All saints are clean; only they may defile their feet. The Spirit, through the intercession of Christ, applies the word and rebukes evil, shows the starting-point of it, and after a while restores the soul of communion. But God never deals with the conscience to falsify the relationship of the saint. The distress may be the greater, because everything is judged by the light we are brought into, but confidence in God will be untouched. If I apply 1 John 1:7 to failures, I ought to read, “If we do not walk in the light, the blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth us,” &c. In truth, that verse gives the whole Christian standing. It is, abstractedly, the portion of the Christian, which can never be lost.
The Christian is looked at, if we may so say, in one point in 1 John 1:7, and neither before nor after. He is in the light, has fellowship with God and His people, and is cleansed. The verse does not say that the blood of Jesus has cleansed or will cleanse, but it cleanseth. God sees me as a believer sprinkled with that blood, which can never lose its value or have to be sprinkled again. Many that have been brought to God have not learned what it is to be purged worshippers, having no more conscience of sins: a mistake the Lord may bear with, because of the value that Christ's death has in their souls. God alone can give the consciousness of being in the place in which Christ is before God.