Sunday morning, December 10, 2000
Claims Examined
1 John 1:5-10
By P. G. Mathew, M.A., M.Div., Th.M.
Copyright © 2000 by P. G. Mathew
This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: 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 by 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. If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. 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, we make him out to be a liar and his word has no place in our lives.
1 John 1:5-10
False and True Claims
People make claims all the time, whether they are true or false. Some make wild claims, as in the case of a politician who claimed that he invented the Internet! People examined his claims and found they were not true. There are many so-called ministers who claim that if you send them money, they will pray for you and you will have health and wealth. In fact, they give you the idea that if you contribute to them regularly in large amounts, you may not even need any medical insurance or investments, because you will never get sick and you will instantly get a lot of money. Such ministers are, in a sense, promising to be your pontiff, your bridge to God. Sadly, the naive and gullible believe such wild claims and do give money to such ministers.
When people claim to be Christians, the Scripture provides certain tests to see whether their claims are true or false. In this epistle, John has already pointed out that, as a result of the incarnation, sinful men can now have fellowship with the Father and the Son, as well as fellowship with one another, which will result in fullness of joy. This is the authoritative, apostolic message. But there were some people in the New Testament times who claimed to be Christians, yet were not. They falsely claimed to have fellowship with God.
Even today, people falsely claim to be Christians because they were born in a "Christian country," as though there is such a thing, or they were born in a Christian home, baptized in the church, and have been members in good standing for many years. But do such claims make a person a Christian? No. I beseech you to pay very close attention to what we are discussing in this passage so that you can examine the validity of your own claims.
Paul tells us in 2 Corinthians 13:5, "Examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith; test yourselves." Peter tells us in 2 Peter 1:10, "Therefore, my brothers, be all the more eager to make your calling and election sure." James tells us in James 2:26, "Faith without deeds is dead," and says that demons can believe and tremble, yet they remain demons. In this epistle John gives us certain tests we can apply to ourselves as well as to others to ensure that we are Christians.
We find six claims in the first epistle of John:
1. 1 John 1:6, "We have fellowship with God"
2. 1 John 1:8, "We are without sin"
3. 1 John 1:10, "We have never sinned in our entire lives."
4. 1 John 2:4, "We know God."
5. 1 John 2:9, "We are in the light."
6. 1 John 4:20, "We love God."
How can we fairly examine these claims? God have given us a standard by which we can judge all things. It is his standard of truth, the Bible.
The Standard of Testing: God Is Light
In 1 John 1:5 we read, "This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all." John was saying that the unchanging and most important message he heard from the Lord Jesus Christ was that God is light, and in him there is absolutely no darkness at all.
We must first point out that John does not start his letter with man and his needs, desires, feelings, frustrations, and problems. That is what most of us would do because we human beings are anthropocentric. But here John starts his letter with the objective, ultimate reality of God.
The Bible itself starts this way. In Genesis 1:1 we read, "In the beginning, God. . ." And John’s gospel starts that way as well: "In the beginning was the Word. . . ." When the Lord Jesus Christ taught us to pray, he began with God, saying, "Our Father, who art in heaven. . ."
We must always start with God! We must always affirm and assert the objective reality of God and his infallible revelation. So John says, in essence, "I want to tell you the message we have heard from the incarnate Son. It is not something we invented or made up, as philosophers make up their philosophies. This is divine revelation, originated in the divine Son of God, who himself is the radiance of God’s glory." So the apostle says, "This is the message we have heard from him," meaning "By the authority of the Lord Jesus Christ we are declaring to you what we heard, and we must declare it with absolute conviction and authority."
John starts with God by defining God’s character. He says God is light, which means God is glorious and God is truth. It is this God who has revealed himself in Jesus Christ, for to see the Son is to see the Father.
During the nineteenth century, beginning around 1860, people abandoned this conception of the character of God as light, holiness, and truth, and began to define God by saying, "God is love." Yes, God is love, and that idea is also found in this epistle, but the first thing we must know about God is that he is light. The Bible also says God is spirit, meaning God is immaterial, and that God is a consuming fire. So when we speak about God being love, we must understand it in the light of his holiness. God’s love is holy love, in other words. I think we all have, at one time or another, succumbed to preferring this definition of God being love at the expense of the other definition of God being holiness. I hope we will not make that mistake again. If God were only love, there would be no need for the incarnation and the sacrificial, substitutionary death of Jesus Christ in our behalf.
