God is Light

Introduction

Who among us hasn’t at some point in our lives stepped on something in the dark? Or perhaps you’ve stubbed your toe, or bashed your shin, or something similar. It happens to the best of us. We get up in the middle of the night and don’t want to turn on the lights and wake ourselves up even more, so we feel about in the dark and find that one piece of lego that we thought we had completely cleaned up before we went to bed.

Perhaps also you’ve seen something in the dark that scared or unsettled you until you turned on the light. The other day actually I got up in the morning while it was still dark and for a moment I thought a snake had somehow gotten into our livingroom. Turns out it was just a stray piece of tissue paper from Christmas.

Light makes a big difference. What was scary or maybe even dangerous in the dark can be revealed to be harmless when you shed a little light on it. This is the sort of thing I think of when I read John’s description of God in 1 John 1:5-10

1 John 1:5–10 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. If we say, “We have no sin,” we are deceiving ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say, “We have not sinned,” we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.

Remember this is part 2 of our new sermon series on John’s Epistles. Last week we read through the introduction to John’s first letter, 1 John 1:1-4. This week we continue from verse 5 to verse 10 and explore what God’s Word has to teach us about how to be better disciples and how to better make disciples.

In his introduction John emphasized the fact that his message comes from his own eyewitness testimony, and is what they have already heard since the beginning of their walk with Jesus. He also tells them that his purpose in writing is to share in fellowship with them and to complete his joy. From there we read this section of John’s letter and we see him answer the question raised by the introduction: what is the report that John is bringing in this letter? Well there are three things I’d like to emphasize from these six verses,

God is Light

Walking in the Light

Confessing Sin

God is Light

Light is really quite a fascinating thing, which I am not fully equipped to understand. For the purposes of this sermon I did some quick internet searching to learn some more about light and found out that it’s complicated. In any case the modern scientific understanding of light probably isn’t what John had in mind when he wrote his epistle anyway, so it thankfully isn’t essential to our understanding of 1 John 1:5:

1 John 1:5 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.

This first part of John’s report is also the first “God is” statement of this letter, and not the last. The image of light represents several things, largely by contrast to darkness. Light gives sight and thereby knowledge where darkness represents blindness and therefore ignorance. Light represents truth in contrast to darkness representing lies by virtue of darkness hiding things from you. Light represents purity as opposed to the impurity of darkness. Light came to represent righteousness in contrast to darkness representing sinfulness and wrongdoing, perhaps because the darkness of night is naturally the time when most people practice theft, murder, and all sorts of other immorality. By saying that God is light John is saying that God is true, pure, righteous and gives sight and knowledge.

John is also following the common OT practice of referring to God’s perfection as light, according to the Faithlife Study Bible. For one of the clearest examples of this we can look at Psalm 27:1

Psalm 27:1 CSB

The Lord is my light and my salvation— whom should I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life— whom should I dread?

In fact also the first thing that God created was light, Genesis 1:3

Genesis 1:3 CSB

Then God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.

God knew the end from the beginning, so we know that God knew light would be a key metaphor for God’s nature, so by creating light first He sort of endorses it as a picture for who He is. It works really well for this since it has no mass and yet impacts the world significantly, just as God is not physical but Spirit, and He acts on the physical world.

John also calls Jesus light in His gospel. John 1:4-9

John 1:4–9 CSB

In him was life, and that life was the light of men. That light shines in the darkness, and yet the darkness did not overcome it. There was a man sent from God whose name was John. He came as a witness to testify about the light, so that all might believe through him. He was not the light, but he came to testify about the light. The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world.

I think the emphasis that John wants to make in his letter by referring to God as light is that God is pure. John elaborates that “there is no darkness in Him whatsoever.” The statement in Greek is strongly emphatic. Perhaps better represented in English as “There is absolutely no darkness in Him in any way shape or form.” God is the pure good, the pure truth, the pure righteousness. He is so Holy that there is no evil in him at all.

Deuteronomy 32:4 CSB

The Rock—his work is perfect; all his ways are just. A faithful God, without bias, he is righteous and true.

What an amazing God we serve! He is perfect in all His ways. This however actually presents a problem for us, because in case you hadn’t noticed, we aren’t perfect. This is a problem because of what John writes next.

