Our daily devotional is a re-post with permission from Words Of Hope. Come view our website at www.clintonave.org.

Be Not Deceived

By Scott Hoezee on December 29, 2021

Read: 1 John 1:1-10

If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves. (v. 8)

Most of us are more familiar with John 1 than with 1 John 1. But it’s obvious the same apostle wrote both. John again harks back to “the beginning” and he has plenty to say about light and darkness just as in the opening of his Gospel. But here John is not celebrating the birth of the Word of God but instead needs to talk about what it means to live as a child of the light.

When we read the Epistles, we are reading someone else’s mail and can see only one-half of the correspondence. We have to guess to figure out to what a given letter is responding. In this case, it looks like some believers had taken God’s forgiving grace so far as to conclude that sin is nothing to fret about. We may as well say we never sin at all since God is so swift to forgive us anyway.

To this John responds with a firm no! Yes, God has forgiven us but only by bringing us into his glorious realm of light. But you cannot carry darkness with you into the light. So confess your sins and certainly do not wallow in them or keep doing them on the assumption it’s no big deal. Don’t be deceived: sin persists in our lives for now. Jesus died to keep that from being the final word on our lives, but our response must be as full of light as Jesus is himself the Light of the world. —Scott Hoezee

As you pray, confess your sins and thank God for his forgiveness.