FOR THE SAKE OF THE NAME

I am writing to you, little children, because your sins have been forgiven you for His name's sake.

(1 John 2: 12 NIV)

John has spent considerable time talking about how crucial love is between fellow believers. He had spent considerable time making it clear that any belittling of our siblings in faith slides toward a failure of love for them, which leads to the darkness of hate. The consequences of letting even slivers of hatred into our lives can be serious.

So suddenly, John stops and puts forward this reassurance. He gives it in a very loving voice, addressing the readers as “little children.” It is the warm voice of a gentle, beloved grandparent reaching out to scampering youngsters, drawing the lively, wiggling little bodies in to a sheltering hug.

“I am writing to you, little children....”

This is personal. This is loving. This is not generic, directed to just anyone who might be hearing. This reassurance is intended for the loved ones he has been speaking to, the loved ones who are listening to his words. He is speaking to all of us who have chosen to follow the Lord, for we are all of one family.

Many of us forget what it is to be loved in that warm, unconditional, sheltering way. For some, there was the misfortune of never having had that kind of love in their lives, due to abandonment, or abuse, or loss of family for whatever reason. For some, they have been struggling with survival on their own for so long, such blessings in the past have become frozen, static memories, gilded postcards locked away in storage, no longer conveying any sense of present love. Many of us get caught up in just getting through our lives, getting tangled in relationships where every exchange becomes registered in a Quid Pro Quo balance book.

John brings us back to this starting point.

We have a Father who loves us, unconditionally. We have fellow believers who love us as well. We have the assurance of that place. We can climb into the lap of that loving grandfather, and feel comfortable and safe in that haven.

But John doesn’t stop there.

“I am writing to you because your sins have been forgiven for His name’s sake.”

After spending so much time reminding us of the discomforts of being trapped outside community, of being cast into the outer darkness by our own dreadful negative attitudes and behaviors, John brings us the assurance that our sins have been forgiven.

Even though we can fall into the darkness of hating our brother, we need not stay there. Those errors have been forgiven.

He doesn’t say they will be forgiven.

He doesn’t say they can be forgiven.

He doesn’t say that there are conditions for us to receive forgiveness.

No.

He says, our sins have been forgiven. That task is done, completed. It is sitting there, waiting for us. All we need do is claim it, accept it.

John even tells us why it is there for us, ready and waiting.

We are forgiven “for His name’s sake.”

God Almighty, the Creator of the Universe, the Most Holy One, whose purity is so intense that we cannot approach it on our own because our own impurities, which are so deeply woven into our being, would be destroyed by that refining fire. We simply cannot come near to God on our own. We cannot remove our sins on our own, not well enough to get us into the presence of God.

And yet, we are allowed to climb into that loving, sheltering lap of divinity, for the sake of the name of Jesus. Because Christ has taken all the burden of sin upon Himself and has purged it by His suffering, we who have become His followers, who have taken up His name, we are given forgiveness and access to the full love of God.

For the sake of His name.

I know there are times when people feel this is too easy, and that the gift is abused. There are people who lay claim to the name of Jesus, and yet still continue to indulge their sins and hatreds. But John has already spoken to the matter of those who do not in reality let go of their inner darknesses. God is not fooled by our simply “claiming the name of Jesus.”

But there are also those who are serious about turning away from the sins and errors of their past, who yet feel that they have not earned that forgiveness. They feel that there should be some tasks they must do, so pains to suffer, in order to be given that free access to God’s love.

But none of us can earn it. We haven’t the capacity to earn it by right. There is nothing we can do that can wipe out a lifetime of small, petty evils done to those around us, as well as the bigger, more spectacular sins we all recognize. And when we face that and understand it, we realize what a tremendous gift God’s forgiveness is.

It was already earned for our sake, it was already paid for by Christ’s suffering, it was already accomplished by the One whom God the Father loves before all else: Jesus.

Little children, draw near. Climb into the lap of the Almighty God, for you will not be destroyed by His holiness. You have taken on the name of Jesus, and His blood gives you the protection. For the sake of the name of the Beloved of God, you are already forgiven. Know this. Believe this.

BLINDED BY HATE

But the one who hates his brother is in the darkness and walks in the darkness, and does not know where he is going because the darkness has blinded his eyes.

(1 John 2:11 NIV)

John keeps bringing out the contrasts between those who love and those who hate. He chooses as many ways as possible to remind us of the extremes, while staying close to his principal imagery of the Light of Christ.

For those who let hatred into their hearts, particularly hatred for those they ought to, by all standards, be loving, he says they walk in darkness. But it is a state that is more than simply being in darkness, it is compounded by blindness.

Earlier, he had talked about walking in darkness, saying that those who do not know Christ move in such conditions. Those who do not believe in the Lord, those who have not heard and learned the Gospel, they walk in darkness. But, they can stop walking in darkness when they come to know the Lord. They will see the Light.

But here, he speaks of those who ought to know better. Here, he is talking about those who have been taught about Jesus, who might otherwise be trying to follow the Lord’s teachings, but who have this one “little” problem: they hate a brother.

To have heard the word of the Lord, to know the teachings of Christ, and yet to harbor a hatred against one we should love, that to John is worse than the state of the non-believer. For we have been in the Light, we have known the Light, but our hatred does more than just drive us back out into the darkness, it blinds us, so that we cannot even see.

When we “merely” have not heard and accepted the Word, we are in darkness. But we can still see. There is still the possibility that we will see the flash of Christ’s Light cutting through our life. There is still the possibility that we will step into the Light, and learn of God’s Love.

But when we hate where we should love, we do something worse than walk out of the Light of the Lord. We do something worse than walk into the outer darkness. When we hate, we blind ourselves and step into the darkness.

Not only do we venture out into the territory of the lost, where those who do not know of Christ wander, we venture out among them blindly.

Imagine what that would be like.

Someone who has known the Light and lived in it has let hatred of a sibling in Christ enter their heart. This person has walked out of the Light and into the darkness where people who do not know Christ wander. But our former friend not only cannot see these wanderers, he cannot see the Light in the distance any longer, because he is also blind. A wanderer might see the Light in the distance and start moving toward it, but the one who is blinded by hate does not have that possibility.

I was once at a retreat for college students, and there was to be an evening campfire. I happened to leave the cabin I was in without my flashlight, and unfortunately there was no pathway through the trees to the campfire. From the walkway to the fire, we would have to cross uneven ground, where stones and roots lay waiting to trip us up. But ahead of me, I could see the light of the campfire. So I kept my eyes on that, and tread evenly and carefully, and made it across the whole distance without stumbling and falling.

That real, physical experience taught me much about what it is like to see the Light of Christ in the distance. If the non-believer who truly seeks Light sees it, even from a far distance, Christ will bring them closer, in spite of stumbling stones and tripping roots. All they need do is keep their eyes on the Light.

But when hatred enters our hearts, the effect becomes both internal and external. Not only do we lose our sight, we bring the external darkness with us.

Is this really what we want in our lives?

What can cause us to hate our brother? This is someone we should be loving. Someone who shares love with us and others, someone who has learned to love Christ, learned to live in the Light of the Lord. What could possibly create hatred of such a person?

Well, the truth is that even at the best of times, we all are broken creatures. We are all imperfect. We all still have much to learn about following Christ.

Being imperfect, we can easily fall into envy of a sibling in Christ. Suppose we see a fellow believer who has had some worldly success in their profession. It is easy to envy that success and the seeming benefits that come with it. If we let that envy fester, we can grow from liking the person but resenting the success into hating the person for having what we lack. We have ceased to love the brother because we look at the worldly things they “got” and we forget that what the Lord gives each of us is special to us, and sufficient.

That is one way we can come to hate a brother.

