How did an entire doctrine get built around 1 John 1:9?

[jonshaff]

Psalms 51:12 Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation; and uphold me with thy free spirit.

...and the entire Psalm encompasses the "restoration by forgiveness" aspect of our RELATIONSHIP with God very well.

Obligating oneself to ask for forgiveness is doing something out of "duty" which has nothing to do with faith in Jesus Christ.

Wanting to reconcile, asking for forgiveness, your relationship is an entirely healthy practice, and very biblical.

[Wally]

Wally, there are two types of people in this world- walkers in light and walkers in darkness. John himself said that it is impossible for Christians to sin- why? Because be regenerated man is now firmly incapable of sin- Paul said (and John concurs) that it is no longer I doing the sin, but the sin within me. 1 John 1:6 is not talking about a light-walker sneaking around temporaily in the darkness, it is talking about salvation. Light or dark. Not a light-walker who's getting into some "dim" areas. Again, please recall the tenor and nature of the letter and its defense against the Gnostics and what they were saying about sin.

You are right. There are two kind of people in the world.

So why are you asking about something you shoud be doing naturally?

If I backed my car into yours, and I said I was sorry, you could forgive me forever. If I did it the next day and said nothing, would that indicate the first apology was insincere?

In the flesh, Of course Yes!

We confess in the flesh, because we believe. We want to. Does God need us to? No.

Jesus is truth. All Truth. If we want to wallow in lies, how can we fellowship with Him?



David had a heart after God. He made mistakes. He took them right back to the only One Offended.



Psalm 51:1-50 New King James Version (NKJV)

A Prayer of Repentance
To the Chief Musician. A Psalm of David when Nathan the prophet went to him, after he had gone in to Bathsheba.


51 Have mercy upon me, O God,
According to Your lovingkindness;
According to the multitude of Your tender mercies,
Blot out my transgressions.
2 Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity,
And cleanse me from my sin.


3 For I acknowledge my transgressions,
And my sin is always before me.
4 Against You, You only, have I sinned,
And done this evil in Your sight—
That You may be found just when You speak,[a]
And blameless when You judge.


5 Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity,
And in sin my mother conceived me.
6 Behold, You desire truth in the inward parts,
And in the hidden part You will make me to know wisdom.


7 Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean;
Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.
8 Make me hear joy and gladness,
That the bones You have broken may rejoice.
9 Hide Your face from my sins,
And blot out all my iniquities.


10 Create in me a clean heart, O God,
And renew a steadfast spirit within me.
11 Do not cast me away from Your presence,
And do not take Your Holy Spirit from me.


12 Restore to me the joy of Your salvation,
And uphold me by Your generous Spirit.
13 Then I will teach transgressors Your ways,
And sinners shall be converted to You.


14 Deliver me from the guilt of bloodshed, O God,
The God of my salvation,
And my tongue shall sing aloud of Your righteousness.
15 O Lord, open my lips,
And my mouth shall show forth Your praise.
16 For You do not desire sacrifice, or else I would give it;
You do not delight in burnt offering.
17 The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit,
A broken and a contrite heart—
These, O God, You will not despise.


18 Do good in Your good pleasure to Zion;
Build the walls of Jerusalem.
19 Then You shall be pleased with the sacrifices of righteousness,
With burnt offering and whole burnt offering;
Then they shall offer bulls on Your altar.


*** Jonshaff You went the same place.


Our new nature desires to be honest. Those times when we are foolish and hide behind our pride, we feel the emptiness of it and because we are saved we can see that.
Those who are not saved have little if anything to convict them. We run to our Father to apologize 70*7*7*7......because we WANT to. Because He loved us first.

[morovich]

The Psalms were not written during the age of grace. While highly beneficial and for our profit, not directly 100% applicable 100% of the time to a church age believer in 2012. Why would David beg the Lord not to take His Holy Spirit from Him and then thousands of years later Paul tells us that were are sealed with the Holy Spirit- unable to be removed, the deposit guaranteeing our inheritance? David did not have the luxury of being sealed with the Holy Spirit. Should I beg God to not remove His Holy Spirit from me like David did? that is a good little example out of the Psalms. Also, if I were to go back and have a chat with David and say "David, guess what! You are no longer under the law! A man can be saved apart from the law!" He would think that I was mad. Crazy. Why? Because God had not yet revealed that during that epoch and it was later revealed through Paul (not to turn this into a dispensational thread : )

[Wally]

Romans 4:5-8 New King James Version (NKJV)

David Celebrates the Same Truth

5 But to him who does not work but believes on Him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is accounted for righteousness, 6 just as David also describes the blessedness of the man to whom God imputes righteousness apart from works:


7 “Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven,
And whose sins are covered;
8 Blessed is the man to whom the Lord shall not impute sin.”

[HeIsEnough]

So there is no more sin- and when I do sin, I know He's already seen it, paid for it and took it away forever 2000 years ago.

Strictly speaking, to say what you said falls back to the original point...."if we say we have no sin...." And I think the continuation of that thought...'when I do sin....' is that we have an advocate with the Father, not that He 'ignores it', for lack of a better description.

