Responding to the Holiness of God and Personal Sin

Yes, if you want to see a living testimony of God's grace, that brings even someone as me here to share

God's word with you, God can do greater things through you. It is my joy to bring

God's word this evening and to share it with you. And today we will be looking at the first chapter of 1

John. And as you are opening it, I know that some of you have heard parts of this message before.

Those of you who were in Cape Cod have heard it and some of you from my Sunday school have heard bits and pieces of it.

But I pray that the word of our Lord would continue to do its fresh work in each of us, whether we were hearing it for the first time or hearing pieces of it again.

Why do you keep preaching to us Christians about sin? An angry church member asked a pastor.

After all, sin in the life of a believer is different than sin in the life of an unsaved person.

Yes, replied the pastor, it is different. It is much worse.

In today's passage, we're going to look at how an unbeliever responds to this issue of sin in their life.

And we're also going to see how a believer must respond to this important dilemma of the holiness of God and personal sin.

The Apostle John, in writing the first letter of John, shows how each person's response will reveal whether the person is truly saved or is just a pretender.

Let's pray as we go to God's word. Dear Father, may the words of my mouth and the meditations of each and every one of our hearts be acceptable in your sight and glorifying to your name.

O Lord, our rock and our redeemer, amen. John had two main purposes when he wrote this letter of 1

John. His primary purpose was to give Christian assurance to believers so that they can know the certainty of their faith in very clear and unmistakable terms.

And the second reason he wrote the letter was to expose false teachers, false teachers who were infecting the church to which

John is writing to. And he wanted to expose them for their false doctrine.

And in John's times, there were two groups in particular, and we see that as we read the letter of 1

John, there were some groups of people who used to say that, you know, Jesus was not truly human.

He just appeared to be like a man. He was not a physical flesh and blood like you think he might be.

Those were the group of people called the Dorsetists. And then there were the Gnostics. And the Gnostics were a group of people who claimed that the spirit is good, but the body is evil or matter is evil.

And for them to know was salvation. Gnostics comes from gnosis, from which we get the word no.

To know was salvation and to do really didn't matter. You could do or not do, do good, do bad.

It was irrelevant to them. And Serentis was supposed to be an early

Gnostic during John's time and probably lived in Ephesus during John's period, who was teaching this heretical doctrines.

So John here was writing to A, provide Christian assurance to believers who were in the faith and also to expose these false teachings in the church.

And our message today is titled Three Revealing Responses to the Light. These are gonna be a true heart responses that John outlines for us based on God's word.

And they will either provide Christian assurance to you this evening, or they will remove any false assurances that you might have as the word of God by his spirit looks into each of our hearts.

Before we read the first verse, why can we trust this passage before us?

Many of us here are believers and we know that the word of God can be trusted. And the apostle

John provides reasons for us to have this confidence in God's word as we open up here.

And he gives us an apostolic foundation for our faith in Jesus Christ and his gospel.

So as we read the first four verses of chapter one, I want you to pay attention to the number of times the word we is used.

And this refers to the apostolic testimony that John is providing for us as believers that we can have confidence in this eyewitness firsthand information that John is giving to us even now, just as he did to the church 2000 years ago.

First John chapter one, verse one. That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon and have touched with our hands concerning the word of life.

Word of life, John is here speaking of Jesus Christ, his person, his words and his works as recorded in the gospel.

And as we read verse two, verse two is essentially a parenthetical statement between verses one and three, explaining a little bit more about this word of God.

Verse two, the life was made manifest and we have seen it and testified to it and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the father and was made manifest to us.

In verse three, pay attention to the term fellowship because we're gonna be seeing this again later in the message.

That which we have seen and heard, we proclaim also to you so that you too may have fellowship with us and indeed our fellowship is with the father and with the son

Jesus Christ. And we are writing these things so that our joy may be complete.

After providing this foundational preface of what

John has firsthand seen and heard, John goes on to give us the three tests of authentic faith.

And he does that by first writing about the message that he has received personally from Jesus and is communicating to us.

And for those of you who are taking notes, this is the first point of the message, which is

God is light found in verse five. This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you that God is light and in him is no darkness at all.

