Sermon Manuscript W ALKING IN THE L IGHT : E XPOSITORY S TUDIES IN F IRST J OHN “Lying to Ourselves” (Pt. II: 1 John 1:5–2:2) • June 17, 2001 • Dr. Doug McIntosh, Senior Pastor Review: The Problem of Sin in Christian Living Let me express to all you dads my best personal wishes for a happy Father’s Day. Being a father, as I know from thirty years of trying to be one, is not the easiest of roles. When I was very young, it seemed to me that all adults were extremely sure of themselves. They always knew just what to do in every situation. Then, when I began to raise my own family, I discovered that there was no script for fa- therhood. Quite often you were confronted with choices and didn’t have a clue what to do. I don’t think I would have been quite so excited about being an adult if I had known in advance that the whole thing was ad-libbed. This week I ran across a column by the late Erma Bombeck in which she was trying to explain to a young woman who had lost her father early just what fathers do. Erma had gone through the same experience, and this is what she wrote: When my dad died in my ninth year, I, too, was raised by my mother, giving rise to the same question, “What do fathers do?” As far as I could observe, they brought around the car when it rained so everyone else could stay dry. They always took the family pictures, which is why they were never in them. They carved turkeys on Thanksgiving, kept the car gassed up, weren’t afraid to go into the basement, mowed the lawn, and tightened the clothesline to keep it from sagging. It wasn’t until my husband and I had children that I was able to observe firsthand what a father contributed to a child’s life. What did he do to deserve his children’s respect? He Page 1rarely fed them, did anything about their sagging diapers, wiped their noses or fannies, played ball, or bonded with them under the hoods of their cars. What did he do? He threw them higher than his head until they were weak from laughter. He cast the de- ciding vote on the puppy debate. He listened more than he talked. He let them make mis- takes. He allowed them to fall from their first two-wheeler without having a heart attack. He read a newspaper while they were trying to parallel park a car for the first time in preparation for their driving test. If I had to tell someone’s son what a father really does that is important, it would be that he shows up for the job in good times and bad times. He’s a man who is constantly being observed by his children. They learn from him how to handle adversity, anger, disap- pointment and success. He won’t laugh at their dreams no matter how impossible they might seem. He will dig out at 1 a.m. when one of his children runs out of gas. He will make unpopular decisions and stand by them. When he is wrong and makes a mistake, he will admit it. He sets the tone for how family members treat one another, members of the opposite sex and people who are different than they are. By example, he can instill a desire to give something back to the community when its needs are greater than theirs. But mostly, a good father involves himself in his kids’ lives. The more responsibility he has for a child, the harder it is to walk out of his life. A father has the potential to be a powerful force in the life of a child. Grab it! Maybe you’ll get a greeting card for your efforts. Maybe not. But it’s steady work. Not a bad description of the fatherly task. Some of the hardest times to be a father are times when your children do what is wrong. A lot of conflicting desires run together at that point. You want to see justice done. You want to see your child have to face what it is he’s done, and you want him to learn from the whole experi- ence. And those kinds of desires underlie the text that we are studying now. We’re engaged in a study of the letter that the New Testament calls First John. It is a description of the process of fellowship with the Father. I want to read again for you the little paragraph that begins at 1 John 1:5. Scripture: 1 John 1:5-2:2 5 T HIS IS THE MESSAGE WHICH WE HAVE HEARD FROM H IM AND DECLARE TO YOU , THAT G OD IS LIGHT AND IN H IM IS NO DARKNESS AT ALL . 6 I F WE SAY THAT WE HAVE FELLOWSHIP WITH H IM , AND WALK IN DARKNESS , WE LIE AND DO NOT PRACTICE THE TRUTH . 7 B UT IF WE WALK IN THE LIGHT AS H E IS IN THE LIGHT , WE HAVE FELLOWSHIP WITH ONE ANOTHER , AND THE BLOOD OF J ESUS C HRIST H IS S ON CLEANSES US FROM ALL SIN . 8 I F WE SAY THAT WE HAVE NO SIN , WE DECEIVE OURSELVES , AND THE TRUTH IS NOT IN US . 9 I F WE CONFESS OUR SINS , H E IS FAITHFUL AND JUST TO FORGIVE US OUR SINS AND TO CLEANSE US FROM ALL UNRIGHTEOUSNESS . 10 I F WE SAY THAT WE HAVE NOT SINNED , WE MAKE H IM A LIAR , AND H IS WORD IS NOT IN US . 1 M Y LITTLE CHILDREN , THESE THINGS I WRITE TO YOU , SO THAT YOU MAY NOT SIN . A ND IF ANYONE SINS , WE HAVE AN A DVOCATE WITH THE F ATHER , J ESUS C HRIST THE RIGHTEOUS . 