1 John 1

As you read John’s letter, you will discover that he enjoyed using certain words and that the word manifest is one of them. “And the life was manifested” (1 John 1:2), he said. This life was not hidden so that we have to search for it and find it. No, it was manifested— revealed openly!

If you were God, how would you go about revealing yourself to men? How could you tell them about, and give them, the kind of life you wanted them to enjoy?

God has revealed Himself in creation (Rom. 1:20), but creation alone could never tell us the story of God’s love. God has also revealed Himself much more fully in His Word, the Bible. But God’s final and most complete revelation is in His Son, Jesus Christ. Jesus said, “He that hath seen me hath seen the Father” (John 14:9).

Because Jesus is God’s revelation of Himself, He has a very special name: “The Word of life” (1 John 1:1).

This same title opens John’s gospel: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God” (John 1:1).

Why does Jesus Christ have this name? Because Christ is to us what our words are to others. Our words reveal to others just what we think and how we feel. Christ reveals to us the mind and heart of God. He is the living means of communication between God and men. To know Jesus Christ is to know God!

John made no mistake in his identification of Jesus Christ. Jesus is the Son of the Father—the Son of God (1 John 1:3). John warned us several times in his letter not to listen to the false teachers who tell lies about Jesus Christ. “Who is a liar but he that denieth that Jesus is the Christ?” (1 John 2:22). “Every spirit that confessed that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God; and every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God” (1 John 4:2–3). If a man is wrong about Jesus Christ, he is wrong about God, because Jesus Christ is the final and complete revelation of God to men.

For example, there are those who tell us that Jesus was a man but was not God. John had no place for such teachers! One of the last things he wrote in this letter is “We are in him that is true, even in his Son Jesus Christ This is the true God, and eternal life” (1 John 5:20).

False teaching is so serious a matter that John wrote about it in his second letter too, warning believers not to invite false teachers into their homes (2 John 9–10). And he made it plain that to deny that Jesus is God is to follow the lies of Antichrist (1 John 2:22–23).

This leads to a basic Bible doctrine that has puzzled many people—the doctrine of the Trinity.

John mentioned in his letter the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. For example, he said, “By this know ye the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God” (1 John 4:2, Scofield). Here are references in one verse to God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. And in 1 John 4:13–15 is another statement that mentions the three Persons of the Trinity.

The word trinity is a combination of tri-, meaning “three,” and unity, meaning “one.” A “trinity,” then, is a three-in-one, or one-in-three. To be sure, the word trinity is not found in the Bible, but the truth is taught there (cf. also Matt. 28:19–20; John 14:16–17, 26; 2 Cor. 13:14; Eph. 4:4–6).

Christians do not believe that there are three gods. They believe that one God exists in three Persons— Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Nor do Christians believe merely that one God reveals Himself in three different ways, much as one man may be a husband, a father, and a son. No, the Bible teaches that God is one but that He exists in three Persons.

One teacher of doctrine used to say, “Try to explain the Trinity and you may lose your mind. But try to explain it away and you will lose your soul!” And the apostle John says, “Whoever denies the Son does not have the Father” (1 John 2: nasb). No Person of the Trinity is expendable!

As you read the gospel records of the life of Jesus, you see the wonderful kind of life God wants us to enjoy. But it is not by imitating Jesus, our Example, that we may share in this life. No, there is a far better way.

Once upon a time.…” Remember how exciting those words used to be? They were the open door into an exciting world of make-believe, a dreamworld that helped you forget all the problems of childhood.

Then—pow! You turned a corner one day, and “Once upon a time” became kid stuff. You discovered that life is a battleground, not a playground, and fairy stories were no longer meaningful. You wanted something real.

The search for something real is not new. It has been going on since the beginning of history. Men have looked for reality and satisfaction in wealth, thrills, conquest, power, learning, and even in religion.

There is nothing really wrong with these experiences, except that by themselves they never really satisfy. Wanting something real and finding something real are two different things. Like a child eating cotton candy at the circus, many people who expect to bite into something real end up with a mouthful of nothing. They waste priceless years on empty substitutes for reality.

This is where the apostle John’s first epistle comes in. Written centuries ago, this letter deals with a theme that is forever up-to-date: the life that is real.

John had discovered that satisfying reality is not to be found in things or thrills, but in a Person—Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Without wasting any time, he told us about this “living reality” in the first paragraph of his letter.

As you read 1 John 1:1–4, you learn three vital facts about the life that is real.

