1 John chapter 1 and verse 1. That which was from the beginning,
which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which
we have looked upon, and our hands have handled of the word
of life. For the life was manifested,
and we have seen it, and bear witness, and show unto you that
eternal life, which was with the Father, and was manifested
unto us. that which we have seen and heard
declare we unto you, that ye also may have fellowship with
us, and truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with
his Son, Jesus Christ. And these things write we unto
you, that your joy may be full. This then is the message which
we have heard of him, and declare unto you, that God is light,
and in him is no darkness at all. If we say that we have fellowship
with him and walk in darkness, we lie and do not the truth. But if we walk in the light as
he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another. And the blood
of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin. If we say that
we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If
we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins
and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned,
we make Him a liar and His word is not in us. The Lord Jesus Christ and the
Word of God in its breadth provides the church with grounds and reason
for joy and peace and hope in this life. The Word of God provides
justification for us to have peace and joy in this Christian
walk, consolation in our pilgrim journey. But often, individual believers
experience doubts, trials, difficulties, And these can disturb our joy
and our peace and even our hope in the Lord Jesus Christ. These can generate questions,
sometimes questions that we never imagined that we would ask ourselves. Questions that cause us to worry
about our Christian experience and our Christian walk. Questions
that might even cause us to wonder if we are believers at all. Questions like, how do I know
that I'm not just kidding myself? about heaven and about salvation. How do I know that all of this
is real? Questions like, if I were truly
saved and born again, would I feel the way that I do? Questions like, If I were one
of the Lord's people, if I was one of Christ's sheep, would
I do the things that I do? Now that's one level of doubt, but
there are even levels of disturbance and disruption that believers
feel in their hearts. Because another whole area of
concern to us is because we are tempted by the devil who delights
to intrude upon our spiritual peace and to cause havoc in our
spiritual relationship with God. This is what Paul speaks about
when he tells the Ephesians about wrestling not against flesh and
blood. These are spiritual battles.
This isn't a physical battle with another person. although
it might have a manifestation in that way. But these are spiritual
battles, but they are nevertheless real, and Christians, and Christians
alone feel those spiritual battles. It's Christians alone who wrestle
against these spiritual opponents. And to fight a spiritual battle,
we need spiritual help. And yet so very often it's at
the times of that fight, that battle, that we most feel our
spiritual weakness. The scriptures and the gospel
are the only way that we can have and find that spiritual
help that we need. Some people tell us that the
gospel is for unbelievers. Well, I wholeheartedly disagree. The gospel is for sinners. And the greatest usefulness of
the gospel is for sinners who are saved by grace. The greatest
usefulness of the gospel is for the church. What unbelievers need is the
law to be brought against them. What believers need is for the
gospel to be brought, to nourish and help, to sustain and uplift,
to bring comfort to their souls and consolation in the time of
need. Believers need the gospel because
it is the word of the Lord Jesus Christ to our souls. It is the
words of Peter and Paul and James and John and Matthew and Luke
and Mark. It is these messages of spiritual,
scriptural help that are brought to us in the preaching of the
Lord Jesus Christ, that teach us and strengthen us with truth
at a spiritual level, which, as Paul says to Timothy, is able
to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ
Jesus. Oh, to be wise unto salvation. It is the gospel that makes us
wise unto salvation. And don't please think about
salvation there as being conversion. Because our salvation is a continuing,
ongoing experience of the grace of God in our hearts. And it is those who have these
concerns, these challenges, these doubts about assurance that need
to find that wisdom unto salvation which comes to us through the
preaching of the gospel by faith. So says Paul, the gospel is able,
the scriptures are able to make us wise unto salvation through
faith which is in Christ Jesus. But it's to John that we're going
to turn today. It's to the beloved disciple. And we're going to turn to him
for help with these questions. We have seen something of the
emphasis that John has placed upon the fact of the Lord Jesus
Christ's coming into the world. And we have seen how he explained
that faith enables us to believe these things about Christ's coming,
about the incarnation, about God becoming man. And we read about that in the
opening verses of John chapter 1. The Lord Jesus Christ came
into the world. And yet, while we have not personally
or individually seen the Lord Jesus Christ in his physical
form or heard the gospel preached by the Lord Jesus Christ from
his own lips, yet we are not left without evidence. Because
John and the other apostles saw these things and heard these
things and write these things. to us as a personal testimony
that through faith, remember what Paul said to Timothy, make
thee wise unto salvation through faith, which is in Christ Jesus. So that through faith, our joy
