The True Gift of Light And Life
I John • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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Isa 9:6 For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.
Isa 25:1 O LORD, thou art my God; I will exalt thee, I will praise thy name; for thou hast done wonderful things; thy counsels of old are faithfulness and truth.
Isa 28:29 This also cometh forth from the LORD of hosts, which is wonderful in counsel, and excellent in working.
Every form of life has its enemies. Insects must watch out for hungry birds, and birds must watch hungry cats and dogs. Even human beings have to dodge automobiles and fight off germs.
The life that is real also has an enemy, and we read about it in this section. This enemy is sin. Nine times, in these verses, John mentions sin, so the subject is not unimportant. John illustrates his theme by contrasting light and darkness: God is light; sin is darkness.
But there is another contrast here, too-the contrast between saying and doing. Four times John writes, “If we say" or "He that saith" (1:6, 8, 10; 2:4). It is clear that our Christian life is to amount to more than mere "talk"; we must also "walk," or live, what we believe. If we are in fellowship with God (if we are "walking in the light"), our lives will back up what our lips are saying. But if we live in sin (“walking in darkness”), our lives will contradict our lips, making us hypocrites.
The New Testament calls the Christian life a “walk." This walk begins with a step of faith when we trust Christ as our Saviour. But salvation is not the end - it's only the beginning of spiritual life.
"Walking" involves progress, and Christians are supposed to advance in the spiritual life. Just as a child must learn to walk and must overcome many difficulties in doing so, a Christian must learn to "walk in the light." And the fundamental difficulty involved here is this matter of sin.
Of course, sin is not simply outward disobedience; sin is also inner rebellion or desire. For example, we are warned about the desires of the flesh and of the eyes and about the pride of life (2:16), all of which are sinful. Their sin is a transgression of the law (3:4), or literally, "lawlessness." Sin is a refusal to submit to the law of God. Lawlessness, or independence of the law, is the very essence of sin. If a believer decides to live an independent life, how can he possibly walk in fellowship with God? "Can two walk together except they be agreed?" (Amos 3:3)
Neither in the Old Testament nor in the New does the Bible whitewash the sins of the saints.
Later, the patriarch tried to "help God" by marrying Hagar and begetting a son (Gen. 16). In both cases, God forgave Abraham his sin, but Abraham had to reap what he had sowed. God can and will cleanse the record, but He does not change the results. No one can unscramble an egg.
Peter denied the Lord three times and tried to kill a man in the garden when Jesus was arrested. Satan is a liar and a murderer (John 8:44), and Peter was playing right into his hands! Christ forgave Peter (cf. John 21), of course, but what Peter had done hurt his testimony significantly and hindered the Lord's work.
The fact that Christians sin bothers some people, especially new Christians. They forget that their receiving the new nature does not eliminate the old nature they were born with. The old nature (originating in our physical birth) fights against the new nature we receive when we are born again (Gal. 5:16-26). No amount of self-discipline, no set of man-made rules and regulations, can control this old nature. Only the Holy Spirit of God can enable us to "put to death" the old nature (Rom. 8:12, 13) and produce the Spirit's fruit (Gal. 5:22, 23) in us through the new nature.
Therefore, All of us must deal with our sins if we are to enjoy real life. In this section, John explains three ways to do so:
1 THE GIFT OF LIGHT - IN HIM IS LIGHT
God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. (1 John 1:5).
When we were saved, God called us out of darkness into His light (1 Peter 2:9).
We are children of light (1 Thes. 5:5).
Those who do wrong hate light (John 3:19-21).
When light shines in on us, it reveals our true nature (Eph. 5:8-13).
Light produces life, growth, and beauty, but sin is darkness, and darkness and light cannot exist in the same place. If we are walking in the light, the darkness has to go. If we are holding to sin, then the light goes. There is no middle ground, no vague "gray" area, where sin is concerned.
How do Christians try to cover up their sins? By telling lies! First, we tell lies to others (1 John 1:6).
We want our Christian friends to think we are “spiritual.” so we lie about our lives and try to make a favorable impression on them. We want them to think that we are walking in the light, though in reality, we are walking in the darkness.
Once one begins to lie to others, he will sooner or later lie to himself, and our passage deals with this (v. 8). The problem now is not deceiving others, but deceiving ourselves. It is possible for a believer to live in sin yet convince himself that everything is fine in his relationship to the Lord.
