If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.
8. If we say. He now commends grace from its necessity; for as no one is free from sin, he intimates that we are all lost and undone, except the Lord comes to our aid with the remedy of pardon.
To deny our sin is to deceive ourselves and exclude the truth from us entirely. The Christian religion is the religion of sinners; Christian life is continued repentance and mortification of sin. Denying sin does not merely deceive us, it calls God a liar and dishonors His testimony against the world's sin.
AI summary
Commenting on 1 John 1:8-10
If we say that we have no sin,.... Notwithstanding believers are cleansed from their sins by the blood of Christ, yet they are not without sin; no man is without sin: this is not only true of all men, as they come into the world, being conceived in sin, and shapen in iniquity, and of all that are in a state of unregeneracy, and of...