Sunday School | Foundations - Walking in the Light

Introduction

Good morning. We are glad to have you here for week two of our Foundations class. If you didn't pick up one of these booklets last week or this week when you walked in, it's our hope that if you have not yet joined the church — and that could be someone who just started coming to enjoy our fellowship in the last few months, or even within the last year — or it could be someone who's been coming here for seventeen years and has yet to join, you know who I'm talking about. But we are very excited.

I hope that you enjoyed last week as Tim talked about the good news, the gospel. There is a QR code here and it's up there too; we'd love for you to sign up so we could stay in touch and schedule a one-on-one appointment with you or you and your spouse to get to know you better, learn your story, and answer any questions you might have about our church that these classes haven't answered.

But just to restate our primary hope from this time together is that you would begin to learn some of the essential core foundational doctrines of our faith and practice as disciples of Jesus. And then more specifically, what does it mean that we're Anglican?

I think many of us have come to the Anglican communion by way of other faith traditions. We are, I would say most of us actually, that did not move to town as Anglicans and then looked for an Anglican church. You found this church because you appreciated something about it — the community, the way we lead worship, or the teaching — but it's important for whatever reason you landed here for you to understand our Anglican heritage. What are some of the things that we believe that are distinct about us because of our Anglican roots? We're really excited to talk about those.

Recap of Last Week

Who can remind me what we learned last week from Tim? If you just had to give me a nutshell from last week, what would you say? Jesus is King, or put the way Tim said it, Jesus became King.

The good news of the gospel is that something happened: Jesus became King. All authority — he says at the beginning of the Great Commission — has been given to me. All authority in heaven and on earth. We follow and serve a King who's in control of everything.

And our hope is not just that we would know we have someone who has become King as our Lord and Savior, but that we would begin to know and experience the King.

And we live in a world — as all of us are uncomfortably acquainted with — there are so many enemies to our intimacy with the King. There are so many things vying for our attention, so many distractions that bring us out of fellowship with Jesus.

The Bible is filled with strategies for how we can protect our union with Christ and how we can cultivate our intimacy with Him. And this morning, I want to talk about one in particular. I'm not going to tell you the title or the subject of what we're talking about today because I kind of want you to discover it on your own from the text we're going to look at.

Walking in Light and Continual Confession

So if you want to turn to 1 John, beginning in chapter one, we're going to look at verses five through ten. And as you turn there, I want to ask you a question: it's a question that I genuinely do want you to answer, but not out loud. It's a question I want you to consider in your heart. And if you're someone who takes notes — which I would encourage you to do — I was not a great note taker until I met my wife. Melissa always takes notes, and what that communicates about her is that she always believes that God has something for her, regardless of who's teaching. She's always taking notes, and I really learned from her.

I want to encourage you: take notes, not because we're so great, but because God is always speaking and He really does have something for each of us.

So here's the question: If you had to characterize your relationship — your present relationship with God — in one word, what would it be?

I just want you to think about that. If you had to reduce your current experience because of your union with Christ down to one word, what would that be?

Let me offer some possibilities: maybe you'd say, I feel close to Him. Maybe you'd feel distant. Maybe you'd say, I feel disappointed or confused — He's elusive. Maybe you would say that your relationship with Him feels kind of formal or transactional.

Maybe it feels inconsistent. Maybe it's joyful, maybe it's dry. What is it?

This is a diagnostic question to get a handle on where we currently are.

This book, this epistle — First John, written by the same one who wrote the Gospel of John — it is written to Christians. It is written to people who already have a relationship with Christ.

And yet, his purpose in this book is to consider how we are experiencing intimacy with God. How do we walk with Him in a way that is real and not just theoretical?

And if you asked me, like, if I had to say what my deepest longing for myself and for our church is, it's that that would characterize our relationship with Christ: that it's real. It's not just performative. It's not just something we say that we believe. It's not just making sure we have the right doctrine in our head, but that it's actually something that has changed the way that we live our life.

It's changed everything about how we see the world, how we think about parenting, how we love our spouse, how we show up at work. That's what a relationship with God is meant to be in 1 John.

