Walking in the Light of God

Preached 10/16/22  [previous sermon]

1 John 1:4-7

[audio] 

 

INTRODUCTION

 

Last week we started a journey through the book of first John.  This tender letter from the apostle John to his children in Christ is very much like medicine.  It is like a soothing, healing balm for the soul of a believer looking for assurance.  It is like a course of super-vitamins that reinforce the power of purpose in the believer’s life.  It is like a blood transfusion for the believer that is anemic from trying to live for Christ all alone.  

 

But - it is also like a vaccine – a protection against false doctrines about God - especially about Jesus Christ and his ministry – that might try to invade the church.  And it is like an antibiotic against the infection of false assurance in a person who has believed in vain.

 

We might be surprised, especially in our modern day of “if you prayed this prayer you have eternal life”, that there is such a thing as “believing in vain”.  But this idea is not unique to 1 John.  Jesus, in the sermon on the mount, gave a stern warning to those whose religion was in vain:

 

Matthew 7:21-23   ²¹ "Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter the kingdom of heaven, but the one who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. ²² On that day many will say to me, 'Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?' ²³ And then will I declare to them, 'I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.'

 

Paul more than once admonished people in his letters to check their own spiritual bone fides, for instance:

 

1 Corinthians 15:1-2  ¹ Now I would remind you, brothers, of the gospel I preached to you, which you received, in which you stand, ² and by which you are being saved, if you hold fast to the word I preached to you--unless you believed in vain.

 

1 Thessalonians 3:5   For this reason, when I could bear it no longer, I sent to learn about your faith, for fear that somehow the tempter had tempted you and our labor would be in vain.

 

But wait!  Doesn’t this contradict the clear doctrine that we preach, that salvation is by faith and not by works?  As Paul would say; “MAY IT NEVER BE!”  There is no human work that earns us even a millionth of a percent of our salvation, period.  It is all bought by the blood of Christ.  John, James and Paul are not talking about checking to see if there are works that you can point to as part of what earned you your salvation.  No!  The key to understanding here is seen all over scripture.  As Paul wrote:

 

2  Corinthians 5:17b-18a   “… if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.  All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself…”

 

So a Christian is a new creation.  We can read as far back as the book of Jeremiah that God had promised to take out our hearts of stone and give us a new heart of flesh as part of the new covenant.  Do Christians still sin?  Of course.  John will make it clear in just a few verses that only a self-deceived person would believe otherwise.  Think of Paul, who called himself the “chief of sinners”, and we read about his distress about this in Romans chapter seven.  But nobody would ever claim that Paul had not changed since his pre-conversion days.  And the same was true for Peter, James, and definitely John.  When we are saved, it is inevitable that there will be changes.  If salvation occurs, there must be changes.  It is inevitable because it is miraculous, just like the act of justification is.  Paul, right before he affirms that salvation is entirely by grace, puts it in this amazing way:

 

Galatians 2:20   I have been crucified with Christ. It is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. And the life I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave himself for me.

 

And if salvation means being made a new creation and being given a new heart, and, especially, becoming the temple of the Holy Spirit of God, then this will definitely show.  Period.  And we can know that we are born again if these signs are present, as John puts it in chapter three:

 

1 John 3:19-21  ¹⁹ By this we shall know that we are of the truth and reassure our heart before him; ²⁰ for whenever our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart, and he knows everything. ²¹ Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence before God;

 

And John wants all believers who read this book to have that confidence and joy!  So he gives all believers a litmus test to be able to see the working of the Spirit in our lives.  And as we discussed last week, the marks for assurance of salvation are these three:

 

·         We BELIEVE – His Truth  (the doctrinal test)

·         We OBEY – His Commandments  (the moral test), and

·         We LOVE – His Children  (the social test)

 

So let’s get to our text for today:

 

 

I  The Joy of Fellowship (3-4):

 

John opens this letter with joy.  But this joy is not a foggy, disembodied sense of euphoria.  It is the result of an amazing truth.  And, by the way, this is always the kind of joy that we are promised as followers of Christ.  When Paul commanded the Philippians to “Rejoice!” it was not an empty admonition, but it was given with instructions about how to experience it: by giving thanks to God and thinking of “whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable”, etc.  Jesus Himself said “Rejoice and be glad”.  But He gave a reason: “for your reward is great in heaven.”  In fact, a great bible study would just be to grab a concordance and look all through scripture for passages that call for rejoicing and catalog the many reasons for doing so.  One thing you will notice with a lot of these are that they are mixed with circumstances that we rejoice in spite of.  But the reasons for rejoicing are always better and more lasting than those that might keep us from wanting to – if our eyes are on the real prize.  So in that light, John writes this:

 

1 John 1:3-4  ³ that which we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you, so that you too may have fellowship with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ. ⁴ And we are writing these things so that our joy may be complete.