Light, as you know, is used in various senses throughout the Bible. We see the word of God being called as a light illuminating our paths.

And in this particular passage, the metaphor that light is used for has two primary meanings.

The first one is God's self -revelation of himself because God is not someone who is hiding in some dark corner, waiting for some

Gnostic spiritual to get some hidden knowledge about him that you have to have the special knowledge in order to come to know

God. What can be known of God is manifest to us in his creation and in his word.

As Pastor Mike was saying, when you look at the Redwoods, the Grand Canyon, if they point to evolution, we are deceived indeed.

The second thing that light points to is God's essential holiness.

Light symbolizes holiness and some aspects of purity and righteousness.

And God here by his nature is good. It is on the basis of who God is that we as humans can even conceive of morality and what is right and wrong.

And holiness is the primary sense in which we are gonna be looking at light in this passage today.

But John doesn't stop with saying that God is light. He goes on to say, in him is no darkness at all.

You would think that if he's told us God is light, it would be obvious to us that God cannot have darkness.

But John doesn't just tell that there's no darkness, but he says in very strong and very emphatic terms that there is no darkness, no none, absolutely no darkness at all.

And there is a reason why he's saying that because God is not dualistic.

He doesn't in some way have a light on one half of him and darkness on the other half.

There are some Eastern religions today that would teach you that there's this dualism about God.

Or even in our postmodern boasts of relativism and its lack of absolutes, there is this mixture of good and evil and the absolutes about light and darkness is lost.

But John very clearly sets us the message that God is light and there is no darkness, that he is not both good and evil.

There is no hint of evil, no hint of wickedness, there's no hint of sin in God. As we see in Isaiah six, holy, holy, holy, he is surrounded in light and he is truly holy.

Now having seen this truth about who God is, that God is light, we will now see John outline three revealing responses to this truth.

It's quite possible that these three responses are actually slogans that these

Gnostics might have used in the first century. And John may be actually recounting them for us and then showing them how they are false and then explaining what the right response to God as light should be.

So let's look at the first response in verse six. Point number two, which is the revealing response number one.

I'm gonna be reading verse six and seven. If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth.

But if we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another and the blood of Jesus, his son, cleanses us from all sin.

In verse six, we see the first false response of people who claim to have fellowship with God, but live a lifestyle of evil.

People who claim fellowship with God, but live a lifestyle of evil.

It's important for us as we get into this passage to define some of the terms that John uses.

And you will see this throughout the book of 1 John. He uses fellowship, walk, light, darkness.

And fellowship here is essentially a right relationship with God. When he says we have fellowship with him, he's talking about somebody who claims to be saved in our modern language.

So if you claim to have fellowship with God, he's talking about somebody who claims to be a believer. And walk, walk in the

Bible throughout the Old and the New Testament refers to an ongoing activity. It's a pattern of behavior.

It's a lifestyle. It's not just one incident doing something one way or the other because he doesn't walk by itself doesn't signify good or bad.

And it refers to a lifestyle when John talks about walking a pattern. And darkness, we've already seen in verse five, it refers to sin, which has absolutely nothing to do with God.

So as you try to put these meanings of these words into this verse, it becomes very obvious. Here is a person in verse six who's calling himself a believer who's living a lifestyle of sin.

Now, I mentioned John wants to expose these false teachers and primarily here we are talking about these early

Gnostics and some of them would actually admit that sin did exist. There was sin in the world, but they would go on to say that sin did not have any effect on any person.

They would sometimes claim that the body was more like a wrapper around their spirit. We saw that spirit they thought was good and the body was evil.

And therefore the deeds of everything that the body did could not in any way contaminate the spirit. The spirit was untouchable in some senses.

And some of them would go even as far as to say, you can go and do whatever that's wrong, doesn't matter because your spirit cannot be contaminated.

And then there were others in the Gnostics who would claim that a person who was truly spiritual has progressed beyond defilement.

So once you know the special thing about God and who you are and what it takes to be saved, that's fine, you cannot be defiled.

So that was the kind of false teaching that was going on that John is writing to here. And these people claimed to have communion or fellowship with God without morality in their lives and in their bodies.

