Light and Darkness 1 John 1:1–2:2 Communion Sermon
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1 John 1:1–2:2 (NKJV) — 1 That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, concerning the Word of life— 2 the life was manifested, and we have seen, and bear witness, and declare to you that eternal life which was with the Father and was manifested to us— 3 that which we have seen and heard we declare to you, that you also may have fellowship with us; and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ. 4 And these things we write to you that your joy may be full. 5 This is the message which we have heard from Him and declare to you, that God is light and in Him is no darkness at all. 6 If we say that we have fellowship with Him, and walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice 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 Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin. 8 If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. 9 If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. 10 If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar, and His word is not in us. 1 My little children, these things I write to you, so that you may not sin. And if anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. 2 And He Himself is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the whole world.
Today I am taking us on a journey; a spiritual journey; the kind that gives us fullness of joy.
This is all about light and darkness. We know that God is love and this is one of the great themes of 1 John and other Scripture but in the passage we read we find another theme: One of the main attributes of God is that He is light.
1 Timothy 6:16 (NKJV) — 16 who alone has immortality, dwelling in unapproachable light, whom no man has seen or can see, to whom be honor and everlasting power. Amen.
And just as in the first words that God spoke into creation He said: Let there be light. And light was separated from the darkness. Just as it’s the nature of light to shine and dispel darkness, so it’s the nature of God to reveal himself.
In the 1 John passage there is a contrast that follows. John pursues the image of “light versus darkness,” and offers his readers the first in a number of “light” statements. So we find the statements that God is light, that we are to walk in the light but also we find later John also says in:
1 John 2:8–10 (NKJV) — 8 Again, a new commandment I write to you, which thing is true in Him and in you, because the darkness is passing away, and the true light is already shining. 9 He who says he is in the light, and hates his brother, is in darkness until now. 10 He who loves his brother abides in the light, and there is no cause for stumbling in him.
It is goes without saying for John that fellowship with God involves fellowship with his people. Perhaps some had claimed to have a relationship with God while at the same time neglecting to love their fellow-Christians which is why he had to write these verses. Others were claiming to be in close fellowship with God, but these same people were living lives of moral and spiritual darkness. Now that means that for all the pious talk about God, their lives were characterized by disobedience, sinfulness, and rebellion. Jesus called such people white-washed tombs! Fancy on the outside but inside are full of dead men’s bones! In fact some teachers think that these people were claiming that once you trust in Jesus Christ, God doesn’t care what you do or how you act, so that sin no longer mattered. I’ve met Christians who believe this. As long as they’ve trusted in Christ it doesn’t matter what they do or what choices they make because God will forgive them. Yet John tells us that such a life is dishonest and impossible, that it’s impossible to live in close communion with God--who is light by nature--and then to live a life of darkness. Our words may sound good, but our choice of direction in the journey gives us away, because there’s no darkness in God, not even a shadow. The Gospel calls people to repentance not simply to believe.
The result of “living in darkness” is that it makes fellowship with God impossible, since human sinfulness inevitably interrupts a personal relationship between man and God – because He is light. This is true before we are Christians and it also affects us in our living as Christians. Conversely, “living in the light” comes out in contact with God, who is himself light. John goes on to demonstrate that it is ultimately God who makes such contact possible through Jesus being the propitiation for our sins.
Now propitiation is not a modern English word and so it needs to be explained because it is in our bibles. Other translations try to do away with the word by changing it to something like ‘sacrificial atonement’ but this changes the meaning that is meant. Atonement means to cover but propitiation means much more than that.
The word propitiation is found in three other places:[Slide]
Romans 3:25 (NKJV) — 25 whom God set forth as a propitiation by His blood, through faith, to demonstrate His righteousness, because in His forbearance God had passed over the sins that were previously committed,
Hebrews 2:17 (NKJV) — 17 Therefore, in all things He had to be made like His brethren, that He might be a merciful and faithful High Priest in things pertaining to God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people.
1 John: 4:10 (NKJV) — 10 In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
The word ‘Propitiation’ means to placate, to appease, to pacify anger by means of a gift or sacrifice. God is angry so Jesus laid down His life to turn away God’s wrath from us. Now this sounds very bad indeed. But let us remember that it was God Himself who sent His Son so that justice could be served so that He could be merciful to us. Justice demanded the death penalty for the:
Romans 6:23 (NKJV) — 23 For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.
