“Our Meaningful Message Is Valid and Valuable”
“What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” “Life is a mystery.” “Good things come to those who wait.” Can I reasonably assume that you have heard, or maybe said, at least one of these phrases? Perhaps you’ve heard them all. And what they all have in common is that we would probably use them in a bad situation. We would tell them to someone who is suffering in some way, someone trying to figure out why things are not the way they had hoped or wanted them to be. If everything is going just fine, we don’t worry too much about whether life is a mystery. If we’re not facing challenges, then we’re not focused on the troubles that could make us stronger so long as they don’t kill us first. And if I already have the good things, I am not too concerned about waiting.
But how useful are these phrases, really, when people are facing challenges? If I were to visit you after a round of chemotherapy and find you tired and worried and feeling awful, would you be pleased to hear me say, “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger”? If you have been distraught about a financial challenge and struggling with not just what to do but also why this is happening, would it help to have a friend say, “Well, life is a mystery”? And what if a relationship has been strained, and you’re dealing with that pain. Does it help at all for someone to say, “Good things come to those who wait”? While people might default to these sorts of phrases because they have heard them or they don’t know what else to say, there is nothing particularly meaningful about them.
So it is our joy to consider, to hear, and to share a message that is actually meaningful. The several verses of 1 John that we read as our Second Reading will help us consider this message today and what makes it different than the other options we’ve heard or any other message that the world might suggest to us. What sets apart the message of Scripture, the message of Jesus, the message God inspired John to share with us is that it is both true and useful. In other words, our meaningful message is valid and valuable.
God moved the Apostle John to write these words in a letter to his dear children in the faith. He introduced the letter with four verses which we heard in our worship services last week, emphasizing that he had the experience of seeing Jesus and touching him. John was speaking from the position of an eyewitness. And so he launches into the heart of his message with the words of our text: 5This is the message we heard from him and proclaim to you: God is light. In him there is no darkness at all. 6If we say we have fellowship with him but still walk in darkness, we are lying and do not put the truth into practice.
And in John’s own unique style, he has in just a few short verses introduced the theme to which he will circle back several times in our section. He has a message. It is the message that is so vital for him to share and for his hearers to focus on. It is a message about God, and it is a message about us. The briefest way to summarize the message is this: God is light. Expanding on that, John says that in him is no darkness.
So those who have fellowship with God will walk in godly ways. They walk in the light. And we can’t simply claim to be walking in the light. If we claim to have fellowship with God, we can’t go on walking in darkness. John wants us to learn as a part of this meaningful message the truth about ourselves.
He returns to that truth several times in these verses. The truth is that we are sinful people. We have lived in darkness. We cannot claim to be free from sin. That is deceiving ourselves and calling God a liar. Do you see how important the truth is when it comes to finding a meaningful message?
The truth is essential. For a meaningful message to be valid, it has to be accurate. We can’t be sure that good things will always come to those who wait, but we can be absolutely sure of the truth about our lives. We were born in darkness. If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us.
We’ve also learned this truth from our experience. We’ve felt the tug of a guilty conscience. We’ve seen the suffering that comes from the actions we have done. We need an answer to our unrighteousness. God’s Word makes it absolutely clear that we have sinned, and we dare not claim that God is a liar.
And it would be easy for us to stop there and say, “Of course that’s right. I am a sinner like everyone else. I confess my sins along with the congregation in almost every Sunday service. I did so already today. I know the truth.” But that is easy to say in this moment and easy to confess in general terms. What about when it comes time to apologize for our behavior? How do we respond when someone tells us that we have hurt them or wronged them or caused damage in the relationship? Don’t we try to excuse or lay blame somewhere else? Don’t we try to explain why I had reasons for doing what I did? Don’t we try to rationalize away our sins? And don’t we love to present ourselves to the world as something other than what we know we are?
When John talks to us about the contrast between light and darkness, doesn’t that make us glad that the light doesn’t shine too brightly on all those things that we would so love to keep hidden from others? They can’t see all of the faults and all of the selfishness and all of the pettiness and anger and falsehood. But God can. And we are forced to confront it when things really get serious and we really worry about our lives. We have to confront it when we think seriously about what God tells us. We are forced to admit that the message that we are sinners is absolutely valid. It is completely true. It can’t possibly do us any good to listen to a different message. We have no reason to accept messages that float around society that all people are basically good or just need to do the best with what they have. The truth is the truth.
But John never leaves us with just that one part of the message. As many times as he emphasizes for us our sinful condition, he is right there with the truth about God’s love. God is light, and in spite of the darkness of our sins, he still wants fellowship with us. God is faithful and just. He wants us to confess our sins because he wants to cleanse us from our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. He doesn’t want to abandon us to darkness. He does not want to see people face the torments of hell forever. He calls us to walk in the light. He assures us that the blood of Jesus Christ, his Son, cleanses us from all sin.
The meaningful message is incomplete if we stop with the truth about us. If we truly understand our sin, then we know that we cannot help ourselves. We cannot save ourselves. That’s why God shows us our Savior. He shows us his Son, Jesus Christ, who came to live in our place not in darkness but in the light and truth of God’s Word and God’s will and God’s love. He is the Advocate we have when we sin. Jesus pleads our case. He tells the judge that we are not guilty. And because he is the Righteous One, he has the case to plead. He points to his own sacrifice. He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins and for the sins of the whole world. He faced the penalty we deserved. He died the death that our sin earned. Jesus fixes our darkness and brings us into the light of fellowship with God. Jesus fixes our sins and gives us forgiveness. Jesus has faced hell for us so that now heaven is our home. And that is a message that seems too good to be true. But it is guaranteed by Christ’s resurrection. John talks in our verses today about Christ’s blood and his sacrifice, but the reason we know that the sacrifice is complete and the blood is our sincleanser is that Jesus rose from the dead. And John saw it with his own eyes. He was with Jesus in the room when he appeared to the disciples. He saw Jesus eat and heard him commission his disciples to bear witness to it.
And along with Peter, that is just what John did on occasions like their time with the crowd after the healing of a crippled beggar (Acts 3:11-20). And that is what John does as he encourages us with the verses before us today. The message he shares is valuable because it changes everything. It motivates us to live in the light right now, and it assures us of the eternal joys of heaven. It is valid because it is true and real. Jesus actually died for you and truly rose again. It is a meaningful message for you to know and cherish and then to share.
There may be times to wonder whether life is truly a mystery. There may be occasions when we will wait for good things. Some things we suffer through can make us stronger. But we have something far better than any of those platitudes and empty messages. We have a message that is valid and true, valuable and lifechanging. We have something truly meaningful: we have Jesus, our risen Lord and the atoning sacrifice for all our sins.
The Text: 1 John 1:5–2:2 (EHV)
5This is the message we heard from him and proclaim to you: God is light. In him there is no darkness at all. 6If we say we have fellowship with him but still walk in darkness, we are lying and do not put the truth into practice. 7But if we walk in the light, just as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ, his Son, cleanses us from all sin. 8If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. 9If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. 10If we say we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar, and his Word is not in us.
2 My children, I write these things to you so that you will not sin. If anyone does sin, we have an Advocate before the Father: Jesus Christ, the Righteous One. 2He is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not only for ours but also for the whole world.