"What do you think of Joseph Prince' view of I John 1:9?" A friend sent me a text with this question. Before I even went on the internet to see what J.P. was teaching I was certain I already knew. I first read it a 1970 book by Peter Gilquest, "Love Is Now". The concern of P.G. then and of J.P. now is that some believers do not realize their standing in Christ is already one of complete forgiveness and that they see forgiveness as a partial thing. The most radical form of this is that if a believer dies with any unconfessed sin they will be lost. I shared that concern in 1970, so I spoke favorable of Gilquest' view of I John 1:9, that it was saying, essentially, how to be saved. I got some very angry criticism for this.
But, I sill wondered how the verse applied to believers. The common view is that the verse is written to believers and talking about sanctification and not about justification. This view is that when a believers sins they lose "fellowship" with God and that the forgiveness spoken of in this verse is a restoration of that fellowship. It is true that sin in a believer will "grieve" and "quench" the Holy Spirit and that until that sin is freely admitted a believer cannot be "filled with the Holy Spirit". Some go so far as to say that the believer becomes "lost" and must "get saved" again.
All of this moved me to do a deeper study of I John and the context of this passage. John was warning against an early form of what would become known in the second century as Gnosticism. This early form of it, among other things, denied the reality sin. So, John warned, in the most severe terms in chapter 1 of this letter, that no one can be in right standing with God without freely acknowledging their sin. In that respect, those who say that verse nine applies to unbelievers have a valid point. But they limit the message of the verse too much.
The key word of I John is "know" (or "known", etc.). How can we know for sure who is a child of God and who is not? John gives a number of tests but which we can know, and one of the very first tests is whether someone freely admits their sin. When this is understood, we move beyond this debate about whether verse 9 is for a believer or an unbeliever. IT IS FOR EVERYONE!
The next thing about this letter from John that we need to know is the way in which he uses the present tense of the verbs in the Koine Greek in which he originally wrote. This is something that we cannot always see in our English translations. The present tense indicates a practice or a way of life.
John uses this with a number of things. In chapter three he says that a true child of God does not "continue to sin" as a practice or a way of life. That passage in chapter three has been greatly misunderstood because of ignorance about the present tense verbs in I John. In chapter one he has already said that the mark of a true child of God is that they freely admit their sins. Chapter four adds the thought that continuing to sin, with no change, is a test that shows who is, in fact, NOT a child of God.
So, what have we learned about I John 1:9? Here is how the verse could be paraphrased: "If, as a practice and a way of life, we freely admit our sins, then we can be assured that we stand forgiven. We have this assurance because God is faithful and just. He cannot forgive one who, as a way of life, denies their sin. If, as a way of life and a practice, we freely admit our sin, we have assurance that we are cleansed and purified before God through the finished work of Christ on the cross."
To return to the original question about the teaching of Joseph Prince now or of Peter Gilquest in 1970; in both instances these men create a false dichotomy of trying to limit this verse to either believers or unbelievers. It speaks to all people. To the unbeliever it says, "there is full and free forgiveness in Christ, but only if you are willing to freely admit your sin." To the believer it says, "rest assured that if, as a practice and a way of life, you are freely admitting your sins when the Holy Spirit makes you aware of them, then this is a mark that you are a true child of God".
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