Which obviously is seen in a different light, as Christ has forgiven us, yet still, we have sin.

It's apples to oranges with earthly dads and God.

Christ makes comparisons similar, and of course quite literally they are not the same, but it is a valid analogy because you have no others to gain understanding.

Because be regenerated man is now firmly incapable of sin- Paul said (and John concurs) that it is no longer I doing the sin, but the sin within me.

If you refer to the one sin, then yes.

I understand what you're trying to say, in the end you'll not be able to avoid going to the Father for forgiveness, while we live in this flesh. This scripture is not the only one addressing this subject. And, while we can examine pauline doctrine here, we won't allow its promotion, just to be clear.

[morovich]

Bear with me all....trying to think out loud...

1.) Is my practical and/or positional fellowship with God the Father "interrupted" if I sin tomorrow?
2.) If yes, based on what passage/s of Scripture?
3.) Have all my sins been forgiven in advance?
4.) If yes, why is reptitious confession necessary for their forgiveness? Passages?
5.) Are believers IN Christ?
6.) If yes, how could their fellowship be interrupted with the Father if all their sins were forgiven in advance and taken away to boot, 2 millenia ago and they now reside in Christ and the Father is in unending eternal fellowship with Him?

If 1 John 1:9 is about salvation not restoration of fellowship (which may very well be the case) then why are we bringing up settled sin issues with the Lord on a daily basis?

[Wally]

Bear with me all....trying to think out loud...

1.) Is my practical and/or positional fellowship with God the Father "interrupted" if I sin tomorrow?
2.) If yes, based on what passage/s of Scripture?
3.) Have all my sins been forgiven in advance?
4.) If yes, why is reptitious confession necessary for their forgiveness? Passages?
5.) Are believers IN Christ?
6.) If yes, how could their fellowship be interrupted with the Father if all their sins were forgiven in advance and taken away to boot, 2 millenia ago and they now reside in Christ and the Father is in unending eternal fellowship with Him?

If 1 John 1:9 is about salvation not restoration of fellowship (which may very well be the case) then why are we bringing up settled sin issues with the Lord on a daily basis?

What do you think God hears when you have your back to him?

[jonshaff]

Bear with me all....trying to think out loud...

1.) Is my practical and/or positional fellowship with God the Father "interrupted" if I sin tomorrow?
2.) If yes, based on what passage/s of Scripture?
3.) Have all my sins been forgiven in advance?
4.) If yes, why is reptitious confession necessary for their forgiveness? Passages?
5.) Are believers IN Christ?
6.) If yes, how could their fellowship be interrupted with the Father if all their sins were forgiven in advance and taken away to boot, 2 millenia ago and they now reside in Christ and the Father is in unending eternal fellowship with Him?

If 1 John 1:9 is about salvation not restoration of fellowship (which may very well be the case) then why are we bringing up settled sin issues with the Lord on a daily basis?

So where in the Bible does it say we "insult" God by asking for forgiveness.

[morovich]

Is "confession for the purpose of restoring a Christian's fellowship with the Father" what the Holy Ghost had in Mind when he inspired John to pen that? Or is it talking about salvation?

My paraphrase- "Hey Gnostics, if we as humans go to God and we confess our sins before him and stop being all "gnosticky" saying we don't have sin and aren't sinners, then hey, guess what, God will forgive us and cleanse us from all unrighteousness and save us."

Just thinking...

[Wally]

Perhaps the real problem is we're trying to match God's timelessness

with our incremental existance.

[morovich]

It would insult him because technically we'd be continually asking forgiveness we'd already previously obtained- thus, by that action, would say that we didn't believe He forgave us in the first place if a second, third and numerous subsequent coats of forgiveness needed to be applied to the same sins.

Would it be insulting if I went out back and tried sacrificing an animal for my forgiveness?

Did Christ restore us to fellowship with God at the Cross?

(and thanks everyone for going with me on this in our dialog- I'm really just trying to test this implied doctrine of the 1 john 1:9 confession obsession and want to know if we're doing that because it's been merely ingrained in us by misappropriation, or it's because that is what the text is actually conveying. And if you can't tell, I'm definitely playing devil's advocate here toward the issue, but would really like to substantiate why we do it and if we should.)

[Wally]

So let's sin all the more that grace may abound? Seems that dead argument was made.

OK wrong turn.


Jesus did it all. On time. Paid in full. So is one Huazzah enough? How about a dozen?

Perhaps we are looking at it from the wrong perspective.

Confession is also Worship.

Acknowledging what we do, what we've done,

And what He has done for us.

It is directing Praise, for what?
For our sin - forgiven. Reaffirming the Truth.

Were it not for what Christ had done, no one would have hope.

[morovich]

like you said Wally- that argument is already very plainly debunked in the epistles.

The argument for continual confession in the life of the believer is far, far more nebulous in the pages of Scripture.
again, if i sin in 10 minutes, is my fellowship with God interrupted?

