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1 John 1:5-2:2

This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all. If we claim to have fellowship with him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live out the truth. 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. If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word is not in us. My dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin. But if anybody does sin, we have an advocate with the Father—Jesus Christ, the Righteous One. He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world.

Three Assumptions

Fellowship with God is a Good Thing

The hearers of this letter believe that fellowship with God is a good thing. Do you believe it is a good thing? Do you know what it means to have fellowship with God?

We don’t fellowship very well, do we? 

I try to practice good fellowship by having a family over on Sunday afternoons for a Mennonite tradition called faspa, which is a light meal of buns and meat and cheese and pickles and whatever spreads or other easy to prepare food items. 

We have done this with probably 8 families so far. My hope is to have every one of you over at some point for faspa. The emphasis during this meal is to visit. To talk about anything, to get to know one another.

There is no agenda except to be with one another, to share a meal and some time together. Intentional times of fellowship with others is important for strengthening relationships. 

Fellowship with God is knowing him and being known by him, to have the creator of the universe as a companion and friend. Maybe you find it difficult to see how this is a good thing. Not everyone can imagine why fellowship with God is something they need.

But, in this passage, it is assumed that it is a good thing, a desirable thing, and something that cannot happen in our natural state.

There is Absolute Right and Wrong

Another assumption is that there is an absolute right and wrong and we can know the difference between right and wrong.

Many things in life are not black and white. And many things even in Scripture are difficult to draw firm conclusions about. People have different interpretations about many principles or statements in the Bible.

But, there exists some absolutes, which are defined and known best by knowing God. It is a dangerous thing to make absolute claims. Absolutes cause conflict and division. This is why Jesus said to his disciples, “Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword.” (Matt. 10:34-35)

When people began to identify Jesus as the promised Messiah, the one who would save Israel and bring salvation to the whole world, it caused division like it had never been seen before. Jesus did not match the interpretation of the Messiah by many Jewish leaders. 

People are divided over how to interpret, understand, and apply the teachings of Jesus and his disciples. 

But, there is nothing to interpret about who Jesus is and the consequences of his claims about himself and humanity. Either he is who he says he is, or he is not. And if he is, then it will change your whole world. It has to. You can’t minimize the claims that he made about himself or that his followers made about him. 

The absolute good about God is best seen in Jesus because, as it says in Colossians 1:15-17, he is “the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.”

There is absolute truth, which is only found in God, and the best way to know this truth is by looking at Jesus. If you are searching for truth and have not looked at Jesus, you will be missing the closest thing to truth you will ever know.We can get our ideas about God wrong

Finally, an assumption is made in this passage that we can have incomplete and incorrect ideas about God. 

The more I learn about God, the more I study Scripture, and learn about the history of the church and Israel, the less confident I am about how much I know with absolute certainty.

I know with certainty that I cannot save myself from my own destruction. I know that this book we call the Bible contains the most valuable information ever written about why humans exist and who made us. I choose to believe that everything in it is true, and that all of it is written so that we will know ourselves and our God.

Throughout my life, I have claimed to know with certainty many things about God. How he works, what he approves of and doesn’t approve of.

Behind the scenes of why John wrote this letter was to address a view of God and Jesus that was wrong. A view that the condition for fellowship with God was that you had to live completely without sin. Therefore, some claimed to be without sin. They deceived themselves and were trying to deceive others. They misinterpreted how the sacrifice of Jesus works.

In doing this, they ignored the truth about God. They relied on their own understanding. They made God in the image of their own preference.

Darkness and Light

Darkness as evil and light as good was and probably always has been a common association. We associate darkness with evil or death and we associate light with goodness and life.

By describing God as light and there is no darkness within him, John is saying that God is absolutely good and he is the source and complete fullness of life. 

I talked about fellowship with God in the beginning. It is impossible to have fellowship with God and be in the darkness because God is light.

God being light means that there is nothing hidden from him. He sees everything. If you think your sin is hidden from God, you are deceiving yourself. He sees it. 

When I was in high school, I would go out on weekends to parties. I was usually the more responsible one at the parties, and it had a lot to do with what my Mom would say to me often. 

She would say that even though she isn’t there with me, God is with me, and he sees everything. This wasn’t intimidating or a scare tactic. This was love. She wanted me to know that God loves me and wants me to do good.

I would find myself in compromising situations, and I would hear this inner voice reminding me that nothing is hidden from God. He is with me. He can get me out of it. Sometimes I listened to that voice and sometimes I didn’t. 

Eventually, I started listening to that voice more and more. This is what it means to walk in light, in fellowship with God. When we walk with him, he exposes the darkness. He takes us out of the darkness, and shows us what’s really going on when we are tempted. 

Think about a large theatre. The room is dark and you know that there is a stage in front of you, but you can’t see anything on the stage. You might assume there is nothing there. Until the spotlight hits centre stage and standing there is the performer. The light draws your attention to this single person in the room. 

