Today I want to begin a series on the book of I John. It is believed by most that John, the disciple whom Jesus loved, was the author of this letter. He wrote this letter before he was exiled to the island of Patmos. Many put the date at around 85-90 A.D., which is real close to the date that John also wrote the gospel of John. John was probably one of the few people left at this point that had seen and touched Christ in the flesh. There are three characteristics about God that John brings home in this letter. God is light. God is love. And God is life. John was writing this letter to the Christian community, it was not written to one particular church. There seemed to be a devisive argument occurring within the Christian community. The problem had reached a point that it seemed like there were some members, including teachers, that had separated themselves from the others and were in the process of establishing their own community. It appeared that many of them kept in touch with those they had separated from trying to entice them to join their new group. So John wrote this to reassure the people in their faith and to combat the false teaching that they were facing. Once again it was a lot of teachings of the Gnostics that John had to combat.
John 1:1-10
One thing that John opens up stressing here is the same thing that he stressed in his gospel. That Christ was eternal. He had always been since the very beginning. That’s why he said, “That which was from the beginning.” The other thing that he stressed was their first hand experience of the Christ. He said, “That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched--this we proclaim concerning the Word of life.” These people may have never seen the Word of life, but John was saying trust me, I’ve seen him and I’ve experienced Him. John said I share these things so that you can have fellowship with us. This whole chapter deals a lot with the word fellowship. Those of you who remember taking “Experiencing God” you remember the Greek word that fellowship is translated from, it’s koinonia. In the classical Greek it’s used as a term to express the most intimate kinds of human relationships. Put into English it can be translated fellowship, communion, participation, and partnership. John wanted these people to understand the truth so that they could have that communion, that partnership in the gospel with him. Isn’t that what the church is. A group of people that have a fellowship, a partnership in the gospel. John writes here in this first chapter about the true fellowship of the church and how you can recognize it.
After John told them that they proclaimed what they had seen and heard so that they could have fellowship with them. In the next sentence in verse 3, he said, “And our fellowship is with the Father and with his son, Jesus Christ.” You see the fellowship that John was a part of was not just a fellowship with a group of men or a group of men and women, it was a fellowship that had the Father and his Son Jesus Christ at the center. You see there are people that come to church every week and they consider themselves a part of the fellowship of the church. Or as some churches call them, they consider themselves members. They have relationships and friendships with a lot of people in the church and they come to the meetings and services regularly and spend time with each other. But the true fellowship of the church is not based on the relationships just between the people. Our fellowship is not with the saints only, our fellowship is with the Father and His Son Jesus Christ. If you take Jesus Christ out of the equation then we aren’t anything more than a social club. James Packer in his book Your Father Loves You said it this way. “Christian fellowship is two-dimensional, and it has to be vertical before it can be horizontal. We must know the reality of fellowship with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ before we can know the reality of fellowship with each other in our common relationship to God. The person who is not in fellowship with the Father and the Son is no Christian at all, and so cannot share with Christians the realities of their fellowship.” You see it’s our relationship with God and his Son that’s at the center of everything we share in the church. It’s our relationship with God and his Son that gives us reason to come and worship and sing of his wonderful mercy and grace that he has shown to us in our lives. If we haven’t experienced the wonderful mercy and grace then how can we come and share our experiences and worship about something which we haven’t truly experienced. When Peter wrote the book of I Peter, he was able to minister to these Christians that had scattered and he was able to have fellowship with them because he could identify with them. They had suffered for their faith and loyalty to Jesus Christ. Peter understood and knew what that was like, he had been through persecutions and tough times for his faith as well. So he was able to encourage them and help them to see that these sufferings would prove their faith genuine, and that it was a part of the refining process that God does in our life. He could have that special partnership/fellowship with them because they shared a common bond through their relationship with Jesus Christ. Paul in the same way encouraged the fellowship of believers about persecution for their faith in Christ. He understood what they were going through. It gave him a unity with them. Paul suffered much for his faith in Christ. But he told the believers in Romans 5:3,4 “…But we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character hope.” Both Paul and Peter also talked about the privilege it was to be able to suffer for Christ, after all Christ had certainly suffered for them all. You see what makes the true fellowship of the church is those who have a common bond and a common experience through their fellowship with the Father and Jesus Christ. Through our common relationship with God the Father and His Son Jesus Christ we have a unifying force that allows us to come together and share our experiences and strengthen one another. That my brothers and sisters is the true fellowship of the church.
Now that we have established that to be apart of the true fellowship of the church you have to have fellowship with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ, John goes on to tell us how we can know if our fellowship is genuine. Our fellowship is not genuine when we live a life of sin. John tells us in verse 6, “If we claim to have fellowship with him yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live by the truth.” Other words we can claim to have fellowship with God the Father and his Son Jesus Christ, but if we are living a continual life of sin, which is what darkness represents, everything that is evil and sinful, it’s not possible for us to be in fellowship with God. We know from the scriptures that God cannot fellowship with sin. We remember that from when Christ took on the sin of the world on the cross and he faced that time of separation from his Father. He couldn’t fellowship with his Father because of our sin. What John was facing here was a group of Gnostics that were trying to claim fellowship with God and that they were walking in the light when the fact was they had thrown off all restraints and were doing all kinds of immoral things. They were claiming themselves as righteous when their lives were showing anything but righteousness. John was saying you can’t say you have fellowship with God and your walking in the light when you are living in sin. If you do you are nothing but a liar.
