Do Christians Have to Confess Each and Every Sin for God to Forgive Them?

I want to respond to someone who recently said:

“You will indeed go to hell by knowingly sinning and not asking for forgiveness!”

And:

“We are not saved from future sin. We must repent of all sin, even after we have been baptized by the Holy Spirit.”

I need to respond carefully because I believe the truth threads a line between the cheap grace taught by many American churches and perfectionist doctrines of condemnation that make it seem almost no one is going to heaven.

Let’s start with the fundamentals:

• Our salvation is by faith in the blood sacrifice of Jesus Christ.
• The purpose of salvation is to reconcile us to God and present us holy and blameless before Him.
• Our salvation will be complete when Christ returns in glory. In the meantime, we go through a process of sanctification, i.e. learning to walk in God’s righteousness and power.
• God wants us to always be growing in our faith. If we are growing, then our faith is solid.
• Saving faith endures to the end.

For more details, please see my recent posts about what the Bible says about salvation:

What Is Salvation? (Part 1)

What Is Salvation? (Part 2) 

The comment above said we are not saved from future sin, but this is not what the Scriptures say:

“For by a single offering he [Christ] has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified.” – Hebrews 10:14

This means Christ’s one sacrifice covers our sins for all time – past, present and future – for we who are being sanctified. One offering, all time, period.

“And we have believed in Christ Jesus so that we might be justified by faith in Christ and not by the works of the law, because by the works of the law no human being will be justified.” – Galatians 2:16

We are justified by faith in Christ and His sacrifice alone makes us worthy. To say we have to confess or ask forgiveness for each and every sin to be forgiven is to add a work of the law to Christ’s sacrifice and attempt to be justified by works. Please hear me carefully, because I am not saying we don’t have to repent of sins, grow in our faith and remain steadfast in our faith to the end. That’s all true.

Acknowledging our sins is part of repentance, but the specific idea of confessing each sin in order to be forgiven is like offering a mini-sacrifice to earn God's mercy. This contradicts the Bible's teaching about Jesus' once-for-all-time sacrifice. This view of confession probably comes from a misinterpretation of 1 John 1:

“If we say, ‘We have no sin,’ we are deceiving ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” – 1 John 1:8-9

This passage about being saved, as in believing in Jesus Christ. A person can only be saved if he first admits to being a sinner and needing God’ forgiveness. If we say we have no sin, then the truth is not in us and we are not saved. However, if we are saved, we have the Holy Spirit and the truth is in us, because Christ is the truth. Therefore, this verse is directed to non-believers. It is not about a believer's sanctification. The subsequent verses about Jesus as our advocate and propitiation pertains to believers:

"My little children, I am writing you these things so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father—Jesus Christ the Righteous One. He Himself is the propitiation for our sins." - 1 John 2:1-2a

Again, I am not saying it’s okay to sin, but the idea of losing our salvation every time we slip, as if we are continually bobbing in and out of the grace of God, is not true. God’s love and commitment to us is not so fickle:

“If we are faithless, He remains faithful, for He cannot deny Himself.” – 2 Timothy 2:13

Therefore, this idea that Christ’s sacrifice does not cover future sin is a false doctrine that brings condemnation and fear.