Another is when misunderstandings grow up between fellow believers. Our desire to always be right can deafen us to what the other person has to say. Our desire to be right can cause us to dismiss any overture toward restoring balance and understanding. By refusing to even listen, we harden our hearts, creating a shell that keeps others out – not just the person we disagree with, but others as well. Once we shut someone out, we behave as if they are an enemy, someone to be defended against, no matter what they do or say. And feeling follows behavior. When we start to behave as if we hate someone, we do in fact come to hate that person.

When hatred enters the heart, by whatever means, it brings darkness and blindness to those who had been in the Light.

The one who hates his brother does not know where he is going. The one who hates his brother has lost the capacity to even see the Light in the distance. The one who hates his brother has brought darkness around him.

Isolation will inevitably result from this, because for those who love the Lord, the Light is where they want to be. They don’t want to be drawn back into darkness. Choosing Christ may mean letting go of the one who harbors a hatred of a sibling in Christ. Choosing Christ means to stay in the Light, to learn to love others no matter what.

Who wants to be lost in the darkness and blind to even the glimmer of the Light of the Lord?

NO CAUSE FOR STUMBLING

The one who loves his brother abides in the Light and there is no cause for stumbling in him.

(1 John 2:10 – NAS)

John wants to make it very clear that love is the key to living in the Light. So he says it repeatedly through several formulations. Each time, he touches on some variant perspective. He does not want to leave any crack unlit and unexplored.

Previously, he had addressed the matter of those who claim to follow the Lord or to love their brother or to abide in the Light. But now he speaks of those who actually do love their brothers, their fellow-believers. After all, they do exist. We may carry hidden resentments and angers toward others, but that does not mean that love is impossible. We do also manage to love at least a few people.

So... “the one who loves his brother abides in the Light.”

Isn’t that a good thing to know?

Yes, Jesus called us to love all others, even our enemies. That is a true challenge to our natures, and a very difficult thing to achieve. And it is certainly what we should be striving for.

But John, for the moment, brings us this more immediate and seemingly simpler task. “Love your brother, your sibling in Christ.” How hard is that?

We tend to make it harder than it ought to be. We fall into dividing the Body by criteria other than being followers of Christ. We start separating ourselves with all sorts of barriers: how scripture is interpreted, what type of music is performed in worship, how the worship service is conducted, which translation of the Bible is used, which congregational structure our communities operate under. We are ready to separate ourselves from other lovers of Jesus on the basis of far too many reasons.

We let those distinctions cause us to go stumbling about. We as individuals stumble over them. But we also let our own divisions cause others to stumble. We witness to new believers that we personally think the style of worship is more important than loving our brothers. Or maybe the type of music used. Or the scriptural translation relied upon. We do a poor job of letting our lives testify that it is love which is most important in the Body of Christ.

So, once again, John reminds us that it is in loving our fellows that causes us to abide in Light.

Wouldn’t we all rather live in the Light? Do we really want darkness around us as we try to live our lives according to Jesus’ teachings?

But that’s not the end of it with John. It’s not just that if we love our siblings in Christ we shall live in the Light. It is also that in doing so, we will not stumble. Or as he puts it, there is no cause for stumbling.

Why does he put it that way?

I think it is because he is talking about something more than just keeping our own feet from tripping up. That is, of course a good thing. Nobody likes tripping over their own feet. But I think John is going beyond that. I think he means also that when we live in the Light, we also do not trip up others.

When we love other people, we want them to stay upright as well. We don’t really want to see those we love tripping up all around us. We reach out and help those we love.

We never think of the possibility that we might be a cause for the stumbling of others, especially not those we care about. And yet, that possibility does exist.

How can that be? In what way can we cause others to stumble?

One of the most obvious ways that can occur in the community of Christ is when two people who are friends, but who are married to others, become romantically involved with each other. It is so easy to make excuses for the breaking of fidelity when powerful emotions and desires are involved. Do we even think of this as causing another to stumble? It is love after all, right? But what of the others around the erring couple? Anger on the part of the betrayed spouse, discomfort and distress for the family and friends of both parties, all these negative emotions pushing several people into stumbling.

There are other ways in which we can cause others to stumble.

When a fellow believer who has looked toward us for spiritual leadership sees us behaving in a less than ideal way, might that person not feel excused about similar behavior in their own life? “My mentor does this, so maybe it’s not such a bad thing after all.” It is easy enough for us to disavow responsibility for other people’s choices. We ought to be conscious of the power that love for our fellow believers has, whether we are the giver or the receiver. Do we think to warn our friends? Do we actually say, “Don’t do this. It’s my besetting sin, and I should be handling it better. It isn’t justified.” Isn’t that what a loving sibling ought to do? Shouldn’t we warn our sister or brother that there are times they should not follow in our footsteps?

The one who loves his brother abides in the Light and there is no cause for stumbling in him.

We do not travel alone, in our lives as believers in Jesus. We travel with our loved ones, our siblings in the Lord. We need the Light so that we can see where we are going. And we need to make sure that we ourselves do not stumble, nor cause others to stumble because we have taken a misstep. Our love for those around us causes us to help each other stay upright, without stumbling.

Let us remember to love each other, and so help keep each other from stumbling.

ON THE OTHER HAND

On the other hand, I am writing a new commandment to you, which is true in Him and in you, because the darkness is passing away and the true Light is already shining. The one who says he is in the Light and yet hates his brother is in the darkness until now.

(1 John 2: 8-9 – NAS)

 

John has earnestly tried to remind his readers that what he has been telling them in this letter is not really anything new to them as disciples. But as a way of shaking up their perceptions of what is expected of them as followers of Jesus, he now adds some thoughts, “On the other hand....”

So often, when we want to offer seemingly contrary perspectives, we like to turn to constructions like “on the other hand.” Most of the time what we are presenting are not flat-out opposite options, such as “Kill that man” or “Don’t kill that man.” More often, what we are considering when we use that phrase is that we want to put forward a secondary course that heads in much the same direction as the first. After all, when we physically extend both our hands at the same time, they generally point in the same direction. It is just that the specifics provide different outlooks and experiences.

This then is what John means when he tells us that he has a “new” commandment for us.

But what is it that makes it “new” compared to the commandments Jesus gave us? John has an answer for that as well.

He says, “the darkness is passing away and the true Light is already shining.”

When Jesus came to teach His disciples, those who listened to Him were living in a darkness. Jesus is the True Light of God, shining into our lives. His presence among people, living as one of us, brought an entirely new context to the matter of our relationship with God. Before Jesus came, we did not have an advocate who would redeem us in the eyes of the Lord. But after Jesus came, we were given this new option, this new way to approach the holiness of God. After Jesus came, those who joined the body of believers lived in a world where the redemption of our unfitness was already accomplished – all we had to do as new believers was accept it and put our new life into action. We, as believers who have come to the Lord after the Resurrection, walk a path where the True Light already shines before us.

So what is this new perspective that John wants to bring us to about our walk as followers of Jesus?

He says that anyone “who says he is in the Light and yet hates his brother is in the darkness until now.”

This is a slightly different angle from what John has said before, about claiming to be walking in the Light while still sinning. He wants us to reconsider all the things that we think of as sin, because there are actions and choices that we can gloss over – such as how we treat those closest to us.

John puts it bluntly: someone who says he belongs to Jesus “and yet hates his brother is in the darkness until now.”

Does he mean our literal flesh and blood siblings? No, he does not. He means those who have been bonded to us spiritually by our shared commitment to the Lord. 

In the Lord’s eyes, when we become believers in Christ we are joined together in one family, as children of the Living God. We are given the status of His heirs. In God’s eyes, we are made closer than blood siblings.

So, is it possible then to “hate our brothers”?

Human nature is very fragile and weak. Yes, it is quite possible to fill our relationship with a particular person with negativity.

What does it mean, after all, to “hate one’s brother”?

