1 John 1:5–7

Original Meaning

God Is Light (1:5)

IN VERSE 5 John narrows his thought to give the essence of the message5 he has brought to his readers. But note again, as in the prologue, that John appeals to historic revelation as the anchor of what he believes. “In him” (though ambiguous in Greek) no doubt refers to Jesus. John’s reflex is to build everything he says theologically on the revelation, the historic revelation, he witnessed in the life of Jesus Christ (cf. 1:1–3). It is fair to ask why he does this. In 2:20–21 we will see how the problems in the church are essentially pneumatic. They stem from prophets who, under the alleged inspiration of the Spirit, are teaching false things. John’s first response when faced with such teachings is to train his followers that theology must be anchored objectively or else it will be shaped by any whim or inspiration. Theology must always begin with recitation in which we examine and state clearly what God has already said in history. This special revelation, then, becomes the check on our inspirations and our speculations.

When John affirms that God is light, he is recalling an idea whose lineage begins in the Old Testament. In Exodus 3 Moses experiences God as fire. In 13:21 God’s presence as fire illumines the way the Israelites travel in the desert (cf. Num. 9). Thus when the tabernacle is erected, God’s presence is signaled with fire in the golden lampstands (8:1–4). Fire brings light, and so similarly God is described as light. Hence Psalm 104:2 says, “[God] wraps himself in light as with a garment,” and the psalmist appeals to him, “Let the light of your face shine upon us, O LORD” (4:6). God’s working among people is consistently described as the bringing of light that eliminates darkness (Ex. 13:21; 2 Sam. 22:29; Ezra 9:8; Pss. 13:3; 18:28; 19:7–8).

John also appeals to the coming of Jesus that is described in the Gospels as the revelation of light. When the baby Jesus is presented at the temple, Simeon celebrates his coming as a “light for revelation” (Luke 2:32). Matthew sums up Jesus’ early ministry citing Isaiah to describe Jesus’ messiahship in terms of a great light to those in darkness (Matt. 4:16). But it is unlikely that John had these Synoptic texts in front of him. If we are correct that the Johannine community possessed an early draft of the Fourth Gospel as its unique record of Jesus’ life, John may likely be appealing to passages such as John 1:5 (“The light shines in the darkness”) or 1:9 (“The true light that gives light to every man was coming into the world”). This is particularly likely since we have already observed the heavy dependence of the present verses on the Johannine prologue. Furthermore, in John 3:19–21 the Baptist uses the light metaphor for Jesus, and in 8:12 Jesus actually says, “I am the light of the world” (also see 9:5; 12:35, 46). In fact, in the Gospel of John itself some variation on the word “light” (either as noun or verb) occurs over forty times.6

The implication for Johannine theology is simple. Since God is light, Jesus in bringing God to us has likewise brought light, divine light. But there is something curious at work in the present verse. Of the many uses of “light” in the Johannine literature, the vast bulk refer to Jesus as the light (in the Gospel, nineteen of twenty-three uses refer to Jesus). While John’s emphasis usually is Christological, in the present verse he makes a stark theological assertion not in keeping with his usual tendency. John generally places Christ, not God, in sharp relief. His writings make only three absolute affirmations about God: God is Spirit (John 4:24), God is light (1 John 1:5), and God is love (4:8). Why has John not gone on here to urge that Jesus is the light?

The importance of this theological image for 1 John should not be missed. John seems to be appealing to a slogan used by his opponents, since in the next five verses he will cite them precisely. Among Gnostics light was a premier metaphor for God, for Gnosticism promoted a religion of mystic enlightenment. As C. H. Dodd writes on these verses, “Anyone who speaks in this way is at home in the religious world of first-century Hellenism.”7 As early as Plato, light imagery formed the conceptual basis of Near Eastern dualism. Even Philo, who merged Hellenism with Judaism, affirms, “God is light, and not light only, but the archetype of every other light, or rather, more ancient and higher than any archetype (De Somniis, 1.75).”8 Thus John may be staking out some common ground, laying a framework from which to assault the error at hand.

Indeed, John says, God is light. He is pure, perfect, and utterly righteous. And above all, light is revealing. Light unveils our spiritual identity—whether we abide in the Son—and it identifies boldly those who live in darkness. Therefore light also has a judging function, for it unveils. This is not an idle theological speculation for John. God stands in contrast to darkness, to evil, to error, to imperfection. Implicit in this notion, therefore, is a challenge: Do we live in God’s light or are we exposed, discovered to be in the darkness?

