1 John 1:1-4 Many of the themes in the gospel of John are reflected
in this epistle. John's gospel closed with his statement that it was an
eyewitness account, which he opens his letter with. He then draws in the themes
from John 17, in which Jesus prayed that His followers would be one with each
other, and with Him and the Father, and that they would have joy in these
relationships.
1 John 1:5-10 John immediately gets to the issue of sin. In this
passage he makes a distinction between acts of sin, and walking in darkness.
God is light without darkness. (John 14:30) It is not a law, but simply a
logical impossibility to walk with Him and be in darkness. The problem of
individual acts of sin is dealt with through the cleansing by the blood of
Christ. If we deny that we sin then we are still walking in darkness, and it is
logically impossible for His blood to cleanse of sins we have not taken to Him.
An additional attribute of this is fellowship with other believers. The
brotherly love of believers is recognized by the world (John 13:35), but the
people of the world cannot enter into it until they accept and practice walking
in the light according to this pattern. As Jesus told Nicodemus, this is
because they love the things in the darkness too much to give them up and come
to the light. (John 3:19-20)
No comments:
Post a Comment