Sermon of the week

CONFESSION BEFORE FORGIVENESS Part 2
 
If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. 
If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to 
cleanse us from all unrighteousness (1 John 1:8-9).  
 
 
This morning we considered our first point, that is, “If we say that we have no 
sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.”
 
This afternoon let’s consider our second, third and fourth points.
 
FOR OUR SECOND POINT, let’s consider the conditional terms upon which sin is 
forgiven, “If we confess our sins.”
 
FOR OUR THIRD POINT, let’s consider the foundation of our assurance of this 
pardon, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful.”
 
FOR OUR FOURTH POINT, let’s consider how justice not only allows, but demands a 
pardon, “If we confess our sins, [then] he is faithful and just to forgive us 
our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” 
 
 
So, let’s consider the conditional terms upon which sin is forgiven, “If we 
confess our sins.”
 
Notice Psalm 32:1-2: “Blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin 
is covered. Blessed is the man unto whom the LORD imputeth not iniquity, and in 
whose spirit there is no guile.” One of the most blessed things you and I could 
ever experience in this life and throughout eternity is that our transgressions 
are forgiven, and that God has not imputed our iniquity unto us. 
 
 
Notice that it is a conditional forgiveness: if we confess. Now let’s examine 
our own hearts to see how much Pharisee, and how much of the spirit of the 
publican there is in our hearts. The publican confessed his sin, but the 
Pharisee boasted before God of his righteousness. How much do we justify 
ourselves before the Lord? How much of the publican is in our hearts, of actual 
open confession: Be merciful to me a sinner? We confess not only that we are 
sinners, but we confess our sin.
 
When we have spoken wrongly, we can confess, Lord, my tongue is a world of 
iniquity. When we have caught ourselves in pride, we can say, Lord, I have 
violated your precepts. We have to identify that sin if it is to be forgiven, 
and to confess that we have that sin. We ask God not only to forgive it, but to 
cleanse us from it. The Lord did not come to save us in our sins, but to save us 
from our sins. God does not forgive with the stipulation that everyone is a 
sinner and that justifies living in sin. There has to be that longing desire of 
repenting and turning from sin. It is not a matter of whether or not we are 
sinners, it is a matter of having the grace to confess and repent of our sins.
 
Leviticus 26 tells how the Lord through His servant Moses showed His people the 
blessings He would bestow upon them if they obeyed His will, but also the 
judgements He would bring upon them if they walked contrary to His will. 
 
 
I want you to see the conditions of repentance in Leviticus 26:40: “If they 
shall confess their iniquity, and the iniquity of their fathers, with their 
trespass which they trespassed against me, and that also they have walked 
contrary unto me.” 
 
 
The Lord wants us to confess before Him when we walk contrary to His will. 
Notice the next verse, which I find to be tremendously important. If in our walk 
of life we find that confusion reigns, the Lord wants us to confess that too.
 
Verse 41 says: “And that I also have walked contrary unto them, and have brought 
them into the land of their enemies; if then their uncircumcised hearts be 
humbled, and they then accept of the punishment of their iniquity.” In other 
words, He has allowed us to enter a state of total confusion, and this is the 
reward for our walking contrary to Him. Nothing happens by chance. Then we must 
confess: Lord, I have walked contrary to you, and you have walked contrary to 
me. I am now receiving the fruit of my own doings.
 
We read in verse 42: “Then will I remember my covenant with Jacob, and also my 
covenant with Isaac, and also my covenant with Abraham will I remember; and I 
will remember the land.”  
 
 
If that unrepenting spirit is broken, and we accept the punishment of our 
iniquities, then He will remember His covenant. The Lord will again send His 
blessings on the fruit of our labors. The Lord will send His blessings upon our 
hearts, and He will again bring us peace. This covenant with Abraham, Isaac and 
Jacob was the Messiah. In other words, He would again bring the Messiah and His 
preciousness back into our hearts. That promise that God had made with Abraham 
was that the Messiah would come, in other words, that He would bring them into 
the promised land, that He would bring them the promises of Abraham. His 
blessings are contingent upon repentance. They are contingent on confessing we 
were wrong.
 
