1 John 1:1-5 - God Is Light

The first of three letters written by the apostle John, the son of Zebedee, one of the first disciples that Jesus called. A fisherman by trade, according to the Gospels.

John also wrote the Gospel of John and the book of Revelation

1 John doesn’t develop a topic, then move to another one in a sort of logical argument like Paul’s letters. Instead, John lays out themes, then comes back to them from a slightly different angle. What looks like repetition is always actually a development.

1 John closely connected to the Gospel of John. But where the Gospel was written so that we might believe

John 20:30–31 ESV

30 Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; 31 but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.

1 John was written so that believers might know they have life

1 John 5:13 ESV

13 I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God, that you may know that you have eternal life.

John organizes his letter around three major themes to help them - the truth about Jesus, the truth about sin and forgiveness, and the truth about love. Each of these helps combat the errors that threaten the Christian’s confidence that they have eternal life. And today, in the preface to the letter, we’re introduced to some of these major themes.

ILLUST: “Why does it matter what we believe about God?”

Intro to 1 John 1:1-5 (note “hinge” nature of v5)

Q: Why does it matter what we believe about God?

I. God has revealed the truth about Himself (vv1-2)

Explain:

John begins much as he did in the Gospel of John chapter 1. But he doesn’t repeat what he says in the prologue to the Gospel. Even when he uses similar phrases, he uses them differently. Instead of “In the beginning,” pointing us to Genesis 1 as he did in the Gospel, he says “That which was from the beginning,” pointing us back to the Gospel and to Genesis, but saying something different.

In John 1, he referred to God the Son as the Word. He said “in him [in the Word] was life, and the life was the light of men.” He said that the light was coming into the world. And in John 1:14, “And the Word became flesh… and we beheld his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father.”

Here, he calls the Son “the Life” - and he calls the message about Him “the word of life.” Like in the Gospel of John, he makes sure we know he’s talking about eyewitness testimony: WE have seen, looked upon, touched the Life.

And John gives us no room to wonder who the Life is. The Life is the ETERNAL Life, who was WITH the Father. Just as he began his Gospel by making sure that we knew the Word was in the beginning with God, the Son, Jesus, who makes the Father known, here he says that the Life is the one who was revealed, who was with the Father, Jesus Christ Himself.

Maybe you remember some of the things that Jesus says about Himself in the Gospels. In John 11:25, he says, “I am the resurrection and the LIFE - whoever believes in me will live, even though he die, and whoever lives and believes in me will never die.” In John 14:6, he tells his disciples, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”

And this is not a metaphor. He is literally the life.

This is why, in Mark 5, when a man named Jairus left his dying daughter’s bedside to find Jesus, begging him to come to lay his hands on her so that she would be well and live, and Jesus followed the man back to his house, only to be approached before they got there with the terrible news, “Your daughter is dead,” Jesus turned to the desperate dad and said, “Do not fear, only believe.”

Mark tells us that he entered the house and sent everyone outside except the girls parents and Peter, James, and John, and went in to the room where the little girl lay.

Jesus took Jairus’s daughter’s hand and said, “Little girl, arise,” and she immediately got out of bed.

This is why, in Luke 7, outside the village of Nain, when a widow wept as her only son was being carried out of the city gates, dead, he approached her and said, “Do not weep.” And Jesus, full of compassion, drew close and touched the bier and said, “Young man, arise,” and immediately the widow’s son sat up, alive.

This is why, in John 11, after he tells Martha, “I am the resurrection and the life,” he approaches the tomb of Lazarus, dead for four days, and tells them to roll away the stone. And he says, “Did I not tell you that if you believed you would see the glory of God?” and he faces the pitch black mouth of the tomb and says, “Lazarus, come out.” And the dead man obeys.

Notice that in each of these cases, Jesus speaks and the dead come to life.

John 10:27–28 ESV

27 My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. 28 I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand.

Jesus came to give His life as a ransom for many; He came to lay down His life and to take it back up again; He is the Eternal Life, and He gives himself to those He will.

John’s words in verses 1-4 form something like a legal deposition - a formal testimony - we have heard, seen, looked carefully upon, and touched with our own hands the eternal life, and we testify and proclaim Him to you.

Consider for a moment how many people make confident statements about what God is like, what Jesus would do, and how often those confident statements are just their own worldview projected on God. Every time the world turns a cultural corner, people jump up and start claiming that what everybody wants is fine with God. They spin a tale about God that ends up looking exactly like themselves.

And that’s the very definition of idolatry - to make a god in the image of man. The gods of the world don’t reveal the Truth, they distort and destroy it.

John says, “I’m not writing my own ideas about God; I’m telling you what He said and did.” The proof of the testimony is in the fact that is nothing like what he and the other disciples wanted. They didn’t want a Messiah who died on a cross, they wanted a Messiah who kicked Rome out and restored the Kingdom to Israel. Their own accounts are full of their own failures to believe, failures to understand. His resurrection came as a surprise even to them.

