We continue this morning with our theme in
the first epistle of John, turning today from
the principle that must forever regulate Christian fellowship,
as that is enunciated in verse five, when
it says that God is light, and in
him is no darkness at all.
We turn from that to the human response
to that fact.
John here proceeds to enumerate three attitudes which
would be fatal to the emergence of Christian
fellowship, and that is really what we have
beginning with verse six in chapter one and
going right through to verse two in the
second chapter.
Here John is concerned to show that there
are certain personal attitudes which are simply incompatible
with the fact that our God is light,
and if we persist in indulging in such
attitudes of mind or of heart or the
corresponding mode of behavior, then we shall find
that we know next to nothing of this
thing that John speaks of as fellowship with
God who is light.
Now, before we come to these attitudes, may
I just notice something which I think is
very important here.
Three times over in these verses, beginning with
verse six, three times over John introduces something
with the words, if we say, if we
say, if we say, and he has the
same thing really in chapter two, verses four,
six and nine.
It's put in a slightly different word, a
slightly different way, he that saith, he that
saith, he that saith.
Now what John is wanting us to get
hold of here is this.
We may say quite a lot, and it
means very little.
We may claim with our lips that we
have this or we are that.
We may profess this and profess that.
In and of itself our profession may mean
very little.
There must, says John in this whole passage,
this is the thrust, there must be something
in our lives that gives credibility to what
we say, what we say, what we say.
Of course it is desirable to have a
credible, to have an audible confession of faith.
Scripture says so.
Jesus says so.
He says, you who will confess me before
men, I will confess you before my Father
who is in heaven.
If we confess with our mouth that Jesus
is Lord, says Paul, and believe in our
hearts that God raised him from the dead,
we shall be said, of course that is
important and desirable.
But it must always be accompanied by something
else.
The mere bare word of profession in itself
is inadequate.
And that is really the pungent message of
the passage that we are entering upon today.
Now, in this passage, John proceeds to write,
telling us that there are two main areas
of life, very specially, where it is possible
for us to entertain attitudes, belief or behavior,
which are quite inconsistent with the fact that
God is light.
And that we acknowledge that, and believe in
him, and have made him our God.
Now, first of all, the Apostle first announces
that if the profession to have fellowship with
God is belied by a behavior which is
inconsistent with his nature, as light, then he
says, we are simply liars.
Look at verse 8.
If we say we have fellowship with him
while we walk in darkness, we lie.
This is very plain speaking, this.
And we do not the truth, or we
do not live according to the truth.
In other words, to say with our lips
that we have fellowship, whilst we live in
a manner that is inconsistent with the God
with whom we claim fellowship, well, that just
makes what we say a downright lie.
Again, from there, John proceeds to affirm that
if our profession to have fellowship with God
is accompanied by certain beliefs about ourselves, then
we are simply giving the lie to what
we profess.
Now, he mentions two particular beliefs.
The first in verse 8.
If we say we have no sin, that
is, sin in our natures, if we say
we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and
the truth is not in us.
Says John, if in walking in the light,
as you profess, if in walking in the
light you were heard to say that there
is no sin in you, then, says John,
your profession to be walking in the light
is absolutely wrong.
Because any man who is walking in the
light who is God, or the light that
surrounds God, will know his sinfulness.
And then, in verse 10, you have something
similar.
The second belief that belies a profession of
fellowship with God as light is that which
denies the practice of sin by us personally,
denies that we have committed sin.
Says John, if we say that we have
not sinned, Now, this is the action of
wrongdoing.
If we say that we have not sinned,
we make him a liar and his word
is not in us.
In other words, then, to sum it up
again before we come down to particulars, what
John is saying is this.
Our Christian profession is this, that our God
is a God of light.
This is the message.
But we go further.
If we are Christian, we say that we
have fellowship with God who is light.
John says, all right.
All right.
But make sure, he says, that if you
say that, what you say must be accompanied
by a behavior and a belief that is
consistent with a God with whom you say
you have fellowship.
Now, this morning that brings us to the
incompatible behavior that he mentions here.
I think I referred to verse eight, did
I not, earlier on, which was wrong.
It's verse six, of course.
Let's turn to that now.
This is the first personal attitude which, according
to John, is incompatible with our having fellowship
with God who is light.
If we say that we have fellowship with
him while we walk in darkness, we lie
and do not live according to the truth.
Now, just note in the first place the
profession that is there made, the profession that
is envisaged.
We say, says John, that we have fellowship
with him.
Now, I'm not going back this morning in
order to bring out again all that is
involved in Christian fellowship.
Suffice it now simply to say this.
Fellowship means sharing life with God.