2 A ND H E H IMSELF IS THE PROPITIATION FOR OUR SINS , AND NOT FOR OURS ONLY BUT ALSO FOR [ THOSE OF THE ] THE WHOLE WORLD . (NKJV) Three False Affirmations #1: The claim of fellowship while walking in darkness (review) Last week we looked at the first of three false affirmations that believers can make about the issue of sin in their lives. The first is described in verse six — the claim of having fellowship with God while at the same time closing off the light of God’s truth. That is a false claim, John says. One of the conditions of fellowship with God is always being open to rebuke. Page 2That is why John says in verse seven that even if we walk with God in the light of His word, we still need cleansing. The blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin. As we walk in the light of God’s word, we experience both a sharing with God and a cleansing by God. Every moment of fellowship that we experience is made possible by the continual cleansing ef- fect of what Jesus Christ has done. Today we look at two other false affirmations that are often made. The second false claim is... #2: The claim of having no sin because we have no consciousness of it The claim: I am not guilty You see this in verse eight: “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us” (1 John 1:8). This is a claim of not being really guilty of sin because we are not conscious of anything wrong in our lives. Now verse six is the kind of statement that a person might make who is being intention- ally misleading; but verse eight is the kind of statement that a person who has been walking in the light might make. Since Christ’s blood cleanses us continually, we might easily draw the conclu- sion that because we do not see anything obviously wrong in our lives, because we are not con- scious of anything that is out of place, that we can claim to have no sin. The consequences: self-deception and impotence John says that when we claim that we are not guilty of any sin simply because we are not conscious of it two things are happening. First of all, we are deceiving ourselves. We are certainly not deceiving anyone else, are we? Other people know that we still have progress to make. We are certainly not deceiving God. He knows how much improvement we have yet to undergo. But we do deceive ourselves. The other consequence is spiritual impotence. John says that if we claim that we have moved beyond the realm of sin, the truth is not in us. He means by that that the truth is not exer- cising the function that God intended for it to exercise. The truth, Jesus said, is what sets us free. But if we deny the truth and say, “ I have arrived,” the truth is not operating inside of us. That doesn’t mean we are not Christians, but it does mean that we have closed ourselves off from the spiritual progress that the truth is designed to take us through. The truth is not operating in our lives from the inside, where it is supposed to operate. The counterpoint: confession The counterpoint to self-deception is confession. The alternative is to be open about the sins that we see in our lives. We confess them to God. We confess them to others if they have been hurt by them. That is the only way to live openly and in the light before God as a believer. But that raises a caution... The caution: why confess if we have already been forgiven? This is a reasonable question. For this reasonable question, the Bible has a reasonable an- swer, and it has to do with the recognition that there are two kinds of forgiveness. There is legal forgiveness, and there is familial forgiveness. We need both. God has told us how to have both. We receive eternal forgiveness when we believe. That’s what Paul wrote about in Ephesians: “In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins” (Eph. 1:7). We have that right now, and nothing can change that. That describes our legal stand- ing before God. Paul describes what we need to have a permanent, unchanging status before God. But we also need family forgiveness to live our lives day by day. We need to have not only a legal relationship with God, but a daily family relationship with Him. That is made possi- ble by confession. We have similar situations in our family lives. The young man who takes the family SUV out for a spin and who puts a dent in the fender doesn’t lose his position in the family when that happens. He may lose a considerable degree of enjoyment of his family, however, and he cer- tainly will if he insists that he didn’t do it when they know he did. Another way to think of this is the illustration of the traffic court judge. One day his son Page 3is brought before him on a charge of speeding. The judge finds the offender guilty, then walks off the bench, walks over to the clerk, and pays his son’s fine. That removes the legal problems be- tween them. But when they get home, the judge is no longer acting as a judge. He is now a father. And if the son is going to enjoy his father’s company, he is going to have to leave his denials be- hind and confess his violations of the father’s will. He is a son whether he does this or not, but his family enjoyment will be severely hampered if he insists on not confessing his wrong. You notice the conditional expression in verse 9: “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins.” The reverse side of this is that if we don’t confess, He doesn’t forgive. The natural question that follows is, “What does it cost a Christian to have unforgiven sins?” The answer, clear from the context, is that the Christian loses present fellowship with God. Fellowship is the enjoyment of life in God’s family. It may apply