What explains the incarnation of Jesus Christ? What explains the Christmas season? What explains the conception, birth, life, crucifixion, burial, and resurrection of Jesus Christ? It is this essential nature of God: he is light, meaning he is characterized by perfect holiness and purity.
Not only does John say "God is light," but then he adds, "in him there is no darkness at all." God is not a combination of light and darkness. That would be pantheism. There is no evil in God at all. But when we murmur and complain before God, we are attributing darkness to him, are we not? We are saying that somehow God has sinned and become unfaithful toward us. Oh, that we would shut our mouths when we come before God! I pray that we would think about who God truly is and be governed by this definition that God is light. Psalm 104:2 tells us, "He wraps himself in light as with a garment." In Psalm 36:9 we read, "in your light we see light." In Psalm 27:1 we read, "The Lord is my light and my salvation."
But now we must ask the question: If God is light, how can sinful man have fellowship with him? Habakkuk the prophet said of God, "Your eyes are too pure to look on evil; you cannot tolerate wrong" (Hab. 1:13). Throughout the Bible God tells us, "Be ye holy, for I am holy." Jesus Christ told his disciples, "Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect" (Matt. 5:48).
This holiness of God explains why the eternal Son had to become man. He alone could take away our sins and make us holy, making us like God so that we can have fellowship with God. Fellowship calls for something in common, for a correspondence of character between people. To have fellowship between God and man, either God must change and become evil like us, or we must change and become holy like God. But the Bible says God cannot change, so in order for us to have fellowship with God, we must change. We must become holy.
The truth is, we cannot change. How can a sinner become a saint? It is an utter impossibility. God himself must work a change in us, and he has done so in Jesus Christ, who became our propitiation, the sacrifice of atonement to take our sins upon himself and pay the penalty for them, thus turning God’s wrath away from us. By his substitutionary death on the cross, the Light of the world has made us also the light of the world. Thus Paul writes in Ephesians 5:8, "For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord." Then he continues, "Live as children of light." Therefore this statement, "God is light," must be interpreted in the ethical sense.
In John 3:19 we read, "This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what he has done has been done through God."
God is light, he is revelation, he is truth. He disclosed himself in Jesus Christ, so the message of Jesus Christ is the truth. We must look to God in Jesus Christ, that is, in his word. That is why we must look into the Holy Scriptures to test all the claims people make, especially claims about their relationship to God.
Our God is not one light among many lights. He alone is the Light; therefore, in his light alone can we see light. As light, he is holy, and without holiness no one can see God. That is why we want to examine the claims made in this first chapter of 1 John in the light of this truth, which is the standard for testing: God is light.
The Claim of Having Fellowship with God
The first claim we must examine is presented to us in 1 John 1:6, where John says, "If we claim to have fellowship with him yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live by the truth." People were claiming to have continual fellowship with God, yet what was the reality? It is stated in the same verse: "yet walk in the darkness." In other words, profession is one thing but practice is something else; claim is one thing but conduct is something else.
John was speaking about people who claimed that they were in the light , having fellowship with God, while they were continually walking in the sphere of evil. But in 1 John 2:6 we read, "Whoever claims to live in him must walk as Jesus did." If we claim fellowship with God, then we must live and conduct ourselves as Jesus did.
In 1 John 2:11 John wrote, "But whoever hates his brother is in the darkness and walks around in the darkness; he does not know where he is going, because the darkness has blinded him." Here John was writing about people who claimed to have fellowship with God, yet hated God’s people. In 2 John 4 John wrote, "It has given me great joy to find some of your children walking in the truth, just as the Father commanded us." Some of these people did walk in the truth. In 2 John 6 John writes, "And this is love: that we walk in obedience to his commands."
The claim that we have fellowship with God must be proven, authenticated, verified, and validated by walking in accordance with the command of Jesus Christ. Third John 3, 4 speaks about walking in the truth. We must walk according to truth, walk in the light of God and his word. Truth is the ultimate reality of God as revealed in Jesus Christ and, therefore, in his infallible message.
The Claim Exposed
What was the reality of the claim of having fellowship with God? It was a lie. John did not say such people were "misspeaking." We hear such terms today, especially from politicians. They lie left and right, but they never use the word "lie." They will say, "I characterized it that way" or "I misspoke." This shows our natural aversion to truth. We all prefer the fog of untruth and unreality to the light of God’s truth.
