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“Three Ways We Walk as Christians” Sunday, May 24, 2009 Pastor Dave Schneider
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I 1 John 1:5-2:11
I. In a brand new commentary on the letters of John that just came out, Peter Rhea Jones sees this first letter as a series of movements, like a grand orchestral symphony. A. Dr. Jones, who teaches at the Southern Baptist Seminary at Mercer University in Macon, Georgia, writes: “Each movement of 1 John begins with a primary characteristic of God and ends with crucial aspects of Christology, especially the incarnational. 1. In his first movement the author begins his composition with God as light and draws corollaries about a church member’s walk. a. The way others see you walk in the light either confirms or discredits you as a Christian disciple. 2. We arrive at the final segment of this first movement in chapter 2:18-27 which poses the final test: either you confess the Son or deny him! a. There is no in between, no gray area. b. while the intervening material both encourages you and at the same time warns you.
B. So says Peter Jones, 1 John 1:5-2:11 should be read all “at once” and as one unit. Here two boasts are made by the church leader, or “Elder.”1. This material in chapter one “calls the tune”:a. “God is light.”(1) We even vfind this powerful affirmation in the Qumran community, i.e., the Dead Sea Scrolls.2. The second chapter, through verse 9, is now a spiritual assessment through a practical series of tests to be assessed with your own church fellowship:a. Is your life, your walk one of love ... or hate?b. Chapter 1 has that list of “If’s”– these conditional questions make up a test which is a “little less direct” or offensive.c. But the second series, 2:3-11, “takes a strong step toward a formal accusation of not walking in the light, of lying!3. The local setting indicates there is a faction in the congregation.a. These “opponents” of the current leadership boast they have “a privileged fellowship” with God. They claim a complete absence of personal sin, somehow ignoring their own hostility toward other church members.4. The first criticism leveled against them is their absence of love!a. “If we say you have no sin...”b. “if you say you love God whom you cannot see and if do not love your brother whom see, the truth is not in you, and you deceive yourself.”c. “we ought to walk in the same way in which he (Christ) walked...by this we may be sure that we are in him.”(1) (I have inverted the two phrases of 2:5 & 6.)5. John’s language is corporate, not singular–the sin is a congregational sin. The way I walk affects your life, either in the light or darkness.a. This is also why John addresses us as “children” or “little children.”b. This is at the same time a term of collective responsibility, also one of affection and endearment.
II. 1 John lists three ways of walking in the church: in order as he lists them, we walk in darkness, we walk in the light, and we walk in the same way in which he Jesus walked. First: walking in the darkness.A. A Rabbi tells a story about a blind man one winter afternoon who went to visit a friend.He had to walk a long way in the snow and through the forest, but he knew the way, he had walked it many times before. By the time the man was ready to return home, it had turned dark. So the blind man asked his friend to light a lamp and loan it to him. “Why do you need a lantern?” asked his host. “You cannot see anyway.” “No; the lantern is not for me, but so that others may see me.” 1. When the light is shining on you, how do others see you walking?a) Do you talk the talk, walk the walk?2. This is a strong ethical commentary on whether church members in their daily lives produce fruit or not.a) John Calvin says you and I were saved, not to go to heaven, but for a life of bearing fruit. If there is no fruit, this gives the lie to our claim of being Christian.3. In the darkness we may believe it is much harder to see how we walk. We imagine our activities and thoughts are private, like Nicodemus who came to Jesus in the dark of night. He did not want others to see him associating with this carpenter’s son. The ironic implication is that he went away born from above, walking in the light of Jesus!
B. In Galatians 5 Paul warns us about walking in the freedom we have in Christ. It is not easy; once we have been severed from the law, it is easy to abuse our new freedom in Christ and again submit to a yoke of slavery.1. Here he talks about “running well” or walking, and Paul also says what 1 John says to those people in the faction, the critics: “For the whole law is fulfilled in one word, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself. But if you bite and devour one another, take heed that you are not consumed...”2. This is the only place that “walking by the Spirit” (Galatians 5:16) is set in direct opposition to a list of negatives, walking in the darkness,” or again submitting to a slavery to the desires or the flesh.3. But Paul concludes, in the church family, “If we live by the Spirit, let us also walk by the Spirit. let us have no self-conceit, no provoking of one another, no envy of one another” (verse 25).4. John Calvin writes, a Christian cannot walk in darkness, or live in sin. This is precisely because we have been “cleansed” by Jesus’ blood from all unrighteousness.a) For Calvin there is a two-fold effect of our confession:(1) God has forgiven us unconditionally,(2) and second, God re-forms us to walk in his light.5. Thus the fellowship which John mentions can only exist if we also become “pure and full of light.”a) We want to be “a more light church.” That term unfortunatelyb) caries a different very liberal connotation!
C. Walking in darkness is of the devil, is one of giving in to the desires of the flesh and its enslavement, it if is not born of God, leads to a life of sinning and lies and ultimately death.1. The Gibeonites are a good example of what Paul and John are saying.
a. They not only deceived Joshua and his advisors,
b. but possibly they made up excuses among themselves that a
life of being cursed and
2. This later becomes a judgment against Joshua for not consulting God before making a covenant with these liars, for not walking in the light of God but the light of his own ego, after too many successful battles.