So John, as an apostle and an eyewitness, says, “What we witnessed, we testify and proclaim to you.”

Look at how verse 2 begins - “the life was made manifest,” and at the end of the verse, “the eternal life, which was with the Father and was made manifest to us”.

Another form of the same verb was on John the Baptist’s lips last week in John 1:31, where we read:

John 1:31 ESV

31 I myself did not know him, but for this purpose I came baptizing with water, that he might be revealed to Israel.”

God has not left us in the dark. He has revealed Himself. He was made manifest in the person of Jesus Christ.

Apply:

We can trust the testimony of John and the apostles because they aren’t giving us vague impressions, or man-made religion or philosophy. Here, in the pages of the Scriptures, we have the unified and coherent testimony of eyewitnesses to the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus.

I want to speak to those of you right now who may be struggling with questions about who God is and what Jesus has to do with you.

Maybe you’ve heard people say that all religions are basically the same, that there are many ways to God, or you figure that faith is a sort of Golden Corral, where maybe you end up with a plate full of mac and cheese, and potatoes, but I grab the chicken-fried steak and the green beans. This is what man-made religion ends up like - you build your religion like you fill your plate at the buffet.

Or maybe you like to say you’re not religious, but spiritual. You don’t want to be narrow-minded, or arrogant, or think that you’ve got it all figured out, but you’re interested in truth wherever you find it.

But all of these so-called spiritual ideas vanish like fog when sun rises on it when you realize: That can only be a valid approach to life if God has left Himself without a clear testimony.

“No one can really know for sure” is a lie. In fact, it’s the very first lie ever spoken. The Bible tells us that God spoke with a clear command in the beginning, but Satan asked Eve, “Did God really say not to eat of any tree in the garden?” And when Eve told Satan what God had said, the serpent spoke directly against what God had said.

Consider this: God is the good Creator, the Life-giver, the Almighty, and He has not left us in the dark about who He is. He has spoken clearly to His beloved world, a clear and consistent Word, ONE truth, THE truth, the Word about the eternal Life, Jesus Christ.

If you’re sort of wandering around the edges of Christianity, if you’re wondering how to know what God has said, pick up His Scripture. There is no other book in the entire world like this one. In these pages, you will read the unimpeachable truth about God, and the unfortunate truth about yourself, and the incomparable truth that God is so good that He has provided eternal life as a gift to all who believe.

Consider what good news this is: God has made Himself known. All the blind groping in the dark can never get you to God; God Himself has come to give life to us. And John saw it all for himself. What a gift to you and me.

In the second-to-last verse of the book of 1 John, chapter 5 verse 20, the apostle says,

1 John 5:20 ESV

20 And we know that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding, so that we may know him who is true; and we are in him who is true, in his Son Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal life.

Look at verse 3 with me, and our second point:

II. The truth is the only way to have fellowship with God (v3)

Explain:

<<READ v3>>

The word “fellowship” has to do with a close relationship and intimacy. It means participating with others, especially by sharing what we have with those we love. The reason we call the space downstairs the “fellowship hall” is because it’s commonly where we meet when we want the whole Church to share a meal. But fellowship also involves sharing in one another’s joys and hardships.

John mentions two kinds of fellowship here - fellowship between himself and his readers, and fellowship with the Father and the Son.

He wants fellowship to come out of this letter. He wants the reader to look and say “yes, I believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, our advocate and the propitiation for our sins. Yes, I share with you in that faith.”

Throughout the rest of the letter, John is going to call us to recognize the genuine message about Jesus that reconciles us to God and reconciles us to others, and to distinguish it from the counterfeits that were already beginning to leap up wherever the Gospel was preached.

This is why the testimony of John and the apostles is so important - because the only way to have fellowship with God is to know the actual Jesus.

John repeatedly returns to three areas of concern in his letter - the identity of Jesus, the nature of sin and forgiveness, and the nature of genuine Christian love. He lays out each of these so that we can identify and flee falsehood, and so that we can be reassured that we have eternal life in Christ Jesus.

Fellowship with the Father and the Son is John’s way of summarizing what he heard Jesus say on the night before His crucifixion. In John’s Gospel, in chapter 14, Jesus gives some of the most wonderful words of comfort imaginable. Even as He is about to lay down His life for them, and return to His Father’s side, He says that He will send them another helper, the Holy Spirit. He says,

John 14:18–21 ESV

18 “I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you. 19 Yet a little while and the world will see me no more, but you will see me. Because I live, you also will live. 20 In that day you will know that I am in my Father, and you in me, and I in you. 21 Whoever has my commandments and keeps them, he it is who loves me. And he who loves me will be loved by my Father, and I will love him and manifest myself to him.”

And in verse 23 he says

John 14:23 ESV

23 Jesus answered him, “If anyone loves me, he will keep my word, and my Father will love him, and we will come to him and make our home with him.

This is the heart of the fellowship that Jesus promises: Everyone who believes in Him is given the gift of the Holy Spirit, God’s own Spirit dwelling within them, all the time, and by His Spirit, the Father and the Son are with us - at home with us.

