A. Good Morning! May God’s blessing and power be with every one of us this morning!
1. Praise Him for all He has done, for all He is doing, and for all He is going to do! Amen!
B. We are just beginning a series on the book of 1 John that I’m calling Walking In The Light.
1. Last week we looked at the first four verses of 1 John which are the prologue.
2. We noticed that John was trying to lay a foundation for the rest of the letter.
3. He declared his Mandate to write - which is the fact that he is a witness. He had heard, seen and touched Jesus.
4. He declared his Message - which is Jesus the Word of Life.
5. And He declared his Motive – that we might have fellowship and joy.
C. In this little letter of John’s he is going to be presenting two primary truths about God.
1. The first is that God is Light.
a. He begins that presentation in chapter 1, verse 5, “This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all.”
b. John is going to deal with this truth about God beginning in 1:5 all the way through 3:10.
c. Basically, John is going to say “God is light and we should walk accordingly.”
2. The second truth about God that John will present is that God is Love.
a. 1 John 4:8 reads, “Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love.”
b. This theme actually begins in 3:11 and continues through 5:12.
c. Basically, John is going to say, “God is love and we should walk accordingly.”
3. Think of light as foundation and love as structure.
a. Or see light as a summary for right thinking and love as the summary for right living.
b. And keep in mind always that the two are never separable in John’s understanding of the holy community that is Christ’s church:
c. People who live in the light of God’s message manifest their love for one another in practical ways.
d. Or, to say it in the negative: Anyone who does not exhibit love within the community of faith has not yet seen the light of the gospel.
D. As we study this letter it will become obvious that there are some opponents whom John is combating.
1. Just who were these opponents? It really is hard to say.
2. My personal opinion is that they were a hodgepodge of people and not some officially organized group.
3. These people were so steeped in what was a very common Greek worldview of the time that they recast the original message about Jesus into their own familiar categories.
4. This worldview embraced a sharp distinction between spirit and matter – believing that a true philosopher, the lover of wisdom, would invest himself in intellectual pursuits and care little about the physical things of this world.
5. The one thing these varied philosophies had in common was a sense that God, a pure spirit, indescribable light, and absolute truth, was detached from the physical world.
6. So the very idea of an incarnation of God in the person of Jesus of Nazareth was contemptible to many of these people.
E. For instance, Porphyry (poor-for-ee), a third-century scholar who helped found what we call Neoplatonism, was emphatic about the irrationality of a divine being entering flesh.
1. He wrote, “How can one admit that the divine should become an embryo, that after his birth he is put in swaddling clothes, that he is soiled with blood and bile, and worse things yet?” (Against Christians)
2. The thought of such a thing was absurd, childish, and anti-intellectual. But that is exactly how the story of Jesus begins, is it not?
3. Porphyry’s statement is rooted in ideas already circulating among many of John’s peers.
4. John will call them anti-Christs: “Many deceivers have gone out into the world, those who do not confess that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh; any such person is the deceiver and the antichrist!” (2 John 7; cf. 1 John 2:22; 4:1-3).
F. Such a false view of the nature of God has obvious implications for ethics.
1. If God is hostile to matter and detached from physical experience, anything human beings do in their bodily life is ultimately insignificant.
2. There were various schools of thought that would have had no problem whatever with this motto: Pursue God with your mind, and satisfy your passions with your flesh.
3. Irenaeus, a second century church leader, tells us that they declared that a truly spiritual man was quite incapable of ever incurring any pollution, no matter what kind of deeds he did.
G. John was clearly horrified by this sort of reinterpretation of the person and work of Jesus.
1. He knew it would have both doctrinal and moral consequences for anyone who bought into such a heresy.
2. In today’s text, we begin to grasp how seriously John took the matter.
3. We hear him preaching against the elitism, arrogance, and divisiveness these people have introduced into the community of faith.
4. And we hear him clarifying an orthodox Christian position over against these pseudo-intellectuals who cannot find it in themselves to remain with “the word of life” delivered to them earlier.
H. Let me put it this way: Both John and his opponents would say that sin doesn’t look the same in light of the gospel, but they would mean something very different by the claim.
1. The false teachers would say, “Sin isn’t what it used to be! It doesn’t mean anything, and we don’t have to battle our addictions, discipline our lusts, or frustrate ourselves in a pointless pursuit of holiness.”
