God is Light | 1 John 1:5-10 | Walking in the Light
What happens when a patient refuses to accept his doctor's diagnosis? He may feel fine. He may insist nothing is wrong. But his denial doesn't change the test results — it only delays treatment.
In 1 John 1:5–10, the Apostle John makes the same case about our spiritual condition. God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. That declaration exposes everything. To claim fellowship with God while walking in darkness is hypocrisy. To say we have no sin is self-deception. And to say we have not sinned is to make God a liar.
But John's diagnosis comes with a cure. If we walk in the light, the blood of Jesus cleanses us from all sin. If we confess our sins, God is faithful and just to forgive and cleanse us from all unrighteousness — not because we've earned it, but because the wrath we deserved was poured out on Christ in our place.
This is the gospel: the one who gives the diagnosis is the same one who provides the remedy. Watch or listen above, then dig into the passage on your own this week.
📖 Click to Show the Transcript of this Sermon
Thank you for joining us for this week's sermon from First Reformed Church in Edgerton, Minnesota. Each week we dig into God's Word, trusting that the Holy Spirit will continue the good work of sanctification in us.
After some coaxing from his wife, a man does the unthinkable and goes to the doctor.
He has a checkup. Now, he has had some symptoms that point to a significant issue, but none of them are terribly severe, and he has just written them off to aging.
Well, through the course of the examination, the doctor notices that something is off and orders tests. And after the test results are in, the doctor meets with him to share the results and let him know that they indicate that he has a very serious health concern. The patient hears the results and says, "But really, I feel fine. I'm just slowing down. I'm not sick." I'm just old.
I don't accept that I have this disease. Now, we know that the man's refusal to acknowledge the diagnosis doesn't change the truth of the test results. His self-deception does nothing but delay treatment. Without acknowledging the sickness and starting the prescribed therapy, it will ultimately be the man's undoing. And as we continue on into our second week in 1 John and close up this first chapter, we see John speaking of the fact of our sin.
If we acknowledge the disease, we can receive divine treatment. If we deny it and deceive ourselves, we're told that there is no hope. Well, our arrival here in verse 5 comes on the heels of the impactful opening 4 verses that we looked at last week. There, John speaks of Jesus as the One who is from the beginning, the One who has been made manifest to them. The apostles heard, the apostles saw, and they touched Jesus.
He was not just an apparition. And He was not just a concept. He was a very real Savior. Jesus really took on human flesh to save us from sin. And this mattered as John was writing the book because there were people who were starting to infiltrate the early church with the teachings of knowledge cults.
These groups taught that the material world, which included the human body, were bad, and that through secret knowledge, they could eventually ascend spiritually and leave the evil physical world behind. These groups had seen that Christianity was starting to expand in the Roman Empire, and so they had attached themselves to Christian communities like parasites. They were living off a healthy host, but they were destroying the health of the church from within. And John writes this letter to set the record straight on what the Christian faith teaches and to encourage his readers to hold fast to the true faith. Now, all of this mattered because Jesus did take on human flesh.
He did suffer and die in a real material body, and he rose again physically from the dead, and he ascended into heaven in that same body. Jesus came to do more than just enlighten a few followers with knowledge. He came to save a people for his own possession and redeem creation from the curse. And so these verses we are looking at today and the book of 1 John as a whole are not only addressing an ancient problem caused by an ancient cult trying to bring false teaching into the church. Today, the verses that we are looking at speak to a problem that is timeless because it is a problem that has plagued us all the way back to the fall in the garden.
Sin. So as we drop into the passages, or this passage here at verse 5, John begins with a statement about the nature of God. He tells us that God is light. This is the message that they've heard and proclaimed. God is light and in Him there is no darkness at all.
