Author: missionspaul

We will find out the reason why John is writing this letter soon but here he is listing those he is writing to. Firstly the children which were the believers who knew forgiveness of Jesus and who knew God. Now it is fathers. But this not gender rather it is those who are the mature believers in the church, so female also.

“I am writing to you, fathers, because you know him who is from the beginning. I write to you, fathers, because you know him who is from the beginning.” (1 John 2 v 13-14)

Remember the opening? “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.” (1 John 1 v 1) Remember the gospel? “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” (John 1 v 1)

The mature of the church are those who have a genuine experience of Jesus and from the beginning. Their experience is rooted in the things of the past. This in itself is a vital message for the church today!

Out with the old and in with the new does not involve people.

If the church truly moves into a new season or a new day they will do so with the mature who have been anchored to the experience of Jesus since the beginning. The world doesn’t need a rootless church.

Well there’s something to equal that certainly!

“I am writing to you, dear children, because your sins have been forgiven on account of his name. I write to you, dear children, because you know the Father.” (1 John 2 v 12, 14)

John is writing not to children as we may think but to the Church that he calls children. The word he uses is ‘teknion’ which has training attached to it. We are a work in progress. We are growing. But one thing is clear, because of Jesus, our sins are forgiven. There is more. Again because of Jesus you know God the Father (John 14 v 9).

Pause today. Those two things are fixed. So do not doubt you are forgiven or you know God. Yes you are still in training and we will be for the rest of our life. Yes we are all sinners. But do not let the accuser influence you away from the truth that because of Jesus you are forgiven and you know God.

Church people can claim a lot of things. They can claim to ‘know him’ (v4), to ‘live in him’ (v6) and now in v9 ‘to be in the light’ but for it all to be false. The reason being is somethings are just impossible.

“Anyone who claims to be in the light but hates a brother or sister is still in the darkness. Anyone who loves their brother and sister lives in the light, and there is nothing in them to make them stumble. But anyone who hates a brother or sister is in the darkness and walks around in the darkness. They do not know where they are going, because the darkness has blinded them.” (1 John 2 v 9-11)

Written to those within the Church:-

It is impossible to be in the light and hate at the same time.

It is impossible to get out of the darkness if you hate.

It is impossible to love and not be in the light.

It is impossible to stumble when there is nothing to sin about.

It is impossible to hate and not be in darkness.

It is impossible to receive guidance when you are blinded by darkness.

The problem is not only whether you love but whether you hate.

For John the problem was within not outside the Church.

The previous generation had to discover love for and within the church. But we cannot rely on this. We have to discover it ourselves. We cannot simply presume that because we have faith we have love. John is moving into challenging those within the church who are weakening it because of their divisive ways.

“Dear friends, I am not writing you a new command but an old one, which you have had since the beginning. This old command is the message you have heard. Yet I am writing you a new command; its truth is seen in him and in you, because the darkness is passing and the true light is already shining.” (1 John 2 v 7-8)

Let’s go back to the beginning: ““‘Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against anyone among your people, but love your neighbour as yourself. I am the Lord.” (Leviticus 19:18)

It was new at the time of Moses but by the time of Jesus it was an old command.

So look what happens, “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.” (John 13 v 34).

It was new but by the time of John’s audience it had already become old.

John says I have an old command but I am making it new, freshening it up for this generation. ‘The content of this command is true in Jesus and for this generation and especially for us.’ That was John’s heart because since his Revelation he knew the evil present age would soon be over and the light of Jesus was still shining.

He will say more and it will provoke further. But here today, let us in our generation as we wait for the return of Christ find a freshness in the command to love one another.

Yesterday we answered the question ‘Do you know Him?’ We discovered that the answer is found in our experiencing Jesus and living that experience out by how we live with others. We are still in the same place. Here’s another question coming from the words in v6, ‘to live in him’. Do you abide in Him?

“But if anyone obeys his word, love for God is truly made complete in them. This is how we know we are in him: Whoever claims to live in him must walk as Jesus did.” (1 John 2 v 5-6)

The Spirit is the assurance that we are in Him (we will see this later in 4:13 “This is how we know that we live in him and he in us: He has given us of his Spirit”) but here John says it is that we walk as Jesus walked. How was that? It is in what they have already received and heard in his gospel, the account of the earthly life of Jesus.

