Category: spiritual journey

“The Bible Is a Dirty Book”: Unbelief and Hatred for the God of the Bible

KASPARS OZOLINS

This month, Loren Seibold, editor of Adventist Today, wrote a provocatively titled piece: “The Bible Is a Dirty Book: …which also contains the words of eternal life.” This title, while clearly intended to grab attention, in no way exaggerates the author’s true feelings toward Scripture. For as I read it, I was taken aback by the content no less than I was shocked by the title. Thus it is that the formerly feigned reverence for the Word of God by progressive Adventists gives way to unveiled contempt.

Seibold’s article gives some initial examples of explicit wording and sexually graphic content from Scripture, before moving on to his real objection to the Bible (what he calls “the worst pornography”): its graphic violence. Particularly objectionable to the author is the fact that God is portrayed as commanding the Israelites to slaughter their enemies, seemingly indiscriminately. Seibold cites Deuteronomy 20:16–18 as an example (in the outdated KJV for maximum effect): 

But of the cities of these people, which the Lord thy God doth give thee for an inheritance, thou shalt save alive nothing that breatheth: But thou shalt utterly destroy them; namely, the Hittites, and the Amorites, the Canaanites, and the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites; as the Lord thy God hath commanded thee…

The three dots at the end of the quotation conceal the entirety of verse 18. This was probably done by Seibold in order to make God’s command appear as unreasonable and offensive to modern ears as possible. The inhabitants of these cities were decreed by God for destruction “that they may not teach you to do according to all their abominable practices that they have done for their gods, and so you sin against the LORD your God” (v. 18). Sin is deadly, and a deadly serious matter, at that. But that’s not at all how a modern religious person would view these things.

Seibold is equally incensed at another passage, Numbers 31:17–18: 

Now therefore, kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman who has known man by lying with him. But all the young girls who have not known man by lying with him keep alive for yourselves.

His response is incredulous, outraged, and mocking: “Seriously? God said you should ‘keep the little girls alive for yourselves’? Since their virginity is particularly noted—uh, what exactly did God intend you to do with them?” Seibold completely leaves out the entire context of Numbers 31, namely that it was commanded as a response to the Midianites’ incitement to sexual sin and spiritual adultery at Baal Peor (Numbers 25).

God did not command the Israelites to keep alive little girls for the perverse satisfaction of Israelite men.

God did not command the Israelites to keep alive little girls for the perverse satisfaction of Israelite men. Instead, this passage protects the innocent Midianite women who had not participated in this horrific sin against the Israelites. However, it seems that Seibold does not care about these details, but is instead trying to drive home his point: The Bible is a dirty book.  

A Christian attitude toward Scripture

I routinely tell my students in class that it is right for believers to wrestle with challenging issues in Scripture, such as the highly controversial “Canaanite genocide” issue. When we read the text faithfully and contextually, good solutions often present themselves, as shown above. But even when we may not get the full picture, or when the solution is not as satisfactory as we might wish, the Bible’s inner theological coherence keeps us grounded. 

I routinely tell my students in class that it is right for believers to wrestle with challenging issues in Scripture, such as the highly controversial “Canaanite genocide” issue.

God is the author of all life. God gives life, and takes life. God has the right and prerogative, as Creator, to take human life (especially in a context of human sin and rebellion). Furthermore, God has the right to use human instruments as a chosen vehicle of divine justice. Governments are charged with carrying out God’s judgment, for example (Rom 13:4). So the difference between vigilante vengeance and legitimate justice is partly due to whether or not God has authorized a particular agent (such as the Israelites) to carry out his judgment. 

Noted Old Testament scholar Tremper Longman helpfully describes some of what is going on in these difficult narratives: “We should not be amazed that God ordered the death of the Canaanites, but rather we should stand in amazement that he lets anyone live. The Conquest [of Canaan] involves the intrusion of the ethics of the end times, the consummation, into the period of common grace. In a sense, the destruction of the Canaanites is a preview of the final judgment.” Notice that the Israelite conquest represents something out of the ordinary. But sooner or later, judgment will come to all sinners, hence our dire need for the gospel. Listen to the sobering words of the Lord Jesus, in response to the crowds who told him about a horrible thing that Pilate had done to some Galileans (Luke 13:2–5):

Do you think that these Galileans were worse sinners than all the other Galileans, because they suffered in this way? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish. Or those eighteen on whom the tower in Siloam fell and killed them: do you think that they were worse offenders than all the others who lived in Jerusalem? No, I tell you; but unless you repent, you will all likewise perish.

