Expounds on the foundational elements of Christian life as presented in 1 John chapter 1, emphasizing that true Christianity is defined by having life from God, which is a gift received through Jesus Christ, not earned. The message traces the progression from this divine life to fellowship with the Father and Son, leading to full joy, and highlights God's absolute nature as light, which dispels all darkness. It further explains that this life brings cleansing from sin through Christ's blood and offers forgiveness and cleansing from unrighteousness upon confession, urging listeners to embrace this gift by faith.
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and may they be for good this morning. Now I want to read a very short chapter in the New Testament, a very interesting chapter, first John chapter one. John's first epistle chapter one. First John chapter one and we'll read the Ten verses of the chapter. That which was from the beginning which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon and our hands have handled, of the word of life.
For the life was manifested and we have seen it and bear witness and show unto you that eternal life which was with the Father and was manifested unto us. That which we have seen and heard, declare we unto you, that ye also may have fellowship with us. And truly our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. And these things write we unto you, that your joy may be full. This then is the message which we have heard of him, and declare unto you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. If we say that we have fellowship with him and walk in darkness, we lie and do not the truth.
But if we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ, his Son, cleanseth us from all sin. If we say that 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. If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar and his word is not in us. I think the writings of John the Apostle and the New Testament are particularly interesting and intriguing to the affection of the Christian at all times.
John speaks in a very absolute way in his writings, that is to say the Spirit of God speaks, and that absolute way through him. And sometimes some of the things that he says are rather difficult for us to understand, because they are so absolute. You see, with John, you are either a Christian or you are not a Christian. You either walk in the light or you walk in darkness. You're either a sinner or you're a saint with John. And it's rather difficult in this world of compromise in which we live to follow that kind of teaching.
But the reason for that is that John always speaks from God's viewpoint, from the way in which God looks at things. And he seeks to teach us that way. When God looks at me, he sees no compromise there. He sees exactly what I am. There is no pretense before him. All things are naked and open unto the eyes of him with whom we have to do. And here in this chapter we have some very important elements set before us that are just as absolute as his entire teaching.
And I would like to draw your attention to these because I think they're very interesting to us. They don't need to be numbered, they come just consecutively down through the chapter, but here you have, for instance, the first item that is brought before us is life. And this again is in keeping with John's teaching. John is the, in a sense, the apostle of life. You read more about life in John's teaching when you read about it anywhere else. Paul is quite different if you like to think of it. But here we have life brought in and then the result of the life that is brought in is in verse three fellowship is the next thing.
Now you can see how the one flows into the other in this chapter and it's not only interesting but very important. Verse four you have joy. Your joy may be full. Then in verse five, the next verse, you have light. God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. Then in verse seven, you have something that is just as absolute, cleansing, cleansing from all things. I say it's absolute, that is to say it goes all the way.
This is not cleansing from the sin you did yesterday so that you will be able to go on and perhaps be compromised tomorrow. This is cleansing from all. And then in verse nine you have forgiveness and cleansing again. Cleansing not this time from sin but from sins, which is a very different aspect. Now, maybe you think I'm going to be a little deep. Well, ah. So, I don't say that facetiously. But I mean, I want us to think a little bit about these wonderful elements, because our entire life, our entire enjoyment, our entire testimony depends on these things, as I want to suggest to you.
A Christian... is a person who has life from God. Now this is the essential thing. It doesn't matter how you've been brought up, whether in a Christian home or a heathen home. It doesn't matter what your culture may be, it doesn't matter what your past education may be, or your intellectuality. What designates you before the eye of God as a Christian is that you have life from God. Now that life comes to you by appropriation, but it comes to you as a gift from God. It isn't something that you can earn.
It is not something that you can acquire. It is not something that you can be educated up to, if I can use that expression. The wages of sin is death. You get that because you earn it. If the Lord does not come, Very shortly, we will all have to die. But we will not die as a gift. We will die as wages. That is to say, each one will have earned death before we get to the grave. But by contrast with the wages of sin being death, in contrast to that, the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.