Walking in the Light

You see darkness and light cannot mix. What happens to darkness when you turn on a light? It is dispelled, it goes away. Because every source of light we have is imperfect, there’s always still shadows, but even they only exist where something has blocked the light from reaching a place. So because God is light with no darkness in Him whatsoever, He absolutely cannot mix with darkness. That’s why John says in 1 John 1:6

1 John 1:6 CSB

If we say, “We have fellowship with him,” and yet we walk in darkness, we are lying and are not practicing the truth.

If God is pure and perfect light, than anyone who is still walking in darkness can’t possibly be telling the truth if they say that they have fellowship with him. It just wouldn’t make sense. It’s like a dry person saying they’re underwater. So if you and I want to be disciples of Jesus who have fellowship with Him and with the Father, which is John’s goal after all, we should be careful not to walk in darkness. What does John mean by walking in darkness?

Scripture often uses walking as a metaphor for living life. So walking in darkness means living a life characterized by darkness. This doesn’t mean that you are walking in darkness every time you give in to temptation and sin. If that were the case than we would all be walking in darkness and none of us could claim to have fellowship with God. It means living a life that is defined by sin. Jesus describes our choice between living by His kingdom and living by the way of this world as choosing between two gates that lead to two different paths in Matthew 7:13-14

Matthew 7:13–14 CSB

“Enter through the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the road broad that leads to destruction, and there are many who go through it. How narrow is the gate and difficult the road that leads to life, and few find it.

So walking in darkness is choosing to live on the broad road that the rest of the world is walking in. Now is a good time to remind ourselves that John isn’t writing to convince people to become disciples of Jesus, He’s writing to people who are already disciples of Jesus. So this isn’t a matter of choosing salvation like Jesus is talking about in Matthew. The point is that if we are in Jesus, we shouldn’t be living lives that could be described as “walking in darkness.”

It’s difficult to draw an exact line between struggling with sin as we all do and living lives which are characterized by sinfulness, and God doesn’t draw that line for us in the New Testament. This means that we need serious self-reflection as disciples to continually ask ourselves if we are walking in the darkness or walking in the light. If we are walking in the light than we can be assured by the next verse 1 John 1:7

1 John 1:7 CSB

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.

It seems pretty clear to me that the right choice here is to walk in the light. If we are walking in the light we have fellowship with one another. John has this fun habit of saying things that are a little ambigious, in this case when he says one another, does he refer to Christians having fellowship with other Christians, or those walking in the light having fellowship with him, meaning Jesus? I really think John does this on purpose when both things are true. If we walk in the light we have fellowship with each other and with God. Then we have the problem of being sinful people trying to have fellowship with a Holy God solved for us. The blood of Jesus cleanses us from our sins. That’s present tense, so it continually cleanses us from sin, both from the penalty of sin and from our struggle with sin. We should expect the disciples of Jesus to be growing more Holy as they walk with Him. I’ll let Paul take over the description of what a disciple should look like in Romans 6:1-14:

Romans 6:1–14 CSB

What should we say then? Should we continue in sin so that grace may multiply? Absolutely not! How can we who died to sin still live in it? Or are you unaware that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? Therefore we were buried with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we too may walk in newness of life. For if we have been united with him in the likeness of his death, we will certainly also be in the likeness of his resurrection. For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body ruled by sin might be rendered powerless so that we may no longer be enslaved to sin, since a person who has died is freed from sin. Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him, because we know that Christ, having been raised from the dead, will not die again. Death no longer rules over him. For the death he died, he died to sin once for all time; but the life he lives, he lives to God. So, you too consider yourselves dead to sin and alive to God in Christ Jesus. Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body, so that you obey its desires. And do not offer any parts of it to sin as weapons for unrighteousness. But as those who are alive from the dead, offer yourselves to God, and all the parts of yourselves to God as weapons for righteousness. For sin will not rule over you, because you are not under the law but under grace.

With that being said, we need to make sure we don’t make the mistake of thinking that we can be perfect. That’s why God tells us that we need to confess our sins.