He is showing us what it means to have a living, active, and real intimacy with Christ.

Here's the verse I want to look at first. In 1 John 1:5, in fact, if someone has 1 John 1 open, would you read verse 5 as loud as you can? Well, maybe not as loud as you can, but loud enough for everyone to hear.

For God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all. — 1 John 1:5

I think that's the gospel of John, so let's be clear. That's 1 John, toward the end — right before Revelation.

The Meaning of God as Light

What does it mean that God is light? I want to ask that not just rhetorically, but I would really love to hear from you: when you hear that phrase, “God is light,” what does it mean?

Catherine: Is that where you go when you're not sure what to do or you want wisdom?

Yes, okay. That's great. Yeah, so God being light, the implication there is there's no darkness in Him. In fact, that's what he says: in Him there is no darkness at all. And that's just common sense: whenever the lights turn on, darkness flees. Where there is darkness, there is no light.

How else do the writers of scripture use the concept of light? Anyone want to take a stab at it?

O'Connell: You look at the Sermon on the Mount, like Matthew 6:22, “The eye is the lamp of the body. If the eye is good, then the whole body is filled with light." But if the eye is filled with darkness, then the entire body is filled with darkness. And if the light within you is darkness, how great is that darkness?

Impressive memory of scripture. O'Connell, tell me: what does that mean? What is he trying to teach?

Well, like that shadow right there is darkness, but that is — it’s not an actual thing; it's the absence of something.

Yes. And so when we don't have our eyes fixed on God, like you were saying, we're in the darkness. When we are actually looking for God, we are in the light. And when we're chasing after Him, then He fills us.

Okay, so light is often used — light exposes things. Light, I mean, this is just common sense: light helps us to see reality. The fact that God is light, and this is why light is used throughout the scriptures to describe revelation. It's like God is turning the lights on so we can see reality for what it is.

God is light. It's revelation. It is exposing the hidden things.

Is there anything else that you would say about light? David says in Psalm 36, in your life, we see light. Yeah, that's great. He is the light by which we are able to see everything else. He's a filter through which we look in order to see reality for what it is.

Light, when it says that He exists in unapproachable light, what is that referring to? His glory. His holiness. You know, if you remember when Moses, I think it's in Exodus 33, he says to Jesus, “Show me your glory.” Essentially, God is like, “You can't see it. You'll die.” Because in your fallen, sinful state, you are not fit for His glory.

So the fact that God is light, it points to revelation, it points to being able to see, and it also points to His holiness. There are probably many other things that it points to as well, but those are the three primary.

Now, I want to ask the opposite question: what is darkness in Scripture? Darkness.

He tells us that if God is light, and if we claim to have fellowship with God, but we walk in darkness, then the truth is not in us. We're liars. And so, what is darkness?

Sin. Separation from God. Evil. Pardon? Lies. Yes. Absence.

So darkness is the opposite. It can mean a lot of those things. It can mean walking in sin, walking in kind of a blindness — not wanting to see reality or not being able to see reality because we're blind. We're in darkness in that sense.

Say that again? You hope others can't see.

Okay, that's interesting. And we'll get to that. That perhaps part of what walking in darkness means is walking in such a way that other people don't see some of what actually is going on.

Here is what John wants us to know: fellowship with Him means compatibility with His character. Light and darkness cannot mix.

Now, let's actually dig into this passage because John is going to give us three false claims that every human being is tempted to make. And he begins in verse six with the first lie.

Could someone read to me what John says in 1 John 1:6?

If we say we have fellowship with Him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. — 1 John 1:6

Okay, so the first lie is this: if we claim to have fellowship, but we walk in darkness, we lie. You may have a version that says, “If we say we have fellowship, but if we walk in darkness.” What he's saying is: it's easy to give lip service to following Christ. It's easy to say, “Yeah, I love God most,” and then my family and my country. A lot of people say that. But he says, if you're saying that, if you're claiming to have fellowship with God, but you're walking in darkness, you show yourself to be a liar. That's the first false claim.

That if we claim to have fellowship but we're walking in darkness. So it's important for us to understand what it means to walk in darkness. And we're going to get there, but I'm intentionally dragging this out.