 

John wants all of his spiritual children to experience joy.  And as his great-great-great-great … grandchildren we are included in these wishes so we do well to listen here.  And part of the lesson in these verses is that joy is meant to be shared.  It is a group phenomenon.  John wants to have joy, and he wants to experience it with others.  By the way, he echoes Jesus’ heart, who said:

 

John 15:11 These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.

 

So here in 1 John the apostle writes to us for the purpose of creating joy.  And this joy is for him and for us.  Is that selfish?  Shouldn’t we be selfless when ministering to others?  But no, both John and our Lord are not only motivated by the desire for the joy of others, but also for their own joy.  We should come to church and serve others for the sake of our own joy.  And joy is multiplied when it is shared by those we love.

 

Now think about this: since all Christian rejoicing is for cause, what is the cause here?  It is fellowship.  Remember from last week that the Greek word koinonia does not refer to socialization, like we mostly use it in church today, but to the concept of partnering.  Koinonia was used for the relationship of marriage.  Now make no mistake - I really enjoy going to a restaurant or a movie with Donella, but that is not really a good picture of the koinonia that we enjoy.  What is meaningful to us (and gives us joy) is the home we have built together, the sharing of our hearts together, being able to bear one anothers’ burdens in love, the children we have raised and sent into the world together, and seeing the families that they have made and the fellowship that they have in their marriages. But the fellowship we enjoy as believers is even more amazing.

 

As children of God, John exults: “and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ.”  Think of all of the metaphors that God gives us in his word to describe the fellowship that He offers to us.  The church is “the body of Christ”, “the temple of the Holy Spirit”, “the household of faith”, the one “bride of Christ”.  We are “though many, … one body in Christ, and individually members of one another”; “in one Spirit we were all baptized into one body … and are all made to drink of one Spirit”.  The bible even says of Jesus “he is not ashamed to call us brothers”.  John underscores his amazement of it all later in this letter:

1 John 3:1-2  ¹ See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him. ² Beloved, we are God's children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared; but we know that when he appears we shall be like him, because we shall see him as he is.

 

With such a prospect, how can we call ourselves Christians and not want to partner with Jesus in building his church?  How can we claim to love Him but not want to join family discussions with Him – to learn his words and to speak together with Him?  How can we spend Communion times talking about movies and video games and other things of this world that will perish and not praise Him and encourage each other to love and devotion to Christ?  Do you ever wonder how someone like the apostle John would view our local church?  What would he write to us?  I actually think he would write the same thing that he wrote in 1 John to the churches in his day.  We need to remember what a privilege comes to us from Jesus and the Father and revel in our fellowship with God and with each other.  And experience joy!  Amen!

 

II  The Object of our Fellowship (5):

 

To fully experience this joy and understand what this fellowship entails, John goes on to describe God to us:

 

I 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.

 

This is an amazing picture of God.  In fact, John’s revelation of God is unique.  James M Boice wrote this about verse 5:

 

None of the other biblical writers tells us so much about what God really is as does the apostle John.  All of them tell what he does.  Some describe the glory that surrounds him.  But John tells w2hat God is in his true nature.  He does this in three striking definitions: God is Spirit (John 4:24), God is light (1 John 1:5), and God is love (1 John 4:8).  It is a characteristic of these three definitions that the predicates occur without the definite article.  We are told, then, not that God is the Spirit, the light, and the love or even, in all probability, a spirit, a light, and a love, but rather spirit, light, and love themselves.  In this we have the broadest and most comprehensive definition of God that can probably be devised in human language. [1]

 

But what does it mean when John says that God is light?  We are certainly reminded here of what John was shown on the mount of transfiguration, where the light of the Father and the Son were shining:

 

Matthew 17:2,5   And he was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became white as light.” then, after Peter spoke, “behold, a bright cloud overshadowed them, and a voice from the cloud said, "This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased; listen to him."