Read the first four verses of John’s letter again, and you will notice that the apostle had a personal encounter with Jesus Christ. His was no secondhand “religious experience” inherited from somebody else or discovered in a book! No, John knew Jesus Christ face-to-face. He and the other apostles heard Jesus speak. They watched Him as He lived with them. In fact, they studied Him carefully, and even touched His body. They knew that Jesus was real—not a phantom, not a vision, but God in human corporeal form.

Some twenty-first-century student may say, “Yes, and this means that John had an advantage. He lived when Jesus walked on earth. He knew Jesus personally. But I was born twenty centuries too late!”

But this is where our student is wrong! It was not the apostles’ physical nearness to Jesus Christ that made them what they were. It was their spiritual nearness. They had committed themselves to Him as their Savior and their Lord. Jesus Christ was real and exciting to John and his colleagues because they had trusted Him. By trusting Christ, they had experienced eternal life!

Six times in this letter John used the phrase “born of God.” This was not an idea John had invented; he had heard Jesus use these words. “Except a man be born again,” Jesus had said, “he cannot see the kingdom of God.… That which is born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Marvel not that I said unto thee, Ye must be born again” (John 3:3, 6–7). We can experience this “real life” only after we have believed the gospel, put our trust in Christ, and been “born of God.”

“Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born of God” (1 John 5:1). Eternal life is not something we earn by good works or deserve because of good character. Eternal life, the life that is real, is a gift from God to those who trust His Son as their Savior.

John wrote his gospel to tell people how to receive this wonderful life (John 20:31). He wrote his first letter to tell people how to be sure they have really been born of God (1 John 5:9–13).

A college student returned to the campus after going home for a family funeral, and almost at once his grades began to go down. His counselor thought that the death of his grandmother had affected the boy and that time would heal the wound, but the grades only became worse. Finally the boy confessed the real problem. While he was home, he happened to look into his grandmother’s old Bible, and there he discovered in the family record that he was an adopted son.

“I don’t know who I belong to,” he told his counselor. “I don’t know where I came from!”

The assurance that we are in God’s family—that we have been “born of God”—is vitally important to all of us. Certain characteristics are true of all God’s children. A person who is born of God lives a righteous life (1 John 2:29). A child of God does not practice sin (which is the meaning of the King James word commit, 1 John 3:9). A believer will occasionally commit sin (cf. 1 John 1:8—2:2), but he will not make it a habit to sin.

God’s children also love each other and their heavenly Father (cf. 1 John 4:7; 5:1). They have no love for the world system around them (1 John 2:15–17), and because of this the world hates them (1 John 3:13). Instead of being overcome by the pressures of this world and swept off balance, the children of God overcome the world (1 John 5:4). This is another mark of true children of God.

Why is it so important that we know that we have been born of God? John gives us the answer: if you are not a child of God, you a “child of wrath” (Eph. 2:1–3) and may become a “child of the devil” (1 John 3:10; and see Matt: 13:24–30, 36–43). A “child of the devil” is a counterfeit Christian who acts “saved” but has not been born again. Jesus called the Pharisees “children of the devil” (John 8:44) and they were very religious.

A counterfeit Christian—and they are common— is something like a counterfeit ten-dollar bill.

Suppose you have a counterfeit bill and actually think it is genuine. You use it to pay for a tank of gas. The gas station manager uses the bill to buy supplies. The supplier uses the bill to pay the grocer. The grocer bundles the bill up with forty-nine other ten-dollar bills and takes it to the bank. And the teller says, “I’m sorry, but this bill is a counterfeit.”

That ten-dollar bill may have done a lot of good while it was in circulation, but when it arrived at the bank it was exposed for what it really was and put out of circulation.

So with a counterfeit Christian. He may do many good things in this life, but when he faces the final judgment he will be rejected. “Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name? And in thy name have cast out demons? And in thy name done many wonderful works? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you; depart from me, ye that work iniquity” (Matt. 7:22–23 srb).

Each of us must ask himself honestly, “Am I a true child of God or am I a counterfeit Christian? Have I truly been born of God?”

If you have not experienced eternal life, this real life, you can experience it right now! Read 1 John 5:9–15 carefully. God has “gone on record” in His Word. He offers you the gift of eternal life. Believe His promise and ask Him for His gift. “For whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall be saved” (Rom. 10:13).

We have discovered two important facts about “the life that is real”: it is revealed in Jesus Christ, and it is experienced when we put our trust in Him as our Savior. But John did not stop here!

