Introduction
Through the course of history there have been many great battles the Church has had to fight. The most recent has been over the nature of scripture. Living in a postmodern age, in a culture that denies the very existence of any absolute truth, it continues to be a sizeable task for the church to stand firm on the certainty that Scripture is the inerrant word of God and is without flaw or error. This battle has been with us for the better part of the last two centuries and continues to rage on today.
The battle before that was for the nature of the church. The from before the Middle Ages up to the reformation the church was confronted with the task of defining the church itself. Who is really saved; how does one get saved and thus become a member of the true church? Does one have to go through the Pope or a priest, or are each of us priests unto God? The Roman church sought to extinguish all others who claimed to be part of the true church. Many of our evangelical forefathers paid with their lives for claiming that the true church consisted, not of those who bowed the knee to Rome, but of those who had placed their trust in Jesus Christ, by faith and faith alone.
Before that, during the first few centuries of the Church, the struggle was over the person and work of Jesus Christ. Who was Jesus? Was He really God? Was He really human? How could He be both God and human at the same time? Was He born of a virgin, and if so, how could that be?
Because it took faith to accept Jesus as He presented Himself, there were those then, as there are today, who wanted to offer alternative explanations for who He was and what He did.
Several years ago and author by the name of Dan Brown wrote a book called the DaVinci code. This May it will hit theaters around the world as a major motion picture, directed by Ron Howard and staring Tom Hanks. It is a story which, at a very basic level, seeks to undermine the nature and work of Jesus Christ and thus Christianity as we know it. With absolutely no historical mooring, the author claims that Jesus was not divine and even says that He was married to Mary Magdalene. While historians across the religious spectrum have decried Brown for being a revisionist and inventing history to match his fantastic story, the truth of the matter is, most people don't know enough Church history to be able to separate fact from fiction.
So, after nearly two millennia, the same old lies about the person and work of Christ which the early church had to put to rest are once again rearing their ugly heads.
Ecclesiastes 1:9 assures us that there is nothing new under the sun. Everything that has been shall be and that which is done, is that which shall be done. No where is this more true than in the area of false doctrines.
From the very beginning of the church, false prophets have tried to make their way into the church, seeking to draw new believers away with half truths and complicated theories. Towards the end of the first century, false teachers were setting forth doctrines contrary to the faith once for all delivered to the saints. They were saying that Jesus was in fact, not God. They were claiming that He was not who He said He was and instead were posing their own theories as to who He was and what He did.
These were the circumstances surrounding the writing of 1st John.
As John, writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, responds to these heresies, he addresses the issue of the fellowship of the saints. Not only the fellowship the saints have with one another but the fellowship we have with God. Throughout this book we find these themes of truth, love and fellowship. John assures us that we can have confidence in the truth wherein we have placed our faith, he tells us that those who have come to know the truth will live it out in love and he speaks about both truth and love in terms of the fellowship we have with God and with one another.
Now to properly understand what John is saying we need to understand this term fellowship. In the Greek language it is the word "koinonia." It speaks not so much to association as it does to participation. In the context of 1st John, it speaks of the participation in the new life we God through Jesus and to the sharing of His Spirit we have with other believers. But it is important to understand that this fellowship, both with God and with other believers is only possible if Jesus is who He says He is and can do what He says He can do.
Notice three things in this first chapter he tells us about our fellowship.
First of all he addresses the certainty of our fellowship.
I. The certainty of our fellowship
"Concerning the Word of Life . . . ." Vs. 1
It is instructive for us to recognize that John begins this book in a similar way to his gospel, by dealing with the nature of Jesus Christ.
John wants to affirm the divinity of Christ. He wants to assure his readers that they can be certain about the fellowship they have with God the Father through the Son, because Jsus is in fact who He said He was and thus could do what He said He could do.
Remember that the first Christians did not have the benefit of two thousand years of study. The New Testament was still being written and even though much of it had already been put down on parchment, it was not published as we understand publishing. In fact, the only scripture the early church had, besides the Old Testament, was what was read to them in the form of circular letters written from the apostles.
In this kind of environment, you can see how easy it was for false teaching to introduce spurious doctrines, and to lead these new converts astray.
It has been wisely said that every generation of Christians must restate the gospel to their own age. The problem is that many times, in the effort to present something new, there is not enough care given to making sure that what is being said is true.
One of these new gospels which plagued the early church was a doctrine known as Gnosticism. Gnostics get their name from the Greek word for knowledge. They were called this because the foundation of their belief system was the acquisition of knowledge.
First, they claimed that knowledge was itself, the end of all things and the way to spiritual advancement. This was the basis for their beliefs.
Secondly they claimed that all matter is evil and all that is spiritual is good. This caused a separation between the world and the supreme God. Since the all matter was evil they claimed that God could not have created the earth.
Third they claimed that since matter is evil and the spirit is good, Jesus could not have come in the flesh, it would, they claimed, be impossible.
Logically, they thus denied the bodily resurrection, both of our Lord and of all of humanity.
Among the earliest Gnostics were a group known as the Docetics, their philosophy was called Docetism. The doctrine got its name from the Greek word which meant "to appear."
