The Epistle of 1 John – Part Two

By Michael K. Farrar, O.D.

© God’s Breath Publications

 

This is the second part of a series on the epistle of 1 John written by John the apostle. In this series we will cover the basic concerns John had for writing this letter to Christians. Included are the fourteen reasons he wrote these epistles of 1, 2 and 3 John as well as the eleven assurances we have that establish our salvation as a Christian.

 

In Part One of this series we learned that there were three general claims of the false teachers that were threatening the Christian church in Asia Minor. First was their false concept of darkness. They believed that you could walk in the darkness of the sin in your life and still have fellowship with the Lord. But this was a lie and John wished to expose it for what it was, falsehood.

 

1 John 1:7 states, “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.” Here John is telling us that if we walk in the light, if we live in godly obedience, if the thoughts we think, the words we say and the deeds we do are in sincere obedience to the Lord we have an honest and open fellowship with other believers. It also follows that we will be in fellowship with our Heavenly Father as well.

 

Of course we know we are not perfect and we will stumble in our Christian walk at times. But this verse tells us that if we walk in the light as Jesus did, the blood of Jesus purifies us from all sin. Christ continues to cleanse us for our sins throughout our life as Christians because we do sin at times, even as a Christians.

 

The fact we can be assured of as a Christian is that when we accepted Christ as Savior, our sins were forgiven, past, present and future. This forgiveness is what is called “justification.” We are justified in the eyes of God because of the sacrifice of Jesus for our sins. This forgiveness continues the rest of our lives as we are sanctified. Sanctification is a progressive act of increasing holiness in our lives as we live for Christ and obey His commands.

 

Walking in the light means we obey God’s Word, submit to the guidance of the Holy Spirit and model our thoughts and actions after Jesus Christ. When we sin as a Christian the light of God’s Word, the influence of the Holy Spirit and the accountability we have from our relationships with other Christians exposes our sins and we will be convicted and ask for forgiveness. Acts of confession after our initial commitment to Christ do not repeat the process of justification which took place when we were first saved, they simply keep us in a close relationship with the Lord. They continue to move us ever forward in our spiritual growth in faith and holiness. The false teaching of the Gnostics was that you could walk in darkness and sin with your body and still be in fellowship with God and other Christians. John was refuting such absurd reasoning. John 8:12 tells us;

 

“When Jesus spoke again to the people, he said, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” This is a rather blunt statement by Jesus that is completely contrary to what the Gnostic false teachers were saying.

 

The next general claim of the Gnostic false teachers was one of deception. They claimed that they were without sin. Verse 8 of 1 John 1 states, “If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.”

 

John is contradicting the false teachers and letting it be known that you cannot claim to be without sin. You not only are deceiving yourself if you make such a claim, you do not have the truth in your life.

 

It may seem strange to us that a person would claim to be without sin. But the Gnostics had to justify their philosophy and religious beliefs with their physical actions of sin. Their thinking was that if you placed greater importance on the knowledge in your mind and the spiritual aspects of your person, these being essentially good according to their teaching, you could deem the physical actions of your evil sinful body as external or separate from who you were as a person. This way you could sin with your body, but it had no consequences of judgment or influence on your relationship with God.

 

But we know that our behavior is evidence of what lives within our hearts and our outward actions can also encourage us to continue in such sinful actions further eroding the condition of our heart and soul. John wanted to expose these lies for what they were and lead Christians in proper conduct and thought life as they walked in the light. True Christians don’t deny their sins, they confess them. Romans 3:10-12 verifies what John is talking about when it says, “As it is written: “There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands, no one who seeks God. All have turned away, they have together become worthless; there is no one who does good, not even one.”

 

Verse 9 of 1 John 1 ties in nicely with verse 8 when it says, “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins.” “Confess” here is in the Greek present active tense. When we confess our sins we are saying that we agree that we continue to sin in our Christian life but we know that these sins have already been forgiven. “Will forgive” is a Greek past tense verb and reflects the idea that the sins we are confessing in the present have already been forgiven. But we need to confess these sins to agree with God that we have sinned so that we can continue to walk in the light as our sins are exposed to us by the Lord and the Holy Spirit. While we are saved from our sins when we accept Christ as our Lord and Savior, we still walk in this life with the frailty of the flesh. We must die to sin daily as we walk in obedience to the Lord. Paul speaks of this in Romans 7:21-25 “So I find this law at work: When I want to do good, evil is right there with me. For in my inner being I delight in God’s law; but I see another law at work in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making me a prisoner of the law of sin at work within my members. What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death? Thanks be to God — through Jesus Christ our Lord!”

 

Christ rescues us from the sins of the flesh by continuing to forgive us of our sins, not just in the past, but in the present as well as the future. Salvation is a constant process and we must confess our sins to agree with the fact that we are dependent upon Christ for salvation.

 

This verse contains another assurance that we are saved. When we are sensitive to the sin in our life we are assured that the Holy Spirit lives within us and our heart and mind have been transformed to seek forgiveness for these sins. This is more than our moral conscience. Our moral conscience can be beneficial in living a “good” life, but it is malleable by our will and influenced by our flesh. It is not always right and it is not always powerful enough to convict us of sin. When we are sensitive to sin in our life we are convicted because of what God’s Word says to us, what the Holy Spirit speaks to us or when wise godly Christians confront us in love with our sinful actions. It is important to understand that when we are convicted of our sin, it attests to the fact that we really are born again and our natural quick response should be confession of these sins.

 

Another false claim of the Gnostic false teachers involved the defamation of God’s character. Verse 10 of 1 John 1 states, “If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and His word has no place in our lives.” The false teachers and those being led astray by them were making the claim, “I have never sinned!” This again goes back to their belief that they could live any way they wanted, seeking passionate physical pursuits and not sin.

 

Their claim to have never sinned defames the Lord. It calls Him a liar. John states in 1 John 3:4 “Everyone who sins breaks the law; in fact, sin is lawlessness.” and in James 2:10 it says, “For whoever keeps the whole law and yet stumbles at just one point is guilty of breaking all of it.” When you call God a liar you do not live by the Word. You do not walk in the light. The Word does not have any residence in your thought life or heart. You walk in darkness when you deny you ever sin.

 

In 1 John 2 verse 1 we have another reason that John wrote these epistles, so that Christians would not sin. “My dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin.” John wanted Christians to avoid sinning so he instructs them in how to live holy and righteous, but in this same verse he states, ” But if anybody does sin, we have one who speaks to the Father in our defense Jesus Christ, the Righteous One.” John wants what God wants. God wants Christians to avoid sinning and so He teaches, instructs and guides us to help us keep from committing sins. But John and the Lord know that people will stumble in their walk with the Lord at times and when this happens we need to be reassured that we have forgiveness for these sins, that Jesus is constantly interceding for us. He is our compassionate intercessor and advocate.

 

We have learned that if we continue to “walk in the light” as Christians we have consistent fellowship with God and other Christians. This is because Jesus’ sacrifice continues to cleanse us of our sins all our life. We are called to live without sin as Christians, but when we do sin we can confess our sins and God is faithful to forgive them. One way we know we are a Christian is if we are sensitive to our sins. While God challenges us to walk in purity, it is a blessing to know if we slip or stumble He is always ready to forgive us. Praise God!

 

“Blessed is he whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered.”

Psalms 32:1