God Is Light

I John 1:5-10 “God Is Light”

What do you think is the best known verse in the Bible? Perhaps John 3:16. But it seems the verse that people throw around the most is Matthew 7:1 “Judge not, lest you be judged.” A close second to that is a verse from I John: “God is love.” People may say, “why would God do that, isn’t he a God of love? Doesn’t the Bible say that God is love?”

Before John gets to “God is love” in chapter four, in chapter one, he says this: “God is light.” As I will seek to explain, God is light means that God is holy. God is a holy and loving God.

John has 2 purposes in his letter: to reject the claims of the false teachers who are confusing his readers, and to encourage his readers in their fellowship with God. He does this by giving tests of salvation. (There is a review sheet on the back table.) As John begins to confront the errors of these false teachers, he begins with God. Many errors about Christianity can be traced back to errors about who God is. Understanding who God is has HUGE implications to how we understand the rest of the Bible and the Christian life. We must begin with who God says he is.

Read I John 1:5-10

First, we will look at the truth claim: God is light. This light exposes 3 errors. Then we will see 2 things we do and two things God does.

1. The truth claim: God is light
God is light. What does that mean? The Bible uses light to picture a number of things. Light can mean that something is revealed. “Like, he finally gets it. The lights went on!” Or, it can refer to salvation: God took us from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of light. We must apply the number one rule in real estate to our text here: location, location, location. Or, context, context, context. In this context, light exposes.

When I was an electrician, we often updated the lighting in people’s kitchens. There was great relief when after a long day of work, covered with drywall dust and sometimes insulation, we would flip the switch and the lights would come on. Then you would see the big mess that you made with dust covering everything. Their kitchen will be harder to clean, because they see all the dirt. In our passage:

1. The person walking in darkness does not acknowledge sin
2. The person in the light confesses their sin
3. Light is put in terms of truth and lies (6, 8)
4. Light is put in moral terms (sin, cleansing, just, unrighteousness)

God’s light exposes our sin. God is light: he is holy. Or he is true and righteous. John uses the term holy once, but more often: righteous, pure, and true. These are moral terms referring to God’s perfection and separation from sin. If we walk in the light, we see God’s holiness in relation to our sin. If we walk in the darkness, we are blind to God’s holiness and our sin.
In these verses, we find 3 errors opposed to God’s purity. These are errors that come from not walking in the light.

1. We claim fellowship with God but walk in darkness (6)

When I was 16, my family took at 6-week long road trip across the United States. We had been in Guyana for 4 years, and had a year break in the States. We packed our 1987 Suburban to the gills, and our family of 6 took off from Pennsylvania and made to California and back. We even had one of those racks attached to the trailer hitch, where we stashed our coolers. We would eat breakfast of cereal, lunch of sandwiches, and often cook supper on our Coleman stove at a park. There is certain way you get to know people when you are crammed in a Suburban for 6 weeks. Of course, we got along perfectly.

If you claim to have fellowship with God, it’s like saying you are on a journey with him. You are headed together in the same direction, with the same purpose. If you are on a journey with God, you will have the same purpose, and know about his character. If we say we have fellowship with God, but walk in darkness, we are claiming one thing and doing the opposite. God is light, so walking with him means we are walking in the light.

2. We claim to have no sin (8)

3. We claim not to commit sin (10)

We’ll take these two errors together. Both of them deal with sin. If we are in the light, we will see our sin. If we are in darkness, we will see not see our sin. Claiming to have no sin focuses on claiming that we don’t have a sin nature or an inclination to sin in us. Claiming not to sin, focuses on claiming not to commit actual acts of sin. You’ve got to be blind to say you have no sin. But this is what the false teachers were claiming. They did that because they were walking in darkness.

In the same way that many errors begin with a distortion of God, other errors pop up when human sinfulness is denied. But denying sin comes first from denying God’s absolute perfection.

Did you notice how these 3 errors lead to lies?
-Vs 6, we lie
-Vs 8- we deceive ourselves- we lie to ourselves
-Vs 10- we make God a liar

We make a complete and utter mess of the truth when we deny our sin and yet claim to know God. These are not errors that are just in our understanding. These are errors that are believe in the heart and lived out in action.

