1 John 1

CHAPTER 1THEME: God is light; how the little children may have fellowship with GodUnder the broad heading, God is Light, we see first the prologue of this epistle, then we shall see how the “little children,” as John calls believers, may have fellowship with God. As I mentioned in the Introduction, John has written to meet the first heresy which entered the church, Gnosticism. The Gnostics boasted of a superknowledge. They accepted the deity of Jesus but denied His humanity. Notice how John will give the true gnosticismthat is, the true knowledge of God.

1 John 1:1

GOD IS LIGHT: PROLOGUE"That which was from the beginning." What beginning is John talking about? In the Scriptures are three beginnings, two of which we are very familiar with. The first is found in Gen_1:1: “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.” That is an undated beginning. We do not know when God created the heaven and the earth. I have read book after book, volume after volume, on the questions raised by the first chapter of Genesis. If I stacked up all those books, I am confident that they would reach the ceiling of my study. And after reading all of them, I am convinced that not one scientist or one theologian has the foggiest notion when Gen_1:1 really happened. I am told that today there are some Christian scientists who are taking what they call the “new earth view.” They are claiming that the earth on which we live is not as old as the science of the past claimed it to be. When I started school it was estimated that the earth was three to seven hundred thousand years old. Then science began to speak in terms of millions of years. By the time I finished school it was estimated that the earth was about 2½million years old, and then, I understand, they reached the billion mark. Now some scientists are moving away from the older dating of the earth and are setting a more recent date. Well, Gen_1:1 would fit into either theory, a new earth or an old earth, since it is not dated. All that the first verse in Genesis declares is that God created the heaven and the earth. Until you are ready to accept that fact, you are not prepared to read very much further in the Word of God, because the remainder of the Bible rests upon that first verse. Did God create this universe or is it a happenstance? It is ridiculous to think that the universe just happened.

As Edwin Conklin put it, “The probability of life originating by accident is comparable to the probability of the unabridged dictionary originating from an explosion in a print shop.” My friend, there is intelligence behind this universe in which you and I live. As to the date of the beginning, we do not know; but if you need a few billion years to fit into your scheme of interpretation, it is here because we are dealing with the God of eternity. God has eternity behind Him. Although I don’t know what He was doing before He created the heaven and the earth, I know He was doing something. Then God created the heaven and the earth, and He did it for a purpose. He is working out a plan in His universe today which is bigger than any human mind can comprehend.

