Light, Life, and Love - Part 1 — Roy Hession

Reading First John and Its Purpose

Now, I've felt it right to seek to turn to the first epistle of John for our morning Bible studies. There are five chapters and we have five mornings, but I'm not at all sure that we shall necessarily merely do a chapter a day.

It's the themes and the truths of this great writing that we want to lay hold on, whether it will coincide with the five chapters or not remains to be seen. Now we're going to read together the first chapter and two verses of the second.

I rather think that possibly the second chapter ought to begin in the third verse of the second chapter. Maybe, but that's not important. That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon and our hands have handled of the word of life, for the life was manifested, and we have seen it, and bear witness, and show unto you that eternal life which was with the Father and was manifested unto us.

That which we have seen and heard, declare we unto you, that ye also may have fellowship with us, and truly our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. And these things write we unto you, that your joy may be full.

He's not going to browbeat them. He wants their joy to be full. That's the reason he writes these things. Those verses then are the introduction. And now he gets to the main message that he wants to speak about at this point, verse five.

This then is the message which we have heard of him and declare unto you, that God is light and in him is no darkness at all. If we say that we have fellowship with him and walk in darkness, we lie and do not the truth.

But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ, his Son, cleanseth us from all sin. If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.

If on the other hand we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.

My little children, these things write I unto you, that ye sin not. And if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. And he is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world.

John: A Sinner Transformed by Grace

Before addressing ourselves to the text of this first passage, I want to say two preliminary things. The first thing is about the writer, John the Apostle. As you read his gospel and this epistle, he seems to be the most spiritual and the most seraphic of all the disciples.

And when you see him, as it says, leaning on Jesus' bosom, and you hear him describing himself in the gospel on several occasions, as the disciple whom Jesus loved, we get the impression that he really was a very, very holy man, a very spiritual man.

And of course he's taken up, is he not, with the great subject of love. And we might get the impression that Jesus loved him because he was that sort of person. Little wonder that such a man would find a place on the bosom of Jesus.

Little wonder that he should be called the disciple whom Jesus loved. But really and truly, that is not the right impression. John was very, very much a sinner saved by the grace of God. In the gospels we have quite an unsavory picture of the writer of this epistle.

Before grace really reached him. There's an occasion where he proved to be intolerant of those that didn't follow with them and hard toward them. You remember in Luke 10, he said, Lord, we've met those that were casting out demons in thy name, but they didn't follow with us.

They went of our group, and you know what I did, Lord? I really gave them a bit of my mind. I forbade them. How intolerant. How hard. How unlike his master. And the Lord Jesus had to rebuke him that day.

He that is not against us is with us. You did the wrong thing, John, in your apparency. And then this, the writer of this lovely epistle, in those early days, was a man with a real vindictive streak in him, utterly unlike his savior.

When he saw that village of the Samaritans wouldn't receive Jesus because his face was as if he would go to Jerusalem, and the Samaritans hated the Jews, they wouldn't receive him. John was so worked up and vindictive, he said, Lord, wouldst thou that I call down fire from heaven and consume them like Elijah did in the Old Testament?

I can't throw stones at John because I have a sin that I know is characteristic of me and I have so often to go to the cross with it. I don't quite know how to express it. I call it the sin of up-in-arms-ness.

It doesn't take very much for me to react and get up in arms. And sometimes if I don't say it with my lips, I have a mighty argument with a person in my mind. And I imagine what I would say if I had the chance.

Sometimes I read the papers. And oh, I hear this, and oh, I find slipping myself into how I would deal with that case. Call down fire. Vindictiveness. Jesus didn't come to destroy men's lives, not even sinners' lives, but to save them.

But John thought that perhaps Jesus did, when they were really bad and they wouldn't receive him. And once again, Jesus had to convict him and rebuke him. You don't know what spirit you're of. That's not from above.

John, that's from beneath. This is the writer, if you please, of the Gospel of John and the Epistle of John, which seem to be so full of love and so spiritual. And then on a third occasion, he manifested a most unsavoury spirit of personal ambition, and that in a realm in which it is most unseemly, the realm of religion.

