1 John 1:1–2:6 | God Is Light & Christ Is the Way
According to the Pew Research Center, the majority of our nation identifies as Christian, and, in some ways, it certainly seems Christianity is on the rise. Christian music is one of the fastest-growing genres, faith-based movies are on the rise, celebrities and major politicians are claiming Christianity, and there seems to be renewed interest in church and the Bible.
That all seems great on the surface, but things get confusing when you peek under the hood.
Because, while the majority of our population claims Christianity, you wouldn’t know it if you’re looking at what our culture actually loves, embraces, celebrates, believes, and how people live.
Roughly half of professing Christians are ok with beliefs, practices, and lifestyles that Scripture explicitly condemns.
Other surveys reveal that many professing Christians don’t believe that Jesus is God. Many believe God accepts the worship of all religions, and a majority of self-identified Christians think that a person who is generally good will earn a place in Heaven.
There’s widespread confusion about who God is, what Christianity is, and what it means to be in right relationship with God.
And there are no questions in the universe more important than those. You can get a lot of other things wrong and be fine, but if you get these questions wrong, that’s a problem, now, and in eternity.
We’re continuing our sermon series entitled “In Between”, where we’re walking through multiple books of the Bible, thinking about how the Christian is to live life in this time between the paradise that Man lost in Genesis and the future New Heavens and New Earth that awaits all of God’s people. The book of 1 John will be very helpful to us on that front.
It was written by the apostle John, probably to the church in Ephesus in Asia Minor, where a group of false teachers arose who distorted Christianity. They were arrogant, loveless, and they promoted an early form of Gnosticism.
Gnostic philosophy concerns “knowledge.” They believed they had attained secret knowledge beyond what the apostles taught. They proclaimed a different way to salvation, a different version of Jesus, and that, to really know God, you needed to be initiated into that secret knowledge. Almost like Christianity 2.0.
And things got so bad that it caused a split in the church, and they ended up leaving.
If you’ve ever been a part of a church split, you know how hard that is. Relationships are torn down, feelings are hurt, and people are confused. If the split is over doctrine, people can even experience a crisis of faith, unsure exactly what they should believe.
And John is speaking into this very difficult situation to wounded believers who have been devastated by it, with the goal of encouraging and comforting them and restoring their confidence.
I write these things to you…that you may know that you have eternal life.
(1 John 5:13)
The confusion sown by the false teachers had eroded their certainty about their spiritual condition and what’s true. If the Pew Research Center had taken a time machine to the first-century Ephesian church, they might have gotten the same confused answers as they did from 21st-century people.
And John’s going to take them back to the basics and reaffirm what Christianity actually is to replant their hope in what is good and right and true. To what end? John says in verse 4,
… we are writing these things so that our joy may be complete.
(1 John 1:4)
Evidently, the church had lost its joy, which makes sense. It’s hard to be joyful in the middle of a faith crisis following a church split, but John wants to restore the joy of their salvation as he reestablishes them in the gospel.
And that’s my prayer for you: that as we work through 1 John in the coming months, we’ll have greater clarity, confidence, and appreciation for the gospel, which will produce greater joy.
And in our text today, you have everything you need to know to be a Christian. If you want to get down to the essence of Christianity, the most important things are all here in 1 John. And in our text today, John shows us that…
Christians embrace the real Jesus (1:1-4)
Christians walk in the light (1:5-7)
Christians are honest about their sin (1:8-10)
Christians rest their hope solely in Christ alone (2:1-2)
Christians embrace the real Jesus.
In the 1st century and today, there’s confusion about Jesus, and John immediately cuts to the chase to bring clarity. He doubles down on two things. Jesus is God. And Jesus is Man.
John writes,
That which was from the beginning…
(1 John 1:1)
John tells us that Christ did not come into being as a little baby born in a manger in Bethlehem.
Instead, John speaks of Christ as one who was from the beginning. He’s alluding to the very start of the Bible story, where we are told that...
“In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”
(Genesis 1:1)
And John is connecting Jesus with that beginning. The beginning of time, of reality as we know it.
In another book, he wrote that we call “The Gospel of John.” He writes,
In the beginning was the Word (that’s Christ), and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
(John 1:1)
This verse points out that, though there is one God. He exists as three persons: God the Father, God the Son (you see both of them here in John 1:1…), and then there’s God the Holy Spirit, who’s mentioned elsewhere in the Bible. This is what theologians call the Trinity.
And John identifies God the Son as the “Word.”