God’s love sent His Son to pay the ultimate price for no one else could pay it and live. Let us be clear about the seriousness of sin…it was serious enough that God sent His own Son to die so that we could have forgiveness. God didn’t gloss over sin but sent the solution to it in Jesus.
Now when we sin we are out of fellowship with God. This does not mean we are now no longer his sons but that until we have confessed them to Him we will struggle to worship, to hear Him, and to fellowship with others and we will find His discipline in our lives.
When we are in this situation we are afraid to come into the light for fear that our sins will be exposed. However when we come to God who is light He reveals to us our sin and as long as we admit them to Him with a heart desirous to repent we come back into fellowship with Him and as a result with each other. The result of coming to the light is not that He exposes our sins but that His light swallows up our darkness and separates us from it because of the blood of Jesus shed at Calvary in the death of our Saviour. He is faithful and just to forgive us and to cleanse us from our sins.
And let us also be clear that every one of us have committed sin: the crowning verse is
Romans 3:23 (NKJV) — 23 for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God
But also is plain in the passage we read in 1 John 1:
8 If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.
10 If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar, and His word is not in us.
But it is in walking in the light that He swallows up our darkness.
You will come across Christians who now claim to be sinless and I suspect that we can overcome their arguments simply by provoking them!
It is also clear that we don’t have to sin (as we saw in Gal 5.16 last time) because we are Spirit-led. But when we do we have someone who is brokering on our behalf to the Father: The Son, Jesus. He is there defending us and saying that we are cleansed by His blood. The price has been paid in full. He is there interceding for us all the time – and boy, do we need it. None of us is free from sin; none of us can claim that we do not need the cleansing offered by Jesus for sinners.
There is action required on our part. In verse 6 and 7 it speaks of walking. We can either walk in darkness or in light. The Greek word here speaks of it in a continual sense. It is that we are consciously living in one or the other by practice.
We do find hope here, in that, when we seek to walk in the light with God His
blood purifies us from all sin. As we walk in the light we become acutely aware of God’s holiness and our unholiness. We are not only forgiven as we find in verse 9 but we are also purified from every sin through the sacrifice of Jesus. The stain is washed away.
It may be necessary just to pause here to describe what sin is: Sin is lawlessness and wrongdoing. Sin is everyone’s problem and without Christ we are separated from God and are His enemies. We are therefore spiritually dead but in Christ our sins can be removed.
1 John 3:5 (NKJV) — 5 And you know that He was manifested to take away our sins, and in Him there is no sin.
John 1:29 (NKJV) — 29 The next day John saw Jesus coming toward him, and said, “Behold! The Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!
It is the scandal of the cross that that Jesus, who was sinless, was sacrificed. In today’s world we are not familiar with such themes as sacrifice. But Jesus, being fully human and fully God laid down His life so that we could live, so that we could be forgiven, so that we could be reconciled to God, so it is not to be taken lightly.
He came so that we could have fellowship with God. Once we grasp that our sin breaks our fellowship with God, that it required a sacrifice so precious then how can we carry on doing things our way instead of God’s? Go and sin no more.
Hebrews 10:29 (NKJV) — 29 Of how much worse punishment, do you suppose, will he be thought worthy who has trampled the Son of God underfoot, counted the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified a common thing, and insulted the Spirit of grace?
A choice is now set before us: we can either walk in the light with God and enjoy fellowship with Him knowing our sins are forgiven, cleansed, purified, and removed from us, or we can walk in darkness and know guilt, fear and discipline.
When we come into fellowship again with God, for the door is always open, then we realise that, actually, we don’t have to sin, and that any sin we have committed is dealt with immediately because of the cross.
John refutes the heretical argument that it is possible to be true to God, while living in sin, by reminding us of the divine character itself: God is light and there is no darkness in Him. God’s holiness excludes man’s unholiness. But Jesus, the Son of God really lived and died to make possible the removal of human sinfulness. He turned God’s wrath away from us and directed it to Himself so that we could be
free. We, therefore, are to walk in the light of God. The evidence that we are may be surprising: we are in fellowship with His people, that we love each other and do not hate one another.
So, it is time to examine ourselves before we come to the table for communion. Are we in fellowship with God and with each other? Confess our sin to God and He will freely forgive. I’m going to give a little time to be quiet and pray.