THE NECESSITY OF WALKING IN THE LIGHT
1 John 1:6–7
If we say that we have fellowship with him and at the same time walk in darkness, we lie and are not doing the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with each other, and the blood of Jesus Christ is steadily cleansing us from all sin.
HERE, John is writing to counteract one heretical way of thought. There were those who claimed to be specially intellectually and spiritually advanced, but whose lives showed no sign of it. They claimed to have advanced so far along the road of knowledge and of spirituality that, for them, sin had ceased to matter and the laws had ceased to exist. Napoleon once said that laws were made for ordinary people but were never meant for the likes of him. So, these heretics claimed to be so advanced in their thinking that, even if they did sin, it was of no importance whatsoever. In the later years of the second century, Clement of Alexandria tells us that there were heretics who said that it made no difference how people lived. The second-century theologian Irenaeus tells us that they declared that truly spiritual people were quite incapable of ever being affected or harmed by sin, no matter what they did.
In answer, John insists on certain things.
(1) He insists that, to have fellowship with the God who is light, we must walk in the light, and that, if we are still walking in the moral and ethical darkness of the Christless life, we cannot have that fellowship. This is precisely what the Old Testament had said centuries before. God said: ‘You shall be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy’ (Leviticus 19:2; cf. 20:7, 20:26). Those who would find fellowship with God are committed to a life of goodness which reflects God’s goodness. The New Testament scholar C. H. Dodd writes: ‘The Church is a society of people who, believing in a God of pure goodness, accept the obligation to be good like him.’ This does not mean that we must be perfect before we can have fellowship with God; if that were the case, all of us would be shut out. But it does mean that we must spend our whole lives in the awareness of our obligations, in the effort to fulfil them and in penitence when we fail. It will mean that we must never think that sin does not matter; it will mean that the nearer we come to God, the more terrible sin will be to us.
(2) He insists that these mistaken thinkers have the wrong idea of truth. He says that, if people who claim to be specially advanced still walk in darkness, they are not doing the truth. Exactly the same phrase is used in the Fourth Gospel, when it speaks of those who do what is true (John 3:21). This means that, for Christians, truth is never only intellectual; it is always moral. It is not something which exercises only the mind; it is something which exercises the whole personality. Truth is not only the discovery of abstract things; it is concrete living. It is not only thinking; it is also acting. The words which the New Testament uses along with truth are significant. It speaks of obeying the truth (Romans 2:8; Galatians 3:7), following the truth (Galatians 2:14; 3 John 4), opposing the truth (2 Timothy 3:8) and wandering from the truth (James 5:19). There is something that might be called ‘discussion-group Christianity’. It is possible to look on Christianity as a series of intellectual problems to be solved, and on the Bible as a book about which illuminating information is to be gathered. But Christianity is something to be followed, and the Bible is a book to be obeyed. It is possible for intellectual superiority and moral failure to go hand in hand. For Christians, the truth is something first to be discovered and then to be obeyed.
THE TESTS OF TRUTH
1 John 1:6–7 (contd)
AS John sees it, there are two great tests of truth.
(1) Truth is the creator of fellowship. If men and women are really walking in the light, they have fellowship with one another. No belief can be fully Christian if it separates people from their neighbours. No church can be exclusive and still be the Church of Christ. Anything that destroys fellowship cannot be true.
(2) Those who really know the truth are each day more and more cleansed from sin by the blood of Jesus. The Revised Standard Version is correct enough here, but it can very easily be misunderstood. It runs: ‘The blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin.’ That can be read as a statement of a general principle. But it is a statement of what ought to be happening in the life of every individual. The meaning is that, all the time, day by day, constantly and consistently, the blood of Jesus Christ ought to be carrying out a cleansing process in the life of the individual Christian.
The Greek for to cleanse is katharizein, which was originally a ritual word, describing the ceremonies and washings and so on that qualified an individual to approach the gods. But, as religion developed, the word came to have a moral sense; and it describes the goodness which enables people to enter into the presence of God. So, what John is saying is: ‘If you really know what the sacrifice of Christ has done and are really experiencing its power, day by day you will be adding holiness to your life and becoming more fit to enter the presence of God.’
Here indeed is a great conception. It looks on the sacrifice of Christ as something which not only atones for past sin but also equips people in holiness day by day.
True religion is the means by which every day we come closer to one another and closer to God. It produces fellowship with God and fellowship with other people – and we can never have the one without the other.
THE THREEFOLD LIE
1 John 1:6–7 (contd)
FOUR times in his letter, John bluntly accuses the false teachers of being liars; and the first of these occasions is in this passage.
(1) Those who claim to have fellowship with the God who is altogether light and yet who walk in the dark are lying (verse 6). A little later, he repeats this charge in a slightly different way. The one who claims to know God and yet does not keep God’s commandments is a liar (1 John 2:4). John is laying down the blunt truth that those who say one thing with their lips and another thing with their lives are liars. He is not thinking of those who try their hardest and yet often fail. ‘A man’, said the writer H. G. Wells, ‘may be a very bad musician, and may yet be passionately in love with music’; and we may be very conscious of our failures and yet be passionately in love with Christ and the way of Christ. John is thinking of those who make the highest possible claims to knowledge, to intellectual superiority and to spirituality, and who yet allow themselves things which they know very well are forbidden. Anyone who claims to love Christ and deliberately disobeys him is guilty of a lie.
(2) The one who denies that Jesus is the Christ is a liar (1 John 2:22). Here is something which runs through the whole New Testament. The ultimate test of any of us is our reaction to Jesus. The ultimate question which Jesus asks every one of us is: ‘Who do you say that I am?’ (Matthew 16:15). Confronted with Christ, we cannot but see the greatness that is there; and anyone who denies it is a liar.
(3) Anyone who claims to love God and at the same time hates another person is a liar (1 John 4:20). Love of God and hatred of others cannot exist in the same person. If there is bitterness in someone’s heart towards any other, that is proof that that person does not really love God. All our protestations of love to God are useless if there is hatred in our hearts towards anyone.
THE SINNER’S SELF-DECEPTION
1 John 1:8–10
If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, we can rely on him in his righteousness to forgive us our sins and to make us clean from all unrighteousness.
If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.
IN this passage, John describes and condemns two further mistaken ways of thought.
(1) There are some people who say that they have no sin. That may mean either