What are your thoughts of Dane Ortlund's interpretation in Deeper Chapter 6 on 1 John 1:7 "walking in the light" as meaning honesty with God by confessing our sin to God but also (and the main point of the chapter) to each other? I ask because I haven't been able to find a similar interpretation of this passage by anyone else I have read so far.
Thoughts on Dane Ortlund's Interpretation of 1 John 1:7 in Deeper Chapter 6
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I think it is a good application but I don't know why the text *has* to mean that.
Do you have a more extended quote so we can evaluate what he's trying to say?
Here is a quote from Deeper page 113 and page 114 (The pertinent text is in bold):
"But the point of this text lies elsewhere. John has something far more liberating to say. Walking in the light in this text is honesty with other Christians.
Notice the emphasis of the surrounding verses. “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves” (1:8). Then John speaks of confessing our sins—acknowledging honestly our failures: “If we confess our sins . . .” (1:9). And then verse 10 returns to the point that verse 8 made: “If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar” (1:10). Apparently walking in the light is confessing our sinfulness, and walking in the darkness is hiding our sinfulness. Walking in the light, in this text, is not primarily avoiding sin but acknowledging it. After all, even verse 7 itself concludes with an assurance of the cleansing blood of Christ—a natural reminder if “walking in the light” earlier in the verse refers to confessing our sins.
Here is what I want to say in this chapter: You are restricting your growth if you do not move through life doing the painful, humiliating, liberating work of cheerfully bringing your failures out from the darkness of secrecy into the light of acknowledgment before a Christian brother or sister. In the darkness, your sins fester and grow in strength. In the light, they wither and die. Walking in the light, in other words, is honesty with God and others.
Thanks for posting the quote.
I see John's point as consonant with other portions of the NT that indicate the Spirit/Flesh divide. Where Paul speaks of it in terms of Spirit and Flesh or in Adam and in Christ, John tends to refer to it as Light and Darkness. Being in the light or walking with the light is dealing with being in Christ. The passage opens with the idea that Christ is light and, in Him, there is no darkness. I see this opening passage, including the honesty about our sin, as dealing with the fact that we need to recognize our indwelling sin and be repenting of its fruits and putting it to death in Christ.
Now, there is certainly an "us" to the battle with indwelling sin. We are not individually fighting the battle, but in the battle together with other Christians and are exhorting one another to put away the flesh and to put on Christ (not walking in darkness but in the light). That is something only a Christian, united to Christ, can do along with other Christians in the Body. I think he jumps past this point to deal with a possible application in certain circumstances where we are confessing our sins to one another. This is certainly necessary in the Body but it is not all that is entailed in the work of mortification and vivification in the process of sanctification among God's people.
Thanks for posting the extended quote. I think I have a problem with how he develops corporate repentance as the immediate or more profound point that John is making.
I see John's point as consonant with other portions of the NT that indicate the Spirit/Flesh divide. Where Paul speaks of it in terms of Spirit and Flesh or in Adam and in Christ, John tends to refer to it as Light and Darkness. Being in the light or walking with the light is dealing with being in Christ. The passage opens with the idea that Christ is light and, in Him, there is no darkness. I see this opening passage, including the honesty about our sin, as dealing with the fact that we need to recognize our indwelling sin and be repenting of its fruits and putting it to death in Christ.
Now, there is certainly an "us" to the battle with indwelling sin. We are not individually fighting the battle, but in the battle together with other Christians and are exhorting one another to put away the flesh and to put on Christ (not walking in darkness but in the light). That is something only a Christian, united to Christ, can do along with other Christians in the Body. I think he jumps past this point to deal with a possible application in certain circumstances where we are confessing our sins to one another. This is certainly necessary in the Body but it is not all that is entailed in the work of mortification and vivification in the process of sanctification among God's people.
Thank you so much for your well thought out comment Rich. I have to teach an adult small group class on this chapter in two weeks and really need to get my head around how Dane exegetes this verse. I thought I may could find something in the Puritan/Reformed writings that may support this viewpoint, but have not so far.
Here is one commentary:
5 This is the message we have from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all. 6 If we claim to have fellowship with him yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live by the truth. 7 But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from every sin.
8 If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. 9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. 10 If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word has no place in our lives.
John has introduced his letter by proclaiming the message that Jesus Christ, who is the Word of life, has appeared and that the readers may have fellowship with the Father and the Son, Jesus Christ. John continues to expand the content of that message and explains that fellowship includes light and truth.