Now we may think that we encompass that in our thinking, but I don't think we do. I'm sure I don't. That is to say, we have to depart from the realm of calculation and reasoning to the realm of grace. Because you see, there is no reason why God should make me a gift of eternal life. There is every reason why I should die. When you die, my friend, whether you are a believer or an unbeliever on the Lord Jesus Christ, you will be paying the penalty as far as the physical condition is concerned. You will be paying the penalty of the sins which you have committed, as far as the physical is concerned.
I'm not speaking about divine justice and divine judgment now. That is a different matter. Your body will die, you see, because... In your body you have sinned. So that is wages. But outside the realm of reason and recompense and calculation, outside of all that realm, God reaches out and he deposits in my heart, in and through the Lord Jesus Christ, a magnificent gift that he gives, for which I can give no return. He gives it to me absolutely by divine grace. Now you have either received that gift or you have not received it.
There I digress for a moment before coming to the point of this chapter in connection with life, to say that no one on earth can give you that gift. That is to say, for years I was very much troubled about not having the gift of eternal life. I was troubled about death very much. I'm still troubled about death, but not in the way in which I was troubled then. I was troubled then about death, because I knew that if I died, I would come into judgment, because the scripture says, it is appointed unto men once to die, and after this the judgment.
But the gift was held out to me And if there had been a minister or a priest or a preacher of the gospel, to whom I could have said, gone and said, Now, I would like to receive this gift. Now, if you will just give it to me and let the fuss be over, and I mean that, let the fuss be over, I would gladly have taken it away with me. But I found that no mediator could take that place, no person on earth. Because you see, the scripture says, there is one God. So you must come to that God. You see, there is only one.
And there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself a ransom for all. So there was only one person to whom I could come, and only one person to whom you can come, to receive the gift of God. which is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord. No one cometh unto the Father except by me, the Lord Jesus said, so that you cannot get it in a church. Now that may be rather familiar truth to many of us here, but let's think about it. There is no point on earth, there is no place on earth, however sanctified, however much of a shrine it may be, where I can walk in the door and sit down and listen to any human or to any pipe organ or music or anything.
I'm not saying anything against the pipe organ. Don't misunderstand me, but there is no atmosphere into which I can come sentimentally or intellectually or in any other way. where I can receive from the hand of man this marvelous gift that changes me from a dying sinner into a person who is going to live forever in the presence of God. There is nowhere I could send you. There is nowhere you could go that you could find that. Have there been anywhere on earth that it could have been found? I'm sure it would have been in Solomon's temple because there There you see, you had all the regalia, and legitimately so, you had all the regalia of the divine presence.
It was a magnificent structure. There was everything inside that temple to impress the human mind that God was there. But it couldn't be found there. The glory cloud had to leave that temple, and the temple was destroyed. So there is only one place that one can come to, and that is consciously in your own life, in my own life, into the presence of the Lord Jesus. Oh, but you see, how can I come to him? You can come to him because he's alive, you know. He's alive. If he was dead, you couldn't reach him, but the Lord is alive today. I wonder if we realize that.
The Lord is living. He's conscious of what I'm saying to you just now. I believe that was all my heart, and I trust we all do. I am he that liveth and became dead, but the whom I am alive forevermore. And he has that priestly position today of being the mediator to whom I can come and receive all the bounty of heaven represented in this gift of eternal life. And if you have not received it yet, I beg of you to reach out the hand of faith in your own consciousness, in your own honest consciousness. and tell the Lord you're a sinner, because only sinners can receive that, and that you are willing to accept that gift by grace alone, not by works, not by any merit of your own, but by grace alone, and He'll give it to you.
