LIVE IN THE LIGHT
1 John 2:1-29 Key Verse: 2:9,10 "Anyone who claims to be in the light but hates his brother is still in the darkness. Whoever loves his brother lives in the light, and there is nothing in him to make him stumble."
In the previous passage St. John introduced God as the light and encouraged us to walk in the light. He also gave us a warning about the Gnostics. They were like modern intellectual hedonists. Their way of believing God was just talking a lot; they did not practice the love of God. St. John warns the early Christians to practice what they know of Jesus. John also teaches them that they must tightly hold on to the basic knowledge of Jesus, so that they would not be deceived by Gnostics. When we study chapter 2 prayerfully, we find that St. John urges the early Christians not to love the world. I pray that we may imitate the life of Jesus by practicing the love of God in our daily lives. May God bless us to maintain Christian koinonia by living in the light.First, our defender, Jesus Christ (1-2).
Look at verse 1a. "My dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin." In light of 1 John, in verse 1, "you will not sin," means to be special or to be different from worldly people, especially Gnostics. Christians who became families of God by the precious blood of Jesus must stay away from sin. Sin has no business among God's children. Why? Sin cuts our relationship with God. Sin breaks our relationship with others. Sin is lawlessness. When people sin, they become lawless and live as lawless people. Most importantly, if they commit sin, they do not please the Righteous One, Jesus Christ. Sin makes people very tragic in the end. Sin ruins one's life of faith and one's holy mission while on earth. Finally, those who sin have to stand before the judgment seat of God (2Cor 5:10). St. John did not encourage the early Christians, saying, "Take care of yourselves," or "Have fun." St. John said, "My dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin." First and last of all, St. John really prayed that the early Christians would not live a life of sin. The most important change after we became God's children is that we began not to sin. The reason is very clear. God doesn't want us to live in sin. 1 John 5:18a says, "We know that anyone born of God does not continue to sin... " This means that whoever is born of God does not practice sin. The Prodigal Son got up out of the pigpen and went home to his father. He did not stay in the pigpen. Why not? Because he was a son and not a pig. In another word, if we continue to sin, we are not God's children and we are not born again. We have to make every effort not to sin and take sin very seriously to maintain relationship with God. When we walk in the light, we will see just how far we have fallen short of what God wants. We must be humble before God. Missionary Joshua Lee Jr. looks like a perfect young man. But he confessed that he was a holy sinner. After the conference, he began to smile a lot in spite of his English problem. There was a famous preacher named Spurgeon. One day he was crossing a street and then he suddenly stopped. It looked like he was praying, and he was. One of his deacons waited for him on the other side of the street and said to him, "You could have been run down by a carriage. What were you doing? It looked like you were praying." Spurgeon replied, "I was praying." The deacon then asked, "Was it so important?" "Indeed it was. A cloud came between me and my Savior, and I wanted to remove it even before I got across the street." In the first part of verse 1, St. John called the early Christians, "My dear children." Here, "children" does not mean diaper babies or pre-teens. The word "children" comes from the Greek word "teknia" and should be translated "my little born ones" or "my little born-again ones." As we see in verses 12-14, when St. John said "my dear children," he meant all families of God who were born again by the Spirit of God. This is a message to all Christians. Look at verse 1b. "But if anybody does sin, we have one who speaks to the Father in our defense--Jesus Christ, the Righteous One." Christians live in the sinful world and they are not pertect yet. They commit sin unintentionally and intentionally. What should they do? They have to come to Jesus Christ. Why? Because Jesus is our defender. Defender is a legal term. In another translation says, "And if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father..." The word "advocate" is from the Greek parakletos, the same word which is translated "comforter" in John's gospel. Jesus is our comforter in heaven next to God. Our accuser is Satan who tries to destroy our relationship with God. But Jesus defends our case before God. Shep. Rusty hired a defense lawyer to appeal his case and he had to pay a lawyer fee. But Jesus defends our case free of charge. He wins the case all the time. Why? Because he crushed Satan's head through his victory over sin and death. St. John tells us that when we sin, we have a defender, who is Jesus Christ. How did Jesus Christ become our defender? In order to become our defender, Jesus Christ became the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the sins of the whole world. Let's reade verse 2. "He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for our sins but also for the sins of the whole world." As we studied, Jesus is perfect God and perfect man. He is the Son of the Holy God. But he came down to this world to make friends with sinners so as to save them from their sins and bring them back to his kingdom. Especially in verse 2, the words "the atoning sacrifice," mean that he became the Lamb of God for our sins. One day, Jesus' forerunner, John the Baptist, saw Jesus coming toward him and said, "Look, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world!" (Jn 1:29) The Lamb of God symbolizes complete sacrifice by shedding his blood for the atonement of man's sin. St. John told them not to sin. It sounded a little bit stern. But suddenly he says that Jesus is the atoning sacrifice for our sins and for the sins of the world. This has deep meaning in it. In the past, Hebrew people thought that blood purifies one's sins and makes him holy before God. When St. John mentioned the atoning sacrifice, he wanted to say that even if one's sin is acquitted, nobody can cleanse his guilty conscience (Heb 9:14). People ignore the problem of guilty conscience. Many psychoanalysts claim that there is no such thing as sin and say just forget about it. But God gave each of us a conscience. If we commit sin, our conscience is diseased and it becomes a guilt conscience. Of course, Jesus Christ is our lawyer or defender before the judgement seat of the Holy God. But Jesus not only saves us from our sins, but also he cleanses us from our guilty consciences so that we may not be deceived by Gnostics who are equivalent to modern intellectual hedonists.Second, live in the light (3-14).
