Read with Me
1 John 1:5-7 (HCSB)
Now this is the message we have heard from Him and declare to you: God is light, and there is absolutely no darkness in Him. If we say, “We have fellowship with Him,” yet we walk in darkness, we are lying and are not practicing the truth. But if we walk in the light as He Himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin.
Listen with Me
Many people are familiar with verse 7, but fewer are aware of the context of the requirement to walk in the light in order to receive the blessings promised in that verse.
First, John identifies a key characteristic about God that he and the other disciples received from the lips of Jesus Himself: God is light, with no trace of darkness. That not only means that He is holy, without a trace of sin, it also means that He is good without a trace of evil, kind without a trace of cruelty, and just without a trace of injustice or capriciousness.
These days it is popular to think more in terms of shades of gray, believing that thinking in terms of black and white is unrealistic at best, and narrow minded and hateful at worst. In the not-too-distant past, the Yin-Yang symbol was influential among some as a way to understand reality, believing that the black dot in the white section and the white dot in the black section prove that nothing is all good or all bad.
But God doesn’t fit into human moral constructs or into conceptions of a balance between good and evil. Instead, He is all light, with no admixture of evil. And any attempt to understand God’s nature by compromising that truth lessens and corrupts both the correct understanding of who He is and who His people must be in order to live in fellowship with Him.
John points out that in order to live in God’s presence, to have genuine fellowship with Him, His people must walk in the light, accurately reflect his character, and live by the truth as He has revealed it to our minds and hearts. Those who claim to have a relationship with God yet who walk in darkness and sin, crude in language and worldly in their mindset, are deceiving both themselves into everybody to whom they claim that relationship.
But if we walk in the true light, in moral goodness and uprightness, so that we share God’s character, then real fellowship with Him, real forgiveness for past sins, and real power over present temptation becomes possible. Of course that true holiness is not possible to attain in our own strength or power. It doesn’t come from self-help or trying harder. It only comes through faith in Jesus, through genuine repentance, and through the transformation of heart and mind that is made possible by the indwelling Holy Spirit (Ezekiel 36:25-27, Roman 12:1-2).
Pray with Me
Father, this makes sense. If You are holy and pure, with no admixture of evil, then evil cannot stand in Your presence, and true fellowship between You and any evil at all, even small evil that we interpret as somewhere in a gray area, is impossible. It also makes sense that the kind of transformation and purification we need to become light like You can only come through the refining fire of Your Holy Spirit burning in and through our spirits (Matthew 3:11-12, 5:8; Hebrews 12:14). Lord, help me to live holy in Your power, to walk every day in the light, even as You are in the light, so that my fellowship with You and with Your people can be uninterrupted. Amen.