The Light of Christ Revealing our Sins Leads to Sanctification (1 John 1:1-10)

 

(Revised and re-titled, May 19, 2025, May 16, 2026)

The apostolic writers know how the believers are encumbered by their own sins, and how they sometimes lose heart or even despair.  But the Light of Christ which reveals our sins leads to confession, forgiveness and sanctification!

Pay close attention to how the Apostle John draws the attention of sin-troubled believers toward the eternal, spiritual and righteous beauty of Christ.  He does not give sin-troubled believers an exposition of the Law which condemns them, but he strikes hope into their hearts by preaching the living, saving and sanctifying glory of the Son of God:

The Incarnation of the Word of Life  (1 John 1, NIV)  My comments are in square brackets.

1 ¹ That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched—this we proclaim concerning the Word of life.  ² The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us.  ³ We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. ⁴ We write this to make our joy complete. 

Then John writes to show that the most beautiful and living One is the most righteous One who can communicate his own righteousness to us.

Light and Darkness, Sin and Forgiveness

⁵ This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all.  ⁶ If we claim to have fellowship with him and yet walk in the darkness [not in the Light of Christ, uncaring of our sin], we lie and do not live out the truth.  ⁷ But if we walk in the light [exposing our sin], as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, [continually] purifies us from all sin.

⁸ If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth [of the gospel] is not in us. ⁹ If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.  ¹⁰ If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word is not in us.

John preaches the way of life to those who believe in Jesus and who, by his light, see not only his righteousness, but also their own sins, and they are built up in him through faith, confession of sin and love of Christ and God the Father, to become full of the righteousness of Christ in eternal life.  Those who reject the light and walk in darkness, careless of their sins, have no cleansing and prove that the saving and regenerating word of God does not shine within them.

A Word of Testimony

In the days of my early Christianity, I was taught that 1 John 1:9 was truly a key text for building our fellowship with God the Father and God the Son.  So important was this text to me and so great was the evidence to myself of my own sin (as seen in the light of Christ) that I became disheartened by the repeated sinning and the apparent lack of progress in sanctification.  I thought I would be a second-class Christian for life.  The sinning would never stop, and I could not discern Christian growth within me.  This caused me to ask myself whether my Christianity was genuine.

But, do read again and believe with me the text quoted from 1 John above:  It is addressed to those to whom the brightness of Christ is the greatest light, and therefore is continually the greatest exposer of their own sin -- it is those who are the ones who are continually being forgiven and constantly being cleansed from all unrighteousness.  But those professing Christians who are untroubled by personal sin are living in the most desperate circumstances, unable and unwilling to see their own depravity, and they are therefore doomed until they repent and turn to Christ and admit that they are sinners needing his deliverance.

So, all who are sin-confessors of their own sins -- ones who think often upon how we have failed our Savior -- we are the ones being by his grace made fit for his fellowship in glory.  We are not second-class Christians at all.  And when we see him as he is we shall see in him what he has also wrought in us, for we shall be like him when we see him as he is! (1 John 3:2)

A Word of Exhortation

In the midst of our duty to strive to please our Savior, it is vital to understand how the Apostle John teaches that we must retain our consciousness of being a sinner.  In this consciousness there is wisdom, a fuller understanding of the true depth of our depravity, and a fuller sight of the immensity of the the free grace of our Savior, who has delivered us by his death and resurrection from both the guilt and power of our sins.  It is the immensity of this free grace --  coming to us by his Spirit and received by faith which cleanses us in the end from all our unrighteousness.  

 

Confession leads to cleansing.  

 

It is a gift.

Justification: Mediate and Immediate Grace

One could define "mediate grace" as that power of the Holy Spirit that changes our inner man, and thus, also changes our working relationship with the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. One would then orthodoxly say that mediate grace made us new men, and our relationship with our God and Father is placed on a basis which may be thought of as "covenant keeping," or "being and acting like Christians."  Our relationship with our Father in Heaven is relationship with a Person, and we may therefore expect that that relationship of fellowship is moved forward, through thick and thin, based on the spiritual quality of our our personal relationship with one another.  Innumerable Scripture passages may be quoted to support this.

Likewise, one could define "immediate grace" as that grant of the status of sonship to us regardless of our merits, for the sake of Christ, which is communicated to our souls as a gift, through faith only, and not based on our works.  Definitive passages of Scripture from many places can be quoted to support this.  Happy is the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin (David).

