Life in the Light
Without light, there would be no life. If the earth didn’t receive light from the sun, there would be no life on earth. Our planet would lie in utter darkness. It would be cold and lifeless. If the light and warmth of the sun’s rays didn’t reach our planet, there would be no possibility for life.
The next few verses in First John tell us that the light of God creates life in the church. We’ll see that God is light and that walking in his light necessarily means walking in life-giving relationships with one another.
The main point of this text is that God’s light creates honest relationships among God’s people. Our two points will be that God is light (v. 5) and God’s people are honest (vv. 6-7).
My hope for this sermon is that God would create in our hearts and our church a commitment to a type of relating to one another that will seem counterintuitive and feel scary but will create a depth and love among us that is life-giving, that God’s light would draw us out of the darkness of image management and into the light of truth and honesty.
God is Light
First, God is light (v. 5). The “message” is the link between this passage and the one before. In 1:1-4, John said that what he experienced is what he proclaimed (v. 3). Now he tells us what that message is. First he points out that he didn’t invent the message. Rather, he “heard it from him,” namely, Jesus. The message of the apostles came from Jesus. His message was their message.
What is the “message” that John received from Jesus and proclaimed to these churches? Verse 5, “That God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.” John condenses the message of Jesus into one affirmation: “God is light.”
This is an absolute statement about the being and nature of God. It reminds us of other ways John describes God, “God is love” (1 Jn. 4:8, 16), and in his Gospel when he recounts Jesus’ interaction with the Samaritan woman at the well, “God is spirit” (Jn. 4:24).
God Wants to be Known
What does it mean to say, “God is light”? It means that God wants to be known and that God is holy. Let’s briefly take these one at a time. To say that “God is light” is to say that God wants to be known. “God is light” means that it’s his nature to reveal himself, just as it’s the nature of light to shine. Light cannot help but be seen. There’s no such thing as unseen light. Light, by definition, shines and exposes and reveals. God as “light” shines, exposes, and reveals.
The God of the Bible desires to be known and has revealed himself so that he can be known. God has revealed himself so clearly through the wonders of the world that Paul says that we have no excuses for not honoring him (Rom. 1:19-21). This is called general revelation. God has revealed himself generally to everyone everywhere at all times through the beauty and intricate design of the world so that we would honor and thank him. God has not hidden his power or nature from his creatures but put them on full display in the universe because he wants to be known.
But knowing God through his creation can’t take away our sins, so God became a man in Jesus and lived a perfect life, died on the cross, and rose again from the dead so that everyone who agrees with God about their sin and puts their hope in Christ alone will be forgiven of their sins. God’s revelation of himself in Jesus, and his revelation of himself in the Bible, is called special revelation.
God so wants to be known by his creatures that he entered the space they live, took on their form, walked among us, breathed air and ate food and drank water he created, so that he could die for the sins of people made in his image who would rather live for things he made than him the Maker. The God revealed in Jesus and the Bible is a God who loves people who don’t love him.
“God is light” means that the God of the Bible desires to be known and that he’s revealed himself so that he can be known. Do you know him? Not know about him, but know him?
No Secret Knowledge Needed
The reason John summarizes the message of the gospel with “God is light” is because the false teachers were claiming to have special or secret revelation. John Stott summarizes this well, saying, “(The false teachers) could never have laid claim to a private, esoteric (knowledge) into which they had been initiated if their conception of God had been of one who is light, diffusive, shining forth and manifesting himself, in whom there is no darkness at all, no secrecy, no hiding in the shadows.”[1]
To say that “God is light” is to say that he can be seen by anyone, that the knowledge of him isn’t for a select few but for all. Through creation and in Christ and his word, God has revealed himself to all equally. There’s not a secret to knowing God. You must simply look to his Son Jesus in faith and his light will fill your life.
