Walk in Light, Live in Truth

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Speaker: Welcome, everybody, to Foothills Fellowship. In case you happen to be with us for the very first time this morning, my name is Rod, and I am not the normal person who preaches on Sunday mornings. Jesse is on a trip with his family. I don’t know—they may be back in town by now—but he wanted to have a week off, and so I’ve been asked to deliver the message this morning. We do hope and pray that it goes well. I guess if it goes well, that’s a good thing. If it doesn’t go well, you probably won’t ever hear from me again, so… you know.

Something happened on November 22, 1963. Something tragic. Something rather monumental. Do you know what it was? Do you remember? Anybody? Just yell it out.

Audience: JFK.

Speaker: That’s right—the assassination of John F. Kennedy. It’s been said by a lot of different folks that that was a defining moment for probably the Boomer generation, maybe also for the earlier generations as well. People can remember where they were, what they were doing, and maybe even the time of day it was when they heard about JFK’s assassination.

Is that true? Those of you who were alive on that day, do you remember where you were?

Audience: Gym class!

Speaker: Yes, okay. So, there are a few of us in the room who can remember where we were and what we were doing on that day. I was three years old, so I don’t remember where I was or what I was doing. I probably was making googly eyes at my little brother, who was two months old at that point.

But it is true—for many people in my generation and earlier generations, that particular event, the assassination of John F. Kennedy, was a defining moment. It crystallized our nation. Everybody was focused on it. It’s fascinating to me—and perhaps just a little ironic—that we have such a hard time agreeing on exactly what happened at that event.

Does that seem fascinating to anybody else? I mean, it was something that happened in broad daylight, in front of thousands of people live, and I suppose in front of maybe millions who were watching on television. There were cameras rolling, capturing multiple angles. And yet over the years, we have had kind of roiling disagreement about whether or not there was one shooter or multiple shooters. Did the bullets come from behind? Did they come from in front? Was there a magic bullet that hit two people? Did Lee Harvey Oswald work alone? Was he in collusion with the Russians? Or maybe the Mafia? Or maybe the Cubans?

And on and on it goes. There have been multiple conspiracy theories. Even up into the present day, it continues. I keep seeing these reports in news feeds and so forth—new information coming forward, people saying… In fact, there was a book written just a couple of years ago by somebody who said, “I was a Secret Serviceman. I was right there. I was next to the vehicle. I saw it happen. I picked a bullet out of the car and put it on the president’s gurney.”

Really, that’s what we need, right? We need someone to come forward and say, “I was there. I saw it happen. I have no doubt about how this all went down.” Then we could all kind of breathe a sigh of relief and say, “Ah, finally. We know the truth about what took place.”

Of course, not everybody would believe what that person had to say, right? And so then there would be all these additional controversies that would come up.

Well, in some ways, I think what we have going on in the book of First John is something similar to the situation with the assassination of JFK. I mean, it’s been sixty-two years since John F. Kennedy was assassinated, and we still don’t really have solid agreement on what happened. Pretty soon, the day will come when nobody who was alive at that time will be around to say anything about it. Then we’ll be totally at the mercy of all the conspiracy theorists who will spread all kinds of stories.

I think in some respect, that’s the kind of situation the apostle John is facing as he nears the end of his life and as we near the end of the first century A.D.

The apostle John was one of the twelve apostles that Jesus called to follow him. The time of his writing this letter is possibly somewhere between 85 and 90 A.D., so it’s about sixty years after he was called by Jesus to be a disciple and to be an apostle. That’s roughly sixty years since Jesus was crucified and then risen from the dead.

John is the last living apostle. All of the other apostles have passed on. All of them were martyred, according to church tradition—suffered various kinds of martyrdom. John is the one who is still living at the end of the first century. It’s also quite possible that maybe John is one of just a very few who were actually there when Jesus was crucified and then rose from the dead.

The book of Acts tells us that there were maybe 120 people who were gathered in the upper room after Jesus was crucified and resurrected and before the Holy Spirit came upon the church. So it’s possible that maybe just a handful of those people are still alive at the end of the first century.

I think it’s quite possible that as John nears the end of his life, he’s starting to realize that there needs to be something said to draw people back to the truth of what took place in the life and ministry of Jesus.