Now, there are not too many people calling themselves Gnostics here, although I remember seeing a book in one of the stores talking about reviving

Gnosticism. But in modern day, it's quite fashionable to claim to know

God. God seems like a very familiar term with many of our people here. There's not many

Atheists you find these days or at least proclaimed Atheists that are practical

Atheists, but they would claim to know God, but see no need to come to the cross to be saved.

There are many more who claim to have mystical intimacy with God. They know who

God is, they know how he works, but they would continue to walk in darkness of sin.

And unfortunately, even within the church, we have people who would call themselves Christians, just as there are people outside in the world who would call themselves spiritual, whose lifestyle is totally incompatible with God who is light.

And here, John, he writes in black and white. You can see that he is bringing out a case where if you claim to have fellowship with God, you cannot live a lifestyle of darkness, which is incompatible with God of the

Bible. Verse six, John exposes sin as antithetical to God.

And my purpose here is not to take potshots at those who are not saved. If there is anyone here who belongs to any of these categories that I just spoke about, my desire is that the spirit of God would open your eyes and that you would be saved by God's grace.

I'd like to, I know of a person who called himself a Christian once. Whether he is or not, we will let the spirit of God and the word of God tell us.

But this person used to read books a lot. He loved books and he used to go and buy books and read them.

And he found it to be quite expensive. So he patronized a certain bookstore and he would go and buy books regularly from there.

And he also developed the habit of skillfully picking one book free for every two that he bought without the knowledge of the storekeeper.

And this went on for years. And of course, this person was claiming to be a believer.

Is his claim true? In the case of the heretics of the first century, in the case of the modern day, people who claim to know

God, and even in the case of this, I'll call him Johnny Quickfingers with our

Italian theme. I don't watch too many mafia movies, but I've heard the name enough to make the connection.

So in the case of all three, their life says it loudly than their words.

And the message is this, that they do not consider anything called sin, or at least nothing called sin that separates them from God because they're claiming fellowship with God who is light.

And here we see the verdict from the apostle John, and he has a very plain verdict.

John writes in black and white. He has no shades of gray when he talks about sin. And he says that they are lying, we lie.

This is a deliberate deception on the part of the one who claims to have fellowship because it contradicts the truth as they know it about their relationship with God.

This is a lie on behalf of the person saying it to others that he has this relationship with God.

And he also goes on to say that they are not practicing the truth. And these actions of these people exposes the lie for what it is, that although they claim to have fellowship with God, they really are not saved.

Now, having looked at the first false response, let's look at the right response that John outlines for us.

And we see that in verse seven, that they claim to have fellowship with God and live a lifestyle of holiness.

They live a lifestyle of sincere holiness. Believers, as we know, through the rest of scripture, cannot have a pattern of lifestyle and sin.

And we see this in 1 John 3, 6, where no one who abides in him keeps on sinning.

And true Christians can live a holy life because God is in the light.

Verse seven says that we can walk in the light. We walk in the light as he is in the light. And it is important to understand how we walk in the light because Christians do not have a light of their own that they generate and then walk by.

It is in Christ's light that Christians can walk in holiness.

And for us to explain this, to understand this, I have a little bit of a mixed metaphor here. So if you'd bear with me on how

I confuse a few terms, but it'll illustrate the point about darkness and light. You know that darkness is not something that we can physically scoop out of a sinner.

Darkness is something is naturally dispelled when the light shines in. And that's the same way with sin in our lives.

We cannot work hard at taking out sin. And that's why an unbeliever cannot do works of righteousness it is only because of God's light that shines in our hearts that we can live a holy life.

And John goes on to say what the results of this walking in the light are.

He says that we have fellowship with other believers. We already saw in verse three that John was writing to this church that they may have fellowship with him, the apostles and also with God, the father and his son.

And John here almost skips a step when he talks about fellowship with other believers.

In verse six, we've seen that he's talking about people who claim to have fellowship with God. And here are people, believers who walk in the light, not only have fellowship with God vertically, but just as every other believer has the same relationship with God, the father and thereby his children, all his children have this fellowship as brothers and sisters in Christ.

And that's the fellowship that John is talking about here. And he goes on to say that the blood of Jesus cleanses us from all sin.