Now, a “word” is something one shares to communicate or express oneself. And Christ, the Son, is the living expression and communication of God the Father.
Long ago…God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son…
(Hebrews 1:1–2)
Jesus is the ultimate expression of God’s character and ways. He’s not merely a prophet. He is, instead,
He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature…
(Hebrews 1:3)
There is no greater revelation of God that God can give you, outside of Christ.
For in him the whole fullness of deity dwells bodily,
(Colossians 2:9)
And that word “bodily” is important. Jesus, who is God, is also Man. The Son of God became a human! Again, John writes,
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—the life was made manifest, and we have seen it…
(1 John 1:1–2)
John is using sensory language. We heard him. We saw him. We touched him. he isn’t a spirit. He’s flesh and blood and bone.
John actually walked, talked, and shared meals with a physical Jesus, before and after Jesus’ death.
Now, gnostic philosophy held that the material, physical world was bad and only spiritual, immaterial things, like our spirits, were good.
And so the idea of a good God actually becoming matter. A flesh-and-blood man would have been scandalous to the false teachers in Ephesus. They believed Christ just seemed to be human, but he wasn’t really.
But they aren’t unique. For 2000 years, the doctrine of the Incarnation, that God became Man, has been a stumbling block for people because it doesn’t make sense, or it offends or threatens them.
John Piper puts it this way….
“…when we preach that Christ has become a particular man in a particular place issuing particular commands and dying on a particular cross exposing the particular sins of our particular lives, then the preaching ceases to be acceptable for many.
…if the doctrine is true, every single person in the world must obey this one particular Jewish man… And the particularity of his work and word flow out into history in the form of a particular inspired book…that claims a universal authority over every other book…
This is the stumbling block of the incarnation—when God becomes a man, he strips away every pretense of man to be God. We can no longer do our own thing…We can no longer depend on our own wisdom to find life, because this one Jewish man who lived for 30…years in a little country in the Middle East says, "I am the way, the truth, and the life.”
You see, we’re ok with the idea of a generic “God” somewhere out there as long as He doesn’t come too close to us…and we’re ok with a nice man that gives us some ethical advice as long as we don’t have to submit to Him as God.
So it’s not like “Oh, you believe this about Jesus, and I believe that, but it doesn’t matter because we all believe in Jesus in some way, right?” The Bible doesn’t give us that kind of wiggle room.
John says that we are proclaiming Christ to you… not the version of Christ preached by some. But the real Jesus, the God-Man, we are proclaiming Him to you. And why?
…we proclaim…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.
(1 John 1:3)
Now, when most Christians hear the word fellowship they’re thinking potlucks! Hanging out with our church buddies and watching football!
But this word fellowship is getting down to something deeper. It’s the Greek word “koinonia”…it connotes partnership. Union. Sharing something in common. It describes the most intimate bonds between.
And John is telling us that the way to that special fellowship with God and the Church is through believing John’s proclamation through receiving the apostolic testimony about God incarnate.
In other words, real Christians embrace the real Jesus, who is the God-Man. That’s what unites us to Christ and makes us part of God’s Church.
To try to remake Jesus and fashion Him into your preferred image isn’t to receive Jesus; it’s actually to disbelieve and reject Him.
And you cannot receive the benefits of Jesus while rejecting Jesus. John elsewhere quotes Jesus Himself as saying that,
…unless you believe that I am he (I AM), you will die in your sins.
(John 8:24)
So the stakes are high in what you believe about Jesus. They’re high for our Mormon friends who do not see Jesus as the one and only eternal God-Man.
They’re high for our Jehovah’s Witness neighbors who see Jesus as some sort of lesser being.
They’re high for Muslims who see Jesus as a prophet but not God.
They’re high for millions of Americans who are fine occasionally giving little shout-outs to Jesus as a good teacher, but will not bend the knee to Him as Lord and God.
And because the stakes are so high, may we grasp with increasing clarity who the real Jesus is so that we can join the apostles in proclaiming Him who is the Word of Life, so that others may receive the life and joy found in Him. Christians embrace the Real Jesus.
Christians walk in the light.
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.
(1 John 1:5)
Now, “light” in the Bible is associated with holiness and moral purity. Darkness symbolizes corruption and evil. Essentially, John is saying that God is absolutely good, with no bad in Him.
He’s not like the gods of Greek mythology, who were a mixture of good and bad.
Your eyes are too pure to look on evil…
(Hab 1:13)
For you are not a God who delights in wickedness; evil may not dwell with you.
