“But if we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin” (1 John 1:7).
Guy N. Woods once illustrated this verse in the following way: He told his audience that many of them would not be old enough to remember this but that he did. There was a time when automobile windshield wipers were operated manually. That is, you operated a lever controlling the single wiper blade as you drove. Not that I ever doubted brother Woods’ words, but I had never seen such a thing until recently. While visiting a museum I saw a 1928 Ford truck and noticed that it had a single wiper blade controlled by a handle inside the cab.
As brother Woods, to finish the analogy, pointed out, nowadays we flip a switch and the work of wiping the windshield is done automatically. Such is the benefit of the cleansing blood of Christ to the Christian. It keeps on cleansing as we keep on walking in the light. The word cleanses is a verb in the present tense and denotes continuous action. The sense is if we continue to walk in the light of God’s truth, then the blood of Christ keeps on cleansing.
Of course, it is meant that the blood of Christ cleanses us from all sin solely upon the conditions on which its power can be made available to man — living in the truth and by confession of past sins (Vs. 9).
[Editor’s Note: Of course, walking in the light as a Christian, whereby the blood of Jesus Christ continues to cleanse from sin, is dependent on one becoming a Christian first. One becomes a Christian and receives the remission or forgiveness of sins by turning to God’s Word alone (the New Testament or Gospel) (Romans 10:17), believing or having faith in Jesus Christ (John 8:24), repenting from sins (Luke 13:3), professing one’s belief in Jesus as the Christ (Romans 10:9-10) and immersion in water (Acts 2:38; 8:37-39; Romans 6:3-5).]