And the cleanses, the word used there is in the present continuous. And it seems a little strange that he would say that the blood of Jesus continues to cleanse us when we are walking in the light and not sinning.

And John now begins to expand on what it means to have true fellowship and what it means to have walk in the light.

So is there sin in the life of one who walks in the light? We're gonna be seeing that shortly, but before we do that,

I wanna provide a few definitions for us to put what we are hearing within the bigger context of salvation.

When we talk about darkness or sin, we know that sin's origin is in our nature.

All of us are born with a propensity to sin. We receive that with Adam's fall and all of us are sinners by nature.

And sin is also manifest in our conduct. As we live with our actions, with our thoughts, we exhibit acts of sin.

And sin results in this breakage of fellowship, both with God and also with our fellow men.

But as a believer and as one who is saved, we know that there are three stages that a person goes through in salvation.

Pastor Mike touched upon that. We have justification, which is a one -time act when a person is justified by the work of Christ on the cross, by his death, his resurrection, and by Christ's death and resurrection, we can receive this justification, which calls us not guilty before God.

And once a person is justified, he now is in the process of sanctification, which is a lifelong process.

It's something that we will have all through life on earth, whether we are raptured or when we die and go up.

Until then, we are in the process of sanctification, where we are made more and more like Christ. We see this in Philippians 3, 14.

Our goal is to press on in sanctification. And then finally, we have a glorification, as we see in 1

Corinthians 15, where we will one day be in heaven, where we will be sinless. We will not have these mortal bodies and we will be made perfect.

But at this point, if a person is saved, he goes through sanctification, being made more and more like Christ.

So in the first revealing response, we've seen that believers walk in the light and not in darkness.

But whether they are perfect or not, we see that in the second response in verses eight and nine.

Revealing response number two in verse eight. If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.

If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

In verse eight, we see the second false response where claiming to be blameless is self -deception.

Claiming to be blameless is self -deception. We have no sin. That's what the verse says here about these people who claim to know

God. And this is a present tense, claiming to be committing no sin, or at least nothing that can be counted as sinful.

And in the heretics of John's time, there were some who denied sin altogether. They would say there was no original sin.

Therefore, there was no sin that can be accounted to them. And others would claim that their sinful nature was eradicated among those who were enlightened, who were the

Gnostics. And therefore, they have attained this sinless perfection. And nothing that they did could now be considered sinful.

And to bring this closer to earth, we talked about people within the church claiming to be

Christians, and those who are in the world who claim to be spiritual. And the pattern that we would see that corresponds to what

John is talking about here is people who would excuse their actions as not being sinful.

Some would deny their sin because they would claim that it has psychological, sociological, or even social causes.

My dad beat me when I was a kid, and therefore, I have a right to be bitter with everybody I meet. Or I committed this murder, but I was partially insane when that happened.

I'm not to blame. Or I have this homosexual tendency, and it's built within me.

I would blame God rather than accept the blame myself. And you know how common this is.

And it is bought in by the world because that is one of the heresies that has existed since the past, that we would not take accountability for sin as the

Bible declares it to be. And there are others which also would fall into this category of the second response, who would claim to have reached sinless perfection.

So the moment they were saved, they don't commit sin anymore, or they have this special knowledge about God, and therefore, no more sin.

Everything they do has a very perfect and valid explanation for it. Now, let's quickly go back to this

Johnny Quickfingers and see what's going on in his life. So he's now starting to thinking about what he's doing.

God has put something called a conscience, and it won't let you, at least initially, keep quiet. So he asks himself, is this stealing what

I'm doing? And then he says, no, not really. I don't think this is stealing because I know the place that I buy from is making a lot of profit on the books they sell.

I buy a lot of books from them. And all I'm doing is, you know, from the profits they make, I'm just getting a few books for myself, and I don't think they are making a loss on account of me.

And he tells it to himself, and he tells it to a few close friends that he, you know, to assuage his conscience.

And then soon, he begins to believe his own lies. So he just goes on to believe that this is fine and no longer conscience -bothering because he has started to believe it.

And in all these cases, again, the heresy or the world with its excuses or with Johnny, there is no sin nature, nor is there any general sinful acts in this particular person.

Every single thing is excused. But John wouldn't let that go that easily.

