How many of us have pulled out the card of 1 John 1:9 to place on top of the multitude of sins we confess? No matter how many transgressions we stack up, no matter how high the pile, this one card trumps them all: “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).
Not that God forgives our sins simply because we confess them. Rather, He forgives them because we confess Christ as His remedy for sin. That is implicit in the description of God as “faithful and just to forgive.”
Faithful means that God is true to Himself, true to His word, true to His promises. That we can understand. But why “just”? Wouldn’t we expect John to say “faithful and merciful to forgive,” not treating us as our sins deserve?
Justice points us to the holiness of God. He who will by no means leave the guilty unpunished has levied that punishment at the cross. His justice has been exercised and His wrath satisfied.
That’s why John points us to Jesus. “If anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. And He Himself is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the whole world” (1 John 2:1–2).
Forgiveness is found not in mere confession of sin but in confession of Christ who atoned for the guilt of that sin and who suffered the wrath of God that we deserve for it. Jesus is the Righteous One who arrived at the cross without any sin of His own that He might take upon Himself the sins of those He came to save.
When we sin, and we do sin (1 John 1:8, 10), we find forgiveness and cleansing through confession, admitting our violation of the law of God and aligning ourselves with His assessment. We don’t minimize our sin, or rationalize it, or excuse it. We own it and turn to our Father for forgiveness in Christ.
But John tells us something else in this trump card of grace in 1 John 1:9 that we can gloss over. He says that God will not only forgive the sin we confess, He will cleanse us from all unrighteousness. That’s like going to pay the minimum balance on our maxed out credit card and the company telling us that balance is already paid and whole debt has been met.
Why does John speak of being absolved of all unrighteousness when we approach the throne of grace confessing even just one sin? That’s because the gospel itself is in view. All of our sins were laid on the incarnate, unblemished Lamb of God and were dealt with by His death on the cross.
When we confess our sins, we invoke the gospel that cleanses us from all unrighteousness. In the gospel all our sins—past, present, and future—have been accounted for and their debt paid in full in Christ. God’s forgiveness of our sin every time we confess is like our being washed over by a breaking wave at the beach that is but an expression of a vast ocean of God’s love for us in Jesus.