We may not say things like this to our friends, but when we think that people need to believe or do x, y, or z to be a real Christian, we’re committing the same error. Christians are those who believe in Jesus as the Son of God and his sacrifice for their sins and follow him. You don’t have to be a Calvinist or complementarian or Baptist to be a Christian. You don’t have to dress a certain way, be a stay-at-home mom and homeschool your kids, get a college degree, read your Bible and pray every day for an hour, or read lots of theological books to be saved. The Bible says, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved” (Rom. 10:13). God isn’t hiding in certain theological traditions. He is light and is therefore available to all who trust his Son.
God is Holy
The other thing “God is light” means is that God is morally pure. Light and darkness are used metaphorically in Scripture in an intellectual sense, meaning that light is truth and darkness is error, and in a moral sense, that light is purity and darkness is evil. Paul says, “Walk as children of light (for the fruit of light is found in all that is good and right and true), and try to discern what is pleasing to the Lord” (Eph. 5:8-10). Light doesn’t just make us see but also enables us to walk. The benefit of light is clear vision and clear direction.
The light of God reveals the truth about God and the purity of God. John connects light and purity and darkness and evil in John 3:19-21, “The light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed. But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God.” Truth and purity is the result of walking in the light of God because God is true and pure. Again Stott says, “We are not just to know the truth, but to do it, just as we are not only to see the light, but to walk in it.”[2]
Saying that God is light and therefore morally perfect and pure means that the claim of the false teachers to know God and yet be indifferent to morality is completely illogical and ridiculous. You can’t know a morally pure God and not care about moral purity.
When God summarizes his message as, “God is light, and in him is no darkness at all,” he’s saying that God wants to be known and that God is pure. “Light” signifies revelation and holiness. In this one phrase to describe God, John is saying that the essence of Christianity concerns truth and life, doctrine and ethics. He’ll say throughout this letter that it doesn’t matter what you believe if you don’t love holiness and love people, and that it doesn’t matter that you love holiness and love people if don’t believe the truth about Jesus. Christianity is a message that creates a certain kind of life.
God’s People are Honest
John applies this teaching in the next of verses and says something foundational about the kind of life God’s light creates. Secondly, God’s people are honest (vv. 6-7).
Verses 6, 8, and 10 are tests for these Christians to use in judging false teachers. Remember, in this letter his goal is to comfort Christians and increase their assurance, not confuse them and fill their hearts with doubts. These three tests are meant to encourage these believers by telling them that if someone’s teaching and behavior aren’t consistent with each other, then they shouldn’t be believed.
The point of the first test in verse 6 is that claiming to know God and not caring about sin are not mutually compatible or Christian ideas. The false teachers were likely teaching that someone’s spirit couldn’t be touched by sin, because sin only contaminated the body, so it didn’t matter what you did with your body as long as in your heart you loved God. John says, “No, that’s not true.” He says that knowing God with our spirit results in honoring him with our bodies.
We may not believe the things those false teachers were teaching, but many do believe that knowing God doesn’t have anything to do with how we live. But, as I said earlier, since God is light, this claim is illogical. Knowing God who is pure without pursuing purity is an illusion. The Bible says that sin is always a barrier to fellowship with God. Isaiah 59:2, “Your iniquities have made a separation between you and your God, and your sins have hidden his face from you so that he does not hear.”
Walking in the Light is Honesty with Other Believers
In verse 6, he says if we walk in darkness but claim to know God, we’re liars. Then in verse 7, he tells us what walking in the light means. If I asked you to tell me what “walking in the light” means, what would you say? You’d probably say something about living a morally pure life, and that wouldn’t be unreasonable. But John says something quite different in verse 7.
God is light and morally pure, so this sounds like a call to purity. But John is after something else. We’d expect him to say something like, “Walk in the light as God is in the light, and you’ll have fellowship with God.” But he doesn’t say that. He takes it one step further. He says that walking in the light results in “fellowship with one another.”
What is John talking about? The emphasis of the surrounding verses is confessing sin. Verse 8, “If we say we have no sin…” Verse 9, “If we confess our sins…” Verse 10, “If we say we have not sinned…” “Walking in the light,” therefore, in verse 7 is about being honest about our sinfulness with other Christians. John is saying that to walk in the light is to walk in honesty with other Christians.
