1 John 1:9 and God's Grace

1 John 1:9 and the Christian Experience

To imagine that one COULD keep accurate and effective short accounts with God is, when you really think about it, the height of arrogance. While we live in this world, in this flesh, we are in a constant Romans 7 experience until the day we die. It isn’t just our actions...but our thoughts and our attitudes...our very beings...that are filthy rags in His sight apart from grace. In ourselves we have NO “good enough” moments. Where do we get the idea that He wants us to “do our best” to keep accounts with him...keep our forgiveness up to date...or to work at staying “in fellowship” with Him. When I look at humanity...at myself...with any honesty whatsoever the very thought completely exhausts me. There is no rest or peace in this because sin isn’t something that we “do” in “instances”...it is the very state of our flesh condition.

Certainly this teaching keeps the most honest and self-aware of non-believers away from Christianity as it is typically portrayed. The prospect of a life spent constantly bouncing in and out of fellowship with a disapproving God who will only really be our Friend, Lover and Ally at such rare moments when we have somehow managed to root out, confess, sort out, identify, own up to and completely surrender every speck of our sin, rebellion, fear, selfishness, bad attitude and wrong thinking, is just too much for them. As it should be. Christ promises that if we come to Him He will give us peace with God and REST.

Many Christians try to strike a sort of compromise by imagining that now that Christ has saved us God isn’t nearly so picky as He once was. He’ll be happy enough as long as we try to confess and repent of the “big ones”. Where does that come from? God is still a Holy God and there are NO moments when YOU are good enough to have fellowship with Him. The very moment that you have confessed and “sort-of” surrendered (which is the best that any of us can really do if we are honest) any particular sin or shortcoming to Him you are still completely steeped in sin because you remain in a condition of “flesh” as long as you live in this world. Either God has taken care of the WHOLE sin issue FOR you and you now exist in a constant state of grace and true fellowship with Him no matter what or how you happen to be doing at the moment...or else you are utterly lost and truthfully you can have NO moments of fellowship...no fellowship at all with a Holy God. There is no compromise...no “in-between”. There IS no Christian bar of soap and there is no need for a Christian bar of soap. There is only the blood of Jesus which was shed “once for ALL” to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

There IS no “out of fellowship” for a Christian. We live in a state of His constant love, grace, care and approval in Christ. A Christian who is completely honest with himself will have to admit that there are ALWAYS areas that we are not yet ready to surrender to God. There are things that we are not anywhere near ready to even recognize or face in ourselves...much less change. If we believe we are out of fellowship because of these things...then we must face being forever and always out of fellowship. The whole concept of being out of fellowship with God because of our sins and then confessing and somehow getting “more forgiveness” for them IF we abandon them sincerely and completely enough...and thus getting “back in good” with God is the biggest source of deception in the typical Christian life. It causes a great and constant sense of “unease” with God. This leads to a lack of trust in a God we fear is constantly disapproving of us unless WE manage somehow to change our own hearts and attitudes to bring ourselves back in line with Him... And the emphasis here gets placed squarely back on US and off of Him and the totality and perfection of what He did for us in love and mercy.

It is only walking in the Spirit that gives us the power or even the desire to resist any of that constant negative pull of our flesh. How do we walk in the Spirit? By cleaning ourselves up sufficiently so that the Spirit will come and work in us? No...it says that BY walking in the Spirit we resist the flesh. We’re too often taught to clean up the flesh and “get forgiven enough” to have access to the Spirit. We’ve got it backwards. How DO we walk in the Spirit? Only by recognizing the totality of grace; His great and perfect love for us that is ALWAYS there no matter how or what we are doing. It is firmly believing that He is always there...always in a PERFECT fellowship with us that depends only on Him. This leads to a sense of true peace with God and to TRUST, faith, hope. These are the things that soften our hearts and lead to a sincere and genuine love response to Him that will, in His timing, effect those changes in us that He has in mind.