Perhaps the classic example of this is King David (2 Sam. 11; 12). First David lusted after Bathsheba.
Then he actually committed adultery. Instead of openly admitting what he had done, he tried to cover his sin. He tried to deceive Bathsheba's husband, made him drunk, and had him killed. He lied to himself and tried to carry on his royal duties in the usual way. When his court chaplain, the Prophet Nathan, confronted him with a similar hypothetical, David condemned the other man, though he felt no condemnation at all for himself. Once we begin to lie to others, it may not be long before we believe our lie.
But the spiritual decline becomes still worse: the next step is trying to lie to God (1 John 1: 10). We have made ourselves liars; now we try to make God a liar! We contradict His Word, which says that "all have sinned," and we maintain that we are exceptions to the rule. We apply God's Word to others but not to ourselves. We sit through church services or Bible studies and are not touched by the Bible's teachings.
Believers who have reached this low level are usually highly critical of other Christians, but they strongly resist applying the Word to their own lives.
The Holy Spirit's inspired picture of the human heart is devastating indeed! A believer lies about his fellowship (v. 6); about his nature-"I could never do a thing like that!" (v. 8); and about his actions (v. 10).
Sin has a deadly way of spreading.
At this point we must discuss an extremely important factor in our experience of the life that is real.
That factor is honesty. We must be honest with ourselves, honest with others, and honest with God. Our passage describes a believer who is living a dishonest life: he is a phony. He is playing a role and acting a part but is not living a genuine life. He is insincere.
What losses does this kind of person experience?
For one thing, he loses the Word. He stops "doing the truth" (v. 6); then the truth is no longer in him (v. 8); and then he turns the truth into lies (v. 10)!
"Thy Word is truth" (John 17:17) said Jesus; but a person who lives a lie loses the Word. One of the first symptoms of walking in darkness is a loss of blessing from the Bible. You cannot read the Word profitably while you are walking in the dark.
But a dishonest person loses something else: he loses his fellowship with God and with God's people
(1 John 1:6, 7). As a result, prayer becomes an empty form to him. Worship is dull routine. He becomes critical of other Christians and starts staying away from church: "What communion hath light with darkness?" (2 Cor. 6:14)
A backslidden husband, for example, who is walking in spiritual darkness, out of fellowship with God, can never enjoy full fellowship with his Christian wife, who is walking in the light. Superficially, the couple can have companionship, but true spiritual fellowship is impossible. This inability to share spiritual experiences causes many personal problems in homes and between members of local churches.
A group of church members were discussing their new pastor.
"For some reason," said one man, "I really don't feel at ease with him. I believe he's a good man, all right-but something seems to stand between us." Another member replied, "Yes, I think I know what you mean. I used to have that same problem with him, but now I don't have it anymore. The pastor and I have great fellowship."
"What did he do to make things better?"
"He didn't do anything," said the friend. "I did the changing."
"You did the changing?"
"Yes, I decided to be open and honest about things, the way our pastor is. You see, there isn't one stain of hypocrisy in his life, and there was so much pretending in my life that we didn't make it together. He and I both knew I was a phony. Everything is better since I’ve started to live an honest Christian life.” One problem with dishonesty is that just keeping a record of our lies and pretenses is a full-time job!
Abraham Lincoln used to say that if a man is going to be a liar, he had better have a good memory!
When a person uses up all his energy in pretending, he has nothing left for living, and life becomes shallow and tasteless. A person who pretends not only robs himself of reality, but he keeps himself from growing: his true self is smothered under the false self.
The third loss is really the result of the first two: the believer loses his character (1 John 2:4). The process starts out with his telling lies and it ends up with his becoming a liar! His insincerity, or lack of truthfulness, is at first a role that he plays. Then, it is no longer a role has become the very essence of his life. His character has eroded. He is no longer a liar because he tells lies; he now tells lies because he is a confirmed liar.
Is it any wonder that God warns, "He that covereth his sins shall not prosper" (Prov. 28:13)? David tried to cover his sins and it cost him his health (Ps. 32:3,
4) his joy (Ps. 51), his family, and almost his kingdom. If we want to enjoy the life that is real, we must never cover our sins.
What should we do?
2. THE GIFT OF LIFE - IN HIM IS LIFE
John gives two interesting titles to Jesus Christ:
Advocate and Propitiation (1 John 2:1
1 My little children, these things write I unto you, that ye sin not. And if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous:
2 And he is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world.
We must understand these two titles because they stand for two ministries that only the Lord Himself performs.
