28/01/2024
Light verse Darkness
1 John 1:5-7
5 This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all.
6 If we claim to have fellowship with him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live out the truth.
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, purifies us from all sin.
Assurance of our relationship with God is a promise, but it is also a way of life. We build our confidence by trusting in God’s Word and in Christ’s provision for our sin, after reading the Bible and agreeing that it is true.
First John was written by John, one of Jesus’ original 12 disciples. He was probably “the disciple whom Jesus loved”. Why do we say that?
John 21:20
Peter turned and saw that the disciple whom Jesus loved was following them. (This was the one who had leaned back against Jesus at the supper and had said, “Lord, who is going to betray you?”)
Along with Peter and James, he had a special relationship with Jesus. John wrote this letter to put believers back on track, to show the difference between light and darkness (truth and error), and to encourage the church to grow in genuine love for God and for one another.
He also wrote to assure true believers that they possessed eternal life and to help them know that their faith was genuine—so they could enjoy all the benefits of being God’s children.
John, was an eyewitness to Jesus’ life. John had lived with Jesus, having personal, physical contact with Jesus. He knew beyond any doubt that Jesus brings light and life.
As an eyewitness to Jesus’ ministry, John was qualified to teach the truth about him. The readers of this letter had not seen and heard Jesus themselves, but they could trust that what John wrote was accurate. We are like those second-and third-generation Christians. Though we have not personally seen, heard, or touched Jesus, we have the New Testament record of his eyewitnesses, and we can trust that they spoke the truth about him.
John 20:29.
Then Jesus told him, “Because you have seen me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”
Jesus does not mean that it is better to believe without hard proof.
John 5:39–40
39 You study the Scriptures diligently because you think that in them you have eternal life. These are the very Scriptures that testify about me,
40 yet you refuse to come to me to have life.
He simply notes that not everyone is blessed with the same level of evidence.
The same humility ought to apply for believing persons today. Though some of God's truth is obvious Romans 1:18–20
18 The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of people, who suppress the truth by their wickedness,
19 since what may be known about God is plain to them, because God has made it plain to them.
20 For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse.
Psalm 19:1
The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.
John writes about having fellowship with other believers. There are three principles behind true Christian fellowship.
First, our fellowship is grounded in the testimony of God’s Word. Without this underlying strength, togetherness is impossible.
Second, it is mutual, depending on the unity of believers.
Third, it is renewed daily through the Holy Spirit. True fellowship combines social and spiritual interaction, and it is made possible only through a living relationship with Christ.
Light represents what is good, pure, true, holy, and reliable.
Darkness represents what is sinful and evil.
The statement “God is light” means that God is perfectly holy and true and that he alone can guide us out of the darkness of sin.
John 1:5
The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
Light is also related to truth in that light exposes whatever exists, whether it is good or bad. In the dark, good and evil look alike; in the light, they can be clearly distinguished.
Just as darkness cannot exist in the presence of light, sin cannot exist in the presence of a holy God.
Remember that Satan cannot enter the Holy Place of God after he was cast down.
If we want to have a relationship with God, we must put aside our sinful ways of living.
To claim that we belong to him but then to go out and live for ourselves is hypocrisy.
Christ will expose and judge such deceit.
John 1:6 -
Here John was confronting the first of three claims of the false teachers: that we can have fellowship with God and go on living in spiritual darkness.
False teachers who thought that the physical body was evil or worthless taught one of two approaches to behavior:
Either they insisted on denying bodily desires through rigid discipline, or they approved of gratifying every physical lust because the body was going to be destroyed anyway.
Obviously the second approach was more popular! Here John is saying that no one can claim to be a Christian and still live in evil and immorality. We can’t love God and court sin at the same time.
John 1:7-
How does Jesus’ blood purify us from every sin?
In Old Testament times, believers symbolically transferred their sins to an animal, which they then sacrificed. The animal died in their place to pay for their sin and to allow them to continue living in God’s favor. God graciously forgave them because of their faith in him, and because they obeyed his commandments concerning the sacrifice.
Those sacrifices anticipated the day when Christ would completely remove sin. Real cleansing from sin came with Jesus, “the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29).
Sin, by its very nature, brings death—that is a fact as certain as the law of gravity. Jesus did not die for his own sins; he had none. Instead, by a transaction that we may never fully understand, he died for the sins of the world.
When we commit our lives to Christ and thus identify ourselves with him, his death becomes ours. He has paid the penalty for our sins, and his blood has purified us. Just as Christ rose from the grave, we rise to a new life of fellowship with him.
Amen! 🙏