Welcome to Week 6 of the Summer Reading Plan!

Even though there are only 4 verses in this first section, these 4 verses are absolutely packed with information. In the interest of saving you time (and not writing a book), you can sum up the things that John wrote out in the first 4 verses in these few bullet points:

• John began with the beginning – the eternal God, who was before all things.

• He told us that this God was physically manifested, and that he and others could testify to this as eyewitnesses.

• He told us that this God is the Word of life, the Logos.

• He told us that this God is distinct from the person of God the Father.

• He told us that we may have fellowship with this God, and that we are often introduced into this fellowship with God by the fellowship of God’s people.

• He told us that this eternally existent God, the Word of Life, who was physically present with the disciples and others (and present for fellowship), is God the Son, named Jesus Christ.

• He told us that fellowship with Jesus leads to a life lived in fullness of joy.

John basically sums up the entirety of the Gospel message in these first 4 verses! In just this small section John gave us enough to live our whole Christian life on. And we're just getting started!

In this second section, we really start to see the main idea of this passage fleshed out: Live in the Light.

Before John even gets deep into his message he wants to make one thing very clear: the things that he is writing to the church are not his own personal beliefs. These are things taught by Jesus Himself.

One of these things (and this is something that John will continue to harp on) is that God is light, and there is no darkness within Him. This might feel like a strange place to start, but actually it's incredibly important that John starts here.

First, by solidifying the fact that God alone is light, he is telling the church that God is perfect. And that has to be the basis for our relationship to Him. Any approach to a relationship with God that assumes, or even implies, that God might be wrong on some things, is blasphemous and contradicts what John is saying here.

In the very next verse he challenges his readers and tells them that if they confess to be following God, but they continue to live their lives in darkness, they are a liar. (Yikes!) 

John is not tip toeing around his point here. If we claim to be Christians, we need to admit that we are fallen creatures, who are slaves to sin by default (1:8, 10). If we claim to be Christians, we need to be following God's commandments and not sinning (2:3-4). If we claim to be Christians, we need to live as Christ lived (2:6)!

John has introduced the ideas of walking in the light and being cleansed from sin. But he did not for a moment believe that a Christian can become sinlessly perfect. 1 John 1:8 made it clear that sin is a fact (at least an occasional fact) in the life of the Christian. 1 John 1:9 makes it clear that there is always forgiveness for confessed sin. Yet, John wants it also to be clear that the Christian should be concerned about sin. One reason in writing this letter was that you may not sin.

John previously rebuked the idea that we can become sinlessly perfect. At the same time, he wants to make it clear that we do not have to sin. God’s desire for the believer is that we follow Him in full obedience, being slaves to righteousness and not slaves to sin. All the resources for spiritual victory are ours in Jesus Christ and that resource is never withdrawn.

All of this is summed up by the very difficult call in 1 John 2:6. This is where the thought is brought around to a full circle. When we are abiding in Jesus, we will walk just as He walked – live lives of obedience and love. When we want to walk just as He walked, we need to begin by abiding in God.

We aren’t called to imitate the way Jesus walked on water, but His every-day walk with God the Father. The spiritual power evident in the life of Jesus flowed from a faithful, regular, disciplined life of fellowship and obedience.

If you remember the sermon from July 4, total allegiance to God means that only God gets all of us. This total devotion to God is evidenced by our actions, the way we live our lives, the way that we walk in obedience.

Whereas section 2 was more conceptual, John explains some practical ways to distinguish those who are living in darkness versus living in the light.

He begins with those who say they hate others, reminding them that Jesus has commanded us to love one another. If someone says they hate a brother or sister, they are still walking in darkness.

Next, John takes a little aside here to say specifically who this letter is being written to. In this passage, he basically says that the wisdom he is writing down is for all levels of the faith. From the most immature "children" to the "fathers".

Next John points out that we are not to live for the things that the world offers us, we are to live our lives in total allegiance to God, because He will not accept any less, and the world only offers temporary pleasures anyway. (For more information on this topic, see this sermon from July 4.)

Immediately after warning us about the world and it's pleasures trying to lure us away from Christ, John warns us about another problem that was facing the church that day, and it was false teachers who were distorting the truth of Christ. Apparently there were some within the church that were teaching that Jesus was not actually the Son of God but rather a prophet, and John wanted to warn people against this.

He encourages the people in the church to remain faithful to what they were taught at the beginning, and warns that the newfangled ideas that these false teachers were bringing up weren't actually founded in scripture at all! (Check out this sermon on false teaching.)

Finally, John wraps up this section with a summary -

Lastly, John just summarizes the point that he's been making the whole first section of the book - if we live a righteous life, if we follow in the footsteps of Jesus and have a relationship with God that is filled with obedience to His commands and ceasing to sin, then we know we are in Him.

But, on the other hand, if we continue to sin, if we don't keep God's commandments, if we don't live as slaves to righteousness, then we do not know who God is.