We must notice the order King Solomon set forth in his prayer: if they confess, 
if they turn, then forgive. We see this in 1 Kings 8:35-36: “When heaven is shut 
up, and there is no rain, because they have sinned against thee; if they pray 
toward this place, and confess thy name, and turn from their sin, when thou 
afflictest them: Then hear thou in heaven, and forgive the sin of thy servants, 
and of thy people Israel, that thou teach them the good way wherein they should 
walk, and give rain upon thy land, which thou hast given to thy people for an 
inheritance.”  
 
 
We need to understand this if we wonder why we are pining away in our 
iniquities, but have not really examined our hearts to see how much Pharisee 
there is in our own heart, and we have not openly confessed our sins. We are 
still defensive. We still try to prove that we are right. We are still going to 
go forward in our sins. If we do this, the Lord leaves us to confusion.
 
We need to confess His name, in other words, that He is the Lord and the Lord of 
our lives, and turn from our sins. Then turn and not only bless them in their 
souls, but in the fruit of their labors, King Solomon prayed.
 
David found that when he kept silent, God’s hand was heavy on him, but when he 
confessed his transgression the Lord forgave him. I want you to notice this in 
Psalm 32:3-5: “When I kept silence, my bones waxed old through my roaring all 
the day long. For day and night thy hand was heavy upon me: my moisture is 
turned into the drought of summer. Selah. I acknowledged my sin unto thee, and 
mine iniquity have I not hid. I said, I will confess my transgressions unto the 
LORD; and thou forgavest the iniquity of my sin. Selah.”
 
We must not only confess our faults to God, but to one another, for our prayers 
to be effectual. We must be able to confess to our fellowman: I was wrong. Will 
you forgive me? I want you to see this in James 5:16: “Confess your faults one 
to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed. The effectual 
fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.”
 
We need to confess our sins to God and to one another for our prayers to be 
effectual, for our prayers to enter heaven, for our prayers to get beyond this 
ceiling. We must confess our sins to one another and admit we were wrong. We 
cannot always defend ourselves and try to prove that we had some excuse for 
doing what we did or to deny what we have done. When we have been wrong we must 
confess that we were wrong. The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man is 
to confess your faults one to another. 
 
 
The Apostle James associates confessing our faults to one another together with 
the effectual prayer of the righteousness, that is, those who observe the law of 
love. If we have offended someone, we have violated the law of love, and we must 
repair that breach by confessing we were wrong. If we do not, our prayers are 
not effectual.
 
If we find it so difficult to confess our faults to one another, how can we pray 
for one another to be healed of that leprosy of sin, of that weakness, of that 
covetousness, of that unruly tongue? The prayer for healing does not just 
pertain to physical illness. It also pertains to the leprosy of sin. How can we 
pray with one another if we cannot confess one to another?
 
If we cannot confess our faults to one another whom we have seen, how can we 
rightly confess them to God whom we have not seen? Our pardon depends on this. 
How can we come before the Lord and say: I was proud; I acted arrogantly; I was 
wrong; and turn right around to the person we were proud against and defend 
ourselves? Lord, I was wrong but do not tell him. It does not work that way. 
 
 
The Lord says for that man to forgive me if I confess my sin, so the Lord can 
forgive him. How can we be too proud to confess that we were wrong?
 
We read in 1 John 4:20-21: “If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he 
is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love 
God whom he hath not seen? And this commandment have we from him, That he who 
loveth God love his brother also.” Can you say that you love God and come before 
Him and confess your faults, but hate your brother and not confess your faults 
to him? How can we have a heartfelt prayer for our brother if we cannot confess 
that we caused his injury?  
 