It means being reconciled with him and then
sharing with him.
We are living together on the same plane.
There is no warfare between us.
There is no enmity between us.
On the contrary, we love one another and
we live with one another and in fellowship.
Now, that's the profession.
The verbal claim is we have fellowship with
God and that God with whom we have
fellowship is a God who is light.
As a matter of fact, the words that
John uses here remind us of what he
said earlier in verse three when he claimed
concerning the apostles and all those in fellowship
with the apostles, truly our fellowship is with
the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ.
We are claiming when we say that we
have fellowship with God, we are claiming that
we are related to God in the same
way as the apostles were, in the same
way as the early church was.
We share in his grace and his goodness
and his promises and his presence and his
power.
Now, it may well be, of course, that
at this point John is echoing some of
the claims of the heretics to whom we
referred when we started this series, the Gnostic
heresies.
Because it is quite true that they were
making a profession to be in such intimate
fellowship with God that really they were ahead
of everybody else.
This is always characteristic of the cults, always
characteristic of heresy.
Heresy goes beyond the apostles of our Lord.
Heresy claims something which goes beyond the norm
of Scripture.
And these people were claiming to be beyond.
They had a light that the apostles did
not have.
And in consequence they said they had such
intimate fellowship with God, the apostles were left
far behind.
Now, over against their verbal claim, they who
say that they have fellowship with God, the
apostle, albeit indirectly, clearly envisages a moral contradiction
inherent in such a profession.
If we say, he says, that we have
fellowship with him while we walk in darkness,
we lie.
You see, these ancient Gnostics were apparently as
brazen, so brazen as to make this profession,
even whilst they were living, not making occasional
excursions into, but living on a plane of
moral perversity.
They were flagrantly violating the laws of God.
They were flagrantly living on a moral plane
that was lower than and inconsistent with God
who is holy.
And therefore, says John, there is a moral
inconsistency here which belies what you say.
Now, let us stress this point even if
we fail to stress anything else.
Darkness is not a shade of light.
We are living in a queer world, a
world that calls darkness light and light darkness.
According to the Bible, light and darkness are
absolutely antithetical and irreconcilable.
Moral darkness is not a shade of moral
light.
Darkness is not light in embryo, light in
the promise, light becoming.
It's nothing of the kind.
Darkness and light are opposites.
And they can never, never be reconciled because
light is what God is, and God determines
what it is at all times.
So that there is something very radically wrong
when someone claims to be living in the
most intimate relationship with God who is light,
and they are living on a plane morally
which is the exact antithesis and contradiction of
what they say with their lips.
The implication of such a claim as this,
of course, is that sin really doesn't matter.
It doesn't matter.
Now, we might not go to the extent
of saying that, but my good friends, may
I ask, may I ask us to face
ourselves this morning.
Are we not sometimes living as if sin
did not matter?
Is it not true to say of us
that very often times our policy and our
principle is this, to get as near to
it as we can without getting burnt?
Rather than keeping as far away from it
as we can to the glory of God.
To avoid a resemblance of evil.
Sin does matter, and the implication here is
that it does matter.
We can have fellowship with him, sweetest fellowship,
the most intimate, and yet we live on
a plane of moral life which is quite
inconsistent with it.
Now something's wrong here.
Here then is a most blatant form of
what is sometimes referred to as antinomianism.
The being in the government of God, anti
-law, against the law of God, against the
authority of God, against the rule of God,
and therefore not taking any serious steps to
put his law into operation in our own
lives.
One writer explains the Gnostic attitude by saying,
and I quote, They thought of the body
as a mere envelope covering the human spirit
and maintained that man's spirit was inviolable.
In other words, sin couldn't touch you.
You may commit anything you like, you may
do anything you like, you may look at
anything you like, but it doesn't touch your
spirit.
You're in an envelope.
The envelope may suffer because of certain sins
you do in the body, but the spirit
itself is inviolable.
It could not be contaminated by the deeds
of the body.
Another writer explains it by saying that the
Gnostics claimed, and I quote, to have advanced
so far along the road of knowledge that
for them sin had ceased to matter.
They claimed to be so spiritual that sin
was of no account at all, so far
on that for them the laws had ceased
to exist.
Now that is the profession that is here
envisaged.
It's a profession with the lips to have
fellowship with God, but it is a profession
to have fellowship with a God of light
whilst they're still living on a plane of
darkness.
Now the conclusion that is reached.
If we say, says the Apostle, that we
have fellowship with him while we walk in
darkness, conclusion, we lie and we do not
the truth, or we do not live according
to the truth.
In the light of the moral contradiction involved
in such a profession, the Apostle of Love
insists that he must indict these people, and
he doesn't.