When God recorded His act of creation, He wasn’t trying to give us a study in geology. However, He put a lot of rocks around for you to look at if you are interested in trying to figure out a date. There is a second beginning which we find in the Word of God. It is the first verse in John’s Gospel: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” He adds, “The same was in the beginning with God.” Then he comes to the act of creation: “All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made” (Joh_1:1-3). My friend, go back as far as you can think, beyond creation, back billions and trillions of years, and out of eternity comes the Lord Jesus Christ. Way back there He is already past tense; He is the Ancient of Days. Notice that John has written, “In the beginning was [not is] the Word.” In other words, this is a beginning that doesn’t even have a beginning because He had no beginning. “In the beginning was the Word” means that you can go back in the past as far as you want to, put down your peg anywhere, and Christ comes out of eternity to meet you. That is big stuff; it is bigger than my little mind can comprehend. I am unable to grasp the immensity of it until I come to Joh_1:14: “And the Word was made [born] flesh….” That takes me back to Bethlehem where He was born, and I begin to catch on at that time. The third beginning is the one we began with in 1Jn_1:1"That which was from the beginning," which refers to the time Christ came into this world at Bethlehem. When He was about thirty years old, John became acquainted with Him. John and his brother James met Him in Jerusalem. Later they were with their father, mending nets, when Jesus came by and called them to follow Him. They left their father (probably a well-to-do fisherman) with the hired men and followed Jesus. Now John says, I want to tell you about Him, and he asserts the reality of the total personality of Jesus: (1) “We have heard” (through the ear-gate); (2) “we have seen” (through the eye-gate); (3) “we have looked upon” (lit., gazed intently upon); and (4) “our hands have handled.” John, of course, is speaking of the incarnation of Jesus and of his own association with Him when He was here upon this earth. “Which we have heard.” John is not prattling about his opinions and his speculations. He is talking about the fact that he heard the Lord Jesus, heard His voice, and when he listened to Him, he listened to God. “Which we have seen with our eyes.” Not only had the apostles heard Him speak, but they also had seen Him with their own eyes. In our day we cannot see Him with our physical eyes, but we can see Him with the eye of faith. Peter told us, “Whom having not seen, ye love; in whom, though now ye see him not, yet believing, ye rejoice with joy unspeakable and full of glory” (1Pe_1:8). And the Lord Jesus said to Thomas, who would not believe He had been resurrected until he could see and handle Him, “…Thomas, because thou hast seen me, thou hast believed: blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed” (Joh_20:29). We today are walking by faith, and the Lord Jesus Christ can be made as real to us as He was to Thomas. As the hymn writer expressed it But warm, sweet, tender, even yet A present help is He; And faith has still its Olivet, And love its Galilee. “We May Not Climb” John G. Whittier “Which we have looked upon.” The word looked is from the Greek word theaomai from which we get our English word theatre, meaning “to gaze intently upon.” The theatre is a place where you sit and look, not just with a passing glance but with a gazea steady gaze for a couple of hours. John is saying that for three years they gazed upon Jesus. It was John who wrote, “And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up” (Joh_3:14). During the wilderness march, the people who had been bitten by the serpents were to look for healing to that brass serpent which had been lifted up on a pole. John is applying that to the Lord Jesus and saying that now we are to look to Him in faith for salvation. After we have done that, we are to gaze upon Himand we will do that in this epistle.

To look, saves; to gaze, sanctifies. John wrote in his Gospel, “And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth” (Joh_1:14). Many of us need to do more than simply look to Him for salvation. We need to spend time gazing upon Him with the eye of faith. “Our hands have handled.” John says that they did more than merely gaze upon Him from a distance; they handled Him. John himself reclined upon His bosom in the Upper Room. Speaking to His own after His resurrection, He said, “Behold my hands and my feet, that it is I myself: handle me, and see; for a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me have. And when he had thus spoken, he shewed them his hands and his feet” (Luk_24:39-40). Dr. G. Campbell Morgan takes the position that when the Lord Jesus held out His hands to Thomas and to the other disciples, they were so overwhelmed that they did not handle Him. Instead, they bowed down in reverence to Him. That would be the normal thing to do, but John makes it clear that they handled the Lord. This is one place where I disagree with Dr. Morgan, (and I disagree with him in a few other places, too) but I dare not disagree with a man of his caliber unless there is a reason for it. But when John says that they handled Him, I think he means they felt His hands and fingered the nailprints which convinced them that He was indeed man, the Word made flesh, God manifest in the flesh. After the death of Paul, about A.D. 67, a heresy arose in the church called Gnosticism. Gnosticism is the opposite of agnosticism. Agnosticism holds that the reality of God is unknown and probably unknowable. There are many agnostics in our colleges and universities, as you know. Charles Spurgeon used to say that agnostic is but the Greek word for the Latin ignoramus. So one might say, “I don’t believe the Bible, because I am an ignoramus!” The agnostic says, “I do not know.” The Gnostic says, “I do know.” The Gnostics were a group which came into the church claiming to have a superior knowledge which simple Christians did not have. They considered themselves super-duper saints, knowing more than anyone else knew. The Gnostics came up with quite a few novel ideas, which I have dealt with in more detail in the Introduction. One of their heretical teachings was that Jesus was merely a man when He was born. He was just like any other human being at the time of His birth, but at His baptism, the Christ came upon him, and when He was hanging on the Cross, the Christ left Him. John refutes this teaching in no uncertain terms when he said in his Gospel record, “The Word was born flesh.” And here in his first epistle, he emphatically declares that after Jesus came back from the dead, He was still a human being. In essence John says, “We handled HimHe was still flesh and bones.” You see, John is not talking about a theory. He is talking about Someone he heard, he saw, and he handled.

