Welcome to Bible Insights with Wayne Conrad.

God's word is a lamp to our feet and a light on our path. Today's topic, being truthful about God and sin. I'm continuing to speak from the epistle of John, his first epistle, 1 John chapter one and chapter two. We considered this in my last podcast and I want to take up from there.

This is the passage, 1 John, beginning at verse five. This is the message that we've heard from him and proclaim to you that God is light and in him is no darkness at all. Now, when John writes these words, that him he's speaking about is the Lord Jesus Christ himself. Because in the paragraph before this, he talks about the fact that he as an apostle, along with the other apostles, knew Jesus Christ in the flesh. He asserts the reality of the incarnation and the reality of him being a eyewitness of the Lord Jesus Christ to every aspect of his life. And so, when he says this is a message we've heard from him, he's saying this is what our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ taught us that we are now proclaiming to you.

And the first thing he says is about God. You see, it is truthfully all about God. It begins with God, and it must end with God. He makes this assertion about God. God is light. Now granted, that's, we would say, a metaphor, a picture, but in reality, God is light. The scripture speaks about the fact that he's the source of light in the entire universe, but God himself is light. And when the scripture uses his term, it's speaking about God as being holy, pure, excellent, perfection. God is light and in him is no darkness at all.

So, John uses throughout his epistle this contrast between light and darkness. Light referring to God, light referring to truth, light referring to holiness. And darkness is the opposite. Darkness refers to the ways of this world out of fellowship with God. Darkness refers to the domain of Satan. It refers to evil, that which is opposed to God.

But now John switches to talking about fellowship with God. You see, the whole reason he wrote his epistle was that he wants his readers who have fellowship with God and one another to have true fellowship and to have fellowship that is not disturbed by false teaching, false professors who come into their midst or who are on the fringe of them are seeking to woo them away with false teaching.

So, for three times he uses this expression, if we say, if we say, now he doesn't make that kind of a statement himself, nor do the other apostles. In fact, true believers do not make the statements that are going to follow these words, but he uses what we might call a pastoral we. In other words, when I want to speak about sin, or I want to speak about things that are true collectively, then I use the word that is inclusive. So, if I say, he says, if we say, we have fellowship with him.

So, all of these are a claim to have fellowship with God. If we say we have fellowship with him, I'm talking in verse six. If we say we have fellowship with him and yet keep on walking in the darkness, we are lying and not practicing the truth. Now that is a translation known as the New English Translation and it's bringing out clearly the meaning of the verbs that are being used and the participles in this particular verse. If we say we have fellowship with him and yet keep on walking in the darkness, we are lying and are not practicing the truth.

So, this is a denial of the sinfulness of sin. It's a denial, basically that sin is a non-entity. This is the outlook of many people, especially in the West. A failure to realize the nature of sin itself and the reality of sin itself. There is the wholesale denial. That's just religious talk. And so, we have other explanations for when things are not doing right, there are mistakes, there may be errors, or we haven't yet evolved enough. But the scripture is very plain; that sin is a reality. And the scripture itself defines what sin is.

Now John, in his letter, says that sin is lawlessness. That is disregarding the law of God and of Christ. And in the New Testament, especially in the sayings of our Lord Jesus Christ, he spells out these commandments, especially in his speech to his disciples just before he went to the cross. And that is that we must love one another as he loves us. We must walk in the truth of Christ's love and of Christ's own person. The holiness that he exhibits. If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, then we are lying. We lie and we do not practice the truth.

So, the opposite of that, he says, but if we walk in the light, he sees in the light. We have fellowship with one another so we can Get a hold of the fact that this attitude has kept those who hold it away from true fellowship with believers. So, they may be on the fringe or those who are outside of it and they claim sin, well, that's nothing. So, they don't really see that they are sinners, and that sin is a reality that must be confronted.

Now, each time John gives us a false view, he then gives us the corrective. In other words, those who hold this view can have salvation. They can know God if they grab a hold of the correction. The correction is understanding the atoning work of the Lord Jesus Christ. 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.

So those who hold this, first of all, are outside of the fellowship, outside of the fellowship with God, and truly outside of the fellowship of believers. because this attitude keeps you from knowing God, and it keeps you from having a vital life with other believers. Now, there can be those in the external form of the church that might actually have this view. They don't necessarily state it, but it keeps him; it holds him back from having fellowship with one another.

You see, in the Christian life, sin is a reality that we acknowledge. and we acknowledge it by confessing it. David gives us a great example of that in his own life when he failed horribly; he sinned horribly. But if we read Psalm 51, we can begin to see what true confession is like. He spells it out. I was guilty, and these are the things I was guilty of. And he asked God for his mercy, God for his grace. And if we do that, we are people in the light, and the blood of Christ continually cleanses us from our sin.

