Requirements of a True Believer (1 John 1:5-10)

The Privilege of Worship and Prayer

It is a privilege to be here, to be able to come into the house of the Lord in freedom, be able to share the word of God is amazing to me. It's a privilege. And before we get started this morning, let's open up with a word of prayer.

Father, you alone are worthy to be praised. You're an amazing God. You give us wisdom and guidance through the scriptures and you've provided a way for us to know you through them. It's amazing to think that you care about us, that you have sent your son to die on the cross as a substitute for our sin, that we can have fellowship with you, to be able to be in your presence, to learn of you, to understand who you are.

It's such an amazing thing to be called a child of the King. And we pray today, Lord, that as we teach and understand your word, that it will penetrate our hearts and our minds, that it will affect us in a way that motivates us to give you glory and to live our lives in obedience to you.

And for anybody that does not know the Lord, we pray today that the light that would shine on you, that it would draw you to the only savior that we have in Jesus Christ, and that you would be saved. We praise your name, Lord, and ask for your blessing on our time today.

In Jesus' name, amen. Open your Bibles, if you would, to 1 John 1. We're gonna be looking at verses five through 10 today. We went and opened up, did the opening verses last week in verses one through four of 1 John, and we shared some things there.

And the title of my message this morning is The Requirements of a True Believer. The Requirements of a True Believer. So let's go ahead and read our text for this morning in verse five. This is the message we have heard from him and announced to you that God is light, and in him, there is no darkness at all.

If we say that we have fellowship with him, and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his son cleanses us from all sin.

That's gonna be our text for this morning. Hopefully, we'll get through all of it, I'm not sure. But before we do, I wanna just recap just briefly what we shared last week, just so we catch everybody up to speed and bring it full circle to our text this morning.

We talked last week that John was writing to address a certain kind of heresy called Gnosticism that was being introduced into the church. It was people that claim to have a superior knowledge. They believe that the physical world was evil, and that they had secret knowledge that only a select few could actually have.

They said that Jesus couldn't be God because he had a physical body, because if the physical world was evil, Jesus had a physical body, therefore, he couldn't be God. Their knowledge was not based on anything scriptural, it was based on their own intellect and mysticism.

And if you remember, John refutes this error pretty vigorously right from the opening verses, claiming right from the beginning that Jesus was both human and he was God as well. He did that because he had firsthand testimony, because being an apostle, he walked with the Lord.

He said he had seen the Lord, he'd heard him, he'd handled him. So what was from the beginning, he said, the beginning of Jesus' human life, beginning of the gospel, the word of life, he said, was the same life that was with the Father in eternity.

Jesus was human, and he was also God. And then he said a very critical thing, and I think it's what I grasp onto in verse three of the first opening verses, he proclaimed the truth that he had heard. He was testifying of everything that he had heard and seen about Jesus, and the reason for that is so that we would have fellowship with one another.

Like-minded believers sharing their faith together, he said, we would have fellowship with one another and with others. And the result of that fellowship is joy. We talked about that last week. It's not a dictionary definition of joy, but it's a deep, abiding, born out of a right relationship with the Father kind of a joy that you just can't find anywhere else.

So that's kind of the opening verses there that we talked about. To proclaim Christ is so very important in those opening verses. I just think about that. We proclaim Christ. It's something we should be doing in our daily lives all the time because of the hope that we have within us.

It just pours forth, and we want to talk about him all the time. John was telling his readers that he had firsthand knowledge of the Lord, and that was pretty cool. Being an apostle, he walked with Christ and heard many things that he had taught.

And he started off his letter very abruptly, if you remember. But the most important truth to defend against Gnosticism was Christ himself. I mean, that he's human and he's divine. That's an important concept of those first verses.

False teachers were prevalent then, and they are as well today, aren't they? You see them everywhere. They introduce their lies from within the body. It's usually where it happens, is inside the church it happens.

