A Study of 1 John 1:5 – 2:2
Introduction
Recently while traveling through Europe, I boarded a train and was seated directly across from a gentleman who looked as if he had come right out of central casting in the role of an old KGB agent. He looked like one of the old spy handlers in a Bourne or Mission Impossible movie. He was dressed in a rumpled suit and tie, and he spoke English with a heavy accent. He was clearly an advocate for the Russian government. I said, “Tell me what’s going on in Russia.” He said, “When it comes to Russia you cannot understand her; you can only love her.”
I said, “What do you think of Vladimir Putin?” He said Putin is answering to many different groups, but that Russia always has time, that Russia is patient, and that Putin knows this. I said, “What do you think about the war in Ukraine?” He shrugged and said, “What is the Ukraine but Russia? And what is war but diplomacy by another name.”
I shared the Gospel with him, going through the plan of salvation a couple of times because of the language difficulties. He understood what I was saying and he replied, “I wish that I could believe as simply as you do.”
I said, “But you can,” and quoted John 3:16 to him.
As the train pulled into the station he looked at me with a weary smile and said, “I’m sorry this has not been a relaxing conversation, but then, these are not relaxing times.”
With that we ended our conversation with something we could agree on. These are not relaxing times. So how do we navigate these difficult times? It’s easy to be rattled all the time. That’s why we have this letter from John. The whole book of 1 John was written to give us assurance, more assurance, reassurance, and more reassurance.
Background
To understand what John is saying we have to know something of the background of this book. In his commentary, Dr. Colin Kruse gives us a brilliant idea as to what caused the apostle John to write this letter. He suggests that near the end of his life John published his Gospel, the Fourth Gospel, the Gospel of John. This Gospel, more than any other, stresses the duel nature of Christ—that He is both God and human. John stresses the deity of Jesus Christ. In a multitude of ways, John tells us that Jesus Christ was, is, and always will be Almighty God. The climactic point in the Gospel of John is when Thomas cried out to Jesus, saying, “My Lord and my God!”
John sent his Gospel abroad, especially among the churches in Asia Minor over which he had responsibility. Some of the people, particularly those with strong Hellenistic backgrounds, thought John was going too far. They said, “John is old and senile. If you continue to listen to what he says and read what he writes, you are foolish.”
It precipitated the desertion of large numbers of people from John’s churches. The key to all this is 1 John 2:18:
18 Dear children, this is the last hour; and as you have heard that the antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have come. This is how we know it is the last hour. 19 They went out from us, but they did not really belong to us. For if they had belonged to us, they would have remained with us; but their going showed that none of them belonged to us. 20 But you have an anointing from the Holy One, and all of you know the truth.
John said in effect, “A lot of people have left us. They have left our churches. Their propaganda has made you feel like you’re foolish for not joining them. Some of you feel hurt and troubled and unsure of yourself and your beliefs. But don’t be rattled; Be reassured.”
Let me quote from Dr Kruse: “(John’s) Readers needed… reassurance because their confidence had been shaken by the propaganda of the successionists…. (His) primary aim in writing 1 John was to assure his readers whose confidence had been shaken by the activities of the successionists (or defectors). Assurance, then, is a pervading theme in this letter….”
Today let’s focus on the second paragraph of the letter—1 John 1:5 – 2:2.
Scripture
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.
8 If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. 9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. 10 If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word is not in us.
My dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin. But if anybody does sin, we have an advocate with the Father—Jesus Christ, the Righteous One. 2 He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world.
John’s opening statement is that God is light, without a flicker of darkness. The terms light and darkness are used symbolically or metaphorically many ways in Scripture. The context here suggests that what John is saying is this: God is so pure, perfect, holy, and faultless that there is not the tiniest trace of sin, pride, selfishness, or any impurity in Him.
You know how it feels when you wake up in the middle of the night and turn on a light. It hurts your eyes. Even staring at a light bulb for a few seconds can hurt your eyes. The flash of the camera can blind you for a moment. When the solar eclipse occurred a couple of years ago we all had to wear very dark glasses to protect our eyes. God is a billion times brighter, infinitely brighter, than any light we can ever imagine. His holiness radiates the light of all the stars and suns in the heavens combined, multiplied by billions.
Based on that, John now makes three statements with contrasting ifs. He says, first, “If we do this or if we do that.” And then again: “If we do this or if we do that.” And a third time: “If we do this or if we do that.”