One day God will set to right every injustice. But that includes the injustice of every sinner, both great and small. That is why these stories about God’s righteous judgment being executed in this life ought to fill us with wonder at the gospel. They ought to make us love the Savior who bore our own judgment in his body so that not one drop of condemnation would fall upon those who believe.

This is what I mean by a Christian attitude toward Scripture. It is fine to have unresolved questions, to seek answers from the text, to wrestle with Scripture. But it is never right for a Christian to question Scripture’s trustworthiness or its goodness, because to do so is to question the trustworthiness and goodness of its Author. There is a very particular attitude toward Scripture which God has promised to honor: “But this is the one to whom I will look: he who is humble and contrite in spirit and trembles at my Word” (Isa 66:2).

An unbelieving attitude toward Scripture

If you dig down deep enough (though it is perhaps surprising to some), one key aspect of false religion and unbiblical worldviews is an unmistakable hatred for the God of the Bible and for what the God of the Bible has said in his Word. I said “dig down” because sometimes this reality is hard to uncover, though it truly is there. Some individuals, after reading Seibold’s article, might counter that he doesn’t really hate God, only that he has misunderstood what the Bible actually claims about God and his interactions with human beings. 

While I do think Seibold has twisted the sense of some of the passages he cites in his article, he seems to have a much bigger and fundamental issue with the Bible than merely the odd verse. Listen to his fairly clear evaluation of Scripture:

Someone is going to say here, “You’re trashing the Bible.” No, I’m trashing one very bad way of reading it. The Bible contains the words of eternal life, but not every word in the Bible is a word of eternal life. Much of it is terribly hard to understand—but even when understood, there’s a surfeit of really bad theology, a horrible lack of respect for human life, and much that is utterly irrelevant to spiritual growth. In its pages some great “holy men of God” did convey to us the astonishing love of God and God’s desire to save us. But it appears some of the words in the Old Testament and Revelation were written by angry, vengeful men—or, in Ezekiel’s case, possibly even mentally ill men.

Things are even further clarified when one pays careful attention to the author’s use of pronouns throughout the article: 

  • “[this] surely isn’t inspired by my God”
  • “a God worthy of our worship has to be better than the god [sic] pictured in Numbers 31:17-18.”
  • “our God isn’t always accurately depicted in the book that was written about him.”

Those are fairly shocking admissions. Sometimes Seibold seems to even move past the idea of the God of the Bible merely being a literary invention of its authors: “Undoubtedly some angry person thought God felt that way, but I’d want nothing to do with a God who actually thought that was a good idea [emphasis added].” And again: “It is impossible for me to believe that God insisted on so much violence—and if God did, that’s not a God I can worship or regard as holy in any way [emphasis added].” 

If Seibold hates the God of Scripture, just what sort of God does he profess to worship? What are his criteria for sorting through those parts of this “dirty book” he can accept?

If Seibold hates the God of Scripture, just what sort of God does he profess to worship? What are his criteria for sorting through those parts of this “dirty book” he can accept? His instructions at the end begin with a summary statement: “[T]o be a holy and godly person takes more than just following the Bible.” Ultimately, he claims “we Christians must read it through the lens of Jesus.” In fact, Seibold explicitly sets up a sharp contrast between Jesus and the God of the Old Testament:

When Jesus said, “If you’ve seen me, you’ve seen the Father,” he was correcting the Old Testament. He was illustrating, by his life, that that picture of God was erroneous. That’s why he didn’t say, “If you’ve seen what the Father did in the Old Testament, well, that’s what I’m like.” Because he wasn’t.

Nevertheless, even Jesus can be a fallible guide to what Seibold’s God is like. For among his illustrations of the Bible as a “dirty book” is even a passage from the New Testament (Revelation 19:19–21). This prompts him to lament: “The New Testament, which introduces us to the wonderful figure of Jesus, is not entirely free of taint in this regard either.”

Ultimately, the only fully reliable guide to what Loren Seibold’s God is like is Seibold himself (along with his like-minded Adventist friends). The technical term for this mode of thinking is idolatry. 