“That which we have seen and heard declare we unto you” (1 John 1:3). And once you have experienced this exciting life that is real, you will want to share it with other people, just as John wanted to “declare” it to all his readers in the first century.

A pastor had a phone call from an angry woman. “I have received a piece of religious literature from your church,” she shouted, “and I resent your using the mails to upset people!”

“What was so upsetting about a piece of mail from a church?” the pastor asked calmly.

“You have no right to try to change my religion!” the woman stormed. “You have your religion and I have mine, and I’m not trying to change yours!” (She really was, but the pastor didn’t argue with her.)

“Changing your religion, or anybody else’s religion, is not our purpose,” the pastor explained. “But we have experienced a wonderful new life through faith in Christ, and we want to do all we can to share it with others.”

Many people (including some Christians) have the idea that “witnessing” means wrangling over the differences in religious beliefs or sitting down and comparing churches.

That isn’t what John had in mind! He told us that witnessing means sharing our spiritual experiences with others—both by the lives that we live and by the words that we speak.

John wrote this letter to share Christ with us. As you read it, you will discover that John had in mind five purposes for sharing.

That we may have fellowship (v. 3). This word fellowship is an important one in the vocabulary of a Christian. It simply means “to have in common.” As sinners, men have nothing in common with the holy God. But God in His grace sent Christ to have something in common with men. Christ took on Himself a human body and became a man. Then He went to the cross and took on that body the sins of the world (1 Peter 2:24). Because He paid the price for our sins, the way is open for God to forgive us and take us into His family. When we trust Christ, we become “partakers of the divine nature” (2 Peter 1:4). The term translated “partakers” in Peter’s epistle is from the same Greek root that is translated “fellowship” in 1 John 1:3.

What a thrilling miracle! Jesus Christ took on Himself the nature of man that by faith we may receive the very nature of God! A famous British writer was leaving Liverpool by ship. He noticed that the other passengers were waving to friends on the dock. He rushed down to the dock and stopped a little boy. “Would you wave to me if I paid you?” he asked the lad, and of course the boy agreed. The writer rushed back on board and leaned over the rail, glad for someone to wave to. And sure enough, there was the boy waving back to him!

A foolish story? Perhaps—but it reminds us that man hates loneliness. All of us want to be wanted. The life that is real helps to solve the basic problem of loneliness, for Christians have genuine fellowship with God and with one another. Jesus promised, “Lo, I am with you always” (Matt. 28:20). In his letter, John explained the secret of fellowship with God and with other Christians. This is the first purpose John mentioned for the writing of his letter— the sharing of his experience of eternal life.

That we may have joy (v. 4). Fellowship is Christ’s answer to the loneliness of life. Joy is His answer to the emptiness, the hollowness, of life.

John, in his epistle, used the word joy only once, but the idea of joy runs through the entire letter. Joy is not something that we manufacture for ourselves; joy is a wonderful by-product of our fellowship with God. David knew the joy that John mentioned; he said, “In thy presence is fullness of joy” (Ps. 16:11).

Basically, sin is the cause of the unhappiness that overwhelms our world today. Sin promises joy, but it always produces sorrow. The pleasures of sin are temporary—they are only for a season (Heb. 11:25). God’s pleasures last eternally—they are forevermore (Ps. 16:11).

The life that is real produces a joy that is real—not some limp substitute. Jesus said, the night before He was crucified, “Your joy no man taketh from you” (John 16:22). “These things have I spoken unto you, that my joy might remain in you, and that your joy might be full” (John 15:11).

Karl Marx wrote, “The first requisite for the people’s happiness is the abolition of religion.” But the apostle John wrote, in effect, “Faith in Jesus Christ gives you a joy that can never be duplicated by the world. I have experienced this joy myself, and I want to share it with you.”

That we may not sin (2:1). John faced the problem of sin squarely (cf. 1 John 3:4–9, for example) and announced the only answer to this enigma—the person and work of Jesus Christ. Christ not only died for us to carry the penalty of our sins, but rose from the dead in order to intercede for us at the throne of God: “If any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous” (1 John 2:1).

Christ is our Representative. He defends us at the Father’s throne. Satan may stand there as the accuser of the brethren (Zech. 3; Rev. 12:10), but Christ stands there as our Advocate—He pleads on our behalf! Continuing forgiveness, in response to His intercession, is God’s answer to our sinfulness.