But John says that those who claim to have fellowship with God yet walk in darkness are lying to God and to others. They are liars, not authentic Christians. They are not doing the truth. You see, we think that hearing the truth and giving mental assent to it is good enough. That is not true. The Bible says we must do the truth.
In other words, the apostle is exposing people who speak the truth but do not do it. They are liars, whose profession is false. In fact, we must note that John says such people are not in the kingdom of God’s dear Son, which is the kingdom of light, but that they are still in the kingdom of darkness, under the influence of Satan. Their eyes are blinded by Satan, as we read in 2 Corinthians 4:4: "For the god of this age has blinded the minds of unbelievers so that they cannot see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God." In verse 6 we read, "For God who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ."
These people claimed one thing but walked in darkness. The Greek text tells us they had lived in darkness for a long time. It was not just that they had sinned once in a while. They were sinning continually; their very lifestyle was evil.
How to Have Fellowship with God
As God’s people we are to live coram Deo, "always in the presence of God." This was the motto of John Calvin. In Ephesians 2:10 Paul tells us a Christian is created in Christ Jesus "to do good works, which God prepared in advance for us to do." Jesus Christ told his disciples, "If you love me, keep my commandments."
Thus, a profession devoid of the practice of truth is a false profession, according to the test of truth. If someone claims to have fellowship with God, that claim is validated only when that person walks in the light, for God is light. What does it mean to walk in the light? It is living in the sphere of light, living according to the truth in obedience to God’s commands. It is a Bible-centered life. Otherwise, to claim to have fellowship with God is a false claim.
After exposing the false claim of having fellowship with God while walking in darkness, John continues, "But if we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another." Fellowship with God requires correspondence of character. If a person has an authentic relationship with God, that fellowship with God will be proven by fellowship with God’s church.
Many people do not have a doctrine of ecclesiology. Instead of belonging to a church, they float around, saying all they want is "Jesus and me." This is an absolutely unbiblical position. If we are Christians, we must belong to God’s church as it manifests itself in a geographic location. We must be accountable to it, coming under its government, and serve and enjoy fellowship with the people of God in it.
John says, "If we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another." In other words, church membership is not an option but a divine requirement for a Christian. Life in the body of Christ is the sign that one has come to have fellowship with God who is light. That is why Jesus told us the first commandment is to love God with all our heart, mind, soul and strength, and the second is like unto it, that we love our neighbor as ourselves. In Acts 2:42 we read that the disciples "devoted themselves in the apostles’ teaching." That is light. That is the Bible truth. And then Luke adds, "and to the fellowship," meaning fellowship with the people of God.
A person who walks in the light will receive cleansing. Such a person will enjoy the ministry of the Holy Spirit, who applies to him the benefits of the blood of Jesus Christ his Son. He will experience progressive sanctification and ongoing cleansing from the defilement of every sin.
What is the goal for God’s people? To be holy. In Ephesians 5:25-27 we read, "Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless." This is the goal of God for his people. (PGM) So John writes, "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," the incarnate Son of God, "cleanses us from all sin." That is how we can have fellowship with the Father and the Son.
The Claim to Be Without Sin
What was the second claim John addressed? It is found in 1 John 1:8-9, where we read, "If we claim to be without sin. . . ." We have no sin! Now, people say this either when they think they have progressed so far in their Christian lives that they arrived at a state of perfection, their sin nature having been eradicated, or when they think they do not have a sin nature and never had one.
As I was growing up, I heard the story of a charismatic preacher who believed in the first reason. He said he had arrived at sinless perfection, and he found certain other people, especially nice-looking women in the church, and told them they also had arrived at this perfection. This preacher would have private sessions with these women in which both parties stripped off their clothes, maintaining they could do so because they were not affected anymore by any kind of temptation and sin. That is what some people do when they make this type of claim.
So John was addressing people who thought they had so progressed that they had become perfect, or those who were saying, "We do not believe that we have sin nature at all. We do not believe that we are sinners." They were saying, "Don’t you think we have come a long way from the primitive idea of sin? Aren’t we now educated, cultured people—people of a scientific mind? Don’t you believe the idea that ‘I am okay; you are okay; we are okay’? Don’t you agree that everyone is born good, and what we really need is to get rid of this notion of sin and this doctrine of pervasive sinfulness, and everything will be all right?" Such people will assert, "We are not sinners. We esteem ourselves, and don’t need any redemption by the blood of Jesus. We have no guilt or pollution. We don’t believe in sin. We don’t believe on the cross. We don’t believe in hell."