The Doctrine of Scripture and the Doctrine of God

The rejection of the trustworthiness of Scripture is not peculiar to progressive Adventism, but lies at the very heart of the entire movement, as its prophetess acknowledges:

The Bible is written by inspired men, but it is not God’s mode of thought and expression. It is that of humanity. God, as a writer, is not represented. Men will often say such an expression is not like God. But God has not put Himself in words, in logic, in rhetoric, on trial in the Bible. The writers of the Bible were God’s penmen, not His pen. Look at the different writers (Ye Shall Receive Power, p. 225).

Adventists can (and do) make adamant claims about Ellen G. White’s high view of Scripture, as did GC President Arthur Daniells, at her funeral in 1915: “No Christian teacher in this generation, no religious reformer in any preceding age, has placed a higher value upon the Bible.” But White’s teaching of “thought inspiration” is not an isolated phenomenon. It is fundamentally linked to her vast universe of writings that present an alternative worldview (the Great Controversy), an alternative god (“the three great worthies”), and an alternative salvation (the Three Angels’ messages). 

The more fundamental reality of false religious systems is not their faulty doctrine of Scripture. It is their faulty doctrine of God.

The more fundamental reality of false religious systems is not their faulty doctrine of Scripture. It is their faulty doctrine of God. And at the very heart of a faulty doctrine of God is a rejection and hatred of the God of the Bible. As Calvin famously stated: “When the Bible speaks, God speaks.” 

To reject the words of the Bible is not merely to claim to have a different hermeneutic; it is to reject the God of the Bible Himself. †

Kaspars Ozolins

Kaspars Ozolins

Kaspars Ozolins was born in Latvia to an Adventist family. They moved to Los Angeles where Kaspars attended Adventist elementary and high schools in Glendale, California, and his father was an Adventist pastor. He met Ieva, his wife, while studying in Latvia before pursuing a doctorate at UCLA in historical linguistics. After Kaspars completed an M. Div. at The Master’s Seminary in Sun Valley, California, he served as a research associate at Tyndale House in Old Testament and the Ancient Near East. He is now on the faculty at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary as Assistant Professor of Old Testament Interpretation.

Martin Luther: God Hater to God Lover

Martin Luther was one of the famous Reformers in the Protestant Reformation. He unknowingly started the Reformation on October 31, 1517. 

There was a time in his life when he confessed:

“I actually hated the righteous God who punishes sinners…” 

In 1505 he became a Roman Catholic monk by entering a monastery at Erfurt in Saxony Germany.  In 1533 he described his life as a monk:

“I was indeed a pious monk and kept the rules of my order so strictly that I can say: “If ever a monk gained heaven through monkery, it should have been I. All my monastic brethren who knew me will testify to this. I would have martyred myself to death with fasting, praying, reading, and other good works had I remained a monk much longer.”

Luther was a very pious, moral, Roman Catholic monk trying to work his way to heaven. A heaven which is ruled by a righteous God who he confessed hating.

Why did Luther hate God? At the root of it was his ignorance. Apostle Paul writing about the unbelieving Gentiles says they are “excluded from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in” them (Ephesians 4:17-18). Such was Luther’s case. The following explains, in his own words, what happened:

“Meanwhile, that same year I had again turned to the exposition of the Psalter, confident that after the academic treatment of the Epistles of St. Paul to the Romans and Galatians and the Epistle of the Hebrews I was better trained. Certainly, I had been possessed by an unusually ardent desire to understand Paul in his Epistle to the Romans. Nevertheless, in spite of the ardour of my heart I was hindered by the unique word in the first chapter: ‘The righteousness of God is revealed in it.’ I hated that word ‘righteousness of God’, because in accordance with the usage and custom of the doctors I had been taught to understand it philosophically as meaning, as they put it, the formal or active righteousness according to which God is righteous and punishes sinners and the unjust.”

“As a monk I led an irreproachable life. Nevertheless, I felt that I was a sinner before God. My conscience was restless, and I could not depend on God being propitiated by my satisfactions [good works]. Not only did I not love, but I actually hated the righteous God who punishes sinners…. Thus a furious battle raged within my perplexed conscience, but meanwhile I was knocking at the door of this particular Pauline passage, earnestly seeking to know the mind of the great Apostle.”