“I would like to become a Christian,” an interested woman said to a visiting pastor, “but I’m afraid I can’t hold out. I’m sure to sin again!”

Turning to 1 John 1, the pastor said, “No doubt you will sin again, because God says, ‘If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us’ (1 John 1:8). But if you do sin, God will forgive you if you will confess your sin to Him. But it isn’t necessary for Christians to sin. As we walk in fellowship with God and in obedience to His Word, He gives us ability to resist and to have victory over temptation.”

Then the pastor remembered that the woman had gone through surgery some months before.

“When you had your surgery,” he asked, “was there a possibility of complications or problems afterward?”

“Oh, yes,” she replied. “But whenever I had a problem, I went to see the doctor and he took care of it.”

Then the truth hit her! “I see it!” she exclaimed. “Christ is always available to keep me out of sin or to forgive my sin!”

The life that is real is a life of victory. In this letter, John told us how to draw on our divine resources to experience victory over temptation and sin.

That we may not be deceived (2:26). As never before, Christians today need ability to distinguish between right and wrong, between truth and error. The notion is widespread in our generation that there are no “absolutes”—that nothing is always wrong and that nothing is always right. False doctrines, therefore, are more prevalent than at any time in history—and most men and women seem to be willing to accept almost any teaching except the truths of the Bible.

In John’s epistles is a word that no other New Testament writer uses—antichrist (1 John 2:18, 22; 4:3; 2 John 7). That prefix antihas two meanings: “against” and “instead of.” There are in this world teachers of lies who are opposed to Christ, and their method of “seducing” people is to use lies. They offer a substitute Christ, a substitute salvation, and a substitute Bible. They want to give you something instead of the real Word of God and real eternal life.

Christ is the Truth (John 14:6), but Satan is the liar (John 8:44). The devil leads people astray—not necessarily with gross sensual sins, but with half-truths and outright lies. He began his career by seducing man in the garden of Eden. He asked Eve, “Yea, hath God said?” Even then, he did not appear to her in his true nature, but masqueraded as a beautiful creature (cf. 2 Cor. 11:13–15).

Satan today often spreads his lies even through religious groups! Not every man standing in a pulpit is preaching the truth of the Word of God. False preachers and false religious teachers have always been among the devil’s favorite and most effective tools.

How can Christians today detect Satan’s lies? How can they identify false teachers? How can they grow in their own knowledge of the truth so that they will not be victims of false doctrines?

John answered these questions. The life that is real is characterized by discernment.

The Holy Spirit, referred to by John as “the anointing … ye have received of Him” (1 John 2:27), is Christ’s answer to our need for discernment. The Spirit is our Teacher; it is He who enables us to detect truth and error and to remain (“abide”) in Christ. He is our protection against ignorance, deception, and untruth.

The discernment of false doctrines and of false teachers will come to our attention again.

That we may know we are saved (5:13). We have already touched on this truth, but it is so important that it bears repeating. The life that is real is not built on the empty hopes—or wishes—based on human supposings. It is built on assurance. In fact, as you read John’s letter you encounter the word know more than thirty times. No Christian, if he is asked whether or not he is going to heaven, needs to say “I hope so” or “I think so.” He need have no doubt whatever.

The life that is real is such a free and exciting life because it is based on knowledge of solid facts. “Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free,” promised Jesus (John 8:32). “We have not followed cunningly devised fables” (2 Peter 1:16) was the testimony of Jesus’ disciples. These men, almost all of whom died for their faith, did not give their lives for a clever hoax of their own devising, as some critics of Christianity fatuously assert. They knew what they had seen!

Years ago a traveling entertainer billed himself as “The Human Fly.” He would climb up the sides of buildings or monuments without the aid of ropes or the protection of nets. Usually the whole neighborhood would turn out to watch him.

During one performance, the Human Fly came to a point on the wall of the building and paused as though he didn’t know what to do next. Then he reached with his right arm to take hold of a piece of mortar to lift himself higher. But instead of moving higher, he fell back with a scream and was killed on the pavement below.

When the police opened his right hand, it did not contain a piece of mortar. It contained a handful of dirty cobwebs! The Fly had tried to climb on cobwebs, and it just didn’t work.

Jesus warned against such false assurance in the passage that we have already quoted. Many who profess to be Christians will be rejected in the day of God’s judgment.

John was saying in his letter, “I want you to be sure that you have eternal life.”

