The Partnership of Light: Accepted, so pure! (Not pure, so accepted)
Notes
Transcript
Handout
Dear Congregation of our Lord Jesus Christ,
As the aged last living apostle, John, the beloved apostle, the apostle of love, the only one not to die a violent premature death, as he writes to these church of Asia Minor , remember they are discouraged and confused false teaching, persecution. Some just tired, some really doubting is the gospel true, is Jesus Christ really God’s Son incarnate alive, coming to me in the gospel - or is religion just a bit of a game, and this group that left us -claiming higher knowledge, inside secrets n rituals and serious spiritual practices - more jazzy spirituality is that where it is at? And how does John answer Christians that are discouraged, doubting, tired, distracted and uncertain. He doesn’t start with all the false teaching, he doesn’t start with what you and I need to start or stop doing, this aged apostle who so loves these congregation,s lived with Mary among them about twenty years, he writes to them all saying: Here is how you can have assurance, here is how you can regain your confidence, here is how you can have not just a little joy - but your joy full - it is all about - this fellowship, this partnership, this sharing in what the eternal life that was in the beginning but came down to earth in the Son of God - this friendship and participation in that life - we heard Him, we’ve seen him with our own eyes, and looked upon and pondered and recognized life from above, our hands have touched him - The Word of God, the Light of the World - all concentrated in this Person Jesus - we’re proclaiming him - so you can enter into partnership with is still living, still life-giving Jesus.
Remember the aim of his gospel with those 7 signs, wonders, was so that you would know Jesus is the Son of God, and believing may be saved. But his aim here for Christian who are struggling is stated again at the end of the letter in 1 John 5:13
I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life.
As you become sure of your participation, fellowship, are assured as to what true knowledge of Jesus means and does in you, - for growth in discipleship and fullness of joy and confidence. We are to reimagine what goes on as Christian's gather, not just as a worship service for us, or fellowship and friendship pone to another - but we are participating, sharing in the communion of the life and truth and light, - sharing the life of God just like the Apostles did with Jesus!
Doesn’t give more wonders and signs to prove Jesus is the Christ to these believers they already had that. But to grow there assurance and confidence, he gives them 3 tests - which if you and I take can rid us of anxiety of: Am I Christian? Do I really know God? Am I walking with Him? Will I be saved in the end? And if you listen to his tone, not a mean school teacher, designing tests to make you fail. There is no chiding, sharing - he calls them his beloved children! One in our congregation said I picture it like the father in the prodigal, John is reaching out to pull us into hug that brings us into a fellowship
You must hear this clearly, you don’t take these tests in order to earn a pass or fail, saved or damned. You take these tests after you’ve received the gift of salvation, in order to be assured that you got the gift! Kind of like always wanted to get married and build a home. And you do those things and you wake up, and you say pinch me to assure me this is real! Well what are the realities that we participate in that can wake us up to the realization yes I have this salvation and live in that full joy? Reality of God’s Light in your lifestyle, His love and Christian in your relationships with others, and faith in Jesus as your God and yet also your brother! Those are the three tests not by which you earn salvation, but by which you can daily be encouraged you’ve got this salvation and share in this fellowship with God in Christ daily!
The first test of fellowship with God is the LIGHT & righteousness test. This is about whether you walk in the light of God in your daily life
Key Truth: Christians walk in God’s pure light, neither pretending to be sinless, nor refusing to address particular sins.
Before we take the test itself which we find in v.6-10, really two command about what you and I do and how we live, John does something surprising, he doesn’t talk about us and our action at all. The false teachers and the many that follow them there religion is all about their knowledge, their, practices, and that is what captures all their time and attention. Today too is tempting to have that be the treasure of our church - look how much friendship community, good works, look what we do. And the message is if we church life this we will be saved. And John could have addressed each teaching and practice of false-Christians and said well we just do it better. Really that’s what all the religion in the world is about - obedience therefore acceptance. Allister Begg “Religion says I obey therefore I am accepted.” Christianity says, I am accepted, therefore I obey”.
So how does John begin the body of this letter and the first test? 1 John 1:5
A) The Basis of our Fellowship & Walk is God’s LIGHT.
This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.
