153 - Confession, Cleansing, and Inheritance [B]

Confession, Cleansing, and Inheritance. Hebrews 9:13-15, John 13:1-11

Hebrews Lesson 153

Hebrews 9:13 ^NASB "For if the blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer sprinkling those who have been defiled sanctify for the cleansing of the flesh, [14] how much more will the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without blemish to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God?"

Note that a key word that we find in those two verses has to do with cleansing—sprinkling the unclean, sanctifying or setting apart for the purifying. The cleansing in v. 14 is talking about positional cleansing. We see a couple of different categories of cleansing in those verses. We see the ritual cleansing category that relates to the Old Testament sacrificial system and then we see a cleansing that relates to positional cleansing in. Positional cleansing has to do with what happens to every believer at the instant of salvation. The work of Christ is applied to us so that we are positionally cleansed as part of our adoption into God's royal family. It is part of the whole package of salvation. We see the imputation of Christ's righteousness and we are then justified. We are forgiven positionally of our sins—the other side of the coin to cleansing. There is another category to that, and that is that there is a level of forgiveness that is true for every human being: the cancelling of the debt which occurred at the cross (Colossians 2:12-14). That is a legal forgiveness. Then there is positional forgiveness which occurs at the moment of salvation, and that is equivalent to positional cleansing.

The purpose for that is to serve the living God. That is important to understand because there has been so much confusion from different Christians over the years about forgiveness and cleansing and confession of sin. The purpose for positional cleansing is to serve Christ, to serve God. The totality of our life is to be worship. This is what Paul talks about in Romans 12:1—"present yourselves a living sacrifice, which is your reasonable service." We are saved to serve.

Hebrew 9:15 ^NASB "For this reason He is the mediator of a new covenant, so that, since a death has taken place for the redemption of the transgressions that were {committed} under the first covenant, those who have been called [believers] may receive the promise of the eternal inheritance." The idea of inheritance is a possession. We have seen that there are two categories of inheritance for the church age believer. There is one area of inheritance that is true for every single believer. That is described in Romans chapter eight as being an heir of God. There are certain realities that are ours throughout eternity that are true for every believer. We are going tom have a resurrection body; we are going to be in glory; there will not longer be a sin nature, and there will be no more sorrow, no more tears, no more pain, the old things are passed away. Then there is a second category of inheritance: being a joint heir with Christ. That relates to our future ruling and reigning responsibilities with Him that are part also of this category of serving the living God—not just serving today but serving in the future. And the life we are living today prepares us for the future. What is important about this is to understand how cleansing fits within this whole scenario. And that is related to confession of sin. 

Some years ago there developed some confusion over the whole doctrine of confession of sin and 1 John 1:9. There is an idea that we don't have to confess our sins, an argument from 1 John 1:7 that the blood of Christ continually cleanses from all sin. But if 1 John 1:7 says we don't have to confess our sin why does John tells us two verses later that we need to confess our sins to be cleansed? It just doesn't make sense. One argument heard is: if confession is so important why is it only mentioned one time in the New Testament? The idea of confession using that one word is only mentioned one time, in 1 John 1:9, but that is not the only time confession is mentioned. But the significance is not in the confession; the significance is in the cleansing. When we take the focus in 1 John 1:9 off the verb to confess and we put it on the forgiving and cleansing aspect, then take it and plug that idea and the whole flow of biblical teaching in, then we realise where the pattern is. Confession of sin fits within that. There are examples in the Old Testament of confession of sin, there are examples in the Gospels and in the epistles; and throughout all of this runs the doctrinal thread of cleansing. And that really is the vital thing. When a believer sins he becomes experientially unclean and there has to be a cleansing that takes place for restoration to fellowship and the resumption of going forward in the Christian life. All of this is connected, we see, even in the context of Hebrews chapter nine with the use of these words that emphasise the importance of cleansing and perfection.  

 When Jesus taught His disciples about this He did it by means of an object lesson. He doesn't come out and teach them in an overt abstract doctrine of confession and cleansing, He does it by illustrating it through something that He does. A lot of times we will hear that the John 13 passage is teaching about being a servant. That is not what it is teaching. Jesus may exhibit something about being the servant when He washes the disciples' feet, but that is not the doctrine that is being taught here. What we have to understand when we approach John 13 is where this fits within the panorama and scope of Jesus' life and ministry and where this fits within the Gospel of John. And that is not that hard to do. John writes his Gospel and says, "These are written that you might believe that Jesus is the Christ [Messiah] and that believing you might have life in His name." The "these" that he is talking about in John 20 relates to the plural noun in the previous verse where the reference is to Thomas's doubting the resurrection. Jesus appears in His resurrection body and says to Thomas, "Put your hands in the nail prints and my side." John comments in John 20:30 that the resurrection is one of many other signs that Jesus provided. But "these," the signs John writes about, are written that you might believe that Jesus is the Christ.