Here John gives a practical advise how to live as the children of light. What is the sign of God's children? How can we have the assurance that we are in God's family? The key point is to obey God's command. What is the main content of God's commnad? It is to love God. We Christians are justified by the grace of God. Now we must be sanctified by practicing the love of God and be elevated to a higher ground of spiritual maturity. We must know and renew our thought world that we are children of God who live in the light, not in the darkness. In a Christian church, there are many kinds of Christians. There are intellectual hedonists. There are mystics who want to satisfy their emotional feelings and speak and act like ancient magic artists in oriental countries. They do all kinds of strange activities in order to feel a spiritual high. We Christians are those who have accepted the good news of salvation that Jesus is God and we love God. Those who love God obey God. Through their obedience they came to know Jesus Christ. True Christians keep God's commandments; God's first and last commandment is to love God and to love one's neighbor. True Christians grow in the love of God and imitate the life of Jesus. Read veres 3-6. "We know that we have come to know him if we obey his commands. The man who says, 'I know him,' but does not do what he commands is a liar, and the truth is not in him. But if anyone obeys his word, God's love is truly made complete in him. This is how we know we are in him: Whoever claims to live in him must walk as Jesus did." Many people say that the love commandment is already an old one. Actually, this is true. In Exodus 20, the Ten Commandments are commandments to love God and to love one's neighbor as himself. Yet this old commandment became a new commandment through our Lord Jesus Christ. Jesus said in John 13:34-35, "A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another." At the beginning of John's Gospel 13, Jesus began to wash his disciples' feet one by one. The top disciple, Peter, didn't understand Jesus' servantship. So he refused, saying, "No, you shall never wash my feet." He was saying, "It is ok for you to wash John's feet but not mine." He was self-centered and did not understand the love of God in Jesus. Jesus answered, "Unless I wash you, you have no part with me." Then Peter said, "Okay." In this way, Jesus taught his disciples how to respect one another. In this way, Jesus taught his disciples complete joy through serving. Look at verses 9-10. "Anyone who claims to be in the light but hates his brother is still in the darkness. Whoever loves his brother lives in the light, and there is nothing in him to make him stumble." These verses teach us how to know whether we are living in the light or in the darkness. Here, "light," refers to love and "darkness" to hate. Whoever hates his brother is in the darkness and walks around in the darkness. He does not know where he is going, because the darkness has blinded him(11). The living proof that we live in the light is to love our brothers and sisters. Galatians 5:6b says, "The only thing that counts is faith expressing itself through love." Love is a fuel to ignite our faith to bloom. Paul said in 1 Cor. 13:1, "If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal." I agree with him 100%. How can we say that we live in the light while we do not love our coworkers and children and parents. That's a lie. It is impossible for us as a child of God to walk in the light and hate our brothers and sisters. If we do hate another Christian, it means that there is something radically wrong with our life of faith. We have to reexamine our life of faith once again. But when we love our brothers and sisters in Christ, many wonderful things happen. Of course, we don't like a certain behavior of our coworkers like snoring or grinding teeth in the night, but we still love them. Everybody wins when there is love among us. Love is a secret weapon not to stumble. That's reason why I send a dozens of roses to my coworker at her birthday. Let's practice the love of God by loving each other. Verses 12-14 are not a poem. But these verses are very poetical and rhythmical. So we can say these verses are the beautiful song of Christians or a Christian poem. However, when we read verses 12-14 very carefully, we find that John repeated the contents we have studied thus far. Let's read verses 12-14. When we analyze these verses, St. John teaches us that we must hold on to the grace of Jesus' forgiveness. St. John tells us that we are in the world, however we should not compromise with evil. But we must defeat evil. The thought of this passage is the same with Jesus' prayer in John 17:15. It says, "My prayer is not that you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one." Here we understand why God put us in the world. The world is our working field. Jesus said in Matt 5:14, "You are the light of the world." We have mission to do in this world. We should not escape to the mountain to avoid the evil. Escaping is not a solution. We must fight against the evil and overcome it by faith. God wants us to be a blessing to those who are wandering in the world. God wants to evangelize them through our one-to-one Bible studies. In the last part of verse 14, we find the words, "from the beginning." When we are going to overcome the world we must hold on to the truth that Jesus is in the beginning with God and Jesus is the Creator God. Jesus also gives us eternal life and the kingdom of God as our inheritance. This main point of the gospel should be in us. Then we can overcome the world. Jesus said in John 16:33b, "But take heart! I have overcome the world."Third, do not love the world (15-17)