As you read this fascinating letter, you will discover that John frequently repeated himself. He wove three themes in and out of these chapters: obedience, love, and truth. In 1 John 1 and 2, the apostle emphasized fellowship, and he told us that the conditions for fellowship are obedience (1 John 1:5–2:6), love (1 John 2:7–17), and truth (1 John 2:18–29).

In the latter half of his letter, John dealt primarily with sonship—our being “born of God.” How can a person really know he is a child of God? Well, said John, sonship is revealed by obedience (1 John 3), love (1 John 4), and truth (1 John 5).

Obedience—love—truth. Why did John use these particular tests of fellowship and sonship? For a very practical reason.

When God made us, He made us in His own image (Gen. 1:26–27). This means that we have a personality patterned after God’s. We have a mind to think with, a heart to feel with, and a will with which to make decisions. We sometimes refer to these aspects of our personality as intellect, emotion, and will.

The life that is real must involve all the elements of the personality.

Most people are dissatisfied today because their total personality has never been controlled by something real and meaningful. When a person is born of God through faith in Christ, God’s Spirit comes into his life to live there forever. As he has fellowship with God in reading and studying the Bible and in prayer, the Holy Spirit is able to control his mind, heart, and will. And what happens then?

A Spirit-controlled mind knows and understands truth.

A Spirit-controlled heart feels love.

A Spirit-controlled will inclines us to obedience.

John wanted to impress this fact on us, and that is why he used a series of contrasts in his letter: truth vs. lies, love vs. hatred, and obedience vs. disobedience.

There is no middle ground in the life that is real. We must be on one side or on the other.

This, then, is the life that is real. It was revealed in Christ; it was experienced by those who trusted in Christ; and it can be shared today.

This life begins with sonship and continues in fellowship. First we are born of God; then we walk (live) with God.

This means that there are two kinds of people who cannot enter into the joy and victory about which we are thinking: those who have never been born of God and those who, though saved, are out of fellowship with God.

It would be a wise thing for us to take inventory spiritually (cf. 2 Cor. 13:5) to see whether or not we qualify to enjoy the spiritual experience with which John’s letter deals.

We have already emphasized the importance of being born of God, but if you have any doubts or questions, a review of Fact 2 might be beneficial.

If a true believer is out of fellowship with God, it is usually for one of three reasons:

1. He has disobeyed God’s will.

2. He is not getting along with fellow believers.

3. He believes a lie and therefore is living a lie.

Even a Christian can be mistaken in his understanding of truth. That’s why John warned us, “Little children, let no man deceive you” (1 John 3:7).

These three reasons parallel John’s three important themes: obedience, love, and truth. Once a believer discovers why he is out of fellowship with God, he should confess that sin (or those sins) to the Lord and claim His full forgiveness (1 John 1:9—2:2). A believer can never have joyful fellowship with the Lord if sin stands between them.

God’s invitation to us today is “Come and enjoy fellowship with Me and with each other! Come and share the life that is real!”

Every form of life has its enemies. Insects have to watch out for hungry birds, and birds must keep an eye on hungry cats and dogs. Even human beings have to dodge automobiles and fight off germs.

The life that is real also has an enemy, and we read about it in this section. This enemy is sin. Nine times in these verses John mentioned sin, so the subject is obviously not unimportant. John illustrated his theme by using the contrast between light and darkness: God is light; sin is darkness.

But there is another contrast here too—the contrast between saying and doing. Four times John wrote, “If we say” or “He that saith” (1 John 1:6, 8, 10; 2:4). It is clear that our Christian life is to amount to more than mere “talk”; we must also “walk,” or live, what we believe. If we are in fellowship with God (if we are “walking in the light”), our lives will back up what our lips are saying. But if we are living in sin (“walking in darkness”), then our lives will contradict what our lips are saying, making us hypocrites.

The New Testament calls the Christian life a “walk.” This walk begins with a step of faith when we trust Christ as our Savior. But salvation is not the end—it’s only the beginning—of spiritual life. “Walking” involves progress, and Christians are supposed to advance in the spiritual life. Just as a child must learn to walk and must overcome many difficulties in doing so, a Christian must learn to “walk in the light.” And the fundamental difficulty involved here is this matter of sin.

Of course, sin is not simply outward disobedience; sin is also inner rebellion or desire. For example, we are warned about the desires of the flesh and of the eyes and about the pride of life (1 John 2:16), all of which are sinful. Sin is also transgression of the law (1 John 3:4), or literally, “lawlessness.” Sin is refusal to submit to the law of God. Lawlessness, or independence of the law, is the very essence of sin. If a believer decides to live an independent life, how can he possibly walk in fellowship with God? “Can two walk together except they be agreed?” (Amos 3:3).