Certainly, when we find ourselves actively disliking another believer, we have fallen into “hating our brother.” If we cannot question that person’s commitment to Christ, what are our grounds for “hating” them?

It is true that there are plenty of committed believers who are less-than-perfect when it comes to living out the commandments of our Lord. There are those who have fallen into dubious interpretations of the ordinances of scripture. There are some whose personalities will always rub us the wrong way for any number of reasons. But if at rock bottom we know that they are followers of Jesus (no matter how poor their understanding or thorough their application of scripture), they are our siblings in Christ – and we cannot hate them.

If we claim to be standing in the Light of Christ, the only criteria we may use to evaluate “kinship in Christ” is whether the other person claims Jesus as their Lord. Paul says elsewhere that that is all that is required to gain Christ in our lives. And it is that which makes the other person our “brother.” Not method of baptism, not the procedure for confessing of sins, not shared approach to worship.

“Jesus is Lord.”

If we allow ourselves to hate anyone who says that with all their heart -- if we allow distaste for their personal habits, their lapses in judgment, their poor understanding, or any such cause – then we have fallen into hating our brother. There’s no way around it.

In this day and age, we frequently see “leaders” in the Body of Christ take very narrow-minded stances. We see just prominent figures make declarations that are everything but pronouncements of the Love of Jesus. And we can condemn the foolishness of their behavior, and wonder about the depth of their so-called commitment to the Lord. But it is not our place to judge the reality of that commitment. We do not need to follow them, only the Lord. We should pray for them as straying siblings, but leave the evaluation of the reality of their commitment to our Ultimate Judge.

Our calling is to act in love toward our siblings in Christ – no matter how challenging that may be.

NOTHING NEW

Beloved, I am not writing a new commandment to you, but an old commandment which you have had from the beginning; the old commandment is the word which you have heard. 

(1 John 2:7 – NAS)

 
John makes a point of telling his readers that what he is speaking of should not be anything new to them: they have heard these lessons before. In fact, he points out that what he is talking about were the first things they encountered as they began their fellowship with Christ.

It’s part of our human nature to crave something new. We want something fresh to excite us, something different to add variety to the regular routines of life. But we also have a tendency to treat older things with less respect, perhaps because we think age makes them useless. We look at the limitations that descend upon the human body with increased age and we assume that the same is true of all things under the sun, including the standards and laws by which we shape our lives.

But this isn’t want God originally designed, nor does He change the basics of His intentions.

John wants to be clear that the foundation of what he is saying in this letter is the nature of God’s love, and His commandment that we love one another. There is nothing new in this, for it is part of the fabric of the Lord’s creativity from the very beginning of the world. And it is the beginning point of anyone’s walk as a believer in Christ.

We have become believers because (in whatever fashion it came to us) we heard and accepted that Jesus manifested God’s love for us. We have become believers because we know that without God we make a mess of our lives to such a degree we could not possibly come near to the holiness of the Lord, even though that is our deepest rooted desire. We understand that Jesus became the sacrifice that clears the way for us to run directly into the heart of God without having our flaws destroy us.

However it is that we begin our lives in fellowship with Jesus, we know it beings with love. This is nothing new to us. It is the oldest thing in belief, the rock bottom foundation we stand on.

And that is perhaps the strongest metaphor for what John says here.

There is nothing new in the message he seeks to convey. The foundations of our faith and understanding have been there since the beginning of our commitment to following Christ. The love of God is the rock beneath our feet.

What “new thing” could give us a greater, more reliable foundation? What “new thing” would be so secure and certain that we barely think about it?

There is nothing that can be so unendingly certain as the love of Christ. And there is nothing that can be so unendingly live-giving as acting on His commandments.

There’s nothing new in His commandment that we love the Lord and love one another. It is the starting point for all other acts of faith.

Why does John make this point, though?

He was writing at a time when Gnosticism had attempted to invade the practice of the faith. Gnostics enticed people off the path with promises of new, special knowledge that only “the In Crowd” could access. The old lessons were for simpletons: the new lessons they had would give them the world.

John reminds his readers that the reality is they were given the key to God’s kingdom from the very beginning. It was nothing hidden, nothing secret. It was the first thing they learned.

There is nothing deeper, stronger, more lasting and durable than the love of God. And He proved it by dwelling with us as Jesus, sacrificing Himself for us in order to let us draw near to the Most Holy. And when we accept this sacrifice, we accept His commandment to love each other.

What “new lesson” or “new commandment” can be greater than that?

Nothing “new” can supersede that first lesson. Why would we look for such? We knew how great it was from the beginning.

MORE THAN LIP SERVICE

By this we know that we have come to know Him, if we keep His commandments. The one who says, "I have come to know Him," and does not keep His commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him; but whoever keeps His word, in him the love of God has truly been perfected. By this we know that we are in Him: the one who says he abides in Him ought himself to walk in the same manner as He walked.  
(1 John 2: 3-6 – NAS)


John makes his point so earnestly in these verses that it seems clear that even in his time – within the lifespan of someone who had actually walked  with Jesus – there came to be “followers” who were declaring that they “knew the Lord,” but whose actions certainly did not show that to be the case. How heart-wrenching that must have been for John, to see that there were people who wanted to be “in with the In Crowd,” as it were, but who were not really interested in doing those things Jesus had taught and commanded.

And it still happens, of course.

Why is that? Why would people declare themselves Christians and yet not live according to the guidelines Jesus gave His followers?

It’s human nature to want to be well-thought-of. We do crave the respect of others, the admiring and appreciating regard. And certainly, the type of person who follows the commandments of Jesus would be a very admirable person: peacemaker, merciful, generous, caring, attentive. Who would not want to have such a cloak around their shoulders?

And to gain that respect and admiration, why, all one has to do is claim  to be a follower of Jesus. Right?

We walk the fine line between the issue of salvation by declaration of faith and salvation by works. Arguments had been made, even in the days of the Apostles, that all that was needed to gain salvation was a confession that Jesus is Lord. Because Jesus died for our sins, all our erroneous actions were paid for by Him, and we are allowed into the presence of God. But the expectation is that gaining that salvation would change us so much that we would now live according to the commandments of Jesus (or at least try to do so).

But even in John’s time, apparently there were plenty who merely gave lip service to being followers of Christ.

“Lip service” is one of those phrases we use a lot without thinking much of it. It means to vow adherence or allegiance to something, saying the words but not following through with the actions that would actually show the allegiance. The only thing “serving the cause” are the words of the declarer.

John makes it clear that when it comes to following Christ, that’s not good enough. “Talk is cheap,” we like to say. It’s very easy to say we follow the Lord, to say we believe in His sacrifice. But John says that if we say these things, and yet do not act according to the commandments of Jesus, we’re lying about our faith.

For John, who had been in the living presence of Jesus, who had walked the dusty roads with the Lord, sat in fields while Jesus spoke to crowds, been squashed into corners of houses packed with people who wanted to see Jesus, it must have seemed sad and strange that there would be “followers” who would claim to love the Lord and yet not be so transformed by that love that they did not start trying to act like Jesus. Their love, it seems, went no further than saying words.

Even now it is very easy to say we are “in the Lord” to mean that we have a certain circle of friends who share a certain outlook. And that that circle can include people we’ve only just met, but who we allow in because they make the same declaration. It becomes just a social designation, and we don’t think about what John really was saying about “abiding in the Lord.”

After all, what does “abiding in the Lord” really mean?

I think it means that Jesus has taken each of us into His heart -- deep into His heart, to that place where no defenses are raised, where love is unconditional and always available. He allows us into that place to dwell forever.

How can we not be changed by such an experience? How can we not grow in a desire to become more and more like that which surrounds us, there in the heart of the Lord?

But we don’t, not always. Because it is not such a visible, tangible thing to us as we want. We have only the assurance of the words left to us and the presence of the Holy Spirit. And the presence of the Holy Spirit is (usually) something invisible, and thus easy to dismiss if not exactly ignore.