 
If we cannot confess our pride to one whom we love, how can we ask one another 
to pray that we be healed of that pride? 
 
 
If we cannot confess our covetousness to one we love, how can we ask one another 
to pray that we be healed? We come together in a prayer meeting and ask for 
prayer requests. One may reply: Yes, I have been harassed with covetousness. 
Pride has been a stumblingblock in my life. I want prayer for this to be healed. 
How can we do this if we cannot confess our faults to one another? 
 
 
If we cannot confess our peevishness, or irritation, to one we love, how can we 
ask one another to pray that we be healed of it?
 
We must confess that we are guilty of these sins that are so common to man and 
that we need God’s help to redeem us from all iniquity. How can we ask: Pray for 
me that I might be healed of these things, without confessing that we need that 
help?  
 
 
If we cannot confess our rebellion to one another whom we love, how can we ask 
one another to pray for the Lord to break that rebellion? 
 
 
Can any one of us say we are free from these sins? Our text says in 1 John 
1:8-9: “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is 
not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our 
sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”  
 
 
We are all guilty of these things. That is a result of our fall by nature, but 
we must confess these sins before one another and before the Lord.
 
Several things keep us from confessing our sins before God or our fellow man 
even though we feel their weight.
 
One is hardness of heart. Did you know that because of the fall we have hard 
hearts, and a hardened heart will hinder us in confessing our sins to one 
another, and it will hinder us in confessing our sins to God? The law cannot 
soften a hardened heart. The more we lash each other with the whip of the law, 
the harder our hearts become. Guilt cannot melt it. I can put you on a guilt 
trip and show you what a terrible transgressor you are, but this will not melt a 
hard and stony heart. The pangs of hell in a man’s conscience cannot break down 
the rebellion of the heart. That is why we do not have a gospel of hell and 
damnation. That is not the gospel. 
 
 
All the lightening and thunder of Mt. Sinai drove the people away. They fled 
from the Lord. That does not melt a hard and stony heart.
 
Yet the Lord sends His Spirit with a blessed revelation of His love, and then 
the waters flow. What has more tendency to break a hard heart, a heart of 
rebellion, a heart of hatred, than love? Love heaped upon the head, those 
burning coals of love, cannot be quenched with a flood. It cannot be quenched 
with hardness of heart. It will melt a hard and stony heart.
 
Watch what we read in Jeremiah 31:9: “They shall come with weeping, and with 
supplications will I lead them: I will cause them to walk by the rivers of 
waters in a straight way, wherein they shall not stumble: for I am a father to 
Israel, and Ephraim is my firstborn.”
 
See the love, compassion and tender fatherly care. We find the rivers not on the 
mountain but in the valley of humiliation. Rivers run downhill. A river never 
runs uphill. There is no exaltation there. It is a continual flowing of 
humility, and it comes with weeping. The love of God draws us to repentance.  
 
 
Sometimes the Lord will compel a confession out of us by laying death and hell 
before our eyes, but most often He will draw it out by melting our hearts with a 
revelation of His love. The Lord is the One who brings us to confess, and we 
must confess before we receive forgiveness.
 
We read in 1 John 4:8-9: “He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love. 
In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only 
begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him.”  
 
 
The Lord brings a confession out of our hearts when He starts manifesting the 
love of God toward us because God sent His only begotten Son into the world to 
suffer, bleed and die to pay the price of our sins. Now we see the tender love 
of the Father. That is what brings us with weeping and supplication. That is 
what brings us into the rivers and the valley of humiliation. This is not 
preaching hell and damnation. 
 
 
Continuing in verse 10 we read: “Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that 
he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins.” Now watch 
what follows. He is looking for the fruit. Verse 11 says: “Beloved, if God so 
loved us, we ought also to love one another.”
 
Now do you understand why the Apostle John said: “If a man say, I love God, and 
hateth his brother, he is a liar” (1 John 4:20).
 