Neither in the Old Testament nor in the New does the Bible whitewash the sins of the saints. In escaping a famine, Abraham became weak in his faith and went down to Egypt and lied to Pharaoh (Gen. 12). Later, the patriarch tried to “help God” by marrying Hagar and begetting a son (Gen. 16). In both cases, God forgave Abraham his sin, but Abraham had to reap what he had sowed. God can and will cleanse the record, but He does not change the results. No one can unscramble an egg.

Peter denied the Lord three times and tried to kill a man in the garden when Jesus was arrested. Satan is a liar and a murderer (John 8:44), and Peter was playing right into his hands! Christ forgave Peter (see John 21), of course, but what Peter had done hurt his testimony greatly and hindered the Lord’s work.

The fact that Christians sin bothers some people— especially new Christians. They forget that their receiving the new nature does not eliminate the old nature they were born with. The old nature (which has its origin in our physical birth) fights against the new nature, which we receive when we are born again (Gal. 5:16–26). No amount of self-discipline, no set of man-made rules and regulations, can control this old nature. Only the Holy Spirit of God can enable us to “put to death” the old nature (Rom. 8:12–13) and produce the Spirit’s fruit (Gal. 5:22–23) in us through the new nature.

Sinning saints are not mentioned in the Bible to discourage us, but to warn us.

“Why do you keep preaching to us Christians about sin?” an angry church member said to her pastor. “After all, sin in the life of a Christian is different from sin in the life of an unsaved person!”

“Yes,” replied the pastor, “it is different. It’s much worse!”

All of us, therefore, must deal with our sins if we are to enjoy the life that is real. In this section, John explained three approaches to sin.

We Can Try to Cover Our Sins (1:5–6, 8, 10; 2:4) “God is light, and in him is no darkness at all” (1 John 1:5). When we were saved, God called us out of darkness into His light (1 Peter 2:9). We are children of light (1 Thess. 5:5). Those who do wrong hate light (John 3:19–21). When light shines in on us, it reveals our true nature (Eph. 5:8–13).

Light produces life and growth and beauty, but sin is darkness; and darkness and light cannot exist in the same place. If we are walking in the light, the darkness has to go. If we are holding to sin, then the light goes. There is no middle ground, no vague “gray” area, where sin is concerned.

How do Christians try to cover up their sins? By telling lies! First, we tell lies to others (1 John 1:6). We want our Christian friends to think we are “spiritual,” so we lie about our lives and try to make a favorable impression on them. We want them to think that we are walking in the light, though in reality we are walking in the darkness.

Once one begins to lie to others, he will sooner or later lie to himself, and our passage deals with this (1 John 1:8). The problem now is not deceiving others, but deceiving ourselves. It is possible for a believer to live in sin yet convince himself that everything is fine in his relationship to the Lord.

Perhaps the classic example of this is King David (2 Sam. 11—12). First David lusted after Bathsheba. Then he actually committed adultery. Instead of openly admitting what he had done, he tried to cover his sin. He tried to deceive Bathsheba’s husband, made him drunk, and had him killed. He lied to himself and tried to carry on his royal duties in the usual way. When his court chaplain, the prophet Nathan, confronted him with a similar hypothetical situation, David condemned the other man, though he felt no condemnation at all for himself. Once we begin to lie to others, it may not be long before we actually believe our lie.

But the spiritual decline becomes still worse: the next step is trying to lie to God (1 John 1:10). We have made ourselves liars; now we try to make God a liar! We contradict His Word, which says that “all have sinned,” and we maintain that we are exceptions to the rule. We apply God’s Word to others but not to ourselves. We sit through church services or Bible studies and are not touched by the Bible’s teachings. Believers who have reached this low level are usually highly critical of other Christians, but they strongly resist applying the Word to their own lives.

The Holy Spirit’s inspired picture of the human heart is devastating indeed! A believer lies about his fellowship (1 John 1:6); about his nature—“I could never do a thing like that!” (1 John 1:8) and about his actions (1 John 1:10).

Sin has a deadly way of spreading, doesn’t it?

At this point we must discuss an extremely important factor in our experience of the life that is real. That factor is honesty. We must be honest with ourselves, honest with others, and honest with God. Our passage describes a believer who is living a dishonest life: he is a phony. He is playing a role and acting a part, but is not living a genuine life. He is insincere.