 

Light shows God’s glory.  Revelation 21 ends with this description of our eternal home in the heavenly Jerusalem:

 

Revelation 21:22-27  ²² And I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb. ²³ And the city has no need of sun or moon to shine on it, for the glory of God gives it light, and its lamp is the Lamb. ²⁴ By its light will the nations walk, and the kings of the earth will bring their glory into it, ²⁵ and its gates will never be shut by day--and there will be no night there. ²⁶ They will bring into it the glory and the honor of the nations. ²⁷ But nothing unclean will ever enter it, nor anyone who does what is detestable or false, but only those who are written in the Lamb's book of life.

 

So not only do we see that the light of God will literally be the only illumination we will need for eternity, but we also see at the end of that passage a second idea associated with the statement that God is Light.  It describes his holiness and his purity.  John underscores this by adding that there is no darkness in Him.  There is no impurity – no sin – no foulness in God.  He is glorious, and wants us to live in his glory, forever! 

 

Light is also associated with intellect, vision, and understanding.  The first words of God recorded in scripture are “let there be light!”  And Paul points out that every time a person is saved it is because God has repeated that command in 2 Corinthians 4.  Note what the source of that light is, and where it shines:

2 Corinthians 4:6   For God, who said, "Let light shine out of darkness," has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

 

Isn’t that glorious?  Though there are more other ideas from scripture than we could bring up in a sermon that lasted for 24 hours, I want to share three more.  Light brings life and warmth, but, as James, who refers to God as “the Father of lights”, points out, light also symbolizes his generosity and his unchangableness:

 

James 1:17  Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.

 

So if we are saved by the God of light, by shining the light of the glory of the face of his Son into our hearts, so that we might “let our light shine before men”, and that we might live in the light of his glory forever, what would be a sign that that had happened to us? Or that it hadn’t? 

 

Or to put it differently, if God is “the Father of lights”, what does that make us, as children of God?  How should we walk?  Paul writes:

 

1 Thessalonians 5:5  For you are all children of light, children of the day. We are not of the night or of the darkness.

 

and

 

Ephesians 5:8  for at one time you were darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light

 

This brings us to verse six, and the very first test in John’s epistle:

 

 

III  The Test of our Fellowship (6-7):

 

I John 1:6   If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth.

 

After reading that “God is light, and in him is no darkness at all”, it seems only natural that this should be the conclusion, right?  Or is this really a test of salvation?  There are several possibilities:

1. It means that a saved Christian can lose their salvation,
2. It means that a saved Christian can get into a “carnal” state that breaks our fellowship but not our salvation, or
3. It refers to someone that was never saved, which is demonstrated by the general direction of their life.

 

Now we can dismiss the first choice out of hand – even using scripture from John’s gospel, such as Jesus’ promise in John 10:28 where He says about his sheep: “I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand.”  We can also go to Romans 8:28-39 or Philippians 1:6 as some examples of scriptures that speak of the endurance of the saints.

 

This leaves us with a choice between options #2 and 3.  Either it speaks of “carnal Christians” or it is speaking of unsaved pretenders.  We might infer from 1:9 that John is merely speaking of the breaking of the enjoyment of immediate fellowship between God and one of his children but not the loss of salvation.  But the rest of the letter definitely tells a different story. But before we consider the entirety of 1 John, let’s look at the second half of John’s statement:

 

I John 1: 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.

 

Two things are immediately apparent: First, John is still talking about fellowship between believers as well as between God and the one walking.  When a believer sins, do they lose what they have in common with other believers?  If we use the word “fellowship” merely to describe socialization, then it might mean this, but when we consider what we read about the unity of believers through the baptism of the Holy Spirit into the body of Christ, and being members of one another, this option seems very unlikely.  The second part of verse seven really puts a nail in the coffin of the “carnal Christian” idea, though.  Who is the person who has had all sin cleansed by the blood of Jesus?  When Jesus was ready to give up his life on the cross, he said “it is finished”.  The writer of the book of Hebrews said of Jesus that “he is able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him…” (Heb 7:25)  Salvation is the complete package.  When we are redeemed, all of our sin is paid for.  As John will point out at the beginning of the next chapter, Jesus is “the propitiation for our sins”.  His sacrifice completely satisfied the wrath of God against us, and we were saved to the uttermost.  There ain’t more saved than that.  Contrary to the doctrine of the Mass, there are no more sins left to be paid for.  Jesus’ blood is completely sufficient.  We are not saved on the installment plan, and no sin is missed.  As Hebrews tells us

 

Heb 9:11a,12  “But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things that have come, …  he entered once for all into the holy places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves but by means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption.”