There are seven signs that are given in the Gospel of John that go up through chapter twelve and then there is an interlude. Then there is the crucifixion and then the seventh sign, the resurrection. So something different is happening in John 13-17. What is happening here is Jesus is having His final meeting with His disciples, His final instructions session, before He goes to the cross and He begins to teach them about church age doctrine. He is going to tell them a lot more after the resurrection but He gives them a tremendous amount of information here, and this is all just the night before He goes to the cross. It begins with the Passover supper which would be at sundown on and then they have the Passover meal, the walk to Gethsemane, and then there are the events in Gethsemane where He goes off with John and Peter and prays, and then eventually He is arrested.

That is the context, and so we must understand John 13 as it fits within the context of John 13-17. There is a progression to His teaching here and this whole section is referred to as the upper room discourse, even though He is only in the upper room in John 13.

John 13:1 ^NASB "Now before the Feast of the Passover, Jesus knowing that His hour had come that He would depart…" The Greek word here is katabaino [katabainw], the literal meaning of which is to pass over, to go over, or to leave. It was a sort of play on words here by John that because it was the feast of the Passover Jesus knew that His hour had come that He should pass over from this world to the Father. "… out of this world to the Father, having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them to the end." The word "love" that appears here, agapao [a)gapaw] is a key word in this whole section. If we skip down to verse 34 Jesus says to the disciples, "A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another. [35] By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another." So the mention of love in verse 1 and the command to love one another in vv. 34, 35 frames the teaching episode that occurs during the Passover meal.

John 13:2 ^NASB "During supper, the devil having already put into the heart of Judas Iscariot, {the son} of Simon, to betray Him…" It is important to understand that John front loads the teaching session by giving us a clue about the one who will betray Jesus. We know who that person is going to be and that there is one person there who is different from the others. [3] "{Jesus,} knowing that the Father had given all things into His hands, and that He had come forth from God and was going back to God, [4] got up from supper…" So what is in the background of His object lesson is His understanding of His mission, what is about to happen, and His ascension. He is going to start preparing His disciples with church age spiritual life doctrine. "… and laid aside His garments; and taking a towel, He girded Himself. [5] Then He poured water into the basin, and began to wash the disciples' feet and to wipe them with the towel with which He was girded."

What is interesting here is the verb that is used for "washing." It is related to the word that is used for "basin," and it indicates a partial washing. The Greek word nipto [niptw] is used almost all the way through here for washing. There is one exception and that is in the earlier part of verse10. nipto has the meaning of a partial washing hands or feet as opposed to taking an entire bath and washing all over. It is the noun form of that word that is translated into the word "basin." So the concept of a basin is something we would use to just partially wash.

John 13:6 ^NASB "So He came to Simon Peter. He said to Him, 'Lord, do You wash my feet?'" Peter objects to this. He has been watching this for a while and the more he sees this the more irritated he is getting that the Lord is doing this. So he has built up a little arrogant head of steam and says basically, "Lord, what do you mean, you are going to wash my feet? This isn't the place to do this." [7] "Jesus answered and said to him, 'What I do you do not realize now, but you will understand hereafter.'" That is a very important verse to pay attention to for the interpretation of this episode. On the surface it looks as though Jesus is teaching something about being a servant and loving someone in that relatively superficial sense. But that is just a sort of surface observation. What Jesus says is, right now as you are looking at me do this you don't really understand what this is portraying. This is teaching something. You don't understand it at all now but you will in the future. Then in John 14 He tells the disciples He is going to send them the Holy Spirit and Holy Spirit will remind them of all things and teach them all things. All things will be brought to their memory so that those who are going to write Scripture is going to write them and others will remember these things to teach them. Several time in John 14, 15, 17 there is this allusion to the fact that the things that they are learning now they will be teaching later on.

John 13:8 ^NASB "Peter said to Him, 'Never shall You wash my feet!'…" Jesus answered him, 'If I do not wash you, you have no part with Me.'" When Peter says "Never" he says it in the strongest way possible. He uses a double negative in the Greek plus the subjunctive mood in the verb, plus the word "forever." We translate it "never." Literally he says, "Forever you shall not never wash my feet." In English the double negative becomes a positive but in Greek the double negative just reinforces itself. So he is making an extremely strong statement here: You are never, never, ever going to wash my feet.

