Walk in His Light | Wade Branch

Hello, I'm very happy that you're joining us today for our

podcast. It's a little bit different

format today. We are missing a couple of the

recordings from our series on 1st John.

And so I'm going to be recording these just me talking to the

microphone, talking to you as a listener.

So a little bit different format and I hope this studies as good

for you as it as it was for me since I have this time just me

with a microphone. I want to personally thank you

for listening to our podcast, especially if you're one of the

regular listeners that seeing people listening makes us

encouraged to do this podcast and excited to keep it going and

trying to improve it and make it better for for our listeners.

So thank you for listening. And most importantly, we pray

that that God is glorified and his word is accurately taught.

And let's jump into first John, first John chapter 1.

1 John 1 · chapter mention

And we're going to be opening up this letter with a little bit of

introduction, some of the background and what we're, what

we're looking at here in the letter.

First John. First off, this letter is

written in the years from around 60 to 100 AD.

That's when it's believed to be written in that range.

And the author is believed to be John.

Now, the author does not give himself a specific address.

He doesn't mention himself. But we do have a significant

amount of internal and external evidence, evidence from inside

the letter itself, things like the themes that are addressed

and the writing style and those things on top of the external

evidence that we have from, from people who are contemporaries

of, of John, who attributed this letter to John, men like

Irenaeus and even mentions of his close friend Polycarp.

Help us to connect this letter to the, the man John.

And we'll see some, some of the evidence in there.

We're not going to dive too deep into that, but most scholars

agree this is written by the apostle John.

And and so there's our, there's kind of our, our author when it

was written and the purpose. Why was this letter written?

This letter does not have quite a specific audience in mind as

far as a letter to the church in, in Corinth or a letter to

the church in, in Galatia. This letter is a little bit more

general in nature and so is the style with which it's written

and they going along with that. The purpose of this letter is

something we can we can all benefit from as Christians or

prospective Christians. And the first thing he's he

tells us as his purpose is comes out in the 1st chapter.

He says these things we write to you that your joy may be full.

So we don't have to wonder why John wrote these letters.

He often says the actual phrase, we are writing this so that, and

the first one is so that your joy may be full.

That's a letter I want to read, a letter that tells me that it's

going to make me happier, more more joyful person #2 it says

that you I write so that you may not sin.

He says that in chapter 2. And so there's a motivation that

goes along with with that joy. It's not just a feeling we wants

to have. It is it leads into an action so

that you may not sin. The third purpose he says is so

that you may know that you have eternal life.

There it is again that joy, that assurance that is all over this

letter. This letter wants to encourage

and bolster our faith from the inside.

The next one he mentions in chapter 5, he also says, I write

this letter so that you may continue to believe in the name

of the Son of God. And finally, another statement

he makes is I write these things concerning those who try to

deceive you. So there's a lot of

encouragement, a lot of motivation to walk in the light

as he's going to see, as he's going to say, so that we may not

sin. But there's also an underlying

theme of others who are detracting from them and others

who would try to pull them away from the faith and from the

truth that they are learning. So we're going to talk about

those deceivers here. Now, who might this have been?

Well, we know that during this time there was a very popular

school of thought called Gnosticism.

And Gnosticism basically says all matter is evil and that the

creation was really the work of a demigod.

And that demigod wouldn't have. Let me rephrase that.

Jesus did not really come in the flesh because if if all matter

is evil, if everything that was created is evil, Jesus wasn't

really here in the flesh because he was.

It couldn't have been evil. So it starts to undermine the

true work that Jesus did. You can already see that start

to form, and there's a specific branch of Gnosticism called

docetism, and that suggests that Jesus really just seemed to come

in the flesh. It was kind of an illusion, kind

of a mirage, and they would even suggest that he was replaced at

his baptism and never truly suffered.

So these are kind of elements that swim through Gnosticism

that undermine either Jesus's fleshly coming or maybe it it

suggests that he was kind of a, an illusion or that maybe he

didn't really go through with the things that he claimed to

suffer that the Bible records about Jesus work.

Gnosticism would claim that that didn't really happen.

And, and, and this, it's interesting how many times this

comes up when you, when you read it and learn about other

religions. There are other religions who

claim this, who don't claim that Jesus is necessarily the Son of

God and the Messiah, but maybe that he was a prophet and that

God would not truly allow Jesus, if he was a prophet of God to

suffer the way he did. There's religions in the world

that believe that. And so we're already starting to

see if you try to marry Gnosticism with the true

doctrine of Christ, you, you get problems, you get core errors

because if Jesus didn't, did Jesus didn't do what he said he

did, that it undermines so much of his work and his and the plan

of God. So this underlying theme of

Gnosticism that we see prop up is, is a huge problem.