Nowhere is ambition more unseemly than when it's in spiritual things, and you want to excel the others in the Christian life. And he and his brother came to the Lord and said, we want to ask you to do something for us.

Well, and what's that? Well, now, we know you're coming in your kingdom. Lord, could we book a place, one on the right hand and one on the left? That wasn't being a geographical place. It meant we want to be prime minister and chancellor of the exegeta in the kingdom that you're going to set up.

And they thought if they got in quick before the others, they could take that position. How unpleasant. A little wonder that it aroused the others to be angry, because they too had been cherishing the same ambitions.

But these men got in first. And if you resent another's selfishness, it is probably because that person's selfishness is crossing yours. They were all about the same. But they got in first, and they got convicted first, did they not?

Now this is the writer of this epistle that speaks so different a language. It is quite clear that when John repented under the rebuke of the Lord, and I'm quite sure he did, Jesus forgave him. And the grace of God, he gave even a sinner with such unsavory characteristics a place on the bosom of Jesus.

And so it is that when John spoke of himself as this disciple whom Jesus loved, he wasn't thinking of Jesus being drawn to him because of his wonderful excellences, for of all the men he knew he hadn't got any.

He was marvelling at the love of Jesus for a sinner that had so often grieved his master. And I suggest to you that is how he came to know and appreciate that love of which he speaks so much in this epistle.

John's Gospel, Epistles, and Revelation

Now the second preliminary thing I want to say is this, is about his writings. John wrote three writings, did he not? The Gospel, the fourth Gospel, these three epistles, we can regard them as one maybe, or separate them if you like, and the Book of Revelation.

It is called the Revelation of John the Divine. Not the Book of Revelations, don't misquote it, it's the Revelation. And it's really a revelation of Jesus Christ made to John. It is thought by those who have gone deeply into it that John wrote the Revelation and saw those things which he wrote before he wrote the Gospels, his Gospel, and before he wrote his three epistles.

Before he ever wrote the Gospels, he had seen the Lamb upon the throne in vision, he'd seen him as the arbiter of the destiny of nations, ruling even the Antichrist and bringing him down. He'd seen Jesus coming on the white horse, and his name was called Faithful and True, and upon his vesture and his thigh were written the words, King of Kings and Lord of Lords.

It is thought that he saw all that first, then having seen who Jesus really was, the transcendence of his Lord, he went back to his earthly life, and he wrote what he did in the light of that vision. Little wonder he doesn't give as much about the earthly birth of the Lord Jesus.

He begins, in the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and so on. And that is the reason, perhaps, that there is such an obvious difference between the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and that of John.

They began with the earthly life of the Lord and went on and on until they saw him and presented him as the Eternal Son. John begins with him as the Eternal Son, and looks at all those incidents in the light of that fact, and as merely evidences and proofs that Jesus actually was what he'd seen him to be in glory.

It is also thought that this epistle was written at the same time, or much the same time, as his Gospel, because it begins in very much the same way as the Gospel does. He's full of the same vision. And it is thought, no one can be dogmatic, that perhaps this epistle was sent round with the Gospel to the churches.

And maybe they read the Gospel first, and then they got down to this epistle. Well, those are just suggestions, but it does perhaps help us to get a preliminary touch with this wonderful writing of this aged man in exile on the Isle of Patmos.

Life, Light, and Love Through Jesus Christ

Now I'm going to suggest that the theme of this epistle is threefold. I don't suppose that in the Greek in which John wrote, his three themes began with L, but they do happen to in English. The trouble is, if you're speaking by interpretation in French or German, they don't always begin with the right letter there either.

The first theme is the theme of life. The second theme is the theme of light. And the third theme is the theme of love. And it is the third theme, which is the one upon which he spends most time, indeed the first two would appear to be something of an introduction to this last theme of love.

And all these three great themes have come into the world only, really, with the coming of Jesus. Apart from the Lord Jesus Christ, this world was dead. They are dead, we are told, we are dead, in trespasses and sins, alive to earth, but utterly dead to God and that realm of threading realities.

