Walking In The Light

Like I mentioned, we've been in this series.

It's been a few weeks here.

And John begins his letter by grounding the Christian faith, not in necessarily a theological argument, but one that's just like the real person of Jesus.

He begins by saying, We all heard from Jesus.

We heard his voice.

We saw him with our own eyes.

We touched him with our hands.

And the point being that Christianity wasn't this abstract philosophy, another religion on the scene, or even a private spiritual experience.

This was something, the real person of Jesus.

And then John tells us something fundamental about the character of God.

He says that God is light and in him is no darkness.

Last week we talked about the negative side of that claim.

John says that if we claim, you and me, followers of Jesus, not just here, but Dane County, Wisconsin, and all over the world, if we claim to fellowship with God while we walk in darkness, our words and our lives contradict each other.

We might say the right things about God or pass the theology test, but our way of living reveals what we truly value, what we truly care about.

So that was kind of the negative side.

Today we're going to go to the positive alternative in verse seven, where John writes, 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, cleanse us from all sin.

And now remember the important context here is that John is writing to a group of people he knows in a broken and fractured community.

Some people have appeared to claim like superior knowledge of God, that they were like more spiritual or more holy, more mature, whatever adjective you want to use, they were really good, and everyone else really wasn't, and everyone needed to get on their level.

And kind of the fruit of that, if you will, the fruit of that, what ended up happening was that their relationships got severed.

It damaged the community, it damaged other people's faith because of this.

Their spirituality sounded impressive or might have sounded impressive, but it led to division, arrogance, insincerity.

John makes a connection that I think we often miss 2,000 years later in our Western society, and that is that the quality of our individual spiritual lives shapes the quality of the communities we create.

That Madison Church isn't just some idea, some building, a service, and neither is the church down the road or the global church.

But rather, we are the sum of every individual who comes, who can't be here today, but is still a part of our community.

The quality of our spiritual lives shapes the quality of the communities we create.

There was a quote on Thursday night from our group on emotionally healthy spirituality that that really stuck out to me.

And that's when Pete Schizero says, far too often we live vicariously off other people's spirituality.

And I love that because I think as a pastor, I do tend to see that a lot.

Where we're all guilty of this, we repeat the convictions of our favorite pastors or authors or theologians or political tribe without ever wrestling with those convictions ourselves and with God.

But John doesn't write, if someone you respect walks in the light and you follow them, you're good.

John says, if we walk in the light, you, me, us, if we walk in the light, no one else can follow Jesus for you or on your behalf.

You have to do it.

Yes, Christianity is communal, but we it cannot be lived vicariously.

We need one another, but none of us can substitute another's person's, another person's actual relationship with God.

I can't cover that for you.

Liz can't cover that for you.

You gotta do it yourself.

Walking in the light means allowing the truth of God to reach our real lives, not just what we believe, not just our public image and what we put out for the world to see.

But walking in the light means showing our motives and our fears, our habits, relationships, wounds, and failures.

It requires vulnerability, requires trust.

And John says that when we walk in the light, one of the fruits that we'll see is that we walk in fellowship and we have fellowship with one another.

Now you might think if you were writing this letter to a church today that was divided or broken or fractured, you might think that, well, I would write about being correct about things, you know, having the right policies and procedures in place, being spiritually mature, being doctrinally pure, like we think the right things.

Now, John cares deeply about those things.

We'll see in the following weeks.

He writes about that.

But the launching pad and where he begins, and I think that's important when somebody begins something by saying, This is it, he begins with fellowship, the relationship that we have with one another.

And something changes when we stop hiding, when we reveal internally what's actually going on here and we're authentic.

Genuine fellowship cannot exist between carefully managed versions of ourselves, where I make sure that I'm only presenting the parts of me that I want you to see and you're doing the same.

Then our relationship is built on just the best parts.

And then when we have those off days, when we have those bad weeks, when we have those long trying seasons, of course the relationship isn't going to make it.

It was never built to make it.

It was only built on the best version of me that I presented to you.

And that's why I think the Christian church should be different.

We should be a community in which trust is developed and vulnerability is given, where we can be known for who we are, and more importantly, love for who we are, flaws and all.

So that we can come together, not just with our friends, but one another, and to be able to say, I was wrong, or you hurt me.

Where we can come together and say, We forgive each other.

The relationship might have been ruptured, but let's do the work of repairing it.

The healthy healthiest Christian communities are not communities where nobody sins.

Okay, the healthiest Christian communities are where people don't have to pretend that they don't.

Yep, I make mistakes.

I'm human, just like you.

And you're gonna make mistakes as well.

The way forward for communities damaged by spiritual elitism and insincerity is not better image management, it's confession, forgiveness, mutual responsibility, and a commitment to repair.

But I do have to add this.

We have to be careful.

It would be easy to make this message kind of like a self-help seminar, which isn't what it is.

You know, just be more honest, confess more thoroughly, repair every relationship, build better community.

And those practices, they matter.

I wouldn't be talking about them if they didn't, but they don't ultimately save us.

They don't restore us, they don't bring us into the life promised to us.

Jesus doesn't, or John, excuse me, John doesn't say that it's your honesty, fellowship, and confession that will cleanse you.

He says, the blood of Jesus, God's Son, cleanses us from all sin.

Walking in the light does not mean we have successfully eliminated all sin from our lives.

I hate to break it to you, but until the day you die, you're going to hurt other people.

Sometimes intentionally, sometimes unintentionally, a lot of times just unknowingly.

It's going to happen.

Now, John will immediately reject the idea that you can be perfect, and that's what we're going to talk about next week.

He's going to talk about how you're going to make mistakes until kingdom come.

But walking in the light means that we stop hiding our sins and that we bring our whole lives into the truth and grace of God.

We do not confess to persuade Jesus to become more gracious or forgiving to us.

We confess because Jesus has already given himself to us, and this is where we find freedom.

Life revealed in God's love.

And Jesus' death confronted the power and consequence of sin, and his resurrection announced that sin and death would not have the final word over our lives.

So as I wrap up, the question and the invitation today is where am I living through someone else's spirituality instead of cultivating my own?

Not thinking about the person next to you or the person you're like, I've got to send this message to when it gets published tomorrow morning because I want them to think about these things.

But yourself.

Remember how we started this.

Our community is the culmination of you in your own spiritual journey.

Where have your claims about faith outrun the way you're actually living?

Where's that discrepancy between you s what I say and how I act?

What are you working hard to keep hidden?

The deep dark secrets that you don't want people to know but are killing you?

They're rotting you from the inside out.

Is there a truth that you need to admit, a sin you need to confess, a relationship and maybe a mistake you made that you need to take responsibility for?

We bring all of those things into the light because that is where fellowship with one another becomes possible and where the cleansing grace of Jesus meets us.