Light And Life Of Mankind

May 4

Read: 1 John 1:5-10

Light And Life Of Mankind

“God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.” (v.5)

There is nothing “dark” about God. Nothing “sinister”. God is perfect light, and in him there is no darkness… no blemishes… no shadowy spots… JUST LIGHT. Light is LIFE - quite literally. God has put this on display for us to see: The sun grows plants. Animals eat plants. Animals grow and eat each other. Humans eat animals and plants for LIFE. Light = LIFE. Trees grow by photosynthesis and drawing energy from LIGHT. Trees use what we as humans cannot (carbon dioxide) and expel what we NEED to LIVE = Oxygen. The air we breathe to live - LIFE - comes from the LIGHT. “God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.” This is what it means when Christ is called the “life and light of mankind” (John 1:4) This means that as sons and daughters of God we are “children of the light”. (Eph. 5:5,8) What does this mean for us?

We CANNOT have fellowship with God while we “walk in darkness”. It is impossible. It is wild to think that anyone would even try to say that, but 1 John points out that it is a possibility. There is as much a temptation to pretend - to “say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness” - as there is to sin itself. This is the sin of “pretending”… the sin of lying to yourself and saying everything is OK while you walk in darkness. It is one thing to be lied to… it is quite another to LIE to YOURSELF. This is why we need someone from outside of ourselves - we need Christ and his work through each other - to wake us up! The people of God must stop pretending! The people of God cannot walk in darkness. The need for fellowship with Christ and with one another is seen in the next verses:

“But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin.” (v.7)

The people of God bring light / life to one another and the world around them. We experience fellowship with one another and with God himself when we walk in the light. Jesus comes for us and does what we cannot do for ourselves: “cleanses us from all sin”. These two things happen together: walking in the light and being cleansed from sins. We will not do this on our own apart from Christ awakening us! Why? because when left to our own devices, we “hate the light and love the darkness” because it conceals our “evil deeds”. (cf. John 3:19-21) We all have sin we need to be rid of. We all have made mistakes in the past. To deny this is to “lie to yourself and not practice the truth.” But here is the GOOD NEWS: “If we confess our sins, (Jesus) is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”

Have you convinced yourself you are “alright” without Christ? Have you deceived yourself into thinking there is “life” in the “darkness”? Do you feel the weight of the darkness on you? The people of GOd need to stop pretending! We need to confess to one another and the Lord. God has called us “out of the darkness into the marvelous light.” (cf. 1 Peter 2:9) The people of God bring LIFE… we walk in LIGHT… we fellowship with God and GOD IS LIGHT. We don’t have to pretend that we do not sin, in fact that is the WORST thing to do… What we DO lay hold of is the work of JESUS which cleanses us from our sin and opens our eyes to the darkness around us… calling us to walk in the light. Do you love the darkness and hate the light? Or do you have fellowship with God by walking in the light with those other brothers and sisters in the Lord? You see, we do not walk alone in the light. Christ walks with us as we walk with one another. The time has come to stop pretending. There is no “middle”… no room for trying to keep a dark closet filled with hidden things. It is time to “stop lying to yourself and start practicing the truth”. (v.8,10) You need not be ashamed, but what you should do is turn to the Lord and he will cleanse you. There is FULLNESS of LIFE in the LIGHT! You know what you need to do - the Holy Spirit is telling you right now. Love you guys! - JDP