Have you heard the teaching that you “cannot abuse” God’s grace? This is one of the reasons why so many believers today follow the hypergrace teachings. Many believers’ legalistic encounters with their own local churches led to a misunderstanding of grace and a misinterpretation of many biblical verses. “You don’t need to confess your sins because the Lord has already forgiven you, past, present, and future,” the hypergrace teacher says, quoting Colossians 2:13. A careful examination of this hypergrace pet-passage will reveal that they omitted verse fourteen, which provides context for the passage they explained in relation to forgiveness connected to justification rather than sanctification.

One of the famous verse that that they try to debunk is 1 John 1:9. “The Lord does not condemn!” says the hypergrace teachers. According to them 1 John 1:9 was meant for the Gnostics not for the believers,” as taught by many hyper-grace teachers. Is this true?

According to Romans 8:1, the Lord does not condemn. However, it is the hypergrace teachers’ incorrect interpretation of the subject of condemnation that has led them to a false view of grace. This passage from 1 John has caused schism in many churches and severed brotherly bonds. It’s easy to see where they’re coming from. They have been subjected to so much condemnation as a result of their sins that confessing their sins to God already brings shame and guilt. They no longer know who is truly bringing the condemnation. Was it the hand of God or the hand of Satan? And in order to avoid this unpleasant legalistic experience, they must reinterpret verse nine to the detriment of the passage.

The truth is that the believers, not the Gnostics, are the recipients of John’s first epistle. The apostle John said, “This is the message we heard from Christ and are reporting to you (the believers): God is light, and there isn’t any darkness in him. If we say, ‘We have a relationship with God’ and yet live in the dark, we’re lying. We aren’t being truthful (1 Jn. 1:5-6, emphasis’ mine). It will be illogical for John to write “if we say we have a relationship with God” if they weren’t believers at all.

The passage in 1 John 1:9 states that if a believer sins, he should confess his sinful actions to God, who is faithful to forgive and cleanse him of his unrighteousness. The act of confession does not make the believer “righteous,” because he was made righteous when he was justified by the Lord through faith in Jesus Christ. Because of God’s judicial forgiveness as a result of a person’s repentance by placing his faith in Jesus Christ, he became righteous. This is what many theologians label as positional righteousness.

The goal of confession is not to make us “righteous,” but to free us from the spiritual enemy’s verbal lies of condemnation (see Rev. 12:10). As a result, Paul made it clear that there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus our Lord (see Rom. 8:1). Yes, God has already forgiven us when we believed in Jesus Christ, but we must return to Him in humility to keep our hearts from becoming callous like the Gentiles (see Acts 2:48; Eph. 4:18-19). To avoid the physical consequences of sin, even David, one of the great Old Testament patriarchs, had to come to God for confession. He said, “For when I kept silent, my bones wasted away through my groaning all day long. For day and night, your hand was heavy upon me; my strength was dried up as by the heat of summer. Selah I acknowledged my sin to you, and I did not cover my iniquity; I said, ‘I will confess my transgressions to the LORD,” and you forgave the iniquity of my sin.’ Selah” (Psalm 32:3-5).

Again, this is not to reassure us that we are saved, but rather to strengthen our intimate relationship with God. Remember the story of the prodigal son? The son’s relationship with his father was not severed. But what he needed was to humble himself before him by confessing his sins. The son said, “I will arise and go to my father, and I will say to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against heaven and before you.’” (Luke 15:18). The son is still a son, but he only needs to admit his sins in order to reestablish the lost intimacy. It is not about the blood relationship, but about the emotional bond. It is not about our spiritual relationship with God, but about our emotional relationship with Him. If we stumble, the Lord will wait for us to humble ourselves, but he will never disown us unless we disown Him (see 2 Tim. 2:12-13). If we do not want to experience his divine discipline, we must humbly acknowledge our sins by confessing them to God and seeking the assistance of mature believers (see Heb. 12:6; Jam. 5:13-16).

1 John 1:9 is the only verse that explains the confession of sin in relation to sanctification. While Paul’s confession in Romans is a type of confession with a connection to justification. If a political tyrant humbly confesses (acknowledges) Jesus as Lord, Savior, and God of his life before dying, he will be saved in the same way that the criminal on the cross was (see Rom. 10:13). The context of “confession” in Romans is for any Jewish or unbelieving pagan who will accept Jesus Christ, whereas it is different in 1 John 1:9, which is intended for the believers’ daily walk.