Life that quickens the spiritually dead only came into the world with the Lord Jesus. Apart from him, this world is dark. There's no true light. Men are completely blind, blind to their true state and condition, blind to the true nature of God.

Light upon man and light upon God has only come into the world with the Lord Jesus. He said, I am the light. And apart from the Lord Jesus, this world and the men of this world are unloved and unloving.

Love has only come into this world, this world that hates and is hated, with Jesus himself. And so these three themes, of course, are emanations of the one whom John loves and worships. The first verses, the introduction, in fact, of the epistle, deal with the theme of life.

Eternal Life as Jesus Christ Himself

Instead of the usual introductions and greetings in an epistle, as in the epistles of Paul and Peter, you have John, once again, preferring to remain rather anonymous, and he introduces himself to us as an eyewitness, an earwitness, and a handwitness of eternal life.

That's all he prefers to be known as. I'm simply an eyewitness, an earwitness, and a handwitness of that eternal life which was with the Father. And his concern, he tells us, is simply to pass on that which we have seen, gazed upon, heard, and handled of eternal life.

You might say, how can you see eternal life? How can you hear eternal life? How can you handle eternal life? Surely eternal life is something you get after you die, if you're a Christian. That's a very inadequate conception of eternal life.

In verse two, John answers that question. He says, for this life was manifested, and we have seen it, and bear witness and show unto you that eternal life which was with the Father and was manifested unto us.

What does he mean? Why he means that this eternal life which was with the Father and has been manifested is the Lord Jesus. The Lord Jesus, he is eternal life, and he has been manifested in a manner in which they could see him, hear him, and even touch him.

It was eternal life walking this world. And so he begins as he does that which we have seen and heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled of the word of life.

Now, in John's Gospel you'll remember that he begins very similarly. That which was from, he says, in the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was God. And of course, preachers like to talk about the logos.

People who don't know any Greek like me really don't know what it means, but it sounds important, it sounds sort of superior to throw in an odd Greek word or two. I mean, if you're really into lecture, you don't talk about fellowship, you talk about koinonia.

Well, I'm going to talk about fellowship, and I'm going to talk about the word. What is Jesus called the word? The word is that without which you cannot understand the thought. A man's thought is invisible, inaudible, unknowable, save as he expresses it by the word.

And normally the word is the exact expression of the thought. And that's why Jesus is given this great title in John's writing, The Word. God is invisible. No man has seen God or known God at any time.

The only begotten which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him. And Jesus is the visible and audible expression of a God who otherwise is invisible, inaudible, and unknowable. This to me throws light upon another one of his great titles, where he is called the Son of God.

Jesus is the Son of God in the sense that the word is the Son of the thought, and cannot exist apart from the thought, and exactly expresses the thought. The word is the Son of the thought, and in that sense God, Jesus, is the Son, the exact expression of what God is.

Now this is very important. The world cannot get itself to talk about Jesus. God, yes, thank God this, thank God the other. You even get politicians and our royal family, in their pronouncements they talk about God.

But somehow the word Jesus sticks in the throat. And there was a testimony on Friday night about somebody who knew about God, they said, but it wasn't until they came here that they saw Jesus. They hated to talk about Jesus.

He's somewhat insignificant. It sort of sounds Sunday school-ish, Jesus, you've got something quite other than here. Only in this Jesus, whom the world despises, is there any expression of God. Thou art the everlasting word, the Father's only Son, God manifestly seen and heard, and God's beloved one.

Oh, I beg you, and I want myself to do the same, to cherish high thoughts of the second person of the Trinity. God's purpose is that all men should honour the Son as they honour the Father. And he that honoureth not the Son, be he never so religious, honoureth not the Father which sent him.

What a wonderful title. In the beginning was the word. He didn't become the word when he was born. He was that all along. God spake, and things were done in it when he created the world. And the word which wrought the miracle was therefore Jesus, the everlasting word.