Docetism, like the rest of Gnosticism, taught that all matter was essentially evil and that all spirit was essentially good. Thus there could be no peaceful existence between the two. This having been said, they claimed there was no way that Jesus, the perfect Son of God, could have come in the flesh. They denied the incarnation and they denied the bodily resurrection. They said that because Jesus was perfect He was essentially a spirit who merely appeared to be human. They separated Jesus, the son of Mary and Joseph, from Jesus the Son of God. Claiming that Jesus, the Son of God, came upon Jesus the son of Mary and Joseph at his baptism and left him before he died on the cross.
The end result of their teaching, of course, was that they denied the atoning work of Christ. If He was not born of a virgin; if He was not flesh and blood; if He was not who He said He was, He could not do what He said he did. So the implications of their teaching not only affected the doctrine of Christ, or Christology, but affected Soteriology, or the doctrine of salvation. As well as the doctrine of the church, Ecclesiology.
So, in this opening sentence to his epistle, John states in unequivocal terms that Jesus, the Word of Life, was who He said He was.
Listen to the terms he uses. He says:
"We declare to you, concerning the Word of life, that which we have heard, What we have seen with our eyes, what we have beheld (or personally observed and examined) and our hands handled (or we touched)."
Speaking as an eyewitness with apostolic authority, John wants there to be no mistake, no misunderstanding that He personally knew Jesus to be both human and divine. Contrary to what the Gnostics and Docetics were saying, John wanted these early believers to realize that the message they had first heard concerning Jesus was the truth.
The personal testimony always has been and always will be the most powerful form of human communication. It is the thing which convicts or acquits people in the court of law, and it is the thing which advertisers use, even today, to sell their products. People can refute almost anything you say but they cannot refute what you yourself have experienced. And thus it is John's personal testimony that the Holy Spirit employs here as he seeks to reassure us readers that the gospel of Jesus, as it was first preached, is in fact the truth.
John is saying, "I tell you beyond any shadow of a doubt that Jesus is who He claimed to be. We personally touched Him with our hands, we saw Him with our eyes, we heard Him with our ears and we observed Him with as we lived with Him." He is testifying to the authenticity of the apostolic message.
He is saying that we can be certain about the fellowship we have with the Father because we have gone through Jesus, who is the perfect expression of God, who is the Way, the truth and the Life and no man goes to the Father but through Him.
Listen to the philosophers of our day. They will try and reinterpret the nature of Christ. They will tell you that he was a good man, a prophet, a wise teacher and a host of other things, but they don't want to recognize that He is in fact the only begotten Son of God. God come in the flesh. Folks, this is what sets us apart from all the other religions of the world. We do not worship a prophet, we worship God Himself, who came in the flesh, born in a manger, who died on the cross as the propitiation or payment for our sins, who bodily rose from the grave and who will come again in power and glory.
John tells us in his gospel that "In the beginning was the Word, and the word was with God and the word was God . . . .and the word became flesh and dwelt among us we beheld His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth."
As Christians living in a post modern age, more than at any other time, we need to hear this personal testimony from an eyewitness. We need to hear the apostle John telling us what he heard, saw, touched and experienced. We need to hear that Jesus is who He says He is and can do what He said He can do. We need to be absolutely certain that our faith has been placed in that which is sure and true.
We have fellowship with God the Father through Jesus and with other Christians because of His Spirit which He has put in us.
This is why John stresses the certainty of our fellowship in Jesus.
But he has more to say about our fellowship, look at the second part of verse 3 through verse 7 where we find him addressing the nature or Character of our fellowship.
II. The character of our fellowship
He says three things about the character of our fellowship.
A. First, he says it is personal
look at the last part of verse 3. It is with God the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ. God is not a distant entity, unknowable and implacable. He is personal. He is a person who knows and can be known. There are those who say that because God is transcendent, or beyond us, that we cannot know Him. But I like what Francis Schafer says. He says while we cannot know God completely we can know Him truly. Schafer makes that point that while we know other humans truly we do not know them fully.
Part of the wonder of the incarnation was that God became one of us so that we could know Him and that He could reveal Himself to us in a way we would understand. So when we talk about a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, this is what we mean: To know Him and to be known by Him. Our fellowship with God is personal.
But when we are in fellowship with God, we are also to be in fellowship, through His Spirit, with His people. It is important that we not overlook this element of what John is saying. Look in the first part of verse three. It is only by knowing Jesus that you can have fellowship with the saints.
Contrary to what the Gnostics were teaching, there was no secret knowledge that would put you in fellowship with God or His people. If you had His Spirit then you were in fellowship with Him and with others who had His Spirit.
It is important for us to realize that those who hold solid theology should live it out in practical ways. What scripture is saying here, and the point John will make throughout this book is that if you really have fellowship with God, you will be in right relationship with God's people.
The great shame of the church today is that we have so many church members who never come to church. Church members for whom fellowship with God's people is not only seen as optional, but for many is seen as a non-essential. Don't miss this point. Look at verse 7, if we walk in the light as He Himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another . . .
