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Walking in the Light
Introduction: When I first took Greek in college in preparation for ministry, I remember how good it felt to be able to read the book of I John just six weeks into the course. I was so proud I was sure I was destined to be a great Greek scholar. It didn’t take me long, however, to realize that my ability to read 1 John had a lot more to do with John’s writing style than with my own scholarship, for John was a fisherman, without formal education, and quite limited in his vocabulary and grammatical creativity. In other words, he wrote in very simple Greek, almost like a child’s book might be written today.
I learned very soon, however, that simple language does not necessarily imply simple thoughts, for John writes some of the most profound theology in the entire Bible. First John is not child’s play. In fact, I didn’t realize just how deep its truths were until I recently began serious study of it for the first time. Friday I was lamenting to Pastor Kent Wagner how difficult I was finding my endeavor, and he told me he heard Chuck Swindoll say that one of his greatest mistakes in the ministry was preaching 1 John as a young pastor. Well, I’m not so young, so I hope this isn’t a mistake. I trust we will learn much together as we engage in this study for the next several months.
Brief background on 1 John
The author is without doubt the Apostle John, who also wrote the Gospel of John, 2 & 3 John, and the book of Revelation. This is not only the consistent witness of the early church, but it is also substantiated by similarities in terms of subject-matter, style and vocabulary. John was a very young man during Jesus’ earthly ministry, but the evidence suggests that by the time he wrote his epistles he was quite elderly, all the other apostles having been martyred for their faith. First John was probably written about A.D. 90, nearly 60 years after the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ. John knew Jesus personally, having walked with Him for over three years, and he is sharing with us truths that he personally received, believed, and practiced for more than half a century.
The audience seems to be broad—probably Christians all over Asia Minor. Strong early church tradition holds that John spent his old age in Ephesus, so the letter probably was initially addressed to the believers in that city, but it sustained wide distribution very early. It has been a constant source of practical guidance to the church ever since.
Occasion of the letter. Why was it written? In the years following the founding of the church on the Day of Pentecost, a great expansion took place, with the Church reaching virtually every corner of the Roman world. Great growth, as is often the case, was accompanied by some relaxation of doctrinal and moral standards. The heresy of Gnosticism began to affect many, with its low ethical standards, its high regard for intellectualism, its skepticism regarding important doctrinal issues like the incarnation of Christ and the resurrection of the body, and its arrogant lovelessness. In addition, other heresies such as docetism and Cerenthianism made strong inroads in the churches.
In the face of these threats John writes like a pastor concerned with protecting his flock from the wolves. But he also writes like a soldier committed to defeating the enemy, not hesitating to call the heretics “deceivers,” “false prophets,” and even “anti-Christs.” He apparently believed that the best defense is a good offense.
The purpose of the book is not a matter for debate, for the author, thankfully, clearly states his purpose, or rather his purposes. He mentions five:
1. That we may have fellowship (1:3). “We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us.” The fellowship, unity, and harmony in the Body had been broken by the false teachers and John wants to see it restored. Of course, it must be restored on the proper basis, which is fellowship with the Father and the Son.
2. That we may have joy (1:4). “We write this to make our joy complete.” While fellowship is John’s immediate goal, joy is his ultimate goal. John is going to have a lot to say about sin and its paralyzing effect on Christian fellowship, and as a pastor he knows he must preach strongly and without compromise. But the last thing he wants is to produce a church whose countenance is somber and sorrowful. The message of sins forgiven should have an exhilarating effect on our lives.
3. That we may not sin (2:1). “My dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin.” John talks a lot about forgiveness and cleansing from sin, but he doesn’t want anyone to think he takes sin lightly.
4. That we may not be deceived (2:26). “I am writing these things to you about those who are trying to lead you astray.” John knows that wrong behavior stems from wrong beliefs, so another of his purposes in writing is to keep believers from getting trapped by the cultists and false teachers of his day.
5. That we may know we are saved (5:13). “I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life.” This may be the most important purpose of all in 1 John, for the theme of Christian assurance comes up frequently. The Apostle wants believers to have assurance, but at the same time he doesn’t want to give false assurance to phony Christians. In view of that we are going to find that he repeatedly offers three tests for faith: the moral test (are you obedient?); the social test (do you love your brother?); and the doctrinal test(do you believe the truth?).