1 John 1:2

“For the life was manifested.” That is, the life was brought out into the open where men could see it. John is talking about the Word of Life, the Lord Jesus Christ, as we shall see in the next verse. On one occasion after I had given a message, a man whom I would call a smart aleck came to me with this question: “You talked about eternal life. What is eternal life? I would like to know what eternal life is.” So I gave him this verse: “The life was manifested, and we have seen it, and bear witness, and shew unto you that eternal life, which was with the Father, and was manifested unto us.” Then I said to him, “The eternal life that John is talking about is none other than Jesus Christ. If you want a definition, eternal life is a Person, and that Person is Christ. It is so simple that even you can grasp it. You either have Christ, or you don’t have Christ.

You either trust Christ, or you don’t trust Christ. If you do trust Christ, you have eternal life. If you don’t trust Christ, you don’t have eternal life. Now since that’s eternal life, do you have eternal life?” He turned and walked away without answering, which was an evidence that he did not have eternal life, and he did not want to pursue the matter any further.

1 John 1:3

HOW TO HAVE FELLOWSHIP WITH GODNow John is going to say something which is quite wonderful. He is going to tell us that we can have fellowship with God! One of the most glorious prospects before us today is that you and I can have fellowship with God. “That which we have seen and heard"this is the third time he has said this, and it should be penetrating our consciousnesses by now. Why, John, are you repeating this? “That ye also may have fellowship with us.” He is saying that believers can have fellowship one with another. “And truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ.” How are we ever going to have fellowship with God? It does present a dilemma. God is holy. Man is unholy. How can this gulf be bridged? How can you bring God and man together, or as Amos put it, “Can two walk together, except they be agreed?” (Amo_3:3). How are we going to have fellowship? To get over this seemingly impossible hurdle, John is going to present three methods. Two of them are man-made methods and won’t work. The other one is God’s method, and it is the only one that will work. Before we get into that, let me say a word about the word fellowship. Fellowship is the Greek word koinonia, and it means “having in common or sharing with.” Christian fellowship means sharing the things of Christ. And to do this, we must know the Lord Jesusnot only know about Him, but know Him as our personal Savior. In our day we have lost the true meaning of the word fellowship. Let me give you an example of what I mean. Several years ago I used to go to Huntington Beach in Southern California and speak to a Rotary Club. A wonderful doctor who was the program chairman told me that they could probably take me once a year; so he invited me for either Christmas or Easter and told me to give them both barrels. (I tried to give them both barrels, and since he is no longer program chairman, they haven’t invited me back!) One of the things I noticed in the place where the Rotary Club met was a large banner over the elevated speaker’s table with the words, “Fun, Food, Fellowship.” Well, the food was nothing to brag aboutembalmed chicken and peas as big as bullets. The fun was corny jokes. The fellowship consisted of one man patting another on the back and saying, “Hi, Bill, how’s business?” or, “How’s the wife?” Then they sang a little song together. That was their idea of fellowship. Well, the Christian idea of fellowship is not much different. When you hear an announcement of a church banquet, it is almost certain that you will be urged to come for food and fellowship. What do they mean by fellowship? They mean meeting around the table and talking to each other about everything under the sun except the one thing that would give them true fellowship, the person of Christ. Now let me give you an illustration of one place where the word fellowship is used correctly. I had the privilege of being at Oxford University as a tourist and seeing the Great Quad, the Wren Tower, and the different schools that comprise Oxford University. I visited one school which specialized in Shakespeare. Now suppose you wanted to know all about Shakespeare because you wanted to teach that particular subject. You would go to Oxford University and attend the particular school specializing in that subject. When you ate, you would sit down at the board, and there you would meet the other men who were studying Shakespeare, and you would meet the professors who did the teaching.

