WALKING IN THE LIGHT (1:5-2:2)

QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION

1. What does John mean by 'God is Light, and in Him is no darkness at all'?

2. He says Jesus taught this - but when? Where do we find it in the gospels?

3. Is John being repetitive, or are his three statements about sin distinct? If so, how?

4. Should Christians be continually repenting & confessing, or is that lack of faith?

5. Is there a difference between repenting of sins, and repenting of sin?

6. How do we, though Christians, deny, or minimise the importance of our sins?

7. How can we develop our 'walking in the light', both in our personal relationship with God, and with each other?

NOTES ON THE PASSAGE

John's first key to fellowship with the Father and the Son, has to do with purity.

He is probably directly addressing characteristics and claims of the folk who'd left;

• hypocritical claims to deep fellowship with God, when in fact their lives are 'in darkness'

• claims to have reached a state of sinlessness - sinless perfection

• denial that sin ever existed in their lives

In each case, he first states the false view, then counters it with the truth.

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This is the message. John says, 'This is the message that we heard from Him, that God is light and in Him is no darkness at all'. There is no record in the gospels, of Jesus saying this directly. But Christ’s message in the Sermon on the Mount, was that God’s Law is about inner purity not just external rules and regulations.

After telling the woman caught in adultery, 'I do not condemn you. Go, and sin no more', Jesus said of Himself, 'I AM the light of the world. He who follows Me shall not walk in darkness but shall have the light of life' (Jn 8:12). His light offers grace, but challenges us to holiness. And disciples will find their consciences enlightened by the Holy Spirit, the spirit of Christ, within them.

Encountering the congenitally-blind man, He says, 'As long as I am in the world, I AM the light of the world' (Jn 9:5), and then, 'For judgement I have come into this world, that those who do not see may see, and that those who see may be made blind' (Jn 9:39). Just as looking at the sun can blind one for life, Jesus's light divides mankind into two camps: those who think they see but don't, and those who worship Him.

In His last appeal to the Jews, He says, 'A little while longer the light is with you. Walk while you have the light, lest darkness overtake you: he who walks in darkness does not know where he is going. While you have the light, believe in the light, that you may become sons of light' (Jn 12:35,36). And again, 'He who believes in Me, believes not in Me but in Him who sent Me. And He who sees Me, sees Him who sent Me. I have come as a light into the world, that whoever believes in Me should not walk in darkness' (Jn 12:44-46). Receiving the light of Christ is by faith, and we then become 'sons of light'; we become the light of the world.

God is Light. He is utterly pure, utterly holy. His Presence over the Israelite camp was manifest as shekinah glory. When Moses asked to see His glory, God responded by declaring His character: 'the LORD, the LORD God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abounding in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, by no means clearing the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children and the childrens' children unto the third and fourth generation'. (Ex 34:6,7). So the glory of God is His character: holiness and grace, hand in hand.

Paul says it is the 'God who commanded light to shine out of darkness, who has shone in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ' (2 Cor 4:6). 'We beheld His glory, glory as of the only-begotten Son. of the Father, full of grace and truth'. Jesus's character is God's character, in human form.

This is the light that John is referring to.

In Him is no darkness at all. If this is the light, what is the darkness he is talking about? What is sin?

The obvious answer, and one which John uses later (1 Jn 3:4), is that sin is lawlessness. Sin is breaking God's commands. Our minds immediately go to the Ten Commandments, and usually to the second tablet of stone: 'Thou shalt not kill, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not commit adultery', etc. But Jesus showed that each of these went far beyond the deed, to the heart. Murder is just the final outworking of anger and lack of forgiveness, for example. Adultery is the end result of looking at a woman lustfully. But whether or not desire has conceived and given birth to sin, whether or not sin has led to death (Jas 1:14-15), the heart's desire is sin in itself. It breaches the précis of the first tablet: 'You shall love your neighbour as yourself'.

The idea of practicing God's commandments is foreign to our libertarian culture. Yet Jesus taught that this was one form of abiding in Him (Jn 15:7,10) - in fellowship with the Father and the Son. And John will later emphasize this repeatedly (1 Jn 2:3,4; 3:7,10; 5:2,3).

But the second tablet of stone, is merely the outworking of the first: 'You shall have no other gods before Me. You must not make any idols, or worship them. You shall not take the name of the LORD your God in vain. Remember the sabbath day, and keep it holy.' Or in terms of the heart, 'You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and soul and mind and strength'. If these are the commandments of God, anything less than full-throated adoration and worship, anything which even marginally takes His rightful place, is sin. 'Anything which is not of faith, is sin' (Rom 14:23). For example, worrying about our financial security, or about food and clothes, is sin - because it is predicated on a belief that it's all down to us. Lukewarm worship is sin. Believing untruths about God - for example, seeing Him as a hard taskmaster - is sin.