All that happened at the manger was the everlasting word became flesh, and men could see him and hear him and touch him. Here, of course, in John's epistle, you have an extra phrase added to the title word, the word of life.

And what John is seeking to show is that Jesus is not only the expression of the invisible God, the invisible thought of God, but he is also the expression of the very life of God, the word of life, that eternal life.

And so eternal life, what it's really like, walked this earth. And John tells us that he was the visible expression of eternal life, he was the audible expression of eternal life, and he was the tangible expression of eternal life.

Now all this leads us to see two things about eternal life. It's quite evident that eternal life is not something which a Christian receives when he dies, but something he receives when he becomes a Christian.

When he is born of God and he puts his trust in the Lord Jesus, eternal life becomes his then. In fact, you can say that eternal life is really internal life. It's an altogether different quality. It's eternal as opposed to temporal.

It's going to go on forever, but it begins now, a fountain of spiritual life, making spiritual things a glorious reality where before we were utterly dead to that realm. And then the second thing that follows is this, that eternal life is a person.

We don't ask you to receive a vague, ephemeral eternal life. We ask you to receive a person, this glorious one, Jesus himself. And later in this epistle we shall hear John say, God hath given us eternal life and this life is in his Son.

He that hath the Son hath the life. And he that hath not the Son, be he never so religious and well-intentioned, hath not the life, he is still dead. And so the great question for us to ask ourselves is, have I the Son?

And has the Son got me? Because in him I have this new life. It fills up. It fills me. It overflows and makes all things new. And so it is that John talks about that which we have seen, he has seen, heard, and touched, of this word of life in order that others may enjoy and share it too.

God Is Light: Revelation Rather Than Mere Morality

Then he goes on at verse five to his second thing, very quickly. And here he says, this then is the message we have heard of him, this word of life, what did he show us? He showed us this basically. And we declare it unto you, that God is light.

God is light. He is going to say later that God is love. But before he comes to that, he's got to teach us that God, if he's anything at all, is light. Now, what does light and darkness mean in the New Testament?

It is, I suppose, at first sight we would imagine it's just a synonym for good and evil. But I suggest to you that is quite an inadequate conception. We won't get John's full meaning if that's all we think it is.

Well, what is light and darkness? He doesn't import a meaning into those words which those words don't normally bear. Light, surely, is anything, is that which reveals. And darkness is that which hides.

If you come into a room at night and the light isn't turned on, you may bang into the table and think it's the piano. But when you turn on the light, oh, you see, you see the table to be the table and the piano to be the piano.

Please turn the cassette over now. Do not fast-wind it in either direction. And that, I think, is a simple meaning. Light is that which reveals, which shows up things as they rarely are. And that's God's great property.

He is light all the time, silently, inexorably, shining upon men's hearts and ways and showing up everything as it rarely is. God is the great realist. God is light. And darkness is anything that hides.

Hides the truth from ourselves. And hides the truth about ourselves from other people. Now, that this is the meaning of light and darkness is seen, it seems to me, from Ephesians 5, verse 13. Ephesians 5, verse 13.

But all things that are reproved are made manifest by the light. For whatsoever doth make manifest is light. Anything that makes manifest is light. Let's imagine that a Christian, and I guess we all know it happens perhaps in our own life sometimes, has got away from the Lord and he's looking at a certain magazine with some doubtful things in it.

Of course, he can argue they're not doubtful. You know, I've got to have an interest in art. I have. It's a wonderful rationalization for looking at wrong pictures sometimes. All right? Let's say that that's it.

But the strange thing is this. The door suddenly opens and a real joyous Christian comes in. What does the first man do? He shuts the magazine and puts it in the drawer. That's darkness. You see, the coming of that friend was light.

The putting of that magazine in the drawer was darkness. Well now, haven't we done something like that? If not in that particular realm, in other realms. Have we not wanted to give an impression of ourselves other than of the truth?

And the simple fact is this, that the first effect of sin is always to make us want to hide. Always. The first effect on Adam and Eve of their sin was what? They hid from the presence of the Lord God among the trees.

