Candlelight 2022
Those who continue to practise the works of darkness cannot be in fellowship with the light
This person claims to have things in common with God, common likes and dislikes, a common nature, the divine, which basic things eventuate in a communion of interest and activity which we call fellowship.
This person is said to be walking in the darkness which is not in God, namely, sin. The verb is present subjunctive which speaks of habitual action. Thus, this person is sinning habitually, continuously, which shows that he is an unsaved person. No child of God sins habitually to the exclusion of righteous acts. We learn that from John’s use of modes and tenses as we proceed in our exegesis of this epistle. Furthermore, he walks in the darkness. The case of the noun is locative of sphere. He walks, that is, orders his behavior, conducts himself (peripateō (περιπατεω)) in the sphere of the darkness of sin. His actions and words are ensphered by sin. Nothing of God’s righteousness or goodness ever enters that circle of sin which surrounds this person. The individual making this claim of fellowship with God while at the same time ordering his behavior within the sphere of sin, is an unsaved person. John says that in making that claim, he is lying, and he is not doing the truth.
Here John was confronting the first of three claims (see also 1:8 and 1:10) of the false teachers: that people can have fellowship with God and still walk in sin. False teachers who thought that the physical body was evil or worthless taught one of two approaches to behavior: either they insisted on denying bodily desires through rigid discipline, or they approved of gratifying every physical lust because the body was going to be destroyed anyway. Here John was stating that no one can claim to be a Christian and still live in evil and immorality. The false teachers claimed to be living in God, but they failed to reflect God’s moral purity.
Those who claim to know God must also be living in the light, for darkness and light are incompatible. People cannot live both in the darkness of sin and in the light of fellowship with God, in whom is “no darkness at all” (1:5). John often used “darkness” to refer to sin (1:5, 6; 2:8, 9, 11). Thus, one cannot live a sinful life and simultaneously claim to be a Christian.
So in this first letter, John confronted us with a disconcerting reality. If we are to be comfortable with God and live in intimate fellowship with Him, we must “walk in the light, as He is in the light” (1 John 1:7). Our values, our behavior, our attitudes, our commitments must be in harmony with God’s character rather than with the natural passions of fallen humanity.
But this seems to raise a terrible barrier. If we must walk in light to have fellowship, how can we, who feel sin’s pull and all too often give in to temptations, ever be comfortable with God? Isn’t each sin a retreat to darkness? If sinlessness is the avenue to fellowship, who then can stand in the presence of God?
But John was not talking of sinlessness. “If we walk in the light,” he said, “the blood of Jesus, His Son, purifies us from all sin” (v. 7). Even those walking in the light need forgiveness, and cleansing from sins they commit. While it is possible for us in Christ not to sin, we can never claim that it is impossible to sin.
John’s primary target here seems to be those who “claim to have fellowship with Him yet walk in the darkness” (v. 6). These men and women speak glowingly of their closeness to God and the fellowship they enjoy—and yet make a practice of sin! Their lifestyle is not godly; it is patterned after the ways of the false teachers described by Jude and Peter. No one who makes a practice of sin can claim fellowship with God. God’s nature is light, not darkness. Those who walk in light as He is in the light may fall, but they will quickly turn away from that old lifestyle to find forgiveness in Jesus.
We might sum up John’s teaching this way; if the direction of your life is toward the Source of light, you will find forgiveness for your failures and inadequacies. But if the direction of your life is toward the darkness, then you may be sure you have nothing in common with God.
Here John was confronting the first of three claims (see also 1:8 and 1:10) of the false teachers: that people can have fellowship with God and still walk in sin. False teachers who thought that the physical body was evil or worthless taught one of two approaches to behavior: either they insisted on denying bodily desires through rigid discipline, or they approved of gratifying every physical lust because the body was going to be destroyed anyway. Here John was stating that no one can claim to be a Christian and still live in evil and immorality. The false teachers claimed to be living in God, but they failed to reflect God’s moral purity.
Those who claim to know God must also be living in the light, for darkness and light are incompatible. People cannot live both in the darkness of sin and in the light of fellowship with God, in whom is “no darkness at all” (1:5). John often used “darkness” to refer to sin (1:5, 6; 2:8, 9, 11). Thus, one cannot live a sinful life and simultaneously claim to be a Christian.