Down to Earth But Heavenly Minded

This video is a little over 4 hours long, but is broken into 11 segments. This part is covered from 1 hour 7 minutes to 1 hour 27 minutes.

1 John 1:5-10.

In verse 5, the apostle who had been a witness of the earthly life of the Son of God gives us the message which, by word and work, He had communicated to them, making God known to them in His nature and character as Light, without a shade of darkness.

No doubt John gave our Lord’s message orally to those to whom he could thus speak, but here he puts it in permanent form that it may be the heritage of all believers. If, then, we have received the message concerning the moral nature and character of God, it becomes us to seek to realize the import of the message.

We may best do this perhaps by considering three statements — “God is spirit,” “God is light,” and “God is love.”

When our Lord tells the woman of Samaria that “God is spirit” (John 4:24), He is teaching her that while the substance of God is immaterial and invisible, it is of the nature of spirit: He is not characterizing the spirit substance in God, not distinguishing it from the spirit substance in other spirit beings. There can be no doubt that the spirit substance of angels is not identical with the spirit substance in God, which is uncreated, underived, subsisting from everlasting to everlasting. Not so in angels. In them it is a created substance. But this distinction or difference is not the point in our Saviour’s conversation with the Samaritan woman. He is emphasizing the fact that God being of a spirit substance, it is unsuited to worship Him with material things — with shadows. He should be worshiped in spirit and reality.

Returning to our verse, when the apostle says, “God is light,” he is not speaking of God’s spirit substance merely, but of His moral nature as well; He is declaring what one of the qualities is by which His moral character is distinguished.

Light and love describe God’s character. Light is used here symbolically: a beautiful symbol it is. In the first place, light, constituted as it is of three distinct rays, is in itself a trinity in unity, and suitably symbolizes God as a unity of three distinctions. God is a trinity of one common substance.

But this is not all that light speaks of. The distinctions in the Godhead are distinctions of personal relations. The three Persons constituting the Trinity are not only a trinity of one common spirit substance, but also of one common life, of one common moral nature and character. To say, “God is light,” is not only to say the Trinity is of one common spirit substance, but also of a common moral nature, since the distinctions in the Godhead are distinctions of moral relations. The distinctions of Father, Son and Holy Spirit are distinctions of individual and personal moral relations. As light is unchangeable, it beautifully symbolizes God as the unchangeable One, both in substance and moral nature.

Again, light is self-manifesting and therefore symbolizes the capability in God of manifesting Himself, of putting Himself in the light. The second Person of the Godhead eternally was its power to manifest itself, whether partially or fully. The partial revelations of God have been by the Word; through His incarnation and earthly life He has fully revealed God — the Father, Son and Holy Spirit — revealed their moral nature. It is in this sense that the Son of God is the light of men. In Him become Man the invisible Father is seen. “He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father” (John 14:9). God the Spirit is able to make men sensible of His unseen immanence — that He is near even if invisible; but the Son not only manifests His nearness, but makes Himself visible — puts Himself in the light.

Again, as the symbol of what God is, light is transparent, perfectly transparent. It is thus the symbol of intrinsic purity, of God’s moral character. To say “God is light,” is to say He is holy; not only relatively, but absolutely so. His holiness is essential, intrinsic. This means He is able to preserve Himself as He is. As light is unchangeable; so is God incorruptible, untarnishable; it is impossible for any moral poison to come into His moral nature. No evil, no sin can ever originate or be in Him. What He is in moral nature and character He has ever been and must ever be. He cannot be deceived; “cannot be tempted with evil” (James 1:13). “God is light” tells us that His moral discernment is absolutely perfect. It is a moral impossibility for God to look complacently upon sin. He cannot behold iniquity (Hab. 1:13). If, then, His perceptions are unerring, His moral discernment absolutely perfect, His judgments must be right. He must perfectly resent everything that is contrary to what He is in His own nature. He can never compromise with what is against or in opposition to His character. That He is light is the assurance and guarantee of all this.

And light is an active agent. It is not a passive thing affected by outside influences. Darkness may hinder its being seen; but seen or unseen it is ever the same. It is not moulded by powers outside itself. It is ceaselessly, uniformly active, symbolizing thus the active energy in God by which He ceaselessly and uniformly asserts or expresses His moral character.

We see, then, that in saying “God is light,” the Spirit uses a most appropriate symbol, whether we think of God as a trinity of Persons, or community of spirit substance, or moral nature and character.

In chapter 4 the apostle says, “God is love.” If light expresses the divine energy in manifesting the stainless and unstainable purity of God’s moral nature, “love” expresses the energy of God in asserting and maintaining the absolute perfection of His goodness. Necessarily these two distinguishing qualities unite in God. If He were not absolutely “light” He could not be absolute goodness; and if He were not absolutely “love” — perfect goodness — He could not be unsullied light.

