The epistles written by the Apostles who Jesus mentored during his ministry carry the extra value of a personal testimony of someone who lived with Jesus. I try to remember that as I read them.
The first epistle of John is traditionally attributed to John, but I am not sure if the text identifies the author as John. The author does claim to have been a personal witness in the beginning of the letter. (v. 2, the life appeared, we have seen it; v. 3 we proclaim to you what we have seen and heard).
The beginning of the letter stresses that the author wants to share his testimony with the reader.
Walking in the light
The first theme after laying the introduction is encouraging to "walk in the light". What does this mean? It means to have fellowship with Christ, one another, and purified from all sin.
It does not mean to be completely without sin or say we have not sinned. This the author clarifies immediately afterwards in verses 8 and 10. Rather, community with Jesus involves a confession of sins. (v. 9).
A few things comes to my mind when I read about confessing and denying sins.
First, good Christians can actually disagree about what is a "sin". There are some things that Christians are pretty unanimous on (adultery, cold-blooded murder), but there are gray areas of sin (is divorce-remarriage adultery? Is warfare murder?).
Likewise, there might be an area of one's life that a person is struggling with to the point their conscience is hard. But in other areas of life, the person has greater faith and obedience and given over to God. In fact, I think that this is a very common, perhaps universal, aspect of the Christian walk.
So, in these and other gray areas, Christians will deny having sin according to their conscience. But I don't think we should read 1 John 1 with the idea that there are no gray areas or places where we have limited understanding of sin. Rather, they are large important principles - just admit your own fallibility and need for Christ. That is step one.
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