He has a very strong verdict on all of these. And he claims that they are self -deceived.

They have lied to themselves and have believed their own excuses, and therefore they are deceived on their own.

And they no longer have the truth in them. Now let's look at the right response of the believer in verse nine.

And this is essential for us to understand what sanctification means as we deal with sin.

In verse nine, we find that confession is essential, absolutely essential in the life of a believer.

Believers must confess our sins. Confession is agreeing with God.

It's telling God, God knows already what we have done, but we agree with God that we have both committed the sin and it's a sin against God and we repent of it.

That's what confession means. And confession is absolutely essential. And when we talk about confession,

John here gives us the reason why we can confess. And he explains, it's on the basis of the faithfulness and justice of God that we can confess.

That's a very strange couple of terms to use when you talk about confession. When you're talking about confession, you want somebody to just look over what you've done.

You want somebody merciful, somebody who would just say, okay, I know you did it, fine. I'm not gonna look at it again.

But here John tells us the basis on which we can confess is God's faithfulness and his justice.

And the basis of justice is the finished work of Christ on the cross.

When Christ died and he rose again, he had already paid the payment for our sin.

And that is the basis on which you and I can confess to God today and be forgiven and cleansed as John goes on to speak.

And God is faithful because he has promised us that whoever has come to him, he will by no means cast away and he will preserve you to the very end, presenting you as a spotless bride.

And it's on this basis of Christ's finished work on the cross and on his faithfulness that we can come boldly before his throne and confess our sins and receive forgiveness and cleansing.

And when we talk about forgiveness and cleansing, these are two sides of this confession that I think we need to be clear about.

Forgiveness, we commit these acts of sin that stack up against us. We have this debt that we cannot pay.

There's nothing that we can do that can pay for what we have done that is wrong. But God has graciously given his son that by his death and his resurrection, all these can be wiped away.

That debt is erased. When Christ died on the cross, all of our sins, past, present, and future is paid for and we are forgiven by his word.

And on the other side, we have the cleansing. And the cleansing is the removal of the stain that sin causes in our lives.

And when we confess our sins, we can have confidence in what

God has done in our lives. We don't have to carry on the burden of sin in our shoulders.

When we come to the cross, the burden rolls away. When we think of ascetics and people who want to do penance for some of their sins, you understand that the concept of cleansing is not understood because when you understand the magnitude of what

Christ has done for each of you on the cross, you know what cleansing you can receive when you confess and come before the cross and receive grace in your time of need.

The believer is not self -deceived as we saw earlier in verse eight, but he is honest about his specific sins.

He does not need to live a life of deception to himself or a hypocrisy in trying to pretend before others that he is holier somewhat than everybody else.

He can live an honest life. He is empowered by God to overcome sin as a controlling force, which is why we saw the first response of the believer can walk in the light.

But he's also able to confess individual sin as he commits them, and he's able to receive forgiveness and cleansing.

And for those of you thinking about sanctification, which all of you who are believers must think about on a daily basis, confession plays a very vital role in our relationship with God.

Now we have seen that believers walk in the light and not in darkness. We have seen that they confess their sins regularly as they fall and they admit that they're not sinless.

And the unbeliever on the other hand, we have seen so far walks in darkness. He lies to other about his relationship with God, and then would claim that he has no sin, excusing his sinful behavior and lying eventually to himself.

Now, is there any other way in which it is possible to respond wrong to God who is light,

God who is holy? And John says that is yet a third and an even more dangerous way to respond in verse 10.

And that's revealing response number three, which we will see in verse 10 and then chapter two, verse one and two.

If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar and his word is not in us. My little children, chapter two, verse one,

I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the father,

Jesus Christ, the righteous. He is the propitiation for our sins and not for us only, but also for the sins of the whole world.

And verse 10 seems very close to verse eight, but here we find that committing a sin is serious, but denying it is a lot worse.

We have not sinned is in the perfect tense. And it refers to not having committed a sin in the past, whether it is a distant past or in the recent past, it's denying that an act of sin ever occurred.

And therefore, there is no issue to deal with because there is no act of sin that was committed in the first place. And again, when we look at the historical false teachers, they would sometimes, like I said, admit that sin exists in nature, but that sin would even break fellowship with God, but that they were enlightened and therefore committed no sin at all after their enlightenment.

