This Sunday we kicked off a brand new teaching series called, “A Word on Reality.” For the next few weeks we are going to be working through 1 John and taking a close look at his invitation to be a part of the real world and what it looks like when we do. In this first part of the series we talked about what needs to happen before any movement in this direction can take place. Keep reading to find out what this is.
A Vibrant Realism
Have you ever tried to teach someone who thought they knew what you were talking about better than you did? How’d that go? It was pretty frustrating, wasn’t it? You probably kept trying to tell them one thing or another, but you could tell they weren’t really listening. Maybe they were hearing, but not listening. Then, when you sent them out to put whatever it was into practice they failed. Miserably. But then, instead of getting mad at themselves for not being a very good student, they got all upset at you for not teaching them well enough. The problem was: While they thought they were living within the bounds of reality on whatever the issue was, you knew they weren’t. But, because of their deeply ingrained false belief, they weren’t willing to listen. Have you ever been there?
I suspect if you have kids you’ve been there more than once. We had Micah the other day declare that he knows everything. I don’t know that I was really ready to start down that particular road with him. I thought we’d get at least a few years past three. Ladies, if you have a husband, I suspect you’ve dealt with something along these lines as well. With some hesitation, I will admit that on occasion—rare occasion, of course—guys might possibly struggle with listening as well to our wives as we should. Single ladies: Count yourself lucky that you don’t have to deal with this. Single guys: If not being single is on your radar at all, you may want to start working on this now. That was for free to save you some trouble down the road.
There’s a bigger issue here, though. There are times in life when we think we’re on the right track, but we’re not really. There are also times when we know we’re not on the right track, but we don’t care and we’re really not all that interested in doing anything about it at the moment. Whether we know we’re off of it or not, though, the tough truth is that there is a right track. That can be a bit of a hard pill to swallow. You see, even though it’s not always a terribly popular prospect nowadays, truth is a real thing. What’s more, it’s a pretty unforgiving thing. Truth is truth and we can either adjust ourselves to it or live apart from it. Living apart from truth…well…that can get messy.
Now, it’s not necessarily messy at first. That’s what makes it so easy to fall into living apart from it. Here’s another pill about the way the world works that isn’t necessarily hard to swallow, but it is pretty bitter: There are times when life is hard. Maybe you’ve got a family situation going on that you are powerless to stop. Perhaps you’re stuck in an awful job without any other prospects on the horizon. It could be that you are facing personal or family illness and the outcome looks pretty grim. Maybe someone in a position of authority really is out to get you for some reason and none of your options for responding to him are very good. It could be a lot of things, but the simple reality is that life is sometimes hard.
And when life gets hard, it is very tempting to look for ways to get out of it, even if for a little while. You’ve experienced this before. There’s this activity that acts as a kind of salve for the wounds of the day. You know it isn’t something you should be doing—at least very often—but it feels so good. And so on those days when life is extra hard, you indulge a bit because it makes you feel better. Over time—especially if this salve is something nobody else knows about—you start to create a world off to the side of the real world where you can go and escape from the chaos here when it gets too bad. Almost nobody is going to fault you for this either because we all do it too. Maybe for you it’s a book. You’re always up for a good book that you can pick up and just lose yourself in for a while. It could be social media. You spend hours completely absorbed in the far-more-interesting-looking-than-actual lives of other people because then you don’t have to deal with your own life (except to feel badly about it, of course). For a lot of young people today it’s video games.
Again, it could be a lot of different things, but the point is that we all have these places where we either do or are at least tempted to live apart from reality. Here’s the thing about these places: While they may not be bad things in and of themselves, if we go there very often or stay there very long we start to become that kid who thinks he knows more than his teacher. We start to think the fantasy world is better than the real world. Maybe not at first, but eventually that’s not going to serve us very well. We’ve got to break the pattern and to be reminded that things are never quite so bad as they seem. In order to get that, what we really need is a little dose of reality. If you know at all what I’m talking about this morning, the next few weeks are for you.
This morning we are kicking off a brand new teaching series called “A Word on Reality.” For the next few weeks we are going to be talking about the real world and how we can live more comfortably within its spacious borders. In order to do this, we are going to have to establish what exactly those borders are and who it is that sets them in place. We’ll also spend some time talking about how we can remain within them. Aiding us in our journey will be an ancient letter written by a follower of Jesus who had been with Him since the beginning. He was writing this letter near the end of his very long life at a time when he had been given a great deal of space to reflect on his time with Jesus, the weight of Jesus’ message, and the implications of that message for the life of his former church family and, through them, all of us. This Jesus follower’s name was John. We call his letter 1 John because, well, it’s the longest of the three letters he wrote (in addition to his Gospel and Revelation) and thus generally put first in the order.
