Will your sin be forgiven if you don’t confess it? (And will unconfessed sin separate you from God?)

 

Many years ago, I had a friend who was struggling with depression. It got so bad, he checked himself into a psychiatric hospital, knowing he was suicidal. I visited him when I could. As the months wore on, his agony went far beyond sadness and into spiritual despair.

It was at the time when Jay Adams’ books were popular. Many people read them and then felt competent to counsel my sick friend. With tears in his eyes, he told me, “People keep telling me that my problem is unconfessed sin. But I’ve wracked my brain and have confessed every sin I can think of. And I’m still sick. Is God mad at me for something I haven’t confessed?”

Over the years, I’ve heard similar sentiment expressed. We need to confess our sin before we can be forgiven. The concept comes from 1 John 1:9: “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”

Do we need to confess every sin? If we don’t, and unconfessed sin remains in us, will that separate us from God? Will we NOT be cleansed from all unrighteousness?

I’ve heard this verse taught many a time, and thinking in those terms is usually how it is interpreted. But unfortunately, that interpretation does not take that verse’s context into consideration. Always a bad idea.

When John wrote this epistle, (between AD 85-95), new false teachers had appeared on the scene. They were pushing an early form of Gnosticism.[1]

John is writing to refute that teaching, which had become popular in eastern Asia Minor (from where John was writing in Ephesus), especially with intellectuals. They believed there was a special kind of knowledge, which only the elite could possess, that could lead to salvation. And of course, the teachers had reached that higher status.

They claimed that their advanced stage in spiritual experience was such that they were “beyond good and evil. They maintained that they had no sin, not in the sense that they had attained moral perfection, but in the sense that what might be sin for people at a less mature stage of inner development was no longer sin for the completely spiritual.”[2]

Their belief system was absolutely contrary to the true gospel message. So the false teachers took their new followers out from the fellowship of those who held on to the truth. Those Christians who remained were shaken and needed reassurance. John wrote for that purpose. “I write this,” he says, “to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life” (1 John 5:13). It was those who had turned their backs on the fellowship that had abandoned the truth.

John begins his letter with reassurance that what they believed was the truth, in contrast to those who had left the fold. “If we say we have fellowship with Him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth,” he told them. “But if we walk in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin” (1 John 1:6-7).  Those who had abandoned the fellowship that was based on the gospel were walking in darkness. Those who remained were walking in the light.

Then John refutes the false teachers’ teaching: “If we say we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us.” There are no elites in the Kingdom of God. We all were in the same boat: sinners in need of salvation. Part of accepting the gospel is acknowledging that fact. But the Gnostics felt they were above it.

John goes on to say, “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar and His word is not in us” (1:9-10). The “confession” here is not for the believer, who is already cleansed and righteous. John is defining confession as an acknowledgement of the true gospel. That there is no one righteous on their own merit. That “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). The Gnostics had abandoned that truth.

So when taken in context, 1 John 1:9 is not a threat to the well-being of any believer. Nothing can separate us from the love of God (Romans 8:28). We wear the righteousness of Christ (Philippians 3:9). Our position cannot be threatened by anything we do, because we received it through unmerited favor (grace) alone (Ephesians 2:8-9).

I wish I could go back in time and tell my sick friend what that verse really means. It would have saved him so much pain and anguish. He could rely on what Jesus has already done—and know that God had not abandoned Him, but was with Him even as he struggled. Even if He couldn’t feel Him at the moment. He was forevermore good with God through the blood of Jesus Christ.

When something is being taught that doesn’t seem to fit in with the gospel message of grace, it’s time to give it a second look. It will likely be something taken out of context.

 

 

[1] The so-called Docetic view, which held a dualistic interpretation of the world: the spiritual is good, the material (physical) is bad.

[2] (F.F. Bruce, 1 The First Epistle of John, page 26).