It’s been almost sixty years, and already there are starting to be conspiracy theories, as it were—alternate orthodoxies being created, alternate facts. Fake news is being put forth by different people about the person of Jesus and about who he actually was and what he actually did.

I think John is realizing that someone who was actually there, who saw what happened, needs to speak up and say some things to help people stay rooted and focused on the truth of Jesus.

I think that’s why John writes. I think it’s why he wrote his gospel. He tells us he wanted people to know, without a doubt, that Jesus was God—God in the flesh. That was the whole purpose of his gospel. Then I think he writes First John, Second John, and Third John to do much of the same kind of thing. The book of Revelation, which he also wrote, is a different kind of literature, probably with a different kind of purpose.

But I think John is trying to help us understand some things about Jesus. I think what John basically does is ask and answer three questions that are really pretty important:

Who is—or who was—Jesus?

What is it that Jesus accomplished for us?

What does Jesus call us to? What does he invite us to?

These are the three questions John addresses in the first chapter. I think he addresses them all the way through the book, but in this first chapter, he gives us some answers.

So let’s dive into it.

It’s interesting to notice that John doesn’t waste any time getting right to his subject matter. We call this a letter, but it really isn’t a letter. I think it’s more of a theological tract. I could imagine John walking through neighborhoods and wanting to pin this to doors, because he’s not really addressing anybody. He doesn’t say “Dear so-and-so.” He doesn’t greet them in the normal kind of way. He just jumps right in and starts talking about Jesus.

What’s striking is the way he talks about Jesus and how he really emphasizes the physicality of Jesus. Do you notice that?

I don’t know if you have your Bibles open, but I’ll read it for you again here:

“That 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. The 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. We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard so that you also may have fellowship with us.”

There’s a lot of emphasis here on the physicality of Jesus Christ—the visceral-ness of him, the physical aspects of his nature.

We might initially think, “Oh, this is just John reminiscing and thinking back to those times when he and the eleven others and Jesus would hang out together, sit around the fire, tell stories, and Jesus would tell parables. They would ask questions, hear his voice, jostle one another, shake hands, have physical contact with Jesus, eat together, watch him eat.” Maybe we’d think John is just remembering these things fondly.

And that could well be the case. But I think there is something deeper and more profound going on here. Because at this particular time in the history of the church—and in the Roman Empire—there were some ideas beginning to float around in the culture. Some ideas beginning to bubble up and surface in the church.

These ideas would eventually blossom into a full-blown heresy that we call Gnosticism.

I don’t know how widespread these ideas were at the time John was writing this, but it seems pretty clear to me that he’s interacting with these ideas. He’s wanting to say something to the people who would teach these Gnostic ideas, and he’s wanting to say something to those who might possibly be hearing them and believing them.

You might be wondering: What exactly are these ideas? What does John want to go to battle with?

Here’s a simple description of Gnosticism. It’s hard to give a precise definition because it goes in so many different directions, but I’ll try to boil it down.

First, Gnosticism includes a belief in dualism—that there’s a spirit realm and a material realm. Now that’s not such a bad thing; Christians believe that too. There is a spirit realm and a material realm.

But the Gnostics believed that the spirit realm was a place of pure goodness and holiness, that there was nothing evil or corrupt about it—complete purity, complete goodness.

They believed the material realm was just the opposite: corrupt, evil, dirty.

So they had this dualism: spirit good, matter bad.

Then, they believed God is a supreme being who dwells in the spirit realm. Again, that’s also true—God dwells outside of time and space.

But they believed that God was too pure and too holy to create matter. That leads them to the idea that the god who created the earth is actually a lesser deity—not the true God, not the Supreme Being, but a lesser one. They believed there were these emanations cascading down from the Supreme Being, and eventually one of these lesser emanations—a kind of foolish deity they called the Demiurge—created the material world.

They associated that Demiurge with the God of the Old Testament, whom they saw as harsh, evil, and judgmental.

So, in their view: God is way up here—pure, holy, unable to create matter. The god who actually created the earth was a lesser deity.

That leads them to a conclusion: Jesus could not possibly have been God in the flesh. Whatever Jesus was, he wasn’t God. He couldn’t have been a physical human person. God could never inhabit human flesh.