John wants to shake us up, to wake us up. He knows that if we are not reflecting the nature of Christ in our actions, we aren’t really inside His being: we are not abiding in Jesus.

He’s not claiming that we have to be following the commandments of Jesus perfectly. Of course we’re going to stumble, and fumble, and get some things wrong. But if our intention truly is to be like Christ, the Lord will handle our missteps (as noted previously, He is the propitiation for our sins and errors). The Lord’s love becomes perfect in us. It’s something He does because we have opened our own hearts to the experience of being inside His heart.

But inevitably, there should be some evidence of it. The transformation that God’s love works on us should show up in our actions, not just our words. And it’s not like we don’t know what the Lord’s commandments are: there’s a whole Sermon of the basics of what our live should look like.

What it comes down to, in a popular phrasing, is – Don’t just talk the talk: walk the walk.

We should give the Lord much more than lip service.

PROPITIATION

and He Himself is the propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for those of the whole world.

(1 John 2: 2 – NAS)


John has just told us that Christ is our Advocate before the Lord, our representative who will argue in the Ultimate Court in our defense when we face God’s justice for our sins. Now he takes that description a step further, and tells us that Christ is also “the propitiation for our sins.”

“Propitiation” is not a word we use much these days. It means to gain or regain the favor of someone, to appease or conciliate. It implies that the person being appeased has some authority over the person offering the propitiation.

Why would propitiation be needed?

It is needed because the holiness of the Lord is such that anything that is stained cannot endure in His presence. And we stumbling humans cannot help but be very stained by our lives; our sins of choice, our sins of error, our sins of omission permeate our being. On our own, we have no hope of being able to approach God because we cannot rid ourselves of these effects, at least not by our own efforts.

But Jesus Christ our Advocate also absorbs the consequence of our sins. However you want to look at it – that Jesus stands between us and a just punishment, or that He takes into Himself our sins so that we would then stand free and clear and pure in the presence of God – Jesus is the one who “makes things right” between us and God the Father.

It is not that the consequence of our sins is brushed aside and forgotten. No, instead, Jesus takes it all upon himself. The consequence is still the consequence and it must play out. But because of His sacrifice upon the cross, Jesus is the one that takes on those consequences.

I think that sometimes we undervalue what it means to have Christ as the propitiation of our sins. And we take it for granted. We walk through our lives as followers of Jesus, and discount the effects of our less-than-perfect actions. After all, our intentions were good, and that should be enough, shouldn’t it? We hardly consider the possibility that something we said or did with good intentions might in fact have had evil consequences.

God does not un-make any of the consequences of any action. He set the Universe to work in a certain way, and one of those ways is that consequences follow actions. He does not change that.

But what He does do is let His Son Jesus take on all those negative consequences. Instead of letting them fall upon us (the fate we deserve), Jesus has taken them on to Himself. And not just the negative consequences before God of the actions of believers, but of the whole world. Jesus stands between everyone and the divine judgment leveled against them, and all anyone has to do is accept Him as Lord in order to gain the benefit of that.

The whole world.

We like to say of extreme consequences that they are “a whole world of pain.” But for Jesus, that is the literal truth. By taking on the role of propitiation for our sins, He has taken on all the pain we would justly receive as a consequence for our actions. No matter what.

It occurs to me that when outraged believers ardently desire heavy punishment to fall on sinners, whether the sinners are repentant or not, the believers are desiring to see others suffer. Humans have a strong impulse for vengeance. We desire to return all ills that we receive. And when we can cloak that desire as the delivery of a just punishment, we feel a sense of satisfaction. So we willingly acquiesce to harsh punishments.

But Jesus is the propitiation for the sins of the whole world. Every divine punishment we could wish upon other sinners, Jesus has taken onto Himself. Because God so loved the whole world that He sent His only Son.

And whatever we do to others, we do to Jesus.

I am certainly grateful for Jesus taking on the consequences of my own sins. I am capable of thoughtlessly or carelessly injuring others, capable of any number of “small sins.” And I know I am not shut away from the presence of God as I deserve because Jesus has absorbed the consequences of those actions.

What I had not considered before is that He does that for others as well, even when I feel that they should at least have a sense of the lash or retribution. Someone did an injury to me: I want them to know what they did and be punished for it. But God’s love is such that even there, Jesus stands as the propitiation for sin. That consequence, that punishment that I want to see visited on another is instead visited on Jesus. It humbles me. Shall I then add to the wounds of the whip that tore apart the skin of the Lord? Shall I too drive the nails into His hands and feet? This He did for the sins of the whole world.

Perhaps we should not be so eager to demand retribution. We all of us deserve it. But Jesus is the one who takes the eternal consequences upon Himself.

OUR ADVOCATE


My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. And if anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous;
(1 John 2: 1 – NAS)


John again mentions the “why” of his letter. He had opened with the urgency of an eye-witness, reminding the readers that he had actually seen Jesus Christ alive, in action, in the flesh – had touched the Lord, spoken with Him. Now the old man (as he would have been at the time of this letter) uses “my little children” to convey his live and affection and his paternal concern that the followers of Christ understand their faith clearly. In particular, he is driven by the awareness that sin separates us from God, from the love of the Father and fellowship with the Son. And John does not want to see anyone so separated.

Thus, “I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin.”None of us care to be on the receiving end of scolding lectures. It doesn’t matter what our age is, we squirm and grimace when someone decides that “for your own good you need to hear this.” It may be true that we do need to hear it, but most such lectures end up being delivered in a manner that distances us from the lecturer. The person scolding us usually wants to be objective, but unfortunately only ends up coming across as disengaged, remote and judgmental. John, however, takes a different manner. “My little children” from a beloved old man carries such a stream of love that we stop and listen. He loves us. He is anxious for us. He sees us heading toward a door leading to disaster and has only his words to halt our progress through that portal.

“My little children.”

He wants us to listen to his words so that we will not sin. But he also immediately tells us that even if we do make that mistake, if we do trip up and commit errors, all is not lost.

Sin separates us from the love of the Father, and with that separation the weight of judgment falls upon us. The consequences of our actions will follow us around, often with dire results. To be separated from God removes the only shield between ourselves and the harshest evaluation of our deeds. And this is particularly true for those believers who let go of their commitment to the Lord.

But John says that even if we do sin, believers have an Advocate with the Most High, someone who will speak up for us, plead our case and gain mercy for us. And that Advocate is no one less that Jesus Christ, the very Son of God, who is one with God.

John is not saying that believers can sin willfully and with impunity and still stand secure in the presence of God. I’m sure there are many who would like to think that. They want to believe that once they formally say “Jesus in Lord” they are absolved of all future sins, and can happily go about doing whatever they want. But that’s not what John means.

Let us remember that he’s just spent a deal of time telling his readers that only genuine confession of sins can keep someone in fellowship with Christ. We all make mistakes, we all sin. “Anyone who says they do not sin is a liar.” It is crucial for us to confess the sin and repent of it because we do understand that such actions can separate us from the holy and loving presence of the Father.

We’re not very good at being our own advocates. When we confess our sins, we’re admitting that we knew we were doing wrong and yet we still did the wrong thing. It’s rather difficult to be standing in front of a judge going “Yes, I knew it was wrong and I still did it. But I’m asking you to have mercy on me.” We need someone to speak up for us, as a character witness perhaps, but certainly as an advocate who will say that we are deserving of mercy, if only by way of the grace of love. We need that advocate, because our own actions have said that we made the mistake of not properly valuing the Grace and Love of God.

But, our confession of our errors and mistakes, of our sins, does win us an Advocate before the Most Holy Judge. And that Advocate is Jesus Christ. John goes to the trouble of adding “the righteous” to the name of our Advocate (though you would think “Christ” would be enough).