God's plan for His people is for them to be in fellowship with Him and with one another. In fact, John tells us in his gospel, chapter 13 that it by this that all men will know we are His disciples that we have love one for another.
Our fellowship is personal, both with God and with His people.
But secondly, look at verse 4 where the apostle tells us that our fellowship with God is peaceful.
B. Secondly, it is peaceful
That your joy may be made complete. The completion of joy is peace. And our fellowship with God brings us peace, both with God and with God's people.
The Gnostics, like others before them, sought to use religion to control others. They had an elaborate scheme of secret knowledge one had to know in order to climb the spiritual ladder. Their fellowship was sectarian, exclusive and elitist. John says that our fellowship with God and His people is not like this. It is not dependent upon the capricious whims of other humans. It is not dependent upon our ability to know this or to memorize that, it is based upon the certainty that Jesus came in the flesh, gave His life for us and rose from the dead. If we place our trust in Him we can be in fellowship with Him and His called out ones, the Church. Instead of consternation it brings communion, it brings peace instead of panic. Our fellowship with God and His people is to be peaceful.
But not only is our fellowship personal and peaceful, notice with me in verse 5 where John says that our fellowship is pervasive.
C. Third, it is pervasive
God is light and in Him is no darkness at all.
This is an important statement. Contrary to the Gnostic philosophy, which said that Jesus could not have come in the flesh, John says not only did Jesus come in the flesh but that He is light and in Him is no darkness at all.
In saying this he is not only contradicting Gnostic philosophy, but is also taking a stab at the way the Gnostics lived. Because they believed that all matter was evil, many of them claimed that they could do anything they wanted in the flesh, because flesh was, after all evil. So long as they did not affect their spirits they saw no problem with all manner of sin.
Consider how this truth runs in the fact of post modernism which says there is no absolute truth. John is saying that God is absolutely light, and in Him is no darkness at all. He is making an absolute statement about the nature of God. Contrary to what others may say God is light and in Him is no darkness whatsoever.
That having been said, if you have fellowship with Him you will not walk in darkness but will walk in the light as He is in the light. In other words, fellowship with God means that there has been a substantive and sustained change in the way you live.
There were then, like today, many who claim to be in fellowship with God, but whose lives do not reflect a change of any kind. To those John says, "If we say we have fellowship with Him and yet walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth."
Those who truly have fellowship with God are readily noticeable by the change in their lives. Those who claim to be in fellowship with Him and continue to walk in darkness, who continue to live like the rest of the world, they are liars and do not practice the truth.
The fellowship we have with God is pervasive, changing us at a core level and manifesting itself in every facet of our lives.
So we have seen the Certainty of our fellowship and the Character of our fellowship, but there is one final thing John says here. Look at verses 8-10 . . . where he speaks to the condition of our fellowship.
III. The condition of our fellowship
Remember that this letter is being written to believers. It is addressed to those who have already come to know Christ. It is written so their joy will be complete, it is written to strengthen and encourage them.
The theme here in this first chapter is fellowship. He has already addressed the fact that our fellowship is based on the certainty of who Jesus is and he has spoken to us about the nature of that fellowship, but now he wants us to understand something about the maintenance of that fellowship.
Like every other relationship, our fellowship with Jesus is something that must be maintained. How do we maintain it? Well, he addresses this issue in verses 8-10 telling us that even as Christians we have a tendency to sin.
Folks who tell you they don't sin will lie about other things as well. All Christians sin. It's a fact of life.
So notice two things he says about sin.
A. If we say we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves
To the Gnostics who said that they could achieve perfection, or that their spirit was perfect, he tells them that they are deceived. Before you can be right with God you have to come to terms with who you are before Him. You have to come to terms with the reality that you are a sinner in need of salvation.
It is easy for us to get deceived into thinking that because we are better than others that we are somehow without sin. But John wants to remind us that even though we have been set free from the penalty of sin and from the power of sin, we are not yet free from the presence and the pull of sin.
As Christians we are subject to temptation and there are times, yes even as Christians, when we yield to temptation and sin. John wants us to come to terms with the reality that even as Christians we sometimes fall into sin.
B. He encourages us to confess our sins
This word confess is an interesting word in the Greek language, it means to agree with God, or to say the same thing as God, and within this context it means to say the same thing about our sin as He says about our sin. That sin separates us from God and condemns us before God. To confess means to make no excuses, to make no attempt to conceal them or justify them before God but, with a contrite heart, to admit that we have sinned and to ask God for forgiveness.
If we do this God will do two things. One, He will forgive us of our sins. That is to say, He will eradicate the punishment we are due. He will pardon us of our sins. But secondly, He will cleanse us of all unrighteousness. This cleansing caries with it the idea of being reformed or being made new. He will create within us a new heart and a new mind, and give us new desires.
This is the very heart of keeping our relationship with God what it needs to be. Only by continual confession and repentance of sin can we keep our hearts right before God. This is how we keep the condition of our fellowship with God what it needs to be.
Conclusion
What about you this morning? Are you certain that you are in fellowship with God? What about the Character of your relationship, is it personal, is it pervasive? And what about the condition of your fellowship with God, is it what is should be? Is it what it could be? What are you willing to do to make it right today?