He is contrasting those who are wrong with those who are right. He is drawing a contrast between those who have deserted the churches and left, and those who have remained.
If We Claim to Have Fellowship
Let’s look at the first set of ifs in verses 5 through 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.
The deserters claimed they had a relationship with God, that they had fellowship with Him, yet they had rejected the Gospel truth about Jesus Christ and were not living out the kind of life Jesus exemplified and exhorted us to have. John said they were lying. He said they were wrong, despite all their claims to high moral caliber.
This is precisely what is happening in our own day. Anti-Christians are popularizing every kind of devious moral choice and pronouncing it normal, healthy, to be celebrated. I read a children’s book recently that’s being used in some schools. The title was It’s Perfectly Normal. Inside were drawings and explanations of all kinds of sexual activities, and the message of the book is that everything you feel like doing is normal.
But saying so doesn’t make it so. If we claim a form of godliness and yet walk in darkness, we are lying. We are not living out the truth. How many people today claim to have fellowship with God but walk in the darkness!
But here is the counterpoint. Verse 7 says: “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.”
What does it mean to walk in the light? John is using some of the same language that he used in beginning of His Gospel. In the Gospel of John, chapter 1, John wrote about Jesus, saying:
9 The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world. 10 He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. 11 He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. 12 Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.”
To walk in the light means to receive Jesus, to believe Jesus, to be a child of God because of what Jesus did for us, and to emulate Him.
If that’s true we have fellowship with one another.
I can’t tell you how many times I’ve used this verse in officiating weddings. I could do so because Katrina and I proved it true in our own experience. My wife, Katrina, and I were very different. But we were both committed to Jesus Christ, and we had both been taught to start every day with our daily Quiet Time, during which we went to our respective desks and we both read and studied the Bible and prayed. At the end of the day, we joined together in prayer. Neither of us was perfect, but we both had a relationship with the Lord, and that was the glue that kept us together. That glue never cracked, or dried up, or lost its adhesive power.
If we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and furthermore, the blood of Jesus Christ our Lord cleanses us from all sin. John is only seven verses into his letter, yet he has already brought up the cleansing power of the blood of Christ.
Yellow Fever is an infectious disease spread by mosquito bites, and there are still outbreaks in Africa and South America. It’s called yellow fever because many of those sick with it develop jaundice. In 1925 the Rockefeller Foundation determined to find a vaccine to protect people from yellow fever. Their efforts failed until they found a 28-year-old man in Ghana named Asibi. He had a case of Yellow Fever. He was sitting on a stool, his head in his hands, and he had a temperature of 103 degrees. Mosquitoes were swarming around him. The doctors took blood samples from him, and there was something about his blood that was efficacious in developing a serum. From his blood came a vaccine, which is still being used today, nearly a hundred years later. That man’s blood has saved millions of lives.
But that’s nothing compared to the blood of Christ. His blood cleanses us from sin, and not just sin but from all sin.
If We Claim to Be Without Sin
And that leads us to the second contrasting set of ifs:
8 If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. 9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.
John was still thinking of those who had flooded out of his churches. Some were telling the others that there is never a need to ask forgiveness. They had a set of beliefs that in some way, they thought, rendered them sinless. We aren’t sure about the details of what they were saying, but at some level they were claiming a kind of sinless perfection.
These deserters were making the others feel insecure and uncertain. But John said, “Don’t be rattled. These people are deceiving themselves. We must learn to confess our sins, because God is faithful to all of the promises He has made about forgiving us. He is a just God who provided salvation through the sacrifice of His Son. When we confess our sins He will forgive us and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
Several years ago I was preaching about this on a Sunday night. The house lights were low, and I made a comment about keeping short accounts with God. By that I meant we shouldn’t let our sins or bad habits or mistakes or bad attitudes accumulate. As soon as we realize we’ve disappointed the Lord, we should confess it. Suddenly I heard a man shout out from the back of the room. He said, “Sir, Sir, that isn’t right!” I saw the silhouette of a young man standing in the congregation near the back, and he went on to say that when we receive Jesus Christ as Savior all of our sins are forgiven—past, present, and future. We are totally forgiven. We are eternally forgiven. And we never need to confess our sins again.