5. This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all.
a. “This is the message.” John skillfully uses the order of words in the Greek to emphasize his point.24 Although we are able to convey the emphasis in English only with the translation this is the message, John puts the stress on the verb is to convey the sense exists: “There exists this message.” He discloses not only the importance of the message but also its timeless significance. This message, therefore, has not been subject to change and modification, because it did not originate with John or with any other apostle or writer.
b. “The message we have heard from him.” John implies that God originated the message delivered by Jesus Christ. John writes, “We have heard [it] from him.” This is the third time John uses the construction we have heard (see also vv. 1, 3). The apostles heard the message from the lips of Jesus; they also knew it from the pages of the Old Testament. Hence David writes, “In your light we see light” (Ps. 36:9). God revealed himself to his people through the prophets (compare Isa. 49:6; 2 Peter 1:19).
c. “We … declare to you.” What did Jesus teach the apostles during his earthly ministry? John sums it up in one sentence. “We … declare to you: God is light; in him is no darkness at all.” John and the other apostles received this declaration from Jesus with the command to make it known. The message is not merely for information; it is a command.25 That is, God speaks and man must listen obediently.
d. “God is light.” John formulates short statements that describe God’s nature. In other places he says, “God is spirit” (John 4:24) and “God is love” (1 John 4:16). Here, in verse 5, he reveals God’s essence in a short statement of three words: “God is light.” God is not a light among many other lights; he is not a light-bearer; God does not have light as one of his characteristics, but he is light; and although he created light (Gen. 1:3), he himself is uncreated light. Moreover, the light of God is visible in Jesus, who said, “I am the light of the world” (John 8:12). In the Nicene Creed, the church confesses Jesus Christ as
God of God, Light of Light.
In Jesus we see God’s eternal light. From the moment of his birth to the time of his resurrection, the life of Jesus was filled with God’s light. “Jesus was completely and absolutely transparent with the Light of God.”26 And whoever has seen Jesus has seen the Father (John 14:9).
e. “In him there is no darkness at all.” Light is positive, darkness is negative. In his writings, John habitually contrasts opposites, including light and darkness, truth and falsehood, love and hate, right and wrong, life and death, faith and unbelief. He writes, “In [God] there is no darkness at all.” Using the emphatic negative, John stresses the positive. God and darkness are diametrically opposed. Anyone who has fellowship with God cannot be in darkness. He is in the light, glory, truth, holiness, and purity of God.
ἔστιν αὕτη—the emphasis falls on the verb to be, which conveys the meaning to exist.
ἀγγελία—this noun appears twice in the New Testament, both times in the First Epistle of John (1:5; 3:11). Some Greek manuscripts have the reading ἐπαγγελία (promise), which also occurs in 2:25.
ἀναγγέλλομεν—the verb to announce (“declare,” NIV) is directed to the audience. By contrast, the verb ἀπαγγέλλομεν (“we proclaim,” NIV [1:2, 3]) relates to the original source of the message.
φῶς—the word light is a typical Johannine word. “In the N[ew] T[estament] φῶς occurs 72 times, of which 33 are in the Johannine writings, 14 in the Synoptic Gospels, 13 in Paul and 10 in Acts.”27
6. If we claim to have fellowship with him yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live by the truth. 7. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from every sin.
The next five verses of this chapter are conditional sentences that describe probability or even possibility. The first, third, and fifth verses are negative, the second and the fourth are positive.
(a) Negative John repeats the word fellowship which he first used near the end of his introduction (v. 3). Fellowship, as he said, is with the Father and the Son, Jesus Christ. But fellowship means intimately sharing in the full light of God’s presence. Nothing is hidden in the brilliance of divine revelation. In God is absolutely no darkness and no need to hide anything.
The sinner who refuses to set his life in harmony with God’s will cannot claim to have fellowship with God. Perhaps some of the people who opposed the Christian faith near the end of the first century and who were known as Gnostics were saying, “We have fellowship with God.” Yet these people continued to walk in darkness, that is, they were taking intense satisfaction in a life of sinful pleasures. They separated word from deed. They professed to live for God, but their deeds proved to be incompatible with their confession. They lived the lie.
What are deeds that are contradictory to the assertion of living for God? They are deeds that cannot stand in the light of God’s Word (John 3:19–21). Darkness can blind a person so that his heart is filled with hatred toward his brother (1 John 2:11). And this blindness results in a refusal to live according to God’s precepts.
