“This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all. If we claim to have fellowship with him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live out the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.” – 1 John 1:5-7
Are you clean of all your sins before God?
I remember watching one of the TV crime dramas (like CSI) a while back. A person had been killed and the killer had scoured the crime scene. To the naked eye, the place looked spotless, but the investigators brought in a special spray and some black lights.
When they turned on the black lights everything looked different. Every drop of blood that had been spilled was suddenly lit up and plain for all to see. There was no hiding what had been done there.
The Stain of Sin
You and I have been stained, too, by all the wrong things we have done, all our sin. Like the killer in the crime drama, we often try to cover up our sin and we present to the world a person that appears clean and unblemished. However, we can’t hide our sin from God.
Like the black light being turned on, our sins are plain as day to God. God requires that we be clean to enter heaven. So, what are we to do? We cannot clean ourselves. The Bible tells us that even our good deeds like filthy rags,
“All of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous acts are like filthy rags;” – Isaiah 64:6
How can we become clean?
In 1 John 1:7 we read that it is by “the blood of Jesus [God’s] Son” that we are “cleanse[d] of all sin.”
Through faith in Jesus Christ, you can be made clean. And this is not just clean like a quick wipe-down with a Clorox wipe. 2 verses later in 1 John 1:9 we read that,
“If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.”
To be purified is to remove all impurities. When gold is purified, all other elements are removed and all that’s left is pure gold as though nothing else had ever been there. By the blood of Jesus, who died on the cross, we are purified of all the wrong things we’ve done. We are made as though we never sinned.
We are made truly clean before God!!
Heavenly Father,
I confess that I have sinned in thought, word, and deed, by what I have done and what I have left undone. I am unclean. Cleanse me by the blood of Christ that I would be made pure and truly clean before You.
Amen.
In Christ’s Service,
Pastor Kurt
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