 

So we are left with the final option.  But wait!  We all still catch ourselves thinking bad thoughts and being selfish and lazy and lustful. We mistreat others, we give in to temptation, and we neglect our duties to God.  Every day, we fail to meet God’s perfect standard.  But we just learned that salvation covers all of our sins – past, present and future.  They are separated from us as far as East is from West.  So how can someone who claims to be in fellowship be a liar when this very letter admits that we sin?

 

One of the keys to understanding this passage is the word “walk” itself.  Walking often refers to a general mode of life – what characterizes one’s manner of living.  As Boice writes: “Here, to “walk in the darkness” means to sin habitually, the contrast being, not a sinless life (for John teaches that everyone sins, v.8), but a progressive growth in godliness.  The present tense indicates a continual practice of that which is opposed to God.”[2] In other words, John is referring to a general life direction or characteristic. 

 

This is also the mode used by John in the rest of this letter, where John refers to “continually sinning” and speaks of those who once attended church but are now absent.  The verbs are generally in a tense that is translated like “keep on sinning” and such.   In Romans 8 Paul uses a similar idea, describing saved people as those “who live according to the Spirit”.  Since he has just admitted in chapter 7 that he is frustrated with his lack of perfection, nonetheless he identifies those who are secure in their assurance of salvation in the sense of the direction and overall hatred of sin.  If we live according to the Spirit or walk in the light – and we keep doing it, this is evidence of our salvation.  If we walk in the darkness or live according to the flesh, then the Bible questions our confession.  As Jesus told Nicodemus:

 

John 3:19  And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil.

 

 

III Conclusion

 

So how are we faring?  What is the direction of our lives?  How are we doing against sin compared to a few years ago?  Are you closer to your heavenly Father each year?  More holy?  Less satisfied by the sinful entertainments of this world and more longing to spend time in God’s word or in prayer in the presence of God together with other believers?  Are you using your spiritual gifts to build up your local church, or are you counting minutes before you get to leave the building?  Do you secretly love darkness or is your walk one that pleases the Lord?

 

Like John, my purpose in preaching from this letter is not to cause believers to doubt their salvation, but to encourage us to live life in the light and to come to a full realization of the amazing privileges that they have in Christ.  Through Christ, we have fellowship with one another – and, amazingly, with the God of the Universe who is light!  He draws us into his glory to live forever in joy.  We are called to fellowship.  All in Christ will never be alone.  Ever.  This message is about joy.

 

May you have joy as you draw near to Christ and to his people.

 

Amen.

[next sermon]

---

[1] James Montgomery Boice, The Epistles of John, p28

[2] Boice, et. al., p31

A Life-Changing Encounter

Preached 10/9/22

1 John 1:1-3

[audio] 

 

INTRODUCTION

 

Have you ever met someone who profoundly changed the direction of your life for the better?  I remember a few in my life.  Back when I was in 7^th grade I once got a report card with 4 D’s* on it.  I was at a point that I just did not care much about school.  My best and really only good friend had moved away at the end of the previous school year and the only other friend (who was a fair-weather friend at best) was not interested in school.  I was pretty much alone at a bigger, new school, at the bottom of the totem pole (and constantly in terror of initiation at the hands of eighth graders), so I pretty much gave up on trying hard that year.  But I met a new friend that year (who later became my best man when I got married) who was the opposite.  He was completely obsessed with getting the best grades in his classes.  In eighth grade I got straight A’s for the first time, and maintained close to that through high school.  I’m sure my parents were overjoyed that I had found such a friend.  Of course, that pales in comparison to the girl I met during the later years of high school who brought love into my life and introduced me to Jesus.  That was pretty spectacular.  Oh!  And I met Jesus!  He paid for my sins, reconciled me to God, and gave me eternal life.  That was even more spectacular!  But I have yet to meet Him personally – which I am looking forward to by the way.