“Day and night I tried to meditate upon the significance of these words: ‘The righteousness of God is revealed in it, as it is written: The righteous shall live by faith.’ Then, finally, God had mercy on me, and I began to understand that the righteousness of God is that gift of God by which a righteous man lives, namely, faith and that this sentence -The righteousness of God is revealed in the Gospel – is passive, indicating that the merciful God justifies us by faith, as it is written: ’The righteous shall live by faith.’ Now I felt as though I had been reborn altogether and had entered Paradise. In the same moment the face of the whole of scripture became apparent to me. My mind ran through the scriptures, as far as I was able to recollect them, seeking analogies in other phrases, such as the work of God, by which he makes us strong, the wisdom of God, by which he makes us wise, the strength of God, the salvation of God, the glory of God.”

“Just as intensely as I had before hated the expression ‘the righteousness of God’, I now lovingly praised this most pleasant word. This passage from Paul became to me the very gate to Paradise.”* 

In another place Luther writes about this experience,

“At first whenever I read or sang the Psalm: ‘Deliver me in thy righteousness’, I was frightened, and I hated the words ‘the righteousness of God’ and ‘the work of God’, for I believed that the righteousness of God meant his severe judgment.  Were he to save me accordingly, I should be damned for ever. But the words ‘the mercy of God’ and ‘the help of God’ I liked better. Thanks to God, when I understood the matter and learned that the righteousness of God means that righteousness by which he justifies us, the righteousness bestowed as a free gift in Jesus Christ, the grammar became clear and the Psalter more to my taste.”*

And in one last place he writes,

“These words ‘righteous’ and ‘righteousness of God’ struck my conscience as flashes of lightning, frightening me each time I heard them: if God is righteous, he punishes. But by the grace of God, as I once mediated upon these words in this tower and heated room: The righteous shall live by faith’ and the ‘righteousness of God’, there suddenly came into my mind the thought that if we as righteous are to live by faith, and if the righteousness of faith is to be for salvation to everyone who believes, then it is not our merit , but the mercy of God. Thus my soul was refreshed, for it is the righteous of God by which we are justified and saved through Christ. These words became more pleasant to me. Through this word the Holy Spirit enlightened me in the tower.”*

As we can read, Luther goes from a ‘God hater’ to a ‘God lover’ once he is no longer ignorant of the following verse:

‘For in it [the gospel] is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith; as it is written, The just shall live by faith.’ (Romans 1:17)

Martin was no longer “excluded from the life of God because of the ignorance that is in” him. By the Lord’s revelation to him, Martin went from being a lost Roman Catholic monk seeking to be saved by his good works to a person who was saved by God’s grace by faith ALONE. He says this truth ‘became to me the very gate to Paradise’.  Now he could participate in the life of God with a clear conscience knowing that his sins were forgiven in Christ. He realized his good works amounted to nothing when it came to being saved from the guilt and penalty of his sin.

All of his anger and hate toward God was due to not properly understanding God’s ‘righteousness’. The Roman Catholic doctors who had taught Luther only understood one side of the ‘righteousness’ coin. In His heart Luther knew he was a sinner and he had been taught that this “righteousness” was responsible for God punishing sinners and the unjust. And he said he hated this righteous God because of this.

Unfortunately, Luther’s teachers had received an unbiblical, false work-based salvation from their Roman Catholic ancestors and could not teach Luther the other side of the “righteous” coin. This being that when sinners place their faith in the finished work of Jesus Christ on the Cross ALONE for salvation, this very righteousness is imputed or credited to their account and thereby they stand before God legally as if they had never sinned. All because of what Jesus Christ did and they are now in Him through their faith and God’s grace.

His teachers did not believe this.

The believer becomes the ‘righteousness of God’ in-Christ Jesus (II Corinthian 5:21).  All of God’s moral excellence and virtue is imputed or credited to the believing sinner’s account. Hallelujah!

What about you?

Is your ignorance about God hindering your relationship with Him?

Do you have a clear conscience before Him or in your heart of hearts you know something is not right, maybe very, very wrong.

Have you ever checked God and Jesus Christ out by reading the New Testament yourself? If not, I encourage you to do so.

If your relationship with the God of the Holy Bible needs a correction or is non-existent, I pray that you will not rest until you are at peace with God the Father through Jesus Christ alone.