That is likely what was behind some of the the things that John

is writing in this letter. Now Gnosticism basically leads

to two conclusions. Gnosticism says all matter is

evil. So if everything that is out in

the world created matter is evil, then there's basically one

of two conclusions. Conclusion #1 is everything is

evil. So you have to run away from

anything that is pleasurable, Anything that is gives you

pleasure because everything is evil.

Now we've learned from Scripture that God has given us many

things that are good gifts to enjoy.

So we know off the bat that that's not true.

But Gnosticism, that's the natural conclusion is if

everything is evil, then we should run away from anything

that is pleasurable. Or the flip side of that says,

you know what? If everything is evil, then

nothing matters anyway. Go ahead, do whatever you want,

do whatever you feel like doing, because nothing matters anyway.

It's all evil. And so you can see these two

extreme conclusions. Neither one of them hits the

mark. We know from scripture that God

has given us many good things. Not every desire is evil.

And on the flip side of that, we do have meaning.

Our actions do matter and we can't just throw our hands up

and say, well, none of this matters anyway.

So there's veins of thought here that you're going to see.

If we understand what Gnosticism was about and what it was

teaching, then it's going to make John's arguments make a lot

more sense in the things that he is trying to encourage them in

and pull them away from. May we never write off the work

of Christ and His fleshly coming, because it is

unfathomable that the God of this world would do what he did.

That though He came to a world that was full of sin and

problems, He really did do it. And sometimes we can take

something that's unfathomable and undermine it when we should

just be praising it. Praise God that He came and

praise God that He died for us and truly suffered and lived

here. OK, with that background, let's

go ahead and start the first verse and work our way through

this chapter. Verse one says in the new King

James that which was from the beginning, which we have heard,

which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon

and our hands have handled concerning the word of life.

I want to first note this first verse.

You can already start to sense the tone of awe from the writer.

The writer is using every sense to convey this really happened.

And if you're going to give a full testimony of something that

happened, this, this person is saying we saw it, we heard it,

we touched it, it was so real. And we've already, we're already

seeing how this is counteracting those Gnostic ideas.

But this writer is in awe of what Jesus did, the word of

life. The Greeks believed that there

was the logos, the divine reason that was implicit, or we had to

believe it, right? Looking at the cosmos, looking

at the sky and looking at the world's they believed in, they

implied that there was divine reason.

And Jesus is that divine reason that Logos, the word of life,

the thing that was ordering it and giving it order, as we learn

in Colossians. So he opens up with the tone of

awe at these, at the things that they saw.

And he uses all these senses. You you can kind of connect some

of the internal evidence here because this sounds a lot like

John's Gospel. The Gospel of John starts out

claiming very similar things about witnessing the Messiah and

being with him. This is the very similar tone

and style how this letter is opened up here.

Verse 2, The life was manifested and we have seen and bear

witness and declare to you the eternal life which was with the

Father and was manifested to us. Eternal life was brought down,

manifested, manifested to make something real, to make it

evident, though it was hidden in some ways from time past, that

eternal life was was laid out in front of them clearly.

And He is here to serve as a witness, to bear witness and to

teach people who would come after Him.

Verse three, that which we have seen and heard, we declare to

you. He's writing to Christians.

He's writing to us today. He's trying to convince us to

declare to us these truths. We declare to you, verse three,

that you also may have fellowship with us.

And truly our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son,

Jesus Christ. The purpose of sharing what they

have seen is so that others can share in it.

He's creating a triangle of a relationship here.

If you can picture this triangle, there's a direct link

between the writer of this letter and Jesus who came in the

flesh. So we know that this writer was

there with Jesus. We know it was someone who had

that close contact and that and that discipleship with him.

And so if there is a direct link to these people, if we can

establish a link, a link with the writer, then we have a

triangle formed between us, this Christian who's writing this

letter and Jesus that he is claiming to have seen.

And if we establish that we are in fellowship with, with the

writer based on what the writer says, the inspired writer of

God, then we can establish a connection that's called the

transitive property with God himself.

That's his purpose. Now, especially for the people

who are reading this letter soon after Jesus died, there could

have been a real sense of man. You just missed it.

You should have seen it. God came down and sorry, it's

too late now. You, you missed it.