First John is often called the “Love Epistle” because he spends a fair bit of time in the short letter talking about God’s love and our loving one another. I think there’s another theme, though, that emerges as you read carefully what John is talking about within these pages. Starting from the first four verses with their echoes of the beginning of his Gospel, John has a passionate concern that his audience understands what is real and learns to live their lives in light of that.
Check this out with me starting right at the beginning of the book: “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we looked upon and have touched with our hands, concerning the word of life—the life was made manifest, and we have seen it, and testify to it and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was made manifest to us—that which we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you, so that you too may have fellowship with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ. And we are writing these things so that our joy may be complete.”
Clear as mud? If your first reaction to this is a rousing, “Huh?” you’re not alone. I have seven commentaries on 1 John in my office. Not one of them deals with these four verses in less than 8 pages of small print. The longest runs twice that. On four verses. All that’s too say, there’s way more here than we’re going to get into together now. The Spirit can move all He wants, but the nursery workers will rightly quit after about an hour and we don’t want a mini version of Lord of the Flies going on across the parking lot. Yet before you despair of making any sense out of this at all, let’s look a bit more closely at what he’s saying.
Seven different times in these four verses John makes reference to some way he has physically interacted with whatever “that which was from the beginning” is. He talks about having seen it and heard it and touched it. We almost expect him to say that he tasted it and smelled it too. In other words, he’s not just describing some spiritual experience he had but which wasn’t repeatable by anybody else. He’s describing something real. What’s more, he mentions testifying to it or proclaiming it or writing about it for his readers four different times. It isn’t just that John experienced this thing that was from the beginning. It’s that he is eager to share about it with us so that we can experience it along with him.
This is where the “from the beginning” part becomes important. This thing which was from the beginning is not a thing at all. He’s talking, of course, about the person of Jesus of Nazareth. The beginning may be the start of Jesus’ ministry, but here at least John is more likely talking about something entirely larger than that. Jesus has always been. Jesus was at one and the same time fully human—and thus able to be physically experienced by John and the other apostles—but also fully God. As the second person of the Trinity, Jesus is every bit as eternal as the Father and the Spirit. There has never been a time when He was not. Stay with me here. If Jesus has been since the beginning, and if, as Paul wrote in what was the memory verse for VBS this summer that all things were created through Him, then Jesus, kind of by definition, defines reality. He’s not just bigger than what you and I see and experience on a daily basis, He gives it definition. What that means for us is that John’s description of his experience with the reality of Jesus does not have to be limited to him. We may not be able to experience Jesus in exactly the same way John did, but that does not at all mean we can’t still have a real experience with Him. In fact, our having an experience with Jesus, our having fellowship with Him, is precisely what John’s goal is. He wants us to have that fellowship with Jesus so that we might be able to share with him in the joy that comes from it. In order to have that joy, though, we’ve got to have the fellowship. How we have that fellowship—in other words, how we live within the borders of reality—is exactly what we are going to be talking for the next few weeks.
Well, with the big picture of the letter out of the way, John gets right down to business. Look with me at v. 5: “This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him there is no darkness at all.” Okay, stop again. What on earth does that mean? Does God glow? Maybe. He’s certainly described as radiating light any time He is pictured in the Scriptures. But I think there’s a little more to it than that. The imagery of light in the Old Testament was primarily used to convey the ideas of knowledge and purity. There’s a reason that even today gaining knowledge about something is sometimes called being illuminated. The idea is that we can now see what we could not see before; something you can do when you are in the light. In a similar way, when something is pure we think about it being brighter than something that is impure. Well, God is perfect in both knowledge and purity. He is omniscient and omnibenevolent—all-knowing and all-good. More than that, He is the source of knowledge and goodness. Nothing exists that He didn’t create and good is defined by His character. Thus, He is light. There is no darkness in Him. There is nothing He does not know and He always, unfailingly does what is right.