It's really important for us to know our God. It's important for us to be able to understand our Bibles, to proclaim that truth in defense of any kind of false teaching that we encounter. I attended a church in Coeur d 'Alene around 2005 and 2006, and the main pastor there was getting up in age, and he retired, and a new pastor came in to the flock.

The new pastor slowly started to introduce false teaching into his sermons. He began to quote from known false teachers in his sermons. He was referencing doctrine that was being twisted through this kind of teaching to fit man's preconceived ideas.

The deception was subtle at first and slow, and at first glance it really sounded biblical, right? There was a meetings and discussions because the elders were made aware of all of this. They were made aware of all of this.

There was a small percentage that recognized what was happening, and they approached the elders and asked them to look into it and try to figure out what was happening. So that's when I say there was meetings and discussions, and it became apparent that the leaders of the church were unable to spot the false teaching, or if they were able to see it, they certainly did not call it out or come clean about it.

They sided with the pastor and perpetuated the heresy for quite a long time. The faithful, though, wouldn't have anything to do with it. I mean, they created such an uproar that eventually the church just split.

There was no way that the true believers could stay with that false teaching and be in that church. And eventually the pastor was booted out of there. But you know what? The elders and the leaders of that church remained.

Many of them are still there to this day. They still do not recognize this teaching that is false, and that church has never, ever recovered from that teaching. So John's letter, this letter that we have here is really a warning, right?

It's to the believers. He's talking about dealing with heresy. He's talking about knowing who the real God is. We need to understand, don't we, how to spot these false teachers, because it's usually a subtle twist on some kind of a truth that we all know.

We need to understand how to identify the false teachers, the false teaching, and false converts as well. The best way to do that is to know our Bibles backwards and forwards. This is what I've found.

That whole situation at that church sent me on such a tangent because I realized at the time I didn't know all the things I needed to know about the faith and about this false teaching, and I just went crazy learning everything I possibly could.

And it changed my life. It put me on a different course. So we need to know what constitutes an authentic God and a true believer in Christ. We need to understand that. As I mentioned before, my message today is the requirements of a true believer, a test, if you will, of an authentic Christian.

A Proper View of God as Light

What do they look like? Well, in verse five, it says this. "'This is the message we have heard from him "'and announced to you that God is light, "'and in him there is no darkness at all.'". True believers must have a proper view of God.

They must have a proper view of God. That first word, this, in that sentence, this is the message. It's referring back, that word is referring back to the one spoken of in the previous verses. This one, there is the reference there, this one, this Jesus is who John is referring to.

This is the message we have heard from him, from Jesus. This is not John's message, right? It's not John's message. It's Jesus' message that John heard. This message, it says, we announce to you. Love that word, announce.

It's the Greek meaning. It says to bring back word, to bring back word. John was bringing back word of all that he had seen about Christ, and he's telling everybody in this letter all about it. Here's what I've heard.

I'm announcing to you what I have personally seen and heard, and I'm bringing it back to you. John uses, or Jesus uses John to deliver that message. A lot of times, it's weird because, you know, God uses flawed human individuals like us to convey these truths, doesn't he?

He always uses us in some form or fashion, the lowliest of the lowly, it seems like. Where we get our truth, though, is important. Where we get it from is very important. False teachers create their own truth, not found in the Bible.

They mix truth and error to accomplish their own agendas. The message that John received came from a reliable source, though, didn't it? It came from the only source of truth, Christ himself. The time John spent with Christ must have just changed his life so radically.

I mean, I can't imagine walking with Christ himself. When I was in Israel, I just imagined, you know, when I was on the Sea of Galilee, there's Christ walking along the water. What would it have been like to be there and to see him?

I mean, how our lives would be impacted so greatly for those that believe, and it just reminded me that we can't stay silent. When we encounter Christ, there's no way for us to be contained anymore. Each of you, when you think back about it, when Christ saved you, were you able to stay silent about it, or were you telling everybody what had happened?

I mean, that's what happened to me. I mean, my family thought I was in some kind of a cult. They were like, this guy's a Bible nut. He's somewhere crazy here. But I'm sure my zeal was apparent back then, but I'm positive that I did not have a lot of tact.