You know, the the brief time he was here, you're almost there.

You were, you played the odds and you were off by just a few

years. No, he doesn't say that they

didn't miss it in the sense that this Messiah came and and you

had your chance to see him and he's gone for good.

No, he's writing this letter with a tone of you can still

enjoy the fellowship and the work of what he did on earth

today. You might not see him in his

physical form right now, but you can enjoy the same relationship

we enjoyed with him, the writer says Today, Whether they were

people 30 years after his death or 2000 years later, like we

stand today, we can still share in this relationship, this

triangle of fellowship. Again, the tone of awe.

This guy was the real deal. This Jesus verse four and these

things we write to you that your joy may be full.

There it is. There's our first and kind of

opening purpose of this letter. It's assurance that your joy may

be full. Now, what could take away from

full joy? If there's things that would

make them not have full joy as Christians, He's trying to give

them full joy. So what could pull them away

from having full joy? Number one, I think not being

sure if these things Jesus claims to be true and the

writers claim to be true are real.

We have so much to be excited about and hopeful in, but we

might not be if we're not sure about those things.

And he's giving them assurance. He's writing this letter so that

they can be for sure about what they're reading.

So that's one detractor from full joy.

I think a second one is not being focused.

So let's say you believe it and you don't have any doubts that

what Jesus claimed to be is real and He did it and he is still

doing it to this day. You can still not have full joy

because you're not focused on it, because your attention is

not illuminated with the light of the gospel.

He's trying to do both of these things in this letter, I

believe, to give us the assurance and to pull our focus

in. So much of life is not about

things that are, that we are proven to be wrong.

It's things we don't choose to focus on, things we don't choose

to spend our time meditating on. And this is a great letter to

marinate and meditate on. Now, I think just to spend a

little bit more time on the implication here, if he's

writing this letter so that their joy could not be full, we

should necessarily kind of imply that it is possible to not have

full joy. And we're going to learn he's

writing this letter to Christians.

And so for you and me, do we acknowledge that it is possible

for us to not have full joy? Life has a way of hardening us.

And sometimes we have the assumption that, you know, we're

going to have full joy just because he said it, because

that's his intent for us. But sometimes life can can

harden US. Jesus describes our hearts as

ground. So I feel comfortable making an

analogy here. I've been doing a lot of work on

my yard lately, and I've learned that I have parts of my property

that are hardened ground. And sometimes that's caused from

the elements, the sun maybe, maybe that some things that are

in the soil or have been put into the soil From around I've

learned that the ground and that the elements can turn ground

hard and fruitless if not properly cared for.

If your soil is not properly amended, the ground can become

hardened. And I think our hearts can be

that way if we're not careful. Yes, as Christians too, our

hearts can be hardened in ways that we don't even realize.

We don't have full joy, and maybe you don't even realize

it's possible, or maybe you've forgotten what it feels like to

have full joy. I'm not that old and I haven't

had many of the experiences that harden people in my younger

life, and yet I can already see that in myself.

I don't know what you've been through, but this writer wants

to assure you that you can have full joy.

Our hearts, like the ground in in my yard, need to be amended.

The soil needs to be amended sometimes and it needs

supplements. It needs.

A certain type of maybe tilling. There are processes that we can

do to heal soil that is hardened and our hearts can be amended.

They can be rejuvenated because our God created our heart,

surely he can change it and surely he can strengthen in ways

that we forgot were possible. So maybe starting this letter by

admitting that is a good place to begin this process of

learning full joy. So His intention is that we can

have full joy. And the the message here is that

we are intended to have full joy.

Sometimes we think about God and the light that is inaccurate,

that we don't fully understand how much good He has and wants

for us. But that we would have full joy

is His goal and is His great priority.

And finally, 1/4 implication from this statement that he's

writing to us. So their joy may be full.

The implication is there are certain sources to turn to for

this joy. You know, I don't know about

you, but I can turn to sources of joy in my life that are, that

are empty. Wells, as the Old Testament

writers often say that they're empty and there are only certain

sources that can give us full joy and there are certain things

that give us a good source of joy, but it's it's small, it's

incomplete without God. And this is what he comes to

bring a complete sense of joy. Verse five.

He goes on to say this is the message which we have heard from

him and declare to you that God is light and in him is no

darkness at all. In this letter there is a

foundational message and uses these three kind of key ideas to

compare God with and to describe God and Jesus with, and it is

that God is light, God is love, and God is life.

This is a foundational principle.

