"If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just, and will forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us (1 John 1.8-10 RSV).

Now John verges on important doctrine. He begins to talk about sin. Sin is a dread reality in the world and in our lives. Men today decry the idea and even Christians are oft-times disposed to treat sin as something inherent in our nature which we will one day outgrow. Human development will leave sin and the effects of sin behind, say some. That is a dangerous error. There is no substitute for the plain Bible teaching that man was originally created perfect and sinless, that sin came in from outside and was willingly received, and that in consequence all men are born under the reign and power of sin, with the effects registered in their minds and bodies. Therefore from their very birth all men are sinners. And just as sin came in from outside, so only from outside may come deliverance from sin. The way back to the perfection and sinlessness of the first man can only be by the power and help of One Who Himself was never sinful, who knew no sin, but who is "able to the uttermost to save those who come unto God by him" (Heb.7.25). Not unless we recognise the fact that we are sinners and that all the world stands guilty before God can we honestly and sincerely accept the only way of freedom from sin that is possible. Only so can we attain, at length, to the perfect state that is the Divine desire for us.

Some there were in John's day among the ranks of the Christians who began to argue that those who had been justified by faith in Christ and freed from Adam's condemnation were on that account without sin. They also said that the indwelling Holy Spirit constituted their bodies' sinless vessels, perfect, holy unto God. Therefore, they argued, there could be no such thing as sin in the life of the child of God. This is a specious argument, having a semblance of truth, but truth misapplied. How easy to go on and assert that the body's imperfections, the slips and stumbling and faults and the things that in other men would be counted as sin, were on this account altogether ignored by God and therefore whatever was done in the body was of no consequence. So, in a very short time, it fell out that some among the Christians became guilty of the grossest acts of sin under the impression that since it was only the body that thus transgressed it was not the believer who sinned at all.

John cuts through all the theological argument and gets right down to the root of the matter. We are still in the flesh, subject to weaknesses and imperfections of human nature. Although we have been justified and are no longer under condemnation and although we have been accepted as sons of God and He esteems us according to the intentions of our will and not according to the deeds of the body, we still stumble and fall. We have accepted Jesus Christ as Lord and King and endeavour to put His principles into practice in our daily lives. There is, however, always the possibility that in consequence of an influence that bears upon us in the ordinary conduct of life, we may become temporarily blinded to, or diverted from, our course. Thus we become guilty of an action that is sin because it is out of accord with what we normally realise is right. There are many misdemeanours of which we are liable daily to be guilty that in the Lord's pure sight are classed as sin, because they constitute violations of Divine law. That is why we have a throne of grace to which we may come daily in time of need. That is why we have an Advocate before the Father, a helper who stands by our side, as John tells us a little later. A sinless person needs none of these things. A sinless man needs not to come before the Father in the name of Jesus Christ, or to claim access to the Holiest of All by faith in Him. He can come as of right, for a sinless person is the completeness of God's purpose with any individual. When he is sinless and has demonstrated that he will always remain so, he takes his place in God's permanent creation, on his own merit and has the fullest of fellowship with his Creator and Father. Paul was in no doubt about this matter. He found a law in his members (Rom.7.17-23) that, when the will to do good was in him, evil was still present with him, so that the good he would do, he often failed to do, and the evil he would not do, that he did. Paul knew full well that despite his wholehearted allegiance to his Lord and the inestimable gift of justification which was his, the processes of sin were still at work in his body and that until the day of his death he must carry that burden. "Who shall deliver me from this body of death?" he cries, and gives the answer to his own question "Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord". In the comfort of the assurance of certain deliverance at the end of his earthly course he reconciles himself to the knowledge that in the meantime "with the mind I myself serve the law of God; but with the flesh the law of sin" (Rom. 7. 25). It is in this sober appraisal of our true position as men and women of this world whose hearts the Lord has touched, that we find our true strength. We do not delude ourselves with the false security of a fictitious perfection and righteousness that we do not possess, neither do we suffer ourselves to be cast down at the thought of a weight of sin and imperfection of which we cannot be relieved. Our sins exist truly enough, but God has cast them all behind His back (Isa. 38. 17). Our bodies are imperfect and frail, without strength, mentally and physically, but God has promised to clothe the mind with a new body, which is neither imperfect nor frail, in due time. Our character development, our growth into the likeness of Christ, the result of all our strivings and efforts and prayer in our walk before God, will all be carried over into the spiritual world and impressed upon the new spiritual body, but the weakness of the old human body will be left behind. Then we shall indeed be able to rejoice in the fact that we are without sin; but as for the present, if we claim to be without sin, we both deceive ourselves and make God a liar. On the other hand, if we recognise the true position, and remain contrite and repentant before God for every respect in which we fall short of His ideal for us, for the little failings as well as the big faults, then He is indeed faithful and just to forgive us those things and to cleanse us from all the unrighteousness which must inevitably cling to us if we fail thus to walk in holiness before Him. The Word that is life and light to us can only remain so if we prepare the way and maintain the way by repentance and confession. That is the privilege and responsibility of the disciple; the heart thus open to the power of the Holy Spirit becomes a receptacle of Divine life and a medium for the shining of Divine light.