might be like John's joy. Our fellowship might be like
his fellowship. Our experience of the Lord Jesus
Christ might, through faith, be like his experience of the
Lord Jesus Christ. And like John, we might have
that joy in the Lord, that confidence, that peace, that hope, that assurance,
and that that joy may be full. God became man. and a man is
God. The eternal Son became like us
so that we might be made like Him. The Lord Jesus Christ joined
Himself to our flesh and united Himself to us that we might be
united with Him. And how is that effected? How
is that achieved? Through faith. Now it's important that we understand
this. It's important that we do not
miss this. Salvation, the salvation of a
soul is so transcendently amazing that it is unbelievable. It is
unbelievable. ordinarily, normally. If it is
just left to man, if it is just left to the human heart, if it
is just left to our carnal reasoning, if it is just left to our own
will, we never would, we never could believe the gospel. We
never could believe that God became man and died in our stead
and brings us thereby to salvation. It takes something else. It takes faith. The gospel and salvation is so
wonderful that faith is essential to believe it. We cannot know
Christ, we cannot know salvation except by faith, and faith is
the crux of the matter. It is faith that enables us to
experience the benefit of spiritual fellowship with God. It is faith
that gets those blessings and brings us into the knowledge
and experience of them. Do you remember? Peter's words to the Lord Jesus
Christ, the Lord was asking his disciples, whom do men say that
I am? And then he turned that around and he said, who do you
say that I am? You see, the Lord is always ready
to make these questions personal and we ought to take them personally. Who do you say that I am? And Peter's reply was, Thou art
the Christ, the Son of the living God. Peter was looking at a man.
Peter was looking at a man. A man whose family he knew, whose
home he knew, whose place in the world he felt that he knew. But he says of him, Thou art
the Christ, Thou art the anointed of God, Thou art the promised
Messiah, Thou art the Son of the living God. Peter, how did
you know that? Matthew chapter 16 and verse
17, we discover how Peter knew that. Jesus answered and said
unto him, Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona, for flesh and blood
hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven. You see what I'm saying here
is that that was a spiritual revelation. This had come from
faith to faith. The faith of the Lord Jesus Christ,
the faith that is divine, had brought that to the experience
of Peter. And Peter had faith, divinely
revealed faith. Romans 1, verse 17 says, Those
who are justified by God will receive from God that faith, that divinely
revealed, spiritually revealed faith by which they are able
to discern and discover. the true identity of the Lord
Jesus Christ and those things which he has accomplished in
our amazing salvation. So here's the first point that
I wanted to draw your attention to today, that this revelation
is a divine revelation and it is a spiritual revelation. Yes, God has created the world,
but he has also created a spiritual understanding that he grants
and bestows to certain individuals. Now this is the force of John's
words in the fifth verse here in 1 John 1, where the apostle
writes, God is light and in him is no darkness at all. What John is saying here is that
God is light or God is spirit because that's the same idea
that is being expressed. He is spiritual and therefore
he is like light. He is light-like. Now, light
is amazing. Light, the light that is around
about us in this world is amazing. Science struggles to explain
light. It has taxed the greatest minds
since the beginning of time. And even today, with all of our
technology and all of our research, we are still discovering things
about light and optics and its properties. And we measure everything
in our universe by light. We can't even describe it properly. And that is therefore a suitable
metaphor and a striking metaphor for the spirit of God, the nature
of God, because God is only and can only be revealed to us in
the way of explanation by words of things that exist. So when
the Lord Jesus Christ said, let there be light, It wasn't that
he was self-creating, but he was beginning to reveal himself
to man. He was beginning to communicate
his attributes, his nature, his person to mankind. I'm absolutely
sure that's why light was created before the sun was created. I'm
sure that that's why light was created on day one and the sun
wasn't created until day four. Because while pretty much all
of the light that we have in this world today comes from the
sun, The Lord Jesus Christ was showing
to us here that there is a glory which is beyond the sun. There
is a light, there is a spirituality which is beyond even that light
which the sun gives. And the Lord Jesus Christ himself
is the light of the world. I am the light of the world. So John is telling us here that
God is a spirit. And he is going on to tell us
that they who fellowship with him must be spiritual. So here's the second point. Not
only is God spiritual, but he is holy. There is no darkness
in God. There is no ignorance in God. There is no error in God. There is no mistaking in God. Our God in his triune persons
is infinite, eternal, unchangeable, and pure. He dwells in the brightness
of his own glory. He is true and righteous and
holy. But, says John, we cannot fellowship
with God If we are not holy, we cannot fellowship with God
if we walk in darkness. God is light and there's no darkness
in Him, but we cannot fellowship with God if we walk in darkness.