You would hear them all talking about Shakespeare in a way you never had heard before. For instance, in the play Romeo and Juliet most of us think that Juliet was the only girl Romeo courted. It is shocking to find that when he said, “One fairer than my love! the all-seeing sun Ne’er saw her match since first the world begun,” That fickle fellow Romeo was talking about another girl! You would hear many things that would alert you to the fact that you had a lot to learn about Shakespeare. So you would begin to study and pull books off the shelf in the library and go to the lectures. After you had been at the school for two or three years, they would make you a fellow. Then when you would go in and sit at the board with the other students and professors, you would join right in with them as they talked about the sonnets of Shakespeare. You would have fellowship with them, sharing the things of Shakespeare. Now fellowship for the believer means that we meet and share the things of Christ. We talk together about the Lord Jesus Christ and His Word. That is the kind of fellowship that John is speaking of when he says, “That ye also may have fellowship with us: and truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ.”

1 John 1:4

WALK IN LIGHTNow this is the second reason he mentions for writing his epistle: “That your joy may be full.” How wonderful to have joynot just a little joy but a whole lot of joy because we are experiencing fellowship. Koinonia sometimes refers to the act of fellowshipthe communion service in a church is an act of fellowship: giving is an act of fellowship, and praying is an act of fellowship. But in this chapter John is talking about the experience of fellowship, such as Paul had in mind when he wrote, “That I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings …” (Php_3:10). My friend, the ultimate aim in preaching is that, through conviction and repentance, men and women might come to salvation and that it might bring great joy to their hearts, like the Ethiopian eunuch who came to know Christ with the help of Philip. He didn’t continue his trip bragging about what a great preacher Philip was; he went on his way rejoicing. Why? Because he had come to know Christ. The purpose of John’s epistle is that you and I might share together these wonderful things of Christ, that the Spirit of God might make the Lord Jesus and the Father real to us in such a way that our fellowship might be sweet. Now we return to the problem which I mentioned earlier. John has said that he has written these things so that we can have fellowship and so that our joy might be full, and our joy would naturally be full if we could have fellowship with God. However, there is a hurdle to get over. John faces up to a real dilemma which every child of God recognizes. The very possibility of man having fellowship with God is one of the most glorious prospects that comes to us, but immediately our hopes are dashed when we face up to this dilemma:

1 John 1:5

“God is light, and in him is no darkness at all” means that God is holy, and we know that man is unholy. How can the gulf be bridged between a wonderful Savior and Vernon McGee? What a difference there is! The canyon between us is steep and deep. How can God and man be brought together? The cry of Job was for a “daysman” who might lay his hand upon Job and upon God and bring them together (see Job_9:33). Through Isaiah God says, “For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways …” (Isa_55:8). How is a sinful man going to walk with God? John tells us that God is light. This is, in fact, a definition of God. I have divided this epistle into three parts and each part is a definition of God: (1) God is light; (2) God is love; and (3) God is life. But how in the world are we going to have fellowship with God? It looks as if we are going to have to do one of two things. We either have to bring God down to our level, or we will have to take man up to God’s level. Neither one of these things can be done, and yet men have tried it. John shows the impossibility of the first one and then gives us a great definition of God: God is light. Modern science, I am told, is not quite sure what light is. Is it energy or is it matter? What is light? Oh, the source of light is one thing, but when you turn on the light in your room, the darkness lurking in the corner becomes light. What has happened? What was it that went over there in the corner and drove out the darkness? Or did it drive out the darkness? Because when the source of light up in the ceiling goes off, darkness returns to the corner. What is light? Well, when John says that God is light, he is revealing many facets about the person of God. Although it doesn’t cover the whole spectrum of the attributes of God, it says a great deal about Him. First of all, light speaks of the glory, the radiance, the beauty, and the wonders of God. Have you seen the eastern sky when the sun comes up like a blaze of glory? A friend and I once camped on the edge of Monument Valley in Arizona. It was a beautiful spot. We spent the night in sleeping bags. When I awoke the next morning, my friend was standing there, watching as the dawn was breaking.