So that's probably some of the reason why they might have thought that. But we must remember that the message John heard was not a human message, not a human message. A human message really doesn't do us or anyone any good hearing it, does it?

The Gnostics had a human message. You see a lot of human messages in our world today that don't line up to the scriptures. The message God is light, what we're gonna be talking about today is really it's supremely revealed in the person of Christ, the son of God himself.

The message that brings life is Christ. That's who brings life. He's the one. We got a new heart and a new message at salvation, didn't we? My message before salvation was, hey, live for self. It's all I care about is me.

But then Christ came into my life and now the only thing I can think about is how to live my life for Christ. That's everything is about him. We should proclaim Christ every chance we get. We should crucify sin.

We should try to kill it at every turn because it destroys lives. So we crucify it. We shouldn't waste time on things that don't matter or have very little impact. We should be focused about the things that are the most important things, which is Christ himself.

True followers of Jesus must have the right view of God. The Gnostics didn't have a right view of God because they denied the humanity of Christ. Jesus is fully God and fully man, but they didn't believe that.

But that teaching is alive and well today. Every religion we see has struggles with that. What better way to reveal the father than through the son though? That's the best way. When someone says to me, I love Jesus, the first thing that comes to mind is, which Jesus are you talking about?

Which Jesus are you talking about? They often say the same thing that the Gnostics said. Well, he's just a man. He's just a man. He's not God. He's not God. He might be a prophet, but he's not God. So many have a wrong idea about him.

They have the wrong idea about him, about whether he was God or not. Well, our text is gonna clearly address that. Our entire faith rests on his shoulders. Everything about our faith is tied to the humanity and the divinity of Jesus.

And to get that wrong, I mean, that has eternal consequences, doesn't it? To get Christ wrong has eternal consequences. Every religion wants to give us their definition about Jesus. It seems like they all have their own way that they look at him.

And you know what? Within that, much confusion is created. People don't know what to believe. There's so many conflicting ideas out there in the world today about who Jesus is, it causes confusion. And you know, that's the devil.

He's always sowing some kind of doubt, isn't he? I mean, right from the very beginning in the garden, did God really say, you know, that little kernel of doubt can enter into a person's life and it can deviate them from the path of Christ?

The devil is always sowing those kinds of doubt and confusion in our lives. But in our text today, John is clear in that verse five, when he says, God is light, and in him there is no darkness at all.

I mean, I thought about this this week. How do you really use human words to define God? That's so hard for me. It reminds me of theology class in college. You know, it's all about how to define God, how to understand who he is.

You know, God is like a pane of glass. You know, you see through it, you don't really see the glass, but he's there. And all these ways that we try to, you know, wrap our brains around who God is. And I don't think human words can actually do it.

I'm not sure I can convey it even today, but I will try to do the best that I can. But defining God as light is just not easy. It's just not easy to say, what does that mean, God is light? When we think of light, though, we usually speak in terms of what light does, right?

Light shines in the darkness. It reveals truth and it brings life to things. That's how we normally think of life, but that doesn't really define God is light. It doesn't really bring that home. The context of John here in what we're looking at seems to make sense to think of God in this way, is that he is omniscient, he is morally perfect.

There isn't any blemish or defect at all in his character in any way. He's holy, he is morally pure, he is perfect in every way. There is no possibility of sin within him at all. I love this verse in Psalm 36, nine.

Psalm 36, nine, it says this, for with you is the fountain of life. For with you, for with God is the fountain of life. In your light, we see light, right? A fountain flows with water, that's a good picture.

It's a good picture. All of life comes from him. We need to continually drink from that fountain. We need to continually be in his presence. In his light, we know how to love. We know how to treat our wives.

We know how to parent. We have all kinds of wisdom. We stay in that light because that's the source of truth and how to live our lives in the best possible way to glorify him. What John, I believe, is saying in all of this is that the message of Christ, his humanity, his work, his gospel message is the light that brings us into fellowship with the God who is light.