There’s more here, though, I think. We can draw out this metaphor of light a bit further. I suspect most of you have been up into the mountains in the fall at some point. What makes that such a special experience? The colors. Our world is awash in colors. Everywhere we look there is a whole spectrum of colors of every hue, shade, and tint. Seeing the world in color is seeing the world as it really is. Do you know what makes color possible, though? Light. When a molecule is exposed to photons of light, some of the energy of those photons it absorbs, some it reflects. The reflected photons bounce back vibrating at a certain frequency. When one of these photons enters our eye, our brain processes its vibration as a color. Each different vibrational frequency corresponds to a different color. But, without light, there aren’t any molecular vibrations and thus there aren’t any colors. The point here is that light allows us not simply to see, but to see things as they really are. The same goes with God. He is light. When we see the world with Him as our lens, we can see things as they really are.
The question for us then becomes—and this is John’s stated goal for his readers—how do we live in that light? How do we make sure we are living in such a way that we are seeing and engaging with the world as it really is instead of as one of the many possible fantasies we are surrounded by and in which we take part? Over the course of the next five verses through a series of conditional statements (if this, then that), John seeks to give us the beginning of an answer to that question. Let’s look at these together.
We’ll start with v. 6: “If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth.” If we are going to get close to God so that we can live in His light, we’ve got to give the effort more than just lip service. One of the demographic trends that has left many church leaders unsettled in recent years is the so-called “Rise of the ‘Nones’.” That’s n-o-n-e, “nones,” not the Catholic version. These are folks who don’t claim to have any religious affiliation at all. The data are perhaps a little misleading as some of these “nones” really do have a set of religious beliefs, they have just embraced the popular cultural notion that having an “ideology” is uncool and responded to the survey accordingly. The bigger issue, though, is that for much of the 20th century, going to church and even claiming to be a Christian was a culturally popular and even necessary thing to do. Russell Moore, the head of the SBC’s Ethics and Religious Liberty Committee, writes about a college friend who was as secular as he could be asking him for help in finding a church to attend. Moore asked if he had had a change of heart and the guy responded, “No way. But I plan to run for office someday and I won’t get elected around here without being a member of a church.” Since about the mid-2000s that trend has changed. Now there is very little cultural merit awarded for being a part of a church or claiming to be a follower of Jesus. In fact, the pendulum has swung all the way to the other side in some places such that being a part of a church is seen as a mark of shame. Whatever the cultural merits or demerits might be, though, claiming to be a follower of Jesus and not backing this up by our actions makes a liar out of us. It keeps us mired in a fantasy world where a verbal affirmation absent behavioral demonstration is all you need to validate a belief and receive its attendant rewards.
In v. 7 John offers us the alternative: “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 cleanses us from all sin.” Here’s how we can get close to God; how we can live in light of reality: We walk with Christ in His light. If we are going to enjoy fellowship with God, then we are going to have to adjust ourselves to living after the pattern of His righteousness. This means giving up living according to what we might define as right. It means leaving behind all the fantasy worlds we have created in favor of the real thing. This is a tough thing to do, but when we commit ourselves to it we have help in the process. The blood of Jesus cleanses us from all sin, John says. We’ll get more into how exactly that works next week, but this introduction of the idea of sin is something not only that we need to talk about, but is actually where John goes next in terms of his focus.
We all know what sin is anecdotally—that is, we can generally point it out when we see it. But, just to make sure we’re all on the same page, let me go ahead and define it for us. At the most basic level, sin is any action or attitude that exists in opposition to God’s character and will. If that is the case, then by definition, sin is invariably a foray into a fantasy world. If God is the one who defines reality as we have already said this morning, then sin is an attempt to carve out a world that exists alongside what is real. It’s an attempt to create a world in which God is not Lord. Well, if we are trying to live in a world apart from God and of our own creation, we can’t very well live in His world at the same time, can we? This is an either-or proposition. What we find here, then, is that if we want to live in God’s world, if we want to live in the world as it really is, before anything else can happen—before we can even get close to God in the first place—we’ve got to deal with sin. We’ve got to deal with it by being honest about the fact that it not only exists, but that it exists in us. We’ve got to be honest about the fact that apart from God we are living in a series of fantasy worlds where He is not Lord and are pursuing a set of ends that are not His. We’ve got to come clean on the fact that we are the students here, not the teacher. Getting close to God takes being honest about sin.
As I said, this is where John goes next. Let’s look at these last three verses all together: “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.” Let me confess something to you: I know next to nothing about cars. While God has given me many skills and talents, those of an auto-mechanic are not on the list. Let’s say, though, that you have such a set of abilities and you stop by the house one day to find me working on our old van. After watching for a moment, you gently observe that I’m doing it wrong. I pause to look over at you, look back at the car, and respond: “No, I’m not,” and keep right on doing what I was doing in the same incorrect way I was doing it. You’d rightly wonder a bit what was wrong with me.