All through this segment they have been using this word nipto for partial washing. "Jesus answered him, 'If I do not wash you, you have no part with Me.'" The "if" is a third class condition, meaning maybe you will, maybe you won't. The washing here is not automatic, it is dependent upon volition. Jesus is saying that Peter has that option and he can not participate in what He is teaching here, but there are gong to be consequences. The key word in Jesus' answer is the word "part" which is the Greek word meros [meroj]. We have looked at this word in relation to inheritance because this is a technical word used in legal literature, especially in wills, that relates to describing the share or the portion that is given to the heir. The same word is used in Luke in the story of the prodigal son where the son says, "Give me my portion [of his inheritance]."

When we read this in English and we read that word "part" we often read that as if what it is saying is, 'You have no role, you don't really have a place, you won't be able to participate with me if I do not wash you.' That is not what this is saying; it is more profound than that. Jesus is saying, 'You won't have an inheritance with me.' Put that into what we saw with the joint heirship with Christ in Romans chapter eight: we can be joint heirs with Christ if we suffer with Him. We saw that that word "suffering" is the same word that is used in Hebrews chapter two to relate to the fact that God the Father in the incarnation took the Son through various tests so that He could learn obedience to the things that He suffered. And we are not talking about simply going through adversity but every situation we go through in life is some sort of test that gives us the option to either obey God and do it His way or do it the way we want to do it. So the suffering there had to do with living in a fallen world and going through the various tests as we grow to maturity. And Jesus went through that same process. So it is not talking about suffering as going through some major sufferings in life, it is talking about that process of growth through handling the tests of growth on the basis of Bible doctrine.

Jesus qualifies for His inheritance by going through this suffering. We do the same thing, and He sets the pattern. So what Jesus is telling Peter is, if you want to qualify for an inheritance with me through the things that you suffer, as I have suffered, then there has to be a cleansing process because you are going to fail at times. There has to be a restoration, there has to be some way to recover from failure, some way to recover from sin. Jesus didn't have to use that because Jesus never failed. Jesus' heirship is unique but we become joint heirs if we suffer with Him. When we fail in that process God has provided a grace basis for recovery. That is what He is illustrating here in terms of the washing. The washing is critical for inheritance. Jesus is illustrating confession of sin, because confession of sin is what gets us experiential cleansing. If we don't confess our sin we won't have the experiential cleansing, we'll stay out of fellowship, continue to operate on the sin nature, continue to produce human good, we will not go forward in our Christian life; all we will be doing is producing a lot of morality, being obedient morally to the Scripture, but it has no spiritual value because we are still out of fellowship. Confession is what restores us to fellowship, and it is only those things that we produce in fellowship and the Holy Spirit is working in and through us (Galatians 5:17) that become the basis for the rewards at the judgment seat of Christ. It is not done on our own efforts.

This is the difference between the way we experience sanctification, spiritual growth, and the way it is presented in a lot of forms of Christianity and Christian theology. If we go to many churches we are told to pray, to be involved in Christian service, to memorise Bible verses, to read our Bible, to witness, and to come to church to worship and all of these things. But we are never told how to do that in a way that really pleases God, that it is a production of the Spirit and not a production of our own flesh and our own natural ability. A Christian who is a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ, justified, adopted into God's royal family, can do all of those things and be out of fellowship. He is doing it in His own power and not in the power of the Spirit. It is the power of the Spirit that energises the Christian life. So we have these various commands in the New Testament to walk by means of the Spirit and it is the Spirit that produces this in us, we are being filled by means of the Spirit, so that the Spirit becomes the unique empowerment for the Christian life.

That is what Jesus is teaching His disciples. At any moment in our life we are either walking by the Spirit or walking by the flesh. Jesus uses a similar setup in the upper room discourse in John 15 when He talks about the true vine, about abiding in Him. The concept of abiding is related to fellowship, and staying in fellowship. The word translated "abide" is a word that means to stay or to remain. John 15:4 ^NASB "Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither {can} you unless you abide in Me." We can't bear divine good (gold, silver and precious stones) fruit of ourselves, out from the power of our sin nature. We can't just go out and do it by being moral. That is how Christianity is wrongly taught from many pulpits, i.e. you just need to go do these ten or twenty things, or the disciplines of the Christian life, whatever they may be. And they are never taught about the power of God the Holy Spirit that makes the difference between praying by means of the Spirit where it has real spiritual values and praying that is just in the power of the flesh that just doesn't go anywhere and doesn't have any eternal value whatsoever because it is fruit that is produced of itself.

