Devotions From the Heart: If We Say

by Derek Gitsham


"If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves
and the truth is not in us. If we say that we
have not sinned, we make him a liar, and His
Word is not in us." 1 John 1:8-10


Being “born of God” is a phrase very common to
John in his first Epistle. He does not mean that
we shall have no more sin in our lives. In fact,
to the contrary, we will be very much more aware
of sin and its power working against us than ever
before. John was writing this at a time when error
was creeping into the Church via a group called the
Gnostics who were being used to deliberately pervert
the Gospel. John was answering these errors here
by placing sin in its rightful place in our thinking.

Regeneration does not mean that sin has been entirely
removed. John Wesley writes, ‘sins remains but does
not reign.’ This is so in the believer, but he does
not have to yield to sin within himself. The phrase,
“If we say we have no sin,” is not saying that we are
living in sin but that we have no sin in the sense of
an a humble acknowledgment of it being still with us.

Paul’s statement to the Romans in 7:23-25 says that
‘I see another law in my members warring against the
law of my mind, and bringing me into captivity to the
law of sin which is in my members. O wretched man that
I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this death?
I thank God through Jesus Christ our Lord. So then
with the mind I myself serve the law of God but with
the flesh the law of sin.’

Paul’s statement to Titus in chapter 2:14 reads,
‘Who gave Himself for us that He might redeem us from
all iniquity and purify unto Himself a peculiar people,
zealous of good works.’ The Lord is still purifying
His Church, still continuing to remove all sin from our
lives, that He may present His Church to Himself,
spotless, without spot or wrinkle, or any such thing.

We dare not be deceived on this matter says John. We
do have sin in us, we must be aware of it, not allowing
it to have its way in us, and seek, by a relationship
with the Lord, to see our own personal deliverance from
it every day of our lives.