The words to ‘live in’ him are words that mean remain, stay or abide. It indicates endurance and durability. A Church I know are going through a season of practicing the presence of God by stillness, meditation and contemplation and they have correctly named this as ‘Abide’. The outcome of this will be that they walk as Jesus walked.

Set in the context of John saying our love for God is completed if we obey his word (and there is no greater command than to love God and love others) we must never underestimate the importance and the power of loving other people.

Love like Jesus loved.

It means sacrifice. It means not putting yourself first. It means going the extra mile. It means being available for others. Burnout doesn’t happen because you love others it happens because the reason to do so becomes flawed.

As we look like Jesus in our love then we know we are abiding in Him.

God.

Is this even possible? John knows people in the church who claim they do but he thinks they are lying!

It isn’t because it is impossible to know God because we can. But how?

“We know that we have come to know him if we keep his commands. Whoever says, “I know him,” but does not do what he commands is a liar, and the truth is not in that person.” (1 John 2 v 3-4)

You can know a person and then you can really know someone. What’s the difference?

We already have read how John’s desire for the Church is that they encounter and experience Jesus Christ. John’s understanding of knowledge of God is also an experiential one. “We know we have come to know him …” This is ‘we are experiencing a knowing of him today because yesterday we came to know him.’ We are living out our knowing and that is proof we know.

How? By obedience to his commands. We automatically think of at least the 10 commandments. But John is thinking in his letter of something different. “And this is his command: to believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as he commanded us.” (1 John 3:23) Two commands. Not that we are perfect in either for we fail in the latter no doubt. But we will be known by being a person who focuses their life on believing in Jesus and loving other people.

That is how we know Him. We have experienced Jesus and we are living that experience out by how we live with others.

Is this possible? Yes.

It was the greatest burden of John and the threat is still very real.

That threat is not the denial of Jesus but the dethroning of Jesus Christ. It takes place around the issue of sin.

John is challenging those who dismiss sin and make it unimportant or dismiss sin as impossible for those who are spiritually enlightened or mature. We see it today. If we remove sin it leads to the dethroning of Jesus Christ. In fact with no sin there is no need of a present Saviour.

“My dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin. But if anybody does sin, we have an advocate with the Father—Jesus Christ, the Righteous One. He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world.” (1 John 2 v 1-2)

We see his deep affection to whoever he is writing to, no one really knows but probably a group of churches who see him as their apostle. He is not saying he expects they will not sin because he has already said we all do.

We know what happens when we sin. We feel guilt, conviction and rightly so. The enemy of our soul, the opportunist, makes his move and brings condemnation and sin can lead to many destructive places. BUT … we have Jesus Christ!

The role of Jesus is as our defence, our advocate, it is beautiful to see the interplay between Jesus and the Spirit as both fulfil roles in advocacy (see his gospel 14: 16). His role is also our sacrifice.

John says that Jesus continually intercedes on our behalf using His righteous act on the cross as our defence. That is not to continually calm God’s anger down. No. This is all of God’s idea. John will say later in 4:10 “This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.”

He is doing this for us the Church and for the whole world.

But who benefits? It is those who know they are sinners.

If you are not a sinner then you don’t benefit from what Jesus Christ is doing right now.

John sees the danger that Church can try to operate without the real Jesus Christ. Without a correct view of sin then there is no benefit of the reality of Jesus Christ. Anything less dethrones Him.

It would seem in John’s world, much like our own, there were people who believed in God but carried a sin-denying theology. In his countering of these claims he calls these people liars (v6), lying to themselves (v8) and in this third response he says they lie to God.

“If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word is not in us.” (1 John 1 v 10)

Today in churches throughout the world visitors will gather and our prayer is that they come to know Jesus who gave His life for them. “…his word …” which John means either the Scriptures or Jesus Himself can only occupy a place in the lives of those who know they have sinned against God. To have a Saviour you need to be a sinner.

No one is perfect. We cannot fix sin ourselves.

But we can ignore it, rationalise it and deny the glory of God that sin falls well short of (Romans 3:23).