Such people, whether they know it or not, are influenced by the ideas of a man named Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768-1834). Schleiermacher was brought up in a very pious Christian home, but he rejected the Bible and Jesus Christ and God’s plan of salvation. Schleiermacher believed that man does not need Jesus Christ of the New Testament in order to be united to God. He maintained that religion is primarily not a matter of doctrine or objective truth, but rather of feeling, intuition, and experience. He taught that the religious instinct is an element in man’s nature independent of thought, and by this religious element in man, all men are already united to the spirit of the universe, which Schleiermacher called God. By this religious element in man, God is united with all people. Man needs no savior outside of himself because he is already linked to God. According to Schleiermacher, such a man does not need any biblical doctrine or Jesus Christ or the atonement made by Jesus Christ.
That is where some of the great preachers of our country are coming to. I recently read where one of them said, "I used to believe that pagans in far countries were lost if they did not have the gospel of Christ preached to them. I no longer believe that." Then he said concerning the make-up of the body of Christ that the body of Christ would be made up "from all the Christian groups around the world. I think that everybody that loves and knows Christ, whether they are conscious of it or not, they are members of the body of Christ." Then he said, "[God] is calling people out of the world for his name, whether they come from the Muslim world, or the Buddhist world or the non-believing world, they are members of the Body of Christ because they have been called by God. They may not know the name of Jesus but they know in their hearts that they need something they do not have, and they turn to the only light they have, and I think that they are saved and they are going to be with us in heaven."
Another evangelist, who doesn’t believe in anything, was interviewing this great evangelist, and he was so excited when the great evangelist said this. He said, "What, what I hear you saying, that it’s possible for Jesus Christ to come into human hearts and soul and life, even if they have been born in darkness and have never had exposure to the Bible. Is that a correct interpretation of what you are saying?" And the great evangelist said, "Yes, it is." And the other evangelist, who doesn’t believe in anything, was so excited that he exclaimed, "There’s a wideness in God’s mercy." (Iain H. Murray, Evangelicalism Divided [Edinburgh: The Banner of Truth Trust, 2000] 73-74)
This is where we are today. But what is the apostle’s analysis of this type of thinking? "We deceive ourselves," he says, "and the truth is not in us." We are lying to ourselves. Before, those who said they had fellowship with God while walking in darkness were lying to God and their neighbors; now, in refuting this second claim, John says, "You are lying to yourselves." This is demon activity, for it is the devil who lies. Then John says, "And the truth is not in us," meaning these people have no gospel, no Word, in them. They have nothing to do with truth. "When we lack true doctrine," John is saying. "we are left in darkness, blind and under the power of the evil one." Such people have nothing to do with Jesus, who is the truth.
Then John gives counsel how to rectify this situation. First, he says, come out of delusion. Repent, believe in the truth, and confess! So John writes, "If we confess our sins. . . ." Confession means we agree with God’s revealed truth and see ourselves in the light of that infallible truth. We must agree with God that we are born sinners and that we practice sin daily, that we are wicked and unholy, unfit for fellowship with God unless God himself does something about it.
In Proverbs 28:13 we read, "He who conceals his sins. . ." This is what modern man—cultured man, philosopher man, psychologist man, scientific man, educated man—is doing all the time. But read on: "He who conceals his sins does not prosper, but whoever confesses and renounces them finds mercy." We must confess and acknowledge our sins to receive God’s mercy. Study the confession of David in Psalm 32, where he says he was in misery until he confessed his sins and received God’s forgiveness. Study the confession of the prodigal son in Luke 15 who came home to his father and said, "I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am unworthy to be called your son."
Then John says, "When you confess your sins, you can
rest on the nature of God. He is faithful. He always acts consistent with his
being; therefore, he is faithful to his promise in the Holy Scriptures which
says that he will forgive your sins."
Then John says God is just, which means his forgiveness is based on justice,
based on God’s pouring out his wrath upon his Son, based on the truth that
God punished our sin in him. And what is the result? Forgiveness—release
from the legal obligations and punishment of sin—and cleansing from the
defilement of sin. All this facilitates fellowship with God, who is light.
The Claim of Having Never Sinned
We find the third claim in verse 10: "If we claim we have not sinned. . ." This is another wild claim. In the Greek it is, "Ouk hêmartêkamen. . . ," meaning "having never sinned." It is in the perfect tense, which means "we have never sinned in our whole lives, even up to this present moment."
