i. 5 - ii. 28. GOD IS LIGHT.
a. i. 5 - ii. 11. What Walking in the Light involves: the Condition and Conduct of the Believer.
Fellowship with God and with the Brethren (i. 5-7).
Consciousness and confession of sin [committed before forgiveness] (i. 8-10).
Obedience to God by Imitation of Christ (ii. 1-6).
Love of the Brethren (ii.7-11).
5 And this is the message which we have heard from him, and announce unto you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all
5. "This is the message." The revelation of God's moral character; which must be known before we can be assimilated to its beauty and purity. Harmony must rest on a mutual knowledge and a moral likeness and sympathy. This constitutes true spiritual fellowship. The incarnation brings God to the knowledge of men. The work of the Spirit in the believer conforms him to the image of God revealed in Christ.
"God is light." Absolutely pure and self-communicating from His very nature, like the sun in the heavens. The holiness of God and the implied obligation of men to be like Him is the underlying truth of the Gospel message, and the theme of the preacher. No moral evil is in Him. Here in the words "light" and "darkness" we have a strong proof that John is opposing Zoroastrian dualism which identified light and spirit with moral goodness, and darkness and matter with moral evil, both principles being self-existent and from eternity. The announcement of God's character is not a discovery of human genius, but a personal revelation. Only in this way can man know God. The reception of this revelation requires faith, without which man is an agnostic, without God, or, as Paul says, "atheos, an atheist in the world." This atheism, under the full light of the New Testament, has not an intellectual, but a moral cause. Against the requirement to become like God the depraved will rebels. This voluntary moral element in unbelief renders it culpable. Every revelation of God's nature enjoins a duty. "God is spirit," therefore we must worship Him in spirit. "God is love," therefore we must have love as a proof that we are His children, i.e., to show that we are facsimiles of God. "God is light," therefore we must walk in the light or be ensphered in holiness. But there is a great temptation to profess a likeness to God when there is no such similarity to his moral character. This temptation takes on a three-fold form: (1.) To say we have fellowship with the Light and walk in darkness, or sin. (2.) To say, "We have no sin," no guilt needing atonement. (3.) To say we have not sinned, makings God a liar and evincing that His truth is not in us. In these three cases John considers three classes of spurious professors of Christianity. Says Bishop Westcott, In doing this he unites himself with those whom he addresses; and recognizes the fact that he no less than his fellow-Christians has to guard against the temptations to which the three types of false doctrine correspond. The words quoted afford no foundation to the grave error of Dean Alford, who, because John says, "if we," says,This state of needing cleansing from all present sin is veritably that of all of us; and that our recognition and confession of it is the very essential of walking in the light. But if such a genuine case of confession followed by walking in the light should occur, and the person thus walking in the light should declare this fact for the benefit of those stumbling in the dark, our logical dean must insist that this victorious soul is deceived and the truth is not in him. He must also aver that the saintly John, while penning these words, could not truthfully say that he was walking in the light and that he had no present guilt. That exegesis of "we," in these three hypothetical sentences, which declares that it refers not to false professors but to real Christians living at their spiritual climax in this world, makes John the most self-contradictory writer to be found in the whole range of secular and sacred literature. For he declares the purpose of his writing to be "that ye sin not" once (aorist tense), and "that he that is born of God does not sin." Then he is made to say that all who obey God's prohibition and by grace abstain from sin and say so, should be branded as deluded or lying, or both duped and duping. But we have not finished the chapter of contradictions involved in the erroneous interpretation of "we."6 If we say that we have fellowship with him, and walk in the darkness, we lie, and do not the truth
6. "Walk in darkness." Ensphere ourselves in darkness or sin by our own choice. Such persons seek to hide those acts which their consciences condemn from themselves, from their fellow men and from God (See John iii. 19, 20.) Religious fanatics in all ages have endeavored to combine loose morals with the possession of true Christian faith. It seems that John found such persons among the Gnostics in the church at Ephesus. He says that they lie and do not the truth. They affirm what they know to be positively false when they profess fellowship with the holy God and are willfully choosing darkness and sin. (See James ii. 14.) Such a choice is fatal to fellowship with God.
7 but if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanseth us from all sin
7. "Walk in the light." By believing on Him who is the light we become "sons of light" and "partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light," having become ourselves "light in the Lord." (John xii. 36; Luke xvi. 8; Eph. v. 8; Col. i. 12; 1 Thess. v. 5.) This choice of light as the sphere of life is a state of justification. They who are in this state and they only are candidates for perfect cleansing from all sin. "This," says Haupt, "must not be understood of forgiveness of sins past but of sanctification," i. e., initial sanctification in the new birth. To say that this cleansing is a judicial clearance from the guilt of sin, is to deny that God "justifies the ungodly" and to set up rectitude of previous life as the condition of pardon as the Roman Catholic Church teaches. On this ground no sinner can be forgiven. Good works instead of trust in Christ cannot save, but good works as the fruit of faith are well pleasing to God. The present tense "cleanseth" here denotes continuousness, not on one individual, but on the human family, one after another being wholly purified, as in Rom. iii. 24, one after another is instantaneously justified. When one leper is cleansed as in Matt. viii. 3, the aorist tense is used, but when many in succession are to be cleansed as in Matt. x. 8, the present tense is used.
