(1) It would seem that some thought it must be unworthy of God to vex Himself about the right or wrong doings of men. They pictured Him as so great and comprehensive that He con- tained within Himself darkness as well as light, and looked with equal complacency on the evil and on the good, so that what men call wrong-doing was not sin against Him, and therefore on a large view of creation deserved no condemnation. St. John knew that such a being had nothing in common with the Father of his Lord Jesus Christ, who had suffered and died to put away the
1 H. S. Salt, Henry David Thoreau, 210.
' S. D. Gordon, Quiet Talks about the Temjpter, 127.
I JOHN I. 8, 9 235
sins of the world. On the strength of his fellowship with the very life of God, v/hich had made itself known in his own spirit through the Person of Jesus, he declares that God is light without any mixture of darkness, and that men can be partakers of His life only by refusing to do the works of darkness.
(2) It was said by others that fellowship between men and God is impossible till men are sinless, for there is always dark- ness mixed with their light. Not so, the Apostle says ; these spots of darkness on the human spirit are not indelible ; the blood of God's own Son has power to wash them out. In the virtue of that sacrifice lies the only possible abolition of sin. But do not imagine, he adds, that you have yet got clear of sin. That were self-deception. We must not only refuse to say that we have no sin, we must press forward to confess our sins, to carry them with shame before God for Him to abolish. And. that He will surely do, both towards Himself and towards us. As sins in the proper sense of the word, offences against a loving Father and Maker, He will send them away, forgive them, allow them to make no breach between Him and us. As unrighteousness, as stains and injuries to our own natures, which He created for righteousness, He will cleanse them away and enable us to go forth in newness of life. Let us have no fears about His will to do this ; it rests upon His very faithfulness and righteousness ; in doing it He is not indul- gently breaking in upon the strict law of His nature, but is acting as His external nature requires Him to act ; He is but perfecting what He began, refusing to despise the work of His own hands, carrying out the purpose for which He sent His Son to die. And if, after all, in spite of the revelation of God as the destroyer of sin, we say that for our part we have committed no sin, we do more than deceive ourselves, more than refuse to receive the truth within us ; we set ourselves directly against God in person, making Him a liar, smothering His voice within us.
11.
Confessing Sin.
1. What is confession ? To confess sins is to own up to them before God, to say to ourselves and to Him that, however dark
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the way has been and however stiff the fight, however heavy the ) handicap has been, nevertheless, in the inner secret of our being, we know that at the last resort and the final analysis those sins ; would never have darkened the face of God's heaven had we not chosen so to live.
That is confession in its first aspect—" These deeds are mine.'^ But there is a deeper aspect. We have to remember that these sins of ours, these separate and individual acts, come from a fountain which John calls " sin." These sins, transgressions, are all of them the result of that in us which is a root and a source of evil. They are the result of that sin which is part of our character, part of our " make-up." They have not come uncaused ; they have not come out of nothing, but out of our own being ; and because of the strain of bad blood, because of the strain of evil, because of the open source of wrong that there is in us, in our own choice and will, they have come forth to poison earth's atmo- sphere. They are ours. That is confession.
(1) It is not confessing sin to admit the fact that you are a sinner ; it is not confessing sin to admit the fact that it is an evil f state ; it is not confessing sin to admit that it is a base thing ; it is not confessing sin to admit, when you contrast a holy state with an evil state, that the holy state is the better state. To confess sin is to come to the conclusion in your heart, and freely, with your lips, to make this admission, that your breach of God's law, and your not loving God with your whole heart, soul, mind, and strength, and your not loving every human being as yourself, is an awful thing, justly charged against you as your guilty and in respect of which, neither the force of example, nor the influence of education, nor circumstances, nor a corrupted nature, furnish any apology whatever. The Bible says expressly, " The lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world " ; and everywhere God is at great pains to separate between Himself and man's sin, and to exonerate Himself from all re- sponsibility for man's sins. To confess sin is to take God's word in the matter; it is to stand upon God's side in the question; it is joining God against myself ; and it is to feel that the fact that this sin is my sin, that this corruption is my corruption, does in no respect interfere with the sternness with which I