But now this life, this gift of eternal life, is not just something that's happened on a certain day, in a certain month, on a certain year. And I've written it down, perhaps in my Bible. And I say, now that's when it happened. It's not that simple. This is not a change of, shall I say, I know the word that I want, but perhaps some of you don't know it. They use it in legal terms, a change of venue, you know. It means that the court has altered things on its calendar and on its books and on its disposition.
It isn't simply a change that has been made in heaven, but it's a change altogether radically in the human soul. So it's not a matter of record up yonder, although it is a record up yonder, but it's something that happens to you. It means that you are brought into a realm where you are enjoying a life that was never known on this planet before by anyone until the Lord Jesus came. Now, I'm very careful in what I'm trying to say because I don't think we properly estimate or begin to understand the privilege of being a Christian in this era in which we live.
I mean, since the Lord Jesus died and rose. this life that is given to me by grace alone is a life that was manifested when the Lord Jesus was on earth for the first time in all history that's what John is saying here this the word of life he calls it that is to say it was the manifestation of life it was the display of life and he says which we have heard with our ears We've seen with our eyes and our hands are handled. I'm very much interested in this. Our hands are handled. Of the words of life.
For this life was manifested. Now, if you want to know the kind of life I have as a Christian, and you have as a Christian, as far as manifestation was concerned, you must read about the Lord Jesus in the New Testament. And what do you read of that life? You find it in manifestation, and it's a marvelous life. It's a life, for instance, of love. If there is any quest in the human soul on the natural plane here in this world, it is the quest of love, a life of love. We all want to be loved, and we all want to love.
And we would like to live in that world of love always. I think when we're born into this world, there is this upward impulse in the heart of all of us. A little child, as it comes to consciousness with a gradual impulse, you see it again and again. A child wants to be loved. That's all it cares about. Just love me, that's all. And then a child wants to love you too. Unfortunately, we're in a world of sin and contention and all that kind of thing, and it's destroyed.
And then when you get married, you think you're going to love each other forever, and you do, if you're normal people. Sorry to say there are some people that are not normal. It's a sad thing. It's a glorious thing to be able to love someone, not only one, but a good man. It's a marvelous life for this. Now that's on the natural plane, but this life that the Lord Jesus manifested is something far wider than that. It means that if you are a Christian, in a sense you love everyone, because the Lord Jesus manifested love towards all.
It's very interesting to see the Lord Jesus in the Gospels, for instance, Even at times when he was having it very difficult and trying, and when he was rejected and even stunned by his followers and deserted by them. I think of him on the cross, for instance, when he says to this very person who is writing here, John the Apostle, and to his own mother and the earthly place, Mary. Behold thy son. And he says to John, behold, thy mother. He was impressing upon John that he was inducted into something that encompassed all that was human, but went away beyond it and encompassed that which was divine.
Then this, I just mentioned some of its characteristics. You remember when the law came down from the Mount of Olives. It's so altogether different from what we are, you see. He might have been occupied with the desertion of his followers the day before and the persecution of those who were against him. And he went up into the Mount of Olives and spent the night there. And then he comes down the next day into the synagogue and he moves about in the outer court of the synagogue there, the temple. And he sees a woman, you remember, bent over double so that she could not straighten herself up. Now here is the manifestation of the life.
The Lord Jesus might have thought, although he couldn't think this, but I mean, had he been merely human, he might have thought, now this is a detail for the disciples to look after. They could have attended to the woman, you know. They have the power of healing. The Lord Jesus didn't, and he went over to her, and he might have said the word that would make her whole, but he didn't say the word. He did something more than that. He went and he laid his hands upon her. He laid his hands on her shoulders. So that she straightened herself up, walked erect.
You see, there was nothing kindness in this life that was manifested in the Lord. I wish we who are Christians would take this thoroughly to heart. It isn't that I've been given a life so that I won't go to hell and I'll go to heaven. That may be true, but that is not the kind of life the Lord gives. The gift of eternal life is a life that will manifest itself, even as it was manifested in the Lord. And this is essential. So if you are a Christian, you should be, you must be, a person of loving kindness and grace. love for other people. Now, if we are not that, we are abnormal.