John is all-inclusive in his description of people who live in darkness. He does not say “they” but “we.” If we say that we are God’s people but continue to live in sin, “we lie and do not live by the truth.” If we lie, we sin with our mouths but also with our entire beings. Our lives are set against God because of a heart filled with hatred and a will inclined to disobedience.
Sin alienates man from God and from his fellow man.28 It disrupts life and fosters confusion. Instead of peace, there is discord; in place of harmony, there is disorder; and in lieu of fellowship, there is enmity.
However, when we have fellowship with God, we experience the grace of Christ dispelling darkness and flooding us with the light of God.29 To have fellowship with God is to live a life of holiness in his sacred presence. The Latin saying Coram Deo (always in the presence of God) was a motto of the sixteenth-century reformer John Calvin. Holiness demands truth in word and deed.
(b) Positive What then is characteristic of a life spent in the light of God’s truth? “If we walk in the light, as [God) is in the light, we have fellowship with one another.” Walking in the light is continuous. It means that we live in the radiance of God’s light, so that we reflect God’s virtues and glory. God himself lives in “unapproachable light,” as Paul discloses (1 Tim. 6:16).
Living for God implies that we have a wholesome relationship with our fellow man. This truth is reflected in the summary of the Decalogue: “Love the Lord your God … and love your neighbor as yourself” (Matt. 22:37–38). A longing for heavenly glory in the presence of God must be accompanied by a fervent desire to have fellowship with the church on earth. Timothy Dwight gave expression to his desire to serve the Lord through the fellowship of the church when he wrote:
I love thy church, O God:
Her walls before thee stand,
Dear as the apple of thine eye,
And graven on thy hand.
For her my tears shall fall,
For her my prayers ascend;
To her my cares and toils be giv’n,
Till toils and cares shall end.
Furthermore, if we walk in the light and have fellowship with God and with one another, we realize that our sins have disappeared. John says, “And the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from every sin.” Jesus cleanses us and presents us to himself “as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless” (Eph. 5:27; also see Heb. 9:14).
We stand before God as if we have never sinned at all. The Son of God purifies us when, after we have fallen into sin, we come to him and seek remission. Note that John writes the name Jesus to call attention to the earthly life of God’s Son, who shed his blood for remission of sin. Sin belongs to the world of darkness and cannot enter the sphere of holiness. Therefore, God gave his Son to die on earth. Through his Son’s death God removed man’s sin and guilt so that man may have fellowship with God.
Ἰησοῦ τοῦ υἱοῦ αὐτοῦ—although a few Greek and Latin manuscripts and at least two translations (KJV, NKJV) have the reading Jesus Christ his Son, it is easier to explain the word Christ (also see 1:3; 2:1; 3:23; 4:2, 15 [variant reading]; 5:6, 20) as an insertion than to account for its omission.
8. If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.
Once more John states the negative and the positive in two successive verses that express conditions. Also the last verse (v. 10) is a conditional statement, which John puts in the form of a negative conclusion.
(a) Denial Another claim made by opponents of the Christian faith, perhaps the so-called Gnostics, is that they have advanced to a stage beyond sinfulness. They say that they have achieved their goal: perfection.30
John listens to these people who assert that they are without sin. But when he quotes their claim, he includes himself and the readers. He puts the assertion in a conditional sentence and says, “If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.” Anyone who has no need to pray the fifth petition of the Lord’s Prayer—“Forgive us our sins” (Luke 11:4)—because he thinks that he has no sin deceives himself. King Solomon wisely observed (Prov. 28:13):
He who conceals his sins does not prosper,
but whoever confesses and renounces them finds mercy.
The choice of words is significant: John says, “we have no sin.” He does not write, “we do not sin.” The noun sin describes the cause and the consequence of an act of disobedience; as a verb, the word describes the act itself.31
In the days of the apostle John, Greek philosophers taught a separation between body and spirit. The spirit is free, they said, but the body is matter that eventually dies. That is, if the body sinned, the spirit would be blameless. Sin, then, cannot affect the spirit. The First Epistle of John provides insufficient information to conclude that John was actively opposing Greek thinking. Scripture, however, teaches the universality of sin by saying that in the human race “there is no one who does good, not even one” (Ps. 14:3; 53:3; Rom. 3:12; also see Eccl. 7:20).
If we say that we have no sin, we are misleading ourselves. Moreover, the truth of God’s Word is not in us. In our spiritual blindness, we go contrary to the plain teaching of Scripture. And God judges us by the words we have spoken, for our own words condemn us.
9. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.
The writer presents typical Semitic parallelism. Verse 8 is parallel to verse 6, and verse 9 is a partial repetition and further explanation of verse 7. Because of its affirmative message, verse 9 is one of the more well-known passages of the epistle and even of the entire New Testament.
(b) Affirmation The text consists of three parts. The first is the condition, the second the assurance, and the third the fulfillment.
“If we confess our sins.” This is the conditional part of the sentence that points to our acknowledgment of sin. We openly and honestly face sin without hiding it or finding excuses for it.32 We confront the sins we have committed, without defending or justifying ourselves. We confess our sins to show repentance and renewal of life. We are not told when, where, and how to confess our sins, but daily repentance of sin leads us to continual confession. John actually writes, “If we keep confessing our sins.” He writes the word sins (in the plural) to indicate the magnitude of our transgressions.
“He is faithful and just.” Here is the assurance. God is faithful with respect to his promises. He is “a faithful God who does no wrong, upright and just is he” (Deut. 32:4). He does not scold or rebuke us; he does not become impatient; and he does not go back on his word. The only condition God requires for forgiveness is that we confess our sins. True to the promises made to the people of his new covenant, God declares, “I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more” (Jer. 31:34; Heb. 8:12; 10:17).33
“[He] will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.” Note the fulfillment. Although translators put the verbs in the future tense as if the acts of forgiving and purifying will eventually happen, the Greek text says that God effectively forgives and purifies once for all. The first verb to forgive describes the act of canceling a debt and the restoration of the debtor. And the second verb to cleanse refers to making the forgiven sinner holy so that he is able to have fellowship with God. God takes the initiative, for he says to us, “Come now, let us reason together.… Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool” (Isa. 1:18).
10. If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word has no place in our lives.
This last verse is the conclusion of the series of conditional sentences. At the same time, it serves as an introduction to the next chapter.
(c) Conclusion The statement we have not sinned reveals the blatant attitude of the unrepentant, unregenerate infidel. In verse 8 the unbeliever said that he has no sin; now he asserts that he is not a sinner. If he is not a sinner, for he maintains that he has not sinned, he makes himself equal to God, the sinless One. Through his Word God convicts man of sin. But if man refuses to listen to evidence God presents, man accuses God of lying (1 John 5:10). In the sequence of three verses (6, 8, and 10), the writer works toward a climax: “we lie” (v. 6), “we deceive ourselves” (v. 8), and “we make him out to be a liar” (v. 10).
Once again John includes himself and the readers when he uses the personal pronoun we. If we should go so far as to say that we have not sinned, in spite of all the evidence, then the Word of God has no place in our lives. And that means that we are unbelievers who have rejected the gospel of salvation. The writer of Hebrews warns his readers not to follow the example of the rebellious Israelites who perished in the desert. “For we also have had the gospel preached to us, just as they did; but the message they heard was of no value to them, because those who heard did not combine it with faith” (Heb. 4:2).
Plaques on walls and bumper stickers on cars tell the world “God is love.” But no one displays the sign God is light. Yet this is exactly what John does in his first epistle. He first says, “God is light” (1:5) and later writes, “God is love” (4:16). Light comes before love, for light uncovers that which is hidden. When we have fellowship with God (1:3, 6), we cannot hide our sins. Sins, like darkness, have no place in God’s light. They must be removed.
How does God remove sins? This is God’s method: First, he cleanses us from sin with “the blood of Jesus, his Son, [that] purifies us from every sin” (v. 7). And second, he specifies our part in the remission of sin: “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness” (1:9). The blood of Jesus is sufficient to cleanse us from sin, but we must be willing to confess our sins. God’s provision and man’s responsibility go hand in hand.
To confess means that I say the same thing God says about sin.34 God applies his law and says, “You are the sinner.” And like the publican in the temple court I acknowledge my sin and pray, “God, have mercy on me, the sinner” (Luke 18:13, italics added—the original Greek has “the sinner,” not “a sinner”). When God and man say the same thing about sin, the blood of Christ dissolves the stain of sin. God will remember sin no more. He forgives and forgets! Indeed, God is love.
τὰς ἁμαρτίας—John writes the plural form of the noun to express the multitude of sin.