John is clear in the opening of his letter. To truly know God is to have first known sin.

Having challenged the first claim from those who say they have a relationship with God without Jesus and calling them liars, John now tackles the second claim. There are those who say they are without sin. It would seem that within the Church there were those claiming that since coming to ‘know God’ and ‘receiving the Spirit’ they are sin-free. John says they are lying to themselves, they are deceived.

“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.” (1 John 1 v 8-9)

John will go on to write about the Holy Spirit being the Spirit of truth (4:6) and who bears witness (5:6). All are guilty, but only Christians know it. This is because of the work of the Spirit who leads us to the place of confession and forgiveness and purification.

The Church continually needs to ask the question: what do we do with sin? Simply because it is inside and outside the Church. Politics, private agendas, whisperings, plans, stubborn refusal to move forward, to listen and learn, to change, criticisms, manipulative abuse, I see it every week and so do you. Worse, we have partaken in this. I don’t find this devotion easy to write because I am part of the problem. Everyone sins.

I received a letter from a complainant of a Pastor threatening to withhold their tithe if I didn’t sort the Pastor out. On the same day I heard that a different Pastor didn’t practice tithing at all as he didn’t believe in it (he was actually giving less than 2% to his church). Sin is everywhere. What do we do with it?

Do we still need forgiveness? Or have we become so spiritually mature we don’t need it? Or have we zero self-awareness?

But for those of us who are self-aware we are thankful for God’s faithfulness and justice. His mercy and grace are great but if I had to rely on those alone my mind would certainly be telling me that those precious qualities ran out for me years ago! I rely on an ACT. A COVENANT that cannot be broken. It HAPPENED. JUSTICE was achieved. He is ‘faithful and just’. It is not about only mercy and grace (of course this flows endlessly) but it is about a court of law in heaven centred around the achievement of Jesus Christ on the cross. So I confess and I am forgiven and I am purified from it all.

Who do I confess to? Definitely Jesus! But at times a friend is needed to help me on that journey of recovery.

The problem that old man John had is not dissimilar to the problem that we have as the Church in 2023.

For him it was either the influence on the church from the world and the Jews or the problem of those within the Church who were anti-Christs. Similarly our problem lies in the fact that there are those in the world and in other religious faiths who make claims about God and those who are within the Church who make similar claims but have different opinions about Jesus.

“This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all. ⁶ If we claim to have fellowship with him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live out the truth. ⁷ But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.” (1 John 1 v 5-7)

John puts his stake in the ground: God is light. He has already written his gospel and mentions on several occasions how Jesus is the light. But here he says God is the light and it is Jesus who told him so. We don’t have any reference in the gospels of Jesus saying this so it is either a collaboration of all the light sayings of Jesus that concludes that God is so because Jesus is God or we can simply accept that Jesus said things to the disciples that were not recorded and this one is now revealed. God is light. In John’s day whether a Jew outside the Church or an antichrist within everyone would agree with that. But what does it mean to walk in darkness? What does it mean to walk in the light? This then opens the problem about Jesus.

You see it is relatively easy to speak about God or a power behind the universe, something or someone, even a creator who created or created evolution. But you start talking about Jesus then that is when it gets interesting!

God’s incarnation in Jesus, the teachings of Jesus, the forgiveness of sins by Jesus, the applying of the death of Jesus (his blood) for the transformation of a person’s life is the determining factor of whether you walk in darkness or walk in the light. The cross and its implications on your life is central to the message of Christianity. If you fail to accept these things of Jesus then you are walking in the darkness. If you do accept them, then you are walking in the light and John states we have fellowship/koinonia with one another who are the Church that continually walks in the light of the knowledge of Jesus and continually is purified from sin because we acknowledge our need for that.

The best friend of Jesus, an old man, who had suffered much for his faith in Jesus is concerned about many claims he is hearing which mean nothing and in fact are lies. Here in 2023 we must stand for the truth:

Claiming to have fellowship/koinonia with God, to know Him, without acknowledging the cross of Jesus Christ is a lie.

Claiming to acknowledge the cross of Jesus Christ without the personal application of His blood is a lie.

Claiming to have applied the blood of Jesus yet deny the fellowship/koinonia with other followers of Jesus is a lie.