It's clear then, that total free grace operates at the same time as the give and take of personal relationship with God in the ethical and religious sphere which is produced by grace-in-us, mediate grace.  God is sovereign and good to his people.  Yet, men are responsible before God, in the give and take of ethical personal relationship.  There is such a thing as discipline for sin.  There are apostates.  There is forgiveness.  There is reward.  Yet there is also superabounding unearned and unearnable grace enveloping our whole life, because of the work of our Savior.

The argument over justification in Reformation time was about this.  Which grace is supreme?  For Romanism, it is grace operative in me, that is, mediate grace, which will determine my destiny at the judgment.  For the Reformers, it is immediate grace.  Mediate and immediate grace are both operative in us or for us, but immediate grace, free grace, is always sovereign.

Does this mean that mediate and immediate grace can conflict?  Can a man under the influence of immediate and free grace fail to show the evidence of mediate grace?  No.  There is no conflict here.  The manifestation of a Christian life, and the presence of free grace always comport properly with one another, whether it looks that way to us or not.  Free grace is not a license to sin, nor is mediate grace in us the ground of our acceptance with God.

Does this mean that a spiritually poor Christian life ought to make us doubt whether free grace is given on our behalf?  Does a sleazy and sinful Christian life mean that mediate grace is absent, and therefore free grace is absent, too?  Not if repentance toward God and faith in the free grace of our Savior is present.  We remember Luther's first Reformation thesis:  Our entire lives should be lives of repentance -- every day!

Righteous by Forgiveness

When I was in the Plymouth Brethren, one of my fellow church-members said to me that Adam was created "neither good nor evil."  This conclusion was reached because in the text of Genesis, God says that Adam, in his Fall, will become like God, "knowing good and evil."  The implication is that Adam, as created, did not "know good and evil."

This friend's sentiment bothered me a great deal, because it was always my conclusion from the Scripture text that Adam was created good, which implied a created righteousness.  If he were not good (righteous in some sense), then how could he fall?  What would the Fall mean?

I believe that I've now come to realize the source of the sentiment expressed by my friend.  I think it is embedded within the later history of Reformed Theology, with the development of the doctrine of the Covenant of Works.

Before getting into this, however, let me explain concepts about the relationship between righteousness and sin.  There are two paradigms:

1)  Righteousness is a positive good, and sin is a negative evil.  One can have ones sins cancelled, but this leaves him with no positive good.  Something else must happen to create the positive good.  To use a physical analogy, good and evil are separate substances, each handled differently, though they do affect one another.  One can eliminate the evil, but this does not create the good.  Or,

2)  Righteousness is the absence of sin.  To have a sin forgiven is to be put in the position of never having done it.  If that sin is the omission of an act of righteousness, then forgiveness makes it exactly as if that act of righteousness were done.  Therefore, forgiving all a person's sins is exactly the same as reckoning that person to be entirely righteous!  All the positive evil is reckoned as if never done.  All the failed good works are reckoned as if they were done.  The process by which this is done is identically the same in both cases.  The forgiveness of sin is the reckoning of righteousness.  They cannot be separated.

I believe it to be the case that the two paradigms shown above imply major differences in the resulting theologies of salvation.

Now back to Reformed Theology.

It is commonly said that Adam and his elect offspring need both the de-imputation of their sins (forgiveness), and the imputation of righteousness from God.  Simply by its mode of expression, this is based in paradigm #1 above.  The need for forgiveness and the need for righteousness are regarded as separate issues.  These are commonly tied to the passive and active obedience of Christ.  In the passive obedience (the endurance of punishment) Christ bore the punishment of our sin and exhausted that punishment.  Therefore, the liability is removed and the sins are canceled.  Furthermore, the active obedience of his life is a righteousness that is put to our account.  This is a separate issue.  But, in any case, having both forgiveness and a positive righteousness, we have full acceptance before God.

Note, however, according to paradigm #1, Adam, put in the Garden at the beginning of his trial of perseverance, had no sin, but this did not mean that he was as fully developed in righteousness as God required for eternal life (Westminster Confession).  Adam obeys the Covenant of Works by persevering in it.  Similarly, in the analogy between Adam and Christ, this would imply that Christ needs to develop his righteousness, because in his human nature even he would be sinless but without developed righteousness at his human birth.  Therefore, in order to carry out the job that Adam failed at, Christ would need to fully create his active righteousness, and that, first, for himself.  Without this, it could not be imputed to our account.

