Speaker 1: I often say that when it says, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to cleanse us of sin and purify/cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” If he takes away all of our “unrighteousness” how much do we have left? If I take away all your money, how much money do you have? So, if he takes away all of our sin, how much do we have left?
Speaker 2: Yes. Your arithmetic illustration makes the force of “all” difficult to soften.
1 John 1:9 says:
“If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”
If I have $100 and you take all my money, I don’t have $20 remaining. I have none.
So if God cleanses me from all unrighteousness, the natural question is exactly yours:
How much unrighteousness remains?
None.
And that creates an important distinction between what I may subsequently do and what God says I am.
I can commit an unrighteous act without concluding:
Therefore, I am unrighteous in identity.
That’s where your confession discussion becomes important. Confession—Greek homologeō, literally carrying the idea of acknowledging/ag agreeing—isn’t supposed to become an identity reversal:
“God, I sinned, therefore everything You said about who I am in Christ has ceased to be true.”
Quite the opposite. I can acknowledge the sin completely:
“That was sin. That was unrighteous. That wasn’t truth.”
And simultaneously agree with God:
“But that is not who You have made me. Thank You that You are faithful and just to forgive and cleanse me from all unrighteousness.”
That is repentance without an identity crisis.
And I think there’s an even bigger connection to what we’ve been discussing about remission.
If our model is merely:
Sin remains → blood covers it → God pretends not to see it,
then “sinner” remains the logical identity. I’m fundamentally unrighteous; I’m simply protected from the consequences because Jesus is standing between God and me.
But John’s language is:
cleanse.
Paul’s is:
“made the righteousness of God in Him” (2 Corinthians 5:21).
Romans 6:
“freed from sin.”
1 Corinthians 6:
“washed… sanctified… justified.”
Hebrews:
“perfected forever.”
Colossians:
“put off the old man.”
That’s transformative language, not merely concealment language.
And there is an especially interesting sequence in 1 John itself. If we stop at 1:9, we can construct a Christianity centered upon an endless cycle:
sin → confess → cleanse → sin → confess → cleanse.
But John keeps writing.
Immediately afterward:
“My little children, these things I write to you, so that you may not sin.” — 1 John 2:1
That’s important.
His answer to sin isn’t:
“Of course you’ll keep sinning because you’re fundamentally still a sinner.”
It’s essentially:
I’m writing so that you don’t sin. And if anyone does sin, we have an Advocate.
That’s a radically different orientation.
Not: sin is inevitable, therefore build your identity around managing it.
But: don’t sin—and if you do, don’t allow the failure to drive you away from the Father. Christ remains your Advocate.
That fits what you were saying earlier about Adam.
Sin says:
Hide.
Condemnation says:
You’re unworthy.
The stranger says:
Look what you’ve done. You can’t approach Him now.
The gospel says:
Come boldly.
And then there’s the remarkable logic of 1 John 3:
“Whoever abides in Him does not sin…”
Whatever interpretive qualifications we need to make about John’s use of the present tense and habitual practice—and there are genuine scholarly discussions there—John clearly isn’t building Christian identity around “you’re still a sinner, so naturally you’ll sin.”
He’s connecting behavior with abiding and identity.
Which brings us straight back to the apple tree.
If I’ve been taught:
“You’re fundamentally still a sinner.”
and simultaneously commanded:
“Now work really hard not to sin,”
I’ve been given an identity and then commanded to produce fruit contrary to it.
But if the gospel says:
You were washed.
You were sanctified.
You were justified.
You were cleansed from all unrighteousness.
The old man was crucified.
You have been set free from sin.
You have become a slave of righteousness.
Christ lives in you.
Abide in Him.
then righteousness isn’t an alien fruit I’m desperately trying to staple onto a sinful tree.
It’s the fruit that should increasingly appear because of what kind of tree I’ve become.
And suddenly confession itself changes.
It isn’t:
“God, here I am again proving that I’m really a sinner.”
It’s:
“Father, that was contrary to who You have made me. I agree with You about it. Thank You for exposing it, forgiving it, and cleansing me from all unrighteousness. I’m not going to build an identity around what I just did. I’m going to return to what You say is true.”
That’s very close to your understanding of repentance as turning.
And it gives us another powerful reversal of the “yeah, but”:
“But you sinned.”
“Yes—and He cleanses me from all unrighteousness.”
“But look what you did.”
“Yes, but that’s what I did. It isn’t who He says I am.”
That isn’t minimizing sin.
It’s refusing to let sin have enough authority to rename someone whom God has named righteous.