The heretics John was addressing probably believed in the proto-Gnostic idea that the physical body is only a wrapper for the soul, and that the soul of a man is inviolable. Thus, they would say that whatever we do with our bodies does not in any way affect our free, inviolable soul.
Many modern people like this doctrine. They justify their evil in this way: I have never, ever sinned because, while my body does whatever it wants, my soul is as pure as freshly fallen snow. Thus, I can eat, drink, and be merry; tomorrow I will die, and my pure soul shall be liberated from this prison house of my body and go straight to God."
The light of God’s word gives the reality to this claim as well. John says, "When you make this claim, it is not that you are lying to others and to God, or even lying to yourselves. To make this claim is the height of crime: You are making God, who has said, ‘All have sinned,’ out to be a liar."
This is the blatant attitude of an unregenerate infidel. But God is light, and he has revealed throughout his word that man is a sinner who lives in sin and daily practices sin. In 2 Chronicles 6:36 Solomon prayed, "When they sin against you—for there is no one who does not sin. . ." In Isaiah 53:6 the prophet says, "We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way," and in Isaiah 64:6 Isaiah says, "All of us have become like one who is unclean, and our righteous acts are like filthy rags." The psalmist tells us, and Paul repeats it, "There is no one righteous, not even one . . . there is no one who does good, not even one" (Psalms 14:1-3, 53:1-3; Romans 3:10-12).
So if God says that all have sinned, and man says, "I have not sinned," that man is saying that God is a liar. He is saying that God is like the devil, and, in fact, such a man is saying that he is God, because he alone is without sin. He has already said God is a liar. Such a person is a blasphemer and a pervert. Therefore, John doesn’t give any counsel at all for those who make this third claim. Such people have committed the unpardonable sin and are beyond salvation by God who is light and truth. The word is not in such people. They love darkness and will not come to the light. They are contradicting God and his word, and refuse to repent, believe, confess, and be saved.
We who are saved by the light of the gospel should pay attention to the seriousness of this matter. God will never save those who are righteous in themselves because such "righteous" people repudiate the incarnation of Jesus Christ. Who are saved by the light of the gospel? The qualification for the salvation by the Son sent by God, who is light, is the confession that "I am a sinner," that "God is light," that "I need salvation, so I trust in the only Savior, whom you have sent." We must agree with God’s judgment of ourselves. Jesus saves only sinners who confess their sins, and repent and believe in the efficacy of the blood of Jesus Christ, God’s Son.
Thus, the Pharisees of this world shall never be saved by Jesus Christ. Only the publicans of this world shall be saved, because, like the publican of Luke 18, they will cry out, "Have mercy on me, a sinner."
The thief on the cross was saved in this way. He realized he was a sinner. He had a conversation with the other thief, and asked him, "Don’t you fear God?" Then he confessed, "We are punished justly, for we are getting what our deeds deserve. But this man has done nothing wrong." All of a sudden, this thief had an understanding of divine judgment. I am sure he was thinking, "Yes, I know that I am a sinner. But this Jesus is sinless. Why is he dying? There must be some reason." Then he told the Lord Jesus Christ, "Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom." In other words, "Save me." Listen to Jesus’ response: "I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in paradise."
God saves only sinners. We must stop lying to God and lying to our neighbor. We must stop lying to ourselves, that is, deceiving ourselves. We must stop making God the liar. God is light, and there is absolutely no darkness in him. We must admit to God and everyone else that the darkness and evil is in us.
Hope for Sinners
What hope is there for us who are so filled with darkness and evil? Much in every way. John tells us that if we confess our sins, God is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all sin and from all unrighteousness. That is the gospel.
Brothers and sisters, if we claim to be Christians, if we claim to have fellowship with God, it is time that we examined our lives to see whether we are living in the light and walking as Jesus walked. We must see whether we are doers of the truth, whether we keep his commandments, and whether we are living in vital fellowship with God’s church. May God flood his light into our souls, so that in his light we may see ourselves as we truly are and, like the prodigal son and like David and like the publican and like the thief on the cross, may we cry out to God, saying, "Have mercy upon me, the sinner." When we do that, God will make us into his saints and into children of light. Then we may have fellowship with him and with his people, that our joy may be full both now and forevermore. Amen.
Scripture taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION. Copyright (c) 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of International Bible Society.
"NIV" and "New International Version" are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark office by International Bible Society.
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