to my enjoyment of God Himself, or of another believer. It assumes the possession of eternal life, but is not the same as eternal life. No one can have fellowship with God without eternal life, but even if you do have it, fellowship is not guaranteed. In fact, there would be no reason for the writing of First John if fellowship came automatically with conversion. So walking in the light is one condition of fellowship. You and I both know people who (we have every reason to believe) have eternal life. You may know people, as I do, who did have fellowship with God, sometimes for many years, and who led rich and productive Christian lives. But today they are walking in the dark. They do not have any enjoyment of the life of God, nor do they enjoy the presence of other Christians, who make them decidedly uneasy. They are no longer walking in the light. You do not get to the point in your Christian life where you get beyond the need to con- fess your sins directly to Him. If you will notice in the text, even the Apostle John, the man who was arguably the closest of all the apostles to the Lord, does not put himself above the necessity of confession. He does not say, “If you confess your sins,” but “If we confess our sins.” That’s the other condition of enjoyment or fellowship. We walk in the light, and we confess the sins that the light uncovers. And that leads to an important distinction between conscious and unconscious sins. The conscious and the unconscious A person can only acknowledge what the light shows him. It is silly to think about con- fessing unknown sins; one cannot confess what he does not know. Here in verse nine we see that John understood this. Look at your text in verse nine. You see that little word our, in “our sins.” Your version may print this in italics. The word is not present in the original Greek. The phrase reads literally, “He is faithful and just to forgive us the sins,” i.e., the sins we confess. But then John adds, “and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” He consciously separates “the sins we confess and are forgiven of,” and “all unrighteousness.” When we confess the sins we know, not only are these known faults forgiven, but all else that is not right in our lives is at the same time purged and removed from His sight. Everything hinges on our integrity before God. If we are willing to keep our hearts con- tinually exposed to His truth, we will have always His perfect cleansing. The moment we begin to excuse our evil, that moment we lie, and reject the truth. We are hiding in the dark. That leads us to the third false affirmation about sin in the believer’s life... #3: The claim of denying the reality of a particular sin The claim: What I just did is not really sinful behavior That is the point of verse ten: “If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar, and His word is not in us” (1 John 1:10). This verse is capable of more than one understanding. Some people would say that this is simply a claim of sinlessness. The believer is saying, “I have never sinned at any point in my life.” Now the language of the verse permits that view, but I think that is a highly unlikely thing for any Christian to claim. Not many people would claim that they had never committed a sin. Who would take them seriously enough even to discuss the matter? Page 4I think that what we have here is a different claim, and one that is far more likely to be made by the ordinary Christian. The claim amounts to saying, “What I just did is not really sinful behavior.” We do this when we rationalize our sin away. Sometimes we play tricks with language to do that. For example, we redefine the word sin. We know that sin suggests something bad and we do not like to use that kind of language about ourselves. So what the Scripture would call sin, we call human weakness, or unfortunate tendencies, or personal frailties, or blind spots. The fancier the name, the more it appeals, because it sounds so much better than that simple, ugly, three-letter word, sin. Thus, one way of saying, “I have not sinned” is to invent these euphemisms, and call what we do by a more socially acceptable name. Now the real rub in this process is that what others do, we call sin, but when we do the same thing, we have a different name for it: • Others have prejudices; we have convictions. • Others are conceited; but we have self-respect. • Others are lazy; we are too busy. • When someone else goes ahead and acts on his own, we say he is presumptuous; when we do the same thing, we have initiative. • When someone else gets angry and blows up, we say he has lost his head; when we do it, we are merely showing righteous indignation. That’s how we operate, isn’t it? We feel better about ourselves when we can put a nice label on something ugly. And as long as we deny the reality of what we do, we never will do anything about it. That’s doing what John is talking about here. It’s a way of saying, “We haven’t sinned.” Unfortunately, we will never treat these things as the threat they are as long as we permit ourselves to conceal the reality of sin by calling it another name. A variation on this theme is describing the causes of our actions in ways that excuse our- selves. For example: • It is “nerves” that causes us