Speaking of liars the other day I was shocked to learn that Tariq Aziz one of Saddam Hussein’s top men who had been the face of the administration for years was a professed Christian. They said he was the only Christian in Saddam’s regime. Here he was claiming to be apart of the fellowship yet all of these years he has told bold face lie after bold face lie, but yet he claims Christ as his Savior. Now some people would say, “You know he feared for his life he probably felt he didn’t have any other choice.” Of course how many Christians around the world have stood up for the truth even when their life was on the line. Fear shouldn’t change the truth. But now here he is in custody of the allied troops where he would not be persecuted for telling the truth and he doesn’t have to fear Saddam anymore and they said they continue to catch him in lie after lie. How can you claim fellowship and live like that. For John true belief meant you put your faith into action.
Now we may not have the crazy teaching of the Gnostics today, but in the church at large there are people who say that they are in fellowship with God the Father and his Son Jesus Christ yet in their life there is consistent sin. We aren’t talking about a slip up here and there we are talking about a pattern in their life. You need to know that you cannot have fellowship with God and walk in darkness. There are too many people who are dependant upon a time long ago when they said they committed their lives to Christ, yet today they are living opposed to the way that God has called them to live. They believe they have fellowship with God and fellowship with the true church because of that decision, but if they had true fellowship with God they would not continue to live life walking in the darkness. There are also those in the church today that claim to walk in fellowship with God and with the church when they are living a life of secret sin. They do it in the cover of darkness so others won’t know. But the same is true for them. If you are living in the darkness, if you are living a life of sin, you are living a lie to say that you are a part of the true fellowship of the church. If you are in fellowship with God the Father and his Son Jesus Christ you will walk in the light as He is in the light.
In verse 8 John is dealing with another false teaching. He says, “If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.” You see the Gnostics didn’t believe in a sinful nature. They actually thought that they were incapable of sinning. They believed that they had received a superior enlightenment. They believed you were saved by this special mystical knowledge. Your spirit being enlightened is what mattered, it didn’t matter what you did with your body. After all matter was evil, that’s why they believed Christ couldn’t have come in a human body. So they had this enlightened spirit and it didn’t matter what they did in the body they were incapable of sin or having a sinful nature. But we need to remember this: Our fellowship of the church is a fellowship of broken people that knows that they need the grace of God. You see the true fellowship of the church belongs to a people who know that their salvation doesn’t depend upon some superior knowledge that they have, it simply depends upon them trusting upon their Savior and Lord Jesus Christ who took their sins upon himself and died on the cross to pay the price. It doesn’t happen because they are some superior class of people, their salvation comes through their own brokenness and realization that they can’t make it without their Lord and Redeemer. They know their human condition, they know that they were born with a sinful nature. They know that through being sanctified by the spirit they can live in victory over sin, but they never become so confident and cocky that they think they are incapable of sinning. They always have to rely upon the guidance and the strength supplied to them through the Holy Spirit. You see if anyone gets to the point that they think they are incapable of sinning, my friend you have come to a dangerous point and you are asking for a mighty fall. But the church is a fellowship of broken people that can relate to another and fellowship freely because they all depend upon Christ for their salvation and they all realize that they need the help of one another. You see, by a broken people, I don’t mean that they are crippled. What I mean by broken is that they are humbled because of their realization of their need for God. They have had to go through some experiences in life that broke their will to help them see that they can’t do it on their own. But it’s only when you become broken that you can become usable in the kingdom of God. When you have a fellowship of humbled people it’s easy to serve one another and love and care for one another. It’s when pride enters in that the fellowship doesn’t operate in the way that it should. Earl Palmer said this in Mastering the New Testament, Volume 12, “We have discovered the brokenness of each other and because of the broken healer we are drawn together into the fellowship of grace.” That’s what the fellowship is all about, a group who understands that without God’s grace they are sunk, and that grace draws them together to praise the Lord and serve Him and one another.
John also gave them the solution to become a part of the true fellowship. He told them in verse 9, “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.” That was true for them back then and it’s true for us today. If you want to be more than someone who just comes to the worship services, if you want to be a part of the true fellowship of the church you have to have fellowship with the Father and His Son Jesus Christ. The way that you do that is simple. You confess your sins and repent. If you do that with a sincere heart he will forgive you of your sins and you will experience the grace of God and you will know what it’s like to be a part of the fellowship of the broken. That’s another thing about the fellowship of the broken, they never close their doors to new members. That’s why John said to them, “We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us.” John went on to say “We write this to make our joy complete.” You see John wanted to add more and more on to the fellowship. It made their joy complete to be able to share and add more to the fellowship. Won’t you make our joy complete today and come be a part of the true fellowship of the church.