What losses does this kind of person experience?

For one thing, he loses the Word. He stops “doing the truth” (1 John 1:6); then the truth is no longer in him (1 John 1:8); and then he turns the truth into lies (1 John 1:10)! “Thy word is truth” (John 17:17), said Jesus, but a person who lives a lie loses the Word. One of the first symptoms of walking in darkness is a loss of blessing from the Bible. You cannot read the Word profitably while you are walking in the dark.

But a dishonest person loses something else: he loses his fellowship with God and with God’s people (1 John 1:6–7). As a result, prayer becomes an empty form to him. Worship is dull routine. He becomes critical of other Christians and starts staying away from church: “What communion hath light with darkness?” (2 Cor. 6:14).

A backslidden husband, for example, who is walking in spiritual darkness, out of fellowship with God, can never enjoy full fellowship with his Christian wife, who is walking in the light. In a superficial way, the couple can have companionship; but true spiritual fellowship is impossible. This inability to share spiritual experiences causes many personal problems in homes and between members of local churches.

A group of church members were discussing their new pastor.

“For some reason,” said one man, “I really don’t feel at ease with him. I believe he’s a good man, all right— but something seems to stand between us.”

Another member replied, “Yes, I think I know what you mean. I used to have that same problem with him, but now I don’t have it anymore. The pastor and I have great fellowship.”

“What did he do to make things better?”

“He didn’t do anything,” said the friend. “I did the changing.”

“You did the changing?”

“Yes, I decided to be open and honest about things, the way our pastor is. You see, there isn’t one stain of hypocrisy in his life, and there was so much pretending in my life that we just didn’t make it together. He and I both knew I was a phony. Since I’ve started to live an honest Christian life, everything is better.”

One problem with dishonesty is that just keeping a record of our lies and pretenses is a full-time job! Abraham Lincoln used to say that if a man is going to be a liar, he had better have a good memory! When a person uses up all his energy in pretending, he has nothing left for living, and life becomes shallow and tasteless. A person who pretends not only robs himself of reality, but he keeps himself from growing: his true self is smothered under the false self.

The third loss is really the result of the first two: the believer loses his character (1 John 2:4). The process starts out with his telling lies and it ends up with his becoming a liar! His insincerity, or lack of truthfulness, is at first a role that he plays. Then it is no longer a role—it has become the very essence of his life. His character has eroded. He is no longer a liar because he tells lies; he now tells lies because he is a confirmed liar.

Is it any wonder that God warns, “He that covereth his sins shall not prosper” (Prov. 28:13)? David tried to cover his sins and it cost him his health (Ps. 32:3–4), his joy (Ps. 51), his family, and almost his kingdom. If we want to enjoy the life that is real, we must never cover our sins. What should we do?

John gave two interesting titles to Jesus Christ: “advocate” and “propitiation” (1 John 2:1–2). It’s important that we understand these two titles because they stand for two ministries that only the Lord Himself performs.

Let’s begin with “propitiation.” If you look this word up in the dictionary, you may get the wrong idea of its meaning. The dictionary tells us that “to propitiate” means “to appease someone who is angry.” If you apply this to Christ, you get the horrible picture of an angry God, about to destroy the world, and a loving Savior giving Himself to appease the irate God—and this is not the Bible picture of salvation! Certainly God is angry at sin; after all, He is infinitely holy. But the Bible reassures us that “God so loved [not hated] the world” (John 3:16, italics mine).

No, the word propitiation does not mean the appeasing of an angry God. Rather, it means the satisfying of God’s holy law. “God is light” (1 John 1:5), and therefore He cannot close His eyes to sin. But “God is love” (1 John 4:8) too and wants to save sinners.

How, then, can a holy God uphold His own justice and still forgive sinners? The answer is in the sacrifice of Christ. At the cross, God in His holiness judged sin. God in His love offers Jesus Christ to the world as Savior. God was just in that He punished sin, but He is also loving in that He offers free forgiveness through what Jesus did at Calvary. (Read 1 John 4:10, and also give some thought to Rom. 3:23–26.)

Christ is the Sacrifice for the sins of the whole world, but He is Advocate only for believers. “We [Christians] have an advocate with the Father.” The word advocate used to be applied to lawyers. The word John used is the very same word Jesus used when He was talking about the coming of the Holy Spirit (John 14:16, 26; 15:26). It means, literally, “one called alongside.” When a man was summoned to court, he took an advocate (lawyer) with him to stand at his side and plead his case.