 

Well, imagine what it must have been like to meet Jesus personally, face to face on earth, before being saved!  Of course, not all people who met Jesus had their lives changed for the better.  Many rejected Him – even one from among his twelve apostles.  But the author of the book we will be looking at definitely did.  And that meeting was as precious to him 60-70 years later as it was at the beginning.  Of course the person we are talking about is the apostle John.

 

He was a fisherman who lived and worked on the northern shore of the Sea of Galilee. We don’t know too much about his previous life.  He and his brother were evidently devout in their Judaism and had probably become interested in John the Baptist’s ministry.  As fishermen had to be brave since their job there on the Sea of Galilee was a dangerous one.  We read in the bible that he and his brother James were known as “the sons of thunder”, which implies a sharp temper.  Even after following Jesus for a while they were still ambitious and hot-headed, though John seems to have been more of a listener than, say Peter (which is not much of a compliment).  But meeting Jesus made a change in him.  After the crucifixion and resurrection and ascension of his Master, he and ten of the other apostles went out and changed the world.  The humble fisherman is seen more than 50 years later pasturing the church in Ephesus in Asia Minor and ended up writing five books of the bible, being the third most prolific New Testament writer.

 

John stayed true to the end of his life, which was very long indeed.  After all the other apostles had been martyred for their faith John was still caring for others.  He became known as “the apostle of love” due to his constant repeating of Jesus’ command to love one another.  He remained humble, not even mentioning his own name in the gospel he wrote or in his first epistle.  In his gospel, he merely refers to himself as “the apostle whom Jesus loved”.  Now he wasn’t claiming any special status with that moniker – but it was the thing about Jesus that amazed him the most (as it should be with us).  Knowing Jesus loved him was enough for him.  This is certainly a change from the early days when he and his brother (and their mother) were asking Jesus for special positions in His kingdom!  In the end, the one for whom Jesus’ love was enough (and who related the humility Jesus showed at the last supper) showed his love for others, which we see in his first epistle where he tenderly refers to Christians in his care as “my beloved children”.  This leads us to “First John”. (or “one John” as it is evidently called in Scotland).

- - - - - - - -

I John is a book that defies easy analysis.  It lacks the straightforward flow from one point to another that we have been accustomed to in Paul’s epistles.  While Paul arranges his arguments in logical order, building arguments upon arguments, John’s first epistle has frustrated many preachers and commentators.  John MacArthur admitted that this book was more difficult of any of the other NT books to make an outline for.  One commentator noted over 50 years ago that the difficulty in systematically preaching through the book had led in his time to a paucity of systematic treatments of it.

 

In spite of this, the book is very relevant.  As one of the last NT books written, it gives us a picture of the changing challenges faced by the church at the end of the first century AD.  By the time John wrote his epistles and the book of Revelation he was the only apostle still alive, all the others having been martyred long before in service of their Lord.  I John fills an important place in our understanding of the doctrine of salvation, though different from Paul.  I think that it actually makes a good companion to the book of James – which was not written by John’s brother James who was half-brother to Jesus according to the flesh, which has at least some similar themes.  We can think of Paul’s epistles as teaching us about

• How to become saved, and
• How we should act once we become saved,

 

While John and James might be said to talk about

• What we should have been doing if we say that we are saved.

 

This may seem to be a minor distinction, but it is very important.  Many preachers choose this as the first book to preach from when they begin ministering in a new church.  It is also often preached through by ministers who have been called in to help failing churches recover and become healthy, functioning, biblical churches again.  It is an essential book of the bible for every Christian to read, know, and apply to one’s life.  But beware - it is like fire, and we will either be burned or refined to gold by it.

 

The style of John stands out.  MacArthur calls him the apostle “of Black and White”. While Paul logically deals with arguments that might be raised against his points and deals with thorny real-life issues and what we might refer to as “grey areas”, John speaks here in terms of absolute truth.  They may seem to be disagreeing with each other if we don’t take into account that Paul is often speaking of individual acts while John is speaking of habits and overall direction of life.  Yet in reality they don’t clash – Paul does warn us to evaluate our salvation (2 Cor 13:5) and John does deal with the fact that we still do actually sin (1:8-10). 