Jesus Christ the righteous will speak on our behalf. For all our sins, big and little.

Jesus: that man who lived and walked and ate and slept among us in flesh and blood. The person John had talked with and walked with. They had traipsed the countryside of Judea during Jesus’ ministry. They had eaten meals together in the homes of friends. They and the rest of the company of the close disciples had been out on the Sea of Galilee fishing together, laughing as they hauled in nets filled with fish. This was not some abstract phantasm surrounded by a holy glow. It was someone who got dusty from walking, who got wet from splashing fish, who shared meals, who sat by wells and asked for drinks of water. It is someone who knows exactly what it is like to be alive as a human being. Our Advocate.

Christ: the Holy One of the Almighty, the one who came to save us. Our Messiah, savior, shield. The one who went so far as to die in our place, to take our punishments upon Himself. Our Lord. The priest and sacrifice that was needed to allow us to even approach the presence of the Most High. Our Advocate.

“The righteous”: the one who knows how to live rightly according to the desires of God the Father. The one who knows and chooses to do what is right in the eyes of God, who does those things with love and joy. Our Advocate.

That is who will speak on our behalf before the Father. Not some fly-by-night lawyer who will look for every loophole possible. No, our Advocate is Jesus Christ the righteous.

“My little children” – you have stepped into the Royal Arena of Creation, you are out of your league, you don’t have a chance on your own. Except that Jesus Christ is on your side.

TO BE HONEST


If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar and His word is not in us. 
(1 John 1: 9-10 – NAS)


John does love to make sure his point is getting across. We really need to be honest with the Lord, admitting our sins and not trying to avoid them. And that admission has to address everything. We can’t excuse things to ourselves, we need to admit where we’ve gotten things wrong.

We are inclined to believe that if there has been no intention to do harm or to offend the laws and will of God there cannot be a sin against God. But I think we are mistaking the benefits of the forgiveness of God as a lack of offense against God. By that I mean that because God loves us and extends His grace to us in so many ways, even when we “innocently” get things wrong, we think that what we did was not, in fact, wrong.

But that’s not the reality. There are, really, only two conditions: there is the perfection of the Lord God and then there is everything else.

If something is “not perfect,” it is outside God and thus “wrong.” It doesn’t really matter how it came to be outside God, the point is that it is outside His perfection. That is the definition of sin.

We excuse so much by saying “Nobody’s perfect.” Since we live in the world, we accept that people and things will be flawed, and we try and make the best of them, as best we can. Sometimes, we even revel in our lack of perception. We celebrate errors and misses (so long as we believe that nobody is hurt by them). We mock things that have attempted to be glorious and then fail miserably (we even bestow mocking awards for such failures).

Why are we so ready to celebrate such failure? Because we fear that perfection is impossible, and we want to “feel good” about something.

We don’t want to admit to our sins of incompleteness, of failure of successful execution, of the frailties of our human nature. And so we protect ourselves by saying “I meant to do that! It’s perfectly the way I intended it to be!” (even when in our hearts we know very well it is not).

We want to believe that we are good people, that we are not doing things that would offend the nature of the Lord. We try to follow the teachings of Jesus. We do our best to be loving and caring to those around us, certainly to those close to us. We try to make choices that honor God in all things. We seek to avoid doing harm to others. And yet....

Every day we get things wrong. Fatigue makes us careless toward the strangers we pass, and we can inadvertently leave a wake of small injuries behind us. Stress can make us blind to the need of someone near to us, and so we pass by moments when even a small word of love could bring healing to someone. Fear leads us to lash out at someone who irritates us briefly. And all this is wrong. All this is sin. All this is outside the perfection of God.

These are the things about which we need to be honest to God. These are the things that John means we have to confess. These are the things that we lie about when we say that we are without sin. Because they happen every day of our lives, and we just sweep past them.

But the Lord knows our doings. He sees all our actions. He knows when we have been inattentive.

And He knows that, because we are imperfect we will indeed get things wrong. He does not fault us for that – that is why His forgiveness is so ready at hand when we seek it out.

But He wants us to admit to these failures. Not in the way of making a mockery of them, nor in celebrating the failure (which almost invites us to keep repeating the failure for the benefit of getting attention). Rather He just wants us to admit how badly we are at trying to emulate His perfection. When we admit that, we give Him an opening to clean it, straighten it out, bring it nearer to Him – to make it righteous.

One of the many things I do in my life is make art. I have drawn pictures since I was a very small child. Give me a piece of paper and something to draw with, and I can amuse myself for any stretch of time. But when I am intentionally working on a piece, I don’t always “get it right” with every single stroke of my pen or pencil. Sometimes I lay down a line that just “doesn’t fit.” It’s wrong. There’s no way around it. It is not going to work. And so I have to adjust it – erase the parts that are out of place, smooth the edges, correct the errors. When I do that, you could say that I was making it “righteous.”

This is what God does when we confess our sins to him. Not just our big sins, where we knowingly plunged into major error driven by our emotions, but also the small incidental wrongs that we leave behind us through inattention, self-centeredness, and carelessness. God will smooth out the edges, correct and straighten the lines, wipe away the stains and glitches. But we have to confess that they exist. We have to acknowledge that we have not done well. We have to bring it before the Lord, and admit that we’ve made a mess here.

John makes the point that if we do not confess, “we make Him [the Lord] a liar and His word is not in us.”
We know that the Lord is no liar. Why would we even try to make Him so? We want His word to be in us, to be alive and active in us. We want to be worthy of fellowship with Him.

We excuse our sins by holding on to our imperfection – by holding on to our sins. “After all,” we say, “I’m not God.” We believe that we are being humble in admitting that. “I’m not God, I’ll never be God.” And we accept that, and so sail on in our imperfection, not bothering to confess all the small sins of our day.

But Jesus came to teach us how to be the Children of God, how to be the heirs to God’s kingdom, how to become like Jesus Himself. Is that not a gift worth striving for? But we cannot get there if we do not submit our poor artwork to the Master Artist for correction. We cannot get there if we do not confess how easily we fail in even the small things. How can God correct and perfect the flaws if we insist that we got everything right and it is perfect, when He can see quite clearly that it is not?

“Confession is good for the soul,” it is said. God can work with us when we admit that we got it wrong.
 

SELF DECEIT


If we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us.
(1 John 1: 8 – NAS)


John doesn’t really pull any punches in his letter. He has just praised the nature of fellowship – with each other and with Jesus Christ. He has indicated that a lack of love can keep us from fellowship. He has told us that we need to choose to walk in the Light of Christ.

So we’re thinking, “Yay! I can do this, easy-peasey.”

And then he brings us to this stop by pointing out that if we say we have no sin in us, we’re not telling the truth.

This is not something we want to hear, not something we want to face. At any time.

When we are working diligently to follow the Lord, to genuinely keep to his teachings, we don’t want to think about our small lapses, hidden resentments, suppressed angers. We want to believe that we have “let go” of all those things. But John knows human nature very well, and he knows that we are so often not honest with ourselves.

As followers of Jesus, we try to shape our lives to what He wants us to be as Children of God. So we watch out for the Big Sins: murder, adultery, thieving. We keep an eye on ourselves for signs of sinful inclination: greed, lust, anger. We lecture ourselves on indulging in these things. And we restrain our actions.

But we do not do such a good job on excising them from our hearts.

Anger and resentment are easy things to keep around, treasured in our hearts. Oh, we vow never to act on them, because we do not want to sin. But we savor our angers as if they were fine wines. We cloak them in the fine garb of Righteous Indignation and refuse to acknowledge it as sin. We make a judgment on the actions and intentions of others and feel justified in our disdain and dislike. Because their actions and beliefs are wrong or even sinful, we shun them, despise them, ridicule them, pour vitriol on them – because they are unworthy.