I asked him what he was doing up so early, and he made this statement: “I am watching God create a new day.” Oh, what a thrill it was to be there and watch God create a new day! All of a sudden the sun peeped over the horizon, then it came marching over in a blaze of glory. I must confess that it became pretty hot later in the day, but what a sunrise it was! God is light. Oh, the beauty and radiance and glory of God! Another characteristic of light is that it is self-revealing. Light can be seen, but it diffuses itself. It illuminates the darkness. It is revealing. It lets me see my handsI’ve been handling books, and I see that one of my hands has dirt on it, and I’m going to have to take it out and wash it. If it hadn’t been for the light, I would not have seen the soil. Light reveals flaws and impurity. Whittier put it like this: Our thoughts lie open to Thy sight; And naked to Thy glance; Our secret sins are in the light Of Thy pure countenance. And Dr. Chafer used to say it this way: “Secret sin down here is open scandal in heaven.” Our sins are right there before Him, because God is light. Also light speaks of the white purity of God and the stainless holiness of God. God moves without making a shadow because He is light. He is pure. The light of the sun is actually the cartharsis of the earth. It not only gives light, it is also a great cleanser. Many of you ladies put a garment out in the sun to clean it or to get an odor out of it. The sun is a great cleansing agent. Light speaks of the purity of God. Light also guides men. It points out the path. Light on the horizon leads men on to take courage. It gives them courage to keep moving on. God is light. Let me go to the other extreme. Darkness is actually more than a negation of light. It is not just the opposite of light. It is actually hostile to light. The light and holiness of God are in direct conflict with the evil darkness and chaos of the world. Now we are presented with this dilemma. I am a little creature down here on earth, filled with sin. If you want to know the truth, I am totally depraved. Without the grace of God for salvation, I would be nothing in the world but a creature in rebellion against God, with no good within me at all. God has made it very clear that He finds no good within man. Paul says, “For I know that in me (that is, in my flesh,) dwelleth no good thing …” (Rom_7:18). Paul also says, “…There is none righteous, no, not one” (Rom_3:10). Not only have they no innate goodness, but they are in rebellion against God. Paul goes on to tell us about the rebellion that is in the human heart. He says, “…the carnal mind is enmity against God: for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be” (Rom_8:7). We are living in a world today that is in rebellion against almighty God. God is holy. I am a sinner. I am saved by grace, yes, but how am I going to have fellowship with Him? How am I going to walk with Him? Men have attempted to do this in three different ways which are presented here, and two of those ways are wrong.

1 John 1:6

REDUCE GOD TO MAN’S LEVEL?The first method is to bring God down to the level of man. “If we say that we have fellowship with him"there are a lot of folk claiming to have fellowship with Him when they do not in reality at all. “We lie, and do not the truth.” Do you understand what John says in this verse? He is rather blunt, don’t you think so? He says that we lie. It is not a nice thing to call another man a liar. John says that if you say that you have fellowship with God and you walk in darknessthat is, in sinyou are lying. I didn’t say that.

I am too polite to say that, but John said it. We always think of John as being that little ladylike apostle who carried a handkerchief in his sleeve. I don’t know how the rumor got started that John was that kind of a man, unless it began during the Middle Ages when an artist painted him with curls! I suppose the artist got the idea of curls from the fact that John is called the apostle of love. But our Lord never called him thatHe called him a son of thunder! If John and that artist meet on the corner of Glory Avenue and Hallelujah Boulevard in heaven, I tell you, that artist is going to know what thunder and lightning both are, because I think John is going to level with him, “What is the big idea of giving the world the impression that I was a sissy-type individual!” John was a great, big, two-fisted, rugged fisherman, and he is the one who says, “If you say you are having fellowship with God, and you walk in darkness, you lie, because God is light; God is holy.” We hear so much about sin among Christians today. One of the headlines in a newspaper here in Southern California told of some members of a cult committing adultery. (I don’t know if that report was accurate or not, but I don’t think the paper would have risked a lawsuit by printing it if it had no basis of truth.) Yet this cult brags about keeping the Mosaic Law and having reached a wonderful level of life. Of course, one of the Ten Commandments is “Thou shalt not commit adultery” (Exo_20:14), but they would attempt to explain that away in some manner. My friend, if you are going to walk with God, you are going to walk in light. And if there is sin in your life, you are not walking with Him. You cannot bring Him down to your level.

