Day 1 - 1 John 1:1-10

We proclaim to you the one who existed from the beginning, whom we have heard and seen. We saw him with our own eyes and touched him with our own hands. He is the Word of life. 2 This one who is life itself was revealed to us, and we have seen him. And now we testify and proclaim to you that he is the one who is eternal life. He was with the Father, and then he was revealed to us. 3 We proclaim to you what we ourselves have actually seen and heard so that you may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. 4 We are writing these things so that you may fully share our joy.5 This is the message we heard from Jesus and now declare to you: God is light, and there is no darkness in him at all. 6 So we are lying if we say we have fellowship with God but go on living in spiritual darkness; we are not practicing the truth. 7 But if we are living in the light, as God is in the light, then we have fellowship with each other, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, cleanses us from all sin.8 If we claim we have no sin, we are only fooling ourselves and not living in the truth. 9 But if we confess our sins to him, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all wickedness. 10 If we claim we have not sinned, we are calling God a liar and showing that his word has no place in our hearts.

Tori's Comments:

I think sometimes we can forget how REAL God is. Like at the beginning of this passage, Jesus was an actual man who died on a cross for our sins. That is one of the most important things we could ever remember (It also seems to be one of the easiest things to forget!). 

Verse 6- Am I growing in my Christian faith or remaining stagnant? It's more important than it seems, because if I am not living for God, what's the point? He should be what I want to spend all of my free time on! Although I'm not there yet, I hope to :)

Terrie's Comments:

This letter that is one that has had plenty of airtime in my head recently!  It is a book that the Holy Spirit has downloaded a lot of information and revelation about.  

It is important to remember that 1 John is a letter and is meant to be read as a whole.  It is important (and I would recommend it highly to go and read this letter in it's entirety everyday of this challenge) to keep everything in context.

Did you know that 1 John 1:9 is the only verse in the Bible that tells us to confess our sins to receive forgiveness?  What is up with that?  Especially when the rest of the epistles talk about the fact that we are made righteous through Jesus.  And that our sins were nailed to the cross.  When taking a look at 1 John in the fullness, even this letter seems to contradict that statement.  
Also if we need to confess our sins to be forgiven and be made righteous then how can we ever be fully righteous or fully forgiven when we will always have sins that are unknown.  Let's read this in the context of just the few surrounding verses and see what we can find...

7 But if we are living in the light, as God is in the light, then we have fellowship with each other, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, cleanses us from all sin.8 If we claim we have no sin, we are only fooling ourselves and not living in the truth. 9 But if we confess our sins to him, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all wickedness. 10 If we claim we have not sinned, we are calling God a liar and showing that his word has no place in our hearts.

In verse 7 we see that it is stated that we are cleansed from ALL sin.  The next verse is saying if we claim to have no sin we are in denial... then comes the famous verse about confession of our sins.  Followed by "if we claim that we have not sinned, we are calling God a liar"  Basically when we read the famous 1 John 1:9 in context of the surrounding verses we can see that this is referring to realizing that we were born into sin and the only way that we can be saved is by confessing that we needed the blood of Jesus to cleanse us and make us righteous.  If we say that we don't need the blood of Jesus to be righteous in God's sight then we are making God a liar and his word has no place in our lives.  When we place our faith in Jesus Christ and decide to make Him Lord in our lives we are admitting that we need his redemption that was provided when he nailed our sins to the cross.  It does not mean that we need to be in a constant state of repentance and begging God for forgiveness.  Forgiveness is for the benefit of the one doing the forgiving.  The Bible says that God forgives us for His sake.  He has already forgiven us.  We don't have to ask we just need to place our faith (believe God's word) that it is already finished!!!  This is great news indeed.

Take our personal comments or leave them. We would love to hear what stood out to you about today`s passage and how it encouraged you. Tell us in the comments below!