LIVING WORD DEVOTIONAL
By Pastor Mensa Otabil
Saturday 9th October 2021
HE FORGIVES OUR SINS
Scripture Reading: 1 John 1
If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. 1 John 1:9
This passage reveals three attributes of God concerning sin.
1. God is just. God’s justice requires that He punishes sin. Sin violates God’s standard. Whenever we sin, we break God’s holy standards. For God to uphold those holy standards, His justice demands that He removes both the sin and the sinner from His presence.
A just God cannot allow sin to go unpunished. However, if God acts only on His just nature, human beings, whom He created in His image, would have to be totally removed from His presence. How does a just God keep human beings who are prone to sin in His presence?
2. God is faithful. God is both just and faithful. His faithfulness allows Him to keep faith with human beings. So that even though we sin and offend God’s holy standards, He wants us in His presence. To do that, God provided a way for us to pay for our sins without suffering for them. He paid for our sins. All we need to do is accept our sins – confess our sins.
3. God forgives. When we confess our sins, God wipes them away and brings us into His presence. He does that for both the vilest sinner who needs new life in Christ and the righteous saint who falls short of God’s standards.
Instead of covering up our sins and making excuses for them, John calls us to confess our sins. As children of God, we should be ready at all times to acknowledge any failure which God’s light may expose to us.
For us to walk day by day in fellowship with God and with our fellow believers, we must confess our sins: sins of commission or sins of omission, sins of thought, sins of act, secret sins, and public sins. We must drag them out into the open before God, call them by their names, take sides with God against them, and forsake them. That is what God’s justice and faithfulness require.
Prayer: Heavenly Father, have mercy on me. Forgive me. Wash me and cleanse me from all sin and unrighteousness. In Jesus’ name, Amen.