But, contrarily, we are faced with Calvin's (and Augustine's) conviction that Christ in his human nature was entirely and completely righteous from the first instant of his human conception.  This is based in paradigm #2 above.  Reasoning back to Adam, this would imply that Adam was originally righteous, too.  But, if Adam is originally righteous, in the same way as Christ conceived as a man is originally righteous, then the process of perseverance in the state in which each was made does not create the righteousness that each already has by creation or conception.  Perseverance illustrates and confirms the righteousness, but does not create it.  This view of the relationship between righteousness and sin shows that each is the obverse of the other.  Adam, newly created, and Jesus, newly conceived, are each righteous, though they have done nothing.  In other words, sinlessness equals righteousness.  The absence of sins exactly is the presence of righteousness.  The forgiveness of sins which we receive through Christ exactly is the imputation of righteousness.  The imputation of righteousness is therefore not a separate imputation.  There is no distinction between the de-imputation of sins and the imputation of righteousness.  They are the same thing.

Following out the argument, then, there would be no distinction between the active and passive obedience of Christ.  His life and his death, but principally his death, all have the same effect upon us, taken together.  There are not two separate and independent imputations.  He was made sin for us, so that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.  But the "dual imputation," or two-way imputation is not an imputation of sins separately from an imputation of righteousness.  In the dual imputation, our sins going to Christ and his righteousness coming to us is not merely simultaneous, but two sides of the same coin.

This is why Calvin says somewhere that justfication by faith alone (ie, the imputation of righteousness to us) is defined as the cancellation of our sins.  That is, by cancellation of our sins we are righteous.  Or, he says in another place, that Christ by his righteousness (which he had from conception) caused the cancellation of our sins.  Or, that Christ's "merit" is that he created the Christian life in us.  Calvin vehemently denies that Christ's righteousness was obtained for himself first (as the Covenant of Works requires).  All that Christ did was not at all for himself, but all for us.

This needs a lot of thought.  The proper definition and explanation of the Covenants of Works and Grace, the definition of the purpose of the Creation, the real doctrine of Sanctification, and the real focus of Eschatology are all knotted together here.

I think it likely to be the case that the two paradigms of the relationship between sin and righteousness imply different theologies in all these realms.

The Capable Counselor

The Capable Counselor is, of course, Our Lord Jesus.  But, one might ask, how can he be the sympathetic High Priest that he is, when he never knew sin?  Not being susceptible to temptation means not feeling the pull of sin like I do.  How can he sympathize with me, a sinner?

There are many problems and questions with this approach.  I think that the answers to these questions lie here:

The Word of God, the One who was in the beginning and who was with God and who was God, took on flesh and became a man.  When he did so he gave up nothing of his deity, but he did take upon himself our nature, yet without sin.  When this happened, the Person who took on flesh did not become a different person.  The Divine Logos, the Lord, the Second Person of the Trinity, the eternal Son of God, took on a full human nature, while remaining the same Person that he was and is forever and ever.  He was, is, and ever shall be full deity -- for the Son exercises all the powers of deity and is worshiped.  He took on, is, and ever shall be a man, in all the fullness of all humanity.  And in this manhood he was tempted by the direct, personal ministry of Satan -- a true temptation, but he did not fall.  As he was tempted in all parts of his manhood, and yet resisted that temptation successfully, he then became the sympathetic high priest who can come to the aid and comfort of the tempted in all their temptations.

We see, then, that it is not the case that those who fell are those who felt the temptation more strongly, and therefore that they are those who can sympathize more with the fallen.  Rather, it is the case that their weakness could not preserve them.  Therefore, those who fall, until recovered spiritually from their fall, are poor counselors for those faced by temptation. 

The One who never fell, but who did feel the whole strength of all temptations, is the best counselor.  He knows all, sees all, feels all, and having made the first creation, he is competent to make the second and greater re-creation.  He is able to make sinners whole, by Himself.  He said, No one who trusts in me shall be put to shame.

Head and Heart Meet Sin

It's out of fashion to speak of the difference between head and heart, but I'll follow Calvin's example and do it anyway.

Head and Heart on Faith

It's easy to give lip service to faith in Christ, and to speak with head knowledge, but still be tempted to fall away under temptation.  The head alone just talks, but it is the heart that believes unto righteousness.  Yet a person who is weak of heart in regard to faith doesn't always know it, and may speak from the head confidently and with enthusiasm about loving Christ.  (Remember the parable of the sower, and the seed thrown on rocky ground.)  A person must develop depth of faith in the heart, in order to have the spiritual fortitude to follow Christ through thick and thin.