"My little children, these things write I unto you, that ye sin not. And if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous" (ch.2.1). For the first time in his epistles John uses a personal mode of address. "Little children"; it is a tender and appealing word, one that must have been specially close to the heart of the beloved disciple, for he adopts it more than any other. He calls his readers "young men" and "fathers" once each, he calls them "brethren" twice, he calls them "beloved" four times, but this term "little children" is used no less than nine times. No matter how far advanced in the worldly tale of years, no matter how mature and advanced in the Truth, to him they were all "little children". He had known them from their early days in the faith. and ministered to them, taught them and watched over them; many of them he had watched grow up from childhood into youth and from youth into middle age. Dark hair turned to grey and fair hair to snowy white, the fresh bloom of maidenhood and early manhood became faded and the smooth skins wrinkled and old, but still they were to him what they had been at the beginning ‑ little children ‑ and he loved them. So now, when the light was beginning to fade out in his own sky and the end seemed very near, he summoned his remaining strength to set down on paper the exhortation he had given so persistently in past years "these things I write unto you that ye sin not".

Perhaps he felt as Paul had done thirty or forty years earlier. "As my beloved sons," Paul had written, "I warn you. For though you have ten thousand instructors in Christ, yet you have not many fathers; for in Christ Jesus I have begotten you through the gospel" (1 Cor. 4.14-15). There were so many who would gladly assume the duty and privilege of instructors and teachers, discoursing, expounding, lecturing to the flock upon the various features of the God's Word and holding their hearers' interest by the eloquence or force of their utterances. There was apparently no lack of that kind of ministry in Paul's day even as there is no lack of it today. What was more sorely needed for these immature babes in Christ, and for all the community of believers whether babes or mature, was the loving care of a father in the faith. They needed one who could discern with unerring eye the varying needs of each member of the family and see that the need was met. That was John's preoccupation too. He had stood by on one memorable occasion and heard the Lord give his fellow-disciple Peter a commission; "feed my lambs": but he had never interpreted that injunction as being obligatory upon Peter alone, and now, sixty years after the words had been spoken, and all his companions in the joys and sorrows of those early days were lying in the grave, he was still continuing in the spirit of those words: "My little children".

"That ye sin not." It seems a strange injunction to lay upon a community of Christians. Evidently there was the possibility of their sinning; otherwise the words would have no meaning. It is clear that John was fully conscious of the likelihood of some of them being so overtaken, if he uttered no warning. The whole of this second chapter is written under the burden of a great urgency: there is an intense awareness of the necessity of a plain statement of the position, and an impassioned appeal for the viewing of the matter from John's own standpoint and to hear his advice. The closing words of the chapter breathe his confidence that those to whom he writes will profit by his words and not fail him. In the meantime he spares no pains to make plain to these his "little children" the ever-present menace of sin and the many unsuspected forms in which it makes its insidious approach to the believer.

