February How To Stay Close to God (1 John 1:5–10)

When we receive Jesus Christ as our personal Savior, we are born into the family of God.

At that point God becomes our heavenly Father, and we have a relationship with Him.

However, having a relationship with God and having fellowship with Him are not the same thing.

As Christians, we cannot be “contagious” unless we are in close fellowship with God.

Therefore, it is vital for us to learn how to stay close to God, which involves three things …

Our great safety is to stay close to the word of God. We should test everything by “What do the Scriptures say?”

Therefore, the only way you and I can stay close to Him is to stay close to the Word of God.

His purpose is that I depend on Him and on His power now. If I can stay in the middle of the turmoil calm and unperplexed, that is the end of the purpose of God.

We must scrutinize our hearts (1:5–6)

John writes: This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all (1:5).

In this verse light refers to what is holy and righteous; darkness refers to what is sinful and evil.

If there is sin in our lives, we cannot have fellowship with God because He will not allow any sin to come into His presence.

Light and darkness cannot exist together in the same place.

Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.

Martin Luther King Jr. (Baptist Minister and Civil Rights Activist); Tony Evans

If He who called Himself the Light of the World was only a flickering torch, then the darkness that enshrouds the earth is here to stay.

The minute light is taken out, darkness will come right back in. But spiritual light and darkness exist together.

Light and darkness are not simply opposites; darkness is nothing other than the absence of light.

Intellectually, light is truth and darkness ignorance or error. Morally, light is purity and darkness evil.

Unless we form the habit of going to the Bible in bright moments as well as in trouble, we cannot fully respond to its consolations because we lack equilibrium between light and darkness.

The Letters of John and Jude God Is Light (1 John 1:5)

IT is certainly the case that our individual characters will be determined by the character of the god whom we worship; and, therefore, John begins by laying down the nature of the God and Father of Jesus Christ whom Christians worship.

The Letters of John and Jude God Is Light (1 John 1:5)

God, he says, is light, and there is no darkness in him.

The Letters of John and Jude God Is Light (1 John 1:5)

What does this statement tell us about God?

The Letters of John and Jude God Is Light (1 John 1:5)

(1) It tells us that he is splendour and glory.

The Letters of John and Jude God Is Light (1 John 1:5)

There is nothing so glorious as a blaze of light piercing the darkness.

The Letters of John and Jude God Is Light (1 John 1:5)

To say that God is light tells us of his sheer splendour.

The Letters of John and Jude God Is Light (1 John 1:5)

(2) It tells us that God is self-revealing.

The Letters of John and Jude God Is Light (1 John 1:5)

Above all things, light is seen; and it lights up the darkness round about it.

The Letters of John and Jude God Is Light (1 John 1:5)

To say that God is light is to say that there is nothing secretive or furtive about him.

The Letters of John and Jude God Is Light (1 John 1:5)

He wishes to be seen and to be known.

The Letters of John and Jude God Is Light (1 John 1:5)

(3) It tells us of God’s purity and holiness.

The Letters of John and Jude God Is Light (1 John 1:5)

In God, there is none of the darkness which cloaks hidden evil.

The Letters of John and Jude God Is Light (1 John 1:5)

That he is light speaks to us of his white purity and stainless holiness.

The Letters of John and Jude God Is Light (1 John 1:5)

(4) It tells us of the guidance of God.

The Letters of John and Jude God Is Light (1 John 1:5)

It is one of the great functions of light to show the way.

The Letters of John and Jude God Is Light (1 John 1:5)

The road that is lit is the road that can be seen clearly.

The Letters of John and Jude God Is Light (1 John 1:5)

To say that God is light is to say that he offers his guidance for the path we must tread.

The Letters of John and Jude God Is Light (1 John 1:5)

(5) It tells us of the revealing quality in the presence of God.

The Letters of John and Jude God Is Light (1 John 1:5)

Light is the great revealer.

The Letters of John and Jude God Is Light (1 John 1:5)

Flaws and stains which are hidden in the shade are obvious in the light.

The Letters of John and Jude God Is Light (1 John 1:5)

Light reveals the imperfections in any piece of work or material.

The Letters of John and Jude God Is Light (1 John 1:5)

So, the imperfections of life are seen in the presence of God.

The Letters of John and Jude The Hostile Dark (1 John 1:5 Contd)

IN God, says John, there is no darkness at all.

The Letters of John and Jude The Hostile Dark (1 John 1:5 Contd)

Throughout the New Testament, darkness stands for the very opposite of the Christian life.

The Letters of John and Jude The Hostile Dark (1 John 1:5 Contd)

(1) Darkness stands for the Christless life.

The Letters of John and Jude The Hostile Dark (1 John 1:5 Contd)

It represents the life that people lived before they met Christ or the life that they live if they stray away from him.

