When Christians sin today, their normal response is to confess their sin to the Lord and ask for forgiveness. Then, they hope that God will forgive them (perhaps after performing some sort of penance)
The common belief is that when you are born again, only you’re past sins are forgiven. From then on, whenever you sin, you must ask for forgiveness in order to be forgiven and to be right with God again.
Because of this, new Christians are quickly taught to remember and use this verse:
1 John 1:9 "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness."
How about James 2:10 which CLEARLY says, if you have broken one of the ten commandments, you have broken them ALL.
Have you ever lied? if so, your not only a lair, your also a thief, a idol worshiper, a murderer, a adulterer, etc, etc!! And that's just the law. If you read closely in the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus took it deeper then the Law. Jesus' said, if you have hatred towards anyone, you have committed Murder (Matthew 5:21-23) Jesus said the same thing about Adultery (Matthew 5:27-28). If you done it in your heart, you have done it.
Now we must go and confess all those sins according to "1 John 1:9" in order to be forgiven. But don't just confess that one commandment, confess all of them, cause we broke ALL TEN; if we broke ONE!
For your information, Paul never breathed this idea that one must "confess their sins to be forgiven" In fact, Scholars tell us the epistles of John weren't written until 90 A.D. Which is about 30 years after Paul's letters(which were written about 60A.D)
So the question is, What did the Church do between 60 A.D and 90 A.D when they sinned? Were they taught to confess their sins?? How could they? that teaching didn't come til 30 years later! Paul never one time in any of his epistles taught that believers need to confess to be forgiven and cleansed from their sins. This is what Paul said about those who have put their faith in Christ. Ephesians 1:7 "In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His Grace"
Notice Paul didn't say, " We have forgiveness of sins according to our confession of sins"
Our forgiveness is according to God's Grace! The day you can measure God's grace, that is the day you can measure how much you have been forgiven. Its according to His Grace and not according to how much you confess your sins. "well what does 1 John 1:9 mean then?" you might ask. Be on the look out for part 2.