Confessing Sin

So you remember the folks we talked about a couple weeks ago called the “gnostics”? They’re gonna come up a few times throughout this series, just so you know. Well they had this sort of funny view about sin and evil. Actually they had two opposite views. I’ll remind you that one of their core beliefs is that matter and flesh is evil and that only the Spirit is good. So on the one hand you had one group of gnostics who taught that the way to be “righteous” was to deny and punish the physical body. They would intentionally harm themselves and deprive themselves of physical necessities and generally avoid indulging in anything pleasurable. Sounds like a cheerful bunch. On the other hand you had folks who believed the same thing about the relationship between matter and spirit, but took the opposite application. They said, “well if we’re just good spirits trapped in flesh, than what does it matter what we do with our flesh? We’re just going to cast it off in the end anyway.” So these people lived lives of indulgence, doing everything they wanted to and saying that it didn’t matter because it was just the flesh doing it, and they themselves weren’t doing wrong or in other words that they didn’t have sin. It’s against this backdrop that John says:

1 John 1:8–10 CSB

If we say, “We have no sin,” we are deceiving ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say, “We have not sinned,” we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.

This adds a whole new dimension to the idea of walking in darkness versus walking in the light. Now walking in darkness isn’t only living lives characterized by sin, but in ignorance or denial of that sin. So by contrast walking in the light means being honest about our sin. So those of us who are walking in the light need to admit that we are sinners, or else not only are we liars, but we make God Himself a liar! That’s a pretty serious accusation by John. This is because God has said in His word that all people sin, so if we say that we don’t sin than we call Him a liar. Paul said in Romans 3:23

Romans 3:23 CSB

For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God;

He then goes on to quote a Psalm in support of His statement that says the same thing. This is true just as much for the Christian as for the non-Christian. For the disciple just as much as those who are not disciples. Paul Himself struggled with sin as He describes in Romans 7:14-25:

Romans 7:14–25 CSB

For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, sold as a slave under sin. For I do not understand what I am doing, because I do not practice what I want to do, but I do what I hate. Now if I do what I do not want to do, I agree with the law that it is good. So now I am no longer the one doing it, but it is sin living in me. For I know that nothing good lives in me, that is, in my flesh. For the desire to do what is good is with me, but there is no ability to do it. For I do not do the good that I want to do, but I practice the evil that I do not want to do. Now if I do what I do not want, I am no longer the one that does it, but it is the sin that lives in me. So I discover this law: When I want to do what is good, evil is present with me. For in my inner self I delight in God’s law, but I see a different law in the parts of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and taking me prisoner to the law of sin in the parts of my body. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, with my mind I myself am serving the law of God, but with my flesh, the law of sin.

So what is our hope if even those of us who are Christians and trying our best to walk in the light still struggle with sin? It’s the promise of 1 John 1:9

1 John 1:9 CSB

If we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

That’s an if… then… promise. If we confess our sins God through His word is telling us that they will be forgiven. End of story. This is proof both of His faithfulness and His righteousness. God keeps His promises by forgiving our sins just as He promised He would through Jesus our savior, and He is Righteous even though He is forgiving our sins against Him because His New Covenant has made a way for the penalty to be fully paid on our behalf.

Conclusion

If you really think about it, this whole section of the letter is just John saying “God is light” and then spelling out what that means for us. It’s an illustration of how some of the smallest biblical truths can have a major impact on the way that we live our lives as disciples of Jesus. So how does the fact that God is light effect us as His disciples?

Well first it teaches us about the nature of God, and why sin is such a serious thing. If God is pure light then sinful man cannot be in His presence without some way of being cleansed. Thank God that Jesus was sent to do that very thing, so that now we can come boldly into His presence as His disciples.

It also teaches us the importance of walking in the light, which means living lives of righteousness and striving to live in a way that pleases God and shows love to Him as well as our neighbors.

It also teaches us to be honest about the sin we still struggle with, because living in the light is living honestly and confronting our sin nature wherever it creeps up.

So what’s your homework today? Find a quiet moment to go to God in prayer. Ask the Holy Spirit to bring to mind the ways that you sin and fall short so that you can confess them openly and honestly to God. Then ask the Holy Spirit with me to help you to every day grow in your discipleship journey to walk more and more in the light as His blood cleanses us from our sins.