We forget that they also are beloved of God. We treat them as if they have already faced Christ on the Judgment Seat and have been cast off. We ignore the possibility of redemption.

Is this not sin on our part? To deny that redemption is possible, even in those who are (in our eyes) so steeped in sin that we are greatly repelled by them?

Occasionally, as a test of just how willing I am to trust the redemptive power of Jesus, I speculate on What Ifs that can challenge one’s faith. Let us suppose that we know as a certainty that anyone standing within the Gates of Heaven has been redeemed and accepted by the Lord, that such a person has indeed repented of all his or her sins, and has submitted themselves entirely to the sovereignty of God. Now then, suppose we are ourselves approaching the Gates of Heaven and the person standing there to greet us and lead us into the presence of God is the absolute last person we expected to see in Heaven. What is our reaction? Will we trust that God knows what He is doing by letting this person into Heaven?

As an artist, I love to go for bold colors and high contrast. And so I often cast this What If with Hitler as the greeter. Yes, I think it is highly unlikely, since the very act of suicide is a slap at God’s gift of life. But What If...?

As a believer, I am called to trust the Lord entirely. Not my own “wisdom” or “understanding.” I cannot possibly know what goes on deep in the heart of another person. I cannot possibly know what repentance they reach. And because I cannot know these things, what justification do I have for holding on to angers and resentments caused by the actions of another?

Oh, many say, “Their works speak for them! See how they continue to support these ungodly causes! They persist in them! That puts them utterly outside the grace of God, and I need show no mercy to them.”

Oh, really?

BLESSED ARE THE MERCIFUL, FOR THEY SHALL OBTAIN MERCY.

BLESSED ARE THE PEACEMAKERS, FOR THEY SHALL BE CALLED THE SONS OF GOD.

If we do not believe in the ultimate redemptive power of Jesus Christ, what will happen to us if we come face to face with the Least Likely Person at the Gates of Heaven?

I have long since stopped holding to the pretty story idea that we are met at the Gates of Heaven by Saint Peter. Yes, he was given the Keys to Heaven, but Jesus never said he had to do Greeter duty. It is a challenge to myself to imagine the redemption of the least likely person I know in my own life.

That, at least, keeps me from deceiving myself about God’s love for others, even those I consider unlikely.

But that is just one sin. What about others?

As a storyteller, I have to create evil characters. It is an honest reflection of the world around us, that some people choose to do evil because they get a pleasure out of it. Not because they were misunderstood or abused or injured in some way along their life-path (though those things may have indeed happened). No, some people deliberately, knowingly, choose actions they know are destructive to others. And so I write such characters from time to time.

As a creator, I have to love “my creatures” in order to give them life. Even though I know their choices, and their fates, and the dire things that will come from them, I love them as creations. But I take no pleasure in their actions.

But there are some types of storytelling, very popular these days, where the storytellers invite the audience to identify with evil characters. The audience is drawn into enjoying the cleverness of a character’s cruelty, of reveling in the satisfaction of unfettered violence, without concern for the life or feelings of the victim. And I have heard people justify this type of storytelling as “Showing us the mess of this person’s life.”

What, I have to ask, is the audience member really enjoying in this type of story?

The truth is, the enjoyment is the pleasure of sinning. The audience member can excuse him or herself by saying, “*I* would not choose to do these things!” But by returning to it, time after time, the audience member acquiesces to the cruelty and evil.

We allow little indulgences into our lives, and pretend that because they are entertainments they do not affect us. But it does make us more tolerant of sin, not just in others but in ourselves.

We resented the service we get in a restaurant, so we feel justified in being curt with the waiter. “This is what you gave me, so this is what you’re getting back!” How is THIS what Jesus taught us? Didn’t Jesus say, “Do onto others as you would have them do onto you”? He didn’t say, “Give as you get.”

We were slighted by a friend, and though we do not know why, we harbor the hurt and nurse it along with vinegar in the wound. We extend less love and care to that friend because we feel we had been injured in some way. Where does mercy lie in this?

These are little things we do every single day, even while we are endeavoring to follow Christ.

John is quite right when he says that if we say we have no sin in us we are lying and deceiving ourselves.

It requires daily examination of our souls. It is a constant weeding process to keep the garden of our spirit free of the weeds of sin. And just because we seem to have gotten all the weeds yesterday, we still have to check the planting beds and look for the wayward shoots of new, young weeds sprouting up.

But the reward for all this work is fellowship with Christ. Surely that is worth the pain of some self-honesty and weeding?

TO WALK IN LIGHT


but if we walk in the Light as He Himself is in the Light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin.  
(1 John 1: 7 – NAS)


John gives us this simple setting for being in fellowship with each other – to walk in the Light.

Yet, we know how easily we hold on to our secret darkness, and how difficult it is for us to let go of our petty sins. How can we possibly walk in the Light?

John reminds us that the blood of Jesus was sacrificed on our behalf. It has swept over us and carried away the darkness of our sin. That is what allows us to walk in the Light.

The thing about being in light is that we can see all that is around us. Darkness hides things, but light reveals them.

It is a curious thing that one of the most powerful of human desires is the desire to be known by others. I don’t mean “being famous” – although that compulsion is a shadow of the real desire. We want to be known for who we really are, what we are really like. We want to be regarded fondly, with affection. We want to be understood, to have our thoughts understood and have our jokes laughed at. But this can only happen by revealing ourselves. And that cannot be done in darkness.

Yet ....

Revelation is a painful process. It requires vulnerability. And we tend to equate vulnerability with weakness. They are not the same thing, of course. But the weak frequently are vulnerable.

To be vulnerable means being open to the possibility of being wounded. It does not mean that we will be wounded, though.

When we walk in the Light, those around us can see us as we are. Our strengths and our vulnerabilities. If we wish to be known, if we wish to be loved, we have to allow this revelation to occur. We cannot hide parts of ourselves in darkness. If we want to be in fellowship with others, we need to be open.

If we let the protection of Jesus cover us, we can walk in the Light. We don’t have to drag our personal darkness along with us. And by walking in the Light, we attract others to us. We gain fellowship with others who are also willing to walk the same way.

The fellowship we gain is not just with each other, of course. We gain fellowship with Christ. We gain the companionship with the One who manifests the power of God. What a marvelous travelling companion!

Once, when I was a ninth grader, I wrote a short story that I titled “Dark Journey” (at least, I think that was the title I gave it). In it, my character maneuvers himself through a number of obstacles in darkness. I used indirect description and never specified what any of the obstacles were, just his physical sensations and movements. Until he reached his goal, that is. He opens a door, and “the little light went on as it always did.” There’s a note there from his parents that if he has another midnight snack, he’ll lose his allowance. So the boy goes back upstairs to bed.

It was written for a class assignment, and I was rather pleased with what I’d done. But even now, when I look back at this piece, I am struck by how much suspense can come from simply not knowing or not seeing what is around us. The moment I finally defined the setting, letting the light shine on it, it lost all its power to alarm the reader.

When it comes to navigating our physical surroundings, we definitely prefer to have light about us. Why then do we continue to “walk in darkness” when it comes to our emotional, intellectual, moral and spiritual lives? Sometimes, I think it is simply because those aspects of our being are not physical. Oh, they can have physical consequences. But they are not, by nature, physical themselves. If they were, I wonder if we would keep the darker aspects around. I don’t think they would be comfortable.

That is just one reason I am thankful for the sacrifice of Jesus. That act, and my acceptance of it on my behalf, is the one thing that makes it possible for me to stay walking in the Light. As Christ is the Light, and His presence drives away the alarming aspects of darkness. It is the Light of Christ that lets me truly see my friends and be in fellowship with them, giving them understanding and love and receiving the same from them.