1 John 1:7

“If we walk in the light,” that is, if we walk in the light of the Word of God. Dr. Harry Ironside tells of his own confusion of mind relative to this verse. Noticing that the cleansing of the blood depends upon our walking in the light, he read it as though it said, “If we walk according to the light, the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin.” He thought it meant that if he was very punctilious about obeying every command of God, God would cleanse him. Then he noticed that it does not say if we walk according to light, but if we walk in the light. The important thing is where we walk, not how we walk. Have we come into the presence of God and allowed the Word of God to shine upon our sinful hearts? You see, it is possible to walk in darkness, thinking you are all right. Let me illustrate this. I went squirrel hunting several years ago when I was holding meetings in my first pastorate in Middle Tennessee in a place called Woodbury. After the morning service a doctor came to me and asked me if I would like to go squirrel hunting, and I told him there was nothing I would rather do. After lunch he brought me a shotgun, and we drove out to his farm and parked in the barnyard. We walked along by the creek there and had some good hunting. FInally we came to a fork in the creek, and he said to me, “I’ll take the right fork, and you take the left fork.

It will lead you around the hill and back to the barnyard. We will meet there.” In the meantime it looked like it was going to rain. It had drizzled once or twice and stopped. When I started out by myself, it started drizzling again. I kept going, and I made the turn around the hill. I noticed quite a few caves in the hill, and when it started to really rain, I knew I was going to get wet; so I crawled into one of those caves.

I went into the largest one I could find and sat in that dark cave for about thirty minutes. I began to get cold and decided I needed a fire; so I gathered together a bunch of leaves scattered on the floor of the cave and put a match to them. I soon had a small fire going, and when I looked around the cave, I found out that I wasn’t alone. I have never been in a place in which there were so many spiders and lizards as there were in that cave! Over in one corner was a little snake all coiled up, just looking at me. My friend, I got out of there in a hurry, working on the assumption that possession is nine-tenths of the law, and since those creatures had the cave ahead of me, it belonged to them.

I proceeded down to the barn and really got soaking wet, but I wasn’t going to stay in that cave! Now let me make an application. I had been sitting in comfort for about thirty minutes while I was in darkness, but when the light of the fire revealed what was in the cave, I could no longer be comfortable there. My friend, across this land today are multitudes of folk who are sitting in churches every Sunday morning but are not hearing the Word of God. As a result, they are sitting there in darkness, hearing some dissertation on economics or politics or the “good life” or an exhortation on doing the best they can. And they are comfortable. Of course, they are comfortable!

But if they would get into the light of the Word of God, they would see that they are sinners and that they cannot bring God down to their level. John has said that if a person says he is having fellowship with God but is living in sin, he is lying. During my many years as a pastor I have encountered a great deal of this. I think of a layman who was a good speaker and went about giving his testimony to different groups. Then it was discovered that he was living in adulteryfor several years he had been keeping a woman on the side. When it was discovered, my, the damage it did to the cause of Christ. And that man still insists that he is having fellowship with God! I recognize that we are living in a day when moral standards are changing drastically and folk rationalize their sinning and try to explain it away, but they cannot bring God down to their level.

If you are living in sin, God will not have fellowship with you. If you think otherwise, you are fooling yourself or using a psychological ploy to put up a good front. And many of our psychological hang-ups today center around this very point. As someone commented, after hearing me speak on this subject, “What you mean, Dr. McGee, is that there are hypocrites in the church.” And when you come right down to the nitty-gritty, that’s what we are talking about. Hypocrites.