John 15:5 ^NASB "I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me and I in him, he bears much fruit, for apart from Me you can do nothing. [6] If anyone does not abide in Me, he is thrown away as a branch and dries up; and they gather them, and cast them into the fire and they are burned." There are consequences. This is not talking about loss of salvation, it is talking about using the analogy of the pruning process for a grape vine, about the fact that as a young vine grows the vine dresser will come along and cut off the little sucker vines that distract away from the main vine. It is a picture of divine discipline in the life of the believer. As the vine dresser prunes the plants then the energy is able to go into the fruit production. So in verse 6 when Jesus talks about someone not abiding in Him and is cast out as a branch He is talking about divine discipline. Gathering and throwing into the fire is just what they would do in the process of pruning the vines.

John 15:7 ^NASB "If you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you." Notice the connection there with God's Word. It is not just the Spirit of God; it is also the Word of God. "My words abide in you," i.e. you are operating on the Word of God in the framework of fellowship. [8] "My Father is glorified by this [process of abiding], that you bear much fruit, and {so} prove to be My disciples." In Galatians 5:15 the command is: "Love one another." Are we able to love our neighbour as ourself? Verse 17 says that this is done by walking by means of the Spirit, and then in v. 21 Paul talks about the fruit of the Spirit, and the fruit of the Spirit is love. That is the first thing he mentions because that is what the context is. The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness. What is Jesus talking about in John 15? "If you abide in me you will bear much fruit so that you will be my disciples. What is the characteristic of the disciple? Well, let's look back at the context. In chapter 13 Jesus told the disciples, "By this all men will know that you are my disciples if you have love for one another." It takes us back to the principle of the foot washing. The foot washing has to do with forgiveness.      

John 13:9 ^NASB "Simon Peter said to Him, 'Lord, {then wash} not only my feet, but also my hands and my head.'" Peter is still thinking literally, he's not thinking in terms of the spiritual lesson that Jesus is teaching because he can't understand it yet—which is what Jesus just told him. [10] "Jesus said to him, 'He who has bathed …" Here He uses the Greek word louo [louw], meaning to wash fully or to bathe. These two words are used and distinguished in the Greek translation of the Old Testament. In Exodus chapter forty which talks about the tabernacle and the anointing of Aaron and his sons, when they are initially anointed into the ministry as priests they are washed. The Hebrew only has one word for washing and it does double duty. When the high priest was initially inaugurated he was washed from head to toe. When the rabbis translated that into Greek they used the word louo—full bath. But then when they talked about the daily operation of the priests in the temple: Exodus 40:30 ^NASB "He placed the laver between the tent of meeting and the altar and put water in it for washing. [31] From it Moses and Aaron and his sons washed their hands and their feet." The word there for washing is nipto. Jesus is picking up on that illustration from the service of the priests to show that if you are going to serve God, what is Hebrews 9:15 talking about? That we are cleansed to serve the living God, and that of we are going to serve Him there has to be a positional cleansing, luo—the full bath which takes place when we are positionally forgiven at salvation—and then there has to be this ongoing experiential cleansing that is depicted in the ritual of Israel by the washing of the hands and the feet.

This is what Jesus is saying, "He who has bathed," i.e. the one who has already been bathed (perfect tense, it is completed). That is describing the person who is already saved, positionally cleansed. "… needs only to wash his feet, but is completely clean…" And then He shifts to the second person plural. "… and you are clean, but not all {of you.}" He is addressing the group of disciples: "you all are clean"—katharos [kaqaroj]. What He means by that statement is that eleven of the twelve are saved, positionally cleansed, including Peter. But onto all of them are positionally clean because one of them, Judas Iscariot, is an unbeliever and he is about to be possessed by Satan. So Jesus is saying that he who has bathed needs only to wash his feet, but is completely clean. That is that restoration to fellowship that is pictured there. 

John 13:11 ^NASB "For He knew the one who was betraying Him; for this reason He said, 'Not all of you are clean.'" Verse 11 is really a parenthesis to explain the statement, "but not all of you are clean." Twice John makes this statement about "not all of you are clean," and he makes it clear that this is talking about Judas, the one who is not saved. So the idea of cleansing here is used of positional cleansing is equated to being saved. The partial washing is nipto, a partial washing or partial cleansing as portrayed in the Old Testament ritual.

What this is teaching is the whole principle of confession of sin. We confess our sins (not for salvation) because after we are saved we continue to commit sin. This is one of those things that has plagued Christianity since the beginning of the church: what do you do with sins after salvation?