I thought that was a very good point, which deserved an answer. What I didn’t realize at the time was that everybody in the room had suddenly become wide awake, shocked by the interruption, and afraid. There had been some violent incidents in churches, and just as I was trying to answer the young man I saw several big ushers surround him and lead him out of the room.
Nevertheless, even in his absence I went on to answer his question. It is absolutely true that when we receive Jesus Christ we are made righteous in God’s sight and all our sins are forgiven—past, present, and future. We are saved, safe, and secure. Let’s say, for example, that a born again Christian man was walking down the street and saw a scantily clad woman. An arrow of lust goes through his heart. In his distraction he steps off the curb and is stuck and killed by a car. I believe, based on the mercy and grace of God and on the blood of Christ, that man would go to heaven, even though his last conscious thought was sinful and he had no opportunity to confess it.
But even though our sins don’t cause us to lose our salvation, they do grieve the Holy Spirit. They quench the Spirit. They damage the vitality of our Christian life and hinder our fellowship with the Lord. That’s why we confess them. We want to abide in Christ and have unhindered fellowship with the Lord day and night.
When I was a boy I drove my father’s tractor into a tree and broke the headlight. He would have understood and worked with me to fix it, except that I tried to hide it from him. When he found out, he was angry with me because I had not been honest. Was I still his son? Yes. He never disowned me. But until I apologized and was honest and sought his forgiveness, there was a darkness over our fellowship.
Is there anything in your life you need to confess to the Lord? Anything that hinders your fellowship with Him and your walk with God? John said:
8 If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. 9 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
Now we come to the final set of contrasting ifs.
10 If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word is not in us. My dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin. But if anybody does sin, we have an advocate with the Father—Jesus Christ, the Righteous One. 2 He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world.
These apostates and deserters were saying they were doing the right thing by leaving the church and rejecting the Christ of the Fourth Gospel. They said they were not sinning. They said they could ignore what John was writing; they could ignore his ministry; they could ignore the Fourth Gospel; and they would be right to do so. They would not be sinning.
But John said to those who remained, in essence, “Actually, everything that I have written is a preventative for sin. If you will read my Gospel and if you pay attention to this letter, it will help combat sin in your life. But if and when you do sin, you can be sure of this: You have an advocate up in heaven representing you before the Father. It is Jesus Christ the Righteous One. He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins and for the sins of the whole world.”
Conclusion
One of my heroes is Bill Bright, who founded Campus Crusade for Christ, or Cru. When he first started serving the Lord, he struggled with certain attitudes. He tended to be proud and demanding. He snapped at people. He was selfish, and he sometimes felt defeated and frustrated.
He compared himself to Romans 7, where Paul said that what he wanted to do he often didn’t; and the things he didn’t want to do, those he did. Dealing with temptation can be very difficult. On the one hand we want to serve Christ with all of our hearts; on the other hand our sinful nature gets in the way.
One night in Portland, Oregon, a particular biblical pattern flashed into Bill Bright’s mind. He noticed what happened when he was breathing. He would exhale carbon dioxide and pollutants and things his body did not need. Then he would inhale fresh air and oxygen. This process was so continuous it was almost unconscious.
He realized his spiritual respiratory system worked in the same way. The Holy Spirit is compared in the Bible to wind and air. We breathe in the Holy Spirit, we fill our lungs and our hearts with the Spirit. We pray for His fullness and yield to His influence. We breathe out and exhale our confessions and our sins.
The Cru booklet about this says:
Spiritual breathing (exhaling the impure and inhaling the pure) is an exercise in faith that enables you to continue to experience God’s love and forgiveness.
- Exhale — Confess your sin — agree with God concerning your sin and thank Him for His forgiveness of it, according to 1 John 1:9 and Hebrews 10:1-25. Confession involves repentance — a change in attitude and action.
- Inhale — Surrender the control of your life to Christ and appropriate (receive) the fullness of the Holy Spirit by faith. Trust that He now directs and empowers you according to the command of Ephesians 5:18 and the promise of 1 John 5:14-15.
We are not living in relaxing times. But we don’t need to be rattled. We can be reassured. We can breathe. God has given us His Word so that we will not sin. But if any of us do sin, we have an Advocate speaking on our behalf before the throne of God. It is Jesus Christ, the Righteous One, the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but for the sins of the whole world.
So don’t be rattled, be relieved. Be redeemed. Be reassured.