3. So the Gibeonites were relegated to a life or servitude, to be “hewers of wood and drawers of waters” for the Jews.
4. Subsequently, the Israelites were drawn into a costly war against 5 kings of the Amorites.
These were people with whom they
had no issue, but the Gibeonites did, and Joshua had
5. So one sin leads to another, a greater sin, and affects many more people.
III. the second kind of walking is the antithesis of walking in darkness; it is to “walk in the light as he is in the light.”A. Again, some Pauline language, or ethical talk:1. For Paul walking in the Spirit is identical to John’s walking in the light.a) Romans 13:13, “let us walk honestly as in the day.”b) Ephesians 5:2, & 8, “walk in love and as children of light.”c) Colossians 4:5, “walk in wisdom.”
B. Leave it to 1 John to tie it to concrete church activities:1. How you talk, those you have conversation with–a) joy, hope, and above all your love for fellow believersb) Stephen Covey in “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People,” says we associate with positive energy people, not negative energy folks, because the way our friends think and talk rubs off on you and me.c) How do you witness to your neighbor, share your faith with words?2. This then has implication on our hospitality–a) whether our hospitality is in good places with good intentionsb) be welcoming and receive people into your church.c) Don’t visit with people who will not let you get a foothold in the door3. third, your table fellowship–especially at the Lord’s Supper4. fourth, your worship5. and fifth, your discipleship–how you follow in Jesus’ footsteps.
IV. Which now brings us to the third way we walk as Christians, we “ought to walk in the same way in which he walked.”A. Always in the background of 1 John is the person of Christ, his work and his redeeming sacrifice for us through his blood.1. Since my high school days, my hero has been Father Junipero Serra, a Franciscan monk who was born on the island of Majorca in 1713. This devout man was “bent on a higher asceticism, he wanted from the beginning to identify himself with the walking friars who had become so famous in the New World.” (Don DeNevi & Noel Francis Moholy) (page3)He and his fellow missionaries started out in Vera Cruz, Mexico, without money or guide, accompanied only by their trust in the Almighty Divine, and their prayer books. He knew there were more Indians on the California coast per square mile than any other area in the United States, or a quarter of a million, Native American men, women and children Junipero Serra established his first mission, San Diego de Alcala on July 16, 1769. Over the next 15 years, until he died at the age of 70, he walked up and down the coast of California, more than 5,000 miles, planting 9 more missions between San Diego and San Francisco. His plan was that overland travelers need only spend 3 days/2 nights in the open between the missions. Toward the end of his career with his leg and foot swollen, Serra refused all remedies, and he refused to ride. If Christ walked, then his servant Junipero would also walk and keep up with the faster Spanish soldiers on horseback. 2. Notice this third kind of walk for John is described as a conditional ethical imperative, “we ought to walk...”a) It is not a “fait-accompli,” but a lifelong learning.3. Learning to walk we take for granted as adults. It is learned early in life only by experience, by falling and getting up and trying again, sometimes by hard knocks and a little crying.a) One of the first faculties that leaves us in old age is the strength of our legs.b) Peggy and I have a one year old grand-daughter Brynn Squires. Peggy has carefully described to me on the phone every bit of her progress...learning first to get a handhold and pull herself along the coffee table or a low chair while balancing on her unsteady feet...then measuring the distance between two objects and how many steps it takes–one or two...then taking a series of steps before she falls...and finally independence!– where she propels herself across the floor. She insists on this all by herself, she spurns any help, though so often she needs the steadier hand of a mother or a grandma.c) And just like Brynn you and I learn to walk the ethical walk of discipleship, never alone, but with the steadier help of more mature Christians.d) This past Wednesday at 7:30 I saw Richard and Mary Cohoon out walking together in the cool of the evening. It was the day before Kelly died. I asked them, “How far did you walk?” “Only twice around our block,” Mary told me. “We needed that walk for our spiritual composure.”e) It is apparent to me that our walk as a congregation these days has been happier, more friendly, more hopeful. One deacon described our meetings now as “convivial.” We affirm one another.4. In his call in the Gospel of John, Jesus invites the disciples to leave their nets and boats, to leave their homes, to leave John the Baptist and to follow him–that is, to walk the walk he walks.a) In the Gospel, chapter 1:35, John the Baptist the second dayafter meeting Jesus is standing with two of his disciples. “He looked at Jesus as he walked, and said, ‘Behold, the Lamb of God.’” b) When John’s two disciples heard this, they began to follow Jesus.
B. Their walk of discipleship is not to be successful until the very end, walking in the light of the resurrection.1. For until they see the risen Lord, they run away and hide. Only one disciple John follows him to the cross.2. In the Fourth Gospel, I think, it is significant, that the disciples seeking the resurrected Lord are not told to follow him into Galilee, where he will meet them. Rather in John Christ makes each of his risen appearances suddenly and surprises those among whom he appears.3. This is because in John I believe his appearances are directly from heaven.a) And so says Jesuit scholar Raymond Brown.4. An implication is that from this point forward the walk and talk of Christ is up to you and me.a) The “ought” is now present tense.5. The risen Lord’s final instruction to Peter in John 21 is the same as in the first call but now the meaning is fully understood and obeyed: “And after this he said to him, ‘Follow me.’”And now may all of God’s children say, “Amen.”
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