Fullness of joy, participating in the fellowship the partnership friendship with God, does not begin with your activity or our methods. Psychologist have a term for some one who thinks the answer to life is wrapped up in small package of their self - that person has a neurosis, in the extreme narcissists - produces real anxiety and sickness. They got to get connected to the world and people the responsibilities and opportunities of those around them. Well so too John, says the answer to all our uncertainty spiritual, not in us. It is in God. And maybe you say, well of course, I believe in God in general and that is all fine and dandy.
But John says the job of the church in the world, isn’t to invent some ideas about God and how we are to act. The job of the church, from the apostles down to 2020 in Barrie ON, is we take the message, the word means something like an amber alert. Phone starts beeping. Watching TV - we interrupt this program for this public service announcement,. The king of the universe breaking into this world - The job of John, and the church until Christ comes again is’t to make up some nice philosophies of life, better ways to be community, but to proclaims this message.
God is… _____. and how would you fill in that blank. John says this is the first test, there will be others. But he begins here. You've probably start with God is love, idea of God as jolly grandfather - just gives nice goodies, laughs a little a foibles , but hey I’m not the Father, so laugh it off, always forgives and indulgent. And that fits well with the idea that the main thing is religion is my needs - and God is just going to meet my needs! But John lays down this startling principle - the way He heard it from Jesus very mouth, and from Jesus very life - God is LIGHT. Even stronger in the Gk - God - no darkness - none at all. Even our son has dark spots, but not God.
Look at those words carefully again, it doesn’t say God is THE light, as if God is physically light. It doesn’t say he is A light. It says he in his very essence at the core of what it means to be God is unadulterated light - absolutely purity. Do you feel this about God - do you experience it? In the OT God is clothed in light, he emanates spiritual light, but listen he is never actually called LIGHT. The OT does proclaim that God’s being is such that darkness tries to hide, Habakkuk 1:13
Your eyes are too pure to look on evil; you cannot tolerate wrong. Why then do you tolerate the treacherous? Why are you silent while the wicked swallow up those more righteous than themselves?
Even the heavens not pure enough for living God - Job says.
But the OT also says that pure light of God - the servant of the Lord, the Messiah, the Christ the God-man, would come and look, He will be called LIGHT. Isaiah 49:6
he says: “It is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to bring back the preserved of Israel; I will make you as a light for the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth.”
God is the source of the Light, but His Son is the effulgence, radiance the flowing forth of that light to the World. That was Jesus message, I am the light of the world - that light wit absolutely no deception, deviation dishonesty.
Do you know God like that - do you feel his complete and utter holiness and purity. Even the sun has spots, yet makes us turn away and in that moment stared at blinds us. But what about you, what is your experience of the holiness of God - does it scare you - want to ignore deny be blind to it, keep on living without reference to that kind of light and purity, holiness, righteousness - alway turning from it feeling your own guilt?
Or does this light,fascinate and attract you, like a moth - drawn to light - you are flying to it? Remarkable thing about Jesus, He said I am coming with all this purity and holiness,s perfect righteousness - I am coning to you as the Light of the World, and as a pure gift You can have my light, it can be yours as a pure gift and then as a result when you get transformed from within, you will start to walk differently:
John 8:12 “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”
Again Jesus spoke to them, saying, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will not walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.”
This was Jesus instruction to Nicodemus always came to him a t night wouldn’t enter the light yet, and to the whole nation and world at the festival of lights. You want to know how God is love to you, John says start with the attributes of attributes of God’s light his holiness - and you will see what the meaning and necessity of the love is really all about. The basis for real fellowship with God and with each other in Christ’s church. And having that as our basis, we can now take the first step in administering the Light test in our lives. John turns our attention from the light of God to our participation with that light.
B. Confidence & Joy in your Fellowship with God is tested by Your WALK in the Light!
B. Fellowship with God is tested by Your WALK in the Light!
Here is really good news and really bad news. First he gives the bad news. Those who only have a bare profession, like gangster Micky Cohen - I am going to be a Christian gangster. Today believe it or not their are those who say polyamorist- Christian. They believe have more than one husband or wife or both … can’t help it, their nature - and then the say the Christian part of their life is that they still have a belief that Christ is God and get forgiveness and inspiration from him. The false teachers and those that followed them were like that - they said two things. Some that because they had asalvation - no more such thing as sin for them - God does ‘t have any commandments - totally different level can do what ever they want, live by own will because grace n o reigns. Others said, the body not creaetd by God so do whatever they want with sexual immorality - but the common thread was they claim to have fellowship with this God of light, but do not practice the truth. Jesus came and proclaimed that’s not how salvation works. He says to Nicodemus
John 3:21 But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God.”