The second pseudo-claim, one who claims to be in fellowship with God but truly is not, is the one who says, if we have no sin, we deceive ourselves. Now the word sin here is in the It's being used in the idea of a single state, no sin. So, it's talking about the quality, the state, or the condition of not having sin, of not having guilt. In other words, this is a failure to realize that our nature as humans is sinful, that we are born sinners. under the condemnation of God. So, this is a failure to see that our deeds are evil, and we do actual sins from a evil nature that God himself has to handle. And though we come to faith in Christ and though God justifies us because of the work of Christ, we still have struggles with sin in the whole process of what we call sanctification, growing into maturity, into holiness.

Why? Because we're still in a state, a body, a body that is still subject to sin and to death. And though our spirits have been born anew, we have a new man, there's still the conflict that continues. Romans chapter seven and eight deals with this.

So, the view is advanced that we don't have a sinful nature, that our nature is not sinful. So, this is a failure to recognize the sinful nature. But we need to come to realize that this is true about us. And this is the corrective that John writes. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. So, we must confess that we are sinners in need of God's cleansing in our lives.

The third is the denial of any sinful deed. It's saying, I did not sin. I have not sinned, and what I did is not evil. And this is talking about sins. And he uses the past tense. If we say we have not sinned, so a particular deed, particular attitude, particular word is in mind here. If we have this attitude, then we're calling God a liar because God says that we're born sinners and God says in his own standards that that which you did is sin. And if we will not agree with God, then we're calling God a liar and his word is not in us.

These three attitudes that John talks about, these three categories, these pseudo claims of fellowship, are all saying that God is not being truthful, but we know the real score. We're calling God a liar to his face. His word is not in us. That is very dangerous territory.

But now you, John, is a realist. Though these attitudes are basically what non-believers have. Those who have false theologies about sin and about God. John realizes though, though we are in right relationship with God, we can still and do still sometimes sin. And so, he says, I'm writing these things to you, my little children, so that you may not sin. I want you to realize these truths about sin, about human nature, and about the nature of God is life, so that you will not sin. So, he indicates the possibility of anyone sinning, a believer sinning, a Christian sinning.

But he does not want to leave us, then, in a state of hopelessness, feeling, well, I can't help it. I just sin, so I just can't really worry about it. I can't. But yes, we can fight evil. We must fight evil because God who has forgiven us, the God who is light and the God who has given us a new nature has also given us the equipment and the indwelling of the Holy Spirit and his righteous and holy law and the fellowship of believers in which we share. He has given us the resources and the equipment we need to fight against sin in our lives.

And so, we need to be honest. And we need to admit to God when we have sinned. Call it by its name. And we can have all confidence when we do this because you see, God has appointed an advocate for us. And that advocate, the one who comes alongside of us to help us. That advocate who is the one who has made the atoning sacrifice so that God can justly forgive us of our sins is the Lord Jesus Christ himself, the righteous one, the one who shares in our humanity, and yet one who shares in deity, the one who is fully God and fully man, a full human, but a sinless human, one who is tested in every way as we are, yet did not sin. And in His humanity and deity, He has taken to Himself that guilt which belongs to us, those sins which we have committed, and He has paid the price for them in His death on the cross.

So that His blood, as the resurrected Lord, His blood in His Continuous application to us as we confess our sin cleanses us from all of our sins. God, you see, forgives us. He erases our debt. He cancels out our transgression, but he also purifies us. The blood of Jesus Christ goes on cleansing, goes on washing us clean from our sins.

Lord Jesus gave a great example of this in the upper room the night before he's put on trial and led to the cross. He took a basin of water and he went around to his disciples' feet and he began to wash their feet after they had come in from walking on the dusty road and now they're gathered in the Lord's, in the room where they're having the Lord's table, we're gonna call it. It was a Passover. And he began to wash their feet.

And when he got to Peter, Peter said, no, Lord, you're not gonna wash my feet. And Jesus said, if I don't wash you, you have no part of me. And then Peter said, "Well, don't start with my feet, wash my whole body.” And Jesus said, Peter, the man who's washed, the man who's been washed doesn't need to take a full bath, but he needs his feet washed. I'm paraphrasing the words. But what Christ is saying is that we need to have the pollution of our daily walks, whether we're out of fellowship with God, whatever way we may be, washed.

This does not affect our state of justification and our adoption of the children of God. We don't have to constantly be born again. We can only be born again once. We're justified forever. But sanctification, is a process that continues until it is completed when our Lord Jesus Christ returns in glory.

But you see, when we sin and we confess our sin, we have this great confidence that our Lord Jesus Christ is our great high priest and advocate in heaven, that the Father's right hand points to the wounds, scars of his body, where he had paid for our sin. And he says, Father, look at them only through my sacrifice for them. And that's what the Father does. He forgives us, He cleanses us and constantly renews us because of our Lord Jesus Christ.

We have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ, the righteous one. And for that, we are eternally grateful.

This has been Wayne Conrad with Bible Insights.