Bridging Contexts

THE ORIGINAL CONTEXT of these verses is governed by the imagined opponents John paraphrases in verse 5. People were claiming to have intimate fellowship with God and were arguing that they had achieved some sort of religious perfection (see 1:8–10). They were enlightened. John has the difficult pastoral task of telling them that they are in darkness, not in light. His words even seem harsh when he refers to their life as a “lie” that fails to “live by the truth.” No doubt we need to keep an eye on the larger setting beyond the scope of these few verses to see the problem more clearly. These people were denying essential ideas within the Christian faith, ideas that have consequences for both belief and living.

John’s initial impulse parallels what he did in the prologue. His message originated with the one whom he has heard, seen, and touched. His message is anchored in the historic life of Jesus Christ. This is no doubt to be contrasted with others making theological claims that are not so anchored. John’s opponents may well be inspired teacher/prophets who are working outside the historic traditions, and John is here recalling the church to its traditional moorings.

I can only speculate how his historic appeal may have worked. His community did not possess the Scriptures as we do. We cannot even be certain if they owned any of the Synoptic Gospels or any of Paul’s letters. Thus when John reminds them of historic revelation, to what does he refer? Some see here an appeal to the Fourth Gospel. This is attractive particularly since there are so many parallels between 1 John and the Fourth Gospel. Perhaps the interpretation of the Fourth Gospel had become a battleground in this church. Perhaps there was uncertainty about just what this historic revelation meant! This is especially true in a pneumatic/charismatic setting, where teachers under the presumed guidance of the Spirit may have been deriving new meanings out of the text. If John’s community was pneumatic/charismatic as we explained in the introduction, he himself is practicing this sort of “inspired exegesis.” The Fourth Gospel nowhere says “God is light—in him there is no darkness at all.” And yet John has deduced this from the many things the Scriptures do say. Here is the point: If John can do this, why not his opponents? In a pneumatic/charismatic environment, the weapons of the heretics often come from the pastor’s own arsenal.14 If John himself and his church experienced the revelatory Spirit—as John 16:12–13 warrants—it is no surprise to find the secessionists doing the same.

First, then, there is this claim to intimate spiritual fellowship with God that shows us that John’s controversy is an “in-house” matter. These are individuals who are living in proximity to the church, who are claiming to be Christians, and John must use utter candor to tell them they are in error. The original context clearly describes people with a bent toward Gnostic dualism. Second, John suggests that one by-product of living in the light is shared fellowship. Perhaps we might reverse this truth. Any pursuit of spirituality that fractures the community, that cultivates a religious elitism, must surely be a faith lived in darkness. And third, most surprising of all, such community is predicated on forgiveness—not one Christian forgiving another, but God purifying his people of a condition of the heart from which they need rescue. If John’s opponents were claiming some religious perfection, this exhortation to be forgiven implies imperfection. Anyone in a religious setting who no longer feels humbled by the need for God’s mercy will show little mercy to others.

As I work to bridge contexts, three themes therefore emerge as crucial to the meaning of the passage: (1) the pastoral task of exhortation; (2) the quality of our Christian fellowship; and (3) our experience of forgiveness. However, in all candor, bridging these themes to our world is not as easy as it may seem. We will take them one at a time.

(1) We live in a world that is hardly open to public—much less private—exhortation. To import the Johannine dualism (above/below; light/dark; right/wrong) into today’s church invites criticism of intolerance. “You’re being judgmental!” “You’re laying a guilt trip on us!” Nevertheless, John demands that we be equipped to identify and confront those who are in error. Once when I directed the adult education program in a large church, I was forced to confront an eager, popular teacher who wanted to volunteer to teach adult education courses. And yet we all knew he professed some seriously deficient beliefs. “But he wants to serve; he cares about the church.” Saying no to him was a costly decision for our entire staff.

(2) The second theme is also challenging. If religious passion, if spiritual zeal sets apart people from the mainstream of the church, should it be stopped? John’s community was fragile, and these secessionists no doubt were ruining the corporate body. But do we not want passion? John almost sounds as if the unity of the whole must dictate to the freedom of the part. Must the few members “on fire” wait patiently for the lethargic majority? To carry this principle to an extreme is a prescription for church paralysis. I once observed a pastor trying to negotiate between “the mainstream” and “the passionate” over the renewal of the worship service. “You’ll have to be patient,” he said to the few year after year until they finally lost interest. Some remained in their discouragement. Others found a new church home.