“The Lord … is patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance.” (Peter – II Peter 3: 9)

Carl

* Martin Luther quotes from Hans Hillerbrand, Editor, The Reformation – A Narrative History Related by Contemporary Observers And Participants (Baker Book House, 1972) pp. 27-28

Conversation With a Truth Seeker

As a result we are no longer to be children tossed here and there by waves, and carried about by every wind of doctrine, by the trickery of men, by the craftiness in deceitful scheming; but speaking the truth in love, we are to grow up in all aspects into Him, who is the head, even Christ…..  (Ephesians 4: 14-15)

It is a blessed thing to see Christians who are builded up by the spirit of God and accordance with the truth. But so many always seemed to be running after some new thing, never seeming to have any discrimination. Let me give you an absurd case.

 Years ago as I sat in my office in Oakland there came in through the book room a man whose very appearance betokened a heretic. He was tall and gaunt, had long flowing hair coming down over his shoulders, and a long unkept beard. He came up to where I sat writing. I did not like to be interrupted, for I felt that he was going to waste my time with some religious oddity. He said, “I gather, sir, from the books I have seen in the window that you are a truth seeker, and I thought I would come in and have a chat with you.”

“You are mistaken,” I said; “I am not a truth seeker at all.”

“Oh, you are not; may I ask why you are not?”

“Why, because, sir, I have found him who is the Way, the Truth and the Life, and therefore my seeking is at an end. Once I was a truth seeker, but now I am a truth finder, for I know Christ.”

“Well, but are there not many things that you still need to know?”

“Oh, yes; there are a great many things that I need to know, but I have found the great Teacher, and I am not going around seeking truth any longer. He instructs me through his Word.”

 “Well, as for me, I am always seeking; I go anywhere and everywhere that I think I can learn more.”

 “Yes,” I said, “I was reading of you in my Bible the other day.”

“Of me?”

 “Yes.”

 “What did it say about me?”

“It said, ‘Ever learning, but never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.’”

“Why, that has no reference to me,” he said.

“Pardon me, but you said that you are always seeking and if a man is always seeking he is never finding. But, you see, those of us who know Christ have found him and have been found of him.”

Then he began to impart some of his weird gospel to me and said, “But you don’t know who I am.”

“No,” I said; “beyond what is written here I do not know who you are.”

“I am one of the 144,000 of whom you read in Revelation.”

“What tribe, please?” I asked.

“Well, the Lord knows; I don’t,” he said.

“Then you will have to excuse me for not taking your word for it and really believing that you are one of the 144,000.”

“But have you not heard that the first resurrection has already taken place?” he asked. “I am in my resurrection body.”

“Oh, I am dreadfully disappointed,” I said. “I never thought it would look like that. I thought it was to be something beautiful.”

Maybe I was a little discourteous to the poor old gentleman, but he was so indignant he turned and cursed me in the name of the Lord and tramped out knocking his shoes against the floor to shake off the dust as a witness against me.

“Ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.” (II Timothy 3:7)

Source: H. A. Ironside, LITT.D, In The Heavenlies [Ephesians] (Loizeaux Brothers, 1937) pp. 197-199

If you are a truth seeker seeking to know the truth of the universe, let me point you to Jesus Christ who made the universe. He is, as revealed in the Holy Bible, The Truth. Once you meet Him, your journey will be at an end.

Speaking of Jesus, it is written:

And He is the image of the invisible God, the first born of all creation. For by Him all things were created, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities –all things have been created by Him and for Him. And He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together.

And He is also head of the body, the church; and He is the beginning, the first born from the dead; so that He Himself might come to have first place in everything. (Colossians 1: 15-18)

Following The Teacher,

Carl

Real Evidence That You Love Lord Jesus

“…, that one is he who is loving me…”

If you ask people if they love Jesus and what is the evidence of their love, you would get a variety of answers.  Some would say that they go to church frequently or are church members.  Others would say that they love their fellow man and do no harm to others; maybe some would say they fast certain things during the year or that they pray.  Some would say they go on pilgrimages to holy sites, give of their money or keep their denominational traditions.

In the Gospel of John, the Lord Jesus told us how He determines if we really love Him or we are just honoring Him with our words, but our hearts (who we really are) are far from Him.  Listen to what He said in John 14: 21 (Wuest Expanded Translation):

“He who has my commandments and habitually keeps them, that one is he who is loving me with a divine and self-sacrificial love.”

On this blog we have quoted the Apostle John in I John numerous times writing about habitually practicing righteousness.  John was at the last supper when Jesus said this. That is where he received this truth.