Let me look at the second false claim. This is in verse 8. All of them begin with “if we say something follows.” If we say this, but this is actually true. Here's what it means.

So if someone could read in a voice that everyone can hear verse 8:

If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. — 1 John 1:8

That's great. So what you might have been tempted to think: well, walking in darkness clearly means walking in sin, but it can't mean that because what he says next in verse 8 is, “if we claim to be without sin, we're liars.”

So walking in darkness, at least in this context, John does not mean walking in sin. He means something else. And we'll get there.

Here's something important — just a little pause side note: when he says that we claim to have no sin, he's not talking about individual sins here. He's talking about sin as a condition that we all have, that we have been completely run through — every thought, every motive. I think, in Tim's Sunday school class, you guys spent a number of weeks talking about hermardiology, the doctrine of sin and what it does to us, that we are curved in on ourselves. Life is all about me. That's what sin does to us. It causes us to look to ourselves.

We see it in the Garden of Eden: “I will satisfy myself.” We're tempted to believe that God's truth is not true — I will go find my own satisfaction. It's the prodigal son, who turns away from the Father who has given him every good and perfect gift in pursuit of finding life somewhere else. That is what sin is.

And here's the reality: we are not sinners because we sin. We sin because we are sinners. Did I say that right? Yeah. So the point is, sin is our native language. It's who we are. We don't become sinners because we commit a sin. That's just who we are.

That's what it means to be human. And if we deceive ourselves, if we lie about that, then we deceive ourselves. We're not telling the truth.

And so walking in darkness has to mean something different.

And quickly, in verse 10, he says something similar:

If we say we have not sinned, we make ourselves, we make Him a liar.

Here he is talking about more specific sins. And there are times that we may be tempted to minimize or suppress or pretend that we're just standing for truth and righteousness when actually we're looking down our nose in judgment.

We are masters at reframing obvious sins as something other than sin. And John is telling us: when we do that, not just that we're liars, we make Him a liar.

So what does it mean, then, if walking in darkness does not mean walking in sin? I want to show you — this is actually something; oh, sorry, that was rhetorical. I'm going to...

Well, actually, do you want to take a stab at it?

I was just thinking that your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path. So I thought, when you ask what light is, it's like where we go because we're in darkness. Not that we're, you know, that can be in the dark because we just don't know, or we refuse to see it or something, but we're still saved, we're still Christians. But we go to the word because it's the light.

Yeah, yeah. This is something I actually learned from Tim that I never had seen. This is a passage I've read dozens and dozens of times. I had never noticed that 6, 7, 8, and 9 are what’s called parallelism. That 6 and 7 are making a claim — like if, then; 8 and 9 are making the same claim in a different way. And what that means is that verse 6 is going to correspond to verse 8, and verse 7 is going to correspond to verse 9.

And that matters. I want to show you why. It is going to teach us what it means to walk in the dark — which is just a big long setup for what I want to talk about. So let's look at those together.

So, let me read to you verse 6:

If we say we have fellowship with Him while we walk in darkness, we lie, we do not practice the truth. — 1 John 1:6

That corresponds to verse 8:

If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.

Obvious that those two are connected. Now, verse 7 is going to connect to verse 9, and here's where the lights start to come on.

In verse 7:

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.

That's great news. He's telling you that there's a way that you can walk that leads to two things — fellowship with Him, fellowship with others, and a cleansing of all our sins.

To the degree that you understand the depths of your own depravity, that becomes better and better and better news.

He cleanses to the uttermost all of our sins.

Again, what does it mean to walk in the light? Well, we're going to see what it means here because verse 7 corresponds to verse 9. And here's what he says:

Remember, if we walk in the light — as He is in the light — we have fellowship. And in verse 9:

If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

What does it mean to walk in the light? It means to confess our sins.

It is so easy to read this passage and think that what it means to walk in the light is to be perfect, to be holy as He is holy, to follow in His footsteps, to get it right, to work on moral perfection. Honestly, that would have been a decent answer. There are places in Scripture that say precisely that: ‘Be holy, therefore, because I am holy.'

