1 John 1:1-10

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. The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us. We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. We write this to make our joy complete.

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 and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live out 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 is not in us.

No “hello, how are you”; no “dear friends”; no introduction at all but a quick launch into a very specific statement of faith, a creed if you will which unequivocally says “God has been here. I saw God. I heard God. I touched God and I remain in fellowship with God.”

The message is clear – whatever this John is going to say is going to be serious and he is already anticipating conflict and disbelief and so he seeks to declaw it before it can scratch by simply staring out with a great bold “I speak with authority” and a more subtle undertone of “you do not…”

John can get away with this…for if he is the beloved disciple, the John exiled to Patmos, then he is likely the last living eyewitness to the breath of God made flesh, the Christ.

In John’s words there are hints at the struggles he is trying to address in the early church (always remember these words were written first and foremost to believers). Unbelief. John’s launch directly into a mini apologetic defending the very real Christ who was seen, heard and touched speaks of a struggle in the emerging church, a potential mythologizing of Christ, a dangerous metaphorizing of him into an idea rather than a person, rather than God.

Why say these things? “So that you may have fellowship with us” and by extension with the one we have fellowship with – God that is Christ that is God; this, according to John, this would “make our joy complete”. The implication – this fellowship is currently broken or strained and John feels it is important to address these things; Important not simply for the individuals but for the church and not really even for the church so much as for whom the church exists for – the world. If the church’s fellowship with God fractures the world suffers.

John moves on to point out what he clearly feels should be obvious but what seems increasingly to be things his audience is forgetting – God is light. To claim kinship with Christ and to walk in darkness at the same time is a problem…you cannot have both. More explicitly as we move deeper into the letter we come to see that John is battling a community that seems to believe that this salvation Christ brings is a very individual sort of thing, a license to sin because of grace…a community Bonhoeffer would say is caught up in “cheap grace” that is in the process of forgetting the costly nature of grace and just for whom grace is meant. John is here to remind the community what true grace is and what it means to be redeemed.

John speaks of sin but he speaks of its dual nature in practically one breath…sin is nature; sin is act. We are called to live like Christ but we are also called to acknowledge and confess our brokenness seeking out the only one capable of sustaining our salvation…the Lord of that salvation. We are sinful and we are called to not be sinful. It makes the head hurt but ultimately it is a call to personal revolution because the act of rebelling against ones rebellious nature is a public one that demonstrates an ongoing relationship (costly grace) and not simply the acquisition of a Get Into Heaven Free Card (cheap grace). Why is the demonstration of this relationship so important? Because it demonstrates that “He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world.”

Not only for us…but for the whole world.

For the whole world.

It is as if John is saying: “You are making the wellspring of grace look like a trough from which only a lucky few can drink while the rest die of thirst when nothing could be further from the truth.”

John then returns to his point: “Why am I writing to you – to remind you you are forgiven because you seem to have forgotten.”

It is important to recognize that while John is revealing Godly inspired, inerrant and eternal truth he is also responding to a very specific and time bound issue. People are wandering away from the church…this has created a scenario of people who call themselves Christians going into the world and intentionally or unintentionally delivering a very unfortunate picture of who Christ is by their actions and lives…because the world does not see the distinction between the genuine faithful and the ones who bought into faith for cheap grace.

In 1 John 2:20 we come to learn that some are denying that Jesus is the Christ…which could be as simple as simply publicly stating that they think Jesus was just a wise human that had an unfortunate run in with the Romans. John is hear to say no…he is more. I saw him, knew him, heard him and touched him. He is messiah (Christ) and as Jewish believer writing to an increasingly Gentile population of Christians it falls on him to teach that Messiah is far more than a simple human.

Note that John refers to this denying of Christ as “antichrist” behaviour. Unfortunately antichrist has taken on silly horror movie connotations in our culture leading to the sad and deceptive belief that THE antichrist is a single being and therefore we need not worry about that being us; this lets our guard down and we become what we think we cannot become as a result… deniers of the one we claim to follow.

Remain in Christ John says – this is eternal life…to remain in the source of eternal life. Which sounds suspiciously like he is saying “eternal life starts now, not after you die, so start acting like it.”

John continues and there is a strong subtext that suggest teachers have been coming to the community John is writing to and telling people that they can continue on in their broken ways with confidence because they have the fire insurance of grace. The lesson that appears to have been taught that John is fighting is that Jesus came so that you could continue in sin and brokenness with abandon when in fact nothing could be further from the truth and if we truly want to acknowledge what Christ has done we can do no better than to seek to live like he did.

At the end of chapter three John gets to a critical point – explaining what he means by “stop sinning” and thankfully we are NOT then presented with an exhaustive list of more than 600 laws…rather John simply states – “We should love one another”. He then spends the entirety of chapter four restating this…you cannot love God and hate your brother and sister…it is not possible, you must love both and they will feed one-another in an upward redemptive spiral just as hate feeds on itself and feeds a downward spiral of bitterness and death.

Speaking death the last chapter of 1 John leads us to that sticky couple of verses (16 and 17) that we may wish were not there:

“If you see any brother or sister commit a sin that does not lead to death, you should pray and God will give them life. I refer to those whose sin does not lead to death. There is a sin that leads to death. I am not saying that you should pray about that. ¹⁷ All wrongdoing is sin, and there is sin that does not lead to death.”

Great. A sin that leads to death (that is separation from God) and we are not to pray for them. Seems harsh.

It is likely what is being spoken of here is unbelief but not simply unbelief because we are speaking of fellow Christians here. Note that John has stated that when you see sin in a fellow believer your response is to pray (it is also critical to think deeply about the things John does not say we should do). For a believer or one who claims to be a believer to step outside of the faith and walk in unbelief (a path toward death) will require more than the well meaning prayers of fellow believers…this one must be left to wander the desert where only God can reach them. This is the lost sheep…this is the one who does not require the protection of the flock but the radical, pursuing love of the shepherd…the only thing that can bring them back from death.

Finally as if to reinforce the theme of remaining true to “the way” of Christ John’s final words are very simple “Dear children, keep yourselves from idols.”

It would have been just as appropriate for John to have left off with the great prayer of Israel, the Shema – “Hear, O Israel: the Lord is our God, the Lord is One“.

John would have his fellow believers stand fast, remain with God and God alone…all else is illusion. Thus the tough, difficult to read, frustrating letter of 1 John ends with the primary theme still ringing in our ears – it is one thing to be apart from God, a gentile in need of the Gospel, it is a wholly other thing to have claimed kinship and then to have abandoned that same kinship in favour of the old ways…this is a difficult, painful path that can lead to death and lead others there as well…stay close to Christ and obey his commands by loving God, loving self, and loving others.