Confess Sin J. Vernon McGee

Another method which is often used is an attempt to bring man up to God’s level. They say that man has reached sinless perfection and that he is living on that very high plateau. Well, John deals with that approach. Listen to him—

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

This is even worse than being a liar. When you get to the place where you say you have no sin in your life, there is no truth in you at all. This doesn’t mean you are simply a liar; it means you don’t even have the truth. You are deceiving yourself. You don’t deceive anyone else. You deceive only yourself.
I ran into this problem very early in my training for the ministry. When I went to college as a freshman, my first roommate was a young man who was also studying for the ministry. He was a sweet boy in many ways. The only trouble with him was that he was perfect. When I found the room which had been assigned to me, my roommate was not at home, but when he came in, he introduced himself and informed me that he had not committed a sin in so many years—I have forgotten if he said one, two, or three years. It shocked me to meet a fellow who didn’t sin. I had hoped he would be my buddy, but he wasn’t a buddy. You see, in every room where I have lived, things go wrong once in a while. And there I was living in a room in which there were only two of us and one of us couldn’t do anything wrong. So when something went wrong, guess who was to blame? Now I admit that usually it was my fault—but not always. Although he was a nice fellow, he hadn’t reached the level of perfection which he claimed; he wasn’t perfect. After the first semester, a freshman was permitted to move wherever he wished, so I told him, “I’m moving out.” He was greatly distressed and said, “Oh, no! Where are you going?” I told him, “I have met a fellow down the hall who is just as mean as I am, and I’m going to move in with him.” So I did move out, and I understand he didn’t get a roommate after that. My new roommate and I got along wonderfully well. In fact, I still visit him down in the state of Florida. We are old men now and we still have wonderful times together. Neither of us is perfect although we have mellowed a bit down through the years.
My friend, if you feel that you have reached the state of perfection, I really feel sorry for your spouse because it is hard to live with someone who thinks he is perfect. John says, “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.” We cannot bring ourselves up to God’s level. It is impossible to reach perfection in this life.
Let me give you another instance of this because I think it is important. When I first came to Pasadena, I knew a man who served for a while as chaplain at the jail. He was a wonderful, enthusiastic Christian. I certainly had no criticism of him. But one day he met me on the street and said, “Brother Vernon, I got sanctified last night.” I said, “You did! What really happened to you?” He told me that he had reached the place where he could no longer sin.
Well, I didn’t see him for a while after that, but one of the officers of the church I served at the time lived next door to him. The son of the man who had reached perfection came to visit and parked his trailer in the back yard with part of it on the property of the man who was an officer in my church. He said nothing for a while, but the time came when he had to build a shed on that spot. The neighbor knew he was intending to do this, but he made no mention of it. Finally, when it looked as if the son was going to stay and he felt that he could wait no longer to build, he went to his neighbor and asked him to move the trailer. Well, the fellow lost his temper and really told him what kind of a neighbor he thought he was. The man who was the officer in my church casually mentioned the incident to me one day; so I couldn’t wait to meet that fellow and finally I looked him up. I said to him, “Didn’t you tell me that you got sanctified?”
“Yes.”
“And when you got sanctified, you reached the plane of sinless perfection?”
“Yes, I think I have reached it.”
“Well, your neighbor is a member of my church, and he tells me that you really lost your temper the other day and told him off in a very unkind, un–Christianlike manner.”
He began to hem and haw. “I guess I did lose my temper. But that is not sin.”
“Oh, if it’s not sin, what is it?”
“I just made a mistake. I recognize that I shouldn’t have done it—so that’s not a sin.”
“Well, I want you to shake hands with me now, because I’ve reached that plane, too. I don’t sin; I just make mistakes—and I make a lot of them. But, brother, the Word of God will make it very clear to you that losing your temper and bawling out your neighbor as you did is sin.”
My friend, whom do you think you deceive when you say that you have no sin? You deceive yourself, and you are the only person whom you do deceive. You don’t deceive God. You don’t deceive your neighbors. You don’t deceive your friends. But you sure do deceive yourself. And John says that the truth is not in a man like that because he can’t see that he is a sinner and that he has not reached the place of perfection. Yet a great many folk are trying that route in their effort to bridge the gap between themselves and a holy God.
Since you cannot bring God down to your level and you cannot bring yourself up to His level, what are you going to do? John gives us the alternative here—

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].

“If we confess our sins.” Here is another one of our “if’s.” We have seen several of them: “If we say that we have fellowship” (v. 6); “If we walk in the light” (v. 7); and “If we say that we have no sin” (v. 8). Now here is the right method for bringing together a sinful man and a holy God: confession of sins.
What does it mean to confess our sins? The word confess is from the Greek verb homologeo, meaning “to say the same thing.” Logeo means “to say” and homo means “the same.” You are to say the same thing that God says. When God in His Word says that the thing you did is sin, you are to get over on God’s side and look at it. And you are to say, “You are right, Lord, I say the same thing that You say. It is sin.” That is what it means to confess your sins. That, my friend, is one of the greatest needs in the church. This is God’s way for a Christian to deal with sin in his own life.
The other day I talked to a man who got into deep trouble. He divorced his wife—he found out that she had been unfaithful. He lost his home and lost his job. He was a very discouraged man. He said to me, “I want to serve God, and I have failed. I am a total failure.” I very frankly said to him, “Don’t cry on my shoulder. Go and tell God about it. He wants you to come to Him. Tell Him you have failed. Tell Him you have been wrong. Tell Him that you want to say the same thing about your sin that He says about it. Seek His help. He is your Father. You are in the family. You have lost your fellowship with Him, but you can have your fellowship restored. If you confess your sins, He is faithful and just to forgive you your sins.”
After we confess our sins, what does God do? He cleanses us. In the parable, the Prodigal Son came home from the far country smelling like a pigpen. You don’t think the father would have put a new robe on that ragged, dirty boy, smelling like that, do you? No, he gave him a good bath. The Roman world majored in cleanliness, and I am confident that the boy was bathed before that new robe was put on him. The next week he didn’t say, “Dad, I think I will be going to the far country and end up in the pigpen again.” Not that boy.
When you have confessed your sin, it means that you have turned from that sin. It means that you have said the same thing which God has said. Sin is a terrible thing. God hates it and now you hate it. But confession restores you to your Father.
John concludes this by saying—

If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us [1 John 1:10].

Now don’t make God a liar. Why don’t you go to the Lord, my friend, and just open your heart and talk to him as you talk to no one else. Tell Him your problems. Tell Him your sins. Tell Him your weakness. Confess it all to Him. And say to your Father that you want to have fellowship with Him and you want to serve Him. My, He has made a marvelous, wonderful way back to Himself!

McGee, J. V. (1991). Thru the Bible commentary: The Epistles (1 John) (electronic ed., Vol. 56, pp. 30–34). Nashville: Thomas Nelson.