Now, obviously, John is not telling us something about the substance of God, that He is like light. It's not that he's saying here that God is the same substance as light, what he's doing is he is illustrating for us the holiness, the purity of God. There are few contrasts that are greater than darkness and light. At some point, most children are afraid of the dark. And as much as you want your children to give up that fear when they're young, At the same time, it really isn't an irrational fear, is it?
Because in absolute darkness, you can't see what's in front of you, much less what's around the corner somewhere. And darkness feels like it closes in upon us. But in the light, everything is exposed. Light is pure and everything becomes clear and visible. We understand the contrast that John is using here.
In the darkness, evil is done because it can be hidden. But light offers safety and protection. And this is true in every time. But think about how true this would have been in John's time. Because, you know, we live in a time where we have artificial light available to us literally in the palm of our hand.
We have an LED on the backside of something we carry in our pocket that we can light up and give us light at any moment. But in the ancient world, and even in some places in our time, there are no flashlights, no light switches, and no lampposts to illuminate dark places. They would have had to start thinking about darkness early on in the day. They had to be prepared. They would either have to have some kind of fire or torch, or they would have to wait for the dawn to have light.
Darkness was something you had to plan for. You needed to get someplace where you were safe before it got dark outside because the streetlights weren't going to come on. And you couldn't find your way home by turning on the headlights on your camel. That idea cracks me up. Headlights on a camel.
But, like, there was none of that. You had to get home.
The image of darkness gives us a sense of fear, cold, being lost. Light gives us an image instead of purity, warmth, and clarity. God is light, and not only is He light, but in Him is no darkness at all. There is none of this fear, coldness, or being lost. He is perfectly pure.
He is what is desirable. But yet, John tells us, in our sin, we choose the darkness. So as we slide down here to verse 6, John hits us with a very convicting statement. "If we say that we have fellowship with God while we continue in darkness, we are liars who do not practice the truth." It's very evident that God is light. We know that fellowship with Him is the best path.
The evil and the darkness of the world is easily apparent to us, but yet, we are drawn to the darkness. We will talk as though we are in the light, but we will walk in darkness instead. As I said, this is a convicting statement. Each one of us has claimed to be walking in the light. And yet we have sin that exposes that we are not practicing the truth.
And John reminds us here that a simple assent to an idea or a verbal affirmation is not the same as practicing what you preach. And I believe verse 6 really resonates with us because there are few accusations that people can make to you that are more cutting than hypocrisy. When you're confronted with the fact that your actions contradict what you say, it cuts deep. And we are all guilty of it. We say one thing, but do another.
We confess our sin on Sunday, but we soon return to it. But John doesn't leave us wallowing in the guilt of our hypocrisy. He quickly turns and reminds us of the forgiveness that we have in Christ. When we walk in the light, He is in the light. We not only have fellowship with fellow believers, but we also have the assurance that our sins have been cleansed by the blood of Jesus.
John wants us to be sure that we know that there's forgiveness. Walking in darkness is not a path that we are stuck on. Instead, amending our lives and returning to the light restores our fellowship with God. It restores our fellowship with one another, and we have confidence that our sins have been cleansed. And John is calling us to return to the light by clearly lining out the benefits of our fellowship with God.
He reminds us of the fellowship we have with each other. I want you to recall what we saw last week. The word in the original language for fellowship is this word koinonia. And it means not only fellowship, but Christian fellowship is also a partnership, a communion, and it's participation with one another in Christ. And I think this is important for us to understand and continually remember because we've sort of reduced the idea of the word fellowship to hanging out together for coffee and having good conversation.
That's important, don't get me wrong, but Christian fellowship is so much more than just spending time together. It's the truth that we have a partnership with our sisters and brothers, that we participate with each other in the body of Christ. And when we walk in the darkness, we risk that relationship to our fellow believers, and we also risk damaging the fellowship of believers as a whole. And so returning to fellowship with God restores our relationship not only to God but to one another. But we also see here that we have the confidence in knowing that our sins are forgiven.