(3) The third theme—forgiveness—is something we talk about frequently. Naturally, therefore, modern audiences are used to it. But our impulse is to repair brokenness, to rebuild esteem, to affirm grace. John’s impulse is to remind people that they must be humble. He concentrates on the prerequisite for forgiveness—sin and imperfection. We concentrate on the consequences of forgiveness—healing and grace. Are candid discussions of sinfulness lost in the church today?

Contemporary Significance

TWO OF MY grandparents were articulate, devoted members of Christian Science. I have strong memories from my youth of summer afternoons in California speaking with them about Mary Baker Eddy’s Science and Health and questioning what it meant for her to reinterpret the Bible. While I was in college they gave me my own copy of Science and Health, and it was then that I began to see that the book promoted breathtaking departures from Christianity. I once marked the margin of a few particularly troubling pages and brought my questions to their home. For example, Mary Baker Eddy had written the following on the atonement:

Wisdom and love may require many sacrifices of self to save us from sin. One sacrifice, however great, is insufficient to pay the debt of sin. The atonement requires constant self-immolation on the sinner’s part. That God’s wrath should be vented upon His beloved Son, is divinely unnatural.15

Does not this contradict the clear New Testament teaching about Christ’s death? Had Eddy never read Hebrews? Or Romans? Later the book talked about sin:

To get rid of sin through Science, is to divest sin of any supposed mind or reality, and never to admit that sin can have intelligence or power, pain or pleasure. You conquer error by denying its verity.16

Does not this denial of sin’s reality contradict a basic New Testament teaching too? If sin is not real, then I have no need of a genuine Savior. Of course the explanations of these passages came to me in lengthy, turgid paragraphs, most of which I could not understand. But I remember one moment clearly. When I pointed out what seemed to be a contradiction between Science and Health and the plain sense of one Bible passage, my grandmother’s answer was clear, “Your lack of understanding simply means you’re too immature. The deeper things are beyond your reach.” And that was that! End of discussion! I was uninitiated, an outsider, an unbeliever—and so the depths of Science and Health were inaccessible to me.17 As I think back on it today, I marvel at how this outlook mirrors that of the opponents of 1 John.

It is easy enough to spot this sort of phenomenon in a religious movement that has broken with the mainstream of Christian orthodoxy. Such new scriptures and new interpretations of the Bible produce a religious mysticism with its own coded theology. But this passage leads me to ask something more difficult: To what extent do such religious substrata exist in the church? Or to use John’s language, are there Christians in our churches who are walking in darkness and still claim to have a profound intimacy with God? These are not fallen Christians. These are keenly articulate religious people whose spiritual zeal is impressive but whose instinct for truth is sorely damaged.

(1) Are we taking “the darkness” seriously? That is, are we ready to admit that our congregations may well contain men and women whose lives have been swamped by some dubious religious experience? Is it possible that they have departed from the faith, even slipped into apostasy? This is the full scope of John’s notion of darkness, and he is serious about it. On the other hand, do we look the other way? I am impressed with the boldness and courage John shows in these verses, for he was willing to risk warning his fellow believers.

Risk is inherent in any such warning because those who enjoy these experiences or who have embraced unorthodox theological ideas usually argue that they are spiritually enriching. I recall serving once as an interim pastor in a Tennessee Presbyterian church where most of the men of the congregation were active Masons. Secrecy and quasi-religious rituals were in abundance, and worse yet, I feared, most of the decisions about the church were being made at the Masonic Hall next door.18 But to mention anything critical of the Masons or to fail to incorporate Masonic life into the church’s calendar brought serious complaints. What would John do? I am convinced John would have addressed such situations head-on. Here there was syncretism at work, blending the Christian faith with breathtaking superstitions. John would have named the darkness, diagnosed the problem, and sought a remedy.

I have witnessed other tragic examples of the darkness as well. In one congregation, a local evangelist in the Pentecostal tradition was planting a new church and encouraging people to take out second mortgages to finance the buildings. His preaching was powerful and members of our church felt renewed in ways they could barely describe. When this pastor disappeared one week with $65,000, the faith of many was crushed beyond repair. In another congregation an influential evangelist came to town with a prophetic ministry; services were conducted to “recall prayers and vows” uttered without thinking. Somehow such prayers were echoing around in heaven and could have a troubling effect on lives if not “exorcised” from “heavenly courts.” I still remember the heavy-handed, manipulative ministry of this preacher as he enticed families into his web.

