The Sri Lankan writer, Ajith Fernando, mentions an Irish
Methodist Minister called George Good, in the preface to a couple of his books.
This is what he says of George: ‘He introduced me to the beauty of
godliness.’ What a wonderful thing to be
able to say about someone!
I know what Ajith meant, for George Good happened to be a
family friend of ours. He was one of the
kindest, most caring, gentle and morally strong men I have ever met. I believe that George’s character was rooted
in his understanding of the grace of God.
You see, what we believe really matters. When the gospel goes deeply into a person’s
mind it changes their heart. If you want
to convince your friends that Christianity is true then they will need to
witness its power in the way you live.
- The truth causes us to love God’s people (6-7)
We can do a little detective work to see what the false-teachers were teaching. John writes, ‘If we claim …’, because the false-teachers were claiming certain things. 'If we claim to have fellowship with him yet walk in darkness, we lie and do not live by the truth.'
The false-teachers claimed that they knew God, but their lifestyle revealed that they neither knew him nor loved him. In particular, their teaching did not challenge them to love God’s people. These false-teachers surrounded themselves with people who listened to their spurious teaching and then distanced themselves from those who held firm to the gospel. So John reminds the church that, 'if we walk in the light ... we have fellowship with one another’.
How you treat people, especially God’s people, reveals
whether you understand and accept the gospel.
If you can see a God who sends his Son to die on a cross, for a world of
underserving people like us, then people will mater to you. If you can see a king who comes from heaven
to earth, washes people’s feet, and willingly submits himself to the shame of a
criminal death, then you will know the importance of true humility. If you are experiencing the transforming work
of the Holy Spirit in your life, then you should be displaying his fruit of
love, gentleness, kindness, and self-control.
Church is not a building but a community, and our attitude
towards this community reveals a lot about our spiritual health. Don’t keep people at arm’s length, and don’t
imagine that everyone here will be easy to get on with. Indeed, those people who get on your nerves
are, in some ways, God’s blessing to you—for they are the people who make us realise
how much we need to depend on God to truly love his people. They are the people
who cause us to fall on our knees, confess the hardness of our hearts and seek
the transforming grace of the Holy Spirit.
The great thing about people that you don’t naturally like is that their
presence here forces you to depend on God for the love that can only be found
through his work in our lives. See them
as God’s gift to you in this school of grace!
Before we move on to the next point, I want you to notice
that walking in the light does not mean that we will never let God down. Tragically, in this life, we will often
compromise in the battle with the sinful nature—including the fact that we will
often fail to love God’s people as we ought.
But thank God that the blood of Jesus literally, ‘goes on purifying us
from all sin’ (1:5).
As one commentator writes, ‘To walk in the light means to
become increasingly conscious of sin that would hinder our fellowship with God
and our fellow Christians, and as that sin is revealed, not to run away into
the darkness again. Rather we bring it,
by faith, to the God whose Son gave his life that all our sins might be
forgiven and removed.’
2. The truth should
make us humble (8-9)
Imagine you have one of those old slide projectors. You want to show some of your friends pictures
of a trip you took long ago. You turn it
on and project its beam onto your sitting-room wall.
Without any slides in place its beam is very
bright. The wall that had looked perfect
in normal light now reveals slight cracks and you can see a spider-web that had
gone unnoticed. Something similar
happens as we come to understand the God who is light and realise more of his
purity and perfection. His light exposes
how failed and flawed our lives are.
Again, look at what the false-teachers were claiming. ‘If we claim to be without sin …’, however,
when we live in fellowship with God the light of his purity exposes our
failings. No-one who truly understands
the gospel can be self-righteous.
An atheist friend of mine, on Facebook, suggested to me that
the thing that draws people to religion is the desire to feel superior from
others. I suggested that the Christian
gospel should have the exact opposite accept, for you don’t go to Jesus until
you realise that you are a moral bankrupt.
Jesus had nothing to say to those people who saw themselves as good
people.
In verse 9 we have what I think of as the most comforting
promise of all Scripture. ‘If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and
will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.’ Learn that off by heart and understand
it. The forgiveness here is not the
forgiveness from condemnation, for there is now no condemnation for those in
Christ Jesus (Romans 8:1). The
forgiveness here relates to the fact that when we sin we damage our intimacy
with God, but God is always calling us to come home and enjoy his embrace. None of us fully see the multitude of ways
that we let our heavenly Father down, but he is calling us to live a life of
confession where we daily acknowledge our need of his grace.
I think that it’s a spiritually healthy thing to lie in bed
at night and look back over the day trying to see the many ways that you did
not do what you ought to have done and did many things you should not have
done, then acknowledge that the sins you are aware of are only the tip of the
ice-burg of the sin he sees, and, confessing your sin, thank him for the fact
that he is faithful to forgive.
Sometimes the shame that we feel when we fall into an
obvious sin reveals more pride than godly sorrow. We say, ‘I can’t believe I did that.’ How foolish!
We should not be surprised at how wicked we can be, and how deep we can
fall. A more humble attitude realises,
‘that there, but for the grace of God, go I.’
3. The truth exposes
our need of grace (10)
‘If we claim we have not sinned …’
The false-teachers said ‘sin doesn’t matter’. Then they claimed, ‘we are not sinners.’ Now they say, ‘we have not sinned.’ Can you see that they clearly don’t get the
gospel? Such people have no idea why
Jesus had to go to the cross. Christ
died for sinners. But they don’t think
they have no sin!
Could anyone believe such a thing today? I was having a discussion with an atheist
friend and he admitted of himself, ‘I am just a flawed human-being like every
other person.’ That sounds good. But I wonder how far he is willing to go with
this. Would he be willing to say that
his heart is evil beyond repair? While
he does not believe in either heaven nor hell, would he be willing to admit
that he deserves to go to hell? The
gospel only makes sense when we see that we are morally bankrupt, evil and vile
people who are loved by a gracious and merciful God.
On, ‘The Meaning of Life’, Gay Byrne asked Gerry Adams, ‘So
what if it’s all true and you have to stand before God on the Judgement Day. What will you say? He replied, ‘I’ll say, “I did my best. Here I
am. Take me in.”’ It’s an answer that reveals that he does not
understand the gospel!
Stafford Carson, a godly Presbyterian minister, wrote on his
blog: ‘If doing our best was enough to
get us into heaven, then why did Jesus die on the cross? If doing our best is enough, then the death of
Jesus seems strangely unnecessary? The
fact is our best is just not good enough. That’s why we need a Saviour.’
Conclusion
You see, what we believe really matters. When the gospel goes deeply into a person’s
mind it changes their heart. If you want
to convince your friends that Christianity is true then they will need to
witness its power in the way you live.
Grasping the gospel should make us the most thankful people
in the world, for God sent his Son to die for a wicked person like me! There may be a spiritual problem if we are
always grumbling! Grasping the gospel
should make us humble, because I am a Christian despite who I am, rather than
because of who I am. Grasping the gospel
should enable us to be real and vulnerable, for I am a liar if I try to pretend
to you that I am without sin, I am a person who lives in God because the blood
of his Son goes on cleansing me of all sin!
This gospel was not just something that you needed to hear
before you were born again. This is the
gospel you need to remind yourself of everyday.
This gospel should be producing within us the beauty of godliness. So, make it your daily habit to preach the gospel
to yourself and live in its life-transforming light!
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