Purpose: To show that the reality of the Incarnation enables us to walk in fellowship with God and one another.
Scripture: 1 John 1:1- 2:6
The search for something real is not new. It has been going on since the beginning of history.
Reality and satisfaction. The search for these is the basis of most human effort.
What are some ways that we look for reality and satisfaction?
We look for satisfaction through wealth, thrills, power and advancement, knowledge and learning. Some of us even look for it through religion.
Ican't get no satisfaction
I can't get no satisfaction
'Cause I try and I try and I try and I try
I can't get no, I can't get no
When I'm drivin' in my car
And a man comes on the radio
He's telling me more and more
About some useless information
Supposed to fire my imagination
I can't get no, oh no no no
(Mick Jagger and Keith Richards)
We all want it. Even need it. But we aint getting it. Why?
Because we aren’t looking in the right places. It’s not in money and wealth. It’s not in our thrill-seeking. It’s doesn’t come with our degrees and career advancements.
There is nothing wrong with our searching. But we need to learn that these experiences by themselves will never really satisfy. Wanting something real and finding something real are two different things. When we find what we are searching for we may even realize that we have wasted a lot of time, priceless time, on cheap, empty substitutes for reality.
This is the point of John’s first epistle. This letter deals with a theme that is always current: the life that is real.
Where do we find satisfying reality?
John had discovered many years prior to this letter that satisfying reality will never be found in things or in thrills. John knew what all Christians discover: satisfying reality comes in the person of Jesus Christ. In the first paragraph of his letter he tells all about the living reality:
1 John 1 (NRSV)
1We declare to you what was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, concerning the word of life— 2this life was revealed, and we have seen it and testify to it, and declare to you the eternal life that was with the Father and was revealed to us— 3we declare to you what we have seen and heard so that you also may have fellowship with us; and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ. 4We are writing these things so that our joy may be complete.
What was from the beginning?
A real, satisfying word of life. A life that can offer complete joy.
How was that life revealed?
It was revealed in the person of Jesus Christ.
Where had that life been before being revealed?
With God.
What was John’s purpose in writing about the real life?
It was John’s wish to encourage fellowship within the church and fellowship with God. This is the purpose of all pastors: to bring people closer to one another and closer to God. Any message which encourages and leads to division is a false message. Fellowship literally means "to have in common". As sinners, we have nothing in common with the holy God. As sinners we have no fellowship with God. A little later we will explore more about how we obtain and maintain fellowship with God.
The Christian message can be summed up as having two great aims. What are the two aims of the Christian message?
Love of God and love for one another.
What is the end product of the aims of the Christian message?
Joy. John wrote these things so that our joy may be complete. Joy is the essence of Christianity. The ultimate product of the Christian message is joy.
Where are we to find fellowship with one another and fellowship with God?
If we are ever to find fellowship with one another and fellowship with God, and if we are ever to find true joy, we must find them in Jesus Christ.
The real life was not hidden from us so that we must diligently search in diverse ways to find it. The real life was "revealed" to us.
Imagine for a moment that you were God (We all do this far to often in our lives. I really shouldn’t tempt anyone to do this any more that we already do...). If you were God, how would you reveal yourself to the world? How could you tell the world about and give the world, the kind of real life that you want the world to enjoy?
How did God reveal the real life?
God has revealed Himself in many ways: through creation, through His Word, our Scriptures, but God’s final and most complete revelation to man came as a man, Jesus Christ. John calls this revelation the "Word of Life". In his gospel, John calls Jesus "the Word".
Joh 1:1 ESV
(1) In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
Why does John give Jesus this name?
Because Jesus is to us what our words are to others. Our words reveal to others what we think and how we feel. Christ reveals to us the mind and heart of God. Jesus is the living means of communication between us and God. To know Jesus is to know God. John makes no mistake in his identification of Jesus Christ. Jesus is the Son of the Father, the Son of God. John warns several times in this letter not to listen to false teachers who tell lies about Jesus:
1Jo 2:22 ESV
(22) Who is the liar but he who denies that Jesus is the Christ? This is the antichrist, he who denies the Father and the Son.