(Psalm 5:4)
Other scriptures speak of God’s burning wrath towards the wicked and His love for righteousness, justice, and truth.
And as we’re thinking through what Christianity really is and what a real Christian is like, John wants us to start with the holiness of God. And the reason why becomes evident in the next verse.
If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth.
(1 John 1:6)
There will be some who say, “I have fellowship/koinonia with God. God and I have something in common.”
They’re going to claim fellowship with the God who is light, while walking in darkness. Now, to walk in darkness doesn’t simply mean to sin. We all sin. If John were just talking about people who sin, then none of us could have fellowship with God.
Instead, to walk in darkness connotes continuous, unrepentant sin and rebellion against God; the one who walks in darkness isn’t interested in fighting sin; they’ve made peace with it. They have a callous disregard for how God says we should live. Anyone who is like that, embracing darkness while claiming fellowship and union with the God of light, lies.
The Gnostic teachers in Ephesus would have thought that what they did with their bodies didn’t matter. “These old bodies are corrupt, and one day we’ll be free of them. But my inner spiritual self is the real me, and that will always be pure, so it doesn’t matter how much I sin with my body in the material world. I can do all the bad stuff I want and still be holy.”
Sounds like a good deal if you want to justify sin.
There are many professing Christians who are gnostic-like. They claim to be saved because a long time ago, when they were 5 years old, they prayed a prayer and asked Jesus into their heart.
Or maybe they had an emotional experience in the past, claiming to have encountered God.
But then they go on living with no interest in God. Walking in darkness, embracing sin, living like the devil for the next 50 years, but “Hey! I’m covered, I prayed the prayer. I asked Jesus in my heart. So back off about my lifestyle.”
I remember before I was a Christian, I thought I was a Christian. I would have claimed to believe in Jesus and the Bible. I sometimes listened to Christian music, but at the same time, I lived a life of debauchery. Sometimes I’d send up a little prayer to God to get me out of trouble, but after the crisis passed, well, wouldn’t you know it? I was still walking in darkness. Why? Because I was still an unbeliever.
I was like the people Jesus talks about in John 3,
…the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed.
(John 3:19–20)
But someone who has genuinely encountered Christ, really believes in Him, and has entered into fellowship with Him is changed and transformed. Jesus said,
I have come into the world as light, (and why? So that people who believe in me can just be the same as always and keep walking in darkness? No!) so that whoever believes in me may not remain in darkness.
(John 12:46)
The Bible knows nothing of a Christian who remains unchanged by the light. So while the unbeliever walks in darkness and has no fellowship with God, John says,
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.
(1 John 1:7)
What does it mean to walk in the light?
“I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”
(John 8:12)
Walking in the light simply means following Jesus with your life.
And by this we know that we have come to know him, if we keep his commandments. Whoever says “I know him” but does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him…By this we may know that we are in him: whoever says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked.
(1 John 2:3–6)
And here we need to be careful and understand what John is saying.
Walking in the light is not the cause of our fellowship with God; it’s the effect of it. What causes fellowship with God is our trust in Christ alone to save us, and then He begins to transform us into a people who walk in the light.
Neither is John saying Christians are perfect.
Salvation is not about perfection. It’s about a new direction. And the process of change is slow, sometimes much slower than we’d like, but make no mistake. God works a supernatural change in the believer’s heart, where the Christian is increasingly repelled by the darkness while walking more and more in the light.
But in that process of change, Christians still stumble and fall. Folks, I still blow it on a regular basis, and so do you. Christians can battle certain besetting sins for a long time, which is why it’s so wonderful that John reminds us that even through our failures,
…the blood of Jesus cleanses us from all sin.
That’s good news, because even the best of Christians are far from what they ought to be, and therefore,
Christians are honest about their sin.
If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.
(1 John 1:8)
John knows there will be people who are unwilling to see their sin and guilt before God.
Maybe the false teachers in Ephesus believed that, through their secret knowledge, they had entered a higher plane of existence in which sin was no longer an issue for them. They had no guilt. They were essentially innocent, no matter what they did.
Now, many people live this way. While few would claim to be perfect, many excuse or minimize their sin. Remember Ryan’s sermon last week from Genesis 3? After Adam and Eve sinned against God, they both admitted they ate the forbidden fruit.
But they tried to cover up and hide their guilt and pretend like it never happened. And even when a confession was dragged out of them, Adam blamed God and his wife. Eve blamed the devil; no one fully owned the heinousness of their sin.
They put on a front, claiming to be more righteous than they actually were. We do this all the time!
