Must we keep asking for God’s forgiveness to get God’s forgiveness?
So, tell me — have you confessed your sins to God today? If you have, why did you do that if you’ve already been forgiven for those sins when Christ died for you on the cross?
With that, I’d like to welcome you to one of the many internal debates in Christianity, this one on the topic of sin confession to God. Do we regularly confess sin to get/keep God’s forgiveness? Is it for another reason? Is it even needed at all?
Continuous sin confession seems to be prescribed in Scripture with Jesus including in the Lord’s prayer, “Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors” (Matt. 6:12) and John writing: “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:8–9).
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The word “confess” in John’s verse is in the present iterative subjunctive in the Greek, indicating a continual action. It could be translated as “keep confessing our sins,” which provides more evidence for the idea of a constant dialogue with God on our present sins. But again, why do this if we’ve already been given forgiveness once for all when we received Christ as Lord and Savior?
On one extreme are teachers who say constant confession of sins to God isn’t needed because of Christ’s once-for-all sacrifice for us. On the other extreme is a fixation on confession as being required for a continuous reconciliation with God and salvation.
Before his spiritual awakening, Martin Luther served as a good example of the latter. Luther would often enter into six-hour sessions of confession (!) with his vicar, Johann von Staupitz, who finally became exasperated one day and told him, “Martin, you confess everything. You think even your own fart is a sin.”
If that last part is true, I’m in some serious trouble.
Anyway, those extremes aside, what is the right position for a Christian to take when it comes to verses like 1 John 1:9? On a recent episode of William Lane Craig’s Reasonable Faith podcast, his co-host Kevin Harris asked him about this very thing:
KEVIN HARRIS: I've been taught that in the atonement all of our sins (past, present, and future) are paid for at the cross. Yet, 1 John, seemingly written to Christians, says if we confess our sins, he's faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. So, clarify for me if you would. Is there an aspect of the atonement that covers our sins (past, present, future) but another aspect in which we continue to take our sins to God for his forgiveness?
DR. CRAIG: I thought about this question, too, because I had been taught as a young Christian that at the cross all of our sins were forgiven (past, present, and future). As a result of my work on the atonement, I've come to believe that that's false, in fact. The reason is that people in the future don't exist in any sense, and therefore they cannot have committed sins, and therefore they cannot be guilty of those sins. A person is not guilty of a sin if he hasn't committed it. So, at the time Jesus died on the cross, you and I didn't even exist, much less were guilty of sins, and so those sins cannot have been forgiven and cleansed at the cross. Rather, I think that what happened at the cross is that there was a payment for human sin that was made to God that was sufficient to cover all of the sins of humanity that would ever be committed (past, present, or future) and that that potential redemption is then actualized historically in time as people come to exist, commit sins, turn to Christ for forgiveness, and receive a divine pardon and cleansing from God. So, I would differentiate between the potentiality of redemption and forgiveness at the cross and its actualization which I think takes place historically over time.
Craig’s response is interesting (and most likely influenced by his position on God’s relationship to time), but I think there’s more we need to unpack on this topic to get these questions settled.
Then and now
The Bible presents at least two dimensions to our sin dilemma that we can think of as “then” and “now.” Scripture first tells us that we fall short of God’s standards and “If you, Lord, kept a record of sins, Lord, who could stand?” (Ps. 130:3) along with “How blessed is he whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered!” (Ps. 32:1).
The “then” dimension of our sin problem includes what Jesus accomplished for us at the cross. When Jesus died, He became the perfect, once-for-all sacrifice for sins that never needs to be repeated and “He did once for all when He offered up Himself” (Heb.7:27). This is why Paul tells us: “In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace” (Eph. 1:7).
Christ’s finished work also represents a payment made to God for our sin which is why Paul says: “You were bought with a price” (1 Cor. 7:23). Lastly, Jesus also satisfied God’s justice for us (a term the Bible calls propitiation, see Rom. 3:25) and reconciled us, who were previously natural enemies of God, to Himself (Rom. 5:10).
All these wonderful things fall under the “then” aspect of our sin problem and were indeed historically and once-for-all-time undertaken for us. And I believe that because God is timeless due to His eternality, these things happened in eternity past according to His perspective.
The “now” position of our sin issue is what John is talking about in his first epistle. One trait of the false teachers John was encountering was that they didn’t acknowledge their sin (see vs. 8). John tells us that such sin admission is a characteristic of the Christian life
On this point, John MacArthur says in his study Bible:
“Continual confession of sin is an indication of genuine salvation. While the false teachers would not admit their sin, the genuine Christian admitted and forsook it (Ps. 32:3–5; Prov. 28:13) … Rather than focusing on confession for every single sin as necessary, John has especially in mind here a settled recognition and acknowledgment that one is a sinner in need of cleansing and forgiveness (Eph. 4:32; Col. 2:13).”
John Piper agrees, saying, “Confess means ‘agree with,’ ‘see it the way God sees it,’ ‘feel about it the way God feels about it.’ So, John says:
“‘If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.’ So confessing is not a payment. It is simply an agreement with God that this was an ugly and unworthy thing for me to do, and I’m ashamed of it. I’m sorry for it. I turn from it. I embrace the finished, complete, perfect, once-for-all work of Christ afresh. I rest in it. I enjoy the fellowship that he secured.”
Not to beat a dead horse on this matter, but one last quote from Calvin because I think he captures well at the end what happens to us when we believe anything otherwise than what Piper and Macarthur say: “He again promises to the faithful that God will be propitious to them, provided they acknowledge themselves to be sinners. It is of great moment to be fully persuaded, that when we have sinned, there is a reconciliation with God ready and prepared for us: we shall otherwise carry always a hell within us.”
Very true. Sounds exactly like what Luther was experiencing.
Fortunately, these realizations allowed him to finally break free from his angst-filled, quarter-day confession ritual and rest in God’s accomplished work for him. He ended up penning the following words, which we would all do well to remember when we think about these things:
“In short, unless God constantly forgives, we are lost. Thus, this petition really means that God does not wish to regard our sins and punish us as we daily deserve but to deal graciously with us, to forgive as he has promised, and thus to grant us a joyful and cheerful conscience so that we may stand before him in prayer. For where the heart is not right with God and cannot generate such confidence, it will never dare to pray. But such a confident and joyful heart can never come except when one knows that his or her sins are forgiven.”
Robin Schumacher is an accomplished software executive and Christian apologist who has written many articles, authored and contributed to several Christian books, appeared on nationally syndicated radio programs, and presented at apologetic events. He holds a BS in Business, Master's in Christian apologetics and a Ph.D. in New Testament. His latest book is, A Confident Faith: Winning people to Christ with the apologetics of the Apostle Paul.