to be irritable with one another. • It is fatigue that makes us quick to accuse people. • It is the pressure of work that causes us to lose our inner peace. • It is difficult neighbors or co-workers that make us resentful and bitter. If it were not for them, of course, we would be sweet, lovely, and kind. The problem, we say, is not sin; it is circumstances. “It’s not really my fault. I can’t help it. It’s because of the circumstances that surround me. What I just did is not really sin. Sin is what bad people do. I am a Christian. I’m not a bad person. I have not sinned.” The consequences: calling God a liar The consequence of this false claim is to call God a liar, John says. Look at verse ten: “If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar, and His word is not in us.” Blaming the circumstances is blaming God. After all, who put us in the circumstances that we are in? That is the real problem. We rationalize by saying that we cannot help ourselves. However, our indulgence in sin really comes because we do not choose to meet our cir- cumstances with His strength. We do not like our circumstances, we do not want to live in them, and therefore we blame it all on God. We find that peace has fled from our hearts; we are har- assed, worried, and upset. We find ourselves flying off the handle even more easily, and losing our patience and we are baffled by it all, not knowing what is causing all this. It is all part of liv- ing in a dream world. The cure: A mediator Now at this point someone might well say, “You’ve just told me that all I need to do is to confess my sins before God and I again have fellowship with Him. That doesn’t seem like much of a penalty. Isn’t God being pretty easy on us?” I think that is why we have this little section at the beginning of chapter two. John ex- plains that nothing he has said should ever cause us to think lightly of sin in our lives. He says in Page 5verse one, “My little children, these things I write 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). He says, “I am not writing to encourage you to sin; my purpose is just the opposite. However, I know that in the real world, Christians are going to sin. What matters is that we have someone who can inter- cede, who can serve as our Mediator, when that happens. When we confess, the Son Himself rep- resents us before the Father. He intercedes for us with longings that are too deep for words. The qualifications: A propitiation powerful enough to encompass the world It helps to know His qualifications for His role as Mediator. He says in verse two, “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). He uses what is a very unusual word (for John) here. I am talking about that word propitiation. The Greek word is closely related to the word that is used to describe the mercy seat in the Old Testament tabernacle or temple. The mercy seat was the lid of the box that was called the Ark of the Covenant. You remember how God gave instructions to build this box out of acacia wood while Israel was still on their way to the Promised Land. The ark was the container when the book of God’s law was stored. That Law, of course, was what Israel would often violate. God gave it to them so that they wouldn’t sin, but He knew that they would anyway. Every time He looked down from heaven, when He looked into that box, He saw the broken Law. His commandments were regularly violated by Israel. So He gave Moses instructions for the peo- ple. Once a year, the high priest could take the blood of a sacrificial animal and go behind the curtain into the holy of holies and take some of the blood and apply it to the mercy seat, the lid of that box. What that meant was that now every time God looked down from heaven he saw the blood covering the broken Law. The Law was still broken, but the blood was a reminder that the sins were still covered. That is one of the things that Jesus Christ does for you and me. When we sin, God looks at us through the blood of His dear Son. The righteous anger that might otherwise come from God when we sin is paid for by Jesus Christ the righteous, who isn’t just barely good enough to cover our sins. No—He paid the price for the sins of the whole world. The whole world isn’t forgiven, of course—only those who trust in His work. But the price has been paid. The righteous anger of an offended God is satisfied by the matchless sacrifice that His Son offered for us. That is not a reason to sin. That is a reason not to sin. It is a reason to live in the real world. God hates phoniness. These false affirmations are ways of living in a dream world. God wants us to live openly before Him and call sin exactly what it is—and yet to rejoice when we realize that our fellowship can be instantly restored when we acknowledge what we have done before Him. That’s what He is offering you and me today—a harmonious, enjoyable relationship with Him, secured by the work of Jesus Christ Himself. C OPYRIGHT © 2001 P. D OUGLAS M C I NTOSH . T HIS DATA FILE / MANUSCRIPT IS THE SOLE PROPERTY OF THE COPYRIGHT HOLDER AND MAY BE COPIED ONLY IN ITS ENTIRETY FOR CIRCULATION FREELY WITHOUT CHARGE . A LL COPIES OF THIS DATA FILE / MANUSCRIPT MUST CONTAIN THE ABOVE COPYRIGHT NOTICE . 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