Q & A

Okay, well today we thought we'd finish up chapter one last week. We thought we'd spend a little bit of time kind of going over some questions that have come up on the first chapter. And from what I've kind of heard from different folks, and sometimes it was during class, sometimes after class, Seth, there were some questions concerning 1 John 7 and 9, well actually 1 John 7 initially, about cleansing from sins.

And then there was a question, I think, Doug, about fellowship. You kind of asked one time about fellowship. There may be others. This is just what I kind of heard. And so actually we're going to kind of share this, Josiah and myself. I'm going to do a part on cleansing from sins, and then Josiah's going to do a part on fellowship. And so I prepared some material, but it doesn't mean we necessarily have to go over all of it. In fact, in the handout, the very last part are some charts from Hal Malloy from major Bible themes that we did a couple of years ago. And just the top 10 questions on sin.

And I don't know, are you guys a fan of Barney Fife and what is it? Andy Griffith. Have you ever heard Andy's little funny one? One of the episodes he says, You know, you can't say enough about sin. He wasn't saying that in a biblical sense. He was just kind of, you know, he's crazy. He's kind of off the wall kind of comments. And so God has a lot to say about sin.

And hopefully we'll, we certainly haven't covered it all, but hopefully this will be a good, you know, good review in some sense. So let's look at, Verses 5 through 9 here. I left out 8 for the time being. So, I'll just go ahead and read them. This is the message we have heard from you. This is the message we have heard from him and announced to you that God is light and in him is no darkness at all.

If we say we have fellowship with him, yet walk in 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. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

So as you look at these set of verses here, we mentioned this before, but verse 5 really kind of sets the tone for the rest of the verses. It kind of declares who God is. And God is declared as being light. And the way the structure is, light identifies God's very character, His very holiness, identifies who He is.

And it also says, kind of the negative sense, there's no darkness. in him at all, and actually the idea there is there's not even one particle of darkness. And then, you know, the rest of the flow here is basically the believer's interaction with God being lighted, in a sense. And the believer makes some statements about himself in verse 6, and basically it's sort of his walk and his talk, right? If his walk and his talk don't match, he's lying.

And verse 7 basically says, if we walk in the light, as he himself was in the light, then we have this fellowship. And it talks about the blood of Jesus cleansing us from all sin. And down in verse 9, it says, if we confess our sins, he's faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins. So we're agreeing with God about our sins in verse 9.

OK. All right, so I thought we just may, before we jump into those verses, just kind of get the, I'll call it the big picture. I think about, and Josiah's going to do the same thing, I just kind of need help. Starting with our position, I think, is always wise because it tells us what's been accomplished that the believer already has.

And the second part of this is that 1 John is addressing one of the aspects of the sin problem. The sin problem is multifaceted, if you will. We have the root of sin, which is our sin nature, and we have the fruit of sin, which are sins plural. So it's wise in Scripture to go through, I thought Brad did a good job last week, where he went through and said, is this talking about sins plural or sins singular? So what's important from this slide to kind of carry away is that that Christ has addressed both issues by his death on the cross.

It says in Romans 6.10, he died unto sin, with respect to sin. And there's a definite article there, the sin nature.

And then in 1 Corinthians 5.3, it said Christ died for our sins, plural. So Christ has accomplished already every believer Christ has died unto their sins and Christ died for their sins. So that's already on the books for every single believer in the Lord Jesus Christ. So when we come to 1 John, passages in 1 John, what are we talking about? And that's kind of my next chart here. And basically God's remedy is multifaceted here too. He has a remedy for the root of the problem and for the fruit of the problem.

And the reason I had built these two charts was to point out that the 1 John 1.9 and also 1.7 really address the fruit of the problem issue. But God's also addressed the root of the problem issue, which is really kind of a key thing.

And we're not going to cover it in this class, but it's covered here in other classes. Like Mike Doyle is doing a class right now, which is very much on the root of the sin nature problem in the believer. And if you think about it, if you can eliminate the problem, then the fruit problem is lessened significantly or eliminated. Not to say that that means I'm contradicting what 8 and 10 say, that we cannot say we have no sin, we still have a sin nature.