Now I want us to focus the rest of our time together this morning on the first ten verses, looking at the essence of Christianity and then the substance of Christianity. When I say that the essence of Christianity is a person while the substance of Christianity is a walk, I am trying to distinguish between the foundation and the superstructure, what’s under the surface from what is visible. John begins with Jesus Christ, because there could be no Christianity without Him. However, since his purpose is practical and ethical, he moves very quickly to the issue of how the person of Christ impacts the walk of the believer.
The essence of Christianity is a Person. (1-4)
I find two things emphasized strongly in the first four verses: evidence and proclamation. Look at the number of words which describe evidence: “heard,” “seen,” “looked at,” “touched,” “appeared,” “seen,” “appeared,” “seen,” and “heard.” His point seems to be this:
The nature of the evidence is indisputable that Jesus Christ is the word of life and the source of eternal life. He was not the figment of someone’s imagination nor was His reputation the result of exaggeration on the part of over-enthusiastic disciples. Rather this One who from the beginning was heard, seen with physical eyes, examined carefully (that seems to be the difference between the words “seen” and “looked at” in verse 1), and touched, was really God in the flesh. The other thing emphasized strongly in the first four verses is …
The importance of proclamation. Look at the words “we proclaim,” “testify,” “we proclaim, “we proclaim,” and “we write.” Obviously John feels compelled to communicate to the church the personal experience he had with Jesus Christ. If Jesus is the essence of Christianity, if eternal life is found in Him and in Him only, then there is no alternative to proclaiming that truth far and wide. Here is a striking contrast with the Gnostics and with any other kind of exclusive Christianity. The heretics wanted to establish a fellowship of the intellectually elite, a kind of spiritual apartheid. But John emphasizes that the message is not for us only; it is for the whole world.
With that as a kind of prelude to the book, John now turns our attention to the fact that …
The substance of Christianity is a walk. (5-10)
There are two phrases which form the key to understanding the rest of chapter 1: “walk in the darkness,” (verse 6) and “walk in the light” (verse 7). Those are the two alternatives that every believer has, and they are mutually exclusive. Notice I said “believer,” because it is my understanding that John is talking to those who have come to personal faith in Christ but, nevertheless, have developed some serious distortions in their beliefs and conduct. Unbelievers can’t help but walk in darkness, as John will make clear later in the book, but believers have a choice to walk in darkness or walk in light.
It’s instructive, however, that John doesn’t start with us; he starts with God. “God is light; in him there is no darkness at all.” No people ever rise higher than the character of their gods. The ancient Greeks and Romans lived reprobate lives because their gods lived reprobate lives. And those who today worship at the shrines of success, materialism, beauty, and sex will inevitably find their lives rising no higher than those humanistic goals. The message John offers about God is the message he got from Jesus Christ.
The message of Christ is that God is light. None of the other biblical writers tells us more about the nature and character of God than does the apostle John. All of them tell what He does, and some describe the glory which surrounds Him. But John tells us what God is like in His very nature. He does this in three striking definitions: God is spirit (John 4:24), God is love (I John 4:8), and here, God is light.
The truth that God is light speaks of His holiness, and it is stated both positively and negatively so that there will be no misunderstanding. There are no ethical gray areas in God’s character, no questionable attitudes, no compromising positions. God is absolutely holy and everything unholy must be separate from Him.
The implication of the message is that we must walk in the light. One might have expected the Apostle to state this clearly and positively in the next verse, but instead he teaches it negatively by discussing three common denials which are tantamount to rejecting the notion that the believer must walk in the light.
The rejection of the message comes in the form of three common denials. You can locate these three denials very easily in your text by finding the three phrases, “if we claim,” in verses 6, 8, and 10.
1. The denial that sin breaks our fellowship with God constitutes a lie to others. (6,7) “If we claim to have fellowship with Him yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live by the truth.” Here John is dealing with believers who claim that they are tight with God, but they don’t take sin seriously.
Walking in darkness means to sin habitually. The present tense indicates a continual practice of that which is ungodly. These people have separated religion from ethics. They live one way on Sunday and another the rest of the week. They practice easy grace.
Friends, let me stop here a moment and comment that the Word is not just speaking to Gnostics and other first-century heretics here; it is speaking to us. We have a great tendency to substitute orthodoxy of doctrine for righteousness of lifestyle. We must come to grips with the truth that if we are toying with an illicit relationship, if we are nursing anger and bitterness in our hearts, if we are stealing from our employer or cheating on our taxes, if we are practicing gossip and criticism, if we are not living with our spouses in a loving, understanding way we are walking in darkness and we cannot at the same time be in fellowship with God.