Acknowledging our sin and returning to God gives us a confidence that we've been cleansed, not because we've earned a forgiveness by returning to God, but an affirmation of God's work in us. That the work of the Word and the work of the Holy Spirit in us has been effective in calling us to repentance and caused us to turn away from the darkness of our sin and returned us to the light. And I think it's important that we take notice of how these two things here are connected. In our fellowship with one another, we also have an assurance of our forgiveness. Our fellowship reminds us that this is a work that God has done and is doing in all of His people.
We are not the only one who is called from darkness to light. The people around you that you are in fellowship with have that same call. They have been brought from darkness to light by the work of the Holy Spirit as well. Have you ever taken a moment at the assurance of pardon in the service and thought about the fact that those words of Scripture that give you confidence of the cleansing of your sin are not just for you. They are for all of the people of God.
They're for all those who have received the gift of repentance and the forgiveness of sins. We are a body of people saved by the grace of God and cleansed by the blood of Jesus. It's not just you that's been called from darkness. But we walk in the light together. That's an important part of our fellowship.
Each of our stories are different. We all have different paths to the grace of God, and we have different journeys living in the grace of God, but we do not walk in the light on our own. We participate in the grace of God with each other. The fellowship that we have not only assures us of our forgiveness, but it also blesses us with fellow pilgrims on the journey to encourage us to remain in the light and to flee the darkness. And we deeply, deeply need this because one of the greatest temptations that we will face will be to return to the darkness because we are so easily deluded by our own minds.
And we think that our sin isn't sin. While there are times where the darkness in our lives is pretty evident to us, there are also times where we deceive ourselves and we say that we don't have sin. And while it's always bad to be in darkness, I believe what John is describing here is a far worse state of affairs than struggling or even being deliberately in sin. Because in those two situations, at least we believe that we are in sin. Sure, we aren't doing anything about remedying the problem, but at least we understand that we're in rebellion against a holy God.
Self-deception is so dangerous because we think we're alright. We don't believe we need to turn from sin. John is clear. If we think that we have no sin, the truth is not in us. God is truth, and His Word is clear that we are in rebellion against Him.
We fail to love the Lord our God with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength, and we do not love our neighbor as ourself. Each day we fail to keep His law. If we think that we have kept it perfectly, we are deluded. And if we think that failing to keep his law is not sin at all, we're even more deluded.
This is God's diagnosis of a fatal spiritual disease that we have. To think that his diagnosis is off and failing to believe him keeps us from the cure. Like I said when we started, we would be foolish to do this with our physical health. And we are fools if we do it with our spiritual health as well. The test results are in.
We are fallen in our sin. We are in desperate need of forgiveness. God in Christ has brought us the cure. But if we don't trust in the healing power of His Gospel, we remain in the dark. But we don't need to remain there.
We come to the light by acknowledging our sin. When we confess our sin, He forgives us and cleanses us from all unrighteousness. The language here is really clear. We are forgiven and cleansed. And God does not hold back forgiveness until we perform some sort of penance.
We aren't dropping good deeds on one side of the scale to bring up the side that we did that has evil deeds. We are forgiven, and John tells us that this means we are cleansed from all unrighteousness. It's wiped away. It's all gone. Again, not erasing the bad with the good.
It's a cleansing. It's not pushed aside. It's gone. It is the work of Jesus on our behalf that does this. His perfect sacrifice pays the price for our sin.
And when we acknowledge that we have sinned against God and that we need His cleansing work in us, He is faithful and just to cleanse us from sins. Now you've likely heard these words many times. They are used all throughout the history of the church, not only in a call to confession, but also in assurances of pardon. So as you read it, you may pass over some of the words without thinking about it You basically have it memorized. I don't want you to miss out on an important word up here.
He is faithful and just. We are told that he is faithful, but he is also just to forgive. In other words, he acts in his justice to cleanse his people from his sins. And that's an interesting statement, because what would truly be just is if I got what I deserved for my rebelling against God. That would be justice.
