Walking in the Light Part 1

The Message of Jesus: “God is light!”

In the next few sermons we will be unpacking what is means to communion with a God who is light. We will begin this week by looking at our relationship to sin, then we will look at God’s commands to us to do—which can be summarized as loving the right things.

The passage opens with a message that Jesus taught John—God is light, and in him there is no darkness at all. What does this mean? From the context we can say that light refers to a moral quality—God’s ways are not shady! God’s perfection means that he has nothing to hide! There is no hidden agenda or malfeasance. He is not like the Greek gods who were fickle and changing. God is an ultimate force for good. He is not marked by treachery or deceit.

When we think of light we think of things being illuminated so that we can see them. Perhaps there is a sense in which this is true of God as well—a light shining in the darkness, that will not be overcome by the darkness. Or in a more mundane image—when one turns on the light all the cockroaches run for cover.

While this may not cover it, I think these ideas move us in the proper direction for understanding the metaphor.

Since John’s primary concern is to help his people understand the truth of the Gospel, he begins by teaching them about the nature of God—light, and then the implications of that for us Christians. In our passage today, we see that it demands that grapple with sin.

There’s no fellowship in darkness

John begins that discussion by informing us that if we claim fellowship with God while we walk in darkness we deceive ourselves.

This follows logically. If God is light and has nothing to do with darkness, then how could people who act shady be in communion with God? The answer is that they could not. But That is not John’s point, that is the assumption upon which the point is made—the point is that to claim fellowship with God and live in ways that are contrary to godly character is just a lie. It can’t happen. And our lives will be marked with the implications of that dishonesty. This building your house on the sand! If you are compromised in your essential understanding of your relationship to God, everything else that flows from that will be unbalanced.

The life lived in the light on the other hand brings, has two effects

1. fellowship, and in a way that is typical of how John thinks, he sends us a twist: We might have expected him to say that if we walk in the light we would indeed have fellowship with God. But John’s point is bigger. He implies that we will have fellowship with God, but reminds us that true fellowship with God is fellowship with others.

Scholars suggest that one of the parts of the heresy that John is addressing is the notion that the Christian life is an individual spiritual experience. John does not believe that! Indeed the primary locus of Christian activity appears to be interacting with other believers! We are supposed to be known as Christ followers not by our superior theology or spirituality, but by our love, expressed primarily to one another.

Does that make you as uncomfortable as it makes me? I am suggesting that the church is supposed to be the place where we learn how to practice love so that we can share it outside the church…more on that in a few weeks.

2. The blood of Christ cleanses us from all sin.

But John is not done with the this idea of darkness:

DON’T LIE TO YOURSELF!

If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.

Here’s the reality of being a human—our nature is tainted. I hope this doesn’t come as a surprise to you. There is a reality to being human that is we are drawn toward things we know are not good for us. And sometimes even our best intentions result in disaster. This world is tainted and on some level it is woven into our DNA.

John’s point here is that when we deny this reality, we are deceiving ourselves. And this is exactly what we want to do! We do not like looking at our fallenness, we would rather rationalize or justify why we do the things we do. We blame other people or circumstances for our sin, but at the end of the day all of those remonstrations just hide the reality that we are not fully who we should be.

The first step in solving the problem is admitting that you have a problem, or so say many addiction programs. And they are correct. You have a problem that you are powerless to solve and that problem is called sin.

Many people who hear that word shut down. How dare you judge me?! Or worry that by teaching people that they are inherently flawed we will kill their self-esteem. This is possible, i guess, but the reality of my flaws isn’t something that comes as news to me. And when I am reminded that underneath my exterior there is a battle between good and bad impulses, sin gives me a concept to help me understand myself. I’m not crazy! I’m just flawed—like everyone else.

And like a 12 step program the answer is to admit it! I have a problem that I am powerless to fix myself! This is confession! When we acknowledge who we truly are, that releases God’s grace!

I have been to a few AA meetings, and my take away was not so much sadness at the power of addiction, but rather the sweetness of a community in which confession and acceptance were the price of admission!

In my experience the church does this so poorly! Even in places where I have seen them attempt confession without true community (acceptance). I rarely see that it leads to change, and sometimes people are not equipped to handle the depth of the human struggle, let alone to accept the reality that we are all just as guilty. And we are rarely willing to truly listen to one another as we attempt to unpack the shame and pain that drive our sin. Or maybe i’m completely wrong, but what I know is that I have had some fellowship with joy, but the majority of my church experience has been a gathering without joy…which suggests that we may be doing something wrong.

Making God a Liar

The piece of John’s grappling with sin has to do with