They ran for cover when the light of the world came down the garden. They couldn't bear to be revealed as they rarely were. They first put on coats of skins, and they were inadequate. Not rather coats of skins, fig leaves.

And then, when he came, they knew that that wouldn't be adequate. They hid behind the trees. And I know in my own experience, when things go wrong, I've done something that isn't straight, I want to hide.

If I get away from God, if I'm cold, it's the last thing I want to be seen as that sort of person in that sort of condition. You know, when you pick up a stone in the field, you find that in the dark there'd been a whole lot of creepy, crawly things.

And the moment you pick up that big stone, they all rush. And that is the natural reaction of the sons of men when anything of God comes near to them. And the trouble is, we're more prone to walk in the darkness, to run for cover, when we come to a conference, than when we don't.

That's the sad thing. Because maybe the light doesn't shine all that brightly at home. There are unconverted people, and the fact that you're cold doesn't bother them. Indeed, it might even comfort them.

But when you come into God's presence, when the king comes in to see his guests, the natural thing is to want to run for cover, to find some way of darkness. We thought about that on Saturday. We put a veil over our face.

Now, that's what we do. We are, all of us, naturally creatures of darkness. So darkness is not really a synonym for sin here. It is rather that with which we hide sin, in one way or another. Even our very silence may be hiding it.

Silence means consent. People think you're a real wonderful person, and if you're silent, you're consenting to that opinion they may have of you. And sometimes, I remember saying to a brother, well, you know, you're not open.

Everybody thinks that you're so different. But they surely don't know I'm a wonderful person. Of course they know. My dear friend, we all feel a bit inferior with one another. And if you only knew it, we're all inclined to put one another on pedestals.

And if we never give our testimonies honestly as to what God is doing for us, we mean we consent to be left on a pedestal. Don't think that everybody knows. In a way they do, in a way they don't. Well, now, there we are, creatures of darkness, naturally walking in darkness.

But God, with whom we crave fellowship, is light. And then he goes on to say, and in him is no darkness at all. And I understand the Greek is very emphatic. There's not one little tiny bit of darkness in him.

He cannot be one with the least little bit of hiding or duplicity or under the countenance in us. How then can a man who's walking in darkness have fellowship with a God who himself is light? He says it is impossible.

If we say that we have fellowship with him and are walking in darkness, things covered, things not faced and confessed, we lie and do not the truth. Now, in these verses we have the progress of darkness, or if you like, the progress of dishonesty.

Confession, Fellowship, and the Blood of Christ

There are three steps in it, it's really very frightening. Verse six, if we say that we have fellowship with him and walk in darkness, one, here's the first step, we lie. We may not be telling a lie, but we are acting a lie.

We're not doing the truth. The second step is in verse eight. If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves. That is, we believe our own lie. If we go on long enough acting a lie, giving up an impression of ourselves other than the truth, the tragic thing is that eventually we come to believe our own lie.

We really believe we are lovely Christians. We really believe we are sweet and gracious and consecrated. And we're living in a complete realm of illusion about ourselves. Slowly, we've come to believe our own lie.

We become not only strangers to God, we become strangers to our true self. And then the third step is worse still. Verse ten, if we say that we have not sinned, we make God a liar and his word is not in us.

When God comes to us to convict us, we say, Lord, you've got the wrong person. It's someone further down the road. When someone challenges us, we argue, we justify ourselves. And we are in effect making God a liar when he wants to convict us, which means we are impervious to conviction.

If you haven't been convicted, it isn't that there's no sin. It may be that you have got down to this third stage in the progress of darkness. We're making God a liar. We're refusing to accept his challenge, the revelation that he's come to make of us.

Well, so it's really very solemn, this. It means that we can't be blessed. We're impervious to the message of grace. Grace is for the guilty. But we as believers won't admit ourselves to be such. We can't possibly see it.

We sincerely cannot see it. I believe we've got to realize it may be that we're in this realm of illusion and you've got and I've got doggedly to receive. And if I can't always see it, except that light may come via another who's trying to help us.