TO WALK IN DARKNESS


If we say that we have fellowship with Him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie, and do not practice the truth.
(1 John 1: 6 – NAS)


Why would anyone who announces that they are “in fellowship with Jesus” choose to still walk in darkness? It seems a silly proposition. And yet, it does happen. Should we just write it off to “human nature”?

But the fact remains that in this fallen world, figurative darkness has its attractions, its temptations. Darkness can hide many things. When we wish to keep someone from knowledge of a particular event or activity, we “keep them in the dark.”

Little children love to play peek-a-boo. The limited awareness of the world that such a child has leads him to believe that if he cannot see a thing, it is “out of existence.” If a thing is hidden from his sight or he closes his eyes, it is very easy for the child to think it is gone. That it comes back is always a delight to the child. Gone. Back. Gone. Back.

Some of that outlook tends to persist in our hearts and minds as we grow older. We hide parts of our lives, our activities, our attitudes and beliefs, from others – for all sorts of reasons. It might not even be because we are lying about anything. It may simply be that we wish to keep something secret. It’s nobody else’s business, right?

But what happens when we claim to be followers of Jesus, and we still hold on to such hidden things, such “dark secrets”?

John had previously said that “God is Light, and in Him there is no darkness at all.”

If we claim to have fellowship with the Lord, what is it that we are bringing into the situation? It is said that as believers we are in Him as He is in us. Is it possible for us to bring our “little darknesses” into the Lord?

John says that no, it is not possible. There is, in Him, no darkness at all.

So, if we persist on keeping our dark secrets and choosing to “walk in darkness,” we cannot also claim to be in fellowship with the Lord. It just doesn’t work that way. We can’t be in the Lord and still hold on to our private darkness. There is no darkness in the Lord.

John is quite bluntly truthful when he says that anyone who claims fellowship and yet walks in darkness is lying.

There’s a phrase that people misquote a lot these days. People say, “He wants to have his cake and eat it too.” But the fact is, that is the ordinary sequence. You have to have a cake before you can eat it, after all. The original phrase is slightly different: “He wants to eat his cake and have it too.” It means that the person wants the pleasure of eating the cake, but that after eating it, he still also wants the pleasure of having the cake before him, enticing, promising yet more pleasures. It is the picture of greed. We want to consume and we want to have the prospect, the possibility, of continued consumption before us. We want no end of cake or the eating of cake.

That is what we are doing when we try to drag our personal darkness into fellowship with the Lord. Yes, we want that fellowship with Jesus, the closeness with God. But we also do not want to give up on our little sins and vices. We don’t really want to let go of all our angers (That guy really deserves my anger!) or pride or little greeds. “It’s a small thing. I’m just a flawed human – God loves me anyway, doesn’t He?” We try to use the great good nature of God against Him, in order to hold onto those things we want.

Yes, God loves us in spite of those flaws and darknesses. But having God love us is not quite the same thing as being in fellowship with Him.

Fellowship is so much more than just being in the presence of the other person. We can be in the midst of a huge crowd and not be in fellowship with a single person there. To be in fellowship with someone is to share an interest, to be engaged, to be a peer of the other person, an equal partner.

And we are invited to be in fellowship with God through Jesus. What an astonishing thing! The Creator of the Universe is willing to connect and engage with me, this speck on the surface of a small planet circling a small star on the edge of one of a myriad of galaxies. Fellowship!

But....

God is light and there is in Him no darkness at all.

I cannot hold on to my private darkness and still claim to be walking in the Light of the Lord. It just doesn’t work.

One year at Vacation Bible School, we whiled away the time learning the meaning of our given names. For some of the children, it made for an amusing game, because we wondered if their parents had known the meaning of the names (unlikely juxtapositions of personality and name-meaning seemed quite frequent).

Since I had been born into a church-going family, I of course knew the significance of my first name, Sarah. Much amusement was hand in my family, because of the Biblical story of the wife of Abraham. Originally, her name was Sarai, and I was taught that it meant “quarrelsome or contentious”. And I was contentious as a child, very much so. But the Lord changed Sarai’s name to Sarah, which means “princess.” (Many scholars do not hold that “Sarai” means “quarrelsome,” however, indicating that “Sarai” is not significantly different in meaning from “Sarah”.) To me, at that time, there seemed a particular responsibility in being designated a “princess.” I was not enveloped in visions of fairy tale princesses, being waiting on hand and foot. Somehow to me it had a weight of responsibility and authority, a weight I was not particularly eager to carry. What added to this weight, particularly for a child growing up in a Christian home, was learning that “Lucy,” my middle name, meant “light.” The combination of names, for a child of believers, had a haunting significance.

There have certainly been times in my life when I have wanted to clutch my private darkness and hide away from God. But when one’s very name does not allow that sort of escape .... I became resigned to it. I cannot escape the Light of the Lord. It is impressed into my very identity. I might as well learn to “walk in the Light.”

I am not so foolish as to claim that I have excised all my own inner darkness. I believe it is a life-long process, a life’s work, to reach that goal. But I do not want to lie, when I claim to be in fellowship with the Lord. I would much rather be in the Light than I would to walk in darkness.

REFLECTION OR TRANSLUCENCE


This is the message we have heard from Him and announce to you, that God is Light, and in Him there is no darkness at all. 
(1 John 1: 5 – NAS)


John gets down to his message swiftly now. He announces the basics of it and the authority of it. This message was heard from Jesus Christ Himself, who is God Made Manifest. And John puts it in terms even little children can grasp: God is Light and in Him there is no darkness at all.

A few years ago, the blinds in my apartment were replaced. The old blinds were old when I moved in, and that had been many years previously. They were so ancient I never touched them as they threatened to fall apart. The slats themselves were metal, and so opaque entirely, letting neither vision nor light get by them when they were closed. And they were closed most of the time because I like my privacy, and I am light sensitive (meaning I respond to changes in light even when sleeping, which is annoying if you went to bed at 2:30 and first light starts sneaking in at 5:30).

Then the management chose to do some major maintenance on all the apartments, minor repairs and such, and so I requested new blinds. I asked for vertical blinds for the living room, as they are more like curtains for allowing variances in light. The new blinds were installed, light-weight white plastic. And they seemed to be opaque, blocking vision. And they certainly block my interior lights from spilling out into the night, when they are drawn.

But I discovered an interesting thing about the power of sunlight. Although these blinds are excellent at blocking artificial light (you can only tell if my interior lights are on if there is leakage between the slats), they are translucent to sunlight. The first morning after their installation, I was wakened by a dim light filling the whole apartment.

We all know that sunlight is powerful. But that was the first occasion in a long time that brought it home to me (so to speak). My blinds could block man-made artificial light, but sunlight was not hindered by it at all. It would still make its way into my living space. Oh, some of the effect was hampered, of course. But as soon as there was light outside in my world, as dawn began, there would be light inside my apartment to see by.

We can chalk this effect up to modern technology, of course. Metal blinds or wood blinds would have blocked everything. But once I got used to the translucence, I rather liked it. And it became a daily reminder to me of how pervasive God can be in our lives, if we let Him shine through.

John wants to make the point of the purity and holiness of God. “God is light and there is no darkness in Him.”

There is darkness of all sorts in the world, of course. Visual darkness, that keeps us from seeing things around us. Mental darkness, that keeps us from understanding things. Emotional darkness, that interferes with our relationships. John knew this as well as the next person.

But people had come, as it is human nature to do, to ask the question, “How can there be so much of this darkness, if it does not come from God Himself? Therefore there must be some darkness in God!” Human nature has not changed all that much at all, for people still  ask that question. Living within Creation, we have a hard time grasping that God is much more than the boundaries of Creation.

So John states it plainly, up-front: God is light, and in Him there is no darkness at all.