If you have ever had a faith view of the precious love of the Father in sending 
His Son; if you have ever had a faith view of Christ being the appeasing of His 
wrath upon your sins; and then tell me that you can hate your brother, you are a 
liar. You have never had that faith view.
 
See the condescension of God’s love in 2 Corinthians 5:18-20: “And all things 
are of God, who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ, and hath given to 
us the ministry of reconciliation; To wit, that God was in Christ, reconciling 
the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them; and hath 
committed unto us the word of reconciliation. Now then we are ambassadors for 
Christ, as though God did beseech you by us: we pray you in Christ's stead, be 
ye reconciled to God.”
 
I want you to see how God first loved us. God reconciled the world to Himself by 
sending His own Son to suffer, bleed and die, to pay the price of sin, to 
appease the Father’s wrath upon sin. He sent His servants to proclaim that 
reconciliation is in place from God’s side.
 
Where is the separation between you and God? Is it on His side or on yours? It 
is because of our hard hearts, that rebellion in the heart by nature that can 
only be broken by the Spirit of God. The Holy Spirit works the work of 
regeneration in the heart and breaks that rebellion. The separation is on our 
part. The fault is with us, not God.
 
No one standing on the brink of eternity will ever be able to say he could not 
be saved because of a limited atonement. God is reconciling Himself to the 
world, and we are to be reconciled with Him. The fault is with man, not with 
God. That rebellion of the heart has kept us apart.  
 
 
This is synonymous with Jeremiah 3:13-14a: “Only acknowledge thine iniquity, 
that thou hast transgressed against the LORD thy God, and hast scattered thy 
ways to the strangers under every green tree, and ye have not obeyed my voice, 
saith the LORD. Turn, O backsliding children, saith the LORD; for I am married 
unto you.”
 
Where is the hindrance to you being saved? Where is the hindrance to a person 
being at one with Christ? It is the rebellion and the hardness of heart whereby 
they refuse to acknowledge their sin. The Lord melts that hard heart with a 
revelation of His love. 
 
 
FOR OUR THIRD POINT, let’s consider the foundation of our assurance of this 
pardon, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful.”
 
The Lord draws that confession out of the hearts and out of the mouths of His 
loved ones by a revelation of His love for them. Now we see how faithful He is. 
 
 
Why does our text emphasize this attribute of God, “He is faithful”? He has so 
many attributes. Why is it that the emphasis not on “He is merciful”? Why is the 
emphasis not on “He is gracious” or “He is kind”?
 
It is because God’s faithfulness is the foundation of all His promises. What 
would one promise of God be worth to you if you could ever prove that He was 
unfaithful and that one promise had ever failed? Where would the foundation of 
our hope be? Our hope is founded on His faithfulness, that He will never fail, 
that what He has promised He is able to perform. He might lead us as He did 
Abraham, whom He promised would have a son by Sarah. The Lord waited until 
Abraham was 100 years old and Sarah was 90. They were both totally past 
child-bearing years. 
 
 
His faithfulness is our absolute assurance that if we confess, He will forgive. 
He has promised. His name is connected with this promise to forgive. That is how 
surely He will forgive.
 
Turn with me to 2 Corinthians 1:19-20: “For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, who 
was preached among you by us, even by me and Silvanus and Timotheus, was not yea 
and nay, but in him was yea. For all the promises of God in him are yea, and in 
him Amen, unto the glory of God by us.”
 
This tells us that His name is connected with His promises. He is faithful. He 
cannot lie. There is no variableness or shadow of turning in the Lord. He will 
not say, Yes, I promised, but I changed my mind because of what you did. We will 
not sin away His promises, but His promises are contingent on our confession of 
sins, if we repent, if we do what He tells us. 
 
 
God’s faithfulness is the attribute in the divine majesty upon which every 
promise rests. God’s word says in Romans 3:4, “Let God be true, but every man a 
liar.” Every man will be proved a liar, but God will be true. God will never 
deceive or repent of what He has promised. 
 
