Preached 10/16/22 [previous sermon]
1 John 1:4-7
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
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:
- It means that a saved Christian can lose their salvation,
- It means that a saved Christian can get into a “carnal” state that breaks our fellowship but not our salvation, or
- 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.
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