But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God.”
Jesus was explaining that the one who won’t come to him, hates the light because exposes something about his deeds and his motivation - exposes that. But if really in fellowship and come into the light, God will fill you, will work in you, the light transform you from within - John says here in
1 John 1:7a But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship
But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin.
Do you get that. This isn’t saying you won’ sin at all any more. But your life lived out of the light of God - and your walk will be a participation and sharing and fellowship with God’s nature, just as jesus was on earth. Not a test by which you can be saved, but saying as you walk in that light more and more, life of God by Christ will be worked and revealed in you. At that great feast where Jesus announced he was the light, he explained that the Holy Spirit will become a source of of life like a spring within us.
Fellowship with God is only possible in the light, Colossians 1:13 describes what this means:
Colossians 1:13 He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son.
He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son,
And so John is saying, you can ask yourself this - have I had my sin exposed by the light of Christ, so I see my need from him. In coming to him, am I walking where God is, in my life - so that now in my body, in my daily life - live out his nature and not my sin nature. Heb 12:14
Strive for peace with everyone, and for the holiness without which no one will see the Lord.
That’s not talking about the holiness of Christ that saves you , but of the progressive and growing holiness that makes you life. Christ. Are you committed to, and practicing that. Here the saying isn’t true that practice makes perfect, at least not until heaven. But the saying is Practice of walking light - practice makes progress! You know you darkness in relationship - hate jealousy, what darkens your eye to those around you, you know the secret sins that rob you of real peace, you know the false ways - are you practicing the truth of Christ - that’s evidence ans assurance that you have fellowship with him. That’s hat happens when the truth wehn the light when Christ is in you!
But the second step of the Light and Righteousness Test IS EVEN MORE ENCOURAGING! AT LEAST IN THE END, ITS MORE SCARY AT THE BEGINNING.
C. Fellowship with God is tested by your CONFESSION of sin, and ONGOING Cleansing!
How are you dealing with sin in your life right now? Are you? That’s a test about your fellowship with God. And John picking up on two things the false teachers were saying, addresses two false ways to deal with sin and so helpfully gives simple clear instruction about how your joy can really be fuller and your fellowship with other Christian and with God more close if you pass this test! How many of us would like that?
False teachers were saying i. we have no sin - either meaning that there is no original sin, we don’t have a sinful nature, or that after becoming Christians our sinful nature has been completely done away with, vanquished, not just conquered and dethroned. John is firing a shot across the bow of the lives of those who deny sin or ignore it. And he is not doing this pointing fingers saying there are the good guys thre are th bad guys. He says, we 51 out of 105 verses in this letter. We are tempted to down play sin completely, The church has largely lost a definition of sin. So easy to say I’m just human, well that’s what God’s word says, but that’s for another culture other time, symbolic, and there is no real principal - and we don’t think that God is light, pure light, and that Jesus reveals that light. But our theology always determines our morality! What you really think and experience of God, determines how you really live!
Instead of living in the light of God’s nature, instead of the truth of Jesus as the life and light of the world and my life, salvation that I now live by, what is at the centre of a person’s life - that ignores sin:
1 John 1:8 If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.
If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.
Deception and a lie is a the centre of our lives. Some Christians teach that if get a third blessing, reach a state of total perfection, sinlessness. Spurgeon had such a man, poured nice cold glass of water, calmly lifted it u and then violently wound up and threw that glass so it crashed inches from that mans’ face against the wall and shattered and splashed against him He got up and berated the pastor with such anger and foul language. You are not sinless, your sin may sleep, nap, for a while, but it only took a glass of water to wake it up!”
You know how this works, we cover up our sin with excuses, may say sorry I got caught,m sorry we’re in a mess - cover ourselves up in excuses. Live as if sin isn’t a real thing in in daily life! But someone covered in excuses and minimizing their sin, is naked before the great white throne of God’s judgment. God Jesus far away , far from the centre of my being even if I believe they exist and have salvation in some distant heaven in some distant time - right now in my daily life their nature, their life their forgiveness isn’t there, a lie that sin doesn't matter that God doesn’t respond to brokenness and wickedness, and evil a and suffering, and life is just about you and I doing what we want. Look at the fruit of the Spirit and the flesh in Gal 5 - if in ongoing unrepentant way - these mark your life and you are alright with that - do nothing about it - - big warning sign
Even Christian can fall into living like that and we have to face it that that is listening to the Serpent - Did God really Say, just live for yourself, get what you want, now regardless of God’s design and purpose live without him. Satan loves to use one of two strategies, one is to make sinners think they are saints with no need for fogginess and change, lulls them. The other is to make saints, who are really in Christ, so worried about their sin that they think there is no forgiven, acceptance and cleansing for their ongoing and past sins! And if we will face that scary reality , look why this is so encouraging in the end. It drives us to He who is the fullest expression to us of God’s light and love.
