"If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." I John 1:9
"Therefore, brothers, since we have confidence to enter the holy places by the blood of Jesus, ...let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, with our hearts sprinkled clean from an evil conscience and our bodies washed with pure water." Hebrews 10:19 & 22
God wants us to confess our sins, to receive forgiveness, and to cleanse us from sin. This cleansing of our hearts washes away all sense of any barrier between God and us, so that our communion with Him is restored.
As we look with the eye of faith on the precious blood of Christ, shed for our sin, we know, and experience that the price for our cleansing and restoration to God has been fully paid. This gaze of our soul upon the cross of Christ restores our conscience to a state of purity, joy, and love for God. We walk in the awareness that all our sins are fully forgiven.
We have been justified by Faith, (Roman 5:1) a one time event - but the daily confession and cleansing from sins is the life breath of our soul, expelling the poison of the fallen creation, and sucking in the life giving grace and mercy and love of our Lord and Savior.
The place where this occurs is the private prayer closet of the Believer, with God alone.
The aim of confession is communion.
"Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for another, that ye may be healed. The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much." James 5:18
There is a place for confessing our faults, literally our 'lapses', the 'deviations' in our walk, to a brother or sister. This is to get encouragement and strength to overcome a particular sin, or character issue which the Holy Spirit has highlighted to us that He wants to work on.
This confession is to receive a hand up not a beat down, a lifting of our burden, not shackles. Hopefully the other Christian has some testimony to offer in this area, or scriptural promises for us to stand on.
And mostly its so another Believer can pray over us, with us, and for us in the coming days.
The method in this verse is to have someone come alongside us in our personal walk of faith, to help us overcome the world, the flesh, and the Devil.
The purpose is that we "may be healed" - cured, made whole; that our lameness may be healed and our walk with Christ straightened.
It is not the Spirit's aim in this verse to beat us down, wound us further, dishearten us, shame us, make us give up.
It is not a group setting either, it is "one another", not one to ten others. Mutual confession and encouragement is the sense of the passage.
Since Jesus came to erase our record of sin, any spirit or person who is holding our record of past failures over our head to control us, discredit us, discard us, is not of God.
This assumes we have made every effort to make past offenses right, and ask forgiveness of those we've hurt, wounded. (And we have all wounded others. We must have the humility to sincerely seek their forgiveness, recognizing they will have to draw grace from the Lord, to grant it. Some wounds are very deep.)
"Hatred stirs up strife, but love covers all offenses." Proverbs 10:12
"Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins."
I Peter 4:8
"Then came Peter and said to him, Lord, how oft shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? until seven times? Jesus saith unto him, I say not unto thee, Until seven times; but, Until seventy times seven." Matthew 18:21
We have a decision to make,
to either forgive others, or become bitter towards them. It's a universal spiritual law of sowing and reaping - unforgiveness always festers into bitterness, bitterness always turns into hatred.
Forgiveness is a decision. It takes grace. If we don't have that grace, it may indicate we are not converted; we may not have experienced God's forgiveness ourselves.
"You wicked servant! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. And should not you have had mercy on your fellow servant, as I had mercy on you?' And in anger his master delivered him to the jailers, until he should pay all his debt. So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart." Matthew 18:32 - 35
So, to justify their unforgiveness against another, they become their record keeper.
"And when one comes to see me, he utters empty words, while his heart gathers iniquity; when he goes out, he tells it abroad." Psalm 41:6
Marking other men's sins
"The wicked spy on the righteous, and seek to kill him." Psalm 37:32 (NASB)
The word picture given here in Hebrew is of someone with binoculars, waiting, watching another. writing down all the dirt they can gather, and then using that dirt to kill another's reputation, harm their health, harm their family, desire them dead, even kill them if possible, or damage their ability to survive or thrive.
This sounds extreme but its what the Word of God is revealing about men's hearts. They become that obsessed with another's harm, if they don't forgive.
"They gather themselves together, they hide themselves, they mark my steps, when they wait for my soul." Psalm 56:6
Like David, we all have haltings, stumblings, in our spiritual walk. David says they were watching for his haltings, peering into his life, with the intent of overthrowing his soul.
Like the Devil, these episodes are well documented, expounded, enlarged, made to characterize the entirety of his walk, to paint him with a completely black heart. (I know my detractors question my salvation, they are so conversant in my failures.)
The Accusers' aim is to completely demoralize us, dehumanize us, discount us, discard us, and to get others to do the same.
Whereas Christ lifted Peter from the waves, these accusers would drown the fainting. We are told to build up one another, but these dividers are experts at crushing others, prosecuting them. They wrap their hateful speeches in Christian lingo and speak them in hushed tones of concern...."pray for _____"!
"Everyday they wrest my words..." Psalm 56:5
If you are tempted to take offense at another's words, the charitable question to ask is, 'what do you mean'.