Right, the God who is light. Paul confirms this thought in 2 Corinthians 4 .6 when he says this, 2 Corinthians 4 .6. For God, who said, light shall shine out of darkness is the one who has shown in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ.

Let me read that again. For God, who said, light shall shine out of darkness is the one who has shown in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ. God's light shines out of the blackness of night into our hearts.

His light in a believer's life is the knowledge of God's salvation. It's the knowledge of God's salvation. This light illuminates our hearts and our minds so that we're even able to comprehend his amazing knowledge and glory.

This knowledge and glory is seen in the face of Christ. That's how we know it. Generally speaking, the word is described as light in a general way, right? We see that in scripture that it's speaking of light in a general way.

Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path. That's Psalm 119, 105. But it is the light of the gospel, the light of the gospel that brings us into true fellowship with the Father. Without that light, we don't have a relationship with a holy God.

Paul says in 1 Timothy 6, 16, it says, who alone possesses immortality and dwells in unapproachable light, whom no man has seen or can see, to him be honor and eternal dominion, amen. I mean, think about this for a minute, right?

God dwells in such amazing light. He says it's unapproachable. Isaiah 6 describes how Isaiah said he saw the Lord sitting on a throne. Seraphim stood above him, said, each of them had six wings, two they covered their face, two was covered their feet, and two it says they flew.

One Seraphim called out to another and said, holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts. The whole earth is full of his glory. The whole earth is full of his glory. Isaiah said, what? Woe is me. Woe is me for I am ruined.

Why is he ruined? Because he fully understands his sin at that very moment cannot be in the presence of such holiness and beauty and splendor and holiness. My point here is this, he's not accessible to sinful human beings that live in constant darkness.

Our sin keeps us separated from him. Hear me when I say this, that the possibility of fellowship between depraved human beings like you and I with the creator who is holy, holy, holy is because of one reason, and that is the incarnate son of God.

That's how we can embrace him and know him and have access right through Christ himself. John said Christ was manifested. He was made known and revealed and that he proclaimed him to others, right? And so that they could have fellowship with him.

I love that. Without Christ, we would be in total darkness and separated from God. True believers need to have a proper view of who God is so we know how to understand him and approach him. Second point here is true believers also need to understand the reality of sin.

The Reality of Sin and Self-Deception

Look at verse six. If we say that we have fellowship with him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. We need to have and understand the reality of sin because there is all kinds of confusion about what that actually means today.

My first point under this is believers don't ignore sin. Believers do not ignore sin. If we say that we have fellowship with him, we should be walking in the light. We should be walking in the light. We gain that true fellowship through the gospel message.

That's how we're all here together sharing is through the gospel. We have a commonality there. That's what puts us in fellowship with the father and with each other. Salvation puts us in the light. Our manner of living should always be in the light.

We should always be focused on it. Verse six, though, communicates that sometimes people fake true fellowship, don't they? Sometimes they say, oh, I have fellowship, but then they walk in darkness is what it says.

There is a possibility in any church of having a mixture of true believers and imposters, isn't there? There's always a possibility. Some who say they walk with God, but don't really do so because maybe of what others think of that maybe others think that they are saved.

See that a lot. They may have grown up in a Christian home, attended church all their lives, but have never really experienced saving grace. They have to keep up appearances. They know deep down inside that they are not practicing the truth, but their pride will not allow them to repent.

There are also apostates who fall into this category, into this lie, but they do so because they're looking for an opportunity to sow discord in the body. Their goal is to destroy the church and the testimony of the true saints.

They also know that they lie and they never practice the truth, but they have to say they have fellowship because they want to blend in without being called out as apostates. A true believer, though, can also fall into this category, can't they?

It's possible that someone can claim fellowship that is a true believer, and at a certain point in time in their life, they can be walking in darkness. Now, I think they're lying to themselves and they're not practicing the truth for sure, and they know it.