And in our contemporary world, again, we can see those in the world who would claim to be spiritual or the pseudo -Christians that we were talking about in the church, who would disown their sinful act.

And whether it is after some spiritual experience or ever since they were born, this disowning of sinful act,

I think it's important for us to understand how this differs from the second response. And I think

Johnny would help us see the difference here. So Johnny one day gets found out and his mom comes and talks to him and says,

I think I've seen this. And then he says, no, I never pinched anything.

I just paid for all of them. He would deny the act. He's no longer giving an excuse to himself, but he is denying that he even committed that particular act of sin.

This person claims to have no act of sin, whereas in verse eight, we saw people who would admit the act, but would find a very good reason to excuse themselves of its sinfulness, therefore not having committed a sinful act rather than the act itself.

And in verse 10, John has the most serious verdict. He says that not only is this person denying the sin that he committed, but he's refuting

God himself who sees everything. We see in Romans 3 .23, God says, all have sinned and fall short of his glory.

And God sees everything. And here is someone claiming to have not committed something, thinking he's just deceiving the people that he's talking to.

But essentially what he's doing is calling God a liar. And that's what John lays it out for us in verse 10.

And accusing God of lying is very serious business. In such a person,

God's word has no place at all. And in verse one and two of chapter two, we are going to see

John summarizing what the believer's response ought to be. And between the extremes of living loose, as we saw in the first wrong response, you know,

I'll walk in darkness, and pretending to be perfect, which we saw in the second and third responses of the unbeliever, there is the proper lifestyle of holiness and confession, which we've seen already in the second, first and second right response.

Believers do not continue to sin. And John explains that very clearly in the first verse of chapter two.

He says, I write this that you may not sin. That's the purpose that John is writing.

The word of God is here to reveal sin. And his spirit is within us to walk along this path of sanctification, that we would be more and more like Christ, that we would sin less as we become like him.

But then John also is not advocating perfectionism. And he says, when you do commit individual sin, you can confess your sin and receive forgiveness and cleansing.

And the reason that we can confess, he goes on to explain in more detail about this great savior that we have,

Jesus Christ, in verses one and two of chapter two. We have an advocate with the father.

We have Jesus, who is Jesus Christ, who is righteous, who is the propitiation for our sins. We could just dwell on this verse two and just dig at the riches of who

Christ is. And I would just want to briefly point to you a few things as we move on. And we are talking about Jesus who is human.

Unlike the false teachers of John's days, this was a person who came in the flesh and blood who identified with human, frail human beings was as we are except without sin.

He was, he came here to take away sin. That's why he was called Jesus, the savior. And he was the

Christ, the Messiah, the anointed one who was sent for the purpose of delivering us. And he is not just Jesus Christ.

He is also the righteous one. He lived a perfect sinless life that he can be that lamb that takes our sin upon himself.

And Jesus Christ, the righteous one was our propitiation. He is the one who was our sin bearer, who provided appeasement to God.

God's wrath on sin and sinners was just. We all deserve to die, to face hell for eternity, but by Christ's work on the cross, his death, his resurrection, and his resurrection proved that God was pleased with what he sacrificed on the cross for us.

So it's his propitiatory work that enables us to have salvation and even sanctification.

And John goes on to say that he is our advocate, our advocate, the one who pleads on our behalf.

He's the one, actually the word here used is a paraclete, somebody who comes alongside and he entreats with God on our behalf.

And when we sin, we know that we have Jesus Christ who has paid our sin, speaking to God on our behalf.

There is nothing that can come between you and God when you have been cleansed by the blood of Jesus Christ.

Now, we have seen that believers walk in the light. We have seen they do not continue in darkness. We have seen that they are not sinless, but they confess their sins regularly.

The unbeliever, on the other hand, walks in darkness. He lies to others about his relationship with God if he calls himself a believer.

Some claim to have no sin and excusing their sinful behavior while others deny that they commit their sins at all and essentially calling

God the liar. Having looked at these three revealing responses, I think it is important for us to look at how we can apply this in our lives and what

God's word has for us. These are essentially tests of faith in Christ.