They profess one thing, “I’m having fellowship with God,” and all the while they are walking in darkness. John says they are lying. Now, suppose you are a child of God, and you are living in sinbut you see it now in the light of the Word of God. Have you lost your salvation? When the light in my study revealed that spot of dirt on my hand, I went and washed it off. And John says, “And the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin.” That word cleanseth is in the present tenseChrist’s blood just keeps on cleansing us from all sin. You haven’t lost your salvation, but you have lost your fellowship with God until you are cleansed. You see, John is talking about family truth. At the time I am writing this, there is abroad a great emphasis on what is known as body truth. Some folk have stumbled onto it for the first time and have gone off the deep end in their overemphasis of it. Body truth is great and it is an important part of New Testament teaching, but family truth is also important. If you are in the family of God and have sin in your life, God is not going to treat you like the sinner outside of Christ. He is going to treat you like a disobedient child.

He will take you to the woodshed for punishment. Remember that He took David to the woodshed, and certainly Ananias and Sapphira didn’t get off easily. My friend, our attempt to bring God down to our level simply will not work. However, that is one method which is often used in an attempt to bridge the gap between a holy God and sinful man.

1 John 1:8

CONFESS SINAnother method which is often used is an attempt to bring man up to God’s level. They say that man has reached sinless perfection and that he is living on that very high plateau. Well, John deals with that approach. Listen to him This is even worse than being a liar. When you get to the place where you say you have no sin in your life, there is no truth in you at all. This doesn’t mean you are simply a liar; it means you don’t even have the truth. You are deceiving yourself. You don’t deceive anyone else. You deceive only yourself. I ran into this problem very early in my training for the ministry. When I went to college as a freshman, my first roommate was a young man who was also studying for the ministry. He was a sweet boy in many ways. The only trouble with him was that he was perfect. When I found the room which had been assigned to me, my roommate was not at home, but when he came in, he introduced himself and informed me that he had not committed a sin in so many yearsI have forgotten if he said one, two, or three years. It shocked me to meet a fellow who didn’t sin.

I had hoped he would be my buddy, but he wasn’t a buddy. You see, in every room where I have lived, things go wrong once in a while. And there I was living in a room in which there were only two of us and one of us couldn’t do anything wrong. So when something went wrong, guess who was to blame? Now I admit that usually it was my faultbut not always. Although he was a nice fellow, he hadn’t reached the level of perfection which he claimed; he wasn’t perfect.

After the first semester, a freshman was permitted to move wherever he wished, so I told him, “I’m moving out.” He was greatly distressed and said, “Oh, no! Where are you going?” I told him, “I have met a fellow down the hall who is just as mean as I am, and I’m going to move in with him.” So I did move out, and I understand he didn’t get a roommate after that. My new roommate and I got along wonderfully well. In fact, I still visit him down in the state of Florida. We are old men now and we still have wonderful times together. Neither of us is perfect although we have mellowed a bit down through the years. My friend, if you feel that you have reached the state of perfection, I really feel sorry for your spouse because it is hard to live with someone who thinks he is perfect. John says, “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.” We cannot bring ourselves up to God’s level. It is impossible to reach perfection in this life. Let me give you another instance of this because I think it is important. When I first came to Pasadena, I knew a man who served for a while as chaplain at the jail. He was a wonderful, enthusiastic Christian. I certainly had no criticism of him. But one day he met me on the street and said, “Brother Vernon, I got sanctified last night.” I said, “You did! What really happened to you?” He told me that he had reached the place where he could no longer sin. Well, I didn’t see him for a while after that, but one of the officers of the church I served at the time lived next door to him. The son of the man who had reached perfection came to visit and parked his trailer in the back yard with part of it on the property of the man who was an officer in my church. He said nothing for a while, but the time came when he had to build a shed on that spot. The neighbor knew he was intending to do this, but he made no mention of it. Finally, when it looked as if the son was going to stay and he felt that he could wait no longer to build, he went to his neighbor and asked him to move the trailer. Well, the fellow lost his temper and really told him what kind of a neighbor he thought he was.

