear. It is His name henceforth; and what is ours compared with it? If we confess our sins therefore, He is faithful and righteous to forgive. What an encouraging word this is, and true from the very time of first turning to God! Here again it is in principle true; and there is no limit to particular time here as in other cases. It is a first principle, and a standing one, for the Christian; it is meant to govern his new walk from the start to the end, a living fact always in the Christian.