We could go on and on about that, and you could go on and on and thinking about it. It is marvelous to contemplate. This was the world of life that the apostles could handle. They could touch the Lord Jesus. That is to say, they were brought into intimate contact with it, and there they enjoyed it. When the Lord Jesus said to his disciples, you remember, when all those around them were deserting them because of the straightforwardness of his truth, he said, Will ye also go away? Simon Peter answered, You remember, Lord, to whom shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life.
The Lord Jesus said, the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit and they are life. You know, the reading of this book, these are the words of the Lord Jesus. There's something spiritual about them. It isn't merely that we do our duty by reading a few chapters, nothing of the kind. We read this book because we get something of Christ in it. The words of the Lord Jesus are spirit and their life. They promote this. Rare enough of enjoyment. But not only is this life which is essential, but you see the outcroppings, the outgrowings, the manifestations of this life.
The first thing that happens, if you have this life, you come into fellowship, you know. I'm not going to talk to you about being received by ten brethren. I'm not talking about that. Nothing to do with that at all. I don't believe in that kind of thing. We don't receive inter-fellowship. God receives inter-fellowship, and he's the only one that does. The moment you have this life, you are in fellowship. What fellowship? The fellowship of Jesus Christ our Lord in the Corinthian epistle, but here it's the fellowship of the Father and the Son. That is to say, shall I say, wake up in the burning of your new life, and you say, I have a father.
You were an orphan before. You were a fugitive and a vagabond in the words of the scripture. You were like chains flying for your life, so was I. But we wake up in the first consciousness of this new life, and I say, I have a father. And not only have I a father, he's not a master father. He's not a priest. He's not a minister. He's not a godly man, even. He's God. God is my. I have fellowship with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. So we've got into a marvelous fellowship and I do hope that all here are in fellowship.
I'm in fellowship. I remember climbing into the automobile of her dear brother in Staten Island one time, a good many years ago. It was like most of Christian's cars. It was overcrowded. But I managed to get in, and I apologized for being the last one, you know, and crowding the people a little bit. And he turned down to me, and he said, that's all right, Tom. This car's in fellowship. You get the idea, don't you? Now, he was speaking of a material thing, but there is some thrill there, isn't there? A marvelous thing to be in fellowship.
When you meet a person on the high seas, perhaps, crossing the Atlantic or the Pacific, and you have a chat with him, and he says, it's a very nice morning. Did you see the stars last night? And then he says to you, you know, it's marvelous to look at the stars, isn't it? And God made the stars, and then your ears pick up, and you say, well, you believe that, too. And then the next thing, you know, he's a fellow believer. Ah, a fellowship. Your fellows together in a marvelous realm of privilege. You don't say to them, what kind are you? No, no, no. That'll come out soon enough, unfortunately, but all you're interested in and all you need be interested in, are you a Christian or are you not a Christian?
If you're a Christian, you're in fellowship. Oh, but you see, he started to say some things that weren't right. Well, so did you, you see. That's the difficulty I have. I find them wrong so often. But this is radical. This is not a matter of opinion. This isn't how much you know about the word even. This is something that's radical. If you have this life, this marvelous life, which God communicated to you, It's not the life of deity. Don't misunderstand me. But it is divine in its origin and it is divinely given. Automatically you become one of the brethren. You belong in every sense and you never belong more to the circle of the faith of God than you do the moment you come into the fellowship of the Father and the Son.
Now it's a marvelous fellowship and I I want to impress that upon my own heart. I think in these days of defeatism, when people are joining everything under the sun. I never join anything, you know. Man came into my office some years ago. He said, Mr. Westwood, you know, I have a small business and they like to get small businessmen. They're usually foolish, you know, and they donate things and all that. But he said, I... was sent or I came to see you about joining the Optimus Club. Oh, I said, I've belonged to that for twenty-five years. Oh, I said. W. W.