If we are sinful, if we are unholy, there's no grounds, there is
no basis for fellowshiping with God. He who is of purer eyes
than to behold iniquity will not, cannot tolerate or excuse
wickedness. And it would seem therefore that
sinful creatures that we are, fallen men and women that we
are, steeped in sin as we are, bound up by this flesh, wrapped
up in darkness and ignorance and blindness to spiritual matters
and spiritual truth, we can have no hope. of fellowshipping with
God. Indeed, all we can expect is
judgment from God and wrath from God. We are those haters of God
that we read about earlier in Psalm 81. But here's the thing. The Lord
Jesus Christ told John and remember what we have before us here in
these verses is John telling us what he has seen and heard
from the lips of the Lord Jesus Christ. The Lord Jesus Christ
personally told John and John is personally telling you and
personally telling me today. that the hour cometh, and now
is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit
and in truth. So while we feel our sin, while
we feel our carnality, while we feel our inability and our
inadequacy, yet here is the Lord Jesus Christ himself saying that
the time is now when worshipers will worship in spirit and in
truth. For the Father seeketh such to
worship him. God is a spirit, and they that
worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth. So here's
what we are discovering. To put it bluntly, it is impossible
for man ever to fellowship with God, except we do so in spirit
and in truth. But yet the Lord Jesus Christ
also said something else. He said that while with men it
is impossible, it is not impossible with God. And this is the gospel
that we have before us. For with God all things are possible. And now John is going to tell
us how it is that we, though fleshy, though fallen, though
walking in darkness, can nevertheless have fellowship with he who is
light and in whom is no darkness. in spirit and in truth, in light
and in holiness, accepted of God and fitted for his presence. How is it that that is possible? Point three, by the cleansing
blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. by the death and shed blood of
the God-man, he whom John is right now testifying to us about. It is the death of the Lord Jesus
Christ, it is by the shedding of his blood that we will know
this spiritual change and our being brought into and under
the truth. It is by the sacrifice of him
who came from God and who came from glory. It is through the
intercession of this one upon whose breast John laid his head,
the God-man. And it is his blood that is the
ground of our acceptance. That is the price of our redemption. That is the means of our pardon
and the atonement that was made. It's the blood of Jesus Christ,
his son, that cleanseth us from all sin. No other payment is
acceptable. No other sacrifice is sufficient. So John now challenges us, we
who are reading these words from his first chapter, his first
opening remarks, as it were, in this epistle that he is writing
to the churches in general. He confronts us with this question. Dare we say that we are without
sin? Then by what means are we without
sin? Our religious ceremonies, no.