However there is a third way of assessing holiness and sin, beyond external obedience to His commands and internal faith, love, and surrender to Him. The nature of sin, Paul says, is that we 'fall short of the glory of God' (Rom 3:23). The word for sin is an archery term, meaning to fall short or to miss the mark. If the glory of God is His character and attributes, anything less than Christ-likeness is sin. Any unlovingness, impatience, unkindness, untruthfulness, harshness, judgementalism, grudge-holding, disloyalty - anything less than the glorious character of God, as seen in Jesus, is sin.

When I was a child, my mother would get me to stand against the wall then mark and date how tall I had grown. As kids, we'd stand back to back with each other to see who was tallest. The work of ministry is to bring all the saints to 'the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ' (Eph 4:11-16). His fullness is a 'fullness of grace and truth'.

Brothers and sisters, "See what love the Father has shown us, that we should be called children of God! ...And it does not yet appear what we shall be, but we know that when He appears, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is. Everyone who has this hope in Him, purifies himself as He is pure." (3:1-3)

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John now lists three corollaries of the fact that 'God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all'. Each of these addressed a spurious claim of the 'super-apostles' and false teachers who had abandoned the churches:

1) Holiness matters. The Gnostic heretics believed that sin only affected the flesh, not the spirit - and thus didn't affect one's fellowship with God. But because there is no fellowship between light and darkness, we cannot have fellowship with God if we're living in darkness.

The Pharisees were outwardly legalistically righteous but inwardly full of lawlessness and uncleanness (Matt 23:25-28). Jesus repeatedly warned His disciples about letting this leaven of hypocrisy permeate their thinking. It is totally incompatible with fellowship with the Father, who sees all things.

And it's lying (1:6). We may get away with living a lie for years, if we ‘practice to deceive’ rather than practicing the truth (1Tim 5:24,25). But at Judgement Day the things we have done behind closed doors will be shouted from the housetops.

Walking in the light requires honesty about our shortcomings. Respectability is a fellowship killer. If Jesus spoke of cutting off your hand or pulling out your eyeball in order to avoid spending eternity in hell, how much more should we discard our respectability and confess?

John doesn't specify whether he's thinking of confession to God, or to man. The word's root meaning has to do with agreeing with God: accepting His opinion of our sins rather than continuing to justify ourselves, and agreeing that He is just when He judges them. Confession to one another is key to healing (Jas 5:16), but especially difficult for leaders. And safeguarding demands that the confidentiality of the confessional has limits. That said, there is wonderful fellowship in being able to unburden ourselves to one another: to be fully known, and not to have to hide.

The upside is that if we walk in the light as He is in the light, not only do we have fellowship with God, but we have wonderful fellowship with one another! And the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin. 'He breaks the power of cancelled sin, and heals the sin-sick soul'.

So does ‘walking in the light’ mean living sinlessly? Not at all...

2) Thinking we’ve arrived, is living in denial. 'If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves' (1:8). John knows there is no such thing as sinless perfection in this life. If we think we’ve achieved this, we are deeply self-deceived. Our growth into holiness has come to a grinding halt. The truth - that we are utterly dependent on grace - is not in us.  Christian maturity is marked not by complacency, but by an ever-deepening hunger for more of God (Phil 3:12-15).

Like Adam, our natural reaction when we've sinned is to hide from God and cancel our fellowship appointment with Him. 'The light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. Everyone practicing evil hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his deeds should be exposed' (Jn 3:19,20).   Walking in the light means exposing ourselves to the standard of holiness set by Christ’s life.

But it is not just exposing ourselves to a standard, but to a Person. "Let us be diligent to enter that rest ... for the Word of God is alive and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart. And there is no creature hidden from His sight, but all things are naked and open to the eyes of Him to whom we must give account." (Heb 4:11-13)

Engaging in fellowship with the Father and the Son can therefore seem very daunting, even though He says 'Come now, let us reason together. Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be white as snow'. My experience is that He is extraordinarily patient with me, and that usually His light brings gentle revelation and encouragement to be different. But on the rare occasion when He will not overlook something, 'it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God'. Thankfully, ‘there is forgiveness with our God, that He may be feared’ (Ps 130:4).

Imagine the relief David experienced, when he no longer had to pretend that Bathsheba’s baby was premature and Uriah’s death a regrettable tragedy of war. Inwardly his bones were aching and his heart groaning (Ps 32:1-7) but once he confessed, God restored his spirit and his role as a worship leader (Ps 51). His fellowship with God was restored.

Once again, John moves from negative to positive. As we set our minds on His glorious character, our value systems are changed (Col 3:1,5,12). We ‘put to death what is earthly’ by confessing our sins - agreeing with God that we were wrong and He is right. This involves repentance: changing our minds, and accepting what seemed good to us was in fact evil.