The name isn't here. Oh, he's looking up the wrong record. My name's up in heaven. And I was able to tell him, not smartly, I hope, but very candidly, and his eyes looked wide. I belong to the best thing under God's heaven. And I don't want to tarnish it with any joinings, if you please. I'm not speaking about things you have to get into sometimes under pressure and all that, in order to keep your business going. I'm not talking about that. I'm not saying either favorably or against it. That's not my function of the moment. It is, you'll never improve what you are if you belong to Christ.
And if you don't belong to Christ, nothing good eventually will happen to you until you do belong to Christ. A member of Christ's body. He that is joined to the Lord is one spirit. Not they who are joined to the Lord. It's not a company. It's he who is joined to the Lord. The fellowship of God's Son. The fellowship of the Father. So that as I say, we come to the consciousness that God is our Father and He loves us perfectly. It's a marvelous thing to go out to the day, to our work, anywhere each morning and say, well, God is our Father.
It's never my Father exactly, but you can take it that way if you like. He's the Father to us all. But the fatherly love that rests upon us. that the love wherewith thou hast loved me may be in them, and I in them. That's the life I'm talking about. Well, then, in this next verse, after the fellowship comes to light here, these things write we unto you that your joy may be full. There's something about John's ministry, you know, that really stirs up our, not only our thinking, but is a little bit ironical.
that your joy may be full. You see, if we were talking about some exclusive club or some organization, some fraternal organization of men, we would be apt to say, once you get into this fellowship, then men will look up to you. Who knows? Once you get into this fellowship, men will look down upon you, as a matter of fact. But if it were a club of man's organization, you'll be out to say you will become important. You will rise in the world. You'll be successful. But the first thing God is interested in when you were a Christian is that you should be a happy one.
That's the fact. He's not interested in this respect in your bank account or your poverty even. The strange thing is that a person can be either wealthy or very poor. It really makes no consequent difference. If he's enjoying this fellowship, then his joy can never be added to. His joy is full. We say, I'm not as happy as I used to be. Well, neither am I sometimes, but the joy remains, you see, because all we have to do is to draw near to the Lord. We can draw near to him by reading the Psalms. If you ever, ever hardly press, try the twenty-third.
It brings me back every time. And get it in the original, in the Scots version, you know, and you'll find it much better. The Lord my shepherd I'll not want. It makes me down to lie. And pastures green, he leadeth me in a quiet waterspire. You like it, don't you? Go, sir. That your joy may be fooled. The Christian is not expected to be a half-hearted person. Oh, but you see, you know, your background makes you conservative. Well, you can't be very conservative when you're one of the brethren, you know. That is to say, in the scriptural sense.
There are hallelujahs connected with this. There is singing. There is joy. There is dancing even. And I don't mean the mere physical dancing. That's a poor affair. But the dancing of the soul, you know, and marvelously. that your joy may be full. Not only is the joy, but there are some sober things too. In verse five, we are reminded that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. Now these are, as I say, essential elements that John is bringing before us.
Why does this thought come in here? Well, there are many reasons for it, but one thing I think is the reminder that there are no pretenders in this fellowship. Oh, but you see, I was in a meeting one time where a man had been there for ten years and he turned out to be a rascal. Well, I was in that meeting too, but I'm not talking about a meeting. I'm talking about the fellowship of God. fellowship with the Father and the Son. There are no rascals can get into this. There are no pretenders can get into it.
Why? Because God is light. That's why. God is light. We may pretend and we may deceive one another, but we cannot deceive God. And what's more, we let him little further down. We may deceive ourselves, even. But we do not deceive God. God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. There are no dark parts in God. That is to say, he never compromises. You must either belong to Christ and be inducted into this glorious fellowship with God the Father and God the Son. Or you're not in it at all.