Head and Heart on Sin

Likewise, looking toward sin, the head and heart may not agree with one another.  Repentance of the head is easy, because we all really do know the difference between right and wrong.  It doesn't take the gospel, or faith in Christ, to know this.  However, to truly repent of one's own sins takes the heart as well as the head, and is the gift of God.  There has to be a depth of heart in repentance before one's own sin is seen in its true horror.  Even then we never really know it all, because repentance is a life-long process.  Our sanctification could be defined as backing up over the lines we've crossed that we know about, and then discovering, behind those lines we knew about, ever more lines and degrees of sinfulness we had crossed negligently and ignorantly before getting to the ones that got us in outward trouble.   Discovering lines behind lines and striving to back up behind them continues throughout a life of sanctification.  Repentance toward sin, then, is the process of backing back up over not just the main line we crossed to get ourselves in outward trouble, but also all those other lines we crossed first, while we were on our way to the main one.

This is why the initial stages of repentance from any particular sin may leave a person in danger of relapse.  The sense of horror about that sin may be very low.  One is aware of a line that's been crossed, and one may think that moving back on the right side of that one line (outwardly) is good enough.  The sin is known, but the knowledge is not a deep heart knowledge.  Actually, to get back securely far from that one line that was crossed to get in outward trouble, a person will need to back up over a lot of other lines in the heart.  Staying near that main line, though outwardly on the correct side of it, tempts the Lord, and will leave a person susceptible to relapse.

The cure, which is the gift of God, is to not stop with repentance about the outward things which get us in trouble, but to begin to slaughter the inward sins that lead to the outward ones.

God said, through James, "Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you."  We should count on it.  Jesus said, "Come unto me, all you that are heavy laden, and I will give you rest."

Also, hardness of heart, or lack of repentance, isn't something that's just relative to certain sins.  We can't be hard of heart here and soft of heart there.  If we're hard of heart about one particular sin, then we're really hard of heart about them all.

True repentance affects the whole man.

Sin and Apostasy

One usually thinks of apostasy as due to an intellectual rejection of the doctrine of the faith.  This can be true.  John (1 John) says that the antichrists who have gone out from us indicate that it is the last hour.  However, in Scripture there are many passages that speak of apostasy, and most of those passages do not speak of intellectual denials, but of moral apostasy.  They speak of sin.

John said that people do not believe, to begin with, because their deeds are evil (John 3:19-20).  Therefore, it stands to reason also that apostasy can come about due to a fundamental heart-preference for sin rather than fellowship with Christ.  This happens in those who have professed allegiance to Christ, but who have not believed the gospel with their whole heart.

In 1 Cor 10, Paul shows that tinkering with sin is the path to apostasy.

¹ Moreover, brethren, I do not want you to be unaware that all our fathers were under the cloud, all passed through the sea, ² all were baptized into Moses in the cloud and in the sea, ³ all ate the same spiritual food, ⁴ and all drank the same spiritual drink. For they drank of that spiritual Rock that followed them, and that Rock was Christ. ⁵ But with most of them God was not well pleased, for their bodies were scattered in the wilderness.

⁶ Now these things became our examples, to the intent that we should not lust after evil things as they also lusted. ⁷ And do not become idolaters as were some of them. As it is written, “The people sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to play.” ⁸ Nor let us commit sexual immorality, as some of them did, and in one day twenty-three thousand fell; ⁹ nor let us tempt Christ, as some of them also tempted, and were destroyed by serpents; ¹⁰ nor complain, as some of them also complained, and were destroyed by the destroyer. ¹¹ Now all these things happened to them as examples, and they were written for our admonition, upon whom the ends of the ages have come.

¹² Therefore let him who thinks he stands take heed lest he fall.

The context shows that the warning is about apostasy on the part of those who have received the sacraments and professed the faith, but who have preferred sin to Christ when the going got tough.  This occurs in this place in 1 Corinthians because the Corinthian laissez-faire attitude toward holiness (as portrayed in their emphasis on enjoyment of rights) is tantamount in Paul's eyes to a threat of apostasy.  He doesn't want to see this, and so he gives the warning.

Now there is also assurance here.  Paul goes on to say that, for those who truly know God,

¹³ No temptation has overtaken you except such as is common to man; but God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will also make the way of escape, that you may be able to bear it.

Therefore, for those who truly know the Lord Jesus, we have a secure guarantee that he will not permit us to be tempted in such a way as to cause us to fall away from him.  But, along with this guarantee, and concurrently with it in our own hearts must be respect for the exhortation:

¹⁴ Therefore, my beloved, flee from idolatry.

Sin is characterized as what it really is -- idolatry.  When we flee it and trust in Jesus Christ clothed in the gospel, we know that our Christ will carry us through and not permit us to be lost.