And that is what John is addressing as he opens this letter.

Basically, John is saying, “Listen—Jesus is God. Jesus is God the Son. He is Jesus Christ, the Son of the Father. Jesus is the Word of Life. Jesus is the Eternal Life.” And then he goes on to say that Jesus was someone who also had a human body. He inhabited humanity. He became one of us. As John writes in the gospel, “He dwelt among us,” or “He tabernacled among us.”

So John is saying, “Look, we have seen him. We have listened to him. We have touched him.” This is his first question: Who is—who was—Jesus? And his answer, against the Gnostics and the heretical ideas beginning to bubble up, is: Jesus is God in the flesh. Jesus came and lived among us. He’s someone we interacted with.

And of course, now we believe that he is in the heavenly realms with the Father, but he is a person with a physical body. That is something we know and believe.

He says, “We write this to make our joy complete. We want you to know that this is the truth. We want you to know that you don’t have to believe these ideas that are coming to you—ideas that suggest Jesus didn’t really have a body, that he only appeared to have a body.”

There was a kind of Gnostic view called docetism. The word means “to seem” or “to appear.” Many Gnostics believed Jesus only appeared to have a body. He wasn’t really a corporeal person. And John says, “No—that is false teaching. That is fake news. That is not the truth. And I want you to know the truth.”

This is a good word for us today as well. There are a lot of different viewpoints out there that people have about Jesus. Whether it’s this exact thing—Gnosticism—or some other kind of false view, John would say, “Let’s get back to the real truth. I was there. I was on the scene. I saw him. I knew him. I walked with him. I can tell you exactly who he is.”

That’s the first question John asks and answers.

So let’s get to the second question: What did Jesus accomplish for us?

To answer this, we need to jump down to the end of the passage. We’re going to skip over the middle part for a minute—we’ll come back to it—but we’ll go to the end of the text here.

Basically, what John is telling us in this passage is that Jesus is someone who died on the cross to pay the penalty for our sins, so that we might be forgiven and purified.

Now to be fair, there’s nothing in this particular passage that specifically mentions the cross. There’s nothing that specifically says that Jesus died on our behalf. Those words aren’t exactly there.

So how do we see that in the passage?

I want to point out two places where I think it comes through—if we just think about it a little.

The first place is in verse 7:

“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.”

There we have a reference to the blood of Jesus. In the Bible, whenever we find that phrase—“the blood of”—like the blood of Jesus, or the blood of animals, goats, rams, bulls, whatever—it’s always referring to death. I don’t think there’s a place in the Bible where the phrase “the blood of” is not, in some way, referring to death.

So John says, “The blood of Jesus”—meaning, the death of Jesus, his Son—“purifies us from all sin.” That’s one place.

The second place is in verse 9:

“If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.”

Now, I don’t know about you, but I would not write that sentence that way. I don’t know if you would put that sentence together exactly the same, but honestly, I wouldn’t write it that way.

If I were writing this, I would say something like, “If we confess our sins, God is faithful and kind to forgive us our sins and purify us.” Or maybe “faithful and gracious.” Or perhaps the better word that would come to mind is “faithful and merciful.”

Do you see what I’m getting at here? The words “just” and “forgiveness” generally do not go together. When we think of forgiveness, we usually think of kindness, mercy, grace—not justice.

Back in July, there was a tragic thing that happened on the UNM campus. A 14-year-old was shot and killed, a 19-year-old was shot and wounded, and an 18-year-old was arrested and charged with those crimes—murder, aggravated assault, and others.

If that young man is brought to trial and convicted, he will most likely spend life in prison—because that’s what justice requires. If you commit a crime, justice requires that you pay the penalty.

Just a few weeks ago, something else happened—more recent. A man named Charlie Kirk was assassinated by someone who shot him while he was on campus. That person has been arrested and charged with murder. If convicted, since it’s in the state of Utah, that person will probably face the death penalty.

That’s what justice means—when someone commits a sin or a crime, justice means paying the penalty.

But what John says here—that’s what’s really upending. John says, “If we confess our sins, God is faithful and just to forgive us and purify us from all unrighteousness.”

