Claims Examined

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. 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 one sends them money, they will pray for that person and he will have health and wealth. In fact, they give the idea that if one contributes to them regularly in large amounts, he may not even need any medical insurance or investments, because he will never get sick and will instantly receive a large amount of money. Such ministers are, in a sense, promising to be a pontiff, a bridge to God for others. Sadly, many naive people believe such wild claims.

When people claim to be Christians, the Scripture provides certain tests to prove or disprove that claim. 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 results 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,” baptized in the church, and have been members in good standing of a church for many years. But do such claims make a person a Christian? No. Therefore, I beseech all of us to pay very close attention to what we are discussing in this passage.

Paul exhorts, “Examine yourselves to see whether you are in the faith; test yourselves” (2 Cor. 13:5). Peter admonishes, “Therefore, my brothers, be all the more eager to make your calling and election sure” (2 Pet. 1:10). James declares, “Faith without deeds is dead,” and says that demons can believe and tremble, yet they remain demons (Jas. 2:26). 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 test these claims?

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 the beginning, God . . .” (Gen. 1:1). John’s gospel starts the same way: “In the beginning was the Word” (John 1:1). 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.”

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 concept of the character of God as light and began to say, “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. 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 light. But if God were only love, there would be no need for the incarnation and substitutionary death of Jesus Christ in our behalf.

Not only does John say “God is light,” but then he adds, “in him there is no darkness at all.” God is not a mixture 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. I pray that we would think about who God truly is and be governed by this definition that God is light. The psalmist tells us, “He wraps himself in light as with a garment” (Ps. 104:2).

But now we must ask the question: If God is light, how can sinful man have fellowship with him? Prophet Habakkuk 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 that we may enjoy fellowship with God. Fellowship calls for something in common, for a correspondence of character between persons. 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? God himself must work a change in us, and he has done so in Jesus Christ, who became our propitiation, the sacrifice of atonement. He took our sins upon himself and paid 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, “For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light” (Eph. 5:8). Therefore this statement, “God is light,” must be interpreted in the ethical sense.

Jesus himself said, “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” (John 3:19-21).

God is light. He disclosed himself in Christ, so the message of Christ is the truth. 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.

The Claim of Having Fellowship with God

The first claim is found in 1 John 1:6: “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.” Profession is one thing but practice is something else. Claim must match conduct.

John was speaking about people who claimed that they were in the light enjoying fellowship with God, even while they were walking in the sphere of evil. In 1 John 2:6 we read, “Whoever claims to live in him must walk as Jesus did.” If we claim to have fellowship with God, we must live as Jesus did.

Elsewhere John writes, “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” (1 John 2:11). 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 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.

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 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. They are not doing the truth. We think that hearing truth and giving mental assent to it is good enough. That is not true. The Bible says we must do the truth.

The apostle is exposing those who speak truth but do not do it. They are liars. In fact, we must note that John says such people are not in the kingdom of God’s Son. Their eyes are blinded by Satan, as Paul writes, “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. . . . 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” (2 Cor. 4:4, 6).

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 told his disciples, “If you love me, keep my commandments.”

A profession devoid of the practice of truth is a false profession. If someone claims to have fellowship with God, that claim is validated only when that person walks in the light. To walk in the light means to live in the sphere of light 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 will be proven by fellowship with God’s church.

Many do not have a doctrine of ecclesiology. Instead of belonging to a church, they float around, saying all they want is “Jesus and me.” 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 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. (PGM) He will experience ongoing cleansing from the defilement of every sin. God’s goal for his people is that they be holy.

The Claim to Be Without Sin

The second claim is found in 1 John 1:8-9: “If we claim to be without sin . . .” People say this either when they think they have progressed so far in their Christian lives that they arrived at a state of perfection, having eradicated their sin nature, 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, who 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. That is what some people do when they make this type of claim.

John was addressing people who thought they had progressed so far 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 educated, cultured, scientific people? 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?” 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. 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. One recently 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, “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. I think such people are saved and are going to be with us in heaven.” The man who was interviewing this great evangelist became so excited when the evangelist said this. He said, “What, what I hear you saying is 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 been exposed to the Bible. Is that a correct interpretation of what you are saying?” And the evangelist said, “Yes, it is.” The other man was so excited that he exclaimed, “There’s a wideness in God’s mercy.”¹

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.” 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 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 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.

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, meaning, “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. Solomon prayed, “When they sin against you-for there is no one who does not sin” (2 Chron. 6:36). Isaiah says, “We all, like sheep, have gone astray, each of us has turned to his own way. . . . All of us have become like one who is unclean, and our righteous acts are like filthy rags” (Isa. 53:6; 64:6). 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” (Ps. 14:1-3, 53:1-3; Rom. 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. 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 salvation by the Son is the confession that “I am a sinner.” We must agree with God’s judgment of ourselves. Jesus saves only sinners who confess their sins 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, to our neighbors, and to 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.

¹ Iain H. Murray, Evangelicalism Divided (Edinburgh: The Banner of Truth Trust, 2000), 73-74.