Prove it to me by Scripture.

remember as a believer, I cannot walk in darkness, I can only walk in the light (in John's terminology) and conversely a pagan cannot walk in the light but can only walk in darkness, a believer cannot (by john's own admission) walk in darkness.

[jonshaff]

I do it because I feel led to

[morovich]

Jon...I do it too, I'm not looking for a "way out of confession" but rather approaching it in a testing manner. There are two campe in this whole argument though-the camp who believes that you're saved up until you're last confession (lots of charismatic, pentecostal pulpits teach this- seen it first hand). Clearly that is unacceptable and easily debunked in Scripture, but that false doctrine is still being peddled, thus making confession a "work and mimicking their Catholic couterparts.

In this thread though, I'm honing in more on the other camp who say that we keep sailing in and out of fellowship hourly or daily- like rudderless ships and have to continually keep on confessing sins that have already been forgiven and taken away to get back into God's good graces. Thats all. Are we really truly just like wraiths drifting in and out of the mists of fellowship and separation on an utterly continual basis? Or have we been reconciled to God and have been called into unending fellowship with him impossible to be broken by already forgiven sins?

[jonshaff]

I understand your "argument." It's been a good discussion. That was just me wrapping it up because I have school...then revival...pray for us!

[Wally]

1 Peter 3:7
Husbands, likewise, dwell with them with understanding, giving honor to the wife, as to the weaker vessel, and as being heirs together of the grace of life, that your prayers may not be hindered.

[morovich]

praying for you jon. be blessed.

[Kliska]

Furthermore, back to the subject in general, if Paul made clear that the full forgiveness obtained at the Cross i something that happened once for all time and took all, every sin away, then is there a degree of insulting God coming back over and over and over again to "confess and seek forgiveness" for things that were already seen in advance and paid in full for? In a sense, I can't necessarily liken an earthly copy of relationshps to our Heavenly Father. I've never gone to my dad and said, "Dad, I want you to forgive me right now for everything I've ever done, am doing, and will do sinfully against you". Why? Because that is not possible for him to do. Forgiveness must be administered on a case by case basis with humans. Because who's to say that I might do something to my Dad 15 years from now that he never forgives me for- we simply cannot necessarily say that he would follow through 100% on forgiving me for everything at one point in time, past, present and future. But God did that for us. So there is no more sin- and when I do sin, I know He's already seen it, paid for it and took it away forever 2000 years ago. Asking forgiveness for something He's already forgiven me for is redundant (or at least I'm playing devil's advocate that it is). And frankly is insulting to him as an eternally Superior Heavenly Father relative to my earthly dad. It's apples to oranges with earthly dads and God.

But it isn't because YOU are human. Many things that God instructs us to do are for us, not for Him; He's the best psychologist ever. I'd also note; be careful, it was God Himself that compared Himself to an earthly father, and then told us how much more He loves us even than that. God chose the metaphor; my earthly Dad has no problem loving me and forgiving me, yes even my future actions won't change that. Why would I ever talk to my Heavenly Father less, about less, than I would my earthly Dad?

Again, where in Scripture does it tell us that the child of God, in the age of grace, part of the bride and body of Christ can EVER fall in and out of fellowship with Him? If we are IN CHRIST, and Christ and the Father have ceaseless fellowship (practically and positionally) then it is inconceivable, that confession would be required for me to be restored to God (practically or positionally) because what I'm asking to be forgiven from and agreeing with God about has already been paid for and forgiven at Calvary, and I am now IN CHRIST and thus benficiary of all that Jesus is, including ceaseless fellowship with God completely non-contingent upon my confession.

Our fellowship can be damaged on our side of the equation. Guilt, insecurity, depression, etc... impacts our relationship with God, not salvationally, but practically, on our part. Once sealed with the Holy Spirit, we are sealed. However, we have a living relationship with Him on a daily basis. We can do things like choose to yield to Him, or not; that will affect our relationship and the earthly consequences we reap. We are not transcendent, God recognizes that and interacts with us and instructs us in a way that makes sense to our brains.

P.S. Wally, there are two types of people in this world- walkers in light and walkers in darkness. John himself said that it is impossible for Christians to sin- why? Because be regenerated man is now firmly incapable of sin- Paul said (and John concurs) that it is no longer I doing the sin, but the sin within me. 1 John 1:6 is not talking about a light-walker sneaking around temporaily in the darkness, it is talking about salvation. Light or dark. Not a light-walker who's getting into some "dim" areas. Again, please recall the tenor and nature of the letter and its defense against the Gnostics and what they were saying about sin.

The idea is even if a light-walker does an action normally associated with a dark-walker, we are not condemned for it because there is no more law.

[morovich]

Wally, very very clutch verse there. A breaking in fellowship is clearly implied. The Greek word for hindered denotes a military tone where an army would dig a trench and lay debris out so it would make the opposing forces' ability to pass tougher. Is it possibly hindrance from a Satanic source- principalities and powers, etc? A la daniel's prayer that took a while to answer because Gabriel was held up by Satan?