However, my belief in the scriptures is that a true believer can't stay in that darkness. You're going to come out of that eventually because once God has a hold of you, he's not gonna let you go and you're gonna come back to that.

So eventually they come back into a right relationship with God. Sin in the life of a believer really should be miserable. I don't know how they can stay in it because it's so miserable. If sin doesn't make you miserable, you might not be saved.

If you wallow in it and you love it, you have to check your salvation at the door and say, what is happening? Because I don't know about you, but one day before salvation, I was sitting there in my sin and I was loving it.

I enjoyed it. I didn't mind it. But the second I got saved the very next day, what happened to me? All of a sudden, the sin that I so loved before just wasn't fun anymore. Just wasn't fun anymore. I thought, oh yeah, let's keep going.

It was terrible. I was miserable and I had to leave it. So a true believer, we really need to understand the reality of sin because it's devastating. When I said we should crucify sin, it's like a minute by minute thing practically because it's so prevalent.

I mean, in our thoughts and when I was saved, I mean, I can clean up the big sins pretty easily, but the sin of the mind, that's what we have to be looking at all the time, taking every thought captive to the obedience of Christ so we can glorify him with our lives.

The second point under here we find in verse eight. Read verse eight. If we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us. Some claim to have no sin. Some claim to have no sin.

And the word there, if we say that we have no sin in that verse, it's singular. It seems like it's referring not to our sins as a whole, but to our sin nature, to our sin nature. If we say that we have no sin nature, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us.

To deny your sin nature is a denial of the reality of the truth that God has revealed already for us. Apparently some had missed Paul's instructions in Romans. I mean, many do today. They have a high view of themselves, but they have a low view of sin.

Well, Paul calls that out in Romans 3, chapter three, Romans 10 through 17 verses. He says this, there is none righteous, not even one. There is none who understands. There is none who seeks for God. All have turned aside.

Together they have become useless. There is none who does good. There is not even one. Their throat is an open grave with their tongues they keep deceiving. The poison of asps is under their lips, whose mouth is full of cursing and bitterness.

Their feet are swift to shed blood. Destruction and misery are in their paths and the path of peace they have not known. There is no fear of God before their eyes.

Wow.

To deny sin is to really be self-deceived. It's self-deception. Some deny sin also though by calling it another name, right? I just did a boo-boo. I didn't really sin. It's like no fault divorce, right?

Nobody takes the blame for anything. I mean, but yet the biblical concept of, you know, the two shall become flesh, it says, is ripped apart in a divorce. Families are destroyed in a divorce. I'm here to tell you in every divorce someone's to blame.

There is sin in there. It's not no fault. It is someone's sin that destroys it and we can't just ignore that in our lives. Modern so-called Christian psychology has put a spin on this, even though there really isn't such a thing as Christian psychology, right?

There's no such thing. But they've done a good job at calling sin by another name. You see that all the time. James Dobson, Focus on the Family, Minnerth-Meyer Clinic, Larry Crabb, Henry Cloud, all of these so-called Christian psychologists put another spin on sin because they call it by a different name.

Alcoholism, gambling, any kind of lust, covetousness, sexual sin. It's often referred to as a disease. It's a mental issue. You have problems mentally. It's not your sin. It's something that may have happened to you in your past.

Maybe you didn't have a father growing up or you experienced an abusive relationship with your family somehow. But the Bible's clear here. The Bible's very clear. In Mark it says this, "'For from within, out of the heart of men "'proceeds evil thoughts, fornications, "'thefts, murders, adulteries, "'deeds of coveting and wickedness, "'as well as deceit, sensuality, envy, "'slander, pride, and foolishness.

"'All these things proceed from within and defile the man. "'No one can deny sin.'". And in Galatians we read this, that these verses here were catapulted me from darkness to light. This was the first verse I ever read when I was looking into the Bible.

And it said this, "'Now the deeds of the flesh are evident, "'which are immorality, impurity, sensuality, "'idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, "'outbursts of anger, disputes, dissensions, "'factions, envying, drunkenness, "'carousing, and things like these.

