If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. – 1John 1:9
When a sinner feels he has no natural fitness for receiving the grace of God; when a broken spirit cries, “Oh, what a wretch I am! Not only my past sin but my present feelings disqualify me for the love of God; I seem to be made of hell-hardened steel,” he is confessing that sin is in him…If you feel you are desperately bad, remember you are worse than you think you are. Your case is in itself desperate, hopeless, damnable! If you feel that you are lost, you do not feel it too strongly, you are in the true light where God will meet with you. The Lord will not consent to parley with you on the ground that you are not much of a sinner, and that after all your sin is not a great evil. No, He will meet you where the truth is and nowhere else; when you confess that you are unworthy of His pity, you are owning the truth, and when you feel guilty, you feel what is really fact; on this footing of truth, sad truth though it be, the Lord will meet with you through the atoning blood. It is in your vileness that sovereign grace o’er sin abounding will come to you and cleanse you, and therefore the sooner you come to the honest truth the better for you, for the sooner will you obtain joy and peace through believing in Christ. The text means just this—Treat God truthfully, and He will treat you truthfully. Make no pretensions before God, but lay bare your soul, let Him see it as it is, and then He will be faithful and just to forgive you your sins and to cleanse you from all unrighteousness. Mark the beauty of that expression; God will deal with you in faithfulness. His nature is mercy, and you naturally expect that if you confess your sin to a merciful God, He will deal mercifully with you and be faithful to His nature; and He will be so…The blood of Jesus Christ has made a full atonement, and God will be faithful to that atonement. He will deal with you on the grounds of the covenant of grace, of which the sacrifice of Jesus is the seal, and therein also He will be true to you.