As Christian leaders we are called to protect our sheep, and this means calling the darkness what it is. Religious darkness is all the more insidious because it clothes itself in a piety that cannot always be recognized by its victims. As I write, a new cult group has arrived in Wheaton and is “evangelizing” our students. Its advocates are well-dressed and pious, and they carry Bibles. But they undermine the truth of the gospel. The Way International has a deficient understanding of Christ (which is utterly Arian), a hostile view of the local church, and an aggressive system of folding new followers into its small groups. We must mobilize to identify it and defend our sheep against it.

(2) Does spiritual righteousness lead to separation? That is, if we are mature in Christ, if we enjoy a holy, excellent walk with the Lord, if we have been powerfully immersed in the Spirit, should this lead us to separate ourselves from other Christians? I am not here concerned with our obligation to remain separate from the world. Here I have in mind mature Christians who have cultivated an elitist view of their place in the body of Christ.

When I was a graduate student in Aberdeen, Scotland, I met a wonderful teacher/pastor who was also working on a Ph.D. in New Testament. As we became good friends, I learned that he belonged to a branch of the Church of Christ. I was utterly astonished to learn how we could not share the Lord’s Table together. He was forbidden even to attend our Scottish church but had to drive hours each Sunday to Inverness to find a small band of like-minded souls. Theologically these people believed that they were the only true body of Christ. And their exclusive fellowship could not be compromised with outsiders like Baptists and Presbyterians.

This is a tragic example that puts in bold relief realities that take place on a more subtle level each Sunday in our churches. Spiritual elitism stalks congregational life regularly. But John’s test is sure: Those who draw near to Christ, who walk in the light, work hard to cultivate the fellowship of the body. Sometimes charismatic Christians are the ones who separate themselves by trying to form a circle of people with similar experiences. Sometimes it is Christians who have discovered a dynamic leader with a new message within the congregation, and their identity is now being shaped by him or her. Sometimes it is young couples eager for community who form their own clique as they try to cultivate koinonia with no regard for the larger community. Sometimes it is Christians like us who become a bit too sure of their understanding of Christian faith.

(3) Is the forgiveness of God in Christ at the center of our fellowship? One of the chief problems of spiritual elitism is its self-diagnosis: It has few needs; it is complete; it has arrived. It is conscious of who is “in” and who is “out.” And left unchecked, it develops into spiritual arrogance.

Those who walk in the light have an ongoing sense of needing forgiveness and being forgiven. When purity is a gift, when the mercy and grace of God are foremost in our experience, spiritual elitism dies. We cannot criticize those whose growth is less than ours because were it not for God’s graciousness, we would be immature too. When community is forged in the context of grace, generosity and mercy become commonplace.

Perhaps one of the most stunning examples of this came from a friend of mine who had recently experienced the power of the Holy Spirit. Since I had often spoken up in defense of charismatic renewal movements, he confided in me about his experience, his relation to our church, and his disdain for the character of its leadership. For him, life in our congregation was a mission. It was a chance for him to help the pastor discover God’s power and to aid less fortunate men and women meet the Spirit. He formed around himself a clique of spiritually keen people—a “Bible study,” they called it—that operated outside the network of small groups in the church. In reality it was a ministry that aimed to compensate for the deficiencies of the church’s pastors.

What troubled me the most about this man and his friends was that they were singularly unteachable. They possessed the Spirit, and therefore their spiritual authority was to be unquestioned. God’s light could not penetrate them because they were walking in the darkness, and yet they argued that they were in the light. Either the church had to change to their way of thinking or they threatened to leave.

Each of these issues—living blinded by the darkness, spiritual elitism that damages fellowship, the absence of a need for forgiveness—are connected. They spring from a religious experience that cultivates our pride. We have arrived in the inner sanctum, and all others must either join us or be excluded. Perhaps the most sinister side of this pride is that sincere Christians can genuinely deceive themselves. The darkness can take many forms, but like wolves posing as sheep, darkness covers its victims in false light. They are confident that they are divinely illumined, confident that all else is darkness. But they are wrong.

In some cases, it is prideful Christians who deceive themselves that they can flirt with things that cannot harm them. Their tenure in the church, their theological degrees, and/or their prominence and recognition convince them that they are stronger than the darkness. Their misplaced pride brings ruin. I recently read Sins of the Body and was profoundly sobered by the book’s description of sexual sin among Christian leaders.19 The deception we live with and the rationalizations we accept build a harrowing picture of the darkness of sin.