Let's begin with Propitiation. If you look this word up in the dictionary, you may get the wrong idea of its meaning. The dictionary tells us that "to propitiate” means "to appease someone who is angry." If you apply this to Christ, you get the horrible picture of an angry God, about to destroy the world, and a loving Saviour giving Himself to appease the irate God - and this is not the Bible picture of salvation!
Certainly God is angry at sin; after all, He is infinitely holy. But the Bible reassures us that "God so loved not hated the world" (John 3:16).
No, the word "propitiation" does not mean the appeasing of an angry God. Instead, it means the satisfaction of God's holy law. "God is light" (1 John 1:5). and therefore He cannot close His eyes to sin.
But "God is love" (4:8), too, and wants to save sinners.
How, then, can a holy God uphold His own justice and still forgive sinners? The answer is in the sacrifice of Christ. At the cross, God in His holiness judged sin. God in His love offers Jesus Christ to the world as Saviour. God was just in that He punished sin, but He is also loving in offering free forgiveness through what Jesus did at Calvary. (Read 1 John 4:10, and also give some thought to Rom. 3:23-26.)
Christ is the Sacrifice for the sins of the whole world, but He is Advocate only for believers. "We [Christians] have an advocate with the Father." The word "advocate" used to be applied to lawyers. The word John uses is the very same word Jesus used when He was talking about the coming of the Holy Spirit (John 14:16, 26; 15:26). It means, literally, "one called alongside." When a man was summoned to court, he took an advocate (lawyer) with him to stand at his side and plead his case.
Jesus finished His work on earth (John 17:4)-the work of giving His life as a sacrifice for sin. Today He has an "unfinished work" in heaven. He represents us before God's throne. As our High Priest, He sympathizes with our weaknesses and temptations and gives us grace (Heb. 4:15, 16; 7:23-28). As our Advocate, He helps us when we sin. When we confess our sins to God, because of Christ's advocacy God forgives us.
The Old Testament contains a beautiful picture of this. Joshua (Zech. 3:1-7) was the Jewish high priest after the Jews returned to their land following their captivity in Babylon. (Don't confuse this Joshua with the Joshua who conquered the Promised Land.) The nation had sinned; to symbolize this, Joshua stood before God in filthy garments and Satan stood at Joshua's right hand to accuse him (cf. Rev. 12:10).
God the Father was the Judge; Joshua, representing the people, was the accused; Satan was the prosecuting attorney. (The Bible calls him the accuser of the brethren.) It looked as if Satan had an open-and-shut case. But Joshua had an Advocate who stood at God's right hand, and this changed the situation. Christ gave Joshua a change of garments and silenced the accusations of Satan.
This is what is in view when Jesus Christ is called our "Advocate." He represents believers before God's throne, and the merits of His sacrifice make possible the forgiveness of the believer's sin. Because Christ died for His people, He satisfied the justice of God.
("The wages of sin is death.") Because He lives for us at God's right hand, He can apply His sacrifice to our needs day by day.
All He asks is that when we have failed we confess our sins. What does it mean to "confess"? Well, to confess sins means much more than to "admit" them.
The word confess actually means "to say the same thing [about]." To confess sin, then, means to say the same thing about it that God says about it.
1 John 1:9 and suggested that the man confess his sins to God.
Confession is not praying a lovely prayer, or making pious excuses, or trying to impress God and other Christians. True confession is naming sin-calling it by name what God calls it: envy, hatred, lust, deceit, or whatever it may be. Confession means being honest with ourselves and with God, and if others are involved, being honest with them too. It is more than admitting sin. It means judging sin and facing it squarely.
When we confess our sins, God promises to forgive us (v. 9). But this promise is not a TALISMAN that makes it easy for us to disobey God!
"I went out and sinned," a student told his campus chaplain, "because I knew I could come back and ask God to forgive me."
"On what basis can God forgive you?" the chaplain asked, pointing to 1 John 1:9.
"God is faithful and just," the boy replied.
"Those two words should have kept you out of sin," the chaplain said. "Do you know what it cost God to forgive your sins?"
The boy hung his head. "Jesus had to die for me." Then the chaplain zeroed in. "That's right- forgiveness isn't some cheap sideshow trick God performs.