 

John is actually a very practical book.  Like James challenges Christians to show their salvation by their works (or be proven as frauds), John gives us actual tests.  Reading and understanding Paul’s writings requires us to pray for illumination to understand the mysteries of the gospel. But reading John requires prayer for a pliable, humble and obedient heart to obtain any benefits.  In the end, our prayers before reading 1 John should match those by David in the Psalms:

 

Psalm 86:11 Teach me your way, O LORD, that I may walk in your truth; unite my heart to fear your name.

Psalm 26:2  Prove me, O LORD, and try me; test my heart and my mind.

Psalm 139:23-24  ²³ Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts! ²⁴ And see if there be any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting!

Psalm 19:12-14  ¹² Who can discern his errors? Declare me innocent from hidden faults. ¹³ Keep back your servant also from presumptuous sins; let them not have dominion over me! Then I shall be blameless, and innocent of great transgression. ¹⁴ Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable in your sight, O LORD, my rock and my redeemer.

 

 

 

I  The Purpose of I John:

 

When trying to discern the purpose of a book in the bible, it helps if the author actually tells us.  But seldom does the author write it out specifically.  Jude certainly did, in his short book, when he wrote:

 

Jude 1:3  Beloved, although I was very eager to write to you about our common salvation, I found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints.

 

John was even more specific than Jude.  But before we read that, let’s consider the relationship between I John and the gospel written by John.  When we read the two books, we see that they go together very well.  Both start “at the beginning” with “the word”.  Both exalt Jesus.  John’s gospel ends with a statement that he was a witness of Jesus’ ministry, and the epistle starts with a statement of his being not only an eyewitness but also having heard and touched Him and therefore “testifying” and “proclaiming” that which he knew by experience. The gospel of John ends with this statement:

 

John 20:30-31  ³⁰ Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; ³¹ but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.

 

…whereas the epistle ends with this purpose statement:

 

I John 5:13   I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life.

 

So John wrote his gospel to unbelievers to draw them to Christ and be saved, while he wrote his first epistle to professing believers to give them assurance of their salvation.  As such, the gospel of John is filled with “signs”, whereas 1 John is filled with tests. There is another interesting difference between these two books of the bible, and it has to do with the person of Christ Himself.  The gospel of John argues for the divinity of Jesus – that as the God-Man He was fully God in the flesh, specifically the Son of God.  The epistle of John starts with Jesus as the Son of God and argues that Jesus was fully man.  This assures us that not only both of these are true, but important.  It also shows us the different types of opposition that the early church experienced during the first century.  (More about that later).

 

If you read through I John, you will notice that instead of laboriously building a long logical argument through the five chapters of the epistle, John instead cycles repeatedly through a few points.  Each cycle gets more detailed and pointed, but John is never vague or ambiguous.  Often the tests follow this form:

1. First, a claim that might be made by a false believer containing some version of “say”, like “If we say” (ch1), “Whoever says: (ch2), or “If anyone says” (ch4)
2. Second, a life characteristic that will not be true if the claim was true, like “walking in darkness” and refusing to call sin sin, not keeping his commandments, falling away from the faith (and the church), or hating our brother, sinning habitually or not loving our brother, not confessing the deity of Christ (that he is the Son of God) or His humanity (that He came in the flesh).
3. And third, a declaration that the profession of faith was false.  John is not shy – to those whose testimony does not match their profession, John calls them “liars”, “self-deceivers”,  being “in the darkness” and even names like “antichrists”, “murderers” and “children of the devil.”

 

But before we despair (or write off John as a judgmental meanie), remember that his purpose was that we should have assurance.  His other main purposes can be seen in 1:4 and 2:1:

 

I John 1:4    … we are writing these things so that our joy may be complete.

I John 2:1    My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin.

 

The tests of true salvation in John are expressed over and over, but basically come down to three:

1. Belief in the truth about Jesus (the doctrinal test),
2. Love toward our brothers (the social test), and
3. Obeying His commandments (the moral test).

 

These three points are summarized in the first two verses of chapter 5 of the epistle, which state

 

1 John 5:1-2  ¹ Everyone who believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God, and everyone who loves the Father loves whoever has been born of him. ² By this we know that we love the children of God, when we love God and obey his commandments.

 

So John wants us to believe, love and obey, and his purposes are that we will have joy, assurance, and holiness.