What then do we do with 1 John 1:9? First of all...I challenge you to find any other verse referring to the New Covenant in Christ that can be taken to mean that we need to somehow obtain, appropriate or apply more forgiveness “each time we sin” and keep short accounts with God. You are welcome to try but I haven’t found any. 1 John 1:9 stands alone and this is why we are constantly confronted with just this one verse. Now if we were meant to be constantly confessing, repenting and getting forgiven so that we can return to fellowship...wouldn’t that be a very, very important, even crucial concept for us all to know and understand? Why then is it only mentioned in one verse in one letter to one church?

It is my belief that this verse has been completely misinterpreted and subsequently used by the enemy to create this constant sense of unease, lack of peace and distrust in the Christian heart. There were those in Paul’s day, some even in the Church, who simply did not believe in the whole concept of sin. Paul was simply saying that you cannot BE saved if you do not believe in the reality of sin because if there is no sin there is no need for a Savior. If you say that you have no sin...you are believing a lie...the Truth is not in you because you cannot trust Him for your salvation apart from an acknowledgement that you are a sinner and need a Savior. But if we confess our sins, are aware that we are sinners unable to save ourselves, He is then faithful to forgive...to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. This is a salvation verse! That’s what happens once and for all at the point of salvation...not over and over again moment by moment by moment. When His blood covered our sins...they were ALL in the future. When His sacrifice cleansed us from ALL our unrighteousness it was all in the future. The sin issue between ourselves and Him is over...settled once for all at the moment we accept His sacrifice for our own salvation. It is NOT understanding and believing this that causes us to perceive a distance between ourselves and Him that isn’t really there. It causes lack of trust. Often it causes us to avoid Him, to run and hide from Him when we need Him most. When our hearts are cold, our attitudes are bad, we’re either feeling rebellious and don’t even want to change a thing or we’re feeling afraid and we know we CAN’T change a thing. Only the unfailing embrace of His total grace and love could possibly reach deep enough to touch any of that...but we run...we hide in fear like Adam and Eve in the garden... We go back to square one and act as though Christ never came and died for us at all. Exactly what the enemy wants.

Yes, there will be times when we feel distant from Him because we are obsessed with something else. Perhaps a sin or perhaps just life. But that is our perception...not reality. The cure is to acknowledge the truth that He is totally there...to allow ourselves to experience the love and grace that IS...to trust that we have been given the free gift of peace with God in Christ. There may be times when we tell Him that we miss Him...that we want to feel closer...that we want Him to break the chains that some sins and desires seem to have had us bound in because we have finally been brought to the necessary point of seeing the ugliness of them, feeling hurt, weary and tired of them. There will be times when we do feel sorry, deeply sorry...and there is nothing at all wrong with pouring our hearts out to Him and telling Him so. NOT in order to receive forgiveness or to “get back into fellowship” but to focus on the fact that we ARE already totally forgiven, loved and accepted and to receive His comfort and peace. To reaffirm our belief in total grace. To remind ourselves of who we are in Him and all He is to us. To have our sorrows transformed into genuine gratitude and joy. This is NOT getting back into fellowship...it is recognizing what has been true all along. It is learning to trust in His unshakeable, unchangeable love and grace. It is coming to the deep realization that it doesn’t depend on us apart from our initial recognition of our desperate need of Him and our acceptance, once and for all, of His gift of grace and salvation. Therein lies faith and trust. No trust whatsoever in our own selves, our wayward hearts, mixed motives, unpredictable emotions or our weak, half-hearted efforts...but complete trust in Him.

January 6, 2006 Journal...My Story

January 6, 2006

As I write this an air purifier is whirring next to me...trying valiantly to counteract the musty, moldy smell in the air of my newly acquired mobile home. One of the walls and some floor was damaged by heavy rain two days after I moved in. I'm surrounded by towers of boxes. I can't really unpack until the rotting, 70's-mustard-gold colored carpet is replaced. The carpet can't be replaced until the floor is fixed. The floor can't be fixed until...I don't know. Is it a roof problem or a wall problem? My headache starts to come back when I think about it too much.