1 John 1:9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
Do you see a shift there, now it’s not just that a need forgiveness from my sinful nature, but even after I am saved and all my guilt and punishment has been dealt with by Christ on the Cross, do you see that there are actual particular sins, indwelling-sins in a believers life that require bringing before God now. Do you do that in specific ways? This IS SUCH GOOD-NEWS AND SUCH A RELEASE. You can’t really live well with a guilty conscience, and when we sin even as Christian with the conditioning of a sound conscience by the Holy Spirit we will feel real guilt for real sin, but here is the test do you go to the Son who is Light and Love. Do you not just say sorry, but do you confess - literally say the same words as Jesus about your sin. Agree with God’s judgment on sin, his definition, in humble true repentance life of turning from that sin and pursuing in the Spirit its opposite. Listen to the end of this verse, if you do that you’re not just waiting for God to say Ok you can take a pass on this, no judgment this time, he winks we’ll over look that one.
Look what is says: you really confess and repent - then because of God’s faithfulness and justice. Here is something so concrete - your sin and mine was really named, and evaluated, and judged as evil and a sentence was handed out on all and each and every one of our sin, all our unrighteousness, and the righteous one, the faithful one stood up and said - I will take that for them and from them, all of it - and John is saying do you experience that - all your sin and sinful nature forgiven once and for all, but even more all those on-going particular stains that you beat yourself up for, and others would judge you so badly for - and so you hide them - he died for those too.Listen does that include petty jealousy, gossip, does it include some serious theft and stealing from company, does it include adultery and sexually immorality, does it include - yes all and everyone. And the one who is in fellowship with God, even now in an ongoing way not going to live in that, can’t be habit any more, but if do fall into sin - really deal with it, really find freedom - and like he scrubs - the stains away and says: Accepted , therefore purified and cleansed and counted holy abut also als live in the light being made holy!
Do you get this? Accepted therefore obey. Not obey therefore accepted. And as we experience Christ cancelling our sin, as the old hymn puts it, as we live in the Light as the Spirit works within us, Christ also breaks the power of that cancelled sin in our lives. So, John says, to say we don’t have sin, or that God won’t forgive it if truly come to Jesus with it - that’s to make God a liar about His promises, his declaration. And the word really doesn’t live in us. But look at the promised glorious results:
1 John 1:7 But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin.
But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin.
You come with the nothing but the blood of Jesus, not your religious acts or good works or traditions, you come with the blood of Jesus - you come into the Light, and God removes the sin that separates you from him by Christ.
Martin Luther bad dream - Satan came with a long list of all the sins that troubled Martin from youth on … and in the dream his response not to deny or seek to justify himself. Like William Gunnel this and so much more. You are to right. But “The blood of Jesus his Son cleanse us from all sin.” You come into the light and live in the light that is Jesus and you know what - as you confess that sin here now - not met with a bunch of judgmental people who think they have got it all together and are better than, you are met by other fellow-sinners who repent together who seek to shed the darkness in their life and live in the light - and the result is when we really speak and believe and apply the gospel to the sins, confess them together - guess what? Then we have fellowship with each other. See when loved like that, start to love others and fellowship with them in the same way.
I hope you long for the fellowship, but also realize it isn’t the main thing, or the cause, its a result of the main thing - of walking int he light with God and walking with Him in community here! As we confess together, repent together, we are community who has this reality: I am not what I ought to be, nor what I one day will be, but thank God I am not what I once was! The Partnership/Fellowship of Light, that’s what in our homes and in our church family we are to experience, - real sinners, with real repentance, meeting the real Christ and then walking with Him together! Bonhoeffer - real test of a church is what we do when we find a real sinner, among us, and decide to share and live the gospel with each together. And John says as you walk in the light, and as you confess your sin and experience this cleansing - as progressive though not perfect sanctification happens to us, our joy becomes full and our fellowship with God and with each other deepens!