 

 

II  The Occasion of 1 John (vss1-2)

Now it is easy for us to understand the need for the importance of the doctrine of the deity of Christ, and also why that would be a stumbling block to potential believers (as it was for the Jews of Jesus’ day).  But it seems perhaps a bit strange that John would be concerned about the doctrine of Jesus’ humanity.  The people that Jesus spoke to during his earthly ministry had no problem with his being human.  And John had spent little time in his gospel addressing that, though he did make it clear in the first chapter:

 

John 1:14  And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.

 

So why the emphasis here, at the dawn of the second century, does John write an entire letter with the humanity of Jesus as a major theme that he calls part of a real, saving faith?  The answer is the collision between the gospel and something called Gnosticism.  I am not going to go too much into the history of Gnosticism, but it is important to know that one part of this doctrine went all the way back to the Greek philosopher Plato.  Plato had taught that all matter was evil and spirit was good.  This led to different schools of thought by the first century.  One extreme taught that since the spirit was good and the body was evil, the way to righteousness was to deny the lusts and emotions (sort of like Star Trek Vulcans) where others believed that they could indulge the flesh while the mind was separately pursuing high and lofty thoughts (or something like that).  But the important doctrine was the fact that matter was corrupt and unredeemable. 

 

So when Greeks became Christians there was a serious conflict.  They could believe that Jesus was a supernatural being, but the idea that He was a man was repugnant to their native philosophy.  We don’t know much about their faith.  James Boice writes this about them: “The Gnostics put themselves forward as being “the knowing ones”, which is the essential meaning of the word Gnostic, while at the same time insisting that salvation is primarily by knowledge, that is, by an initiation into the mystical and allegedly superior knowledge they possessed. In most forms of Gnosticism this meant that the importance of moral conduct was denied.  The Gnostic might say that he had no sin, or that what he did was not sin, or that he could have fellowship with God even though he continued sinning.”[1]  As we read through I John we will see him refute this doctrine specifically and he will talk about what we know about Jesus, himself being a physical witness. 

 

But Gnosticism was so ingrained as a philosophy that many tried to reconcile the gospel with it.  The infiltration of Gnostic teaching into professed Christianity as it spread was one of the first crises of the church, and John, the last living apostle of Jesus Christ Himself, wrote this letter to the churches to specifically refute and condemn its teachings.  Imagine having been appointed by Jesus to spread the gospel and then finding people who called themselves converts to Christianity trying to incorporate ideas and practices that denied major tenets of this young movement. 

 

Why would the humanity of Christ be important?  Consider this:  Jesus as a man was the descendent of David and heir to his throne.  He took a body to be able to die as our substitute on the cross.  His death was real, as was his resurrection, which was a proof of our salvation.  Consider what Paul writes:

 

1 Corinthians 15:3-4, 17-19  ³ For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, ⁴ that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures, ... ¹⁷ And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. ¹⁸ Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. ¹⁹ If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied.

 

Or what the writer of the book of Hebrews wrote:

 

Hebrews 4:14-16  ¹⁴ Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. ¹⁵ For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. ¹⁶ 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.

 

But the Gnostics taught that God could never have taken a body upon Himself and that the idea of the incarnation was impossible.  The “Christian Gnostics” explained the life of Christ by saying that the spirit of God temporarily rested on Jesus but left Him before the crucifixion.  So how does John address this?  STRAIGHT ON:

 

I John 1:1-2  ¹ That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we looked upon and have touched with our hands, concerning the word of life-- ² the life was made manifest, and we have seen it, and testify to it and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was made manifest to us--.

 

John says “Hey!  I was there!  We heard Him, we saw Him, and we TOUCHED Him even.”  In other words, the Word that he had introduced in his gospel, that was in the beginning, and was with God, and was God, was manifested to us.  Manifested here means to make evident or to make real.  Is Jesus real to you?  Francis Schaeffer once put it this way:

1. Do you believe that God exists and that He is a personal God, and that jesus Christ is God – remembering that we are not talking of the word or idea god, but of the infinite-personal God who is there?
2. DSo you acknowledge that you are guilty in the presence of this God – remembering that we are not talking about guilt-feelings, but true moral guilt?
3. Do you believe that Jesus Christ died in space and time in history on the cross, and that when he died His substitutional work of  bearing God’s punishmet against sin was fully accomplished and complete?
4. On the basis of God’s promises in His written communication to us, the Bible, do you (or have you) cast yourself on this Christ as your personal Saviour – not trusting in anything you yourself have ever done or ever will do?[2]