We say, “I’m sorry if my actions made you feel this way!”
“I never would have blown up like that if he hadn’t disrespected me!”
“Well, if those people at the beach didn’t dress like that, I wouldn’t be lusting after them.”
“Well, if I told the truth, it would hurt them, so I lied to protect them.”
We humans, spend a lot of time confessing that our sin is anything but sin.
And I know I said few would claim to be perfect, but you should know that in some churches, aberrant teaching has crept in, suggesting that Christians now, before heaven, can achieve sinless perfection. Watch out for that!
It’s said that a man who claimed to be without sin confronted 19th-century English preacher Charles Spurgeon. Spurgeon invited him over for supper, during which Spurgeon got up, took his glass of water, and threw it across the man’s face, to which this ‘perfectionist’ responded with the kind of rage and hostility that you’d expect from any sinner, to which Spurgeon replied,
“Ah, you see, the old man within is not as dead as you claim. He had simply fainted, and I have revived him with but a glass of water!”
Now, that might be an apocryphal story, but honestly, if anyone would do something like that, Spurgeon would! And while I wouldn’t recommend that technique for exposing someone’s sin, the point is well taken. We can put up this super-pious, self-righteous front. But sooner or later, something will expose us for what we really are.
There is this caricature of Christians that we think we’re better than everyone else. But John says the posture of a Christian is the exact opposite of proud self-righteousness. John says,
If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
(1 John 1:9)
A genuine Christian lives a lifestyle of regular confession. That’s part of what it means to walk in the light, being honest about our sin.
God doesn’t smash His people when they sin. He forgives and cleanses us from all unrighteousness, so we don’t have to hide in a cloak of self-righteousness as unbelievers do.
In Luke 18, Jesus tells a parable to those who trusted in themselves as righteous while looking down on others.
Two men went up into the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee…prayed… ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week; I give tithes of all that I get.’ But the tax collector…would not even lift up his eyes to heaven, but beat his breast, saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’ I tell you, this man went down to his house justified, rather than the other. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, but the one who humbles himself will be exalted.
(Luke 18:9–14)
Isn’t it interesting that the one who sought to justify himself before God walks away not justified, and the one who is honest and does not seek to justify himself IS justified!
But that begs the question… How does God do this?
If God is light. Absolutely holy. How can He justify the sinner and cleanse us of all unrighteousness?
Christians rest their hope in Christ alone.
My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin.
(1 John 2:1)
Now that’s important! While John has made it clear that in this life we can’t be sinless, he does believe we can and will sin less because our union with the God of light transforms and produces holiness in us.
But he knows that believers still stumble. And when that happens, what then?
When YOU fall into sin, what’s your response? Of course, we should be saddened and broken before God, but some Christians are plunged underneath a flood of fear, anxiety, and despair. They wonder about their standing before God, if He still loves them, if He’s still for them. Or maybe God will run out of patience and finally cast them aside.
“Well, I gave him 500 chances to beat that sin. But 501? That’s too many. I’m done with that guy.”
That’s some people’s vision of God, and so they live in constant fear. If that’s you, you need to lock in to the final minutes of this message. John gives a word of encouragement to troubled believers.
But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.
(1 John 2:1)
An advocate is one who comes alongside to help in times of need, who lends his voice to defend us. To speak on our behalf. It’s courtroom language.
In a courtroom, there are at least four people. The judge, the prosecutor, the defense attorney, and the defendant. And so envision yourself in God’s heavenly courtroom. God is in the judge’s chair. You’re the accused. Guess who the prosecuting attorney is? The devil!
Revelation 12 describes Satan as the accuser of Christians, accusing them before God day and night. Day and night?? That’s a lot of accusations! But truth be told, I’ve no doubt that Satan has a file on me this thick with all of the sins I’ve committed. He can spend many days and many nights accusing me of many things, and he would be right.
And of course, a guilty verdict means being cast away by God forever.
And here’s Satan throwing down stacks upon stacks of files chronicling all of my sins, filling up the room.
And, if this is like most courtrooms, I’ve got a problem.
Because the defense attorney typically defends the defendant on the merits of the defendant’s case, but I have no merit in and of myself. If I’m bringing my own record before the judge, I’m doomed.
And so are you!
And yet, John says you have an advocate. You have a defender pleading on your behalf. None other than the Lord Jesus Christ.
And here’s where things get a little different than the typical courtroom.
In a typical court, an attorney can’t be related to the judge, but in heaven’s court, it’s totally legal. Jesus, the Son, and God the Father are of one mind, on the same side, with the same goal, which is to rescue you from condemnation.
