Principles Of Fellowship With God Series

Scripture

I recently started a sermon series on the Letters of John.

False teaching was infiltrating the churches in the region of Ephesus for which the Apostle John was responsible. The false teachers were teaching that they had a knowledge of God that was available only to the spiritual elite. Moreover, the false teachers were teaching that the body enveloped the spirit and that the deeds of the body could not contaminate the spirit.

This false teaching caused a stir in the churches for which John was responsible. He wrote his letters to do damage control, and also to set down correct teaching for believers.

In today’s lesson, John addresses the false teaching by setting down biblical principles of fellowship with God.

Let’s read about principles of fellowship with God in 1 John 1:5-2:2:

5 This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. 6 If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. 7 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 cleanses us from all sin. 8 If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. 9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. 10 If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.

2:1 My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. 2 He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world. (1 John 1:5-2:2)

Introduction

My undergraduate degree at the University of Cape Town was a five-year program. The first three years were full-time, and the final two years were part-time. We attended lectures for one and a half days a week, and the other three and a half days we worked as interns in offices scattered throughout the city of Cape Town. I had moved into an apartment with some classmates during my fourth year. I walked a few blocks to the Rondebosch train station and caught the train into Cape Town, where my office was located. One day at the train station, I met a man who was perhaps about forty years old. We struck up a conversation and I came to understand that he had some mild learning disability. Over time, he shared with me that his mother was ill, and it appeared to him that she was dying. However, he was attending a Christian Science Church, and they assured him that the human body and the entire material world were unreal. Therefore, they said, sickness cannot truly exist. I was so angry with the garbage that he was being told that was not allowing his mother to get treatment and that was breaking my friend’s heart.

Christian Science teaches a false gospel. And the Gnosticism of the false teachers that John was confronting also proclaims a false gospel. We see John’s pastoral concern for his flock in this first letter. He wants them to understand biblical truth and he wants to protect them from false teachers.

Lesson

First John 1:5-2:2 shows what is involved in having fellowship with God.

Let’s use the following outline:

1. A Statement About the Character of God (1:5)

2. Spurious Claims About Fellowship with God (1:6-2:2)

I. A Statement About the Character of God (1:5)

First, let’s note a statement about the character of God.

Question 4 in The Westminster Shorter Catechism is, “What is God?” This is a question that people have asked for millennia. It is an extremely important question because people want to know who or what is God. The answer given in The Westminster Shorter Catechism is, “God is a Spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable, in his being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth.” It is possible, however, to read this definition and come to know something about God and still not know God.

At the heart of John’s controversy with the false teachers was a clear understanding about who or what is God. John’s definition is both simple and profound. He writes in 1 John 1:5, “This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.”

The first thing I want to point out is that John did not make up this definition of God himself. He said that it was “the message we heard from him and proclaim to you.” John was one of the apostles who heard the teaching of Jesus. He was simply passing along to his beloved people what he heard from Jesus.