I’m not necessarily saying we cannot be saved; I’m just saying we are not in fellowship, and there is a difference. It is my feeling that a great many Christians rarely enjoy deep and unhindered fellowship with God. The reason is not because they do not tithe, or miss services too often, or refuse to serve as they should. If those things are true, they are probably only symptomatic of the real problem—walking in darkness.
John says that the one walking in darkness and at the same time claiming to be in fellowship with God is guilty of lying. He’s making himself out to be someone he’s not. He smiles and sings and testifies, but underneath his life is a lie because he does not live by the truth.
Is there any solution to this trap? Well, I’m glad you asked, because verse 7 tells us that the only way to stop walking in the darkness is to start walking in the light: “But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.” Walking in the light describes absolute sincerity, having nothing to conceal from God or our brothers and sisters. It also indicates a walk of purity.
The two results of walking in the light deserve special notice. First, we have fellowship with one another. One might have expected John to speak here of fellowship with God rather than fellowship with one another, since fellowship with God was the subject of verse 6. But it is in fellowship with one another on the horizontal dimension that our fellowship with God on the vertical dimension is demonstrated. You show me someone who has continual problems getting along with other believers and I’ll show you someone who is not in fellowship with God, no matter how spiritual he tries to come across.
The second result of walking in the light is that the blood of Jesus Christ is available for continual cleansing. At first glance this seems a contradiction, for why does one already walking in the light need cleansing? And if he is being cleansed from sin, does this not imply that he must have been walking in the darkness previously? The contradiction is only superficial, for John does not understand “walking in the light” to mean perfection. Rather he means a genuine and continuous pursuit of holiness (note the present tense, “walking”), along with a refusal to keep certain dark areas of our lives hidden from the light. The one walking in the light will find forgiveness for any sin he inadvertently falls into. I like Zane Hodges’ observation, “We are never perfect, even while we are in the light, but if we stay in that light we are perfectly clean!”[i]
So much for the first denial. Secondly, …
2. The denial that sin exists in our nature constitutes a lie to ourselves. (8,9) “If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.” This claim is even worse than the first. At least the first conceded the existence of sin, though denying that it had the effect of estranging the sinner from God. Now the very fact of sin is denied. The one who holds this view cannot benefit from the cleansing effects of the blood of Jesus because they say they have no sin.
The word “sin” is in the singular and the claim seems to be that the inherited sin nature has been conquered. The person maintains he has advanced in his walk in the light to the point that he has reached sinless perfection. I must say that one of the most difficult religious claims for me to understand is this claim to sinless perfection, yet there are many people and even some entire denominations that teach the possibility of it. For example, the Church of the Nazarene teaches that through a work of the Holy Spirit subsequent to salvation a believer can experience the eradication of the sin nature. Most holiness denominations also accept that view.
Not only does such a view contradict this Scripture text; I believe it is blatantly contradictory to experience. I have known some of the finest men and women of God alive—great missionary statesmen, great people of prayer, dedicated servants of God—but I have never met one who had conquered sin. Furthermore, the ones I have known who claim sinless perfection maintain that view only by redefining sin.
Perhaps I have mentioned before a young music professor at Wichita State University who came to personal faith in Christ under our ministry. For six months he grew rapidly in the Lord, but then he came under the strong influence of a campus group espousing holiness doctrine. It wasn’t long before he was claiming that he had quit sinning. I asked him one day, because I knew he had had a filthy mouth before he received Christ, “Don’t you ever slip up and take the Lord’s name in vain?” Well, he said, in the heat of a difficult situation I do sometimes say a curse word, but I immediately renounce it and confess it. “What about lust?” I asked, for I knew that had also been a real problem for him. Well, he said, there are times when evil thoughts will come into my mind when I see a provocatively dressed girl on campus, but I quickly put the thought out of my mind.
My response to him was this: “I’m glad to see that you are growing in the Lord to the point you are more sensitive about these things than you used to be. That demonstrates that you are maturing in your faith and walking in the light. But it is not sinlessness.” What he had done is to redefine sin as a premeditated act of disobedience which one consciously encourages and perpetuates. A lustful thought lasting five seconds is not sin; ten seconds or longer constitutes sin. But God calls sin “missing the mark” of God’s holiness. In fact, a good theological definition of sin is “any failure to conform to the character or will of God.” When sin is seen for what it really is no one can claim to be without it.
