READ: 1 John 1
BACKGROUND: John kicks off his letter in an incredibly important way. A way that sets Christianity apart from every other religion in the history of the world. He says, “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched—this we proclaim concerning the Word of life.” Every religion believes in a truth. Christianity believes in an event! Every religion is ideological. The gospel of Jesus Christ is historical!
THINK:To mistake freedom from sin only on the conscious level of our lives for complete deliverance from sin by the atonement through the Cross of Christ is a great error. No one fully knows what sin is until he is born again. Sin is what Jesus Christ faced at Calvary. The evidence that I have been delivered from sin is that I know the real nature of sin in me. For a person to really know what sin is requires the full work and deep touch of the atonement of Jesus Christ, that is, the imparting of His absolute perfection.
The Holy Spirit applies or administers the work of the atonement to us in the deep unconscious realm as well as in the conscious realm. And it is not until we truly perceive the unrivaled power of the Spirit in us that we understand the meaning of 1 John 1:7, which says, “…the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin.” This verse does not refer only to conscious sin, but also to the tremendously profound understanding of sin which only the Holy Spirit in me can accomplish.
I must “walk in the light as He is in the light…” – not in the light of my own conscience, but in God’s light. If I will walk there, with nothing held back or hidden, then this amazing truth is revealed to me: “….the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses [me] from all sin” so that God Almighty can see nothing to rebuke in me. On the conscious level it produces a keen, sorrowful knowledge of what sin really is. The love of God working in me causes me to hate, with the Holy Spirit’s hatred for sin, anything that is not in keeping with God’s holiness. To “walk in the light” means that everything that is of the darkness actually drives me closer to the center of the light.
– Oswald Chambers in My Utmost for His Highest
PRAY: Ask God today to help you walk not in the light of your own conscience but instead in his light today!
throughin2.com 
Yes…this so good! It does little good to try to give an unbelieving world a list of what we “the church” consider sin! The Holy Spirit must do that and has we see more clearly the Holiness of God and begin to love him more, our awareness of sin and how damaging it is on our lives grows…and we begin to finally get how life giving it is to follow Jesus!