 
Faithfulness, that is truth, is the very character of God. Therefore His 
faithfulness is the foundation of our assurance of the words of our text: “If we 
confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse 
us from all unrighteousness.”
 
FOR OUR FOURTH POINT, let’s consider how justice not only allows, but demands a 
pardon, “If we confess our sins, [then] he is faithful and just to forgive us 
our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” 
 
 
The Lord tells us in Proverbs: He who justifies the wicked, and he who condemns 
the righteous are equally abominable in the sight of the Lord. So for the Lord 
to condemn one who is righteous would be abominable in His own sight. If you and 
I are just, justice not only authorizes but demands our acquittal.
 
If you and I are brought before the court of heaven, Satan is the accuser of the 
brethren. He is the prosecutor, and God the Father sits as judge. What can any 
one of us say but guilty, guilty, guilty? Justice demands our sentence, but we 
have an Advocate with the Father, even Jesus Christ the righteous. An advocate 
is our legal representative, our attorney. 
 
 
My legal representative stands up, and He enters my plea. He raises His right 
hand, and in the palm of His hand my name is written. He stands before the 
Father and says, That name is written in the palm of my hand and every sin that 
has been brought to his charge has been paid for right here. The penalty for 
that sin has been paid. The accuser of the brethren is put to silence. He has no 
charges left to bring against me.
 
Now justice demands my acquittal. For the judge to condemn me would be as 
abominable as it would be to justify me if I were guilty. Now I am righteous 
because the penalty has been satisfied in full. If He has fully satisfied the 
requirement of the law by the payment of the penalty, the law is satisfied. I 
have now been justified, and therefore justice demands my acquittal.
 
Our text says He is faithful and just, not only meaning that He can justly turn 
me loose because I am no longer guilty, but now justice demands that He turn me 
loose. The charges are dismissed. I have been set free because I have confessed 
my guilt. My Advocate would not just sit there. He said He would rise for my 
cause, and He did, so now I find justification. 
 
 
When we speak of the attribute of God’s justice we must ask, How can God pardon 
a transgressor and still be just? We read in Romans 3:24-26: “Being justified 
freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus: Whom God 
hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his 
righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance 
of God; To declare, I say, at this time his righteousness: that he might be 
just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus.”  
 
 
God can do this and be just and allow that sin, not to go unpunished, but 
punished in a Substitute. He would not be just if He allowed that sin to go 
unpunished, but Jesus was the acceptable Substitute. 
 
 
What an eternal wonder how the Lord of life and glory entered into the place of 
transgressors to be made their Substitute under the curse of the broken law. We 
see this in 2 Corinthians 5:21: “For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew 
no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.” 
 
 
We stand righteous. That word righteous means not guilty. The word righteousness 
and the word justified in the Greek are translated from several words. In this 
instance that word righteous means to be acquitted as not guilty because our 
Substitute became guilty. Our Substitute was made to be sin for us that we might 
be made the righteousness of God, in other words, perfect righteousness.
 
Now justice demands our pardon, “If we confess our sins, [because] he is 
faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all 
unrighteousness.” He is now just because we have confessed those sins. 
 
 
Oh beloved, mercy begs, but justice demands! Have you ever known what it is to 
lay flat on your face before the Lord and beg for mercy? The Lord Jesus Christ 
stands before His Father and demands our acquittal. 
 
 
Mercy beseeches and pleads for undeserved favor. Mercy is a part of God’s 
character, which looks down with pity and compassion on a confessing criminal, 
but justice says: This is his due. It is his right. It belongs to him. The Lord 
Jesus Christ judges, and He demands our acquittal, because He has purchased our 
salvation with a payment in full. Oh beloved how can that be? Our blessed 
Redeemer has paid the debt in full.  
 
 
When Jesus was circumcised He became a debtor to do the whole law in the place 
of His church. We read in Galatians 5:3: “For I testify again to every man that 
is circumcised, that he is a debtor to do the whole law.”  
 