No reputable and prominent Bible scholar will say that this letter was written for the believers to address the unbelievers. This will make no sense because it’s like saying I am writing to you but addressing another group of people. However, it will make more sense if we say John was writing to the believers, at the same time informing them about the false teachings of the unbelievers. If this is the case then there is no way for John to address the unbelievers in his letter. The Nelson Study Bible agrees when it says, “John most like wrote this letter with two purposes in mind–one pastoral and one polemical. John’s pastoral purpose was to promote fellowship (1:3). But for the believers to have true fellowship, they needed to understand the true nature of God (1:5; 2:29; 4:7, 8). Thus the pastoral purpose naturally leads to the polemical purpose (2:26), which was to protect his readers (the believers) against the deceptive ideas of false teachers. If the believers were deceived by false doctrine, they would eventually lose their unity, which is possible only in the love of Christ.” (The First Epistle of John, page 2138)

Bible scholar Dr. Zane C. Hodges, explains that the First Epistle of John is a letter that “contains no hint about the identity (unknown names) or location of the readers beyond the fact that they are Christians.” (The Bible Knowledge Commentary, page 881) He also explains that in 1 John 1:3, “The objective John had in mind in writing about these significant realities was that you, the readers, may have fellowship with us, the apostles. Since he later, in 2:12-14, made it clear that he regarded the readers as genuine Christians, his goal was not for their conversion. It is an interpretative mistake of considerable moment to treat the term ‘fellowship’ as though it meant little more than ‘to be a Christian.’ The readers were already saved, but they needed this letter if they were to enjoy real fellowship with the apostolic circle to which the author belonged. In the final analysis that apostolic fellowship is with the Father and with His Son, Jesus Christ.” (The Bible Knowledge, page 884)

As a result, when John says, “so that you, too, may have fellowship with us; and indeed, our fellowship is with the Father and his Son Jesus Christ,” he is referring to the Christian readers. In context, the epistle of 1 John 1:3 still addresses believers because it is illogical for John to write to two groups of people at the same time in one letter given their spiritual disparity.

It is not whether 1 John 1:9 was referring to the Gnostics but is the whole letter addressed to the believers or not. Many wrongly interpreted 1 John 1:3 to mean that John was addressing also the believers. One will readily notice in that verse 3 that John says, “that which we (apostolic leaders) have seen and heard we (apostolic leaders) proclaim also to you (believers), so that you (the believers) too may have fellowship with us (apostolic leaders); and indeed our (apostolic leaders) fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ” (emphasis’ added)

It will make sense if we read it in this way because he also said in verse 4 “And we (apostolic leaders) are writing these things so that our (apostolic leaders) joy may be complete.” In the other manuscripts, it says “that your (believers) joy may be full.” In verse five it says, “This is the message we (apostolic readers) have heard from him (Jesus) and proclaim to you (believers), that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all” (emphasis’ added) And the final blow to the hyper-grace people is when they read verse 6 saying, “If we (apostolic leaders and believers) say we (apostolic leaders and believers) have fellowship with him (Jesus) while we (apostolic leaders and believers) walk in darkness, we (apostolic leaders and believers) lie and do not practice the truth” (emphasis’ added).

It is important to note that during the early church, there were no chapters and verses but a continuous letter. It is not logical for us to think that John will suddenly inject a sentence or two then address a group of unbelieving Gnostics out of the blue that does not even acknowledge his leadership. It will also not be consistent if we think that the recipient of the letter would be the unbelieving Gnostics starting with verse three if we say John was explaining to them in verse 6, “If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth.” This will surely not make any sense to them since they are walking in darkness in the first place. Why explain to the Gnostics “if we say we have fellowship with him” when they have no fellowship with Jesus at all? Remember, relationship precedes fellowship.

Is it possible for John to refer this to the believers? Yes! Is it possible for believers to walk in darkness in some areas of their life? Yes! This is because in verse ten it says, “If we (includes the apostolic leaders) say we (includes the apostolic leaders) have not sinned, we (includes the apostolic leaders) make him a liar, and his word is not in us (includes the apostolic leaders)” (emphasis’ added). No wonder John encourages them in verse 9, “If we (apostolic leaders and believers) confess our (apostolic leaders and believers) sins, he (Jesus) is faithful and just to forgive us our (apostolic leaders and believers) sins and to cleanse us (apostolic leaders and believers) from all unrighteousness” (emphasis’ added).

Any reader with no knowledge of biblical history can interpret these passages in a variety of ways, but let us not be subjective in our interpretation of 1 John 1:9. Be objective by enlisting the help of those who know the language better than we do. Let us not commit the biblical fallacy of hasty generalization in our interpretation, as this error may be passed on to others through discipleship. So, can we truly “abuse” the grace of God? No we can’t. Rather, the Scripture tells us in Romans 5:20,

Now the law came in to increase the trespass, but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more,

In other words, the more we sin as a result of our personal battle with wickedness and our flesh, the more God’s grace is available to change us. It is true that we cannot overpower God’s grace. Many people believe that grace triumphs over law, as if the law is an enemy that does not complement grace. His grace is neither “radical” nor simply a “winner” rather His grace is truly amazing. 

Revised May 3, 2021