You wouldn’t call 1 John a simple, straightforward read, would you? The author starts off in a  way reminiscent of his Gospel—great fun for fans of his previous work—but he then quickly hits us with what feels like conflicting ideas:

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 cleanses us from all sin. If we say 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. (1:7–9)

And by this we know that we have come to know him, if we keep his commandments. Whoever says “I know him” but does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him, but whoever keeps his word, in him truly the love of God is perfected. By this we may know that we are in him: whoever says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked. (2:3–6)

John, what? Jesus cleanses my sin if I confess it, and I better be realistic about having something to confess, but the way I will know if the love of God is truly in me is if I keep his commandments and don’t actually sin? And you go on to say so much about needing to love the right things rightly, and that “whoever loves God must also love his brother” (4:21)—I definitely did not love a certain fellow Christian yesterday! What do I do with that?

What is easy to do is stress and worry and strive to be a better Christian. I was an anxious, over-sensitive child who needed Philippians 4:6–9 on my wardrobe to remind me to pray and then think about something else when I got caught in thought-loops, but I was always so distracted by the directives I saw there that I couldn’t follow Paul’s actual point. I was already anxious! I was already thinking about unhappy things! Failed!¹

So is John describing inevitable failure here? Is this a situation where God is trying to find an excuse to eject people from his kingdom for not doing well enough? Mmm … probably not. It doesn’t make a lot of sense to go to the trouble of having Jesus die and rise again to save us if we still must qualify ourselves through our behaviour. 

We are not saved by the action of avoiding failure and sin; we are saved by putting our faith in the one who did—faith that then demonstrates itself through the actions of love and commandment-keeping (1 John 5:1–2). But I am a worrier who wants assurance of her faith and who doesn’t seem capable of producing the actions that confirm it. I keep on sinning instead. Should I print 1 John 4:20–21 out and stick it on my wall, trying harder and harder to love my siblings in Christ? If I tell myself over and over that God’s commandments are not burdensome, can I make them so?

No. If I am lacking in works, I cannot will them into being. That isn’t how they grow. John is at pains in his letter to connect over and over our actions to Jesus. So why do I automatically skip over Jesus and stare at the actions? When my life does not reflect Jesus, pretending to be Jesus isn’t going to make that mirror image. Only Jesus looks like Jesus! So rather than jumping to the worst-case scenarios of what it all means, I need to slow down and look at the rest of the letter.

Towards the end of his letter, John discusses Christian sin through instructing a Christian who isn’t sinning:

If anyone sees his brother committing a sin not leading to death, he shall ask, and God will give him life—to those who commit sins that do not lead to death. There is sin that leads to death; I do not say that one should pray for that. All wrongdoing is sin, but there is sin that does not lead to death. (1 John 5:16–17)

This immediately leads us to wonder what sins don’t lead to death, and the answer is actually very comforting. We have examples in the Bible of God forgiving sexual sin and murder (King David), persecution of Christians (Paul) and even denial of Christ (Peter). When people confess, God forgives (1:9). Because I am in Jesus, God will forgive me when I repent and ask for life (1:7; 5:16). The kind of sin that leads to death seems to be the sin of staying in the darkness, of not turning to Christ but instead denying that we need him (1:8).

When a Christian sins, they remain in relationship with God the whole time between sinning and turning from it. A child disobeying their parent still remains their parent’s child; that reality doesn’t change depending on their behaviour. Of course, we still “ought to walk in the same way in which [Jesus] walked” (2:6). A child who is learning behaviour and what is good from their parent will eventually want to follow that parent’s lead. God does not disown us when we sin, but we will be in a more befitting relationship with him when we disown our sin.

John isn’t trying to confuse or condemn us but to show us just how kind and gracious a God we have. We have a God who “laid down his life for us” (3:16). He knows we will sin against him even while we abide in him; he will continue to abide in us and perfect us through his love, so we have no need to fear failure (4:16–18). “And now, little children, abide in him, so that when he appears we may have confidence and not shrink from him in shame at his coming” (1 John 2:28).

1. It was a huge relief when much later Paul Grimmond in When the Noise Won’t Stop reframed the tone of that passage from one of condemnation to one of comfort.↩<