With that, he's going to build on verse 6.

If we say that we have fellowship with him and walk in

darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth.

So there's the contrast. God is light and there's a way

that we can walk in darkness, and it's from a fake commitment

or a fake statement that we have fellowship with Him when we

really do not, when we don't practice the truth.

So what is walking in darkness? He's going to use this this

phrase, walking in darkness or walking in the light.

And the walk is our life. The walk is our habits.

And if we walk in light, we are walking in the ways of the one

who brings light. And if we're walking in

darkness, it's the exact opposite.

It's without light. And he calls us a liar and says

we do not practice the truth, verse 7.

But if we walk in the light or practice things that are of the

light, if we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have

fellowship with one another in the blood of Jesus Christ.

His son cleanses us from all sin.

He's John writes this letter in kind of a high view.

He doesn't get into all the details of all the nitty gritty

and, and and situations. He's talking from a, a high

level overarching view. And the statement is that if we

walk in the light, then there's that is fellowship with with

John the writer. And by extension, that's

fellowship with Jesus. And sometimes I can over

complicate my relationship with God.

I can over complicate what it takes because it seems so simple

sometimes and yet sometimes it can be very difficult to walk in

the light with all of our ways. But we can take peace in this

statement that it is as simple and as complicated as walking in

the light. And when we do that, he says the

blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanses us from all sin.

He doesn't say, you know, if you mess up, then you've then you've

really lost it. Now you've you've ruined it.

No, he says, as we walk in the light, there is a a cleansing

that continues to happen. That word cleanses is in the

present tense, the present active.

He cleanses us from all sin. So as we walk in the light,

there's still going to be a need for a continual cleansing.

May that both humble us and encourage us that we are not

above mistakes, improvement or any of that.

But at the same time, you can know that you still walk in the

light even when you mess up. You can still be somebody who is

making it their habit to walk in the light.

And I had some discussions recently with people after this

lesson where you can feel like if you continue to struggle, am

I even really a Christian at all now?

There's a point at which if we are not taking the steps to grow

like, like James says, confessing our faults to one

another, if we're not confessing and being transparent with

ourselves, with others, with God, then we can ask ourselves

that question, am I really walking in the light?

Because what does it take to walk in the light?

And that's kind of a, that's a whole conversation in itself.

But just know that if you still make mistakes, that doesn't mean

you're not walking in the light because Jesus's blood is perfect

and continually cleansing. Verse 8 If we say that we have

no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.

The proverb says the heart of man is deceitful above all

things. I don't know about you, but the

older I get, the more wrong I find, the more areas in my life

I I learned that I I didn't realize how how much selfishness

I have in my life, how much pride.

I didn't realize how much I've lacked love.

There are so many ways I find continual areas where I need to

work on. I may have cleaned up some some

more obvious downfalls, but don't you 2 find the roots of

some of the sins in in your life of bitterness, selfishness,

pride? But you know what the truth

does? The truth convicts our hearts

and shapes us for good. If we don't see our sin, it is

clear that we are unaffected by the truth.

And that's why that's why he says, if we have no sin, the

truth is not in US. Why is that The truth can't be

in us? Because if it was really in US,

it would be showing us that we have sin.

So if we don't say we don't have sin, the truth must have not

been in us. Because when it is working on

us, we're going to continue to find things that are going to

shape us and prune us. I'm so glad for the way that God

convicts us because you know what?

If I saw everything it was wrong with my heart and my myself on

day one as a Christian, I may have just given up right there

because it would seem so overwhelming.

All of all of the burden of of what I was and what I was not.

But by the grace of God, we often see our areas for

improvement one piece at a time. And he teaches our spirit where

where change needs to happen one step at a time.

And so you and I can't fix ourselves completely on day one,

but usually there's an area that our conscience becomes aware of,

an area that we need to grow of a way that we need to change.

And so we take that step one and we let it convict us and shape

us as His truth convicts our hearts and the truth lives in

US. And that is a sign that you are

alive and well, not a sign that you are forever lost because you

made a mistake. Verse 9.

If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive our

sins, forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all

unrighteousness. So this is very similar to that

passage in James we just mentioned.

Part of how we practice walking the light is we show

transparency and we are willing to confess it.

He doesn't say who to confess to.

We'll talk about that in a minute, but he says to confess

our sins. That is transparency.

Because if I admit it to myself, then it's more real.

Now, if I admit it to someone else, it's even more real.

It's even more evident. The light is shined on it to

where we see it for what it really is.