Our religious ceremonies will never bring us into the experience
of spiritual reality. Our church membership, no. Our church membership will never
introduce us to God. Our moral obedience, our good
intentions, no. Our own conscience tells us that
we fall far short of even how we would like to live in this
world, far less the perfection of he who is the light and in
whom is no darkness at all. All who claim peace with God
outside of Christ's substitutionary atonement, all who claim peace
with God apart from the shed blood of Jesus Christ are deceiving
themselves and continuing to walk in darkness. And the truth
is not in them, says John. Listen. No child of God ever
discovers salvation outside of Jesus Christ. Rather, that attempt That contentment
to imagine that there is salvation outside of the blood of Jesus
Christ is in itself an evidence of our carnal nature and our
fleshy desires. Salvation is achieved only by
blood and received only by faith. That is the narrow way, the only
way of which we spoke last week. And now John is bringing this
momentous event of the great sacrifice of the God-man, this
once-and-for-all transaction, down to his reader's own experience,
down to your experience and mine. And he says in 1 John 1, verse
9, If we confess our sins, he is
faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us
from all unrighteousness. Now let me say this, confessing
our sins is not running through a list of wrongdoing. The Roman Catholic Church has
honed that exercise to a fine art and it is a fleshy deception. Confessing our sins is not running
through a list or a catalogue of the things that we have done
wrong. It's exactly the opposite of that. It is a spiritual admission
of our sinfulness. It is a confession of our helplessness. It is an acknowledging of our
need before a holy God. And it is seeking mercy at the
hand of God and only upon the merit of Christ's blood. That's
what it is to confess our sin. It is taking God at His word
and believing His testimony. And what a wonderful phrase this
is that is set before us here. It is said by John that if we
confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive. Our God
is faithful to his promise. And let me explain that a little
bit for you if I may. He is faithful to his son. He is faithful to his covenant. He is faithful to his word. He is faithful to his word to
forgive all who confess that they have no hope but the blood
of Jesus Christ. And he is just to accept Christ's
sacrifice. He is just to receive the payment
of Christ's blood. It is just of God because of
the preciousness of that blood, because of the terms of the everlasting
covenant. He is just to receive that blood
and to honour that atonement that has been made on behalf
of the elect. He is just to cancel the debts
of His people. He is just to pardon their sins. And note with me, please, that
this is not God's being faithful to men in the first instance,
but His faithfulness to His own covenant terms, faithfulness
to His own Son, Jesus Christ. and the fulfilment of that covenant
agreement. Christ did that which was required
of the Father in going to the cross, in shedding his blood,
in bearing the sins of his people, in carrying that sin in his own
body in the tree, and being a substitutionary atonement for them, thereby gaining
their pardon. And the father too fulfilled
his part of the agreement, the contract, the covenant, by forgiving
the sins of those for whom Christ died. The forgiveness of our
sin happened when the Lord Jesus Christ's blood was shed and the
debt was paid. But there is in this too a personal
promise. If they come, says the Lord,
confessing their sin, confessing their need, confessing Christ,
seeking mercy upon the ground of Christ's blood and sacrifice,
I will forgive them and apply that blood also to their conscience. purging it from dead works. You see, it's not only that the
blood of the Lord Jesus Christ washed away our sins in the covenant
purposes of God, but there is an application spiritually, of
that blood to our own conscience by which we see the Lord Jesus
Christ as the taker away of our sins and the provider of salvation
for us. How do we see that? We've never
seen the Lord Jesus Christ. We did not see him dying there.
We did not see that blood being shed. We did not see the empty
tomb. We did not see the resurrection
morning. No, but by faith we believe these
things to be so. By faith we trust in the faithfulness
and justice of God because he is faithful and just to forgive
us our sins. What does that mean? It means
that our salvation was accomplished by the death of the Lord Jesus
Christ on the cross. But it also means that the effect
of that salvation is received in the hearts and experience
of all who come to God by Christ throughout all of time, be that
Old Testament believers or New Testament believers. and that
the effects of Christ's death are received by faith. There
were very few of the Lord's people actually saw his death, but whether
it's the Old Testament saints or the New Testament saints,
we by faith see what God has done for us in Christ. We don't
believe the gospel to be forgiven. We believe the gospel because
we are forgiven. Listen, I cannot show you a cleansed
heart, and I can't display to you a redeemed soul, and I can't
exhibit in any way at all, physically or materially, a purged conscience. And yet by faith the Lord's people
believe and enjoy all these blessings, a cleansed heart, a redeemed
soul, a purged conscience. Because God is faithful and just
to accept and to apply the work of Christ for the good of his
people. Let me just finish up by saying
this. If you come to God in prayer, confessing your sin, confessing
your need, your dependence on Christ, your desire for salvation,
He has already forgiven you because He made that promise to Christ. He promised Christ that He would
forgive you if Christ shed His blood for you. and it would be
to deny himself. It would be to make himself a
liar not to do so. If you come to God confessing
your sin, the work of grace is already done. Mercy is already
yours. God's faithfulness is upheld. His justice and his justness
is vindicated. How do I know I'm saved? How
can I tell if I'm one of the Lords? How can I tell if my sins
are forgiven? By coming in faith, we make our
confession by faith. If you know you're a sinner today,
if you know you cannot save yourself right now, If you believe that
outside of the Lord Jesus Christ there is no other saviour, if
you seek forgiveness only upon the merits of Christ's blood,
God is faithful and just to forgive you your sin, to cleanse from
all unrighteousness and has for Christ's sake already done so. And every other alternative makes
God a liar. Amen.