We return now to the thread of the apostle’s argument. He has shown that the Son of God become Man has by word and work, especially by the cross, manifested the life eternal in its fulness and power; and that believers on the Son of God participate in the life thus manifested; that believers now not only share in the life but may know it, and so have the full joy which that knowledge gives. Then he declares the spotless purity of God’s moral character as manifested in the Son come from God, that the participators in God’s moral nature may apprehend and understand the character of the life and nature in which they share.

This is used to test the reality of the profession as to possessing this divine life — whether the profession be our own or others’. The qualification to test whether the profession is real or not is the knowledge of what God is in His moral nature. But this knowledge must be, not only reliable, but authoritative. It is reliable, because the Son of God Himself has come and made known the truth about God. It is authoritative, because He was sent of God to reveal Him.

Again, the knowledge we possess of God’s perfect moral nature is reliable and trustworthy knowledge, because it has been communicated to us by those who were personal witnesses of its revelation in and through the Son of God. These witnesses have borne testimony to what they heard Him declare. It is His revelation that they have announced to us, and were commissioned by Him to make.

Let us notice also the form of the announcement. It is stated both positively and negatively. “God is light” declares what He is positively. The negative statement is, Darkness is not at all in Him. Through the Son of God become Man, God is in the light. Faith knows what He is morally as revealed in His Son. Of this life, through grace, the children of faith partake.

We have seen that God has put Himself in the light. The invisible God has made Himself visible in His Son become Man. Faith owns Him thus.

If then, for faith, God is in the light, believers are in the light also. On the authority of the divine testimony they can say that they know God. They can truthfully affirm that they have community of life with the Father and the Son. It is not a question of development in the knowledge of God: it is true of the babe in Christ. Though their acquaintance with God may not be based on long continued companionship with Him, they have an apprehension of what He is in His nature and character.

This apprehension is, in greater or less measure, in every soul that sets to its seal that the testimony of God is true, i.e. — in every soul that is born of God. Feeble as his intelligence and apprehension may be, he is not speaking falsely when he says he knows God and has fellowship with the Father and the Son. He is in the light where he sees God — what He is. He is not in the darkness; he does not belong to it; he has passed out of it as surely as he has passed out of death into life. He is now one of those who live to Him who died and rose again (2 Cor. 5:15); he lives and walks in the light.

It is necessary to notice here the expression “Walking in the light.” It is important to apprehend the mind of the Spirit. The expression refers to a fact — not to the degree in which that fact is realized. The expression denotes the moral condition in which the children of God are by virtue of their new birth and the manifestation of the life they have been born into. The apostle is not speaking of their practical consistency with the light, but of their essential and necessary relation to it. They are in the light. It is the moral sphere to which they belong, with which they are connected. How far they are faithful or unfaithful is not in question here.

Now, for an unbeliever to say he is in the light, or to profess that he has community of life with God, is to make a false claim. He is in relation to the darkness, belongs to it, does not know God, has not the life eternal. He is not practising, not even feebly, the truth. He claims to be in relationship with God, to be His child, to be a sharer in His nature and life, but the claim is not true. Now that the light has come and is shining, those who are in it can judge and denounce as untrue the boastful professions of those who are not in it.

Verse 7 is a precious text for every child of God. There are two things affirmed in it of those who are in connection with the light. First, those who walk in the light with God now manifested, are now in the light with Him, participating in life with Him. They are one family. What a bond! What a blessed tie! How intimate and close the relation of one child of God to every other child of God. It is a relation of nature and life, always subsisting, abiding forever. Here again the apostle is speaking of the unchanging fact, an abiding fact, whether we are faithful or unfaithful.

Of course, if we are faithful or unfaithful has much to do with our practical enjoyment of the ever subsisting bond. The normal outflow of the common tie is often interfered with through what violates its distinctive character, but the tie once formed abides. It is an eternal tie; He who lives from everlasting to everlasting being the source of it, and in which, through grace, we have been brought.

The rest of the verse is the declaration of a most important truth. Every child of God, every one born of Him (who is thus a participator in the life eternal), stands before the face of God in all the value of the priceless blood of Christ. The light in which God has put Himself shows that. What a blessed revelation! God Himself is in the light; the sin in us is in the light; and though we see it to be utterly abhorrent to God, yet the same light that shows this manifests how God removes all the defilement there is in us. The blood of Jesus Christ His Son is shown to be God’s provision for it, and it is a perfect provision. The light itself can discover no sin in us for which that blood is not an absolute remedy.