ἵνα—the conjunction introduces not so much purpose as “conceived result.”35
ἡμαρτήκαμεν—the perfect active tense denotes completed action in the past—although negated by οὐχ (not)—that continues into the present.36
ψεύστης—this noun appears ten times in the New Testament; half of the references occur in I John (1:10; 2:4, 22; 4:20; 5:10).
24 John follows the regular Greek word order in other passages of this epistle, where similar constructions occur without emphasis (see 2:25; 3:11; 5:11).
25 Refer to Ulrich Becker and Dietrich Müller, NIDNTT, vol. 3, p. 47. They write, “The content of the proclamation is both for information, or ‘reminding’ of the saving event, and commandment.”
26 Thomas F. Torrance, Christian Theology and Scientific Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981), p. 96.
NIV New International Version
NIV New International Version
27 Hans-Christoph Hahn, NIDNTT, vol. 2, p. 493.
28 Consult Walter Thomas Conner, The Epistles of John, 2d and rev. ed. (Nashville: Broadman, 1957), p. 21.
29 John Calvin, Commentaries on the Catholic Epistles: The First Epistle of John, ed. and trans. John Owen (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1948), p. 164.
KJV King James Version
NKJV New King James Version
30 Refer to Neil Alexander, The Epistles of John, Introduction and Commentary, Torch Bible Commentaries series (London: SCM, 1962), p. 49.
31 Refer to Westcott, The Epistles of St. John, p. 22.
32 Consult Dieter Fürst, NIDNTT, vol. 1, p. 346; Dodd, The Johannine Epistles, p. 23.
33 Compare J. R. W. Stott, The Epistles of John: An Introduction and Commentary, Tyndale New Testament Commentaries series (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1964), p. 77. And see Brooke, Commentary on the Johannine Epistles, p. 19.
34 J. D. Pentecost, The Joy of Fellowship (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1977), p. 31.
35 Robertson, Grammar, p. 998; and see Blass and Debrunner, Greek Grammar, sec. 391(5).
36 Consult Burdick, The Letters of John the Apostle, p. 128.
5 This is the message we have from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all. 6 If we claim to have fellowship with him yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live by the truth. 7 But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from every sin.
8 If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. 9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. 10 If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word has no place in our lives.
John has introduced his letter by proclaiming the message that Jesus Christ, who is the Word of life, has appeared and that the readers may have fellowship with the Father and the Son, Jesus Christ. John continues to expand the content of that message and explains that fellowship includes light and truth.
5. This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all.
a. “This is the message.” John skillfully uses the order of words in the Greek to emphasize his point.24 Although we are able to convey the emphasis in English only with the translation this is the message, John puts the stress on the verb is to convey the sense exists: “There exists this message.” He discloses not only the importance of the message but also its timeless significance. This message, therefore, has not been subject to change and modification, because it did not originate with John or with any other apostle or writer.
b. “The message we have heard from him.” John implies that God originated the message delivered by Jesus Christ. John writes, “We have heard [it] from him.” This is the third time John uses the construction we have heard (see also vv. 1, 3). The apostles heard the message from the lips of Jesus; they also knew it from the pages of the Old Testament. Hence David writes, “In your light we see light” (Ps. 36:9). God revealed himself to his people through the prophets (compare Isa. 49:6; 2 Peter 1:19).
c. “We … declare to you.” What did Jesus teach the apostles during his earthly ministry? John sums it up in one sentence. “We … declare to you: God is light; in him is no darkness at all.” John and the other apostles received this declaration from Jesus with the command to make it known. The message is not merely for information; it is a command.25 That is, God speaks and man must listen obediently.
d. “God is light.” John formulates short statements that describe God’s nature. In other places he says, “God is spirit” (John 4:24) and “God is love” (1 John 4:16). Here, in verse 5, he reveals God’s essence in a short statement of three words: “God is light.” God is not a light among many other lights; he is not a light-bearer; God does not have light as one of his characteristics, but he is light; and although he created light (Gen. 1:3), he himself is uncreated light. Moreover, the light of God is visible in Jesus, who said, “I am the light of the world” (John 8:12). In the Nicene Creed, the church confesses Jesus Christ as
God of God, Light of Light.
In Jesus we see God’s eternal light. From the moment of his birth to the time of his resurrection, the life of Jesus was filled with God’s light. “Jesus was completely and absolutely transparent with the Light of God.”26 And whoever has seen Jesus has seen the Father (John 14:9).
e. “In him there is no darkness at all.” Light is positive, darkness is negative. In his writings, John habitually contrasts opposites, including light and darkness, truth and falsehood, love and hate, right and wrong, life and death, faith and unbelief. He writes, “In [God] there is no darkness at all.” Using the emphatic negative, John stresses the positive. God and darkness are diametrically opposed. Anyone who has fellowship with God cannot be in darkness. He is in the light, glory, truth, holiness, and purity of God.