Jesus is giving the disciples an object lesson of a very important truth. It has to do with the necessity of partial cleansing. There are other allusions to this in the New Testament. James chapter four is dealing with those who had become involved with mental attitude sins, and so James confronts them with all of this division and strife within the congregation. In verses 1-6 he deals with this and points out that this is the result of friendship with the world and arrogance. Then in verse 7 he begins the solution.

James 4:7 ^NASB "Submit therefore to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you." Before we confess our sin there is a recognition that we need to get right with God again. This is basically what James is talking about. We need to submit to get back under God's authority. [8] "Draw near to God and He will draw near to you…" Well how do we do that? "…Cleanse your hands, you sinners; and purify your hearts, you double-minded." This is the same principle, the same verbiage: cleanse and purify. There needs to be this post salvation purification and that is what restores us to fellowship with God. This is what is meant by humbling ourselves under the hand of God.

The whole idea of inheritance fits into this because as a believer we can do good things—moral things, spiritually obedient things—all in the power of the flesh. We can read our Bible, memorise Scripture, go to Bible class, witness, etc. in the power of the flesh. But it has no eternal value because it is something we are doing. As Jesus said in John 15 the branch cannot produce fruit of its own, it has to abide in Him. So when we are out of fellowship, when we quit walking by the Spirit and start walking according to the flesh, how do we recover? There has to be a way of going from not abiding to abiding, and from not walking by the Spirit to walking by the Spirit; and there has to be something that deals with the sin that occurs that got us out of fellowship. And that is the principle of cleansing, of confession of sin which means only to admit or to acknowledge our sin to God.  

The point in the Christian life isn't to confess our sins. So many people have this misconception that somehow the key to spiritual growth is confession of sin. The key to spiritual growth is abiding in Christ, walking by the Spirit; not confession. Confession just gets us back to abiding, to a place where we can abide, to a position of walking by the Spirit.

Two things tend to take place with a person. You have a licentious person who doesn't want to admit that gossip is really a problem for him, and even if it is he gets a lot of joy out of gossip. He says, Oh well Jesus paid for it on the cross, I'll just confess it later. That is the kind of person who is just flipping the light switch all the time, in and out of fellowship. Then there is another kind of person whose area of weakness is worry. They know that their job might be on the line and they have already seen their retirement plan go to almost nothing, and they are worried. That is the area of weakness of their sin nature. So one minute they are worrying, and then they say, you know I have to trust God. They confess their sin, and then two seconds later they worry again. Mechanically they are no different from the gossip, but the difference is that the licentious person just keeps flipping the light switch and never realises that the purpose is to leave the light switch on for a while; whereas the person who keeps getting overwhelmed or tempted with the sin of worry is fighting it. Maybe after some time they reach a point where they say they are going to put it in the Lord's hands and leave it there. And five or six seconds goes by before they get their eyes back on the worry and flip the light switch off again. But there is progress. It takes time. It may take weeks, months or years but it demands the discipline of learning how to recover and how to walk by means of the Spirit. It is that walk by means of the Spirit that provides that real ongoing production that is the basis for inheritance.

In Revelation 2:11 there is a warning to the second church, the church at Smyrna. "He who has an ear, let him hear what the Spirit says to the churches. He who overcomes will not be hurt by the second death." He who overcomes is a reference to the believer who is growing, who overcomes in the area of spiritual growth. It is very clear from other passages, for example in Revelation chapter twenty, that the second death is the lake of fire. As a believer you will not end up in the lake of fire but you can be hurt by the second death. That is what we have seen in Revelation 21:7, 8 ^NASB "He who overcomes will inherit these things, and I will be his God and he will be My son. But for the cowardly and unbelieving and abominable and murderers and immoral persons and sorcerers and idolaters and all liars, their part {will be} in the lake that burns with fire and brimstone, which is the second death." Verse 7 sets the context, that those who are obedient will inherit, but in contrast verse 8 is the category which has their part (meros) in the lake of fire. Their inheritance gets flushed into the lake of fire instead of being distributed at the judgment seat of Christ.

When we put all of this together we realise that confession of sin is not just something we do before Bible class. That is merely a pedagogical tool to reinforce for everyone in the congregation the importance of confession of sin. It is not just some mechanistic thing. It is a vital part of our relationship to God where we are admitting to God where you have sinned, recognising those sins were paid for by Christ on the cross so that now I am cleansed again, I recover the filling of the Holy Spirit, am walking by the Spirit, so that I can move forward and can grow. Because without that we can't serve God. Just as the Old Testament priest couldn't serve without that experiential cleansing we can't serve. And we are saved to serve; we are not saved to confess sins. So the issue is growing, abiding, walking; not just confessing.