The Letters of John and Jude The Hostile Dark (1 John 1:5 Contd)

John writes to his people that, now that Christ has come, the darkness is past and the true light shines (

The Letters of John and Jude The Hostile Dark (1 John 1:5 Contd)

Paul writes to his Christian friends that once they were darkness but now they are light in the Lord (

The Letters of John and Jude The Hostile Dark (1 John 1:5 Contd)

God has delivered us from the power of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of his dear Son (

The Letters of John and Jude The Hostile Dark (1 John 1:5 Contd)

Christians are not in darkness, for they are children of the day (

The Letters of John and Jude The Hostile Dark (1 John 1:5 Contd)

Those who follow Christ shall not walk in darkness, as others must, but they will have the light of life (

The Letters of John and Jude The Hostile Dark (1 John 1:5 Contd)

The Letters of John and Jude The Hostile Dark (1 John 1:5 Contd)

(2) The dark is hostile to the light. In the prologue to his gospel, John writes that the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it (

The Letters of John and Jude The Hostile Dark (1 John 1:5 Contd)

It is a picture of the darkness seeking to obliterate the light—but unable to overpower it.

The Letters of John and Jude The Hostile Dark (1 John 1:5 Contd)

The dark and the light are natural enemies.

(3) The darkness stands for the ignorance of life apart from Christ.

The Letters of John and Jude The Hostile Dark (1 John 1:5 Contd)

Jesus summons his friends to walk in the light so that the darkness does not overtake them, for those who walk in the darkness do not know where they are going (

The Letters of John and Jude The Hostile Dark (1 John 1:5 Contd)

Jesus is the light, and he has come that those who believe in him should not walk in darkness (

The Letters of John and Jude The Hostile Dark (1 John 1:5 Contd)

The dark stands for the essential lostness of life without Christ.

Therefore, to stay in fellowship with God, we must open up on a regular basis and ask God to examine our hearts and minds (Psa. 139:23).

King James Version Psalm 139

Search me, O God, and know my heart:

Try me, and know my thoughts:

Then, what prayer in Psalm 139:24 should we pray?

King James Version Psalm 139

And see if there be any wicked way in me, And lead me in the way everlasting.

Why do we need to ask God to examine our hearts?

Why can’t we just do it ourselves, and then confess our sins to God?

This won’t work because of what fact found in Jeremiah 17:9a?

King James Version Chapter 17

9 The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?

This means we don’t see our own sins as we do the sins of others.

When we gossip, it is just so people can pray more intelligently.

When we have bitterness and resentment in our hearts, it is justifiable.

In our own hearts we legitimize, rationalize, and spiritualize our own sins.

Therefore, we need to ask God to search our deceitful hearts.

Next, John writes: If we claim to have fellowship with him yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live by the truth (1:6).

The Letters of John and Jude The Necessity of Walking in the Light (1 John 1:6–7)

HERE, John is writing to counteract one heretical way of thought.

The Letters of John and Jude The Necessity of Walking in the Light (1 John 1:6–7)

There were those who claimed to be specially intellectually and spiritually advanced, but whose lives showed no sign of it.

The Letters of John and Jude The Necessity of Walking in the Light (1 John 1:6–7)

They claimed to have advanced so far along the road of knowledge and of spirituality that, for them, sin had ceased to matter and the laws had ceased to exist.

The Letters of John and Jude The Necessity of Walking in the Light (1 John 1:6–7)

Napoleon once said that laws were made for ordinary people but were never meant for the likes of him.

The Letters of John and Jude The Necessity of Walking in the Light (1 John 1:6–7)

(1) He insists that, to have fellowship with the God who is light, we must walk in the light, and that, if we are still walking in the moral and ethical darkness of the Christless life, we cannot have that fellowship.

The Letters of John and Jude The Necessity of Walking in the Light (1 John 1:6–7)

This is precisely what the Old Testament had said centuries before. God said: ‘You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy’ (

The Letters of John and Jude The Necessity of Walking in the Light (1 John 1:6–7)

Those who would find fellowship with God are committed to a life of goodness which reflects God’s goodness.

There were many false teachers in John’s day, and in our day also, who taught we can have fellowship with God and still walk in darkness, or sin.

But, God’s Word is clear.

If we claim to have fellowship with God and still gossip, harbor bitterness, use filthy language, steal things at work, are unfaithful to our spouse, etc., God says we are liars.

The basis for fellowship with God is walking in the light, which means obeying His Holy Word.

Many Christians would be mortified on Sunday morning if the people sitting next to them knew the true conditions of their hearts.

Some would be humiliated because of their terrible language.

Others would be embarrassed if all their filthy thoughts were put on PowerPoint® and projected onto a screen for everyone in the worship service to see.

But we know God hears and sees it all because of what fact found in the last sentence of 1 Samuel 16:7?

King James Version Chapter 16

7 But the LORD said unto Samuel, Look not on his countenance, or on the height of his stature; because I have refused him: for the LORD seeth not as man seeth; for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the LORD looketh on the heart.