But the control of sin nature is something that God has provided for us. And as far as the root's concerned, he tells us to consider yourselves, or reckon in the King James, yourselves to be dead to sin but alive to God. And that's kind of based upon knowing something that happened. This is sort of positional truth. Knowing this, that our old self, the old man, was crucified with him, that our body of sin might be with. And a better rendering of that is put in idle or taken off long. So with that reckoning, moment by moment, the believer can walk in fellowship with the Lord.

But then 1 John 1.9 and 1.7 are provided for the occasion when we don't do that, we walk contrary to the light. And in that case, we're to confess our sins, and He's faithful to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

I kind of wanted to have that kind of on, you know, hopefully that's helpful. And you kind of keep in mind we're addressing the fellowship issue or the fruit issue about sins in the 1 John passages. So are there questions about this before I was going to go on next and kind of get into the kind of step through verses 6 through 9? I think where I get hung up a lot is, you know, you go, some of the churches I grew up in, you focus so much on let's have our time of confession, you know, and in the Catholic Church, of course, they go to somebody else and confess, but the whole Reckoning for me is the repentance, and if you confess without the repentance, that's where I'm getting hung up. Yes, if we confess our sins, he forgives us, but isn't there this whole repentance thing that Paul talks about, that we really have to repent and sin no more? And can you continue to live and keep confessing for the same sin? No, it's there because the Holy Spirit's brought it to you and you confess it and yeah, He's forgiven me for it.

But you're not ready. That old man's there and you're not ready to repent. and turn away from that sin. So what happens when the trumpet sounds? You know, the verbing pen doesn't show up in any Paul's epistles. It's a word that shows up in the Gospels and in the Acts, but not in the epistles.

I think unfortunately people have taken and they've kind of You have to come to the point, what is required to become a believer? Is it faith plus repentance, or do we have to have something besides faith? I thought Dr. Schaffer did a wonderful job. I haven't looked at them all, but 115 times in the New Testament it says that faith in the Lord Jesus is required to become a believer, and faith alone. But people have said, well, OK, repentance. And I'm going to add something. I'm going to put repentance in there. And you've got to have faith plus repentance.

I believe it's really not accurate to characterize that's required for true salvation. Salvation is based on faith and faith alone. When you have repentance in there, that's actually more, I don't know, it's just not part of what God requires for us to become believers. So I think it confuses the issue very much so. Well, why would Jesus walk on the earth and tell everybody, repent and sin no more? Why would that be discredited? That came from our Lord Jesus Christ, who's telling us to repent. Well, okay.

Are you, and this kind of gets into dispensational, are you kind of aware that the Gospels are really kind of a transition period between the Old and the New Testament? If you don't kind of see that, you're going to say, you're going to try to count a lot of things, like when John the Baptist came, repent for the kingdom of God is at hand. Is that a message for the believer today? I think the whole Bible is a message for the believers. Well, you have to be careful. The Bible is for all of us. I mean, it's for all. Yeah, go ahead. Would it help if Israel already had this message, if you will? Good, excellent.

And so when Jesus was talking to the people in his early days, he was talking to Israel because he came to fulfill the law. And they had turned away from him. So now they had to repent or turn back, turn around. So that's what he was talking to. Sometimes we confuse Israel and us. Now I don't see anybody here that appears to have a Jewish background. And he's really talking to Israel. So if we take what he's speaking to them, we take it on ourselves. We would have to be Israel.

See what I'm saying? So as a Pentecost, and even later, it was in Acts chapter 10, where we see the first Gentile And so I think if you can kind of separate out who's being talked to in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John and the early part of Acts, if you look at the Acts transition, Acts is all the way through is a book of transition. So I don't know if that helps. No, that's very good.

No, it's and it's much about is it is addressed, you know, the distinction we make a lot here is to the Israel or to the church. And that's what I'm trying to try to point out that when you look in the Gospels, you know, a lot of it is is to to Israel, basically.

And a lot of what he's saying was focused upon Christ's first coming. And the fact that the Jews saw him as coming and ruling and reigning, building his kingdom right then. His kingdom was not going to happen until his second coming. So you have to be careful when you're in the Gospels.

And that's one of the things that I know as a new believer, I went in the Gospels probably the same as you. And I thought every single word in here is for me. That's all about me. That's talking to me exactly. Well, after I became, after walking with the Lord and saying, wait a minute, this isn't talking about me, this is talking about Israel.