This is what happens when you enter fellowship with God. You think no one can see what’s hiding in the dark corners of your heart and mind. Then the light shines.

It is not easy because it’s vulnerable. We don’t want our imperfections to be seen. We think that in order to be loved and accepted, we need to behave a certain way. We need to clean ourselves up before God goes snooping around with his light.

But, God is forgiving. His light will not only show us what is wrong in our lives, but he will heal what is wrong. 

You see, the darkness is death. And the light is life. When we stay in the darkness, when we ignore the voice of God, when we reject his fellowship, we are on the path of death.

But, in the light is life. And this light is only found in Jesus.

John 1:4-5 uses similar language, probably because it was written by the same person as 1 John, but also because it points to wonderful truth about Jesus. It says this: “In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”

If you want to have fellowship with God, the darkness within you will be lit up with his light. You will experience new life in Jesus.

In John 8:12, Jesus makes a claim about himself. He says, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”

If this is true, then what happens to our sin? Does God just wipe it away every time I mess up?

Sin and Forgiveness

What is sin? Both our nature and what we do because of our nature.

What is forgiveness? It is the removal of the consequences of sin. It is the settlement of a debt. 

Describing our nature as sinful is really critical for understanding why we need forgiveness. This is not just about us doing wrong things. It is about us wanting the wrong things.

All of us experience needs and wants. Let’s take a really basic example of how this works. Our bodies need water to live, right? It’s among the most basic of needs.

We wake up in the morning, and we need water because our bodies have become dehydrated over night. 

Our need for hydration has produced an tremendous amount of innovation. The Romans built the aqueducts, which transformed their empire completely.

This is an example of our tendency to find ways to meet our needs in the most convenient and fastest ways possible.

We do the same thing with our wants. At some point in history, humans discovered that our bodies really love sugar. They may not have known it at the time, but our bodies can’t survive without sugar. 

While we need sugar to survive, we do not need it in the ways we often now get it. Refined, mixed with fat in the form of ice cream or chocolate bars. 

We have done with sugar what we do with so many things. Fellowship around story-telling has been transformed into instant-access entertainment in our pockets.

Our tendency is to take what is good and make it instantly available and thus over-indulge in these things.  

God made us to love good things, but our nature is impatient and self-indulgent. We distort the good that God has made because we have gone wrong ever since Adam and Eve ate the fruit that God told them not to eat. They believed a lie about how they can get what God is offering. 

That is the sin nature. And out of that nature, we do sinful things. We chase after our cravings and in the process we do harm to ourselves and others.

This is a sobering thing to think about, and it should be. But, there is hope because God has made a way for us to have new life.

Through Jesus, we go through a process that eventually will lead us to an eternity in which nothing is wrong and everything is right. 

This process includes the perfect life that Jesus lived. He did not have a sin nature because God, through the Holy Spirit, is the source of the conception of Jesus. His DNA is different than ours. This is what it means in John 3:16 where it says that Jesus is God’s one and only son. We are all created by God, but Jesus is born of God. He is the human we will all need to become in order to live perfectly. His humanity is not corrupted by sin. 

Before we can become like Jesus in his perfect humanity, we need to be purified, forgiven, and brought into fellowship with God.

This can happen because Jesus died, offering himself as a perfect sacrifice, which paid the price that we should have paid for our sin, which is the price of death. But, his death is our death. 

But, if Jesus would have stayed dead, that would have been the end of the perfect human. Our sins would have been paid, but we would not have the opportunity to be made new. Jesus came back to life, and his new life is our new life.

How does this affect us? It has an eternal effect and an immediate effect. The eternal effect is that we will experience life as it was meant to be. A perfect life in a perfect world.

The immediate effect is that we can experience an increasing measure of fullness in our lives. As John writes, we may still sin, but our nature is being renewed by the light of God shining in our lives. When we mess up and give in to our sinful nature’s cravings, Jesus will purify us and bring us back into fellowship with God.

Our sin no longer holds us back. We are not walking in darkness. We can have fellowship with God, which means we can know and experience his goodness. 

This passage ends with the words, not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world. This means that all these promises are available to everyone, no matter how far they have gone into the darkness. God can bring them into the light.

I want to end with what you can do with this information. This is not about application, but about transformation.

Two main things: 

First, remind yourself of this truth regularly. Do this by being among God’s people, here at church and during the week. We are forgetful people, so in order to be transformed by the truth, we need to be immersed in it.

Second, be a forgiving person. First, with yourself, and then with others. Agree with God when he says that you are forgiven. Receive this forgiveness with gratitude. And out of that gratitude, forgive others. 

Let’s pray.

Scripture References
1 John 1:5-2:2
Matthew 10:34-35
Colossians 1:15-17
John 1:4-5; 8:12

Other Resources
The Prodigal God, Timothy Keller
The Epistles of John, Howard Marshall
1, 2, 3 John (New American Commentary), Daniel Akin