III  The Goal of 1 John (and Salvation): Fellowship (vs3)

 

The goal of this epistle is given in verse 3. “Fellowship”.  Remember that the biblical concept of death is one of separation.  God told Adam about the tree in the garden that “In the day that you eat of it you shall surely die”.  Now Adam and Eve lived many years after they ate, but they were immediately separated from their Creator by their sin, as evidenced by their hiding from Him and then being banished from the garden.  Paul wrote to the Ephesians about their state before salvation “you were dead in trespasses and sins”.  But then he described salvation as “God, being rich in mercy, made us alive together with Christ”. Without this life, our final destination would be “eternal destruction, away from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of His power,” (2 Thess 1:9b)

 

In answer to that, John says “We saw and touched the Word of Life.  We are proclaiming this Word to you with the end result that we will have fellowship with you and we all together will have fellowship with God the Father and God the Son, forever!”  Look again at the flow of the text of the first three verses of the book:

 

I John 1:1-3     ¹ That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we looked upon and have touched with our hands, concerning the word of life-- ² the life was made manifest, and we have seen it, and testify to it and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was made manifest to us--  ³ that which we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you, so that you too may have fellowship with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ.

 

Based on our usage of the word fellowship, we might assume that John is saying that he is joyfully looking forward to us getting together for a potluck and a movie night, right? Or could it mean more? Well, the word translated fellowship here does not mean socializing. It refers more to the concept of partnering.  The goal of the gospel is to build the body of Christ. 

 

Jesus prayed for nothing less as He prepared himself to go to Calvary:

 

John 17:20-24  ²⁰ "I do not ask on behalf of these alone, but for those also who believe in Me through their word; ²¹ that they may all be one; even as You, Father, [are] in Me and I in You, that they also may be in Us, so that the world may believe that You sent Me. ²² "The glory which You have given Me I have given to them, that they may be one, just as We are one; ²³ I in them and You in Me, that they may be perfected in unity, so that the world may know that You sent Me, and loved them, even as You have loved Me. ²⁴ "Father, I desire that they also, whom You have given Me, be with Me where I am, so that they may see My glory which You have given Me, for You loved Me before the foundation of the world.

 

This is the true meaning of the fellowship that we have in Christ.  John wants none of his beloved children in Christ to fall short of this.  This eternal, joyful unity and togetherness is the goal of salvation.  The alternative to being unified in the light is to be alone in the dark, and John wrote to his spiritual children to be together in joy forever.

 

III Conclusion

 

So the real question we have as we approach and read through this letter – have you had a life-changing encounter with the real, living, Lord Jesus Christ?  Well, John suggests some areas for self-examination.

 

• Do you love your brethren in Christ?  Or do you find excuses to spend as little time as possible with them or prefer the company of those who do not know Jesus?
• Have you degraded Jesus to be a creation of your own design – inoffensive to your own philosophy but ultimately impotent to save you or bring you to God?
• Is your life one of unrepentant, habitual slavery to sin?  Has your conscience been blunted by the sin in the world until you just don’t care?  Are you keeping the commandments of the Lord Jesus Christ, or are you coasting and living your own life for yourself with some idea that “God loves me so it doesn’t matter what I do?”

 

It is interesting, given our modern evangelism, that nowhere in 1 John did John include the test “did you pray the words of a canned prayer once?” or “did you raise your hand at a meeting when everybody’s eyes were closed and immediately pull it back down lest someone see you?” or even “did you join a church?”  Actually you will find none of these in the entire Bible.

 

Remember, the point of  1 John is not to exclude anyone, it is to give you joy and assurance. John wrote with great love and care. As he wrote: “I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life.”  His point will be to exalt Jesus, to cause believers to examine their hearts, and to purify the church.

 

Have you met Jesus?  Are you in fellowship with Him?  Partnering with Him?

 

[next]

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* Original sermon said “F’s” but the recollection was inaccurate – it was 4 D’s

[1] J.M. Boice, The epistles of John, p15

[2] Francis Schaeffer, The God Who Is There, p134-135