John could not but have felt something like Ezekiel of old. "Son of man, I have made thee a watchman unto the house of Israel,… if thou warn the righteous man, that the righteous sin not, and he doth not sin, he shall surely live, because he is warned" (Ezek.3.17-21), It was the mission and the responsibility of John to watch for the lives and the souls of these his "little children", as "one that must give account" (Heb.13.17) and he was by no means unmindful of his responsibility. Just as Ezekiel of old spoke the message that was in him without fear or favour, crying the word of the Lord to all who would listen, so did John seek with entreaties and persuasion to exhort his flock to that constant vigilance which alone would ensure their freedom from the delusions and the subtleties of the Adversary.

Here is a theme that it is well should be laid on the hearts and minds of everyone who is privileged to be a servant of the believers in spiritual ministry. How often do the Scriptures exhort all such to feed the flock of God with all that is pure and holy! How often, too, is this fact, of the ever-present danger of falling away from the faith, stressed as being an important aspect of such acceptable ministry. The work of the Christian elder to-day must needs include the uncompromising warnings so characteristic of the Hebrew prophets of old, for the same sins are with us in our world and human nature is still the same and ever prone to fail. Is that why Paul, writing to his son-in-the-faith Titus, defined in unusually clear and definite terms just what are the duties of an elder in this connection? "These things speak, and exhort, and rebuke, with all authority. Let no man despise thee," he said, and went on to list out those things in detail. They are: "denying ungodly and worldly lusts, we should live soberly, righteously and godly in this present world; looking for that blessed hope, and the glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour Jesus Christ, Who gave himself for us, that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works." (Titus 3. 15).

That is a summary of God's Plan as it affects the Church: an abstract of all that the Apostles have said in all their epistles to guide the Church in its progress through this world and to the end of its course. In all of this, even although sin is not so much as mentioned, the thought of the constant conflict against the evil forces that would rob the Christian of his inheritance is implied, and the implication heavily underlined.

Suppose, in spite all the fatherly care and all the instruction and all the warning, someone does sin. The "sin" that the Apostle has in mind is one of deliberate, flagrant defiance of God, one of outrageous and blatant immorality. To go to the other end of the scale, it may be some petty failure to live up to the standard of Christianity or a temporary indulgence in some weakness of the flesh. John does not define what he means by sin. Suppose one does give way before the machinations of the Evil One, or perhaps, is "drawn away of his own desires, and enticed" (Jas.1.14). The possibility of disregarding the Apostle's advice and falling into the snares from which he would save his readers is clearly implied in these verses; but if so, is the case then hopeless? Does the faithful father in God wash His hands of the erring one and does God reject him for ever? This is a question of doctrine and the answer is important!

It is because the answer is so important that the Apostle is so definite in his ruling. "If any man sin," he says, "we have an advocate with the Father." For the moment we will go no further than that statement. What merit is there in this office of advocate with the Father that it should be invoked here in the case of the disciple who has sinned? Remember at this point that at our consecration, condemnation in Adam was removed. There is no question of the previous sinful condition being imputed to the repentant believer. "There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus, who walk not after the flesh, but after the spirit" (Rom.8.1). No advocacy with the Father is needed for those things, for they have already been done away in Christ. This Advocate stands ready for the aid of the believer who, in spite his consecration to God and his acceptance into the High Calling and his possession of the indwelling Holy Spirit, has nevertheless come short of the standard, has sinned. John tells us in chapter 1 that not one of us can claim to be free from that handicap and that if we do so claim we deceive ourselves. Not one of us can say we are without sin. For all of us, therefore, the Advocate must stand ready, for every time of need, throughout the span of our life in the flesh.

(To be continued) AOH