I deserve hell for committing cosmic treason against the King of the Universe. But that's not what I'm getting. I'm being forgiven. How is that just? Well, it's just Because God does not hold back forgiveness until we do something.
Instead, He does what He did in Christ. He is just because God took on our sins in Christ. The wrath for my sin was poured out on Christ, and He satisfied the justice of God on my behalf. Now we're going to get into this more deeply next week as we move on into the second chapter of 2 John, because this is an important theme. And what we're going to find is that God does this for us, and our proper response is gratitude and devotion.
It draws us out of the darkness into the light to live a life of holiness to his glory. And as our Passage closes up today with the return to the concern of our self-deception. We see that this is an important thought. John keeps repeating themes here because it's important that we understand this. He wants it abundantly clear that we are our biggest problem.
We need to abandon the idea that we are holy on our own or that we don't have anything wrong with us. Holding on to that delusion has us saying that God is a liar because God's Word is clear about our sinfulness. God's Word is clear about our fallen state. If we don't believe that there's such a thing as sin or that we don't sin, we don't need a Savior. And the Word of God is clear.
We do need a Savior. And that is why Christ took on our flesh. That's why He lived a sinless life and bore the wrath of God. That's why He defeated death for you in His resurrection. And it is why He ascended to intercede for you.
That story is the primary focus of Scripture. If you aren't a sinner in need of redemption, It was for nothing.
But Christ did those things for a purpose. He came to save a people for Himself. And when you believe that truth and you cling to it for your salvation, His Word is in you. He is at work not only to save, but to sanctify you. To not only call you out of darkness into the light, but to walk in the light.
In holiness. And I want to go back to the scenario that I lined out at the beginning with the man sitting across from his doctor and hearing a diagnosis that he refused to accept. He felt fine. He was just aging. He didn't accept the assessment of the test results.
We have zero difficulty seeing why that is foolish. The results of a test Don't change because we don't accept them. Denial doesn't heal us. It delays treatment that could save our life. And John makes the same case regarding our spiritual condition in the passage that we have looked at this morning.
God's Word is spoken. And the diagnosis of our condition is clear. We are dead in trespasses and sins apart from the grace of God. We are fallen sinners in desperate need of a salvation that we cannot earn by any works of our own. And this is why the Gospel is so amazing.
The one who tells us the diagnosis is also the one who has provided the cure. Not a treatment to help us manage the symptoms. The Gospel is the cure to our sin disease. Verse 9 doesn't tell us that if we confess our sins, God will consider maybe forgiving us if we work hard enough to earn it. No, it tells us that He is both faithful and just to forgive us and cleanse us.
The payment for our sin has been made. God's wrath has been satisfied because the Lord Jesus Christ drank the cup of God's wrath all the way down to the dregs. And He did it for you. And this is good news and it's our only hope. Hear and believe.
Don't tell God His diagnosis is wrong. Continually confess your sin. Walk in the light. Know the peace that comes from being cleansed of all unrighteousness. Walk in the light and live there that God might be glorified for His saving work in the lives of His people.
Amen. Let us pray. Great and merciful God, We thank you for the gift of your Word, that in it we hear this message of salvation, that you are faithful and just to forgive us of all unrighteousness and to cleanse us from sin. I pray that as we step out into the world this week, we would live in light of that good news, that the temptation of the darkness would seem less appealing, that we would desire to continually be in the light and to walk in the light together, building up one another in faith. And bringing glory to Your great and glorious name because You have saved a people for Yourself.
It is in the name of Jesus that we pray. Amen. Thank you for joining us for this week's sermon. For more information about First Reformed Church, head to our Facebook page or website, edgertonfrc.org.
Continue in the Word
"God Is Light" is part of our ongoing series through 1 John, Walking in the Light. Explore the full series or browse our complete sermon archive to keep digging into God's Word.