I'm still nervous about the rats. I haven't actually seen or even heard a rat...I just found lots of "evidence"...a nice word for rat poop...all over after I'd already moved in. Not to mention all the spots where they've obviously gnawed through the wood surrounding pipes and fixtures to get wherever they wanted to go. Okay, so I didn't notice these things before I signed the papers. I'd never dealt with the issue before. Not even mice. It had just never occurred to me. Welcome home.

I think perhaps the rats had already vacated before I moved in. I like to think so anyway. I spent the first couple of days stomping around here trying to annoy them...or warn them that I was coming just so I wouldn't run the risk of actually seeing one. I probably am rather annoying to live with as I am more nocturnal than any rodent. When I wasn't stomping around I made sure to have the washer or dryer or dishwasher running most of the night. On day two I put poison bait in all the cupboards that seemed most affected. (Why previous inhabitants didn't think to do this is beyond me...) After several days all of the bait appears untouched except for the tray behind the bar (more about "the bar" later) which may or may not have been eaten from. I could be imagining it. I'm actually beginning to relax about the rats. Hopefully I'm not being lulled into a false sense of security. Still, I'm having most of the kitchen cupboards replaced as soon as I can. No amount of cleaning could convince me to put my dishes and pans into them. On the upside, I haven't noticed any bugs here to speak of. Maybe the rats ate them.

"Okay!" you're thinking... "I've got it. She's a missionary! She answered the Lord's call to some backwater slum where she is bravely putting up with all sorts of adverse conditions in order to reach less-than-friendly natives with the gospel!" No. Sorry, but that's not it. I'm in a respectable mobile home community in a nice, friendly, all-American town. If I am a missionary, then you, my readers, are the only hostile natives I should have to worry about. I come in peace. Honest!

Besides the whirring of the air-purifier, I can hear noises in the living room area to my right. Click, click, click, click...shake, shake, shake....BANG! Over and over. No, it isn't the heater. That actually seems to be working okay. The noise is made by my son. He's sitting on the floor with a little M&M shaped tin that he got for Christmas. The M&Ms are gone and so he keeps filling the tin, one by one, with marbles. Then he closes the tin and shakes it a few times...then drops it from above his head. BANG...the tin hits the floor and all the marbles come crashing out. Makes a great racket. I'm not sure if he's having fun or not. He's repeated the process at least thirty times since I've been sitting here. He isn't two. He's sixteen. He's severely autistic.

Up until four months ago I had a husband. We had a modest but very comfortable house in a great neighborhood. But things went terribly, terribly wrong and, there is simply no civilized way to put this... One day at work he deliberately ran himself over with his semi-truck.

I know that it is starting to sound like I am making all this up and you're waiting for the punch line. I keep thinking that too. Sometimes I hope that I'll wake up one morning and it will have all been one of those bizarre bad dreams. But this is not really a book about me and all of my problems. Problems, hurts, both minor and severe are all par for the course. You know that by now as well as I do.

The reason I am writing is to share with you how and why I've even survived this mess thus far and what God has taught me and is continuing to teach me on a day to day basis. This is too painful to have happened just for me, if that makes any sense. Plus, the Lord seems to have built some odd mechanism inside of my head whereby I always feel the most relaxed and comforted when I am writing. I'm going to take one of those leaps of faith that I keep hearing about and assume He must have put that there for a good reason.

This story may prompt you to face a few realities about yourself. I'm going to be brutally honest and in return I'm asking you to be equally honest. Not with me, but with yourself. The process may be a little painful, but the outcome will be that you will meet the real person down beneath the good manners, the bravado and the frantic activity. Under the nice hair, the designer whatever and the expensive shades. Far below the never-ending smile and the calm facade. Yes, this person lives many layers down and it's kind of scary there, but if we just barge in and make a lot of noise, stomp about and wave a flashlight around, I think the vermin will flee from us.

This may seem like a very disturbing, dark and terrifyingly lonely place. Don't despair. Quiet yourself and wait a little while in the darkness. Doesn't something in you recognize this place? This is the place where you are finally going to be loved. Wait. Do you hear a baby crying?