I have spent a large portion of my life practicing law. Whether a law practice is built inside the courthouse with complaints and motions and testimony or inside the law office with contracts and affidavits and notary acknowledgments, the idea is the same. Find the truth, define it, corral it, document it and base your conclusions on it. We are said to be a nation of laws and not of men. The point is that we seek justice blindly in the law without regard to family or influence or color or gender. It often does not happen the way the blueprint reads, but that is the noble intent of our system, however flawed.
The law seeks the truth wherever it may be found. We honor the application of fact to legal principle, so we become fact finders. We get our facts from witnesses of all kinds, be it forensic or eye-witness or ear-witness or circumstantial. It forms a body of evidence from which we form our proofs and upon which we base our conclusions.
In the first century, the early church struggled to find its center and to establish its truths. That struggle would continue for several hundred years. Arguably, it continues to this day. Witness the number of mainline denominations of the Christian church. There are hundreds of offshoots of those denominations. The problem is not new. It existed in John’s day as well. The book of 1 John was written no later than the 90’s AD and almost certainly by the apostle John. At this point, he was much advanced in age, the senior citizen, indeed probably the only one left alive, of the Twelve.
What does the law have to do with our message today from John? John, too, is a truth seeker and he understands that there is only one truth when it comes to Christianity. Where is the truth? John knows and he writes this letter to defend the true faith against a movement called Gnosticism. But first, he must establish his credentials. He says that he has heard, that he has seen with his eyes, that he has looked upon, that he has touched with his hands…the word of life. He had, too. He was one of the first disciples called by Jesus. He was the one who was called the beloved disciple. Yes, he had seen it all, and he had survived it all to his old age.
He had left Jerusalem
John warns against sin. He writes almost as a grandfather would. He prefaces his remarks with terms like “my little children.” His is a cautionary tale about what the truth really is, but he writes with affection for his audience. His message is all positive. He says he writes “so that our joy might be complete.”
John’s audience was a Christian community that was showing signs of division. Some members, including teachers, had already separated themselves from the others and were in the process of setting up their own religious community (2:19). Not only that. the ones who had left would not leave well enough alone. They kept trying to get others to follow suit (2:26). The worst of it was that what started out as hypothetical questions had turned into doctrine for the new sect. Chapter 2 of 1st John is loaded with all the false doctrine emerging. Many of the statements recited there form part of what would come to be called Gnosticism. Gnosticism saw God as light but rejected Jesus as coming in the flesh, viewing him only as a philosophical concept. They separated spirit from flesh, calling spirit good and flesh bad. This gave them excuses for what they did or did not do with their bodies. They did not view the flesh as anything more than a container for the Spirit.
John realized that this movement was important. He saw that it was spreading and would continue to spread and gain influence. He knew that it was false doctrine and that it must be addressed. And yet as he instructs, he writes kindly as one might to his children. He lifts up rather than scolds. He talks in a very positive manner about reaffirming that body of doctrine which is vital to the Christian community. He proclaims the life, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus as the foundational features of our faith. He calls Jesus the “eternal life, which was with the Father and was made manifest to us –.”
John goes on to say that Christ is not optional; rather, he is essential. For John and for us, to walk in the way and the light of Jesus is to walk in fellowship with God himself. To walk in any other way is to practice that which simply is not true. He says to the Gnostic position that the body and the spirit are separate and that the spirit is essentially good—that only the blood of Jesus can separate us from our sin. To say that we have no sin is false doctrine and nothing less than the deceit of ourselves. Our bodies and our spirits are inextricably bound together. If it were not so, would our Savior have endured the pain and humiliation of the cross? Of course not. His body and his spirit were bound just as are ours.
Well…that was then and this is now. We are in no danger of such ridiculous notions, right? If that is so, why do we have so many religions, so many denominations? Why do we have schism threatening us right now in our own denomination? Because, as our dear John says to us: “if we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.” We do have sin. Only Jesus is without sin. Any creed that teaches otherwise is false doctrine. John’s opponents would claim that their superior spiritual righteousness, obtained through the pursuit of knowledge, left them supposedly pure and without sin. This denial of sin gave them liberty to gossip, to boast, and to engage in all kinds of wrongful behavior because they were now “above” sin. After all, the body is separate from the spirit, right? Wrong! This is not Christian; this is heresy.
Some Gnostic Christians saw the scriptures as irrelevant or at least relative. John points out kindly but clearly that this too is false doctrine, that to deny sin is to deny the witness of both Scripture and the gospel itself. John tells us that if we say we have not sinned, then we make God out to be a liar. We make a mockery of the gospels and the life of Jesus. John testifies again in his old age that Jesus is real, that his life, his death, his sacrifice, his resurrection…are real. John saw it, heard it, touched it. He tells his Christian audience again that the good news is completely and utterly real…that Jesus is the word…the word of life itself.
John reminds us that in this world of facts and figures and science, there is yet another fact…the fact that Jesus came and died and rose and ascended…and did it all for us. John reminds us that no amount of education, no amount of denial and no amount of self delusion can erase the truth that Jesus is who he said and did what he said he would do. Near the end of his life, the beloved disciple reaches out to touch those who are within the sound of his voice and, lucky for us, within the reach of his pen. He does so because of love, the love that Jesus showed to him and taught to him, the love that is still offered to us regardless of our breeding or our opinions or even our stubbornness. “He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the world,” says John.
I have a friend and client for whom I care very much. She calls herself Christian but disdains church. I have tried to reach her in a number of ways, but so far, none of the seeds I have sown has taken root to my knowledge. Last week is a good example. I asked her about her Easter Sunday and she shared with me a story of hiding a hundred Easter eggs for grandchildren. She said it helped relieve her stress to see them hunting for the eggs. I couldn’t help but feel even more frustrated as I listened to her story. Her stress will not get better because she looks for cures within herself. Easter is the greatest day in the life of a Christian, the greatest hope for all mankind. It marks the victory over death and evil. Easter eggs are nice for little children, but Christian adults know where they should be on the day they celebrate our Lord’s resurrection from the dead. Who will teach these children about Jesus if we don’t? What will remind us of our Savior if we do not fellowship with Christians? Today we run the risk of becoming jaded to the everyday miracles occurring all around us as we seek to confine the Gospel to bite size chunks that suit our appetite. It can’t be done. Jesus is the word of life.
We are not much removed from those straying Christians of the first century. We all like to play God and make our own rules. John’s lesson today reminds us, his little children, that we should not play with God. There really is only one set of rules, no matter how much we may wish otherwise from time to time. What sets us apart as Christians is not that we do not sin, but that we have an advocate. Our Savior stands in the gap and pays the price for those who believe and repent. We still sin, but we can rest in the promise that both our bodies and our spirits are in his hands. He is faithful. He forgives. He cleanses. This is the truth that John wants his church…and our church…to believe. Jesus is not a concept. He is our Savior and he lives today as he has from the beginning! He is---the Word of Life!
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