Introduced by Smedly Yates

Well, Jacob Hantla is preaching this morning and he needs no introduction. He is our student ministries pastor among many of the pastoral responsibilities that he carries. But I want, this morning, in introducing something of a graduation Sunday, highlighting our student ministries, to paint a little fuller picture of Jacob Hantla than you might have. He lives several lives. He is, of course, a Christian, a husband, and a dad. He is accomplished in many things in life. He has many skills and hobbies and interests. His breadwinning profession is in anesthesiology, and in that world, Jake is famous. He is an innovator, an inventor, an entrepreneur, a renowned innovator and instructor. Most days of the week, he saves someone’s life. His job is a real yawner. I mean, seriously, he puts people to sleep. If you’ve seen his license plate, it’s a personalized plate that reads “sedator.” Please don’t confuse that description with the roles and tasks that he has here at Grace Bible Church. If you ask Jake, “What do you do?” He will often say, “I’m a pastor at Grace Bible Church.” This is what he loves. He works hard at preaching and teaching and counseling and shepherding. He leads the student ministry staff that labor on behalf of our 6th to 12th graders week in and week out. You know their tireless efforts. You parents, you are aware of the sleepless nights, the hours of prayer, the labor in the word on behalf of our students. It bears much fruit. And all of these things—a full-time job that he and Kiki have in battling the multiple life-threatening and life-altering cancers in their family. And what a treasure this church has for its student ministries in a pastor like Jake. He’s been a pastor and elder over a decade with a shepherd’s heart. He is a seasoned and tried parent with a dad’s heart. And he is a student with a student’s heart. Always curious, always learning, always growing, a diligent student of God’s word who applies his work ethic from all of life into his pastoral life. He also applies his fun ethic for all of life into his pastoral life. And he is a rare breed among student ministries pastors in the world. We’re so thrilled to have him serve our church. Jake, come open the word for us.

Introduction & Student Ministries

Thanks, Smed. Praise God. Leading student ministries this last year has been one of the biggest honors and pleasures in my life. Almost every one of the names of people who came up is a sweet, precious soul that you parents have entrusted to me and to the staff that serves along with me. If you are on student ministry staff, it is a lot of people. Can you stand up? I just want to give honor to them. Stand up now. Give them a round of applause. There’s quite a few. Every Sunday evening during the school year, they are back there leading these kids.

The goal in student ministries is not to entertain. It’s not to have the kids have something fun to do to keep them in church or not distract us while you’re in evening service. It’s that they would come face to face with God in his word. That is the goal. And not only come face to face with God, but answer the question, “How must this affect me?” The students are used to me saying that. Those are phrases that I say almost every week, that I ask them and I ask you to ponder every day when you open the Bible. What does this reveal about God? How must this affect me? You can’t come face to face with God knowing who he is and come away unaffected. That’s what I hope that you get from today’s message. And that’s what I want the students to get in student ministries.

I pray and I hope that you pray with me that the students who come up through student ministries—if you’re a fifth grader, I think this is your first Sunday here, so now you know what you’re going to be getting. If you’re coming into student ministries, I want to make sure that by the time you leave, you’re not able to be unsure or ambivalent about your position before God. God demands a response and the only proper response is obedient faith and dependence on him.

And so we have a little bit of a problem in student ministries. We get a lot of good, doctrinally informed church kids. The evidence of your parenting is obvious. There’s a mix of believers and non-believers in there. Every week I’m pleading with dead people to come alive. I’m also encouraging Christians who’ve been made alive in Christ to obey, to be diligent, to make their calling and election more sure. We have a mixed crowd just like we have here in front of us today. And I’ve seen this unsure phase paralyze some of the kids. They’re like, “I don’t know if I’m obeying because my parents told me to, or maybe I’m obeying because I love the Lord. I want you to help me know.” And the student ministries leaders labor so well in this, that the kids want to know—many of them, “Am I a believer? I want to believe. Am I a believer? How do I know? How can I be saved?” And I want them to know that as a believer, God has granted to them everything they need for life and godliness. And it’s important if God has granted you this, that you are not bashful in taking advantage of all of those benefits that God’s given you.

So if you’re God’s child, even if you grew up in this church, even if your sin wasn’t as bad as some who never had the benefit of growing up in the church, or maybe if despite those benefits, you’ve walked away and returned to the Lord, know these benefits, live these benefits, cling to these benefits in faith.

