Life Project Blog

This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all. If we claim to have fellowship with him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live out the truth.  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, purifies us from all sin.

1 John 1:5-7

Earlier we looked at the introduction to this letter, and here, we enter the first section of the letter which begins at verse 5 and continues through 2:14. This section is given context in verse 5: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all. Thus, this section is all about John’s declaration of light versus darkness, and it contains comparisons and contrasts.

Before we take a look at it, keep in mind what John wrote in John 1:4 “In him was life, and that life was the light of men.” All through the Gospel story, John used “light” as signifying the presence of Jesus, contrasted with “darkness” denoting His absence.  Keeping this in mind, let’s take a look at our text. After proclaiming that God is light, John gets down to his explanation by asserting that if we claim to be in fellowship with God, but walk in darkness, we lie, and are not in the truth.  This is a rather easy statement to understand, for if we are in darkness, then we aren’t in His presence, and if we aren’t in His presence, we couldn’t possibly be in fellowship: There is no half-way.

The contrast is that if we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship… because we are with Him in the light.  If we have this fellowship in the light of His presence and truth, then His blood purifies us from all sin.  The reality of the statement is that we can’t be in fellowship with Him until our sins have been forgiven by His sacrifice on the cross.

Sometimes, we may walk a ways in darkness, and by this I mean that we may stray from time-to-time.  John doesn’t suggest that our errors kick us out of fellowship as we will see a little farther through this text, but that there is a way to return to the light of His presence, by confessing our sins, as we see in the next paragraph:

If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word is not in us.

1 John 1:8-10

I think we all would agree that a claim by any one of us to have never sinned would be little short of crazy.  John seems to think it’s worse than that.  All have sinned, but take heart, for there is a way out, confess your sins and He will forgive; this is our covenant promise.  There is simply no need for us to wring our hands and carry around a burden of guilt and shame before God, for when we confess our sins (acknowledge them) He will forgive; we have His Word on that!

It is time to begin a new adventure and I thought that since it has been a very long time since we have taken a close look at John’s letters, that we could mine the treasures contained in 1, 2 and 3 John. When I was studying these letters in Seminary, about 500 years ago (or so it seems now) we were told that these are very very difficult little books to understand, but as you will see, these are actually some of the easiest books of the New Testament to understand; they are simplicity itself once you get used to John’s writing style. Let’s just dive in!

That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched—this we proclaim concerning the Word of life. The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us. We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. We write this to make our joy complete.

1 John 1:1-4

John has a way of telling the story of Jesus from a lofty, heavenly viewpoint, and this is surely one of those instances.  His Gospel begins in a similar way, (see John 1:1-4) it provides a perfect parallel passage in fact.  Of course, in Revelation, John’s vantage point is so lofty that most misread it entirely. Here in this short letter, John is setting forth two basic and wonderful facts:  First, that Jesus is the Messiah, the anointed One of God.  Second, He is setting forth the fact that he, himself, is an eyewitness of Jesus, and Apostle who lived and walked with Jesus for over three years, consequently he is able to give eyewitness testimony about Him.

In verse one, John is letting us know that he saw this Jesus with his own eyes, touched Him with his own hands, heard Him with his own ears, and that now he (John) is proclaiming Jesus as the Word of Life, the Word that was with God and that was in fact God from the very beginning, a beginning that predates time itself.

I hate to be crass after such lofty statements, but to put it in the simplest possible modern American terms, John is saying something like:  Hey!  I’m about to tell you something important; listen up. Hey dummy, I know what the heck I’m talking about here!

Back to lofty: In verse two, John takes a step further, as he did in John 1:2.  This Word of Life really appeared, and John saw Him, John was there.  This eternal life that came from the Father Himself John is now going to proclaim to us; John will proclaim this great news of the Word of Life so that we may have fellowship with John and with Jesus, the Son as well as with the Father. And in doing so, our entry into fellowship will make John’s joy complete.

Fellowship is an interesting word, from the Greek word koinōnia meaning “association, community, communion, joint participation, intercourse; the share which one has in anything, participation.” This participation is not only in relationship, but in purpose, for we really cannot separate the Person of Christ from the purpose of the Father.  John’s joy will be complete, because by the proclamation of the Word of Life, we will be in relationship and purpose with John, our fellow believers, and with the Lord Himself.

Well dear reader, this is the introduction, I can’t wait to get to the proclamation itself, but that will have to wait until next time…