2. John would say, “Sin isn’t what it used to be! Jesus has brought pardon and broken its power over us, and the key to holiness is not to deny our vulnerability to sin but to confess it humbly before both God and one another.”
I. John uses a formula in this section to introduce the statements and claims of the false teachers whose influence he fears.
1. That formula is interesting in itself.
2. He could have said “If someone says...” or “If some among you say...”
3. Instead, his formula is “If we say this or that...”
4. This is not merely an “editorial we” as opposed to the first-person singular.
5. It is part of his emphasis on the fact that Christ’s church is a fellowship, a body in which each member is a vital part.
6. So there is really no such thing to John as personal views that don’t matter to the group, no such thing as individual behaviors apart from their impact on the full association of believers.
7. This is not only important to keep in mind for interpretive purposes but for the sake of how we should see ourselves as a community of faith here at Wetzel Road..
J. We notice that the teachings of those false teachers are presented in verses 6, 8, and 10.
1. And then we notice that the positive truths that John affirms in response to them are in verses 7, 9 and 2:1-2.
2. The entire section is set against this background: “This is the message we have from him and proclaim to you, that God is light and in him there is no darkness at all” (1:5).
K. In the Old Testament writings that John knew so well, there is no better figure to sum up God’s self-disclosure than light.
1. There is the brilliant cloud by day and fire by night guided Israel in the wilderness; it illuminated their path.
2. Thus David would sing: “Let the light of your face shine on us, O Lord!” (Psa. 4:6).
3. And still another psalmist wrote: “O send out your light and your truth; let them lead me; let them bring me to your holy hill and to your dwelling” (Psa. 43:3).
4. In the Fourth Gospel, John himself writes of Jesus, and says: “The true light, which enlightens everyone was coming into the world” (1:9).
5. And he quotes this claim from Jesus’ lips: “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness but will have the light of life” (8:12).
L. Therefore, the first half of 1 John is focused on this theme of light.
1. It is an exploration of what is involved in true enlightenment – knowing God, having fellowship, confessing the Son of God, and dealing with sin.
2. John directly confronts his opponents’ very different view of divine light and human enlightenment.
M. In verse 6 he says, “If we claim to have fellowship with him yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not put the truth into practice.”
1. John’s opponents were claiming that walking in the light of spiritual enlightenment meant escaping the mundane world and its obligations.
2. Therefore, what they did by way of drugs or drunkenness, lust or lewdness, materialism or money-grubbing was irrelevant to their status as spiritual persons.
3. John’s reply to such an approach said that the church would fail the practical test of faith by walking in the darkness of such ungodly behaviors.
4. More than that, we would be lying to ourselves and others to think or say that some set of superior doctrinal insights somehow relieves us from the duty of imitating the purity of Christ in our behaviors.
N. In verse 8 he says, “If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.”
1. In the view of the false teachers, sin just isn’t what it used to be for anyone who has their enlightenment! It isn’t a problem anymore. It is no longer a threat.
2. We can practically hear John laughing at such a claim as he calls it either self-deception or a deliberate lie for someone to make such an absurd claim.
3. But ultimately, it is not a laughing matter!
O. Then in verse 10 he says, “If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar, and his word has no place in our lives.”
1. Isn’t this outrageous - some of those false teachers were even willing to tell themselves and others that they had never actually been guilty of sin at all!
2. You can just hear them: “Once you understand the true nature of enlightenment and grasp the fact that these once-taboo experiences are simply the natural and expected – programmed-by-God – responses of our bodies to physical things, you realize how incorrect it is to call these things ‘sin,’ do you not?”
3. John’s response to this view is harsh: Anybody who says that is simply calling God a liar and showing that he does not know the gospel.
P. What I hope we will realize is that the kind of thinking exhibited by these opponents of John are very much like the thinking embraced by our culture today.
1. It seems that humans are always changing life’s price-tags and calling good evil and evil good.
2. In our time, the prevailing culture tolerates and teaches worldviews that confuse our children, excuse inexcusable behaviors, and create a moral/spiritual environment that is hostile to God.
3. For example, our own culture has pulled off a slick caricature of Christianity as hypocritical, judgmental, and emotionally unhealthy.
Q. This is done in order to affirm that the only truth is that which we create for ourselves and that the old moral taboos must be banished from our world.
1. Notice how everything has been redefined: premarital sex is a rite of passage, homosexuality is only an alternative lifestyle, and adultery is my right to be happy.