And because Jesus is not just a Man, He can stand before God in that courtroom because He, too, is divine.
But there’s more! In a typical court, it’s not allowed for the defense attorney to be related to the accused, but in heaven, this is totally legal!
And so Jesus can represent you as an advocate because He is fully Man and calls us his brothers. Only one who is both God and Man can stand between God and Man, representing both sides, bringing reconciliation.
And here’s the BIG difference between a worldly court and the heavenly one. Your defender is not arguing for your acquittal on the basis of YOUR merit; he’s arguing for it on the basis of His.
John says of Jesus Christ, our advocate,
He is the propitiation for our sins…
(1 John 2:2)
Which means that the wrath, the anger, the judgment of God that we deserve for our sins was turned away from us and poured out on Him. Jesus does something no normal defense attorney would ever do.
Jesus goes to the cross as Man’s substitute and representative, and ALL of the sins of His people were placed on Him. The stacks of files full of charges and accusations were put on Him. Our names were redacted from those files and replaced with Jesus’ name as if Jesus committed all those sins and crimes against God.
And the God of justice punishes each and every one of those sins in Jesus. Jesus suffered the full penalty. the full force of Hell itself. The banishment from God that we fear when we sin. He actually experienced that, so that we don’t have to.
This is why it’s important that Jesus is the God-Man. Because man sinned, a man must pay the price for sin. But only a perfect God can sufficiently pay that price, and now that the price has been paid.
All who would repent from walking in darkness, who would humble themselves and not try to justify themselves as if they had no sin or guilt, but would instead simply confess that they have sinned and deserve God’s righteous judgment, resting their hope solely in Christ alone for salvation, all who do that will be saved from God’s judgment because Jesus has taken on your sins and paid your fine.
And in exchange, He gives you His perfect righteousness, like brand new clothes, His clothes, and puts them on you. And so, now, in the divine courtroom, none of Satan’s accusations stick. It’s as if God the judge says, “What sin?” I see no sin. I see a righteous son and a righteous daughter who will forever be a part of my family. This child is innocent. Case dismissed.
This, brothers and sisters, is the solution to the dilemma of how God can be both just in regard to our sins, yet merciful towards the sinner.
And for some of you, this is hard to believe because you’re so overwhelmed by sinfulness. You’re thinking, “I’ve blown it so much this week. I sinned on the way to church this morning. I’ve sinned since I’ve been here this morning!”
Friend, if you get nothing else, get this. As much as 1 John will emphasize holy living, walking in the light, walking as Jesus does, John is equally adamant that you cannot hope in your own holiness. If you do that, you’ve totally missed the point of Christianity.
You’re not saved through your holiness. You’re saved by His holiness. His righteousness is placed on you that you simply receive by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone.
And so you do not respond to your sin through despair. You respond by confessing your sins and trusting in His sacrifice and His righteousness, because He is the propitiation for your sins.
Heed the wisdom of the great 16th-century Reformer Martin Luther…
So when the devil throws your sins in your face and declares that you deserve death and hell, tell him this: “I admit that I deserve death and hell, what of it? For I know One who suffered and made satisfaction on my behalf. His name is Jesus Christ, Son of God, and where He is there I shall be also! - Martin Luther
This great propitiation is beautifully expressed in the hymn " Christ alone.
Till on that cross as Jesus died,
The wrath of God was satisfied –
For every sin on Him was laid;
Here in the death of Christ I live.
It turns out there’s actually not a lot you need to know to become a Christian. That doesn’t mean that there aren’t hard doctrines that you could spend your whole life working through. But as far as the basics, it’s actually pretty simple.
Christians embrace the real Jesus.
Christians walk in the light.
Christians are honest about their sin.
Christians rest their hope in Christ alone.
As I invite the worship team to return to the stage, consider which of those four things has stood out to you, and spend some time in prayer about it. Maybe you’ve never realized that Jesus is the God-Man. This would be a great time to worship Him as such.
Maybe you feel an increased desire to walk in the light, reflecting God’s holiness. But maybe like me, you realize how short you fall. This would be a great time to be honest about it and confess it to God, with assurance of His forgiveness and cleansing, as you ask Him to help you to more faithfully walk in the light.
Or maybe you know you need to anchor your hope in Christ alone now more than ever, not in your own good works, your own righteousness, your own wisdom, but in Him, His death, His blood, His power…, His love. That’s what Christianity is all about. Let’s spend a few moments in quiet prayer/reflection before God.