According to John, if a man is wrong about Jesus Christ, he is wrong about God, because Jesus Christ is the final and complete revelation of God to men.
Trivia note:
We often hear of "the Antichrist", but this letter and John’s second letter hold the only instances of the word "antichrist" in the New Testament, and in both instances John makes it clear that anyone and everyone who denies Jesus and his divinity is an "antichrist" and the world is full of "antichrists".
How does John declare his authority to preach his message?
He has heard Christ. He has seen Christ. He has looked at and touched the "Word of Life". This "Word of Life", that "was from the beginning", in other words eternal, has entered our world, the world ruled by time. Not only has God entered our world, that entry was in the form of a real human. A real human of whom John was a disciple.
The "Word of God", or "Word of Life" is not nor will ever be a human discovery. The "Word of God" comes directly from God. It is news of God that we could never discover for ourselves.
1 John 1:5 (NRSV)
5 This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light and in him there is no darkness at all.
In the first paragraph John tells us that he had heard, seen, and known the message. What was the message that John had heard and which he now declares?
John begins by telling of the nature of God the Father of Jesus Christ. God, he says, is light, and there is no darkness in him. What does this statement tell us about God?
Some possible answers:
1. It tells us of God’s glory. There is nothing so glorious as a blaze of light piercing the darkness.
2. It tells us of God’s self-revealing nature. Light is seen, even in darkness. No amount of darkness can extinguish a light, yet the smallest flicker seems huge in pitch black darkness. To say that God is light is to say that there is nothing secretive about Him. He wishes to be seen and known.
3. It tells us of God’s purity and holiness. Darkness cloaks and hides evil. That God is pure light speaks of absolute holiness.
4. It tells us of the guidance of God. One of the great functions of light is that we may see our way through darkness.
5. It tells us of the revealing quality of the presence of God. Flaws that may be hidden by darkness are obvious in the light. Light reveals any imperfections.
We can never know the depth to which human life has fallen or the height to which it may rise until we see it in the revealing light of God.
In God, says John, there is no darkness at all. We have discussed the meanings of light. What did John mean by "darkness"?
1. Throughout the New Testament darkness stands for the very opposite of the Christian life. Darkness stands for the Christ-less life, the life that people lived before they met Christ or the life that they live if they stray from Him.
2. The dark is hostile to the light. In the first paragraph of John’s gospel, he writes that the light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not overcome it.
3. The darkness stands for the ignorance of life apart from Christ.
4. The darkness stands for the chaos of life without Christ. In the beginning God commanded light to shine out of the darkness. Without light the world was a chaos with neither order nor sense.
5. The darkness stands for the immorality of a life without Christ. Because people are born in sin, people love darkness rather than light. Those living a life without Christ seek the shadows.
6. Darkness is unfruitful. Growing things need light in order to grow. Without Christ no fruit of the Spirit will ever grow.
7. Darkness is connected with lovelessness and hate. If people hate one another, it is a sign they walk in darkness.
8. The dark is the home of the enemies of Christ and the final goal of all those who will not accept Him.
1 John 1:6-7 (NRSV)
6If we say that we have fellowship with him while we are walking in darkness, we lie and do not do what is true; 7but if we walk in the light as he himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin.
What inconsistency does John address here?
Darkness is sin. Sin is the enemy of God. There is often a very real inconsistency between what we say and what we do. If we say we have fellowship with Christ, but we do knowingly, willingly "walk in darkness" or live in sin, then what are we?
Liars. Hypocrites.
What results from "walking in light"?
Our Christian life is much more than "talk". We must also "walk" or live, what we believe. If we are in fellowship with God ( if we are "walking in the light"), our lives will back up what our lips profess.
The New Testament calls the Christian life a "walk". This walk begins with a step of faith when we trust Christ as our Savior.