2. Stealing is the understandable response of have-nots to the cold, unfeeling “haves” of our time.
3. Why not cheat on your taxes, your expense report, or your insurance claims? Everybody else does.
4. And, besides, government, the people we work for, and big corporations are ripping us off!
5. Drugs should be legalized. Pornography is free speech. Abortion isn’t murder, it’s just a choice.
6. And the only things anybody can be dogmatically certain of is that dogmatic certainty about anything is perverse!
7. Do you see how John’s sense of horror at what was happening in his time and place are very relevant to what is going on in our own?
R. For instance, Abercrombie & Fitch defends soft-core pornography as the staple of its advertising with this statement: “We market to twenty-somethings. That sort of ad catches their attention. We expect older people to be offended by our strategy, but they’re not our target market.”
1. Several years ago, they marketed thong underwear to ten- and twelve-year-old girls with the words “eye candy” and “wink wink” printed on the front.
2. The company said, “The underwear for young girls was created with the intent to be lighthearted and cute, any misrepresentation of that is purely in the eye of the beholder.”
3. Do you hear what they are saying? “Anybody who dares object to selling backless underwear to fourth-graders has a dirty mind.”
S. How did John respond to his opponents who had twisted and undermined the gospel?
1. In verse 7 John declared, “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 every sin.”
2. For anyone who is walking in the light of the gospel, sin is not something to deny or minimize but must be taken very seriously.
3. What we do in our bodily existence does matter. Sin is both against God and against the faith community in which God has placed us.
4. Therefore, a truly enlightened believer has turned from darkness toward the light, is moving toward God in partnership with his brothers and sisters, and is experiencing an ongoing cleansing from sin through the power of Christ’s blood.
5. Far from denying our sinfulness, we must sense it all the more acutely, precisely because we are standing in the radiant light of God’s holiness.
6. But at the same time we put our trust in what God has done for us in providing atonement for our sins at Calvary.
T. In verse 9 John writes, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.”
1. As long as we, Christians, are spiritually sensitive enough to confess – not deny, not minimize, not explain away – our sins, the divine promise is that they will not be able to bring us under condemnation.
2. And isn’t this ironic. The worldview of fleshly, arrogant, spiritual elitism that eliminates sin as a category or practically forces one to live in denial of it, keeps a person under sin’s control and condemnation.
3. But in contrast, sin loses its power only when we name it, recognize its damning power, confess our inability to undo it, and lay it at the foot of the cross.
4. And there our faithful and just God supplies pardon for what is past and power for what lies ahead in overcoming it.
5. The primary human need with regard to sin is simple honesty about our powerlessness in the face of it, and humble dependence on God alone for pardon, renewal, and victory over it.
U. Finally, in chapter 2, verses 1 and 2, John writes, “My dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin. But if anybody does sin, we have one who speaks to the Father in our defense—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.”
1. The ideal for my life as a Christian is to hate sin, to avoid sin, and to not commit sin.
2. The reality for me is that I do still sin.
3. And for a confessing sinner like me, the role of Jesus as my “advocate” is the key to everything.
4. The original word here is variously translated “propitiation” (KJV) or “atoning sacrifice”(NIV).
5. It signifies that the death of Jesus accomplished everything that was necessary to remove our guilt, change our relationship with God, and give us confidence about the future.
6. Jesus speaks up as our advocate, our defense counsel, our helper; to affirm that we do not belong to Satan; but that we have been bought for God by Christ’s blood (1 Cor. 6:20).
7. Praise God that our standing with God is not based on our flawed performance but on Christ’s completed work of redemption.
V. What paradox there is to the gospel of Jesus Christ!
1. To be exalted, we must humble ourselves. To live, we must die. To be set free of sin, we must admit how vulnerable we are to it.
2. Because we participate now in the community of light, and are walking in the light, sin does look different to us.
3. What can still seduce and entrap is now something that we hate.
4. And when we succumb to temptation, we feel more grief than excitement, more remorse than desire to continue in it.
5. And by battling it confessionally rather than living with it secretly, its hold is gradually broken.
6. Because of Christ’s death for us, and defense of us, sin cannot defeat us unless we let it.
W. So, let me ask you…
1. How is your walk with God?
2. How humbly are you addressing your temptation and sin?
3. Are you denying it? Are you rationalizing it?
4. Far better that we admit our weakness and failure and sin, and that we walk in the light!
(Resource: Sermon by Rubel Shelly, “Sin Isn’t What It used to Be.”)