And throughout the rest of the letter, John will insist that fellowship with God is not for individuals alone. And that leads us to our third point:

III. Fellowship with God is the source of joy (v4)

Explain:

John gives several reasons why he writes this letter, and this is the first one. Connect verses 3 and 4 with me - he proclaims the message about Jesus so that his readers will have fellowship with him and with God, and he writes so that “our joy may be complete.”

Joy is more than temporary happiness. Joy is when God’s blessing overwhelms something else. A completed joy is found in a fulfilled promise.

God sent John the Baptist to baptize so that the the Christ would be revealed to Israel. When that’s exactly what happened, and people started following Jesus instead of John the Baptist, you’ll remember how he responded:

John 3:29–30 ESV

29 The one who has the bride is the bridegroom. The friend of the bridegroom, who stands and hears him, rejoices greatly at the bridegroom’s voice. Therefore this joy of mine is now complete. 30 He must increase, but I must decrease.”

John’s joy was complete because God had fulfilled His promise.

John 16:24 ESV

24 Until now you have asked nothing in my name. Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full.

And Jesus promised John, all the apostles, and the fledgling church, “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.”

Now he bears that witness, and he longs for it to bear much fruit, just as Jesus had promised.

Charles Spurgeon said, “Having found the honey, we cannot eat it alone; having tasted that the Lord is gracious, it is one of the first instincts of the newborn nature to send us out crying, ‘Everyone that thirsts, come to the waters, and whoever has no money, come buy and eat; yea, come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.’”

To put it another way, true complete joy is a product of God fulfilling His promise to save sinners. Not just ourselves, but others. The Gospel - the Good News of Jesus Christ, is not just that Jesus died and rose again to save me, but that he died and rose again to save a people.

APPLY:

Do you want to know the kind of joy that John longed to have? It comes through fellowship with God together with one another.

There’s a picture of this growing joy in the early church:

Acts 2:42–47 ESV

42 And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. 43 And awe came upon every soul, and many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles. 44 And all who believed were together and had all things in common. 45 And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need. 46 And day by day, attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, 47 praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved.

Do you see how they were rejoicing at what God was doing, not just in themselves, but in one another?

This is what we were made for - true fellowship. This is why the New Testament so often refers to Christians as brothers and sisters. The Gospel is too good to keep to ourselves, and it’s too big for us to live out by ourselves.

We didn’t just sew pajamas for an entire elementary school because it’s nice. We did it because those children are made in the image of God and need to know that Jesus is LORD. They need to know that God so loved the world that He gave His only Son so that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life. Our community needs the truth about God, and I long for our joy to be complete through God saving our neighbors and making them our brothers and sisters.

So put verses 1-4 together, and you get this:

God has revealed the Truth about Himself - that truth is the only way to have fellowship with Him, and that fellowship is the source of joy.

But each step introduces a division. God has revealed the truth, and that means that we must distinguish between the truth and falsehood. The truth is the only way to have fellowship with Him, and that means that apart from the Gospel of Jesus, we are and must remain alienated from God, alienated from the Eternal Life.

True fellowship with God is the source of joy, and that means that apart from that fellowship, we will not know the blessing that overcomes despair and darkness.

And this leads us to our final reason why it matters what we believe about God, in verse 5:

IV. The truth about God reveals the truth about us (v5)

<<READ v5>>

Explain:

When John says “God is light,” he does NOT mean that photons are God, or some silliness like that. No, he means that God is perfectly radiant with goodness and righteousness. He is what created light was designed to picture.

Light reveals what darkness hides. And there is no darkness in God. When He reveals Himself, He does so without error, without miscommunication, without falsehood. And He has spoken definitively and perfectly in His Son Jesus Christ.

Jesus communicates who God is to us. He is infinitely righteous, perfectly wise, almighty, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.

But the truth about God also demonstrates why the message about Jesus is such good news, and I repeat myself from our Advent series:

He came anyway.

The truth about God reveals the truth about us - that we are not perfect lights.

Think again about the little girl that Jesus raised. On his way to Jairus’s house, an old woman reached out and touched him, even though her illness made her unclean. A selfish man might have had his disciples teach her a lesson for breaking the Law and defiling him. But not Jesus. He spoke not only healing, but forgiveness.

Under the Law, touching a dead body made a Jew unclean, but when the Life took the hand of the little girl, death had no power over Him. The Light broke through. The Life broke through.

APPLY:

So, consider the world around us, filled with darkness and light, and hear the words of Jesus:

John 8:12 ESV

12 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.”

If you’ve been wandering in the darkness, far from God, He’s calling you into the light of His fellowship. Not because you deserve it. Because He has paid for you. He purchased your life with His. Jesus, the Life made manifest, the Word made flesh, lived a perfect life, died a sin-bearing death as our substitute, and rose to new life on the third day, just as He promised. Promise fulfilled - joy complete -

Psalm 16:11 ESV

11 You make known to me the path of life; in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.

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