But that is not what John's saying here. He is not equating our personal holiness with walking in the light.

What he is saying is that walking in the light is living in a state of perpetual confession. That we live in a place of continually being exposed before the Lord.

That in the moment of realizing that I have grieved Him, that I have sinned, I don't try to stuff it down and pretend it didn't happen.

That's the temptation of verses 8 and 10, I think, that we would minimize or try to pretend that we haven't sinned.

The freedom that we get to experience in walking with Him and experiencing genuine, intimate fellowship is unlocked not when we start acting better, but when we just get real honest about how bad we are: that we come to a place of just continual and perpetual endless confession.

And what is the benefit of that? The benefit is forgiveness — complete forgiveness. Or, as John would put it:

He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

Perpetual confession means perpetual forgiveness and perpetual cleansing, which we need.

But I want you to notice something in particular: what John says here is, He is faithful and just to forgive our sins. What does that mean? Why would he use the word "just" here?

Wouldn't it make more sense for him to say He is faithful and merciful to forgive us?

What do you think?

He paid the price.

Where did that come from?

Back there.

Yes. This is so important: He appeals to God's justice when he's talking about His own forgiveness. He's appealing to something that Christ has already done. It is a finished work.

And therefore, I'm not just forgiven because I ask for it; I am forgiven once and for all because of a single work that He performed and completed on the cross.

And what that means is, when I come to Him asking for forgiveness, I can demand justice. It almost sounds wrong to say that, but that is the language used — demanding that God be just in forgiving me because of my unification with Christ and all that He has done.

That's what it means to be baptized into Christ: that everything that is true of Christ is now true of me. All of the benefits that belong to Christ now flow to His children. We are hidden in Him.

This is what Paul talks about in Romans 6:

He died to sin; you died to sin. He was raised to life; you are raised in newness of life.

The same power that raised Jesus from the dead is at work in you.

He listens to your prayers because He listens to Jesus. You are hidden in Him.

This is why He says He is just to forgive you. And this is the place we are called to stay in — this posture of ongoing confession.

So, to be clear: the contrast here is not sinless versus sinful. It is hidden versus exposed.

Light does not create dirt — it exposes it. When you turn on the light and see dust everywhere, it didn't come into existence because you turn the light on; it was already there.

And this is what it means to come into contact with Jesus, who is the light: we begin to see. But we can come boldly to the throne of grace because we know that He is just. And what Christ has accomplished for us is a completed work, and we rest in it.

The last thing I want you to notice about 1 John 1:9 is that the language he uses is about cleansing — it's an ongoing thing. To the degree that we bring ourselves under His healing and saving and cleansing blood, we will be renewed over and over again and conformed into the image of His Son.

I would like all of us to consider that confession is the doorway to joy. It is the doorway to genuine and deep fellowship with Jesus.

We spend so much time trying to clean ourselves up when what John is suggesting we do here is just come to be honest about who we are. That's where intimacy occurs.

Now, let me ask you: why is that? Why is ongoing and perpetual confession leading to deeper intimacy and joy?

Don?

Yeah, I would say another benefit of walking in the light would fix the problem the way we started this morning when you asked us about our relationship with Jesus. Many of the things you listed were not very good.

Yeah. And the minute that you start confessing — when I start confessing — I realize that presenting myself to Him and checking that out can feel different. But the minute I confess, I know that I'm thinking exactly the way He is, and we're thinking the same way. And that's a closeness that we can't be.

That's fantastic, Don. In fact, do you know what the Greek word for confession means?

To agree.

It's to say the same thing. When we confess, we're essentially doing what?

Agreeing.

Exactly. It's to agree with God's view of our sin. We're calling sin what it is; we're agreeing with Him. That's great, thank you.

Anything else? Any other reason why perpetual confession leads to deeper joy and intimacy?

He's opposed to the proud, but He gives grace to the humble.

Yes, absolutely.

God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble.

I want you to think for a second about human relationships. You and I have a fundamental desire for many things, but we want to be loved and we want to be known.

And those two things are deeply connected.

In fact, to experience being fully loved, what's required?