I say, well, I can't see it, but if you can, I'll accept it. And it won't be very long before God will go with us into far greater detail than any other brother could. And we'll go back to him and say, brother, you saw something, but actually it was a whole realm of something else underneath.

Thank you. It helped to get me out of this realm of illusion in which I've been living for so long. Well, what's the alternative then to walking in darkness? Verse seven says, but, but, but, if we walk in the light as he is in the light, that's the alternative.

What does it then mean to walk in light? We've seen something of what it means to walk in darkness and its baneful effects. The opposite is to walk in the light as he is in the light. It isn't something, a sort of technique that you do apart from him.

It's because he's in the light and you want him, you want Jesus again. You're so dry and thirsty and needy that you're prepared to walk in the light which he is. What does it mean? I think it simply means to say yes to what the light is beginning to show us.

The trouble is we've been in the dark so long we can't see very much. But if we will begin with the first thing, if we will open but one window and pull back the blinds, we shall see progressively the true state of the room in which we have been living.

The reward of light received is more light. But remember it's a love light, it's a light that flows from Calvary that wants to embrace you and deep down we need not fear. And so to walk in the light is very simple.

It's simply to say yes, Lord, you're right, I'm wrong. It needs brokenness. You and I won't be willing to say that if self has always got to be right. If we're not prepared to suffer deep, deep deaths to self but he went down to the death for us, are we not willing to join him at the cross?

Walking in the light is simply saying yes to what the light reveals and the light goes on shining. But if when we are convicted of something we refuse to say yes to what the light reveals then there's darkness and you're so much less likely to see the next thing and we go on this other progress.

And it says this, that if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we'll have fellowship one with another. If we're all hiding from one another we shall never know one another and you can't have fellowship with a mask, two masks trying to have fellowship.

It's only two real people and the amazing thing is when we're real with God first and then with one another in testimony, if I were all the same. And you know, you get drawn to a man who's honest. A person says to you, frankly, I'm downright selfish.

Till he said that, you hated him. You say, I, I, I, I, I, I, no one quite so selfish as me, all my friends. You feel you can get along with a man like that, can't you? And he can get along with you when you are on the same basis.

If we walk in the light. Therefore, this walking in the light is honesty. Basically, firstly, with God himself and then in testimony one to another as he guides us and the result is fellowship. But then he goes on to say, oh, how important, without which there can't be any walking in the light with God and the blood of Jesus Christ.

His son cleanses us from all sin. What the light reveals, when we are broken enough to say, yes, Lord, you're right, I'm wrong, that precious blood shed on Calvary years ago gloriously cleanses. And you thought that testimony would be a terrible thing to ever have to share with another.

But you know, by the time you've been to Calvary with it and by the time you've got to giving that testimony to that other friend of yours and telling him what grace has just done for you, it's been sprinkled with the blessed antiseptic from Calvary.

You needn't fear. That's not going to start spreading germs. If there's real brokenness and real repentance, the blood cleanses and what really comes out is something of Jesus. And the extraordinary thing is instead of everybody wanting to hide and feel shocked, you'll find that everybody somehow wants to sing glory, glory, hallelujah, glory, glory to the Lamb.

Oh, the cleansing blood has reached him again. Oh, praise God and me too, Lord. If we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another and the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses us from all sin.

The Passover and Judgment Already Met

Now, I realize that this precious phrase, the blood of Christ, occurs with great frequency in our gospel hymns and in testimonies and yet someone may say, well, it's a phrase to me. What does it mean, the blood?

You've got to understand it, friend, because there's no cleansing apart from it and there's no entrance to glory apart from it and this is the theme of all the songs in heaven. So if you don't know what it means, you'll be singing a theme if you get there, the meaning of which you don't know.

The blood of Jesus Christ. I go back to the incident of the Passover when at midnight the firstborn in every house were going to die and Israel was asked, each Israelite home was asked to kill a lamb and sprinkle its blood upon the doorpost of the house wherein they were and God said, when I see the blood, I will pass over, I will stand over that house and not suffer the destroyer to come into it on that one condition.