God is faithful to His promise, and God is just, because Christ died for your sins and paid the penalty for you. Now, the next time you plan to sin, remember that you will sin against a faithful loving God!"
Of course, cleansing has two sides to it: the judicial and the personal. The blood of Jesus Christ, shed on the cross, delivers us from the guilt of sin and gives us right standing ("justification") before God.
God can forgive because Jesus' death has satisfied His holy law.
But God is also interested in cleansing a sinner inwardly. David prayed, "Create in me a clean heart, O God" (Ps. 51:10). When our confession is sincere, God does a cleansing work (1 John 1:9) in our heart by His Spirit and through His Word (John 15:3).
King David’s great mistake was trying to cover his sins instead of confessing them. For perhaps a whole year he lived in deceit and defeat.
No wonder he wrote (Ps. 32:6) that a man should pray "in a time of finding out" (lit.).
When should we confess our sin? Immediately when we discover it! "He that covereth his sins shall not prosper; but whoso confesseth and forsaketh them shall have mercy" (Prov. 28:13). By walking in the light, we can see the "dirt" in our lives and deal with it immediately.
This leads to a third way to deal with sins: we can try to cover them, we can confess them, or
3 THE GIFT OF VICTORY - LIGHT AND LIFE BRINGS VICTORY OVER SIN
1 John 2:1
The secret of victory over sin is found in the phrase "walk in the light" (IJOHN1:7
7 But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin.
To walk in the light means to be open, honest, and sincere. Paul prayed that his friends might "be sincere and without offense" (Phil. 1:10). The word sincere comes from two Latin words, sine and cera, which mean "without wax." In Roman days, some sculptors covered up their mistakes by filling the defects in their marble statues with wax, which was not readily visible until the statue had been exposed to the hot sun for a while. But more dependable sculptors ensured their customers knew the statues they sold were sine cera-with-out wax.
Unfortunately, churches and Bible classes have been invaded by insincere people, people whose lives cannot stand to be tested by God's light. "God is light," and when we walk in the light, there is nothing we can hide.
It is refreshing to meet a Christian who is open, sincere, and not trying to masquerade!
To walk in the light means to be honest with God, with ourselves, and with others. It means that when the light reveals our sin to us, we immediately confess it to God and claim His forgiveness. And if our sin injures another person, we ask his forgiveness, too.
But walking in the light means something else: it means obeying God's Word (1 John 2:3, 4).
105 NUN. Thy word is a lamp unto my feet, And a light unto my path.
To walk in the light means to spend time daily in God's Word, discovering His will; and then obeying what He has told us.
Obedience to God's Word is proof of our love for Him. There are three motives for obedience. We can obey because we have to, because we need to, or because we want to.
A slave obeys because he has to. If he doesn't obey he will be punished. An employee obeys because he needs to. He may not enjoy his work, but he does enjoy getting his paycheck! He needs to obey because he has a family to feed and clothe. But a Christian is to obey his heavenly Father because he wants to, for the relationship between him and God is one of love. "If you love Me, keep My commandments" (John 14:15).
This is the way we learned obedience when we were children. First, we obeyed because we had to.
If we didn't obey, we were spanked! But as we grew up, we discovered that obedience meant enjoyment and reward, so we started obeying because it met certain needs in our lives. And it was a mark of real maturity when we started obeying because of love.
"Baby Christians" must constantly be warned or rewarded. Mature Christians listen to God's Word and obey it simply because they love Him.
Walking in the light involves honesty, obedience, and love; it also involves following the example of Christ and walking as He walked (1 John 2:6). Of course, nobody ever becomes a Christian by following Christ's example. Still, after we come into God's family, we are to look to Jesus Christ as the one great example of the kind of life we should live.
This means "abiding in Christ." Christ is not only the Propitiation (or sacrifice) for our sins (v. 2) and the Advocate who represents us before God (v. 1), but He is also the perfect pattern (He is "Jesus Christ the righteous") for our daily life.
The key statement here is "even as He" (v. 6).
"Because as He is, so are we in this world" (4:17).
We are to walk in the light "as He is in the light" (1:7).
We are to purify ourselves "even as He is pure" (3:3). "He that doeth righteousness is righteous, even as He is righteous" (3:7). Walking in the light means living here on earth the way Jesus lived when He was here, and the way He is right now in heaven.