To be fully known.

That we're fully known. Our experience of how loved we are will be in direct proportion to how known we are.

And we have a say in what we will offer Him to know.

When John says, “If you claim to have fellowship with God but walk in darkness,” the reason that is a contradiction is that you cannot truly have fellowship with someone you're hiding from.

It will start to feel fake, fake, false, disingenuous.

It starts to feel rote and perfunctory.

It's not going to be genuine fellowship because you're not really there. You're not the real you.

It's a version of you you'd like the world to believe, and you'd like God to believe.

But He's pretty smart.

And He knows it's not the real you.

This is what Paul Miller, in The Praying Life, describes when he talks about abiding.

He says, “The key to abiding is to be like a stick connected to a branch.”

And sticks are needy, clingy.

They're honest about their need.

They're desperate.

And what he describes: bringing the real you to the real God.

And if we aren't bringing the real us to the real God, we will not experience Him.

We will not have fellowship with Him.

Again, the call is not “be better.”

It's just “be more honest,” and experience His cleansing blood and His joy-filled fellowship.

Okay, put another way: we can't have fellowship when there is pretense.

And that is true in our friendships, in our marriages, and certainly in our relationship with God.

The people who experience the most joy in Christ are not the ones who sin the least; they are the ones who confess the most.

I just want to say that again. When you look throughout the Gospels, who's the first person that comes to mind?

For me, it's the sinful woman from Luke 7.

She’s an immoral woman; she falls at Jesus' feet.

She's crying, breaking perfume, giving everything to Him, weeping.

Why?

Because she knows how sinful she is and how deeply she needs His forgiveness.

And it expands her love and intimacy for Him.

Any other thoughts?

The woman at the well.

Have you, I mean, gosh, what's the Chosen’s rendering of that miracle? I cry every time I see it — doesn’t matter how many times I see it.

Her running away: “He told me everything I ever did.”

See, she didn't even willingly confess.

He shined a light; He let her know, “I see it, and it's okay. I love you. I see it.”

And that could be misunderstood, misleading.

It's not okay, but I love you anyway.

Let me just finish with a few questions that I don't know if we have time to really talk about, but I would love for you to write them down and think about later.

Three questions:

First, where am I walking in subtle darkness?

Maybe another way to put that would be: where am I not being honest about the sin in my life?

Either just from blindness or an intentional reframing of the sin.

Second: what sin have I been minimizing rather than confessing?

And third: do I believe — and I know we're going to talk about this at church today, if you haven't already — do I believe that Christ's blood is enough to cleanse me? Not just from guilt, but to purify me from all unrighteousness? That as I bring myself under His fountain of blood, that I don't just get forgiveness, but I actually start to transform?

That as I confess, He begins this transformational process in me where I start to look more like Him?

Do you believe that there is that kind of power in His blood for your forgiveness and your formation?

Because that's what John is suggesting here.

And as we leave here, and as you maybe come back to this later today, I just want to encourage you to realize what is being offered to you:

That the price of intimacy is a willingness to be exposed. But the cost of hiddenness is no intimacy, no fellowship.

And if that's what we choose, we will likely not make it with Christ.

Because at a certain point, there will be a logical disconnect: “Why am I following Him if I'm just going through the motions?”

Eventually, just say, “This is not worth it.”

It's exactly what happens in John chapter 6. At the end of that chapter, everyone is like, “Forget it, we're leaving.”

And I don't want that to be the case for me, and I don't want it to be the case for you.

The key to maintaining a closeness to Christ is just living in a perpetual state of honesty about my sin.

Conclusion

Amen.

Let me pray for us.

Father, thank you for this time together. I pray that we would increasingly understand how desperate we are for your cleansing because of our sin.

When I think about the light — when I drive into the sunlight and my dirty windshield is exposed — I didn't see it before, but it was already there.

It's just that the light revealed it.

I pray that we would be willing to step into the uncomfortable light so we can experience the all-cleansing blood of your Son, Jesus.

We cannot clean ourselves; we need you.

In Christ's name, amen.

Thanks for coming, everyone. See you at 11:00 if you're sticking around.