Is salvation the end, the ultimate goal, of our spiritual life?
Salvation is only the beginning. Just as a child must learn to walk, so a Christian must learn to "walk in the light".
What is the most fundamental difficulty in learning to "walk in the light"?
The "darkness" or sin.
Must we be perfect before we can have fellowship with God?
If that were the case, all of us would be shut out.
According to John, what are the tests prove that we do indeed "walk in the light"?
If we are really walking in the light, we have fellowship with one another. No belief or doctrine can be truly and fully "Christian" if it separates and divides people from their neighbors. No church can be exclusive and still be the Church of Christ. Anything that destroys fellowship is "walking in darkness".
The second test of "walking in light" is that each day those in fellowship with God are cleansed more and more from sin. Are we ever or can we ever be cleansed to the point of being sin-free?
This is a matter of debate. But the one key doctrine in which John Wesley, and those who follow in his heritage, really stand out is the doctrine of "Christian Perfection". Wesley was a firm believer, and it is backed up many times in Scripture, that the grace offered through the blood of Christ not only cleanses us from the guilt of sin, but from the power of sin in our lives as well.
1 John 1:8-10 (NRSV)
8If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. 9If we confess our sins, he who is faithful and just will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. 10If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.
Was John Wesley deceiving himself with his insistence that Christian Perfection was not only possible but expected?
No. The problem with the doctrine of "Christian Perfection" is the language itself. When people hear the words Christian and perfection together, the word impossible is what usually jumps to mind. And yet this is the language that Jesus Himself used:
Mat 5:48 ESV
(48) You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.
The word perfect and its synonyms occurs nearly 30 times in the New Testament, every instance referring to Christian believers. It all depends on whether you interpret "perfection" from the Latin perfectio which literally means "the perfection of the gods, one who is perfect in all aspects, in thought, word and deed" or from the Greek teliosis which when translated to English means "whole, complete, mature, grown-up, perfect". The New Testament version of "perfect" was translated from the Greek teliosis.
Is John contradicting himself when he says that we must "walk in the light" and then later calls liars those who "say that we have no sin"? After all if we "walk in the light as He is in the light" wouldn’t that mean that in us "there is no darkness at all"?
Not really. He merely tells us to be honest about our sin. It is easy for us to find defenses for our sin. We blame our upbringing or our genes or our environment, or our temperament, or our physical condition. We may claim that we have been led astray by others. It is a human characteristic that we seek to hide or escape responsibility for our sins.
John tells us that we can depend on "he who is faithful and just" and He will forgive us. We might think that God in his righteousness and justice would be more likely to condemn than forgive. But the point is that because He is righteous, He never breaks His word, and His Word is full of the promise of mercy to all who come to him asking for forgiveness.
1 John 2:1-6 (NRSV)
My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous; 2and he is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world. 3 Now by this we may be sure that we know him, if we obey his commandments. 4Whoever says, ‘I have come to know him’, but does not obey his commandments, is a liar, and in such a person the truth does not exist; 5but whoever obeys his word, truly in this person the love of God has reached perfection. By this we may be sure that we are in him: 6whoever says, ‘I abide in him’, ought to walk just as he walked.
John makes it clear that Christians do not have to sin. To know God and to obey God, according to John, must be twin parts of the same experience. Those who claim that they abide in God and in Jesus Christ must live the same kind of life that Jesus lived. Union with Christ necessarily involves imitation of Christ. Knowledge involves obedience, and union involves imitation. Therefore in the Christian life, sin can never be taken lightly.
What test did John describe for knowing whether or not a person truly knows God?
If we obey.
This lesson highlights the two most obvious sides of Methodism. Methodism was began as a holiness movement. This scripture passage tells us that we are to be holy people, to walk in the light and purge ourselves of darkness. This passage also tells us that the non-exclusive, welcoming nature of fellowship that the Methodist’s practice is evidence that we are indeed walking in the light.
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