Jesus finished His work on earth (John 17:4)—the work of giving His life as a sacrifice for sin. Today He has an “unfinished work” in heaven. He represents us before God’s throne. As our High Priest, He sympathizes with our weaknesses and temptations and gives us grace (Heb. 4:15–16; 7:23–28). As our Advocate, He helps us when we sin. When we confess our sins to God, because of Christ’s advocacy God forgives us.

The Old Testament contains a beautiful picture of this. Joshua (Zech. 3:1–7) was the Jewish high priest after the Jews returned to their land following their captivity in Babylon. (Don’t confuse this Joshua with the Joshua who conquered the Promised Land.) The nation had sinned; to symbolize this, Joshua stood before God in filthy garments and Satan stood at Joshua’s right hand to accuse him (cf. Rev. 12:10). God the Father was the Judge; Joshua, representing the people, was the accused; Satan was the prosecuting attorney. (The Bible calls him the accuser of the brethren.) It looked as if Satan had an open-and-shut case. But Joshua had an Advocate who stood at God’s right hand and this changed the situation. Christ gave Joshua a change of garments and silenced the accusations of Satan.

This is what is in view when Jesus Christ is called our “advocate.” He represents believers before God’s throne, and the merits of His sacrifice make possible the forgiveness of the believer’s sin. Because Christ died for His people, He satisfied the justice of God. (“The wages of sin is death.”) Because He lives for us at God’s right hand, He can apply His sacrifice to our needs day by day.

All He asks is that when we have failed, we confess our sins.

What does it mean to “confess”? Well, to confess sins means much more than simply to “admit” them. The word confess actually means “to say the same thing [about].” To confess sin, then, means to say the same thing about it that God says about it.

A counselor was trying to help a man who had come forward during an evangelistic meeting. “I’m a Christian,” the man said, “but there’s sin in my life, and I need help.” The counselor showed him 1 John 1: and suggested that the man confess his sins to God.

“O Father,” the man began, “if we have done anything wrong—”

“Just a minute!” the counselor interrupted. “Don’t drag me into your sin! My brother, it’s not ‘if’ or ‘we’— you’d better get down to business with God!”

The counselor was right.

Confession is not praying a lovely prayer, or making pious excuses, or trying to impress God and other Christians. True confession is naming sin—calling it by name what God calls it: envy, hatred, lust, deceit, or whatever it may be. Confession simply means being honest with ourselves and with God, and if others are involved, being honest with them too. It is more than admitting sin. It means judging sin and facing it squarely.

When we confess our sins, God promises to forgive us (1 John 1:9). But this promise is not a “magic rabbit’s foot” that makes it easy for us to disobey God!

“I went out and sinned,” a student told his campus chaplain, “because I knew I could come back and ask God to forgive me.”

“On what basis can God forgive you?” the chaplain asked, pointing to 1 John 1:9.

“God is faithful and just,” the boy replied.

“Those two words should have kept you out of sin,” the chaplain said. “Do you know what it cost God to forgive your sins?”

The boy hung his head. “Jesus had to die for me.”

Then the chaplain zeroed in. “That’s right—forgiveness isn’t some cheap sideshow trick God performs. God is faithful to His promise, and God is just, because Christ died for your sins and paid the penalty for you. Now, the next time you plan to sin, remember that you are going to sin against a faithful, loving God!”

Of course, cleansing has two sides to it: the judicial and the personal. The blood of Jesus Christ, shed on the cross, delivers us from the guilt of sin and gives us right standing (“justification”) before God. God is able to forgive because Jesus’ death has satisfied His holy law.

But God is also interested in cleansing a sinner inwardly. David prayed, “Create in me a clean heart, O God” (Ps. 51:10). When our confession is sincere, God does a cleansing work (1 John 1:9) in our hearts by His Spirit and through His Word (John 15:3).

The great mistake King David made was in trying to cover his sins instead of confessing them. For perhaps a whole year he lived in deceit and defeat. No wonder he wrote that a man should pray “in a time of finding out” (Ps. 32:6, literal translation).

When should we confess our sin? Immediately when we discover it! “He that covereth his sins shall not prosper; but whoso confesseth and forsaketh them shall have mercy” (Prov. 28:13). By walking in the light, we are able to see the “dirt” in our lives and deal with it immediately.

This leads to a third way to deal with sins.