Starting this week, if you’ll indulge me, I’d like to change tracks slightly, or get on a specific track. The first four weeks that I was with you all, I preached using the lectionary. The lectionary is a great tool for preaching, especially during the holidays. It provides a nice set of Scriptures, all pre-selected for you, and thus removes a large chunk of the “work” when it comes to preaching. However, the difficulty with using the lectionary during what we call “ordinary time” is that it often makes the preaching appear disjointed, you hop around from topic to topic with, at times, no apparent rhyme or reason.
Of course, as some of you know, when I first started preaching at Gibault, due to the fact that so many of the kids were unfamiliar with the story of Christ itself, I chose to preach straight through one of the Gospel in hopes of making them more familiar. At the time I chose the Gospel of Luke to preach through, because Luke was so detailed, in retrospect that’s the exact reason why I shouldn’t have chosen Luke’s Gospel. It took forever to get through, even with my frequent skipping ahead and summarizing.
However, one of the things I gained from this was an appreciation for preaching “straight through” a text. This method of preaching, actually, was fairly common amongst the Early Church Fathers; it’s called the “lectio continua.” It makes sense, given that most of the books of the New Testament were originally written to be read aloud on a regular basis in front of congregations. Reading through an entire book and preaching through an entire book would seem to go hand in hand.
The practice dwindled over time. However, one of the few things which our Calvinist brothers and sisters can be uncautiously praised for was the revival of this practice during the Reformation. So, if you don’t mind, I’d like to take a page from their book for the next few weeks.
One of the benefits of doing so, I think, is that it enables us to follow one stream of thought from one author, thus providing more of the context and background which are helpful in understanding various difficult passages. It also enables us to see broader, overarching themes throughout the text and see how the author relates different topics back to this theme.
Now, where to start? Why First John? Well, John’s Epistles are among the group of what you might call the “lesser-known epistles.” Not that they’re actually unknown; but they often get overlooked. Usually, when you think of the New Testament epistles, you think of Paul, obviously. He’s the majority writer when it comes to the New Testament. Not only that, but, being the Apostle to the Gentiles, Paul’s writings tend to be thought of as the most “theologically-rich” books of the Bible due in part to his need to “bridge the gap” between Jewish-Christian thinking and the rest of the world. But what of books like James, the books of John, first and second Peter, and so on? Clearly God has more to say than what He imparted to Paul.
It was also a choice of personal preference. I don’t know why, but I love John; specifically I love his Gospel and his three Epistles. Now Revelation, that one I’m not so fond of, it still puzzles me just as much as it did when I was a teenager. But his other writings, for some reason unbeknownst to me, strike a deeper chord with me than many of the other books of Scripture.
Finally, it was a pragmatic choice as well. Right now, preaching straight through a text remains a bit of an experiment for me. If it doesn’t seem to be going well after a while, well then, these books are short and it won’t be a concern for very long.
So, that being said, what do we know about John and his First Epistle? Well, as you already know, John was one of the twelve disciples, Jesus’ inner-circle so to speak. As far as we know he was originally a disciple of John the Baptist before coming to follow Jesus. We’re also pretty sure that he was a fisherman before joining Christ.
We also know that, though humble, John was by no means shy or timid. He, along with his brother John, was given the nickname “sons of thunder” by Jesus Himself. And, of course, John has no problem with letting his audience know, over and over again, throughout his Gospel, that he was the disciple “whom Jesus loved.” Tradition tells us that John wrote his three pastoral epistles while staying in Ephesus, before being eventually exiled to the island of Patmos, where he apparently wrote Revelations.
When it comes to the way John writes, it’s very different from what we may see in other New Testament authors, particularly, again, Paul. In Paul we see a lot of very Western linear thinking (a leads to b which leads to c). John, however, tends to weave his thoughts together. He’ll take a particular thought or idea as his starting point, develop an application from that concept, then return to the same starting point and develop another application, and so on and so on. Also, he often takes Gentile phrases, or Gentile concepts, and gives them a Jewish context. A famous example, of course, would be his use of the Greek word “logos” at the beginning of his Gospel. There he says “In the beginning was the Word (logos), and the Word was with God and the Word was God,” and goes on to say that this Word “took on flesh and dwelt among us.” He took a very Greek-heavy, philosophically-heavy idea of the ethereal “it,” the logos, which was/is responsible for all the order in the observable world and connected it to the flesh-and-blood God-Man Jesus Christ.
In this letter, one of his major themes is Light and Darkness, again, another Greek-heavy concept, and relates it back to being either in fellowship with the Light, with the God-Man Jesus Christ, or being in fellowship with the Darkness, the Satan, the anti-christ or anti-christs.