The starting point of the Gospel is that when it comes to life, all of us are doing it wrong. There are lots of different ways God conveys this tough truth to us—conviction, the Scriptures, another person. How we respond to this determines whether or not we can get close to Him. If we look up at Him and say, “No, I’m not,” there’s really not much else we can talk about with Him. Either He’s right or we are. (Spoiler alert: He is.) If we are not willing to be honest about the fact that apart from Him we are pursuing a fantasy world that will not lead us to any kind of life—in other words that we are living in sin of some kind—we can’t get to Him. And this not because He’s not willing to have us, but because we’re not willing to go. Getting close to God takes being honest about sin. In such a case, not only are we living apart from the truth—from reality—but we are trying to make a liar out of God. He says we need to be redeemed and went so far as to send His own Son to die in our place, His blood spilled to the last drop in order to pay the price for our persistent refusal to live within the spacious bounds of reality, in order to make it possible. If we respond with, “No, I don’t,” then we’re calling Him a liar. More than that, we are declaring Jesus’ death to be a waste of time. We can’t do that and get close to God. Getting close to God takes being honest about sin.
When we are ready to do that, though, He’s there. When we are ready to say, “You know what, I have been trying to live apart from reality. I am a sinner in need of redemption,” our God is not only faithful, but just to come in, apply the blood of Christ to our account, and pronounce us right with Him. He is faithful in that this was the purpose for which He created us all along—to be in a relationship with Him. He’s just in that given what Jesus accomplished on the cross and the resurrection, forgiving us and applying Jesus’ right standing with God to us when we seek it is the right thing to do. Getting close to God takes being honest about sin. When we’re ready to do that, He’s ready for us to go with Him and to be a part of His world.
There’s two more things to say here and then we’ll hit the road. The first is this: If you are already a follower of Jesus and this is all old hat to you, don’t let familiarity breed contempt. First John 1:9 is sometimes treated by Christians as a kind of get-out-of-trouble-free card. If we sin, we can always just confess it and then God has to forgive us. What for Christians, then, was intended to be a kind of pull-in-case-of-emergency lever becomes part of our daily routine. We sin. We feel badly about it. We confess. We feel better about it. Wash. Rinse. Repeat. What can happen, though, is we begin to treat this offer of grace as an entitlement. God has to do it. He owes us this because of Jesus. The danger here is that over time as we begin to carve out this fantasy world our attitude about sin and forgiveness becomes less repentant and more expectant. The thing is: If we aren’t really repenting, God’s not really forgiving. And this not because He’s not willing to do it, but rather because we’re not really repenting and thus we aren’t really seeking forgiveness. What we really want is permission to go and do whatever it is again without having to face any consequences for it. What we really want is for God to bless our fantasy world so that we can go live in it whenever God’s world gets too inconvenient for us. He’s not likely to give us that. If you want to claim 1 John 1:9 as your banner statement of God’s grace and mercy, that’s fine. But know well that confession absent repentance won’t do you any good. Getting close to God takes being honest about sin. When we’re ready to be honest about sin, repentance—a desire to walk away from it and leave it behind—is a natural partner.
The second thing is this: Talking about sin is a tough place to start a conversation about getting and staying close to God. If you’re not someone who identifies as a follower of Jesus these kinds of conversations can feel really uncomfortable and judgmental. Know well these two things: 1. We who are followers of Jesus think it’s uncomfortable too. That’s why we don’t talk about it much in non-abstract terms. We may talk about sin sometimes, but it’s usually about sin as an idea, not our sin. Because of that, rest assured: nobody’s judging you. 2. As uncomfortable as it may be, it’s a necessary place to start. It’s necessary because until we are willing to live on God’s terms, getting close to Him is just not something that is going to happen. There’s not even a possibility of it happening. Getting close to God takes being honest about sin. Or perhaps to put that another way: The first step in getting closer to God is to acknowledge that we are not close to Him. The reason we are not close to Him is not that He’s gone anywhere, but rather we have. That’s sin. This is ultimately the Gospel we’re talking about in this series. It’s good news to be sure, but before we can get to that good news, we’ve got to come to grips with the hard news that makes the good news good. Getting close to God takes being honest about sin. Next week we’ll talk about what happens when we are.
The Nexus 