Lord Jesus goes on to describe what happens when we habitually keep His commandments:

“And he who is loving me thus, shall be loved with this same kind of love by my Father, and I shall love him with a divine and self-sacrifical love, and I shall disclose myself to him.” (22)

God the Father poured out this kind of love on the world (John 3:16) when He sent His Son to the cross to bear the guilt and penalty of our sins.  And He continues to do so when we are obedient to the gospel and are born again.

But there is more. His disciples thought that Jesus was about to “disclose” Himself as the conquering Messiah to the nation of Israel.  The mother of James and John had already approached Jesus about her two sons being seated in places of honor in His messianic court. So one of the disciples asked Him why He was going to disclose Himself to them and not the whole world. Here is His reply:

“Answered Jesus and said to him, If anyone as a habit of life loves me with a divine and self-sacrificial love, my word he will keep, and my Father will love him, and to him we shall come, and an abiding place with him we shall make for ourselves. He who is not habitually loving me with a divine and self-sacrificial love, my words he is not keeping.  And the word which you are hearing is not mine but belongs to Him who sent me, the Father.” (23-24)

Now this is very amazing! The God of the universe is going to come and abide in us. How does this happen?

“This things I have spoken to you while abiding with you. And the Counsellor, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in my Name, that One will teach you all things and recall to your mind all things which I spoke to you.” (25-26)

In Acts 2: 38 the people cried out , “What shall we do”, after hearing the first gospel message.  Peter told the Passover crowd to repent and be baptized for the forgiveness of your sins and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.  These people were obedient to the gospel message and the Holy Spirit set them apart (i.e. sanctified them) to the Lord Jesus and they were sealed by the Holy Spirit until the day of redemption (Ephesians 1).  In other words, the Lord Jesus and The Father came and made their abode with these converts through the Holy Spirit.  And God does the same for us when we are obedient to the gospel message.

This is what the Apostle John is telling us in I John 1: 3-4 when he writes:

“…what we have seen and heard we proclaim to you also, that you also may have fellowship with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ. (NASB)

Amazing! We born again believers in Jesus Christ have the privilege of fellowshipping  with God Almighty today and everyday.   John goes on to tell us how our behavior affects this fellowship.  I John 1: 5-10 says the following:

“And it is the message which we have heard from Him and at present is ringing in our ears and we are bringing back tidings to you, that God as to His nature is light, and darkness in Him does not exist, not even one particle. If we say that things in common we are having with Him, and thus fellowship, and in the sphere of the aforementioned darkness are habitually ordering our behavior, we are lying, and we are not doing the truth.  But if within the sphere of the light we are habitually ordering our behavior as Himself is in the light, things in common  and thus fellowship we [the believer and God] are having with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son keeps continually cleansing us from every sin.”

“If we say that [indwelling ] sin we are not having, ourselves we are leading astray [nobody else], and the truth is not in us. If we continue to confess our sins, faithful is He and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from every unrighteousness.  If we say that we have not sinned and are now in a state where we do not sin, a liar we are making Him, and His word is not in us.”  (Wuest Expanded Translation)

The reason John is telling us this he states next in I John 2: 1:

“My little children … these things I am writing to you in order that you may not commit an act of sin.  And if anyone commits an act of sin, One who pleads our cause we constantly have facing the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous One. ” (Wuest Expanded Translation)

In closing, two things.

First, is there enough evidence in my life to convict me of really being in love with Jesus, per His definition, or am I a hypocrite like the people in Mark 7:6 to which the Lord said:

“And He said to them, “Rightly did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written, ‘THIS PEOPLE HONORS ME WITH THEIR LIPS, BUT THEIR HEART IS FAR AWAY FROM ME.

In Luke 6:46 Jesus asked the question “And why do you call Me, ‘Lord, Lord’ and do not do what I say?

Secondly, the Apostle John is telling the born again believer that our indwelling sinful nature, though we are dead to it, has not been eradicated from our being.  Therefore, we will occasionally sin and, when we do, we need to confess that sin to maintain fellowship with our Father. (Notice I said fellowship and not relationship. Because of our faith in the work of Christ on the Cross, our relationship is secure with the Father.)

He not only immediately forgives us but the blood of Jesus cleanses us from all unrighteousness, i.e. habitual sins of ignorance that we are walking in but are not aware of yet.  What a merciful God!!!

My friends, it all boils down to a simple question for everyone: Is Christ Lord of your life?

I hope you enjoy the fellowship with your heavenly Father and His Holy Son today.  Walk in the light as He is in the light.

Carl