Paul's addressing our life in Christ. And that's why Paul's epistles are kind of the key foundational part of the believer in the Christian life, basically. Paul's epistles are foundational, because they address the church. That's why all the scripture is for us, but some of it is to us and addresses our place right now, this moment in Christ.

So that's what I was trying to go through here and try to point out. And confession, once again, we have to remind ourselves, you know, confession that we hear in the Catholic sense, I'll call it, is where you go to some person and you say, I'm sorry for this, I'm sorry for that. Well, 1 John 1, 9, and unfortunately, I made some miscommunications.

First John 1.9 doesn't really talk about being sorry. That's not really part of it. It's not confession in the sense that we probably think of it.

It's basically agreeing with God. The word is homiligeo, to say the same thing that God says. If God says that lying is sin, we say, Lord, you say lying is sin. I agree with you that lying is sin. And that's what he's asking us to do. He's not asking us to feel sorry. can, you know, in other places in Scripture it's talked about, but not in 1 John 1, 9. It's talked about disagreeing with God about your sins.

And how faithful, I left out that portion, how faithful and righteous He is to forgive us our sins. That's part of His character that defines who He is. And then the bottom part here is really, and this takes time, I mean, the bottom part to see that we're to reckon or to count upon what Christ has done, I find that takes time. That's taken years for me to come to understand the significance of Romans 6, 7 and 8. I mean, it just does not come, you can read it and you get some idea, but it takes years to really see what's the Lord trying to tell you. Okay, so I'd like to kind of go through here and look at 1 John, And I kind of like to look at the structure of the sentences.

And this might be a little hopefully this will be instructive. If it's too much, then, you know, you can tell me that. Don't do this again. So I'm gonna give an example first. And this is just a kind of the sentence structure layer, all these conditional sentence where there'll be a statement. And this is an example. If if I have money, I will buy a new suit.

So you could. Diagram the sentence. And I didn't want to do that because I felt it was probably getting a little bit too, too much. And if you're not comfortable with diagramming sentences, you sort of say, well, I'm get lost in the details. So I just decided I'll put the main statement, the main clause and the subordinate clause. And the whole the whole point of this discussion is.

We look at the subordinating clause. If the subordinating clause is true, then the main clause is true. If the subordinating clause is false, then the main clause is false. So the main clause, the main statement of the passage you want to see in 6 through 9 are, looking at the subordinating clause, is that a true statement?

And the structure in the Greek is, one, it's a probable condition. It's likely that that's true. So if we were to kind of fold it, oh, it's likely it's true, this person, that he will have the money. If that's true, then he'll buy a new suit. If he doesn't have the money, he will not buy a new suit. So does that kind of make sense?

I don't know. I was hoping this is supposed to be helpful. I don't know. Anyway, so I want to take this concept. So we're going to look at the next Three verses of scripture, and we're going to look at that, and hopefully it'll be helpful in understanding those verses. If it's not, then, you know, throw it out. I mean, OK, so let's go ahead here.

OK, so here's 1 John 1.6. If we say that we have fellowship with him and yet walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. So the main clause here, we lie and do not practice the truth. And that's a true statement. I'm going to go down and go through it in a second here.

So it's conditioned upon if we say that we have fellowship with Him and yet walk in darkness. It's conditioned upon if we're saying that we have fellowship with Him, with God, but our walk is contrary to that, then we're lying and not practice the truth. Our walk doesn't match our talk, right? And actually, if you look in a lie, not practiced, or in the present tense, something that the person is presently doing, and I think this is the case where, as I pointed out before, that in the context of 1 John, he was addressing the Gnostics here, because that was a common practice. But for us, it has application. If we say that we have fellowship with God, but our actions are contrary to that, then we're lying. We're not practicing the truth.

So basically two possibilities. If the if statement is true, then the main clause is true. If it's false, then the main clause is false. OK, so that's this. Verse six is sort of got our feet in the ground with a scriptural. So that seemed to make sense. OK, good. Although this has nothing to do with salvation, really. We're not talking about salvation. The person stood at the cross. And that's exactly why I went through those two other charts with the tree. The whole point is, 1 John is focused on our Christian walk, our fellowship with him. The issue of whether we're a believer or not is already settled.

You know, he uses we, we, we, we, we all the time. And I, you know, some have, some have, believe it or not, there are some commentators that says, I don't know about we. What does we mean? And I, boy, I have a tough time with that. You know, from the context I can see in 1 John, he's talking about the we, he's talking about believers. And so in that context, he's saying that we're having, you know, if we say we have fellowship with him, so this is, this is a Christian walk issue. What's the quality of our Christian walk?

All right, here's 1 John 1.7. 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. Okay? So the main clause is basically, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, cleanses us from all sin.

And that's conditioned upon walking in the light as he himself is in the light. Now, if you think about that, if you look in other parts of scripture, you'll see that That's a very common phraseology. It says, walk by the spirit in Galatians. I mean, walking is a term that's used in scripture many times to indicate how a believer conducts his life, the conduct of his life. So he's saying that statement on the top is true based upon the if part of this. So let's just go on to that.

So if the subordinating clause is true, we have fellowship, and basically it says, and no sin. At that instant in time, we're not sinning, cleansed from all sin. If it's not true, we're out of fellowship and in sin. Does that sort of hang together? I mean, if the if is true... We have fellowship and no sin. If it's false, it's the opposite of that. Now the questions come up about how does this fit in. It seems like that the cleansing from all sin How does that work out in this verse?

1 John 1.9 talks about cleansing as well. So, if you look at it here, and this is not an easy thing. I thought about this a fair amount. It looks like this is making a statement about the walk of the Christian. It's saying, if we're walking in the light, the state that we're in, we're walking with the Lord, we have fellowship with Him. We're in fellowship with Him.

And sin is not an issue anymore. Even though it says he's cleansing us from all sin, the timing of that cleansing from all sin really, I believe, is 1 John 1, 9 addresses that. Because that talks about when we confess our sins, right? When we confess our sins or agree with God, God takes the action. He's faithful and righteous. That's the timing of the issue. This is a declaration about the Christian walk. And so that's how I took it. And that's not a totally satisfying answer. And I'm open to other thoughts on this.

This statement, in fact, some, I looked a little bit at other people, and some said, well, they thought that seven and nine were making the same statement. And from what I can see, seven is declaring the quality of the Christian walk. The Christian is walking, when he's walking in the light, he's having this wonderful fellowship with the Lord, and sin is not an issue anymore. It's already kind of assumed that 1 John 1 9 at some time in the past has occurred in my mind.

So that's kind of how I took it. Like I said, I'm open to other. And in either case, you know, Christ's blood is required for salvation and for our Christian walk. It's required at every step of the way. The blood of Christ is required. And I think that's another thing to pull out here is Christ's blood that is the active force here. It's his blood that does the cleansing.

Have you ever known anybody that could do that blue? Could do the blue? Because of your definition of darkness and light, Jesus walked in the light. Have you ever known a human being other than Jesus that could walk in that same light? Okay, well, can a person abide in Christ? Scripture tells us that the Lord said that. And here's a case in the Gospels, in John, where he says, abide in me. Is that a possible condition? I mean, I ask you, if you're going to... You're questioning whether a person is able to do that, a believer is able to do that. Is that your question?

Yeah, because Jesus did it. He never failed. And he walked in the light his whole life. Okay. And I don't think we can do that because we do fail. Okay. Right. And we don't walk in the light. Absolutely. Absolutely. Even if we're in Christ. Absolutely. Right.

And what is this? Is this addressing our position or our condition? You've got to make that statement. Is this a positional statement or a conditional statement? Conditional means this is my Christian walk. It's something that I'm walking out in my life. Am I walking in the light as he is in the light? I may not be doing that, right? I may be down here. If I'm not doing that, I'm out of fellowship, right? I would say that's more of a condition than a position. Okay, I agree with you. I'm saying, this is a conditional statement. There are two possibilities.

We can walk with the Lord, and I think we all, personally, I've experienced exactly this. I've experienced the positive part of this and the negative part of that, unfortunately. I think most Christians, if they're honest, will say that. How can there be a negative side if it's like Because he himself is in the light. I can't see where the negative at all because of your definition of light.

Okay, let me ask you, does a believer, does a believer, when, is a believer God? You've got to ask yourself that question. You know, you're saying, and I've defined that God declares himself to be light, right? He says, I am light. I am absolutely, absolutely, right? Can a believer, you know, is that what the Christian life is? Does a believer become God? And I think that's what's hanging you up. You're saying, well, if I can't become light... That's what it says. It says if we walk in the light... Right, okay. What does the word walk mean? You have to ask, well, what does walk mean? It doesn't say we live every day, all day long, Well, okay, it's telling us, it's saying if, and the construction here, right, is it's this construction, the Greek, which is likely, it's likely we'll do this, but it's not guaranteed.

And I think that's pretty accurate. That's pretty accurate to the Christian life. I don't know, others have thoughts on that? The reason that we can do that is because of what God has done on the cross. So, I mean, that is what we can fulfill that condition by God's grace, because a couple of things. We have the indwelling Holy Spirit, which is God himself. And then secondly, you know, the second slide Roger showed, or the first or second slide we showed showed, you know, in sin nature, what God's dealt with in sin nature. So now, it's just a matter of us believing in what God's done. Because, you know, He said on the cross it's finished. He paid the penalty for our sins and He took on the sin nature and condemned it.

So now, man, we are free. Positionally free. And the only thing that's barring us from walking in that freedom is faith in the fact. And so it's that simple. It's a matter of faith. Faith allows us to walk in the light as He is in the light. It's super confusing for Tom and I about it. Sometimes people, it's like saying that you can go through life without any sin. And we've known people who think it doesn't matter anymore. And as soon as I got up in the morning, if I confessed my sins, I mean, right away, I'd probably sin again. It doesn't matter if it's an attitude or something.

I mean, all day long, I could. Just getting in the car and driving, you're sinning already. How can you walk in the light? I mean, you'd have to be so perfect. I think that's the issue with us. Traditionally we know, but it's almost impossible to walk in the light.

I hear what you're saying. Well, you know, this statement is saying that it is possible. So you have to kind of, in some ways, you're arguing with God's word. God says it's possible right here, right? He says if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship. So the question is, The quality of, you know, fellowship is a word that's kind of thrown around very loosely.

But I'm jumping into this part of sales and just this part. Can I sit here? Can I? Sure. Sure. Go ahead. Tom asked, has anybody ever done it? Also, probably a good example. Right. Galatians 220 is probably a good example of how we get it. Right. Yeah. That's a good. That's a really good point. Yeah. Well, why return to Galatians? In fact, actually, I had thought about that. And you want to read that for us? Well, why don't we wait till everybody turns to their Galatians 220?

Because it's important to see who who is living and who's living the Christian life. Go ahead. I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. In the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave himself up for me. So how does he live? He lives by faith. What's his object? The Son of God. How does he live when he walked this earth? He lived in total dependence on the Father.

The Christian life is not our life, it's Christ's life. And that somewhat seems to get a little bit blurred here possibly, because you think, well, somehow I've got to roll up this really goodness in me. I'm going to be light, and I can never be that. And you can't be light. Christ is light. And he says, it's his life, not your life.

And your part in all this is to decide that it's faith. is exercising faith in what he has done. And that's why I had that little picture for the root of sin, where to reckon by faith that we've been separated from the source of sin in our life. And that's how he wants us to live, by exercising faith.

He doesn't ask us to somehow well up some fabulous goodness and become light. We can't do that. He is light. It's his life. And so these verses are addressing exactly the issue that the Christian has, that he will not walk on the light. That's going to happen.

But what's really interesting here, I underlined the word all. And it's really a remarkable thing. I think that the Christian, like you pointed out, sins many times during the day. But what's interesting is the Lord, and we haven't got to, when we get to 1 John 1, 9, let's just go ahead and get there. Go there. Oops. I'll just jump to that.

It says, he's faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness, conditioned upon the fact if we confess our sins. And if you look at some verses, it says that he forgives us and cleanses us from, does he just do that one sin? Let's say you came to him and you said, Lord, I know today I was angry with my husband or whatever it might be. What's wonderful about this verse, he not only acts upon what your request is about, he talks about all sin. So he takes care, at that moment, he takes care of all sin. That when we confess our sins or agree with him about our sins, he takes care of all the sin.

So it's not like you have to, otherwise you're on this treadmill, right? I sinned 42 times today, I got 41, you gotta check them all off. You'll never get there. I mean, personally, once you forgot about. And you don't even know that. Right, exactly. And that's actually why I put... I'm going to go back here. That's why this bottom part is so critical. It's just so critical.

Because God doesn't really, I believe, want you in this confession loop. You're constantly in turmoil over that. He wants you, by faith, to consider or reckon that you don't have to respond to that old nature. You can, and you do, but you don't have to.

We're to know something from verse 6, knowing this, that our old self, the old man, was crucified with him, that our body of sin might be, better translated, put in idle, taken offline. This is where we're to be in our daily walk. reckoning ourselves, that way we won't get to the point where 1 John 1 needs to come into play, because we won't be there. And that's the emphasis of so much of Paul's writing in terms of our sin nature. Counting upon what Christ has done, abiding with Christ, resting in Christ. Alright, with that I'll let Josiah do it here.

Can you read John Gospel of John, chapter 1, verses 1-14. Can you read that? Gospel of John. Chapter 1. Because that's actually something I wanted to do, Doug. John 1, 1-14. And this will define light, because that's actually one of the things I wanted to do. In the beginning was the word, the word is with God, and the word was God. The same was in the beginning. All things were made by him, without him was not anything made that was made. In him was life, and the life was the life of men.

There's your light right there. The light shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehendeth not. There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. The same name The same came for a witness to bear witness of a light that all men through him might believe. He was not that light, but was sent to bear witness of that light. That was the true light, which lighteth every man that cometh unto the world.

He was in the world, the world was made by him, and the world knew him not. He came unto his own, and his own received him not. But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe in his name, which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. And the word was made flesh, and dwelt among us.

We know the glory. The glory is only to God the Father, full of grace and truth. Walking the Light is talking about walking in the Lord Jesus Christ. It's similar to 1 John. Remember when we studied 1 John, verses 1-4, he kept referring to that which we have seen from the beginning, that which we have heard, and he was referring to the same, the Light, to the Lord Jesus. I think that answers your question, Doug. Who's the light? It's the Lord Jesus, the life of the Lord Jesus.

So, I'm convinced that one of the biggest problems today in Christianity is that the church is not balanced when it talks about spiritual growth. Because, I mean, on the one hand, Debbie, you were describing a focus on this. There's a lot of teaching out there that doesn't look at this. And like Roger was saying, a lot of teaching will just focus on 1 John 1, 9. So you're getting this big confession thing. If you really want to be faithful to 1 John 1, 9, you're going to drive yourself crazy and go into a mental institution. And some people have.

So we need to be balanced on those. But I think that slide is great. I'm going to skip here. Roger covered a lot of things I was going to cover, and so I can skip some of this stuff here. Fellowship, let's just look at this slide real quick. Since we're going to talk about fellowship a little bit, I'm going to just go to the mouse. I don't know how to do this one. Fellowship is the Greek word koinonia and it means fellowship, intimacy, contact, and Wyss describes it this way. He says, fellowship is a joint participation with someone else and things held common by both.

In the context of 1 John 1 verse 9, what is John communicating with those believers who received his letter? What things is he communicating to the believers, to whom he is writing? Without reading the verses, what can you guys come up with? There you go.

So John had been telling these believers in the first few verses about the Lord Jesus, what they heard from the Lord Jesus, what they saw the Lord Jesus do, what He told them. And it's these things that they saw in the Lord Jesus, and the truths that the Lord Jesus taught, it's these things that they are going to participate in together.

And that's fellowship. That's what John wants. He wants the believers to participate in, to depend upon the Lord Jesus, to believe the Lord Jesus, to fellowship with the Lord Jesus. So that's his goal. I'm going to skip a little bit here. Roger looked at verse 7 already, but let's read these again.

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. And so Roger showed us how these work, with the main clause and then the two subordinating, or the subordinating clause. We lie and do not practice the truth if we say that we have fellowship with Him and yet walk in darkness. And like Roger said, if our walk doesn't match our talk, we're lying. And I used to do that as a Christian. You know, Roger said, this is written to the Gnostics, which it is. But you know, Christians can do this too.

There was a period in my life when I knew about the identification truths, and my understanding was that I just had to wait maybe 20, 30 years before the Lord started to make these things real in my life. And in the meantime, what am I going to do? If I sin, I sin. But I'm trusting the Lord. So that was my attitude.

And that's exactly what he's saying we shouldn't do. Roger went over that, I'm going to skip that. And then, if we walk in the light, as he himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another. And again, Roger showed us how these clauses work. We have fellowship, if we're walking in the light, as he's in the light. And what does it mean to walk in the light? This gets to Doug's question a couple of minutes ago. So, walk. Walk. Peripateo. It's signifying the whole round of activities of the individual.

That's how we conduct ourselves. And as Tom alluded to, it's our life. I mean, it's every part of our life. It's not just church on Sunday mornings or Bible study on Thursday nights. It's when we wake up to when we go to bed. It's our whole life. And the light refers to Jesus Christ. So, the way in which we live or conduct ourselves in every area of our life is to be consistent with the life of Jesus Christ. That's what John's saying. If we walk in the light, that's what he's talking about.

Now, this is speaking of our condition, and this is now possible because of our position in Christ. Okay. We'll spend the rest of our time looking at some of these diagrams here. So this slide represents our position. Our position, the moment we got saved, of course, God put us into Jesus Christ. And that's where He views us now, forever. Forevermore, the Father views us in Jesus Christ. Is He aware of our condition as well? Sure. Scripture has a lot to say about our condition. But God accepts us on the basis of our position in Jesus Christ.

This little circle here, in the arrow, represents the concept of the Greek word in. To be in something is to be entirely enclosed in something. So, if the circle represents Jesus Christ, you, the believer, are in Jesus Christ, completely, all the time. That's our position in Jesus Christ. In 1 John, verse 7, He's talking about walking in the light. This is talking about our condition. But I put the two beside each other because, again, it's the same Greek preposition, in.

The believer is to be walking in Jesus Christ, completely in Jesus Christ. There aren't to be moments of our day where we walk outside of Jesus Christ, in dependence upon our sin nature. That's not what God wants. God wants us to be walking in Jesus Christ. Is that clear? Confusing as mud? So just position and condition show up here in 1 John 1. Another way to look at the conditional sentence that Roger went over is this way. Here's our condition.

I changed the slide. Now on the left you have your condition. If we walk in Jesus Christ, then we have fellowship with one another. The condition, if you walk in Jesus Christ, will result in us having fellowship with one another. This is another way to look at it, and this is going to step back a little bit. Let me just step you through this slide. The cross here represents the moment we got saved.

At that moment, we begin to grow as we depend upon the Lord. These moments here, where we are growing, show progressive spiritual growth. These are moments when we are beholding Jesus Christ, According to 2 Corinthians 3.18, it's at these times that we are transformed from glory to glory to glory to glory.

It's during these times that we are depending upon the Lord. according to 1 John 1.7 that we are walking in the light and we're growing during those times. It's these times where we have fellowship with one another and with the Lord.

The next slide will change at the top and just state that. We are in fellowship during these times when we are walking in the light. So that's fellowship. It's talking about our condition. Now these flatline times are when we are walking in the flesh. Notice there isn't any spiritual growth going on there.

And these do occur in our Christian life. Is this what God wants? Does God's Word teach us to walk in the flesh? Does God admonish us to walk in the flesh? contraire, the opposite. He admonishes us to walk in the Spirit, to depend upon Him. But this whole chart is representing our spiritual growth, so those are in there as well. I changed this portion.

We are not in fellowship when we are walking in the darkness, and that's what he says in 1 John 1.6. Another way to look at this shows that the moment a person gets saved, he has a position in Christ that never changes. Look at that, it remains constant throughout our entire spiritual growth process here. But what does change is the believer's condition.

Do you have questions? And what I meant by that is that I think a lot of the problems in the church are because of bad teaching on spiritual growth. Not that we shouldn't talk about spiritual growth. It is very important. Well, you know what? It's funny, because there are churches that teach, but there's no such thing as spiritual growth. I have heard that before. But no, that's not what I meant.

I think there is a lot of bad teaching on spiritual growth, and it affects our lives severely as Christians. But does that help? So, we have to differentiate between our fellowship with the Lord, which John is saying occurs when we're walking in the light, and if the light is the Lord Jesus, consistent with his life.

There's a lot of things that 1 John isn't going to address. For example, we're not going to spend a lot of time talking about the Holy Spirit in this class. He comes up a few times in the book, but not a lot. We're not going to spend much time at all going over Romans 6. And Romans 6 is hyper important because it talks about what God did with our sin nature. So there are a lot of things we won't go over in 1 John that are in the text, but we'll need to talk about them throughout the class.