Most people carry around a running list of everything they are not. Not disciplined enough, not holy enough, not gifted enough, not good enough to pray. That list shows up the moment they try something new, and it shows up loudest when they try to come to God.
John 1 offers a better way to answer the question every believer eventually faces: “What do you say about yourself?” (John 1:22).
Two Words in Scripture
John’s Gospel opens with the Word: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1). Then it introduces a man: “There was a man sent from God, whose name was John” (John 1:6). John the Baptist “was not the light, but came to bear witness about the light” (John 1:8).
One helpful way to read this passage is to see John the Baptist as a picture of the old covenant. He is the last voice of the law and the prophets, standing right where Malachi ends. Everything before him points toward a true light, but none of it is the light.
Jesus is that light. He is not merely the first or last word of the new covenant; He is its only word, the One whose sprinkled blood “speaks a better word than the blood of Abel” (Hebrews 12:24).
Jesus, the Great Clarifier
That matters for how the Bible is read. “Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son” (Hebrews 1:1-2).
Open the Bible to a random page that doesn’t make Jesus clear, and it is easy to come away believing things about God that are not true for believers today. Read the old covenant apart from Christ and it will leave anyone under condemnation, because “the Scripture imprisoned everything under sin” (Galatians 3:22).
Paul tells Timothy to be “rightly handling the word of truth” (2 Timothy 2:15). Rightly handling the Word means reading it through Jesus. Rather than searching the Old Testament to find Him, look through Him and see the old covenant promises in His light. Jesus is the great clarifier.
Full of Grace and Truth
John writes that the Word “became flesh and dwelt among us,” and that He was “full of grace and truth” (John 1:14). Two verses later: “For from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace” (John 1:16).
Notice what John says. Jesus is full of grace and truth, and from that fullness believers receive grace upon grace.
A lot of preaching treats John 1 as a balancing act: you need grace, but you also need truth, and “truth” quietly comes to mean the Law. The message becomes, “You’re saved by grace, but now get your act together.”
That is not what the text says. “For the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ” (John 1:17). The Law has a good purpose. Paul says “the law is good, if one uses it lawfully” (1 Timothy 1:8), and its job is to lead people to Jesus. But when truth starts to sound like the Law, like condemnation and judgment, something has been misread.
Grace should always be the takeaway. When you read the Word, grace should always be what you carry home. You may walk away aware that you don’t live up, and you don’t. But One lived up on your behalf, and His righteousness is credited to you.
What Do You Say About Yourself?
In John 1:19-23, the religious leaders send priests to question John the Baptist. Are you the Christ? Elijah? The Prophet? Then they ask the question that matters: “What do you say about yourself?”
John’s answer is a model for every believer.
He was honest about what he was not. “He confessed, and did not deny, but confessed, ‘I am not the Christ’” (John 1:20). A grace confession is not denial. It doesn’t pretend weakness, sickness or failure isn’t there. Faith that the cross is enough does not require acting as if you have no needs.
He got his confession from the Word. John answered with Isaiah 40:3: “I am the voice of one crying out in the wilderness, ‘Make straight the way of the Lord’” (John 1:23). Believers can do the same, finding in Scripture what God says about them, such as being “planted in the house of the LORD” (Psalm 92:13).
He anchored it in how Jesus related to him. Of all the things John could have said, his confession pointed to the One coming after him. It is one thing to know that God so loved the world. A grace confession asks: what has Jesus done for me?
Neither, Nor
The questioners pressed: “Then why are you baptizing, if you are neither the Christ, nor Elijah, nor the Prophet?” (John 1:25).
Anyone who steps out to do something will meet a “neither, nor.” Start a business and discover you don’t understand accounting. Step up to serve and hear every reason you’re not qualified. And the loudest accusation is often this one: you’re not good enough to pray.
John didn’t argue. He said, “I baptize with water, but among you stands one you do not know” (John 1:26), one whose sandal strap he was not worthy to untie. He pointed past himself.
Then comes verse 29: “The next day he saw Jesus coming toward him, and said, ‘Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!’” A confession that points to Jesus produces. You will see Jesus at work.
Six Grace Confessions for Prayer
These confessions can be spoken at the start of prayer, right after “Our Father”:
1. I am the righteousness of God in Christ. Not in my own behavior, but in Him (2 Corinthians 5:21). 2. God has already given me more than anything I will ask Him for. “He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?” (Romans 8:32). 3. Nothing I will do today is more powerful than the finished work of Jesus Christ. No success outdoes it, and no failure undoes it. 4. Everything I’m not, Christ is in me. “He who is in you is greater than he who is in the world” (1 John 4:4). 5. Jesus has made up the difference between who I am and what I do. “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Romans 8:1). 6. I am worthy, qualified and significant enough to experience more in life, because I am in Christ. Those who receive “the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ” (Romans 5:17).
These are not self-help affirmations. They are what the Word says about anyone who is in Christ. Spoken in prayer, they lead to the posture Hebrews describes: “Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need” (Hebrews 4:16).
So what do you say about yourself? Be honest about what you are not. Then say what Jesus has made you.