He doesn't hold his punches here.
You know, my friends, we've got a mixed
-up idea about love, haven't we?
Love is sometimes very daring and very open,
and it says things very straight from the
shoulder.
There are times when love has to speak
loudly and clearly and unambiguously, and it's the
Apostle of Love who says here, look, he
says, if you say you fellowship with a
God of light and you walk on a
plane of moral darkness, which is the antithesis
of light, look, he says, you're downright lying.
Now, my good people, I don't know what
you'd do with the Apostle John if he
said that to you this morning, but he
says it if you belong to this category.
You lie.
We lie.
A positive charge, we lie.
Actually, John says this four times over during
the course of his epistle.
We won't go into that now, but four
times he says that, and it's the Apostle
of Love, and he's a courteous man.
Oh, he's a perfect gentleman, John.
He wasn't uncouth.
He wasn't an uncivilized man.
Don't you believe it?
You read his letters and see.
No, no, no.
John, John knew what etiquette required.
But look, he says, we lie if we
say we have fellowship with a God who
is light and we walk down there on
the plane of moral darkness.
It's a downright lie.
Too much is at stake here not to
speak the truth.
It may hurt.
It may bring persecution to the speaker, to
the Apostle, or anybody else that repeats his
terms of his language, but it must be
said there is a moral inconsistency which is
a veritable lie, unenacted lie.
Negatively, John puts it like this.
We do not the truth.
Now, probably that is a Hebraism, and that's
why it sounds a little bit odd in
English.
We do not the truth.
I notice that the Revised Standard Version says
we do not live according to the truth.
But it misses the point, you see.
Because to the Hebrew, truth is not something
that you simply believe.
Truth is something you do.
You do truth.
You have to act on it.
You don't simply believe it with a mind.
If you believe it with a mind, you
act upon it, and the two things are
one.
Truth must be done.
This is a Hebraism, and it's true to
the whole Hebrew concept of morality in the
Old Testament and coming on into the New.
Truth must be done.
In other words, if I say that I
believe something, and it's simply a matter of
intellectually holding to it, and it doesn't affect
my life, well, I just don't believe.
If I say, for example, that I believe
God is light, but that doesn't have anything
to say to my behavior, then I just
don't believe.
I fancy I do.
But I hold an opinion.
And to hold an opinion is a different
thing from believing.
I would hazard the guess, my friends, and
I hope you won't be angry with me
for saying it, that the Church of Jesus
Christ is full of opinions about God.
But men and women who really believe are
less a number.
To believe is not simply to hold something
in the mind, but that which I hold
in the mind masters my life and molds
my living.
Now, that's the point here.
And that principle applies to the matter before
us, according to John.
And he does not hesitate to draw the
logical conclusion that to believe that God is
light and then to walk in darkness is
inconsistent with the nature of true Christian belief.
To add that we have fellowship with him,
and not just believe in him, that we
have fellowship with him is to add insult
to injury.
Religion without morality is an illusion.
Amos recognized long ago that only those who
are agreed can walk together.
And Paul asked the question demanding a negative
reply.
How come union has light with darkness?
So then we turn to the last thing.
From the profession envisaged and the conclusion announced
to the correction that is prescribed.
Now, what have we got to say to
this?
Very challenging so far.
It cuts through, doesn't it?
Reaches me anyway.
I hope it reaches you too.
It comes through the camouflage.
It makes me ask myself many questions.
I hope it makes us all ask questions.
But now, what is the correction to this
attitude of living as if sin were unimportant
or didn't matter at all?
What is the correct attitude to take?
Well now, says John, here's the correct attitude.
But if we walk in the light, as
he is in the light, we have fellowship
one with another, and the blood of Jesus
Christ his Son cleanses us from all sin.
John now turns from the exposure of what
is false to the exposition of what is
true and what is right.
He insists that there can be no fellowship
with God by way of refusing to take
sin seriously.
Since God is light, we must accept his
view and his verdict upon every aspect of
life and living.
Otherwise, we treat God as if he did
not exist.
And he has graciously made provision for those
who are prepared to be thus realistic and
rigorous, who desire fellowship with him more than
anything else.
Now, let's look at it.
We shall be brief.
The first thing I want you to notice
is the duty that is universally prescribed.
If we walk in the light, as he
is in the light, the principle expounded here
is that we let God determine our standard
of living.
Walking in the light means this.
It means referring every decision, every project, referring
everything to the God who is light, and
asking him to assess it and evaluate it
and decide for me, because I want to
walk in fellowship with him.
He must determine what is right and what
is wrong.
Now, this is a very rigorous, sometimes a
very painful discipline, but it is the discipline
of the Christian life.