Greek Words, Phrases, and Constructions in 1:5
ἔστιν αὕτη—the emphasis falls on the verb to be, which conveys the meaning to exist.
ἀγγελία—this noun appears twice in the New Testament, both times in the First Epistle of John (1:5; 3:11). Some Greek manuscripts have the reading ἐπαγγελία (promise), which also occurs in 2:25.
ἀναγγέλλομεν—the verb to announce (“declare,” NIV) is directed to the audience. By contrast, the verb ἀπαγγέλλομεν (“we proclaim,” NIV [1:2, 3]) relates to the original source of the message.
φῶς—the word light is a typical Johannine word. “In the N[ew] T[estament] φῶς occurs 72 times, of which 33 are in the Johannine writings, 14 in the Synoptic Gospels, 13 in Paul and 10 in Acts.”27
6. If we claim to have fellowship with him yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live by the truth. 7. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from every sin.
The next five verses of this chapter are conditional sentences that describe probability or even possibility. The first, third, and fifth verses are negative, the second and the fourth are positive.
(a) Negative John repeats the word fellowship which he first used near the end of his introduction (v. 3). Fellowship, as he said, is with the Father and the Son, Jesus Christ. But fellowship means intimately sharing in the full light of God’s presence. Nothing is hidden in the brilliance of divine revelation. In God is absolutely no darkness and no need to hide anything.
The sinner who refuses to set his life in harmony with God’s will cannot claim to have fellowship with God. Perhaps some of the people who opposed the Christian faith near the end of the first century and who were known as Gnostics were saying, “We have fellowship with God.” Yet these people continued to walk in darkness, that is, they were taking intense satisfaction in a life of sinful pleasures. They separated word from deed. They professed to live for God, but their deeds proved to be incompatible with their confession. They lived the lie.
What are deeds that are contradictory to the assertion of living for God? They are deeds that cannot stand in the light of God’s Word (John 3:19–21). Darkness can blind a person so that his heart is filled with hatred toward his brother (1 John 2:11). And this blindness results in a refusal to live according to God’s precepts.
John is all-inclusive in his description of people who live in darkness. He does not say “they” but “we.” If we say that we are God’s people but continue to live in sin, “we lie and do not live by the truth.” If we lie, we sin with our mouths but also with our entire beings. Our lives are set against God because of a heart filled with hatred and a will inclined to disobedience.
Sin alienates man from God and from his fellow man.28 It disrupts life and fosters confusion. Instead of peace, there is discord; in place of harmony, there is disorder; and in lieu of fellowship, there is enmity.
However, when we have fellowship with God, we experience the grace of Christ dispelling darkness and flooding us with the light of God.29 To have fellowship with God is to live a life of holiness in his sacred presence. The Latin saying Coram Deo (always in the presence of God) was a motto of the sixteenth-century reformer John Calvin. Holiness demands truth in word and deed.
(b) Positive What then is characteristic of a life spent in the light of God’s truth? “If we walk in the light, as [God) is in the light, we have fellowship with one another.” Walking in the light is continuous. It means that we live in the radiance of God’s light, so that we reflect God’s virtues and glory. God himself lives in “unapproachable light,” as Paul discloses (1 Tim. 6:16).
Living for God implies that we have a wholesome relationship with our fellow man. This truth is reflected in the summary of the Decalogue: “Love the Lord your God … and love your neighbor as yourself” (Matt. 22:37–38). A longing for heavenly glory in the presence of God must be accompanied by a fervent desire to have fellowship with the church on earth. Timothy Dwight gave expression to his desire to serve the Lord through the fellowship of the church when he wrote:
I love thy church, O God:
Her walls before thee stand,
Dear as the apple of thine eye,
And graven on thy hand.
For her my tears shall fall,
For her my prayers ascend;
To her my cares and toils be giv’n,
Till toils and cares shall end.
Furthermore, if we walk in the light and have fellowship with God and with one another, we realize that our sins have disappeared. John says, “And the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from every sin.” Jesus cleanses us and presents us to himself “as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless” (Eph. 5:27; also see Heb. 9:14).