The man who was the officer in my church casually mentioned the incident to me one day; so I couldn’t wait to meet that fellow and finally I looked him up. I said to him, “Didn’t you tell me that you got sanctified?” “Yes.” “And when you got sanctified, you reached the plane of sinless perfection?” “Yes, I think I have reached it.” “Well, your neighbor is a member of my church, and he tells me that you really lost your temper the other day and told him off in a very unkind, un-Christianlike manner.” He began to hem and haw. “I guess I did lose my temper. But that is not sin.” “Oh, if it’s not sin, what is it?” “I just made a mistake. I recognize that I shouldn’t have done itso that’s not a sin.” “Well, I want you to shake hands with me now, because I’ve reached that plane, too. I don’t sin; I just make mistakesand I make a lot of them. But, brother, the Word of God will make it very clear to you that losing your temper and bawling out your neighbor as you did is sin.” My friend, whom do you think you deceive when you say that you have no sin? You deceive yourself, and you are the only person whom you do deceive. You don’t deceive God. You don’t deceive your neighbors. You don’t deceive your friends. But you sure do deceive yourself. And John says that the truth is not in a man like that because he can’t see that he is a sinner and that he has not reached the place of perfection. Yet a great many folk are trying that route in their effort to bridge the gap between themselves and a holy God. Since you cannot bring God down to your level and you cannot bring yourself up to His level, what are you going to do? John gives us the alternative here

1 John 1:9

“If we confess our sins.” Here is another one of our “if’s.” We have seen several of them: “If we say that we have fellowship” (v. 1Jn_1:6); “If we walk in the light” (v. 1Jn_1:7); and “If we say that we have no sin” (v. 1Jn_1:8). Now here is the right method for bringing together a sinful man and a holy God: confession of sins. What does it mean to confess our sins? The word confess is from the Greek verb homologeo, meaning “to say the same thing.” Logeo means “to say” and homo means “the same.” You are to say the same thing that God says. When God in His Word says that the thing you did is sin, you are to get over on God’s side and look at it. And you are to say, “You are right, Lord, I say the same thing that You say. It is sin.” That is what it means to confess your sins. That, my friend, is one of the greatest needs in the church. This is God’s way for a Christian to deal with sin in his own life. The other day I talked to a man who got into deep trouble. He divorced his wifehe found out that she had been unfaithful. He lost his home and lost his job. He was a very discouraged man. He said to me, “I want to serve God, and I have failed. I am a total failure.” I very frankly said to him, “Don’t cry on my shoulder. Go and tell God about it. He wants you to come to Him. Tell Him you have failed. Tell Him you have been wrong. Tell Him that you want to say the same thing about your sin that He says about it. Seek His help. He is your Father. You are in the family. You have lost your fellowship with Him, but you can have your fellowship restored. If you confess your sins, He is faithful and just to forgive you your sins.” After we confess our sins, what does God do? He cleanses us. In the parable, the Prodigal Son came home from the far country smelling like a pigpen. You don’t think the father would have put a new robe on that ragged, dirty boy, smelling like that, do you? No, he gave him a good bath. The Roman world majored in cleanliness, and I am confident that the boy was bathed before that new robe was put on him. The next week he didn’t say, “Dad, I think I will be going to the far country and end up in the pigpen again.” Not that boy. When you have confessed your sin, it means that you have turned from that sin. It means that you have said the same thing which God has said. Sin is a terrible thing. God hates it and now you hate it. But confession restores you to your Father. John concludes this by saying

1 John 1:10

Now don’t make God a liar. Why don’t you go to the Lord, my friend, and just open your heart and talk to him as you talk to no one else. Tell Him your problems. Tell Him your sins. Tell Him your weakness. Confess it all to Him. And say to your Father that you want to have fellowship with Him and you want to serve Him. My, He has made a marvelous, wonderful way back to Himself!