"'And who practices these things "'are not going to see the kingdom of God.'". I was very moved by that when I read that for the first time because I was doing every one of those things on that list, but about three of them.

And so sin is very prevalent. We can't deny it. We can't play games with sin. We have to call sin, sin, and understand as a believer how that impacts our life. The third point under this heading is some claim to have never sinned.

Some claim to have never sinned. Can you believe that? Verse 10, it says this, "'If we say that we have not sinned, "'we make him a liar and his word is not in us.'". That verse is connected to verse nine where it says, "'If we confess our sins, he is faithful to forgive.

"'But what if we say that we have not sinned? "'Then what? "'Then what do we do?'. I mean, how do I confess something that I don't believe I've ever done? Why do I need to do that? John is addressing believers, remember, in this passage.

So the idea here is not that they had never sinned. It's just that after salvation, they weeded out sin in their life. So to the point that they didn't sin anymore. I mean, I'm sure we've all done that, right?

We've weeded out sin in our life. We don't sin anymore. Not happening, not possible. This is a kind of sinless perfection that you see out in the world today. It's hard to believe people believe this, but there were some here that were in this situation.

I read a story about that R .C. Sproul had told one time, and it was about a 19-year-old who had basically one year of salvation under his belt. He declared to R .C. Sproul that he had received the second blessing, and that because of that, he was now living a sinless life.

Well, of course, R .C. Sproul's not one to sit there and not say anything, so he took him to Romans 7, and he addressed that, look at this, Paul is dealing with the two natures, and he's dealing with very present and real sin.

It wasn't like pre-salvation sin. And the kid said, yeah, I do agree with that. I agree that it was present-day sin, but he said that, well, Paul just didn't receive the second blessing, so he couldn't live this life that I am living, so I thought it was interesting that R .C. Sproul said that, so after, let me get this right, you're 19, you've got one year of salvation under your belt, so you're telling me that you have more faith and obedience than the Apostle Paul.

And the kid looked at him with a straight face, he said, and said, yes. Wow, that is crazy to me, because, I mean, because sin's so prevalent. It's not something we can say I don't have anymore, so we pay attention to that.

Walking in the Light and Confessing Sin

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

Now, walk is used literally in scripture, you know, as I walk from here to there, but it's also used figuratively, spoken of as a person's way of life. So that's what that says, but if we walk, that is insinuating there that we have a certain way that we carry ourselves, how we walk our daily life.

And it should be consistent with the revealed truth of God. Our daily habit, our walk, should not be in darkness, as a believer. Our daily habit should be in the light. We should walk daily in the light.

Why?

Because Jesus is the one who saved us, and he is light. We live within that sphere. We continually strive to be close to God, to stay close to him. I always say to my kids, you know, you need to stay under God's umbrella.

Well, that's just another idea for staying in the light. Be close to our savior. We have to stay away from sin and darkness. Anything that can hinder our relationship with God and with others, we pursue the light because of the fellowship that we have with one another and with Christ.

When we read, when we read 1 John 1, 3, it says, when we have heard what we have heard and seen, we proclaim to you also so that you too may have fellowship with us. We read that. And we talked last week that it was clear that the speaking of the fellowship was with other believers.

However, the context here in verse seven is different. It's a different context than we had with fellowship between one another in verse three. It says, but if we walk in the light as he himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another.

The question here is, are we speaking of a believer to believer fellowship or a Christian to God fellowship? I think the one another there could mean with other believers, but I honestly believe that the context here is fellowship with Christ and Christ has fellowship with us.

So it's a reciprocal. He interacts with us in fellowship. We interact with him as we remain in the light. That's pretty cool.

I love that.

True believers also confess their sin. True believers also confess their sin. Verse nine, if we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

That word confess is, the meaning of that is to agree with. It comes from a certain word called homologal. Comes from almost the same and logo to say. To confess is to say the same thing. To agree with God that the sin in the life of a believer is destructive.