The two succeeding verses have reference also to the believer's ever-continued need of redemption and purification. "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us."

The ground for the believer's confidence, under this consciousness of still inhering sin, is thus presented by the Apostle in the faithfulness and righteousness of God. For the faithfulness of God includes in itself his truthful fulfilment of the promises which he has given. It necessarily implies, that what he has promised he will certainly bestow, provided only that believers on their part meet the condition affixed to the fulfilment of the promise. By the faithfulness of God is meant, the harmony of his action with itself and with his own nature. It is implied therein, that Ile will certainly perform what his word, his promises, the wants implanted in the soul and waked into conscious life by his providence, have taught men to expect from Him; that his dealings with men will certainly be in accordance with the wants and expectations thus excited; that in his dealings all parts will correspond, beginning middle and end will be in harmony; no contradiction, no discord in any part. Since then God is truth, it must follow as a necessary consequence that, having through his word, through the sending of the Redeemer and his sufferings for humanity, through the influence of his spirit upon their hearts, promised forgiveness of sin to those who believe; he will assuredly suffer nothing of this to fail, he will fulfil the promise which he has given, if they will but conform to the conditions with which the promise is connected. But righteousness is here conjoined with faithfulness. This might at first seem strange. We should rather expect that forgiveness of sins would be represented as an act of divine love and mercy. But we must here seek for a relation, according to which forgiveness of sin can properly be ascribed to the divine righteousness. The true index to the Apostle's meaning is found in the union here of faithfulness with righteousness. Righteousness, then, must here be understood in a sense akin to faithfulness. Now we call him righteous who gives to each one his own, to each his due, what his position, the relation in which he stands to the other, give the right to expect. God's righteousness is manifested in the observance of the laws which he has himself established in the moral world. Its office is the administration of these laws. Redemption, the forgiveness of sin, is indeed primarily the work of divine love; yet, that provision being once brought about through his love and mercy, the divine righteousness now reveals itself in the observance of the laws, according to which redemption and forgiveness are to be bestowed on man, -- in the administration of the order established in the work of redemption. God, the Righteous, gives to each what belongs to him; he truly performs what the redeemed, as such, have reason to expect of him under the given conditions. The original provision is the fruit of divine love; the administration of its established laws, the work of divine righteousness. Hence, in this view, the divine righteousness stands in close relation to the divine faithfulness; and is the pledge that if the redeemed fulfil the laws, the conditions, according to which and under which forgiveness is to be imparted, God will truly bestow on them the forgiveness promised, will complete what he has begun, that he will do his part if the redeemed do theirs.

The condition to be fulfilled on the part of the believer, is expressed in the words: "If we confess our sins." Of course it is not an outward confession of sin which is here spoken of, but an inward act, grounded in the whole inward direction of the spirit; as that which is thereby to be appropriated and received, that for which man is thereby to be made meet, is also something purely inward. It is therefore that inward confession of sin before God, -- the consciousness of sin both in, general, and in its manifestation in particular sinful acts, -- whereby, in a spiritual sense, man draws near to God. In this it is necessarily implied, that he is deeply penetrated with the sense of still inhering sin; recognizes the sinful as such in all its single forms; and with a deep feeling of sorrow on account of it, begs of God forgiveness of sin and purification from all remaining sinful tendency. All communications of God to man, -- man, to whom God imparts himself not after a law of natural necessity, not by a process of constraint, but as to a being gifted with freedom, -- are conditioned on his own voluntary acceptance, the free surrender of himself to the divine communication. As in the words of our Lord, God is represented as giving only to those who pray (and prayer is nothing else than this direction of the spirit towards God in the feeling of personal want) so here, confession of sin is made the necessary condition of that gift of God, which consists in the forgiveness of sin, as evidence of the free appropriating acceptance of the blessing. With forgiveness of sin is here conjoined the cleansing from all unrighteousness. This would not have been added, unless something new, something additional, were to be designated by it; as indicated by the emphatic expression: "from all unrighteousness." We cannot but perceive that a distinction is here made between forgiveness of sin, and the progressive work of purification from all remaining sin. With the forgiveness of past sin, is necessarily connected purification from all the sin which still remains, as a security against relapse into like sins.

To that affirmative proposition, the negative is now added. With the confession of sin is contrasted the boastful declaration, and of course the inward view and feeling which dictates it: "We have no sin." This implies first, that he who says it is wholly unconscious of still inhering sin, that he regards himself as sinless. In this again two things are included, viz. first, that he has no understanding of what is implied in a sinless state, of the true nature of that holiness for which man was created, and for which lie is to be new created, to be born again; and that he has not rightly compared himself with that standard which he is required to reach, has not examined and tested himself by the model of the divine word, in the mirror of the divine law, in the divine light. And secondly, it is implied that he does not recognize the sinful as such in its particular acts, but has learnt to palliate it to himself, to deceive his conscience in regard to it. The guilt and the perverseness of such a position is now represented by the Apostle as consisting in this, viz. that it makes God a liar; that is, by such a position we show that we regard God as a liar, we deny him as the God of truth. First, inasmuch as the word of God uniformly represents us as sinners, and seeks to awaken in us a consciousness of our sins; we, by declaring that we have no sin, accuse the word of God, and God himself speaking through it, of falsehood. Secondly, since God in sending to us Jesus as the Redeemer from sin, has thereby declared that we are ever in need of continued redemption; we make him guilty of a lie, -- asserting by this position of ours, that although it is through Christ we have attained to our present state of religious development, yet as being now sinless, we are no longer in need of him as Redeemer. Hence the Apostle charges upon such, that the word of God is not in them; an expression equivalent to the former declaration, that the truth is not in them. By it is meant, that the word of God does not dwell in such as the animating principle of their inner life, or that they do not dwell in it; which is one with saying that the truth dwells not in them as their life-element, that their life is alienated from the truth. Though in their external profession they acknowledge the word of God, they have not given it an abode in their inner life and consciousness. Their judgment of themselves is in contradiction to it. The word of God is to them a merely external thing.