LOVING JESUS

] 1 John 1:5-7

1 John 1:5–7 CSB

This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light, and there is absolutely no darkness in him. If we say, “We have fellowship with him,” and yet we walk in darkness, we are lying and are not practicing the truth. If we walk in the light as he himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin.

So John says;

This is the message: John is making a claim to authority. John isn’t making this up; these are not his own personal opinions or ideas about God. This is God’s message about Himself, which is why he says, (which we have heard from Him), which John then goes on to say I declare to you. What John will tell us about God is what God has told us about Himself. We can’t be confident in our own opinions or ideas about God unless they are genuinely founded on what God has said about Himself. This is such an important part of the puzzle so to speak. We don't need to hear Jonathan Glovers opinions on what the Bible says we need to hear what God says about what the Bible says. The problem in this day and time is that we have so many people preaching opinion as fact and fact as opinion. We have so many people who will tell us that our sin is OK the Jesus is loving above all indicating that he is OK with ongoing out broken sin and that simply not what God tells us about himself. As long as you are on earth there is somebody who will pat you on the back and make you feel good about living in out broken sin or to put it as John puts it in this scripture walking and out broken sin and John clearly tells us right here that if you say that you have fellowship with God and yet continually walk in darkness you're lying and not practicing the truth.

God is light and in Him is no darkness at all: We must begin our understanding of God here. John declares this on the simple understanding that God Himself is light; and light by definition has no darkness at all in it; for there to be darkness, there must be an absence of light. A good definition of God is, “God is the only infinite, eternal, and unchangeable spirit, the perfect being in whom all things begin, and continue, and end.” Another way of saying that God is perfect is to say that God is light.

“LIGHT is the purest, the most subtle, the most useful, and the most vibrant of all God’s creatures; it is, therefore, a very proper symbol of the purity, perfection, and goodness of the Divine nature.” The nature of God is announced in this verse. Spiritual light indicates the radiant glory and brightness of the Father. To Him belongs the power of self-revelation. To God nothing is hidden; He is pure and holy. When His light shines forth, there is no darkness. In him is no darkness at all. When men stand in that light, everything in them is made visible. I did a illustration a while back where I lit a lighter and showed that the flame literally doesn't even have a shadow why is that? Because there's literally no darkness in light to the point the light the actual flame the actual light doesn't even have a shadow because it's so pure.

If we say that we have fellowship with Him: John first deals with a false claim to fellowship. Based upon this, we understand that it is possible for some to claim a relationship with God that they do not have. We can also say that it is possible for someone to think they have a relationship with God that they do not have. Many Christians are not aware of their true condition. They believe they are saved, they have experienced conversion and have repented at some time in their life. Yet they do not live in true fellowship with God. There's so many of us who bank our eternity on a prayer that we said 20 years ago or a feeling we had one time at the altar. I don't think I would bank my eternity on something like that. Right here it tells you and not only right here but many other places it tells you that you have got to have a relationship with the Lord you've got to walk with the Lord you've got to talk with the Lord you've got to repent you've got to surrender daily you've got to walk in the light as he is in the light and to use the words of John who wrote this scripture if we say we have fellowship with him and yet walk in darkness we are lying and not practicing the truth. That's pretty black and white if you ask me. God has no darkness at all . Therefore, if one claims to be in fellowship with God, yet does walk in darkness, it is not a truthful claim. If John said “That is a lie,” it means he thinks in terms of things being true or being lies. John sees things much more clearly than our sophisticated age does, which doesn’t want to see anything in black or white, but everything in a pale shade of gray. The modern world often thinks in terms of “my truth” in an individualistic sense. John focused on the idea of God’s truth, ultimate truth. The truth is the Bible. That is the truth meaning the one and only truth meaning God's standard for us to live by and it tells us all the way through it that we have to be in a relationship with God.

But if we walk in the light: This means to walk in a generally obedient life, without harboring known sin or resisting the conviction of the Holy Spirit on a particular point. John’s message here means that a walk in the light is possible. We know that on this side of eternity, sinless perfection is not possible. Yet we can still walk in the light, so John does mean perfect obedience. The Christian life is described as walking, which implies activity. Christian life feeds upon study, but it displays itself in action. “Walking” implies action, continuity, and progress. Since God is active and walking, if you have fellowship with Him, you will also be active and walking. As He is in the light: Since God is light , when we walk in the light we walk where He is. We are naturally together with Him in fellowship. We have fellowship with one another: We would have expected John to say, “We have fellowship with God.” That is true, but already in the idea of walking together with God in the light. John wants to make it clear that fellow Christians who walk in the light enjoy fellowship with each other. This leads to an important idea: if we do not have fellowship with one another, then one party or both parties are not walking in the light. Two Christians who are in right relationship with God will also naturally be in right relationship with each other.

. The blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin: As we walk in the light we also enjoy the continual cleansing of Jesus. This is another indication that John does not mean sinless perfection by the phrase walk in the light; otherwise, there would be no sin to cleanse in this ongoing sense. See this is where a lot of people will say well we all sin and fall short of the glory of God which is true but what this scripture is teaching us is that when we sin as we're walking in the light the Holy Spirit will convict us and since we're in right relationship with God we will react to the conviction and ask the Lord to cleanse us and with cleansing comes clarity of The Who what why where and when of our sin and then God helps us to grow out of that sin. So saying we all sin and fall short of the glory of God is true but what it does not mean is that we continually walk in the same out broken sin and are in right relationship with God because right here John says that if you say you have fellowship and you're continually walking in darkness you're a liar and the truth is not in you. The verb form John used in cleanses us from all sin is in the present tense, not in the future tense. We can do more than merely hope we will one day be cleansed. Because of what Jesus did on the cross for me, I can be cleansed today. You don’t have to leave here with the problems you came in with.

. The blood of Jesus Christ paid the penalty for all our sins – past, present, and future. The work of Jesus on the cross doesn’t only deal with the guilt of sin that will send us to hell. It also deals with the stain of sin which hinders our continual relationship with God on earth. We need to come to God often with the simple plea, “cleanse me with the blood of Jesus.” Not because we haven’t been cleansed before, but because we need to be continually cleansed to enjoy continual relationship.

. From all sin: We can be cleansed, by the blood of Jesus, from all sin. The sin we inherited from Adam, the sin we committed as kids, the sins of our growing up; sins against our father, against our mother, against our brother and sister; sins against our husbands or wives, against our children; sins against our employers or our employees, sins against our friends and our enemies; lying, stealing, cheating, adultery, swearing, drugs, booze, promiscuity, murder, homosexuality including the lgbt and q; sins that haunt us every day, sins we didn’t even know we did – all sin can be cleansed by the blood of Jesus. Sin is the hindrance to fellowship and the blood of Jesus, received by faith as the payment for our sin, solves the problem of sin and opens the way to fellowship with God.

· You can’t come to fellowship with God through philosophical speculation. You can’t come to fellowship with God through intellectual education.

· You can’t come to fellowship with God through drugs or entertainment.

· You can’t come to fellowship with God through scientific investigation.

· You can only come to fellowship with God by dealing with your sin problem through the blood of Jesus.

We might say that the only sin that cannot be cleansed by the blood of Jesus is the sin of continuing to reject that blood as payment for sin.