You're either in light or in darkness. Now, I'm well aware that there are some people have taught that This light that John speaks of in John's first epistle is church light. There's nothing of the church here at all. Nothing of it whatsoever. This doesn't mean you're in the right meeting or the right church or any of that stuff at all. This is talking about what is vital. You're in relationship with God here. And God is light and in him is no darkness at all. That is to say, wherever God shines, all the darkness is dispelled. And everything is open. I remember reading about a man who was put in prison in a cell somewhere in Old London, I believe.
And he was put in there at the dark of night. Just one window in the place, and of course it was pitch dark. So he felt his way around. And he felt what seemed to be a couch. He knew he'd been there for the night anyway, and he lay down on the couch. And he went to sleep after a while. And when he woke in the morning, suddenly there was a shaft of light that he saw coming in from this window, and it shone right down on the couch, where he was. He jumped up at once. The place was filthy, dusty, and covered with cobwebs, and here he'd been lying in the midst of it.
But as long as it was dark, you see, it wasn't in evidence. And so is whenever God signs, you see, wherever the light of God penetrates, everything is laid bare, not for the purpose of condemnation, but in order to bring us into the light. He that doeth truth, the scripture says, cometh to the light, that it might be made manifest that his works have been wrought in God. The evil doer goes into the dark. The doer of truth comes to the light. What does that mean? It means simply this, that if you will do what is true, you'll come into the light of God.
If you are a sinner here this morning, my friends, still unconverted. If you will do, for the first time perhaps in your life, what is truth, as far as you are concerned, to take your place before God as one who has sinned and confess that sin. God will bring you into the light of his own countenance and dispel all the darkness from your life forever. God is light and in him is no darkness at all. Ah, but someone may say, well, I have had the light shine on me and I am not.
I know I am very far from what I should be. I know I am besmirched by sin. I know that I have done grievously wrong. We all know that. Well, that question is taken off directly afterwards. The scripture says, if we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ, God's Son, his Son, cleanseth us from the all sins. Now, as I speak of this, I want to go on to verse nine, because I think we are somewhat linked together. Here it is the blood of Jesus Christ, God's Son, cleanseth us from all sin.
And in verse nine, if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Being a sinner is a very serious matter for any of us, for all of us. There are two items that are presented to us here. First of all, We need forgiveness if we have sinned. We need to have our sins, our acts of iniquity, forgiven, and we need to be cleansed from unrighteousness. But something more than that, we need to be cleansed from sin in its totality.
And that is what the last thing is, what is taken up first by John. Everything that we think is last is first in John's writings. Because he's all speaking from God's side. I don't like using human illustrations very much, because they always fall far short of the mark. But let me say this. Each one of us, as we come to manhood or womanhood, unless Lord intervenes in our very early life, we... Not only are we sinners in ourselves, but we become sinners.
Now there's not such a thing in the Bible as a saved sinner. You know, you don't find saved sinners in the Bible. The moment a person is saved, he's no longer a sinner. That's elemental. I know what our phraseology is, but sometimes our phraseology is entirely wrong. When a person tells me, I'm only a sinner saved by grace, I tell them. You're very far mistaken, mister. If you're saved, then you're not a sinner. And if you're a sinner, then you're not saved, and you need the Lord. How is that not true? Well, that isn't the way I have it, somebody says. Well, that's the way the book presents it. A sinner is one who sins, not one who has sinned, but one who sins.
Now, the sinner... the unconverted person, the one who is going on in ungodliness, the one who doesn't know the Lord. There are two things that he needs. First of all, he needs to have his own conscience and his own heart cleanse them made free from the guilt of sin. But then there's another thing that we need, and that is to have the record of our sins obliterated by God himself. And that's a far more important thing. And the first thing that John speaks of here is the obliteration of the record. The blood of Jesus Christ, God's Son, cleanses from all sin.