However, the most significant theme throughout this book, and all of his other writings, is the theme of love. God’s love for us as His children, John’s love for those whom he was writing to as children in a family of which he is an elder, a sort of paternal figure, and our love for each other and those around us. He paints a very fellowship-centered/familial picture in this book.
So, after all that, let’s get on to what John actually has to say in this first chapter of his first epistle:
1That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched—this we proclaim concerning the Word of life.
That’s a pretty complex starting point. Again, like in his Gospel, he is going back to that concept of the eternal existing God, that which was “from the beginning,” and bringing that concept into the realm of a physical experience; “that which we have touched, seen, heard.” He’s saying this concept, the Word of life, the spiritual reality which brings eternal life through forgiveness and healing, took on actual flesh, became as one of us. “This is our starting point,” he seems to be saying, “that God Himself became one of us.”
In a way this is also a statement of authority. Something which we will inevitably end up talking about as we work our way through this book is the issue of what was going on in the community to which John was writing. There was a number of what he later calls “anti-christs” who were leaving the community and preaching a different Gospel. He’s stating with authority that “we have heard with our physical ears, seen with our physical eyes, and touched with our physical hands this Word-in-flesh,” as opposed to those who didn’t know Him and may have even been denouncing that He really came in the flesh at all. John’s saying, in a way, “don’t tell me he wasn’t in the flesh, I touched Him.” And simultaneously saying that “I’m proclaiming to you what was told to me by this Word of life in the flesh.”
Thus he continues:
2The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us.
He’s telling us that what he is proclaiming is not the product of abstract thought, wishful thinking, or the outworking of a network of principles. No, instead what he is proclaiming is not a concept but a testimony. He is testifying to what he and other disciples with Him literally experienced.
In a sense, he’s appealing to the “I’ll believe it when I see it” side of human nature. He’s saying it’s a matter of evidence. Some of his opponents in this community had reached certain conclusions about the nature of God and religion through conjecture, through sitting down and thinking it out. In a way they’re kind of like the guys who start making predictions about sports teams at the beginning of the season. They sit down, look at the information they’ve got to go on, and then speculate about things no one could possibly know. In the end they always end up surprised by at least a few teams, by the actual experience itself; sometimes what happens defies reason.
Some of John’s opponents in this community, or, properly speaking, who had left the community and were now trying to persuade others to do the same, were what you might call pre-gnostics. One of the tenets of Gnosticism was that the material world and the spiritual world can’t have any real relationship with one another. Thus, God couldn’t really take on human flesh in their minds. John, on the other hand, is saying “we’ve seen it, we’ve experienced it. I don’t care if you don’t have the mental capacity to understand it, some things are beyond understanding, but either way it happened.”
That has to be, in a way, our starting point as well. If we’re going to call ourselves Christians, the foundation of our faith, the rock on which it’s built, cannot be ethereal concepts, principles, ideas of what it means to be nice. These are all important, but they’re the result, not the basis of our faith. Rather, our faith is grounded in the event, the actual living, dying, and rising again of the historical person of Jesus Christ, God come to dwell amongst us in the flesh. This we hold to be true and all other things of secondary importance.
One final thing in this verse which John will develop later in the next one is that relationship between the Father and the Son, the eternal Word. As I mentioned earlier, in John’s Gospel he tells us the “Word was with God and the Word was God.” There is an unbreakable unity between the Father and the Son, the Son and Father are both separate persons but one God; and an aspect of that unity is fellowship, the Word is both with God and is God.
John goes on to talk about our fellowship and its relationship to their fellowship:
3We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ.
Because of this experience, because they followed, trusted in, Christ, they have fellowship with Him. And because they have fellowship with Him, they have fellowship with the Father through Him, because He is in fellowship with the Father. Thus, if we join that same fellowship with John, fellowship with the Word, the logos, Jesus Christ, the Word of Eternal Life, we too will have fellowship with the Father through Him.
John wants His audience to join him in this fellowship, this plan of God to bring human beings into a relationship with Him through the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ, God in the flesh. Why does John want this? He tells us in the next verse:
How does this make their joy complete? Is he saying “it’s just not the same without you around?” I doubt it. It would seem that the joy of being in fellowship with God could ultimately overshadow any loss of friendship if necessary. Rather, it’s kind of like when you get your first car as a teenager, part of the fun is driving your friends around in it, so that they can experience part of the joy. An even better example might be telling a story. A large part of the joy that we get from having a unique experience is when we tell other people about it, when we share the story. And then if others go on to share the story with their friends, it’s even better. It’s like the old hymn “I love to tell the story, 'twill be my theme in glory, To tell the old, old story Of Jesus and his love.”