Confession brings thorough cleansing from all the resulting unrighteousness: both our guilt in God's eyes, and our guilty conscience (Heb 9:14). Jesus, our Advocate in heaven, pleads His propitiation - His blood sacrifice - before the Father; and our fellowship with Him is restored once again. (Christ's sacrifice was once for all, but He pleads its efficacy repeatedly.)

The blood of Jesus cleanses us from all unrighteousness. There is absolutely no trace left, in God'ss eyes.

Revivals usually start with Christians repenting of things they had hitherto thought unimportant. Often, the things that block our fellowship with God are not obvious to us. This may be because all the usual psychological mechanisms of denial, projection, and the like are in operation in our fallen thinking. But sometimes it is that we've never been taught about things like forgiveness, judging others, dealing with anger and lust, and so on. Or that even once we've dealt with all the inner roadblocks to our fellowship with God, we still have wayward hearts.

Roy Hession, who brought the lessons of the East African Revival to UK, wrote a book called 'The Calvary Road'. I quote: "If we are really open to conviction as we seek fellowship with God (and willingness for the light is the prime condition of fellowship with God) God will show us the expressions of this proud, hard self that cause Him pain. Then we can stiffen our necks and refuse to repent, or we can bow the head and say "Yes, Lord".

Self-examination must always use the right yardstick. If we measure ourselves against others, we can always find someone who makes us look good by comparison. If we measure ourselves against 'the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ' (Eph 4:13), it's a different matter. And even then, our reason will find ways of excusing our failures to match up. 'The human heart is desperately wicked and deceitful. Who can know it?' (Jer 17:9). We can but cry out to the Holy Spirit, "Search me, O God, and know my heart. Try me, and know my thoughts. See if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting" (Ps 139:23,24).

Mother Basilea Schlink advocated a life of continual repentance: her strapline was “Repentance - the joy-filled life!” If our concept of sin is limited to specific deeds, you might question whether Christians need to repent that often. But if sin includes attitudes such as bitterness and unforgiveness, wrong beliefs about God being a hard taskmaster, or prayerlessness as a marker of sinful independence from God, then continuous repentance is indeed appropriate.

Sin is the law that operates in our flesh, even once our minds have come to love the law of God (Rom 7:12-8:2); sins are the individual manifestations of it. The cure for sin, says John, is continual repentance for sins, as the Holy Spirit reveals them to us. Christ came to do away with sin (1 Jn 3:5). 'The law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus, has set me free from the law of sin and death. There is therefore no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, who walk not according to the flesh but according to the Spirit'.

Such ongoing repentance, experiencing the joy of blood of Christ cleansing us, and our relationship with the Father being restored and deepened, is the first of John’s keys to maintaining genuine Christian experience of fellowship with God.

3) Refusing the Holy Spirit's prompts, is rejecting God's voice. "If we say we have not sinned, we make Him a liar, and His word is not in us" (1:10).

Believing or pretending that sin doesn't cut us off from fellowship with God, is a lie. Refusing to accept that we are sinners by nature, is self-deception. And thirdly, John says, denying that we have sinned in practice means denying God's word and effectively calling Him a liar.

For the heretics to claim not only that they are now sinless, but that they never sinned in the past, is a total rejection of the gospel.

But this verse applies to us, too. The Holy Spirit is the Spirit of holiness. He not only guides us about our present choices, giving us either peace about something or a 'check' in our spirit; He also seeks to bring cleansing from past unrighteousness, and to show us false beliefs and any roots of unholiness in our hearts. When He shows us something, it is vital to our fellowship with God that we accept what He is saying.

If we give a friend advice about something, and they choose to ignore it, inwardly we think 'That was a waste of breath!' and we withdraw from offering any further guidance.

During a siege of Jerusalem, when Isaiah approached King Ahaz who was inspecting the city's water supply, he prophesied the siege's failure and invited Ahaz to ask for a confirmatory sign. But Ahaz refused, and instead stripped the Temple of gold to buy help from the King of Assyria. Isaiah described this event as 'refusing the waters of Shiloah which flow softly' (Isa 7:1-12; 8:6) and prophesied future disaster as a result.

And when Elijah seeks a powerful new revelation from God on Mount Sinai, God's reply is not in the fire, or the earthquake, or the wind - but as a still, small voice.

Learning to listen for the whisper of the Holy Spirit, is key to living in fellowship with the Father and the Son.

John immediately adds a caveat. His motive in writing is not to persuade them that sin is inevitable and thus normal, as the Jews believed - but to encourage and empower them to live free from the law of sin and death. Nevertheless, the reality is that Christians do sin.

Thank God, we have an Advocate in heaven as well as an Advocate on earth! Jesus Christ, the only righteous Man, is Himself the propitiation for our sins. Propitiation is more than atonement. Atonement means covering over sins, as the ark's covering was covered with blood once a year. But propitiation means removing wrath and restoring relationship!