And from Scripture, we know that we are to confess to, you might

say, these three groups of people #1 the, the involved

party. If we make if we sin and we

messed up, the first person we need to be talking to is the

person we send against the person that we have wronged.

We need to confess our wrongs to people, and we'll often get a

lot more respect from them from doing that, even if it might be

a hard conversation to have. We need to confess our sins to

the involved party #2 We need to confess our sins to an

uninvolved party. When you are trying to overcome

something, it is good to talk to somebody who is not involved in

the situation because they maybe have a clear mind about it.

They have maybe they're not don't have that sense of maybe

there is judge mental of you because they're separate from it

and they're not focused on the hurt, but they're able to give

you that clear perspective on the situation to confess and

work through. And there are things that I have

to work on that I confess to those who are close to me and

tell them what I need to be better at, what I need to work

on, how I need to change because talking to those people is a

safe place to grow and to work through some things.

So confessing things to an uninvolved party from the

situation maybe you might be involved in is is huge.

And thirdly, and maybe most importantly, we need to confess

our sins to the involved Father. God wants us.

The Father wants to help us succeed.

He wants His Word to have a good work in US.

Confession is vital to know that we're really walking in the

light because the first thing that darkness wants to do is

hide. Darkness wants to hide the sin

and confession puts it out in the open and says I can deal

with what I can see and if I see an error, I'm going to work past

that by the grace of God and by the strength of God.

Verse 10 If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar

and His word is not in US. We might not always realize our

own mistakes, but when? This.

But when the risk is that big that I would be calling God a

liar, maybe I'll think twice before I place myself on any

kind of moral pedestal because I am not the Holy 1 He is.

And far be it from me to make him a liar by speaking things

that are not truth. Now we're going to dip our toe

into chapter 2 before before our next study.

So let's just read a couple more verses.

Chapter 2, verse 1, He says, my little children, these things I

write to you so that you may not sin.

All those things we just said is.

And so many things in this letter are to help us stay pure

and holy in him and to have a close walk with him that is not

separated from him by sin. The second big purpose of this

letter is to have hope in our fellowship with him that

motivates us to walk in the light goes on to say in that

verse, verse one. And if anyone sins, we have an

advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous.

There is that continual cleansing he mentioned, but now

he kind of phrases it a little bit different and says that we

have an advocate. An advocate is somebody who's

going to speak on your behalf. Jesus speaks on our behalf with

the father. And this analogy probably

doesn't work in every in every respect.

But suppose there's a courtroom scene and Jesus stands to answer

for our charges. Maybe he is our our defending

attorney and when the prosecution, the devil who's

called the accuser of the brethren, accuses us of all of

these sins and all of our wrongs, our defending attorney,

Jesus affirms every charge. He affirms the crime and the

penalty that goes with it. He says you're right, this

person, Wade Branch did do this and this and this and that was

sin and the penalty is just. The Bible says that we deserve

condemnation because of that and the devil and Jesus affirms that

the devil, the devil's criticisms are valid of us.

But then Jesus approaches the bench with the devil, the

accuser of the brethren, for a sidebar, and the devil is

laughing and he is pumped to hear this condemnation.

The defending attorney just admitted that we were guilty.

But Jesus simply leans in and says, Dad, this one is mine, I

paid for him. So Jesus affirmed all of our

guilt and the consequence of our sin.

But then he leans in to the Father and says, this one is

mine. I paid for him.

And the gavel sounds, the slam of the gavel and and God says,

Son, you said this one belongs to you.

I release him into your care. Case closed.

We have an advocate with the Father.

Jesus stands at the right hand of God as our mediator and as an

advocate on our behalf. And we have a good advocate

because he knows what we've been through, because he did it too,

and more. Jesus Christ the righteous.

Now that like I said, that analogy does not stack up in

every, in every way, but he is pleading on our behalf.

May we honor the advocate. May we respect our advocate

Jesus, because how sad is it to think about him doing this for

us, advocating for us, standing before the Father for us, and

then US turning around and willfully sinning, doing what we

know to be wrong, making our advocate look bad.

May we never disrespect him that way.

I've been in work situations where someone stuck their neck

out for someone else to give them an opportunity.

You know, they, they, they vouched for somebody to give

them an opportunity that they would have gotten otherwise.

But when the rubber hit the road, the person who got the job

because of the person who vouched for them, when the

rubber hit the road, that person didn't come through.

That person maybe wasn't a good or a trustworthy worker.