We stand before God as if we have never sinned at all. The Son of God purifies us when, after we have fallen into sin, we come to him and seek remission. Note that John writes the name Jesus to call attention to the earthly life of God’s Son, who shed his blood for remission of sin. Sin belongs to the world of darkness and cannot enter the sphere of holiness. Therefore, God gave his Son to die on earth. Through his Son’s death God removed man’s sin and guilt so that man may have fellowship with God.
Greek Words, Phrases, and Constructions in 1:7
Ἰησοῦ τοῦ υἱοῦ αὐτοῦ—although a few Greek and Latin manuscripts and at least two translations (KJV, NKJV) have the reading Jesus Christ his Son, it is easier to explain the word Christ (also see 1:3; 2:1; 3:23; 4:2, 15 [variant reading]; 5:6, 20) as an insertion than to account for its omission.
8. If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.
Once more John states the negative and the positive in two successive verses that express conditions. Also the last verse (v. 10) is a conditional statement, which John puts in the form of a negative conclusion.
(a) Denial Another claim made by opponents of the Christian faith, perhaps the so-called Gnostics, is that they have advanced to a stage beyond sinfulness. They say that they have achieved their goal: perfection.30
John listens to these people who assert that they are without sin. But when he quotes their claim, he includes himself and the readers. He puts the assertion in a conditional sentence and says, “If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.” Anyone who has no need to pray the fifth petition of the Lord’s Prayer—“Forgive us our sins” (Luke 11:4)—because he thinks that he has no sin deceives himself. King Solomon wisely observed (Prov. 28:13):
He who conceals his sins does not prosper,
but whoever confesses and renounces them finds mercy.
The choice of words is significant: John says, “we have no sin.” He does not write, “we do not sin.” The noun sin describes the cause and the consequence of an act of disobedience; as a verb, the word describes the act itself.31
In the days of the apostle John, Greek philosophers taught a separation between body and spirit. The spirit is free, they said, but the body is matter that eventually dies. That is, if the body sinned, the spirit would be blameless. Sin, then, cannot affect the spirit. The First Epistle of John provides insufficient information to conclude that John was actively opposing Greek thinking. Scripture, however, teaches the universality of sin by saying that in the human race “there is no one who does good, not even one” (Ps. 14:3; 53:3; Rom. 3:12; also see Eccl. 7:20).
If we say that we have no sin, we are misleading ourselves. Moreover, the truth of God’s Word is not in us. In our spiritual blindness, we go contrary to the plain teaching of Scripture. And God judges us by the words we have spoken, for our own words condemn us.
9. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.
The writer presents typical Semitic parallelism. Verse 8 is parallel to verse 6, and verse 9 is a partial repetition and further explanation of verse 7. Because of its affirmative message, verse 9 is one of the more well-known passages of the epistle and even of the entire New Testament.
(b) Affirmation The text consists of three parts. The first is the condition, the second the assurance, and the third the fulfillment.
“If we confess our sins.” This is the conditional part of the sentence that points to our acknowledgment of sin. We openly and honestly face sin without hiding it or finding excuses for it.32 We confront the sins we have committed, without defending or justifying ourselves. We confess our sins to show repentance and renewal of life. We are not told when, where, and how to confess our sins, but daily repentance of sin leads us to continual confession. John actually writes, “If we keep confessing our sins.” He writes the word sins (in the plural) to indicate the magnitude of our transgressions.
“He is faithful and just.” Here is the assurance. God is faithful with respect to his promises. He is “a faithful God who does no wrong, upright and just is he” (Deut. 32:4). He does not scold or rebuke us; he does not become impatient; and he does not go back on his word. The only condition God requires for forgiveness is that we confess our sins. True to the promises made to the people of his new covenant, God declares, “I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more” (Jer. 31:34; Heb. 8:12; 10:17).33
“[He] will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.” Note the fulfillment. Although translators put the verbs in the future tense as if the acts of forgiving and purifying will eventually happen, the Greek text says that God effectively forgives and purifies once for all. The first verb to forgive describes the act of canceling a debt and the restoration of the debtor. And the second verb to cleanse refers to making the forgiven sinner holy so that he is able to have fellowship with God. God takes the initiative, for he says to us, “Come now, let us reason together.… Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red as crimson, they shall be like wool” (Isa. 1:18).
10. If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word has no place in our lives.
This last verse is the conclusion of the series of conditional sentences. At the same time, it serves as an introduction to the next chapter.