This the accusers will never do, because their plan is to "form and fashion and shape them at their pleasure; construe them, and put what sense upon them they think fit. To Job, they put his words upon the rack, and made them speak what he never intended." -John Gill
To make much of other's sins we must discount our own
Jesus spoke of an incident in the temple, where two men were praying.
The Pharisee in the temple that day made much of the Tax Collector's sin, and little of his own. The Pharisee based his own righteousness on a superficial comparison with others. "I'm not like others." (Yeah, he literally said that !!)
Additionally, he decided he must be right with God because of his legalistic adherence to fasting and tithing. He didn't actually know his own heart, that it was full of hypocrisy and was wretched in God's sight.
He was a legalist and thought God was a legalist too -- how wrong he is !
Jesus said that this Pharisee wasn't even saved. Nor those like him.
NO, candidates for true salvation are continually humbling themselves before God, and recognizing their brokenness and sin.
of the tax collector in the temple that day Jesus said this: that he beat upon his breast with brokenness and shame before God, and
would not even lift up his eyes to heaven because of humiliation for his sin,
but pled "God, be merciful to me, a sinner!'"
And Jesus said that this man went down to his house Justified.
"for every one who is exalting himself shall be humbled, and he who is humbling himself shall be exalted." Luke 18:13 (Young's Literal Translation)
In Summary:
We may wonder, how a supposed man of God (who at some point became more concerned with his own fiefdom than with the souls committed to his charge, and so became a hireling) how could he so callously sever professing children from their believing parents, sever women from their husband of thirty years, kick former members of their group to the curb, discard Christians who don't "fit in" -- all in the Name of Jesus ?!
The only explanation is that there is a spiritual dynamic at work there which is not explained by reason; Not explained by the cumulative actions or failures of the parties involved, however real, and egregious. This kind of division, this harboring of bitterness over past offenses, these things will never "add up" - they will never account for the destruction upon families, marriages, churches, souls; never account for the rippling harm which is dissipating spiritual capital, destroying decades of spiritual legacies, destroying ministries.
It is demonic. Dark forces, and doctrines of demons are involved.
So let us be on guard against the machinations of the Accuser, for he turned the scriptures against the Logos of God to attempt to manipulate the very Son of God in the wilderness.
The Accuser uses the very Word of God today, with great subtilty, turning its intended meaning on its head to work his division and demonic control.
The Accuser uses confessions and attempts at reconciliation to divide and dismember families and churches, even further. and to control those harboring offenses
When no amount of confession with tears turns the heart of the offended person to forgive you -- then you can be certain that a demonic spirit of hatred and confusion is present, or the person is simply lost, or both
The Accuser uses hirelings / false shepherds to creep into houses and undermine the Biblical authority of husbands / fathers, all while paying lip service to biblical roles and authority (after all hirelings must use the scriptures to accentuate and even extend their own authority). To do so they must discredit husbands/fathers accentuating their flaws and failures, with the aim of usurping their headship.
Nowhere in the Bible does God instruct to remove a husband / father from their role
Hirelings maintain control by accentuating the sins/failures/history of their discards
The Accuser is a legalist - using the law to condemn those forgiven / comfort the lost
Lost men make much of other men's sins, and little of their own
Lack of self knowledge is a sign of lostness.
Lack of love is synonymous with unforgiveness (you don't love someone you haven't forgiven. The Bible says you don't, stop saying you do.)
Unforgiveness invariably leads to bitterness
A root of Bitterness defiles others (everyone who agrees with your justification for it)
Bitterness makes you so obsessed with hating / harming your target that you are blinded to the harm on the others you are infecting
Bitterness leads to profaneness, as Esau, and more grievous sins like adultery
Hatred is the same as murder according to Jesus
Murder is not confined to the physical act
We can murder someone's reputation, their life, relationships, health, ability to thrive
Desiring someone's death is the same as murder
"Ye heard that it was said to the ancients: Thou shalt not kill, and whoever may kill shall be in danger of the judgment; but I--I say to you, that every one who is angry at his brother without cause, shall be in danger of the judgment, and whoever may say to his brother, Empty fellow! shall be in danger of the Sanhedrim, and whoever may say, Rebel! shall be in danger of the Gehenna of the fire. If, therefore, thou mayest bring thy gift to the altar, and there mayest remember that thy brother hath anything against thee, leave there thy gift before the altar, and go--first be reconciled to thy brother, and then having come bring thy gift. Be agreeing with thy opponent quickly, while thou art in the way with him, that the opponent may not deliver thee to the judge, and the judge may deliver thee to the officer, and to prison thou mayest be cast, verily I say to thee, thou mayest not come forth thence till that thou mayest pay the last farthing. Matthew 5:21 - 26 (Young's Literal Translation)
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