Perhaps it is good to give darkness a closer definition. Of course it includes wrong doctrine. But it also includes the power of the evil one and his demons. It also includes sin in its many sophisticated forms. Generally speaking, darkness is an atmosphere that denies the truth of God and forbids his light to enter. It is like fog on a sunny morning that is so thick it obscures the way we are driving and makes us wonder if the sun is out at all. Darkness is where God’s glory cannot be found. To be sure, Satan creates darkness and is its prince. But we also are capable of doing the same through our fallen choices, our deception, and our sinfulness. And before long, we become so accustomed to darkness that we forget what true light really is.

John is looking for a model of Christian life that is like a circle of light on a stage, perhaps a spotlight in a darkened theater. At once the darkness around it is most prominent. A boundary is evident. And yet the circle is created by God’s penetrating light. It is a light that is pure, hard, revealing, and guiding. And those who walk in this light discover lives that are knit together by God’s forgiveness and redemption. To walk in this light is ultimately humbling. But at the same time it is also healing, renewing, and invigorating.

Original Meaning

Life in the Darkness (1:6)

ALTHOUGH THE GREEK text of verse 6 uses indirect discourse, it is helpful to convert verses 6, 8, and 10 into direct discourse to see that John is confronting three false ideas, possibly three slogans well known in this church. Six “if” clauses (Gk. ean clauses) appear in 1:6–2:1; three are negative and three are positive.

1:6 If we say, “We have fellowship with him,” yet walk in the darkness	1:7 But if we walk in the light as he is in the light …
1:8 If we say, “We have no sin”	1:9 But if we confess our sins …
1:10 If we say, “We have not sinned”	2:1 But if anybody does sin …

Each of these statements, paraded out so carefully for us, is a subtle variation on the same theme. Individuals in John’s church were claiming that they had an intimate walk with God, that their lives were unstained with sin, and that they had done no wrong. The issue was not some disagreement over specific acts of purported wrongdoing. They were not refusing to acknowledge some sin for which John is rebuking them. The problem lay deeper; verse 6 hints that these Christians were living a double life. Many people in John’s day believed that God was detached from the material world, that his holiness and purity set him above the common stuff of our existence. This explains, for instance, why his opponents had such a difficult time with incarnational theology (1:1–4; 4:2). God is ineffable light, pure and perfect. He cannot enter into the banal stuff of human history.

But there is an important ethical corollary here. If God is utterly removed from our world, if his existence is unaffected by earthly, material concerns, then behavior outside the spiritual context is unimportant. Earthly things and heavenly things exist in different spheres. In fact, a spiritual appraisal and a moral appraisal of one’s life can be quite distinct. These Christians were claiming that sin is unimportant—they were not of the world—and that God only looks on the inward condition of a man’s or a woman’s soul.

John says that no such division is possible. A good God expects good people. A God of light expects lives that are permeated by such light. In verse 6 John describes this moral conduct as “walking” (Gk. peripateo) in darkness. This is a Semitic idiom akin to the Jewish term halakah. The religious life is not merely a matter of spiritual reflection or intellectual persuasion, rather, it is comprehensive. It is a habit of walking, a way of living (cf. Prov. 8:20; Isa. 2:5; Eph. 5:2). These opponents were not just in darkness, they were living lives of darkness (conveyed by the present tense of peripateo). They were persistent, dogged, and tenacious in the habits they had chosen. Smalley translates the verb “living habitually in darkness” and says it “implies a determination to choose sin (darkness) rather than God (light) as one’s constant sphere of existence.”9

This sort of spirituality is a lie. Again, John draws on dramatic verbs to uncover this religious falsehood. While the NIV translates that such people fail to “live” by truth, the Greek text employs another Semitic idiom that is much more dynamic. People living this lie do not “do” (Gk. poieo) the truth.10 Truth is an essential concept for John. Nearly half of all its uses in the New Testament appear in John (of 109 uses, 25 are in John’s Gospel and 20 in his letters). Truth describes not only the reality of God’s existence shown to us in Christ (hence doctrinal truth) but also the genuineness of pure religion, true religion, true personal conduct that coheres with the essence of God’s character.11 John’s opponents were not just ignorant of some fact about God—they were hostile. They had not simply overlooked something about God; they were lying and self-deceiving in their conduct. John 3:21 provides a parallel critique: “But whoever does the truth comes into the light, so that it may be revealed that what he has done has been done through God” (pers. tr.; cf. 8:44). Such conduct prefers to remain in darkness because living in the presence of God’s light would expose its error.