This has extremely practical applications in our daily lives. For example, what should a believer do when another believer sins against him? The answer is that believers should forgive one another "even as God for Christ's sake hath forgiven you" (Eph. 4:32; cf. Col. 3:13).
Walking in the following example of Christ will affect a home. Husbands are supposed to love their wives "even as Christ also loved the Church" (Eph. 5:25). Husbands are supposed to care for their wives "even as the Lord" cares for the Church (5:29). And wives are to honor and obey their husbands (5:22-24).
No matter what area of life it may be, our responsibility is to do what Jesus would do. "As He is, so are we in this world." We should "walk [live] even as He walked [lived]."
It is impossible to imitate the life of Jesus Christ with the poor equipment we have as mere human beings. The effort would be similar to a cripple trying to play baseball like a big league star. We would give the cripple an "E for effort," but he would nevertheless fail in his attempt. This is why John uses the word "abide" (1 John 2:6). The only way to walk as Christ walked is to abide in Him.
This is the secret of victory over sin.
Jesus Himself taught His disciples what it means to abide in Him. He explains it in His illustration of the vine and its branches (John 15). Just as the branch gets its life by remaining in contact with the vine, so believers receive their strength by maintaining fellowship with Christ.
To abide in Christ means to depend entirely on Him for all that we need to live for Him and serve Him. It is a living relationship. As He lives out His life through us, we can follow His example and walk as He walked. Paul expresses this experience perfectly: "Christ liveth in me!" (Gal. 2:20)
This is a reference to the work of the Holy Spirit.
Christ is our Advocate in heaven (1 John 2:1), representing us before God when we sin. The Holy Spirit is God's Advocate for us here on earth. Christ is making intercession for us (Rom. 8:34), and the Holy Spirit also makes intercession for us (8:26, 27).
We are part of a fantastic "heavenly party line": God the Son prays for us in heaven, and God the Spirit prays for us in our hearts. We have fellowship with the Father through the Son, and the Father has fellowship with us through the Spirit.
Christ lives out His life through us by the power of the Spirit, who lives within our bodies. It is not through imitation that we abide in Christ and walk as He walked. No, it is through incarnation: through His Spirit, "Christ liveth in me." To walk in the light is to walk in the Spirit and not fulfill the lusts of the flesh (cf. Gal. 5:16).
In these ways, God has made provisions for us to conquer sin. We can never lose or change the sin nature that we were born with (1 John 1:8), but we need not obey its desires. As we walk in the light and see sin as it actually is, we will hate it and turn from it. And if we sin, we immediately confess it to God and claim His cleansing. By depending on the power of the indwelling Spirit, we abide in Christ and "walk as He walked."
But all this begins with openness and honesty before God and men. The minute we start to act a part, to pretend, to impress others, we step out of the light and into shadows.
Sir Walter Scott puts it this way: oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive!
The life that is real cannot be built on things that are deceptive. Before we can walk in the light, we must know ourselves, accept ourselves, and yield ourselves to God. It is foolish to try to deceive others because God already knows what we really are!
All this helps to explain why walking in the light makes life so much easier and happier. When you walk in the light, you live to please only one Person-God. This really simplifies things! Jesus said, "I do always those things that please Him" (John 8:29
29 And he that sent me is with me: the Father hath not left me alone; for I do always those things that please him.
We "ought to walk and to please God"
1 Furthermore then we beseech you, brethren, and exhort you by the Lord Jesus, that as ye have received of us how ye ought to walk and to please God, so ye would abound more and more.
If we live to please ourselves and God, we are trying to serve two masters, and this never works. If we live to please men, we will always be in trouble because no two men will agree and we will find ourselves caught in the middle. Walking in the light-living to please God-simplifies our goals, unifies our lives, and gives us a sense of peace and poise.
John makes it clear that the life that is real has no love for sin. Instead of trying to cover sin, a true believer confesses sin and tries to conquer it by walking in the light of God's Word. He is not content simply to know he is going to heaven. He wants to enjoy that heavenly life right here and now. "As He is, so are we in this world." He is careful to match his walk and his talk. He does not try to impress himself, God, or other Christians with a lot of "pious talk."
Pious talk! A religion of words! To paraphrase James 1:22, "We should be doers of the Word as well as talkers of the Word." We must walk what we talk. It is not enough to know the language; we must also live the life. "If we say-" then we ought also to do!