Additionally, the fellowship we have with God through Jesus Christ enables us to begin loving and enjoying the things He loves and enjoys. And the thing which He seems to love and enjoy most is bringing other people into fellowship with Him. Thus, our fellowship with Him shapes us in such a way that we love to see others being a part of that fellowship with us and Him in Christ.
Then John moves into telling the message which He wants to write about specifically. He says:
5This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all.
John’s going to develop this theme of darkness and light over the next several verses. So what’s he talking about? Does he mean that God literally is light, as in “it sure is dark in here, somebody hit the lights,” sense? No, obviously not. God is spirit, whereas light, even though we still don’t scientifically understand exactly how it works, is a substance, material. Instead, as you know, John is speaking figuratively.
As far as I can understand it, John is speaking mostly about truth and honesty here. God is truth, God is the truth. Light, of course, illuminates things, shows them as they really are; whereas darkness hides things, conceals them, covers them up. As we are asked in the Old Testament, “is God a man that He should lie?” Of course not. God has no reason to lie, He has nothing to cover up. He simply is what He is. John will develop this aspect of the theme in verses 8-10.
The other obvious aspect is the old light/darkness=good/evil picture. It’s kind of like the yin-yang of Daoism. Only, in contrast, whereas the yin-yang shows a dark circle on the white background, highlighting the unknown outcomes of any event perceived as good or bad, the mixture of the two, et cetera, instead, in God there is no evil, no darkness. Clearly this is the case because evil is that which is that which, in a sense, is opposed to God, and God cannot be opposed to Himself. Thus in Him dwells no evil, no darkness.
John then lays out how this relates to our fellowship with Him:
6If we claim to have fellowship with him yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live by the truth.
What’s John mean here? Does he mean if you ever tell a lie, if you ever sin, slip, or stumble, then you don’t really have fellowship with Him? No, look again, he says if you “walk in the darkness…” Put the emphasis on “walk” and you get the picture. If that’s the path your life is on, if you live your life by the ways of darkness, if your life is defined by, rather than occasionally impaired by, sin, then you’re lying if you say you have fellowship with God.
But, again, what is he saying? Is he telling us that if we want to have fellowship with God we better straighten up our act and live a sinless life? No, that would be to put the verse in reverse order. Instead, he’s saying that if we show ourselves to be walking in darkness, to be whole-heartedly embracing sin, then it’s because we don’t have really have fellowship with Him. The broken fellowship is not the result, we don’t lose our fellowship with Him by sinning, we live sinful lives because we don’t have fellowship. We can come to fellowship by one way and one way alone, and that is faith in Jesus Christ.
Additionally, in keeping with this darkness/light/lies/truth paradigm; even apart from the issue of abject sins, this is also about whether we’re being honest and truthful. If you’re lying about yourself to God, i.e. not admitting your faults, struggles, et cetera, and blundering about as if you have none, chances are you’re not walking in fellowship with Him. Instead, you’re trying to be dishonest with God, you’re lying. Quick solution: pray the Lord’s prayer, “Forgive us our sins (brief pause to reflect on them) as we forgive those who sin against us.”
John continues:
7But 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[b] sin.
Rather, if we walk in the light, if we are honest, and if we confess to God our struggles, weaknesses, and sins, these things, which are concealed by darkness and prevent fellowship, are instead cleansed by the blood of Jesus on the Cross.
Likewise, if we walk in the light, that is if our lives are defined by following Christ rather than our sinful nature, it is because of our fellowship with Him, it shows that we have been purified by His blood and are now in a relationship with Him. John goes on:
8If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. 9If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.
I already touched on this passage a little last week, but let me just say this again. The verbs, in the Greek, as best I understand it, are in the continual sense; meaning that he’s essentially saying that “if we claim that sin does not continue to trip us up, we continue to lie to ourselves and the truth is not in us. But, if we continue to confess our failures, weakness, and shortcomings, He will continue to be faithful and just and will continually forgive us and continually purify us from that unrighteousness.”
Of course, again, John is not saying that sin is a defining characteristic of the Christian life, exactly the opposite as we have already seen. Rather, He is saying that when we do stumble, when we do fall into sin, when we act out of character with our fellowship with Christ, if we continue to repent and confess it to God, we show that we are in fellowship with Him and continue to be so. But, just to make sure everything is clear, John finishes up this chapter by saying:
10If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word has no place in our lives.
Highlighting, again, that there is no way into this fellowship if we don’t admit that we were at one time sinners. Otherwise, as Paul tells us elsewhere, if our righteousness comes by the law, then Christ died for no reason. Instead, John has told us, it comes from the fellowship established with God by Christ’s blood.
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