Not sins, but sin. The whole thing in its totality is taken away by the cleansing power of the Word of Christ. I've often told the story and hadn't told many, many times. I suppose you have to. Martin Luther. Martin Luther was a very marvelous man, as we all know, I suppose. And like many marvelous men, he had his low times, if you know what that is. He had his low times. And sometimes he came to the conclusion that he wasn't saved at all. and he would have interviews with Satan, or at least he thought he did, and I don't know whether he did or not, but he thought he did, and Satan would seem to come and tempt him and say, your faith is vain, Martin.
You're not really forgiven at all. You've left a real church, you know, and you're not... And Martin Luther became very much disturbed with this. And when he was teaching, there was a great, huge... blackboard along the wall where they wrote all the problems and so on. Master Luther, in extremity of spirit, he said to Satan, as he thought Satan was there and his accuser, he said, Satan, I want you to write all my sins on that great long blackboard.
He said, if you've forgotten any of them, I'll help you. And in this thinking anyway, I don't know just what ensued, but Satan wrote them all down on the great blackboard. Unnumbered of them. Martin Luther was going on thinking about the various awful things, and you can think them up for yourself, and so can I. The awful things that he had done. And then he said, finally, to Satan, in his dilemma, he said, are you sure that are there? And Satan told them, yes, that's all I can think of. Well, Martin said, that's all I can think of, too.
So we'll write over them. And he went over with a piece of chalk, and he wrote over the whole blackboard, the blood of Jesus Christ, God's Son, cleansed them from all sin. I think that's wonderful. The record was gone then. Now, Martin Luther, you see, was concerned about deceiving. Some days he didn't feel like a forgiven sinner. Another days he felt that he was really sanctified. What he found then was even from the scripture which he knew full well. He was a forgiven sinner. And it was he who boasted the truth of sanctification by faith across the world, marvelous.
The record is gone. That is to say, not only the things that I have committed, but the sinner himself is obliterated, and the sin, the radical thing, is gone before the eye of God. God has put it out of his sight. He sunk it into the depths of the seas, cast it behind his back. He has said, thy sins and thy iniquities, I will remember no more forever. The record is gone. But then for the daily and the hourly feelings that rise and fall, here we have something more. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins.
Have you done something in your life? I suppose we all have done, and we just say to ourselves, I wish I could obliterate I wish I could, yes, I know God has forgiven me, but I wish I could obliterate it and get it out of my mind because I can't forgive myself. God is faithful and He's just. That is to say in righteousness, He puts the sense of forgiveness in our hearts so that we can rest assured As the Scripture says, as the same John the Apostle says, Your sins are forgiven you for His name's sake.
That's the end. Oh, but you see, I don't know how I will come in at the end. You know, I may... The record's gone as far as heaven is concerned, you see. And if we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us all. And to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. That's a very wonderful touch, is it not? I might say that forgiveness would be enough, but it's really not. Mr. Mace used to come to this meeting a great deal. I used to see him at San Francisco in days when I came here. I always remember an illustration he gave us of this last part of the first chapter of John's, of John's Epistle.
It was something like this, and he gave it in his own graphic way. He said there are two things that the person who commits sin needs. The first is forgiveness, and the second is cleansing, and his illustration aptly enough, a little boy. And his mother has decked him out in finery. He's got a nice suit on, and some of it's white, and so he wants to go out to play on the... in the backyard and she challenges them of course you can only go out for a few minutes and keep yourself clean because you're dressed and you have to go so and so on and so on oh yes oh he'll do all of that and so he leaves and he goes out and he plays and you know the inevitable he falls in a heap of mud and he comes in with the plaything covered with mud and he cries before his mother.
Now, he needs two things. One is not enough. His mother might pat him on the head and say, well, Johnny, I forgive you. Mother forgive you. Oh, then he looks at his pants. Who's mother now? He needs cleansing. And so she takes him to the tub and puts him in it and cleans his suit. And off he goes again in full regalia. forgiven and cleansed. Isn't it marvelous? But God will actually