Notice what the Apostle says about people who claim to be without sin—they deceive themselves. The first group was lying because they knew in their hearts they weren’t enjoying fellowship with God. But these are deceived; they are lying to themselves.
Is there a remedy for this second denial? There sure is, and it is offered in verse 9: “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.” Instead of denying that we sin we must admit and confess the sin; only then can God truly cleanse us from all unrighteousness and remove the barriers that prevent fellowship.
I believe this is not principally a salvation verse but rather a fellowship verse. This is not a verse I recite to show someone how to be saved, for the issue at stake here is not one’s eternal destiny. Paul’s teaching on justification makes it clear that the believing sinner receives by faith a perfectly righteous standing before God at the moment he receives Christ, and nothing can be added to this or subtracted from it. But while no sin on the part of a believer in Christ will change God’s verdict of “not guilty” at the Judgment Seat, every sin does some damage to our fellowship with Him. When you stop and think about it, it couldn’t help but hurt our fellowship because God is light and in Him is no darkness at all.
Let me try an illustration. Suppose someone adopts a child. From the moment those final papers are signed that child belongs to the family and there is no legal means of un-adopting him. He is as secure legally as if he had been born physically into that family. But then suppose that child is rebellious and violates his parents’ wishes. Does he lose his place in the family? Of course not. But he does lose something of the close relationship with his parents, at least until he acknowledges his rebellion and is forgiven. Then the fellowship is fully restored.
So it is for us in our relationship with God. If we acknowledge our sins—the word “confess” means literally “to say the same thing as”; i.e., if we call our sin what God calls it and don’t try to justify it or rationalize it—if we acknowledge our sin, God will forgive us and cleanse us. We can count on it because He is faithful and just, faithful to keep His word, and His justice has been satisfied by the cross.
Is there a greater truth anywhere for believers than the fact that any interruption in our fellowship with God can be immediately remedied by our coming to Him in sincere confession? Notice please that the requirement is not confession plus penance, not confession plus begging, not confession plus works. It’s just a sincere and heart-felt agreement with God that we have sinned.
Quickly, now let’s look at the third and last false claim.
3. The denial that sin shows itself in our conduct constitutes a lie to God. (10) “If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word has no place in our lives.” How does this third claim differ from the others? We may concede theoretically that sin would break our fellowship with God if we did sin, and we may concede that sin does exist in our nature as an inborn disposition, and still we may deny that we have in practice sinned and thus put ourselves out of fellowship with God. That is what is claimed here, and it is the most serious of the three denials. To say that we have not sinned is not just to tell a deliberate lie, or to be self-deceived, but actually to lie to God, or better to accuse God of lying, for He said, “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.” (Romans 3:23).
There is, of course, only one way to come clean on the matter of our conduct, and that is to compare it to the Word of God. There is a great tendency in our society to interpret the evidences of sin and guilt solely in terms of physiological, psychological or social causes. We wish to remove all the guilt of alcoholism, for example, by calling it a disease, period. We refuse to entertain the possibility of spiritual causes of depression, preferring to medicate it or psychoanalyze it. And we excuse much criminal behavior by blaming environmental causes.
There is no doubt that there are secondary reasons for most of the negative behaviors people engage in. But the Bible indicates that the primary reason is sin. Now please don’t misunderstand me. I am not denying that alcoholism is a disease; I am just arguing that it is not a morally neutral disease. We need to avoid the strong tendency in our society and in our own lives to look for excuses for our failures.
Conclusion: A vital Christian walk depends upon honesty with others, with ourselves, and with God. Only when there is integrity and honesty about one’s sin can forgiveness and cleansing be enjoyed. Christianity is the only religion which, by emphasizing that God is light, insists first on taking sin seriously and then offers a satisfactory moral remedy.
I want to suggest that we take a moment right now and exercise honesty with God about our sin. It’s easy for us to pray, “O Father, we confess our sin and recognize we are unworthy in your sight,” but the practical result is that when everyone is guilty, no one is. Instead let’s each examine himself and lay our lives bare before Him with who we have to do. Then let us accept His forgiveness and cleansing. Finally, let us bask in our renewed fellowship.
DATE: September 10, 1989
Tags:
Gnosticism
Fellowship
Joy
Light
Sin
Perfectionism
[i] Zane Hodges, class notes at Dallas Theological Seminary.