What happens if the test comes back negative? If you find that your life is one of walking in darkness, is there truly fellowship with God or are you actually lying about your relationship with Him?

Or do you find yourself excusing your sins? Do you find that it's very easy to give reasons for all the sinful things that you do?

If so, are you self -deceived or do you find yourself in the habit of covering up all the things that you do wrong, denying that you actually even do them?

If so, remember that the Bible tells us that you are in effect calling God a liar.

Or maybe you're here and this is the first time you're hearing about the truth about who God is, that God is light and what sin really is for the first time.

Johnny Quickfingers is a real person, someone I know closely, and one day he was saved.

And what will prevent you from trusting in Jesus today if you fall with a negative test?

The second purpose for John's letter was also to provide Christian assurance. So the many of you here who are believers, you should be able to look up at your own lives and see how it stands up against what

John tells us about saying and doing. When we say we ought to say we are believers, if you are, and if so, are we living the pattern of lifestyle that John has talked about?

Is our fellowship with God reflecting in holiness? And when we do sin, are we honest about it?

And are we confessing our sin regularly to God, receiving this forgiveness and cleansing and able to walk in greater purity from day to day?

And if we do, such a life should reflect in every single area of your life.

Firstly, with respect to lies and honesty, your life should be one of honesty, sincerity, whether it is to others about your relationship and your lifestyle, about yourself, to have an honest opinion of where you stand, where you are, you have the

God's grace to excel and where you need God's grace to overcome particular sin. And honesty to God as you come before him every day to confess.

And it also results in obedience. John in verse three to six goes on to talk about how the believer would respond in obedience.

But very briefly, any area you take, marriage, forgiveness, anger, work, in all of these areas, you will see how this truth about walking in holiness and confession will bring a bearing on as you walk this life here on earth before we go to heaven.

So for example, I'm just gonna use marriage here. So those of you who are married, the men, you know that Christ has asked you to love your wife as Christ loved the church.

It is a hard thing to do, but God has asked us to do it and he would give us the grace to do it. And as believers, you would want to obey

God in this particular area. You would live a lifestyle where it is characterized by this type of love that you wanna show your wife.

Yes, you would try, but you would fail. And when you do, you wouldn't cover it up.

You shouldn't cover it up. You would rather bring it in confession before God, ask for his forgiveness and go back to obeying him.

And that's how your life progresses in holiness. The same thing goes for the wife. Submission is a hard thing.

Bible very clearly says the wife ought to submit to the husband. And that should be the pattern of lifestyle that characterizes the wife.

You would want to obey God because of his light that is within you. And your life would show that behavior and you wouldn't be perfect again.

You would fall. And when you do, you would come back down on your knees and receive this cleansing and forgiveness that God gives us when you confess.

And as we close here, I want you to remember this aspect of sanctification is one of abiding in him.

As we say in Galatians 2 .20, it is no longer I who live, but Christ who lives within me. We are living a life of incarnation.

As Christ's light is within us, it enables us to live out this life that God wants us to. And it is not one of scooping out the darkness by our own self efforts, but rather by fellowship with God.

For those of you who were here for Dan Rathbun's message on sanctification in 2 Corinthians 3, he talked about how you look at the glory of God and let his life, his truth about God change you.

And that is the process of sanctification. And your goal is to please God, not please yourself or to please other men.

And especially for believers here, I would urge you that you would take the messages that you hear here and you would go out and share it out of love for your

God because he has commanded you to do so. Finally, as we close here, we have seen sin in the life of an unbeliever and sin in the life of a believer.

We have seen how each of them deal with it. And may the spirit of God quicken you to salvation if you do not truly know him, if these tests came out negative.

And may it grow you in sanctification. As you leave this place today, let's pray.

Dear Heavenly Father, we thank you, Lord, for your word. We thank you for your spirit.

We thank you, Lord, for your light that shines upon us. Cleanse us,

O Lord, we pray. Lord, it is an awesome privilege that we can come before you, holy as you are in your throne of grace, and we can receive the same cleansing and forgiveness.

I pray that you would work on each of our lives, O Lord, as we go out from here, that we would walk as you have shown us by your word.