8 If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us
8. "If we say we have no sin." "Because," said the Gnostics, "sin never defiles the soul but the body only, and hence we need no cleansing, having in our spirits no sin to be cleansed from." Bengel, Bishop B. F. Westcott, and others have noted that the phrase, "to have sin," is found only in John's writings (John ix. 41, xv. 22, 24, xix. 11), and that it expresses guilt. "To have sin" is distinguished from "to sin" as the sinful principle is distinguished from the sinful act in itself. It includes the idea of "personal guilt." If the pronoun "we," as many affirm, in the conditional clause, "if we say we have no sin," means all genuine Christians including the author of this Epistle, we must impeach the truthfulness of Paul when he declares respecting the justified soul, "There is therefore now no condemnation;" for condemnation is inseparable from "guilt" involved in John's idiomatic phrase "to have sin." We must impeach John as well as Paul, for he says, the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses from all sin. If guilt still remains for future ineffectual cleansing till physical death, it follows that John's words are untrue so far as this present life is concerned, and there is no deliverance from guilt in this world, and the only holy persons on earth are in the graveyard. We must also impeach truth, the heavenly maiden. "The truth shall make you free" from guilt and its penalty. And finally we must either put some new interpretation upon the words of the infallible Teacher himself, "If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed," from the guilt of sin and the love of sin, or we must say that they have no relation to man's deepest present need. Such are some of the irresistible inferences from the interpretation of "we" as including all Christians in their present character after grace has done its best to purify them.
To whom does John refer? To the dualists or agnostics in the church who imagined that their spirits were untouched of sin which inheres in matter only and cannot stain the soul. It belongs to the body and will perish with the body in the grave. These people were indulging in the grossest sensual sins — gluttony, drunkenness, sodomy, fornication and adultery — and were professing to walk in the light, to have fellowship with the holy God, to have no guilt upon their souls and hence no need of the blood of Christ. John in defense of the truth deals faithfully with these men either deluded by their false philosophy or downright liars willfully maligning the Gospel. Many religious teachers who discard the Gnostic philosophy as a system retain its essence in the idea that there is impurity in the body which divine power cannot expel without the aid of death. Hence they oppose the doctrine of entire sanctification in this life as rank fanaticism, forgetful of the scripture that "where sin abounded grace did much more abound" and "that ye may know the exceeding greatness of his power to usward who believe." (See notes on verses 5, 6, 7, and concluding note 5, at the end of Chapter I, and Chapter II, concluding note.)
9. "Confess our sins." To God and to men when the sins have been in public, and to individuals who they have been wronged by our evil deeds. It is not necessary to confess publicly grossly shameful acts. Confession must be attended by an eternal abandonment of sin. Restitution when it is possible characterizes genuine confession. Confession implies repentance, a word not found in this Epistle nor in the Fourth Gospel. For this reason some teach that it is not required but faith only. But evangelical faith is possible only for a truly penitent and contrite soul.
"He is faithful." Not fickle, capricious and arbitrary, but immutable in the principles of his moral government. He can always be depended upon. His word is as good as his oath.
"And righteous to forgive us our sins." To render what is due from one to another is the essence of righteousness. Under the atonement it is due to the Son of God that his Father should forgive all who sue for pardon in His name. It is true that mercy is at the bottom of the atonement, so that the righteousness of God in forgiveness is removed but a step from mercy.
"And cleanse from all unrighteousness." The character is purified after the past sins have been forgiven, as a definite momentary act in the mind of God. The cleansing in its completion is also a definite work instantaneously wrought by the Holy Spirit in the believer. It is to be noted that both "forgive" and "cleanse" are in that tense which denotes not a continuous, but a decisive, single act. Says Alford, In verse 9 'to cleanse us from all unrighteousness 'is plainly distinguished from 'to forgive us our sins;' distinguished as a further process; as, in a word, sanctification, distinct from justification. The two verbs are aorists, because the purpose of the faithfulness and justice of God is to do each as one great complex act—to justify and to sanctify wholly and entirely. He says, "to do," not both, but "each" as one great act. This is what the Wesleys discovered in 1737 "that men are justified before they are sanctified." Again, justification is a work done for us, and entire cleansing is a work wrought in us.
10 If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us
10. "If we say we have not sinned." This verse elucidates verse 8, showing that sins before the new birth are spoken of in both passages and not the daily sins of believers, if such a phrase is not a self-contradiction. The Gnostic professed Christians absolutely denied the fact of past sin. Hence, if they denied past sinful acts, they could deny that they had sin. To have no sin refers to a sinful state. The whole context shows that both these verses described refer to sins before the experience of regeneration or to those who had in heart so far backslidden as to lose their sonship to God by ceasing to bear His moral likeness.
"We make him a liar." It is manifest that John does not include himself in this word "we," but that he means "any one" or "he who." John uses the editorial "we," as James does in James iii. 1-3, 9, wherein he does not mean that he personally is guilty of moral "offences," nor that he is a horse trainer, nor that he blesses God and at the same time curses men, nor that he should "receive the greater condemnation."
"His word is not in us." John and faithful Christians are not included in "us." What John does mean is that God's word is not in any man who makes him a liar by denying that he never did sin, since God has said that "all have sinned and come short of the glory of God."
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