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. (1 John 1:5-10)

The rest of the first chapter of 1 John is all about light and darkness, sin and forgiveness. And some of it is not what you think.

The first part is pretty straightforward: God is all light and no darkness, and any one who says they and God are tight, but they are living in darkness, is not telling the truth. To walk with God, you have got to live in the light, and that is revealing — sometimes painfully so. And then John shows us what that looks like in verse 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.”

It looks like this: a bunch of people being exposed by God’s light (because that’s what light does), having down-to-earth fellowship because in God’s light, we all see each other as we really are, and then, in our worship of the Lord together, we all get gloriously cleansed and forgiven, and there is much rejoicing, because we all know what scoundrels we are, and we can’t believe our good fortune at the table of God’s grace.

So this is where the surprise comes. “If we claim we have no sin, we are only fooling ourselves.” What? I thought we were supposed to try not to sin. Well yes, that’s partly right, but the question is, can we? Can we not sin? And the answer is a resounding, “NO!” Verse 10: “If we claim we have not sinned, we are calling God a liar.”

So here’s the point. The point is not, not sinning. The point is being honest with  our sin before God and each other.

Not sinning makes us all Pharisees vying for spiritual oneupmanship. Confessing our sins makes us buddies — forgiven brothers and sisters, arm in arm, walking together towards the light.