When this happens, our relationships move from friendship to “fellowship.” Because God light, we’re called to walk in the light, meaning we’re called to know and be known by each other in such a way that nothing is hidden. The result is a depth of relationship not possible otherwise.
Dane Ortlund, in his book Deeper, says it this way: “You are restricting your growth if you do not move through life doing the painful, humiliating, liberating work of cheerfully bringing your failures out from the darkness of secrecy into the light of acknowledgement before a Christian brother or sister. In the darkness, your sins fester and grow in strength. In the light, they wither and die. Walking in the light, in other words, is honesty with God and others.”[3]
Dietrich Bonhoeffer says it this way in his book Life Together: “He who is alone is utterly alone. It may be that Christians, notwithstanding corporate worship, common prayer, and all their fellowship in service, may still be left to their loneliness. The final breakthrough to fellowship does not occur because, though they have fellowship with one another as believers and as devout people, they do not have fellowship as the undevout, as sinners. The pious fellowship permits no one to be a sinner. So everybody must conceal his sin from himself and from the fellowship. We dare not be sinners. Many Christians are unthinkably horrified when a real sinner is suddenly discovered among the righteous. So we remain alone with our sin, living in lies and hypocrisy.”[4]
Do you see what he’s saying? He’s saying that, although our doctrine of sin tells us that everyone’s a sinner, we remain quiet about our sin because churches don’t have room for real sinners, only theoretical sinners. Real fellowship never grows because we’re afraid to be honest.
What Does “Walking in the Light” Look Like?
We say we’re sinners but never get around to opening up to each other about exactly how we sin. Sometimes we’re explicitly dishonest, saying things like, “I didn’t lie at work,” when we did lie at work. More often, we’re implicitly dishonest. This is the self-projection of moral success when the truth is different. It’s image management, or saying and doing things to make ourselves look as good as possible.
“Walking in the light” is the opposite of this. It’s stopping the mask-wearing and framing even our sin in the best possible way in order to keep up our appearance. It’s rather an utter collapse into transparency.
None of us want to do this. We’d rather die than tell people the truth. Walking in the light feels like a kind of death. Our impressive appearance is dying in front of another Christian. But what would you say to a baby terrified of being born, wanting to stay in the warmth and darkness of the womb? You’d say: If you stay in there, you will die. The way into life and growth is to come out into the light.[5] Life is in the light. Death is in the darkness.
You might have an amazing grasp of theology and doctrine, obvious gifts in the church, great performance at work or school, but your relationship with Jesus isn’t deepening. It may be because you’re trying to grow spiritually in the dark.
Is there anyone in your life who knows you’re a sinner not only theoretically but specifically? Someone who knows the concrete sins you struggle with? Someone who you don’t keep any secrets from?
Developing the kinds of relationships where confessing sins is normal feels counterintuitive, but actually leads to life. It feels scary, but leads to healing. Surgery is scary but it’s worth going through because on the other side of surgery is healing and restoration and health. James 5:16, “Confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working.” Confessing specific sins to another Christian should be a normal part of our Christian life, and the result is healing, not more shame.
Of course we should confess our sins to God first and foremost, as verse 9 says. We confess vertically and horizontally. And this doesn’t mean we need to confess our sins to a priest or a pastor. James says to confess to “one another.” Pick a trustworthy brother or sister in the church and start there. And this doesn’t mean you need to tell everyone everything. The goal isn’t width but depth. For example, if five people know you struggle with lust but you haven’t told anyone about your sexual addiction, you need to pick one trustworthy person and tell them. Or if you’ve told several people that you struggle to manage your finances but no one knows about your gambling or online shopping addiction or lack of giving to the church, then you should pick one trustworthy person and tell them. Or if a few people know that your marriage is struggling, but no one knows that you verbally and emotionally abuse your spouse, you need to find a trustworthy person and tell them.