This is how Christians have walked, when they
walked in a manner consistent with their profession.
It is to walk in the light, hold
nothing back in the dark, have no secrets
between you and God, open your heart to
him and say, Lord, this is how I
am thinking.
Am I right?
Lord, this is what I propose to do.
Is it right?
Lord, this is what I have done yesterday.
Was I right?
Give me your sentence.
Pass your judgment.
Tell me what you think.
Show me what is right.
And in the light of God, I accept
his verdict.
Living in the light.
Our duty, as enunciated by the apostle, therefore,
is to turn our backs upon all that
can be described as darkness, or shady in
any way, and to make it our habit
to regulate our lives according to God's moral
excellence, and therefore his moral standard.
John requires of us a way of life
which is marked by transparency and honesty, Godward.
We must live in the eternal light, which
is God.
We must hold on to nothing that is
inconsistent with that.
Every habit, every behavior, every thought, every notion
is brought up and assessed in the light.
Now, if that is the duty that is
universally prescribed, look at the discovery which will
be eventually made.
What if I do that?
Now, what if we do this for one
day?
What if we do this today now?
Everything we are going to relate to God.
And we say, Lord, is this right?
Is this consistent with your moral character, your
moral nature, your moral excellence, your holiness?
You see, what's going to happen is this.
I'm going to become aware not only of
the fact that I'm doing something wrong now,
but over a period of my life I've
been living in a wrong way.
Certain principles that I've held have not been
consistent with this.
Certain modes of behavior have been inconsistent with
this.
And what's going to happen is this.
I'm going to become aware of all kinds
of things that have been wrong in my
life, in my belief, in my behavior, all
along the way.
Well, how do you deal with that?
How does this gender fellowship with God?
How is it possible for this kind of
thing to bring us to a place of
fellowship with God?
Well, now, says John, and let me quote
him again, if we walk in the light
as he is in the light, we will
have fellowship one with another.
You say, how?
Now, expositors divide here, and I noticed that
there might have been a division of opinion
in our group this morning if we had
opened this up for more discussion.
Someone voiced the view that the reference here,
we have fellowship one with another, refers to
we have fellowship with other Christians.
And I'm sure it includes that.
But if you read it carefully, I think
you will see that in the first place,
in the first place it refers to fellowship
with God.
That is the theme here.
If we walk in the light as he
is in the light, then we have fellowship
one with another.
Who are the two parties concerned?
Well, in the first place, they're God and
ourselves.
Because, you see, what happens when we come
into the light?
Let's use this picture for a moment.
Now, what happens when we come into the
light in order to walk in the light?
Think of it as a picture, pure and
simple.
Coming into the light from the darkness.
Now, God is light.
The whole world is dark and black.
It's all darkness in the world.
Use the image for a moment, the picture.
God is light.
Right.
And I am part of the black sinful
world.
All of us are.
But now I'm coming into the light.
In other words, I'm coming near to God
and I'm opening up before him that he
should assess my thinking and my living, cast
the light of his holiness upon me, and
let me see myself because I want to
know what I look like from his vantage
point.
I want to know his assessment of my
life and of my living.
I'm coming into the light.
Now, notice what is happening.
That's the first step into fellowship.
Because what a man wants when he comes
into the light is this.
He wants to know what God is saying
about him in order to do what God
says.
The moment you step out of the darkness
into the light and relate your life deliberately
to God's judgment, that very moment you've taken
a step towards fellowship with him.
And then, of course, with one another.
We have fellowship one with another.
And the first step into that fellowship is
to take God seriously.
If you fail to take the holiness of
God seriously, you will always be living in
the shadows of a true Christian experience, never
in the reality.
It is absolutely essential that we take the
holiness of God seriously and let him judge
us.
But you say, I don't understand the logic
of that.
If I come into the light, all right.
That is a step towards fellowship with God.
I'm opening up and I want to know
what he thinks and what he says about
me in order to obey.
Right.
I can understand that.
But there's so much sin in me.
But you see, this is how John ends
the verse.
When you come into the light of God,
you never see sin only.
When you begin to walk in the light,
you will always see the blood of Christ
that relates to the need of the sinner
who is walking in light.
Now, this is the difference between the accuser
of the brethren and the savior of sinners.
The devil very often accuses us and leaves
us there.
He reminds us of things we've done and
he breaks our hearts.
He brings this charge against us and that
charge, and we have to say, if we're
honest, yes, you're right, and you don't even
know half the truth about me.
And we could add much more than the
devil says to us about ourselves.
But you see, he generally leaves us there
to mope over ourselves and we're left in
a state of hopelessness.