Look at verses 15-16. "Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For everything in the world-- the cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes and the boasting of what he has and does-comes not from the Father but from the world." These verses mean that we must love God only, living in this world. We must carry out all our beautiful privileges and mission from God. "Do not love the world" sounds very harsh. But Matthew 6:24 says, "No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money." Physically speaking, when we put water in a bottle, the air in the bottle comes out. Two things cannot be in the bottle at the same time. Likewise, we cannot love God and love the world at the same time. Look at verse 15. "Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him." In the world there are many precious things. But the most precious thing is the love of God. If we love the world or anything in the world, the love of the Father cannot dwell in our hearts. In short, by loving the world we lose the love of God in our soul. When we lose the love of God, virtually we lose everything. Our existence is nothing but flesh, which fades sooner or later. Why should we not love the world when there are so many funs in the world? It is because the love of the world means the craving of sinful man, the lust of his eyes and the boasting of what he has and does--which are not from the Father but from the world. These days we see so many people who are slaves of the cravings of sinful desire, slaves of the lust of their eyes and slaves of the boasting of what they have or do. Eve was deceived by Satan to please her eyes and to satisfy her human pride. She loved the world and yielded to temptation. Jesus was tempted to love the world by Satan in Matt 4 when he was hungry. But Jesus overcame Satan's temptation because he loved God more than the world. When we read Ecclesiastes, written by King Solomon, we find that everything under the sun that man does is meaningless (Ecc 1:2ff.) Even if it is meaningless, if we could keep on doing it forever, how nice it would be. But verse 17 says, "The world and its desires pass away, but the man who does the will of God lives forever." One physics professor gave his heart to physics. But he could not achieve as much as he wanted. Instead he contracted throat cancer. He despaired. His life seemed to have been totally meaningless. He only made his wife lonely all through his lifetime. He said to a young lady, "Don't be a physicist's wife." Worldly life is like this. We must know that man is like grass and his glory is like the flowers of the field. The grass withers and the flowers fall, but the word of the Lord stands forever(1Pe 1:24-25). Where is the glory of the Roman Empire? Where is the glory of Bibel Tower? Where is the glory of the British Empire? But we see the glory of the Kingdom of God.Fourth, warning against antichrists (18-29).
Look at verse 18. "Dear children, this is the last hour; and as you have heard that the antichrist is coming, even now many antichrist have come. This is how we know it is the last hour." In this verse, the words "the last hour," are repeated two times. The last hour implies the signs of the end of the world(Mk 13:1ff). At the signs of the end, the world is desparate and full of tragic premonition and the dreadful fear of tragic death. In this situation, antichrists arise and deceive people not to waste time in worshiping God, but to be anxious and distressed to prepare to be ready for the last days. They are indeed antichrists because they plant fear in innocent Christians. When we observe verses 18-27 very carefully, the Gnostics left and formed their own group; they did not remain in the church. But St. John strongly urges the early Christians that they have an anointing from the Holy One and all of them know the truth(20). So we must remember that we are anointed people. Then we can defeat the antichrist. Look at verse 22. "Who is the liar? It is the man who denies that Jesus is the Christ. Such a man is the antichrist--he denies the Father and the Son." In order to defeat the antichrist, we must believe almighty God is our Father. Jesus Christ is our Savior King. When this faith is not engraved in our hearts, there is a danger that we also may become antichrists. In verse 24, the word "remain" is repeated two times. St. John urges that Christian must remain in the Son and in the Father. This requires faithfulness. But the result is eternal life. In verses 26-27, St. John urges prayerfully that they must remember that they are anointed ones. Children of God continue or remain in Jesus so that when our Lord Jesus Christ appears, we may be confident and unashamed before him at his coming(28). May God bless you to live in the light.