Ortlund offers wise counsel here. He says, “For most of us, the greater difficulty is under-confessing our sins to one another rather than over-confessing them…what if each one of us determined to find one person – someone of the same gender, to head off any possibility of unhealthy attachments – who knew who we really are, inside and out?”[6] And I would add that if you’re married, this includes your spouse. True intimacy won’t grow in a marriage as long as there are secrets. The things you think you could never tell your spouse are probably the exact things you need to tell them. Life grows with light.
Let the Walls Come Down
We long for real relationships, for depth, for true togetherness, to be known completely and still loved. God made us for a deep and rich life together. John in verse 7 is inviting us into a feast of fellowship together as we pursue honesty with each other, and we’re no longer alone, realizing that we struggle and battle sin in the same ways as others. In these kinds of relationships, we’re actually able to enjoy each other instead of comparing and competing against each other. When we get out of impress mode, we can finally start loving each other, and we can finally find healing and freedom in the light.
A song by Tenth Avenue North called “Healing Begins” describes this beautifully:
So you thought you had to keep this up
All the work that you do
So we think that you’re good
And you can’t believe it’s not enough
All the walls you built up
Are just glass on the outside
So let them fall down
There’s freedom waiting in the sound
When you let your walls fall to the ground
We’re here now
This is where the healing begins, oh
This is where the healing starts
When you come to where you’re broken within
The light meets the dark
The light meets the dark
Afraid to let your secrets out
Everything that you hide
Can come crashing through the door now
But too scared to face all your fear
So you hide, but you find
That the shame won’t disappear
So let it fall down
There’s freedom waiting in the sound
When you let your walls fall to the ground
We’re here now
We’re here now
This is where the healing begins
This is where the healing starts
When you come to where you’re broken within
The light meets the dark
The light meets the dark
Sparks will fly as grace collides
With the dark inside of us
So please don’t fight
This coming light
Let this blood come, cover us
His blood can cover us
This is where the healing begins,
This is where the healing starts
When you come to where you’re broken within
The light meets the dark
The light meets the dark
Cleansing
God made us to enjoy life together, as brothers and sisters. In the gospel, we have a resource that can create that life because it brings us boldly into the light of God. Any sin we confess is already covered by the blood of Jesus. And this is the second result of walking in the light mentioned at the end of verse 7.
This verse isn’t saying that we’ll only be cleansed if we confess our sins. It’s saying that, because we all keep sinning in lots of ways, we continually feel dirty. Some may feel irredeemably dirty. We know God loves us and Jesus died for our sins and we believe the gospel. But we live under the oppression of shame, feeling like no one is as dirty as us.
But John is saying that if you’re in Christ, heaven has bathed you. It doesn’t matter how dirty you feel, that doesn’t define you. Jesus took on our dirtiness so that we could have his cleanness. He died on the cross to free us from our defile status and our defiled feelings. It doesn’t mean we won’t feel dirty. It means that we grow as we bring our feelings in line with the decisive once and for all eternity cleansing we have in the blood of Jesus. It says “cleansing from all sin.” This is a comprehensive and decisive cleaning. If you’re in Christ, you are clean. Period.
Therefore, we’ll never confess a sin that isn’t already covered by the blood of Jesus. So we’re free to be honest. We don’t need the approval of other people because God has already justified us in Christ and made us pure by clothing us in his righteousness.
When we start being honest with others about our specific sins, we will start to feel the reality of the forgiveness we already have in Christ. Our hearts begin to relax as we experience the acceptance and love of a brother or sister in Christ as an echo of the acceptance and love of the Father.
[1]John R. W. Stott, The Letters of John, The Tyndale New Testament Commentaries (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1988), 75-6.
[2]Ibid., 77.
[3]Dane C. Ortlund, Deeper: Real Change for Real Sinners (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2021), 114.
[4]Quoted in ibid., 114-5.
[5]Ibid., 115-6.
[6]Ibid., 117.