-Walking or living (6)
-Do not practice the truth (6)
-Acts of sin (10)

There was the Frebreze commercial that shows this car full of rotting fast food sitting in the middle of a sweltering parking lot. They spray the car with Frebreze and take a person blind folded person and put in them in the driver’s seat. They say- Oh, it smells great in hear. But take off the blindfold, and the story is different. Yuck! When we walk in darkness we can’t see the rottenness of our life, but when God takes off the blindfold and we see his holiness, we say yuck!

Now, let’s focus on the truths taught in the light of God’s holiness.
2 things we do
2 things God does

1. What we do: We walk in the light (vs 7)
Walking in the light is walking in the light of God’s holiness. The outcome of this journey is that we have fellowship with…one another. The only way we can have a true connection with other Christians is if we are too seeing the light and walking with God. If two people both claim that Jesus has the wheel of their vehicle, they better be in the same car. A true Christian sees the holiness, purity, and truth of God, and lives in accordance with it.

2. What God does: Christ cleanses us (vs 7)
A true Christian who walks in the light knows their need of the blood of Jesus Christ to cleanse them from their sins. A Christian is one who has been cleansed by the death of Jesus Christ. The light exposes impurity and the death of Jesus applied to us cleans us up.

3. What we do: We confess our sins (9)
When the light exposes our sin, we see the need of Christ’s death to cleanse us, but also the need to confess our sins to God. What is confession? It is agreeing with God about our sin. It is not just saying that we sin. That is not enough. We must have God’s view of sin.

There is a trend today in Christianity that focuses on being real. We certainly desire genuine Christians who are not hypocrites. We should have a desire for us as Christians to be honest about our sin with one another. But if you get a group of people together acknowledging that they are sinners, that is not enough. “Yeah, were really messed up.” You don’t need the Bible to show you that. You need to have God’s view of sin. You need a group of people acknowledging their sin, but also doing something about it. Hating it, putting it off, and growing in holiness.

4. What God does: He forgives us (9)
God hears the confession of one who is walking in the light. He forgives them. Why? Because he is faithful and just. It doesn’t say merciful and gracious, but faithful and just. How does that work? 2:2
Christ is our propitiation. We will get to this fully next week, but simply put, Christ took the punishment for our sin. If we have believed in Jesus, God can faithfully and rightly forgive us because Jesus took our sin.

Application: How do we know we are in the light?

The worst problem you could have today is if you are walking in darkness. How do we know we have fellowship with God, how do we know we are walking in the light? The false teachers claimed to know God, but they did not walk in the light. How did it show? It showed because they did not acknowledge their sinfulness. We can be assured that we are in fellowship with God when we see our sin and confess it.

Seeing our sin a vital mark of a Christian. Later in the letter, John is going to say: if you have been born of God, you will not keep on sinning. When we hear that, we must remember what John said first here: a Christian does not deny their sin, but they see it. They confess it, and continue to walk in the light.

The proper response to sin is not denial, as with the false teachers. Nor, is it continual guilt. We must have the same view as God. Our sin is despicable to God, and his holiness exposes its hideousness. But, for those who have Jesus Christ, God has forgiven your sins. He has cleansed you from the filthiness that his light has exposed. Not denial, not guilt, but an agreement with God about our sin AND the sacrifice of Jesus for us. Sin is ugly but the brutal death of Christ is beautiful in the eyes of the sinner.

The more we grow in your understanding of the light—God’s holiness—the more we will be aware of our sin. As the light of God’s holiness pours into our souls, we will see the extent and depth that sin has affected us. Yes, Christians will grow godly character and actions, but they will also see how far they are from God’s standard of holiness, because they see more of his holiness.

When humans get an overdose of God’s light from an encounter with God, they are overwhelmed. Think of Isaiah. He saw a view of God’s holiness, and what did he say? “Woe is me! for I am undone; because I am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips: for mine eyes have seen the King, the Lord of hosts.” Isaiah got the surface of the sun view of God’s holiness and was completely shattered.

Or think of Peter, when he encountered a miracle of Jesus. Jesus put out in Peter’s boat, and told the fisherman to put out their nets, even though they hadn’t caught anything all night. They caught such a large number of fish that their boats almost sank. In the midst of all the clamor, Peter sees the light of Jesus. He falls down at Jesus knees. He says, “Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord.”

This should be our response to walking in the light. “Depart from me, O Lord, because I am sinful.” We should fall at the feet of Jesus when we realize how holy he is, and how sinful we are. But then, we should look up and see the scars in his hands and feet. He died for us. He took our sin. We are forgiven. We are cleansed. We are his.