The only way that can happen is if someone else has taken our place and paid the penalty for us. That’s the only way God can be just and still forgive.

So John is telling us what Jesus accomplished for us. He starts out by saying Jesus is God in the flesh—Jesus is the second person of the Trinity. He chose to come and live a human life, to be on this earth, to join with us in our humanity—someone we actually lived with, touched, handled, listened to.

But then Jesus was willing to actually take ownership of all the things we’ve done wrong. Jesus was willing to say, “Even though all of you are sinful and guilty of rebelling against God’s ways and God’s will, I am willing to take that upon myself. I’m willing to suffer and die in your place.”

Because of that, God can be just and still forgive us of our sin.

In fact, I think I could go so far as to say that if we confess our sins, acknowledge our sin, and cry out to God for forgiveness, then God would be unjust if he didn’t forgive. I think that’s what John is saying—that God is faithful and just to forgive. In other words, another way to think of justice is “doing the right thing.” God is going to do the right thing by forgiving us and purifying us because the penalty for our sin has already been paid by Jesus.

That’s what Jesus accomplishes for us.

This is what I think makes the gospel beautiful. We talk about the beautiful gospel from time to time here, and when I think about what makes the gospel beautiful, this is it: that the God who created the world—the God who made everything and made all of us—loves the world so much that he would become one of us. That he would take on our sin.

One of the songs we sang earlier said, “He who had no sin became sin.” Jesus would take our place. He would take on our sin. He would take on the judgment that is due us. He would die on the cross, on our behalf, and he would forgive us of our sin.

For me, this is what makes the gospel a beautiful thing: that we have a God who would do this for us.

Now, I don’t know where everybody in the room is this morning in terms of your relationship with God, and I don’t know how these words are landing with you right now. But I do want to ask you to think for a minute: Do you know for certain that you’ve received God’s forgiveness? That you’ve been purified from unrighteousness? Do you know for certain that you have a relationship with God because of your faith in Jesus Christ—because of what he did for you on the cross?

Or do you sometimes wonder about that?

If you are someone who’s wondering—if you’re thinking, “Yeah, I don’t know if I really have this forgiveness… I don’t know if I really have this purification from sin”—then I want to invite you to seek somebody out afterward. Talk to that person. Maybe it’s me. Maybe it’s an elder, like Mark. Or maybe anybody else here in the room—someone you know who can help you think that through.

This is good news. This is a promise from the Lord Jesus, from God. It’s a promise that John is relaying to us: that if we confess our sins, God is faithful and just. He will forgive us our sins. He will purify us from all unrighteousness. We can be set free. We don’t have to walk in shame and guilt any longer. We can know without a doubt that we have forgiveness from the Lord.

So then, the third question that John is asking is: What is it that Jesus is calling us to? What is it that he’s inviting us to?

Really, it comes down to just a couple of things in this text.

The first thing John is inviting us to is fellowship. Fellowship with God initially—because when we have forgiveness of sin, that means we can go boldly and joyfully into the presence of God. We can have a relationship with him.

So he’s calling us to fellowship with God.

He’s also calling us to have fellowship with one another—to be in relationship together with others who also believe in God, who also have this understanding of forgiveness and purification.

That’s the first thing: we can be in fellowship with God, and we can be in fellowship with each other.

The second thing—and this is perhaps equally important—he’s calling us to walk in the light, because he is in the light. He’s calling us to a life that is patterned after the life of Jesus. Calling us to walk in the footsteps of Jesus, to be people who walk in light as opposed to walking in darkness.

I don’t know how many times you’ve tried to walk in dark places. A little bit of self-revelation: I’m at that age now where I don’t sleep all the way through the night. I have to get up a time or two. And when I get up in the night to go to the restroom, the house is completely dark. There are no lights on. I don’t want to turn on any that would wake people up or cause others in the house to not get a good night’s sleep.

So I have to plan very carefully—my path, you know what I’m saying? I have to be very intentional about what’s in the way or not in the way. Oftentimes, I’m moving things out of the way before I go to bed. Because there have been a few times when I’ve gotten up in the night, completely dark, not fully awake, and I end up stumbling—I stub a toe, or maybe I hit my arm or my head on something.