And you never, never find that in Scripture.
Here is a man walking into the light.
He's coming into the light of the throne
of God and he's saying to the Lord,
Lord, my heart is dark and black.
I have an awful lot of sin here,
but I want your judgment upon it.
I want to know what you think.
I want to know what you require of
me.
The whole hideous thing comes up before me,
and I know what God says.
He condemns it, and He requires this and
He requires that.
But if I'm in the light, I shall
always see something else.
Oh, the preciousness of it.
What will I see?
And the blood of Jesus Christ, His Son,
keeps on cleansing me from all sin.
Now, there are two processes that are going
on simultaneously here according to the grammar of
the sentence.
The first process is this.
It's a man walking in light.
Walking in light.
Living, you see, on this plane that I
constantly refer things to God.
Constantly refer to His judgment.
Constantly receive His adjudication.
That's one level of existence.
That is one continuous thing that is taking
place in John's imagery.
Now, as long as that takes place, so
long the blood of Jesus Christ, His Son,
keeps on cleansing us.
In other words, the only thing that you
Christians need is this.
Be honest with God.
Don't hide yourself.
Don't excuse yourself.
Don't pretend to be other than you are.
He knows much better.
Don't wear a mask.
Don't pretend.
Open up with God.
Let Him say to you what He wants
to say and judge what needs to be
judged.
And in the process of walking in the
light, the blood of Jesus Christ, His Son,
keeps on cleansing us from all sin.
So, you see, the ensuing fellowship is at
one and the same time a fellowship in
the light, but under the blood.
Now, I'm going to repeat that because I
want the devil to hear it.
It's a fellowship in the light, but it's
a fellowship under the blood.
Everything Godward is made ours through the blood
of the everlasting covenant, through the sacrifice of
the Mediator, through the death of Calvary and
the resurrection of the third day.
The blood of Jesus Christ, God's Son, cleanseth
us.
One little word.
Thank you.
I can't open my mouth today.
But one little word we dare not leave.
The blood of Jesus Christ, His Son, cleanseth
us from all sin.
Now, will you underline that little word, all?
It's very difficult, you know, preaching the gospel
and expounding the scriptures, because knowing oneself, one
knows other people a little better.
And we go to extremes.
Either we are too sensitive or we are
not sufficiently sensitive.
And perhaps you find the same thing in
one person at different seasons.
Now, I can imagine if somebody here this
morning saying, All right, I'm letting the light
of God's countenance break in upon my past
experience, and I know so many things that
are wrong, and he says they're wrong.
And I can understand God's Son dying for
this and forgiving me for that and cleansing
that, but what about this?
What about this?
I can't forgive myself.
I can't forget it.
The skeleton lives with me.
It wakes me in the bedroom every morning
when I get up.
And it follows me to bed in my
mind each night I go to sleep.
Oh, my friend, I want you to hear
the word of God this morning.
Cleanseth us from all sin.
Have you got it?
All sin.
The man or the woman that begins to
walk in the light as God is in
the light and relates the whole of life
to Him will feel uncomfortable, terribly uncomfortable, as
God begins to assess this, that and the
other.
But wait a moment, it's never the end
of the story.
The blood of Jesus Christ covers the whole.
All sin, my sin, not in part, but
the whole were nailed to His cross, and
I fear them no more.
Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, O my
soul.
This is the gospel.
I, therefore, am encouraged this morning to invite
anybody here who doesn't live on this plane.
I can't judge you, and I won't do
it.
But as you judge yourself, you may not
be living on this plane.
You've never referred everything to the light which
is God and accepted His assessment of everything.
You're not living in the light.
I am encouraged this morning to ask you
to come right into the glare of it.
Open up completely, don't try to hide anything.
And I'm encouraged to do it, not simply
because you will have fellowship with God, but
because I can assure you that in order
to have fellowship with God, the blood of
Jesus' Son avails to take the stain away.
And your fellowship with the Father will be
under the canopy and the efficacy of the
blood of His peerless Son.
Take the first step, if you've not done
it before.
In your heart of hearts, decide here and
now, by God's grace, that you'll do this.
Characterize your life, that you'll be on the
way toward this deep fellowship with God which
the apostles knew.
And sin was judged daily, hourly, by reference
to God.
Not to men.
Times without number, they had to say.
We cannot, we must do the things that
God has ordered, rather than the things that
men require.
But they were judged by the light of
God.
May the Lord lead us then by His
grace and enable us so to respond to
His truth today that we shall know increasingly,
on a personal level, on a level as
a church, and as fellowships of people living
in areas within this great city, we may
know increasingly what fellowship and communion really means
to God's glory.