When we talk about being followers of Jesus, we often say things like “I want to reflect the Light of God to others.” And it can be a useful way of talking about it. Reflected light can be a very pleasing thing: we often enjoy mirrored corridors when they are lit up, and the moon when high and full in a clear night sky can be so bright as to cast strong shadows. But since the translucent blinds came into my life, I have begun to wonder about the metaphor of reflection.

Reflective surfaces are hard. The point of them is that they do not let light “get through” to whatever is behind that surface. We are all familiar with the one-way glass that gets used for police interrogation rooms. The way these function is that the treated glass acts as a mirror on one side, in a well-lit room filled with light. On the other side, the observation room is darker. This allows observers to see through the treated glass into the subject’s room. But the darkness on the other side, for the subject, keeps the glass only reflective, for no light from the other side is passing through it.

Which would I rather be like? The translucent blinds, which allow true light – sunlight – to pass through and illuminate things on the other side? Or would I rather be like the one-way glass, that reflects back the brightness on the mirror side, but requires darkness on the other?

John’s words come back to me: there is no darkness in God.

I think we are called to be translucent, not reflective. God’s light should shine from within us, whether softly (as the daylight in my apartment does when the blinds are drawn) or brightly (like when the blinds are wide open to full sunlight). I don’t think we should be lurking inside the shell of our lives in darkness, letting our hard surfaces reflect back on others the bright light of God. For we need the light as much as the next person.

This is what John learned from Jesus Himself. And surely those two are trustworthy witnesses.

WE HAVE SEEN


What was from the beginning, what we have heard, what we have seen with our eyes, what we have looked at and touched with our hands, concerning the Word of Life -- and the life was manifested, and we have seen and testify and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was manifested to us -- what we have seen and heard we proclaim to you also, so that you too may have fellowship with us, and indeed our fellowship is with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ. These things we write, so that our joy may be made complete. 
(1 John 1: 1-4 – NAS)

I have always been struck by how earnestly John begins this letter. Biblical scholars place the time of the writing of this letter around A.D. 90. And assuming (as I do) that it was written by the Apostle John, he would by that time have been quite an old man. He had been a young man when he walked with Jesus (possibly even the youngest of the twelve disciples), so almost his entire life had been lived based on what he had seen and heard and experienced in those three momentous years with Jesus.

Sixty years or so is a longish time between an historical event and people “now living” discussing what it was and what it meant. I’ve been recently doing some research on the beginnings of World War II in Europe, and it struck me how quickly something can slide backwards into “historical dust.” The artifacts of such a period become curiousities (although innovation moves much faster for us than it did in the ancient world), and there become fewer and fewer eye witnesses to events as participants age and die off.

By the time this letter was written, such aspects were beginning to sneak in to the community of the followers of Jesus. What a joy it must have been to John to see that the teachings of Jesus could indeed be passed on to others, understood and followed. How exciting it must have been to realize these wonderful things would not pass away.

But there is something about the way he opens this letter that indicates also that other reactions to the teachings of Jesus had begun to creep into the community of believers. I suspect that the distance of time had allowed newer believers to treat many aspects of the life and teaching of Jesus as something “open to interpretation.”

Interpreting scripture was, after all, something that had a long tradition amongst the Jews. In Jesus’ time, it was, in fact, the past-time of the “scribes and Pharisees.” The students of one scholar could argue interpretation with the students of another scholar, and no one felt that they were imposing their personal interpretation on ancient events because there were not witnesses from the days of Moses to tell them otherwise.

It must have distressed John to see that beginning within the communities of believers. For at this time, Gnosticism was beginning to push its way into the church. According to my Ryrie Study Bible, Gnosticism held that (1) knowledge is superior to virtue, (2) the nonliteral sense of Scripture is correct and can be understood only by a select few, (3) evil in the world precludes God’s being the only Creator, (4) the Incarnation is incredible because deity cannot unite itself with anything material such as a body, (5) there is no resurrection of the flesh.

For John, who had walked with Jesus, seen miracles performed by Jesus, watched Him die a horrible death on the cross, and then – wonder of wonders – saw Him again, in the flesh, alive and walking with His followers, even touching Him after the Resurrection, to have newer believers, younger believers coming along and dismissing the heart of John’s life, it must have been a challenge of pain.

At the heart of Jesus’ teachings are the basic commandments “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and soul and mind, and you should love your neighbor as yourself.” All other commandments grow from that. John new this and heard this from Jesus Himself, so the idea that this core virtue was of less value than “knowledge” would be such a great error. The virtue and power of love greatly exceeds any security that can come from “knowledge.” This is not to say that there’s anything wrong with “knowledge” for it is as much a part of what God has given us as love is. But it is not superior.

It follows then that the idea that the real meaning of scripture can be understood only by a select few would also be something that would disturb John. The idea that everything in scripture is only metaphor to be interpreted would seem silly to John. Imagine it: he hears some young believer influenced by Gnosticism spouting off about how the story of the loaves and fishes being multiplied is just a metaphor for the abundance of the Lord, and all he can remember is the desperation the disciples felt when they realized the huge crowd was hungry and could be a problem, and Jesus blessed five loaves and two fish and then told the Twelve to feed the hundreds, possibly thousands, who had come to hear Him teach. And at the end of the day the disciples had to pick up the left-overs, and there were baskets overflowing. Some metaphor! Lugging around baskets of left-over food in the dusk after a hot day in the sun.

“We have seen, we have heard, we have looked at, and we have touched.”
At the moment, let us skip over the issue of evil and God as the only Creator. For this moment, as John is making his declaration of being an eye witness authority, let us come to the matter of the Incarnation and the resurrection of the flesh.

The denial that God would humble Himself to enter into flesh somehow offended the minds of Gnostics. “God wouldn’t do that!” “How could He be God and yet man?” It’s incredible, impossible. Therefore the entire concept is to be dismissed, in order to preserve the holiness and purity of God.

“Jesus was just a good man. Perhaps THE Good Man. But he wasn’t God.”

The seeming impossibility of divinity becoming human boggles the mind. So many people drop to a “more probable” interpretation. There was nothing divine about Jesus, he was just a human. (Of course, by saying the Incarnation is impossible, such "experts" are saying that there is something God cannot do, thus limiting the very nature of God.)

Again: “We have seen, we have heard, we have looked at, and we have touched.”
There is nothing metaphorical about calling Jesus the Word of Life, nor yet again in calling Him the Son of God.

With every fiber of his being, John knew that what he had seen and heard and touched in those three years when he was a young man was the Real Deal.

God had chosen to become manifest among us, in the flesh and blood. Wonderful things had happened, and we were given something amazing in the life of Jesus. God Himself taught us how to come near to Him, as simply and directly as was possible. So simply and directly that even the littlest child could respond! No special knowledge that required levels of initiation and study. Love.

And John, bursting with the reality of that in his life, has to re-convince newer believers who were being affected by Gnosticism, that he had the authority of an eye witness, that he was not an old fool telling comforting stories, but who did not understand the implications of what “really happened.”

He writes the letter to spill out the wonder and joy he has had all his life because of the things he heard and saw and touched. He knows this joy can be communicated to anyone, if they but listen. The fellowship with Christ Jesus and God the Father is available at all times, ever present for those who believe.

John was willing to stand as a witness and testify to the reality of what he had experienced. Not interpret it. Not present it as a useful metaphor for challenges. He was willing to state, flat-out, that he had witnessed the actions of Jesus Christ.

How willing am I to witness like that? I do it a bit. But often, it feels like I’m just “stating the facts.” I look at what John says here, and am humbled and challenged. “These things we write, so that our joy may be made complete.” Do I convey the JOY of knowing the Lord and His actions in my life? Or do I just tell people it is there, but make no effort to infect them with my joy?

These things I have seen, and they are marvelous and wonderful, and there is great joy in knowing that the Lord God is so close at hand! For the Lord is great and greatly to be praised. Jesus came that we might have this Life, and have it abundantly.