Here I would make a practical observation. Those who come to the light, drawn there by the power of the grace of Him who is light, find the light manifests their deeds. Now this manifestation is not simply for the moment in which we first come to the light. It is a continuous work: the light constantly detecting in him the contrarieties to the light; but in this searching of the heart, the light shines as well on God’s remedy for the contrarieties detected, and manifests its absolute perfection as a remedy. This sustains the soul before the light. No sin can possibly be discovered by the light for which God has not provided, or for which He is not perfectly sufficient. Hence the child of God can say, No matter what evil in me may be searched out by the light in which I walk, my abiding standing there is secured. The blood of Jesus Christ, God’s Son, in its infinite value and eternal efficacy, is what cleanses me before God. In the consciousness of this I may say, Let the defiling evil in me be searched out: nothing can possibly be brought out to light that can alter the abiding place of favor and blessing in which God has put me on the ground of the merits and value of the blood of Christ.

What peace! what rest! A sinful creature in myself, put before the face of One who makes me realize as I abide with Him how unlike Him I am, but to realize also that He who is thus constantly searching out the defiling evil that is in me is ever looking upon me as perfectly and eternally cleansed from it! May God grant to His beloved people to have an ever-deepening sense of this.

But to return. In verses 8 and 9 the apostle deals with another pretension which the light manifests to be untrue. What characterizes those who through grace have come to the light is the confession of what that light manifests. It shows that men are sinful, that sinners practise sin. For any man to say he is not a sinner is to deny the truth; it is resisting the testimony of the light. The very claim makes manifest that those who make it are not in the realization of the truth. The truth is not in them. They are deceiving themselves.

It must be kept in mind the apostle is not here contemplating failure in the children of God to fully realize the truth. While it is true that the child of God may have such a feeble sense of the truth that he may be betrayed into similar language to that of the mere pretender, it is not characteristic of him as one who is in the light. John is reasoning in the abstract, not concrete. He is speaking of what is characteristic, of principles, not persons.

It is not characteristic of one born of God to deny that in himself he is a sinful man (see Luke 5:8), or pretend that he does not sin. The measure of his realization of what he is in himself is quite another matter. Speaking characteristically, as John does, he sets to his seal that the testimony of God is true, he accepts the truth, he owns as true of himself what the light has shown to be the truth.

To acknowledge oneself a sinful man is to acknowledge the commission of sins. And if the confession of having a sinful nature is characteristic of a child of God, it is also true, speaking still characteristically, that he confesses his sins. It is not simply that he confesses his sins when he first comes as a sinner seeking a Saviour, but as he walks in the light he owns the continuous exposures of his sins. The light in which he walks is constantly detecting them and manifesting them.

But then as a child of faith he is the heir of God’s promise: “I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more” (Jer. 31:34). The believer is a son of Abraham and has the privilege of appropriating the promise to himself. The God who gave the promise is faithful; therefore, characteristically speaking, the believer has the divine assurance that his sins are forgiven.

But it may be asked, Are not his sins a violation of righteousness? and do they not defile? The answer is, God is just in fulfilling His promise of forgiveness and remembering the sins no more. He has provided a remedy — a way of cleansing. He has given His own Son to bear the due of sins. Purification of sins has been made (Heb. 1:3), and the Maker of it has the right of cleansing all who believe on Him. It would be unjust to Christ if God did not apply the purification to the one who believes on Christ Jesus. The believer, then, whatever the record of his sins, and however conscious of being sinful in himself, has the divine assurance that in the sight of God he is perfectly cleansed, and stands before His face eternally forgiven. As identified with the interests of Christ here on earth he is subject to divine discipline, correction or reproof. He is not exempt from the government of God. But as in Christ, he is cleansed from every unrighteousness.

Again, as stated in verse 10, if men claim they are not sinners by practice they contradict the testimony of God who declares that all have sinned. The light in which believers walk shows the claim is absolutely false. Any one making the audacious pretension that man is not fallen, has not the truth of God dwelling in him. All believers, characteristically speaking, set to their seal that God’s testimony is true. The word of God dwells in them; it may be often in feebleness, very defectively realized, but as a class what marks them, all of them, is submission to what the light has made manifest, i.e., that man without exception is a sinner both by nature and practice. These haughty pretenders, then, are in and of the darkness which comprehends not the light (John 1:5).

But the children of faith — being born of God and in the light, while confessing that grace has cleansed them from all defilement, do not deny that in themselves they are sinners both by nature and practice. The degree in which all this is realized is not the apostle’s subject in these verses. This we must keep in mind to avoid confusion and misunderstanding.