 
When Jesus Christ was circumcised, His whole church was circumcised in Him. It 
is so important that we understand that covenant of circumcision, where the Lord 
Jesus Christ covenanted in eternity to come in the place of His church and be 
their Substitute. God revealed to Abraham in the covenant of circumcision that 
the Lord Jesus Christ would come and be a debtor to do the whole law for His 
church.
 
We read in Colossians 2:9-11: “For in him dwelleth all the fulness of the 
Godhead bodily. And ye are complete in him, which is the head of all 
principality and power: In whom also ye are circumcised with the circumcision 
made without hands, in putting off the body of the sins of the flesh by the 
circumcision of Christ.”
 
In that circumcision of Christ, you and I have the imputed righteousness of the 
Lord Jesus Christ. We are circumcised in Him. We have fulfilled the law to 
perfection by His imputed righteousness. 
 
 
This is how the obedience of Christ is imputed to His Bride. That is why the 
Apostle Paul said in Galatians 5:1-2: “Stand fast therefore in the liberty 
wherewith Christ hath made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of 
bondage. Behold, I Paul say unto you, that if ye be circumcised, Christ shall 
profit you nothing.” If you are going to yet preach circumcision, you nullify 
the circumcision we have in Christ.
 
Continuing in verse 3 we read: “For I testify again to every man that is 
circumcised, that he is a debtor to do the whole law. Christ is become of no 
effect unto you, whosoever of you are justified by the law; ye are fallen from 
grace.”
 
The Lord Jesus Christ has been circumcised for His church, and we are 
circumcised in Him. Circumcision does not replace baptism, and neither does 
baptism replace circumcision. We need both. We are complete in Him. We need His 
perfect obedience, but we also need His baptism, wherein He stepped under the 
wrath of the Father and took away the penalty of sin. We are baptized in Him, 
and we are circumcised in Him. This is how we can have Him as our Advocate, 
where He stands in our place before the Father and says: Father, I have 
fulfilled the law in his behalf. I have taken the penalty of the law in His 
behalf. Justice now demands his pardon. The law has been satisfied, and the law 
has been kept by my imputed righteousness.
 
It is such a terrible thing when people want to still preach circumcision, and 
they preach that we have to be circumcised whether it be with water or the 
knife. If so, Christ avails us nothing. We have nullified that. To be 
circumcised means we become debtors to do the whole law.  
 
 
It was in the way of this perfect obedience that Christ became the propitiation 
for our sin. In Philippians 2:8 we read: “And being found in fashion as a man, 
he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the 
cross.” This is the obedience of the Lord Jesus Christ that is crucial to you 
and me. He became a debtor to do the whole law, and God had so commanded Him 
that He must lay down His life and take it again. In such perfect obedience, He 
stepped into the Father’s wrath as an act of obedience, and now you and I are 
circumcised in Him. Our obedience is in the imputed righteousness of Christ. 
That is why we need His circumcision. That is why we cannot nullify it by yet 
being circumcised. Read Galatians 5 and study it prayerfully in that light. 
 
 
The Father was so glorified by the perfect obedience of Christ because therein 
His justice was satisfied, His wrath upon sin was appeased and the purpose of 
His creation was fulfilled.
 
Philippians 2:9-11 says: “Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, and given 
him a name which is above every name: That at the name of Jesus every knee 
should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the 
earth; And that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the 
glory of God the Father.”  
 
 
He has perfectly satisfied the law by perfect obedience and the appeasing of 
God’s wrath in the way of obedience. 
 
 
Our text says in 1 John 1:8-9: “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive 
ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful 
and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”
 
Not only do we seek pardon, but we seek cleansing. When we learn to see the 
sinfulness of sin and the true character of sin, then we understand what it is 
to desire to be cleansed from sin, because the Lord will never save us in our 
sins. He will save us from our sins.