1 John 1:8 Doesn’t Mean What Many Claim it Does

David had been a faithful man who was walking in the light before God until he committed adultery with Bathsheba in 2 Samuel chapter 11. After that, David would proceed to murder Bathsheba’s husband Uriah the Hittite by deliberately arranging to have him slain in battle in an attempt to cover up his adultery. David was lying before God and men about the sins he had committed in this matter.

David received a visit from a prophet named Nathan. After hearing Nathan’s heart piercing rebuke, David didn’t cover his sin anymore. He confessed that the rebuke applied to him. He also submitted to a long process of discipline afterwards in relation to what he did without complaining and without being otherwise stubborn against the Lord.

Now consider the commonly cited 1 John 1:8: “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.”

Many use this to try to claim that everyone, even the righteous who are abiding in Jesus Christ, must sin constantly. In operating like this they are true candidates themselves for rebuke based on 1 John 1:8- since they are doing the very thing which 1 John 1:8 says not to do. It is a good thing that David did not use their logic when Nathan confronted him. If he had done so, instead of confessing his own with horror and grief directed at himself, he might have rather told Nathan that we all sin constantly anyways. He then may very well have resorted to recrimination and told Nathan that there was surely sin in his own life.

Since David had unrepentant sin which the Word of God testified against, he had to confess and forsake it Proverbs 28:13) in order to receive forgiveness and be restored to fellowship with the Lord and fellowship with faithful worshipers of the Lord. If David had said that he had not sinned (and justifying yourself by excusing and/or downplaying your sin is essentially claiming you have not sinned), then David would have been deceiving himself and the truth would not have been in him. If the light of God’s Word testifies against you and you resist that conviction, then you are deceiving yourself and the truth is not in you. Let God’s Word be the referee and keep in line with the Word. Those who are saying that we must sin constantly and are trying to put the righteous and the wicked in the same category are surely not doing that. The Bible does not put the righteous and the wicked in the same category- and it differentiates them on the basis of their deeds (in terms of living according to the light of God’s Word without embracing anything the Word labels darkness or not).

People will be emboldened to sin and no one will repent when they are led to believe that constant sinning is inevitable for everyone anyways. There is no true repentance when someone says their sins were inevitable anyways, when they won’t acknowledge they could have and should have done right, and won’t submit to doing what they should have done before. The grace of Christ does not eliminate the fact that sin leads to death. No one can be saved who does not actually turn to the Lord in a way where they forsake their sins from the heart and receive His discipline so that they faithfully resist temptation (see James 1:12-15).