And that left their advocate, the person who vouched for them.

It left them looking foolish because they vouch for this

person. They stuck their neck out for

them to their boss, got them a job, and it made them look

foolish because the person they recommended didn't didn't come

through. It kills me to think about doing

that to Jesus now. No, there's obviously nothing

that I can do to take away from the glory and majesty and

imperfection of Jesus, but it kills me to think about him

standing up for me, and me in a sense, spitting in his face with

the way I might choose to make decisions.

May we respect our advocate and walk in the light.

May we show appreciation for Him with the way we live.

Because that's the theme of this letter.

It's about how we live. It's about who we are as we

claim to have fellowship with the Father.

Finishing up here, verse 2. And he himself is the

propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for

the whole world. That word propitiation was a

word used to mean giving something to appease righteous

anger. It was a popular idea during the

time that their gods, you know, that were really unrighteous

gods for the for the Greeks, their gods needed appeasing and

so they would give, they'd be given a gift.

Basically, something was something was needed to be given

on their behalf. And our God is not that unjust

judge that maybe they're that they're that they're Greek gods

were but something needed to be paid for our sins.

And Jesus is our propitiation. He is our advocate and our

offering of reconciliation. Having your advocate in court be

the same person who paid the debt for you makes it so

powerful. He has every right to advocate

for us because when there's a family in the audience of a

courtroom that's been wronged by a crime, those people need to

have be represented. And Jesus is the one who was

hurt for us. Jesus is the one who my sins

crushed on the cross. So he is it's right for him to

be the one to be able to claim my freedom because he has a say.

He is represented in this court. And if he says so, what a

powerful defense on our behalf. Verse three.

Now by this we know that we know him.

If we keep his commandments, sometimes we can overcomplicate

it. Like we said earlier, do you

keep his commandments? Because that's how you know

you're in him. That's how I know I'm in Him.

Verse four, He who says I know Him and does not keep His

commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him, but whoever

keeps his word. Verse 5, Truly the love of God

is perfected in Him. By this, we know that we are in

Him. The Word of God is perfected in

us. How?

It creates a change of heart. That change of heart then

creates a different goal, a change of goals.

And when our goals are different, what we're working

towards is different. Our actions are different.

And this is a complete cycle of our love for God changing our

heart, changing our motives and our goals, and then producing

actions that back that up. It's not we don't have to wonder

if there's some magical Nirvana moment where you become so

enlightened that you know God is living in you.

It's our actions, he says by this the universe 5.

We know that we are in him. Sometimes it helps in studying

Scripture to do the emphasis exercise and, and, and here's

what I mean by that. You can read this passage and

put emphasis on different parts of the verse.

So when he says by this, we know that we are in him.

The emphasis is on the we know God, knowing that we are in him

doesn't always make our hearts at peace and joyful, right?

Because God may know that I'm in Him, but it's possible for me to

not truly be assured and know that.

But He's assuring us. We do know that.

We know that we are in Him, and He wants us to know that.

So it's not just, well, God knows it, but we live a life

miserable with ourselves. We live a life that is unsure

and miserable. He doesn't want that.

He wants us to know that we are in Him piece that we're doing

the right thing, that we're on the right path and we're having

bound. You could also put the F

emphasis on by this. We know that we are in him.

He started all this by saying that they had seen him and know

that they are in him and they wanted to confer the same

relationship and he's saying we are he's using we you who are

listening to this letter. John says you and me, we're in

him. By this we know that we are in

him. Or you could read this 1st and

maybe all these are valid. By this we know that we are in

him, in him, in the King himself.

We share an identity with the King.

And I'll just leave you with some considerations from this.

A Christian no longer has the same relationship with sin.

A Christian no longer loves sin as he once did.

A Christian no longer brags about his or her sin as they

once did. A Christian no longer plans to

sin as he once did. A Christian no longer fondly

remembers his sin as he once did.

A Christian never fully enjoys his sin as he might have in the

past, and a Christian no longer as comfortable in habitual sin

as he once was. That's part of the theme here.

It's not you made a mistake and so you're not one of his own.

It's if you are making a habit of this sin, if that is your

practice of your life, if we, it's how we walk, right?

That's the the analogy you use. It's a walk.

If we are walking in making a habit of sin, he says you're not

in him. But a true Christian will no

longer be comfortable walking in a habit of sin and making that

the habit of their life. Instead, a Christian will seek

and strive to walk in the light, make new habits that reflect a

new Master and Lord of their life.