(c) Conclusion The statement we have not sinned reveals the blatant attitude of the unrepentant, unregenerate infidel. In verse 8 the unbeliever said that he has no sin; now he asserts that he is not a sinner. If he is not a sinner, for he maintains that he has not sinned, he makes himself equal to God, the sinless One. Through his Word God convicts man of sin. But if man refuses to listen to evidence God presents, man accuses God of lying (1 John 5:10). In the sequence of three verses (6, 8, and 10), the writer works toward a climax: “we lie” (v. 6), “we deceive ourselves” (v. 8), and “we make him out to be a liar” (v. 10).
Once again John includes himself and the readers when he uses the personal pronoun we. If we should go so far as to say that we have not sinned, in spite of all the evidence, then the Word of God has no place in our lives. And that means that we are unbelievers who have rejected the gospel of salvation. The writer of Hebrews warns his readers not to follow the example of the rebellious Israelites who perished in the desert. “For we also have had the gospel preached to us, just as they did; but the message they heard was of no value to them, because those who heard did not combine it with faith” (Heb. 4:2).
Practical Considerations in 1:5–10
Plaques on walls and bumper stickers on cars tell the world “God is love.” But no one displays the sign God is light. Yet this is exactly what John does in his first epistle. He first says, “God is light” (1:5) and later writes, “God is love” (4:16). Light comes before love, for light uncovers that which is hidden. When we have fellowship with God (1:3, 6), we cannot hide our sins. Sins, like darkness, have no place in God’s light. They must be removed.
How does God remove sins? This is God’s method: First, he cleanses us from sin with “the blood of Jesus, his Son, [that] purifies us from every sin” (v. 7). And second, he specifies our part in the remission of sin: “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness” (1:9). The blood of Jesus is sufficient to cleanse us from sin, but we must be willing to confess our sins. God’s provision and man’s responsibility go hand in hand.
To confess means that I say the same thing God says about sin.34 God applies his law and says, “You are the sinner.” And like the publican in the temple court I acknowledge my sin and pray, “God, have mercy on me, the sinner” (Luke 18:13, italics added—the original Greek has “the sinner,” not “a sinner”). When God and man say the same thing about sin, the blood of Christ dissolves the stain of sin. God will remember sin no more. He forgives and forgets! Indeed, God is love.
τὰς ἁμαρτίας—John writes the plural form of the noun to express the multitude of sin.
ἵνα—the conjunction introduces not so much purpose as “conceived result.”35
Verse 10
ἡμαρτήκαμεν—the perfect active tense denotes completed action in the past—although negated by οὐχ (not)—that continues into the present.36
ψεύστης—this noun appears ten times in the New Testament; half of the references occur in I John (1:10; 2:4, 22; 4:20; 5:10).
24 John follows the regular Greek word order in other passages of this epistle, where similar constructions occur without emphasis (see 2:25; 3:11; 5:11).
25 Refer to Ulrich Becker and Dietrich Müller, NIDNTT, vol. 3, p. 47. They write, “The content of the proclamation is both for information, or ‘reminding’ of the saving event, and commandment.”
26 Thomas F. Torrance, Christian Theology and Scientific Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981), p. 96.
NIV New International Version
NIV New International Version
27 Hans-Christoph Hahn, NIDNTT, vol. 2, p. 493.
28 Consult Walter Thomas Conner, The Epistles of John, 2d and rev. ed. (Nashville: Broadman, 1957), p. 21.
29 John Calvin, Commentaries on the Catholic Epistles: The First Epistle of John, ed. and trans. John Owen (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1948), p. 164.
KJV King James Version
NKJV New King James Version
30 Refer to Neil Alexander, The Epistles of John, Introduction and Commentary, Torch Bible Commentaries series (London: SCM, 1962), p. 49.
31 Refer to Westcott, The Epistles of St. John, p. 22.
32 Consult Dieter Fürst, NIDNTT, vol. 1, p. 346; Dodd, The Johannine Epistles, p. 23.
33 Compare J. R. W. Stott, The Epistles of John: An Introduction and Commentary, Tyndale New Testament Commentaries series (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1964), p. 77. And see Brooke, Commentary on the Johannine Epistles, p. 19.
34 J. D. Pentecost, The Joy of Fellowship (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1977), p. 31.
35 Robertson, Grammar, p. 998; and see Blass and Debrunner, Greek Grammar, sec. 391(5).
36 Consult Burdick, The Letters of John the Apostle, p. 128.
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