My point is simply this: when you walk in complete darkness, you’re liable to get a little bruised and battered. You’re liable to get wounded because you’re not walking in the light. You can’t see where you’re going.

John is saying to us here:

“God is light; in him there is no darkness at all. If we claim to have fellowship with him yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live out the truth. 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.”

We’re living in the light. We’re living in forgiveness. We’re living in purification.

So John’s invitation to us—and Jesus’s invitation to us—is to walk in the light. That basically comes down to paying attention to what’s in God’s Word. Reading the Bible. Knowing as well as possible, as intimately as possible, what it is that he has called us to do. What instructions does he give us for our lives?

It has to do with listening to the voice of the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us, who lives in us, and who speaks to our hearts and minds and says, “Hey, this needs to happen,” or “That needs to happen.”

The other day I had something happen—I was in a conversation with some people, and I said some things in that conversation. Afterward, I didn’t feel completely settled about what I’d said. It was unsettling enough that I decided, “I need to check in with these folks. I need to find out if I said something that was wounding to somebody. Did I hurt someone’s feelings?”

So I did that. I sent an email out right away and said, “Hey, tell me if this was a concern for you.” Fortunately, what I got back was, “No, this wasn’t a concern. You were fine.”

But that’s an example—at least for me—of what I think walking in the light looks like. Trying to listen to what the Spirit is saying. Maybe you hear those nudges from time to time. Maybe you’re going this direction, and you kind of hear something that seems to be telling you to turn in a different direction. It would be good to pay attention to that. Because maybe the place you’re headed is a place of darkness, and the Spirit is trying to get you to turn so you can go a different way and walk in the light.

So: read God’s Word. Read the Scriptures. Listen to the Holy Spirit. Pay attention to what other people who know God are saying to you. What are you hearing from other folks—other people in the Body—about how you can walk in the light?

That’s the invitation from John. Be in fellowship with God. Be in fellowship with each other. Walk in the light. Don’t walk in darkness.

And then finally: be truthful. Be truthful about your need for God’s love and forgiveness.

We never, ever get to a place where we don’t have something we need to confess. As long as we’re living here on this earth, we are going to be people who struggle with sin, who struggle with doing things we shouldn’t do or saying things we shouldn’t say.

John says:

“If we claim we have not sinned, we make God out to be a liar, and his word is not in us.”

So: have fellowship with God. Walk in the light. Live in the truth.

If we’re going to sum up John’s main message, how might we do that?

(To TJ, preparing for the next song)

TJ, I’ll invite you to come up and kind of get ready for the next song.

I think we would sum it up this way:

Jesus is God. Jesus was God in the flesh, who suffered and died for us. He went to the cross on our behalf. He paid the penalty. He did everything that was required of us because of our sin. He took that upon himself. Then he forgives our sins. And he calls us to walk in the light and to live by the truth.

So this morning, I just want to invite you to embrace these things about Jesus. Embrace the truth about him. Live in that truth. Walk in the light.

Let’s take a moment to pray and ask him to help us as we seek to do that.

Lord Jesus, thank you for being God. Thank you for being the God who existed before time and space. Thank you for being the God who created time and space, who created the earth, who created matter. Thank you for being the God who came to dwell among us, who took on human flesh and became part of our world.

Thank you for being the God who was willing to take our place, to suffer and die in our place so we would not have to. Thank you for being the God who rose from the dead, and who now offers to forgive us of our sin—because that’s the just thing to do.

If we confess our sins, you are faithful and just. You will forgive us our sins. You will purify us from all unrighteousness.

Thank you, Lord, for this good news. Thank you for this beautiful gospel of how you surrendered yourself and made it possible for us to be here this morning, singing these songs and worshiping you. Made it possible for us to look forward to an eternity with you.

Help us to put into practice the things you’ve taught us. Help us to have fellowship with you and with one another. Help us to be people who walk in the light, as you are in the light. Help us to avoid walking in darkness. Help us to see when the darkness is ahead of us.

Help us to be people who live in the truth. Who reject false teachings about you. Who reject false ideas and fake news that don’t reflect who you are and what you did for us. Help us to be focused on the truth.

We pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen.