1-3 John - 1st John 1 Rewiew/Questions of Chapter 1
1 John 1 · Roger Henderson · Feb 13, 2011
1, 2 & 3 John, No. 07
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/4926226108092

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

Okay, I've divided the review here into two parts, verses 1-4 and then 6-10. So if I get someone to read the first four verses, you can read from the overhead or from your Bible, whatever you like. What was from the beginning, what we have heard, Third, we proclaim to you also, so that you too may have fellowship with us.

Indeed, our fellowship is with the Father and with the Son, Jesus Christ. These things we write so that our joy may be made complete. Thanks, Gary. So we're going to go through. It's kind of nice that you have the verses on top. We're going to have to ask some questions about the verses. This seems to be a little more appropriate for your view this time.

So, first question is, What did they see and hear about Christ that they wanted to proclaim? Gary just read those verses so look back on those verses. What did they see? What did they see and hear about Christ they wanted to proclaim? Well that Christ was the Lord and that he came and he was the Son. And they saw it and it was manifested in Christ and so they saw it with their own eyes.

Right, and that's really wonderful. You look at those verses and it said they could still hear his words, they touched him, they could still remember it. It was so vivid. In fact, the Greek is so wonderful there. They still heard the words ringing in their ears and that's just wonderful.

But then toward verses 3 and 4, it talks about, actually back in verse 1, What name did they give to Christ in verse 1? The word of life. Right, so that he was life. This is just me. If you have some other ideas, don't let me sway you here. One of the things is that Christ was the word of life. He said, Lord, you have the words of eternal life. No one else had the words of eternal life. Only Jesus Christ had the words of eternal life. So that's at least one thing that they wanted to proclaim.

And Roger, wouldn't they remember from the Old Testament where, where is it? And I can't remember the verses exactly, but in the Old Testament where it talks about the water, which was the spring of life for the, The living water. The living water. That was the shadow of the word of life, of the life. That's good. If they were from a Jewish background, they would have remembered. Sure, there's a lot of things that they brought to the table, so to speak. Right. Okay, that's good. Is there anything else that occurs? Why don't you look in Look at verse 2. What do you see in verse 2?

Where was eternal life at? With the Father, right? Basically, eternal life was with God the Father. So at least a couple of things in there that they wanted to proclaim. Who the person of Christ was. They actually saw him. He was a real person. But then from the text it says that he He was the Word of Life. They proclaimed to you eternal life. And eternal life resided, according to verse 2, with the Father, and was manifest, made plain to them. They said, this eternal life, it was off somewhere, but now it's in the person of Christ. So, at least two things that I saw. And it also was manifested into us. Right, it was manifested to us. Manifested means to reveal, take off the lid. What Margaret just said, We don't have to wait to get to eternity to experience eternal life.

Well, that's actually the definition in John 17.3. It says eternal life is knowing Jesus Christ. So that's the wonderful news about eternal life.

Okay, so next question. What was the purpose of this proclaiming according to those verses that we read? Was there a purpose? Did they state a purpose in there? OK, OK. That we would have fellowship. Excellent, excellent. You get a gold star, Woody. Like Bonnie, she's in class, a second grader. I used to have little stars here. I'd go around and give you stars. But you were looking at a man who would never die. Amen, amen.

So the purpose was that you may have fellowship. And that kind of goes into the next question. Who did John say his fellowship was with? Okay, right, right. It was with a father and with his son. So, it's interesting is that if true fellowship, right, if I want to have fellowship with you according to Scripture, right, It's not just I've become a really nice person. I think you're the greatest person. I shake your hand when we're warm and I give you a cup of coffee or whatever. No. It's my relationship to God the Father. That's what John says. He says, we want to have fellowship with you. But we first have to sell this issue about who we are and our relationship is to God the Father.

As I looked at this and reviewed this, it kind of struck me and I read some commentaries about it. This is almost like this section of scripture especially starting in verse 6 through 10, is actually like counseling or discipling. It's so like saying, if I go with Bob, and Bob and I maybe don't know each other too well, we know each other pretty well, and we don't know where we're coming from, it takes a while for us to understand Well, what do you think about this? And we go over a process of understanding one another.

Well, this is almost exactly what's happening here. He's saying, I want to have fellowship with you. But first of all, we've got to make sure we understand where our fellowship comes from. It comes from on high. Our fellowship with God is the first. Before we can have fellowship on the horizontal, we've got to make sure we have fellowship on the vertical.

And he's going to go through and kind of show us in six through ten, here are the pitfalls. Don't say these things about sin. Don't say I have fellowship and do something different. He's going to go through all these if statements. If, if, if, if, if, six times. And he's going to say, let's sort this out. Actually five times. Let's sort this out on our fellowship. You guys just going to comment on, Margaret and I were having a late fellowship. I'm not sure we quite realize what you're going to be doing today.

I think that I'll speak for myself, you can be guilty sometimes of trying to assess others in the faith based on this concept of fellowship. I think what you just said is so real. True fellowship relates to the foundations of the truth we're studying here. And maybe I'm guilty of expectations. Margaret accuses me of that all the time, that my expectations are not appropriate for the circumstances.

But I think true fellowship is based on the solid foundational truth of Christ in us. It's founded on really the positional truths. And maybe I need to have fewer expectations about what this is all about. But I think like you pointed out, if we didn't know each other very well, we hung out together for 20 minutes and we started talking about who Christ is and who we are.

I mean, that fellowship builds like a mountain. Exactly. Isn't that exactly what John did here? He said in verse 3, their purpose was to have fellowship with one another. He said, but wait a minute. my fellowship, he wasn't bragging, my fellowship is with the Father.

We've got to understand that if your fellowship is with the Father, we're going to have almost an impossible time of having fellowship because you know... Well, and also, you know, what we were talking about was you're around other people who maybe they're at a mainline church or they're... and we think they're believers, okay, but we notice that we don't have the same kind of fellowship with them, even though they are believers, as we do with other people who are believers. But I think it's all about this part, which is, it has to do with their relationship, their personal relationship with the Lord, and how they understand their relationship. And they can be believers, and we may not have the same kind of fellowship, because we have a different view of what our relationship is with the Lord.

But that doesn't mean they're not saved. And that's exactly the conclusion I came to by looking at verses 6-10. John says, you know, I want to get off to a good start here. We're going to go through each of these tough topics and we're going to talk about each one about sin, and what sin does to fellowship, what that's all about. And we're going to go through each one. And we're going to say, what if I say this? What if I say that? And he goes through all these.

Some might say hypothetical, but I think they're probable things that we might do. So there's some disagreement about whether those ifs are probable or hypothetical. But either way, he wants to have a discussion so that we're on the same page. And it's the same for us right here. If we want to have fellowship, we have to come to an understanding of what he's going to go through verses 6 through 10. fellowship, and that's with all the scriptures. So I think that's where it's at. Now, the challenge is to come, you know, that's our, you know, what Vern and Mike and I always pray about, that we'll be on the same page. We'll have a sameness of mind here at Holly Hills so that we can have fellowship and so we can proclaim the truth. But it's interesting, this is a microcosm in these ten verses of what is to happen in the whole body.

Or there's no room for arrogance or elitism here. By the way, I think that nothing to offer our Heavenly Father. Exactly. I didn't bring him to the table. I was a really good guy and he got a good deal, right? Okay, well that's wonderful. I'm glad you guys had your conversation. Yeah, it was very timely.

Another thing, the definition of fellowship is sharing in common, having in common, there's a little footnote in definition. It's sharing with someone you have something in common with. If we don't have these truths in common with, just like you're saying, they may be believers, but we're going to have a difficult time. And that's why as we go out in the world, I see believers at work, I see believers in different places, I see Pat at work. Different believers, my fellowship I can have with them is limited by what our common understanding is. And that's what John is talking about. OK, well, great. We're off to a good start. Now we've got the tough verses. OK. So actually, it's actually 5 through 10. OK, could someone read these verses for me?

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 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 say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and righteous 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.

In this verse, before we go to the questions here, actually I have questions about the totality of these verses and then I have questions about starting in 6 through 10. In fact, people look at the first verse as setting the stage for the rest of Chapter 1 all the way into Chapter 2, almost to the end of Chapter 2. That verse makes a statement about God's character. Okay, so let's go...

So the first question is, what is the message they heard from Christ? If you look at the previous verse, in verse 5, what's the message? What was the message they heard? I kind of want you guys to do it rather than me. It made us a little picky. I apologize for being picky. But from verse 5, what's the message they heard from him and they announced to you? There are two aspects to it, right?

Okay. Is that all there is? No dark. And there's no dark in him. Okay. Excellent. Excellent. Good. I said, man, a little bit picky. I apologize. But the pick the part about let's go back here for a second. It says, God is light, and in him there is no darkness at all. And it actually means there's not even one little speck. And that's probably pretty consistent with our view of God. I mean, if you know Scripture and you're a believer, you wouldn't have a problem with that.

But he just wants to state that. He states that, and now we're going to talk about the what ifs. What if this? What if that? What if you do this? He's going to go through all these, six through ten, he's going to go through five statements about the what ifs.

Roger, you know this idea of life? What is that equal to? I'm thinking what comes to mind is truth. Tom is the only one that really knows truth. Because we don't. And he's instructed us in that. Well, and we know it because of his son and because we're in him. That's the only way we know it.

I mean, in fact, actually wasn't Christ asked, what is truth, right? He was asked by Pilate, what is truth? And the only way we know what truth is by, you know, by his word and by, by having him, you know, that we're in union with Christ, right? So, so light is a metaphor, I think, for the holiness of God. Well, it seems like there's this question of, you know, let's say the guy in the street somewhere.

There's no good and evil. Yeah, there is. There is good and evil. And it's because we've been shown and it's been illuminated, good and evil have been shown. So when I think of light, when I first look at it, well, what's that? It's good, and we've had this discussion before, only God is good. Remember, I had this, well, Jim Hazen, you know, that's a good friend from work.

He always, I always say, he said, Roger, how's your day going? I say, good. He said, Roger, only God is good. Every day. So I stood up to him and I said, amen, brother, amen. God is good, I agree, but I'm having a good day, too. I didn't say I was good, I said my dad was good.

So in verse 5, we have that contrast. God is light and there's not any evil, any darkness. It's a classic thing, good and evil, light and darkness. And the only way we know the difference from that is from his word. There's no other way. I mean, we may, I think intuitively we know when somebody starts hurting us or is, you know, does terrible things that they're probably not good. I mean, just from a human perspective, but we, a clear definition is nowhere else in God's word.

So you're saying light is equal to good? Well, it's God, basically. That is an attribute, right? You can go through it. Hal had one of those things about God's attributes, and I've forgotten. I can't list them all. But anyway, light is one of his attributes. It's a metaphor. I mean, he's not...

Actually, in a sense, he's both, you know, if you look in the end times, he's physical light, right? Well, and even to Moses. Moses couldn't look upon him and have the veil because his face was so... right from the holiness of God which manifests itself as light. Yeah, I mean Christ himself identifies with himself as the light coming into the world.

Right, right. It's a character of God. God's perfect righteousness. It's truth. There's a whole bunch of synonyms you could attach to that. So life can equal righteousness? Christ calls himself the light. John 3. I'm the light of the world. When he came into the world, he brought the truth of who God is. Light is a metaphor for that. There are many places where it talks about the darkness.

When I think of light, I think of the radiance rather than the absorption of And so he reveals, he does not hide. He shows us, and we could say truth and righteousness and everything, but he also shows us evil. And so he reveals all, whereas darkness absorbs all, hides all. And God does not do that. He does not hide anything. Yeah, I think that's really important. It's the light makes the darkness be revealed. Right. And actually we have verses coming. They're going to talk about that.

They're going to talk about how the light, and man, you know, the natural man doesn't want the light. He doesn't want the light to shine on who he is because he inherently knows. He knows within himself that he's not right. Man doesn't have to be told. I mean, it's interesting. God in Romans tells us, man knows that he has a problem, but he won't admit it. He's too proud. So we're going to get into the light and darkness. Is that good enough for now, Pat? All right. So let's go back to the questions here. Okay.

In verses 6 through 10, there's discussions about what aspects of the Christian life. So looking at 6 through 10, let's keep going back, I apologize. So in 6 through 10, what aspects are mentioned in there? And it just kind of, you know, That you see quickly.

I mean, this is not this is not really none of these things are hidden They're just the obvious things so walking would be how you conduct yourself. Okay, that's good. Okay, it's the walk in general Okay, other things that we see in in these six six to ten Fellowship right fellowship. Okay, how to have fellowship right how not to have fellowship What else how about buds favorite?

I have to give you a hard time, but I apologize. So we see sin, right? We actually see, are there two kinds of sins that are mentioned? There's sins and sin, both are mentioned. Okay, excellent. And we're going to talk about that very shortly here. So there's quite a few topics that occur in these six through 10. Okay, go back. Okay, if you had the group, is there a grouping that you see? I keep going back, I apologize, I should have done this better. Is there a grouping of if statements in here? Which ones would you group with which? Or do you think they all are equal? Well, no, there's positive and negative statements. Good. Is there the same phraseology in some verses over some other verses?

Okay, well, I'll give you my grouping here. If you look at 6, 8, and 10, it says, if we say, if we say, if we say. So that's something you might say, right? So that's where some people would say that's a hypothetical if, possibly. And then we have if we walk in 7, right?

So that's like an action. One is saying something, right? I'm verbalizing something. Other one is if I do something, if I walk. And then in 9, we have if we confess. But actually, confess, in the Greek, right, is this word homo legeo, I think we mentioned that last week, is to say the same thing. So that's a saying as well. You're saying something. You're saying what God is saying. So that was a grouping that kind of occurred to me. OK. I'd like to just make, to kind of say something about this. This is a little bit techie here.

All those if statements, there was discussion I know through the last several weeks, they're all what's called in the Greek, third class condition. It presents a condition of uncertainty, a certain fulfillment, but it's likely. So it says, in the if statement we read, what's presented is likely, but it's not guaranteed. It's a probability. It may happen, it may not happen. So you cannot translate any of those if statements since.

I know in some cases we'd like to. I know we were talking yesterday after the service. Some of those you'd like to transcend. But according to the original language, they're all, and actually it's very easy. I mean, I'm not that great at Greek. I took Hal's class. I learned from him a lot. But I can identify, with my stumbling Greek, I can identify that those are all what they call, they're all a probability statement. They're not assumed to be true, which is first class. They're all probability statement. So that's just kind of FYI. just to help us as we go through. Another thing, this is old news to everybody here almost, but it never hurts.

We're going to see statements in 6 through 10, and we're going to have to make a judgment. Are they talking about our position in Christ, eternal and unchangeable, or are they talking about our condition, which is our moment-by-moment walk. It's temporal, it's changeable, And that's something that we need to understand. Which one are we talking about? Because if we're not careful, we may go between those two. And it's just really good. So this is where, is it a positional truth about us in Christ, eternal, unchangeable, or is it our Christian walk? It's something that we might encounter as we walk with Christ. So now, we'll start with verse six. The first if.

But I didn't do a lot of verbiage here, just want to answer any questions again. In verse 6 it says, if we say that we have fellowship with him, yet walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. So, I'm not sure why questions work. I probably should have phrased that better. I always rethink some of these. What, maybe, I don't know, if you like my question that's fine.

What do you think, I'm retaking here. What do you think verse 6 is telling us? Just in your own words, what do you think verse 6 is telling us? Is there something that kind of just jumps out at you from that? Don't worry about the greed, just what does it say? It says light and darkness don't hang out together anyways.

Okay, that's good, that's good, well I like that, okay. Well, you can say anything you want. Exactly. Okay, good. But what's the test? What's the bottom line? What does your walk look like? Exactly. So it's a walk and a talk, right? Or a talk and a walk. Talk and a walk. Talk and a walk.

I think I'm going to flip. I'm sorry, go ahead. I think it seems like it's saying that it's quite possible to be self-deceived. Okay, that's good. It's a probability, right? I mentioned this may happen, right? This could happen. So... What do you mean, it may happen? Well, I was going to ask that question. I was going to ask you. Okay, you're right.

The other happens in a nanosecond a whole day. Have you ever said, I'm having fellowship and then, boom, what happens, right? But you walk, you do something contrary to who God is and what he's done, right? And it's presenting that case. That's what it says. If we say we have fellowship, then we ought to walk according to the fellowship. And what is fellowship? It's light. It's in him. It's according to his standards.

So it's, I think these verses are trying to identify pitfalls we might in our mind think, how can I be doing this? I'm doing one thing but saying the other. And we all, and Margaret said, we all do it. And we probably do it before we go home today. I apologize. I mean. I've already done it today. Okay.

Isn't that our warning that the Adam is still at work and has to be measured? Amen. And he's a thing to contend with. And that's a warning about that. That if we say all these things, do all these things, Adam has got a hold of us. And we're back there again. And that's a warning. But he makes a fire escape for us. After the war. Just, you know, anything of unbelief. Anything. Well, what's anything?

I mean, I'm just thinking in seriousness. Well, actually, he makes us say, whatever not of faith is sin. So you could examine, I mean, you could get, now here's the question, are we to be Is the way to live the Christian life, are we going to examine every single thing we do, every moment, and say, no, I have two lists, I have good and bad every day. I start off in the morning, I get up in the morning, I kick the dog, I say, bad.

I kick it away, it's dead. So, and you're right. So, how do we know, you know, how do we know what's... Go ahead, Bob. Well, I think, you know, this self-metric that we apply to ourselves, it's a schizophrenic life. Absolutely. You're going to be... take you off to the...

I think when you walk by faith, the life shows up. I mean, am I really buried with him and risen with him in newness of life? And you live by that faith, the life shows up. And we don't put measuring sticks to our own life. The Holy Spirit lived out in the power of our faith. But again, if we self-examine every thought, Gail said perfectly, we may not even recognize we're not walking in truth. Because we think we're doing good, but it's the old Adam nature that's getting buffed up.

I don't know, I think we leave it up to the Lord to be the final judge of what our walk looks like, but I think in fellowship, we see one another's walk, and we say, gee, that, and to give ourselves points along the way, I mean, it just, that's not what this is all about. So Pat, do you think that, let's see, we saved your question, or you're, I don't know. Well, I'm looking at the other, I swapped the two phrases. I'm saying, okay, You want to know what fellowship is? Here's what it's not.

If you're walking in darkness, which means you are short. You fall short, but we all fall short. So it seems like, well, if we all fall short, then we almost all be walking in darkness. And that's true. He's not that far yet. We'll get that verse in a minute. For Rogers, is there a censor to it? Because it says, walk in darkness. I mean, it's more of a continuous pattern. That's a good point. Walking is a way of life, in a sense.

But sins are kind of individual, aren't they? is the source, but the sins are the individual falling short. What we see from our perspective is we see that we sin. And actually, he's going to cover that situation. Some people will say, well I've got to say I don't sin anymore, or I don't have a sin nature. So some of those statements he's going to deal with, we're going to get to them very shortly here. He wants to deal with the very basics.

Don't test it against reality. And the first reality statement is, we're not to say fellowship and walk in darkness. Be habitually walking in darkness. And that's kind of the sense. That was good. And it basically says we lie to not practice the truth. We want to practice the truth.

Now, what Pat's saying is, yeah, I know, but there's something that I even, I sin and don't even remember it. And he even covers that. In 1 John 1, 9, he covers that as well. He says he cleanses us from all unrighteousness. So even things we don't even think about.

The focus of Christian life is not to be on the sins, it's to be on Christ. And that's the key thing, and hopefully we're going to show that as we get into it. If we focus on the sins, it's all over with, because we're going to be the checklist again, and the checklist is going to kill us. my dependency on God the same.

You see what I'm saying? So is walking in darkness a broader piece, or if you didn't do this, you didn't do that? I think these are statements at a higher level. I would agree. Darkness is, he doesn't define. Darkness, you could make a list, infinite probably. Darkness is anything contrary to who God is and what he's done. And his character.

So I agree, these are high-level statements, so not down at the nitty-gritty. You know, places in Scripture, it lists sins, it lists the sins, you know, there's seven sins that he hates and he has the first one, they're listed. But here he just says darkness, he doesn't, you know, he says basically contrary to who God is. Okay.

Well, I mean, if you jump ahead just a second. Eyes and the pride of life that covers pretty much everything. We're going to come back to a lot of these topics and come back again as we go through first one. But I was just about to jump over my John nine square on. John 1, John 2, 1. Read that, that's got a lot of advice. Actually, we're going to cover that next week.

Okay, so 6 is kind of a negative statement. We say we have fellowship. Our talk doesn't match our walk. But 7 is a positive statement. It says 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. So what are the questions I had here? Basically, this is back to what is true fellowship, right? True fellowship is what? Walking in the light, right? We covered that already. Actually, that should be 5.16. I apologize for the typo there.

What does Galatians 5.16 tell us about walking in the light?

Galatians 5.16, if you don't remember it, is a very familiar verse.

But I say, walk by the Spirit and you will not carry out the desires of the flesh. So basically, Walking is a metaphor for conducting your Christian life, right? So if we're walking by the Spirit, by the power of the Spirit, we're in a condition that pleases God, we're in the light, and we're not going to exercise, carry out the desires of the flesh. So it's just another parallel verse that tells us about what walking in the light means. You're walking in the light of who Christ is, Walking in the Spirit is another part of that. Isn't that also because of our identification with Him? If we're walking in Him, and He's in the light, then it's not His character to ever go to the darkness. So if we're in Him, we're going to always walk in the light when we're in Him.

Conditionally. I mean, we are with him positionally. And you would agree that these verses we're going through, this is talking about our condition, right? This is talking about our condition. Condition. Okay, so what two things from verse 7 happen when we walk in the light? We have fellowship with one another. Okay, and there's a part two. And this is a part...

Okay, so I'm going to ask a question here that, you know, we're going to ask it later. Why do we need this cleansing? Why is that mentioned here? That's why they wrote John 1, 2 in here. 2, 1. That's why they wrote that in there, to remind us that we should be aware of it. So here's the issue. I think this is Pat's question from last week, and we're going to get into it more in 1 John 1, 9. But basically, let's read a verse here before we do that. Let's look to John 13, 7-10. John 13. Can someone read John 13, 7-10?

Jesus answered and said to him, What I do, you do not realize now, but you will understand hereafter. Peter said to him, never shall you wash my feet. Jesus answered him, if you do not wash, if I do not wash you, you have no part with me. Simon Peter said to him, Lord, then wash not only my feet, but also my hands and my head. Jesus said to him, he who has bathed needs only to wash his feet, but is completely clean. And you are clean, but not all of you. Well, let's just talk about that a little bit. That's a whole study unto itself, that set of verses.

When we trust Christ as our Savior, He cleanses us from all sin, for all time, past, present, and future. He cleanses us from for all our life, but in time we are executing our life, right? And we come across the sin, okay? So that sin's already been paid for, right? But what does God want us to do with that sin, even though it's paid for, right now?

And that's kind of the question that comes up and is addressed in these verses. And that's kind of a, you know, could be a stumbling block, I guess. Because it's already paid for, and it basically says, So the blood of Christ isn't like a static thing. It's not like the blood of Christ and time passed, boom, that was it. No, it continues on. In our time, it continues on and it's cleansing us, even though that sin is painful. That is still in motion, so to speak.

And that's, you know, I think Bob pointed out, Commentaries look to that as judicial sins and family sins. This is a family sin issue. I'm a believer, and I sin. What does God do about it? He wants to cleanse that sin. Now, it doesn't say that it already hasn't been accomplished. It probably makes it more complicated by talking about it. Let's see here. Well, let's go on. Basically. There are two issues at stake. One issue is that at salvation, all sins have been paid for.

And that's the John 2.2.

He said propitiation for our sin, and not for our sin only, but for the sin of the whole world. So he has paid for the sin of the whole world. But there's also an issue about believing on him. And we have forgiveness of sins. That's also an issue. And that's what a believer does. He believes on what Christ has done. But the sins are forgiven. But now, he says, as you walk your Christian life, John chapter 1 is one of the few places in scripture where he addresses this issue of sins within the body of Christ. What do you do about those sins as a believer?

He addresses them. What do we do? Even though they're paid for, he wants us to recognize those and say what he says. So anyway, Pat, is that coming anywhere to what your concerns were? We still, you know, you could say, okay, I've got this source of sin, and it's going to keep sinning. Okay, we're going to cleanse us from sin. Okay, we took away that one, but it's still got the basic problem. So when you say cleanse us from sin, when scripture says that, is that actually changing our nature, or not our nature, but giving us, let's say, dominance over the sin nature?

I don't think so. I think this is a wonderful statement about as we walk with Christ, this is the time in our life or the part of our life that we would like to be in 24-7. We would like to be walking in the light 24-7, never walking in darkness, never ever That's what the goal of the Christian life is, right? But what happens? We have a sin nature, and we don't achieve that. What he's telling us is, as you're walking in the light, sin is not an issue anymore.

His blood is paid for that, and you are cleansed as you walk. So basically, you can walk with Christ in fellowship, because you're like His in fellowship of life, right? But what does it mean? one another, conditional. The second is true, related, but not dependent on the first phrase.

The blood of Jesus, his son, cleanses us from all sin. That statement is not conditional based on walking in the light. It's a true statement. Oh, by the way, also, the blood of Jesus, his son, cleanses us from all sin. There's no way in which the conditional phrase up front leads to the second statement to make the second statement true. I agree. But what does it mean to cleanse us from sin? That means positionally it's been done away with. The sin nature's been crucified, right? Go ahead, Bud. That's all that first verse of number two of John there is telling you. And it's very clearly the only thing The thing we have to do is read something into the Scriptures, and we don't have to do that. Because it just says right there, it says, My little children, these things I write unto you, that ye sin not. The desire is that we don't sin. God does not want us to sin.

And if any man sin, we have it all advocated by the Father. Who is this advocate? Oh, that's Jesus Christ. Oh, okay, well, this is the case, alright. Well, with the Father, we have Jesus Christ the righteous. And He is the propitiation for our sins, and not ours only. In other words, He's telling them, He turns to the Father and says, I paid for everything. It's all over with. And that's all there is to it.

But the point that Pat's asking is, this is in our Christian walk. We're walking in the light, right? We have fellowship with one another. And the blood of Jesus is being exercised and sin isn't an issue. As we're walking by, sin is no longer an issue.

Because it's an ongoing process of cleansing us of our sins. And our sin has already been dealt with judicially. But because we still have a sin nature, as Pat pointed out, we still continue to sin with these little sins that we do. But the Lord is cleansing us all the time. It's an ongoing process.

Grace is greater than all our sins. And we're going to sing that today. Grace is greater than all our sins. I like the fact that you mentioned, or somebody brought it up, whatever, that John 13, verse 10 there, where he says, I think it speaks to our eternal security. Right, you're already clean. Yes, that he who is bathed is completely clean. And I think that's really how secure we are. Totally identified in our position and everything. It isn't an issue.

But we live in an environment that is characterized by darkness. And I'm thinking of the little character in the peanuts column that walks along and all the dirt is fluffing up all around him. And I think maybe that's a good illustration of walking through this world not only around us, but within us because our sin nature is there. And so maybe that is an illustration of how our feet are getting dirty. We can't help it. Exactly. And what Christ says, you know, you're already clean. Don't take a bath. I don't want to give you a bath, but your feet get dirty. You will encounter sin in your life.

And basically this is addressing, 1 John 1 and 9 will address that situation. And we encounter sin in our life, even though it's already paid for. He wants us to acknowledge it. He wants us to agree that that's sin. Recognize. So we can have fellowship. It's back to the whole thing. I can't have fellowship with you unless we're on the same page. If you're in a sinful situation, then your fellowship's going to be impaired. And that's the bottom line of all this is, He wants to have fellowship with us.

And don't tell me, don't have all these possibilities where you're going to have a little wiggle room to wiggle around to say, well, maybe that's not so bad. No. You have to say what sin is sin, and you have to identify it. I was just going to point out a second in him, and that's sin.

For he hath made him who knew no sin to be sin for us. That's always a tough one. You think the Lord was made? That's the most incredible thing in all history. The sinless God would make sin for us. That's mind boggling. So this is just real quick. I like this picture. This is how I worked it. We're in this together. The root is the nature, right? A sin nature is the root, and the fruit is a personal sin. So God addresses both of these. I have some charts later on, but we probably won't get to them. We might. We'll see here. We'll talk more about that. So here's another situation.

If we say we have no sin, and actually, let's point it out, basically he's talking about the nature here. There's a definite article. This is the nature. What two things happen when we say we have no sin nature? We're deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us. So he's not going to let you say that you don't have a sin nature. No, that's... we can figure out that. Okay? Here's another situation. If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar and his word is not in us.

And actually what's interesting here is that actually, we have not sinned is in the perfect tense. So it's basically saying that we have not sinned in the past up into the present. That's a pretty bold statement. But there are some branches of Christianity that get to a state where I've reached this sinless perfection. I don't sin anymore. This verse addresses that. So going through there, he wants to cover all the bases, so to speak. All the things we might pose as a question, he wants to say, no, that's not true. It makes God a liar and his word is not in us.

Did you say that was perfect tense? Well, it's called perfect tense. Yeah, actually, we have not sinned is in the perfect tense. And I tried to make it, I tried to put it in English, what the perfect tense means. It means we have not sinned in the past. So we've never sinned. Well, I'm not sure it says that. It says we have not sinned in the past. Well, that's never. In fact, mine and I would have this exact discussion about how far back, no, your exact question. I don't know. I guess I'm not sure of that.

I won't say that we ever sinned. It just says we have not sinned in the past. You might say, after February 25th, which was 10 years ago, I didn't sin. I was perfected then. Well, after you were saved. I was saved. And I haven't sinned all the time in the past, up and on in the present.

Well, you know, he covers that situation. He says, no, you make God a liar, and his word is not in you. It's interesting that, basically, in A, he says we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. And then down in 10, it says we make him a liar, and his word is not in us. So the truth and the word, it's all there. These two statements are inconsistent with who God is and his character.

OK, so now we get to the $64 question. OK, if we confess our sins, Okay, does confessing our sins have anything to do with our position in Christ? No. Does everybody agree with that? This is only talking about our condition, right? Okay, all right. And this is, we've kind of covered this.

Why do we need forgiveness of sins if we're already saved? And that's repentance. We don't need forgiveness. because we are already saved. But, if we want fellowship, which this is all about fellowship, if we want fellowship, we need to agree with God that we have sinned. That's really what it's about. It's all about fellowship. This is all about fellowship. I tried to find parallel verses that are not 1 John 1 John is one of the few places that addresses sin in the Christian life.

And you know what, Roger, so interesting. You can say, and I think people do, well, I don't need to do this because, you know, the fellowship, you know, that's not that important. Well, but what happens is the Holy Spirit will convict you and pursue you finally until you realize you miss the fellowship.

You need the fellowship. You do. And there's fellowships on two levels. Fellowship with the Father and fellowship among us. But it's interesting that he talks about he wants to have fellowship with them. It's a discipling thing. I want to have fellowship with Bob. Well, Bob says, Roger, we've got to first make sure we have fellowship with the Father.

Until we solve that issue, forget about it. And that's why he's so relentless in this. He just keeps hammering away. He keeps hammering away at that. Okay, I think I have one. Okay, and this is back to the cleansing thing. See, the cleansing comes up twice in these passages. And what I, you know, it says, two things happen, right?

If we agree with God about our sins, confess our sins, we agree with what God says about our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins, step one, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. And what, you know, and that last part, the cleansing part is a toughie, and Pat kind of has pointed out too, but what I think that is, is that there are sins that we are unaware of. God is so gracious, he takes care of those. So when we come to him and say, Lord, you know, I did X, Y, or Z, he says, you know, fine, wonderful, you know, that's wonderful. I'm so excited that we agree with him. But on top of that, he says, you know, all these things you forgot about, you didn't even realize, those are taken care of too.

So the table, the slate is clean. Now the question is, okay, I want to get these two next slides here. Okay. All right. So let's just do this quickly and then we're going to have to call it quits here. Okay. So I want to, these are two similar charts here. This is the next one. Basically the root of the problem.

So he's, what has Christ done in our position? He died unto sin, unto the sin nature. So he took care of the sin nature. So positionally our sin nature has been taken care of. Conditionally, our personal sins, he died for our sins, or on behalf of our sins. So he took care, he died unto the sin nature, and he died for our sins. So that's our position in Christ. So now let's look at our Christian walk. In terms of the root of the problem, this is what This is a conditional thing. So what are we to do in terms of our sin nature? Do we just throw our hands up and say, boy, I got that Adam nature. It's whipped me. I don't have a chance.

No. It says we're to consider or reckon, even so consider yourselves to be dead to sin, but alive to God. That's what we're to do. And this is your answer, Pat, I think. This is what we're to do in terms of how we've lived the Christian life. We don't focus on the sins, we focus on the fact that we have been separated from those sins. We've died or separated.

And I have another kind of ancillary verse, knowing that this our old self was crucified with Christ and so on. And okay, what about the fruit? That takes care of the nature. What about the fruit? And this is the keystone verse for the fruit. We have the keystone verse for the nature and the keystone verse for the fruit. We have two verses that control, not control us, but that we're to remember as we walk the Christian life, the nature and the fruit. But what's wonderful is if we're on our toes, I'm making this a little bit, if we reckon first, we'll never get to the fruit. And I believe that is the most freeing thing. And that's what, that's what, that's what, boy, In other words, you're saying if we reckon this, we will never go there.

You never have to go there because you're already understanding that the Lord has done the work. And you guys, most of you are with Hal. How many times Hal would say, he would say, basically, he would tell me personally, he'd tell all of us, he'd say, you know, I'm dead to that.

I don't have to go there like I'm driving my car and some crazy person Just some nutso things. Sometimes I will actually say that. You know, I don't have to respond to that. I could, but I don't have to. And I just drive on. Other times, it's all over with.

And I go there, and what do I have to do? I have to use blood first? I have to confess my sin? The Lord wants us to be here. And I think that's the most freeing freeing verse in scripture. We count ourselves that we're free from that. I don't have to go there anymore. I know that I can go there. It's so easy to go there. But many times we don't, you know, I'm the same way. I don't do that. And then the last, the last of them are just kind of house charts on the top ten things about sin. Look over them.

They're really wonderful. They're just really great. So thanks guys, this is one hour we have to do this. Hopefully we made a little chip away at some of the questions. I hope we've done something like that. We're very close. Dear Father, thank you so much, Lord. We thank you for this day. Lord, we thank you for the blessings we have. Father, thank you for our Savior and all that he's done, Lord. Thank you that we can count ourselves dead, we can be separated from that sin nature, and we can walk in the light as he is in the light. May I sit in Christ's name, Amen.