So we say it often in student ministries: If you’re a Christian, if you want to be a Christian, whatever situation in life you face, say, “What would a Christian do?” And then do that thing in faith. If you have an opportunity to obey God—not for your own glory, but for his. If you have God’s word in front of you and you say, “What would a Christian do with this?” Don’t say, “Okay, well, I don’t know if I’m a Christian, so I don’t know what to do.” Say, “I want to believe. What would a Christian do?” And then do that. Walk in faith. If a Christian sees sin, they don’t hide it. They don’t bury it. They don’t pretend like it’s not there. A Christian will confess their sin and turn from it.

It’s critical that we don’t stay in this limbo of “I’m not sure.” And it’s even more critical that you don’t deceive yourself. Just because you’re in the church, just because you’re here, just because the students are in student ministries, just because you believe that there is a God doesn’t mean that you’re in fellowship with him. It doesn’t mean that you’ve been saved. One of the worst tragedies would be to be on your way to hell, deceiving yourself, maybe deceiving others, and not know it. To think that you’re right with God while remaining his enemy, that’s a position you must not stay in. So I hope that every student who leaves student ministries as an enemy of God does it with full knowledge that they’ve chosen that path.

Are You Walking in the Light or Living a Lie?

And that’s why we’re going to open up to First John today. First John chapter 1. It’s so helpful. John writes in particular to help us sort through these questions of knowing how we stand before God. John was an apostle. He was an eyewitness to Jesus’s life, ministry, and message. And the purpose of his book was that he would write in order that his readers could have fellowship—that is, joint participation in unity with John and unity, fellowship with God, because they’ve been united to God by God. So the name of today’s message, the title is, “Are you walking in light or living a lie?” This is something that I hope every single one of you—whether you’ve been a believer for decades, or maybe you’re asking the question, “Where am I with God?”—I hope that this is a question you take seriously and that you pay attention to God’s answer from his word.

Let’s pray and then we’re going to read our text and then dive in.

Scripture Reading & Prayer

God, thank you for your word. I thank you that I’m standing up here not with my words or my wisdom, but yours. In your words, you declare who you are. You make yourself known. And God, I pray that your Holy Spirit would take that truth of who you are and what you demand and who you’ve provided and change lives today. God, I pray your Holy Spirit would be active in me as I teach to provide clarity, accuracy, faithfulness to the message. And I pray your Holy Spirit would be active in the hearers to bear fruit that only he can bring. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

All right, open up your Bibles to First John. I’m going to be reading. I have it for you on the screen as well.

This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. But if we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin. If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us. My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world.

1. Because God Is Pure Light, Sinners Must Know God

So we must ask: Are we walking in the light or living a lie? Because God is pure light, sinners, in order to have fellowship with him, must first know God. This is where John starts. He starts with a statement that God is light, and in him there is no darkness at all. The statement is absolute.

Whether you’re a Christian or not, if you are a person and you want to know who you are and see yourself rightly—if you want to know your “authentic self,” that’s a buzzword out in the world—you need to get your eyes off yourself first and most, and see God for who he is. That’s where John starts: God is light. He is the perfect standard of holiness, and his light reveals the truth of our sin and our need before him. God is light. There’s no darkness in him. He’s pure, unadulterated light.

That’s a complex topic. We won’t be able to unpack it completely in the time, but let’s make some observations about the way John uses the term, and the Bible uses the term, “God is light.” This primarily refers to his absolute glory, his holiness, his purity, and truth. Think about light: Light exposes, light reveals. And fundamentally, light is incompatible with darkness. Where light is, darkness ceases to be. Light is defined by the absence or oppositeness of darkness.

MacArthur writes that throughout the scriptures, God and his glory are often described in terms of light. I was thinking about that this week—it’s interesting. That is true. I wish I could go through all of the passages in the Bible. God and his glory are shown and described in terms of light. In fact, when people are exposed to God’s glory, Moses shone light. What did God do to every Christian when they were saved? He removed the blinders so they could see the light of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

What’s the purpose for which God created the whole universe? To show his glory. What was the first thing that God had to create—day one—before anything consistent with that aim? “Let there be light.” The very thing that helps us see or makes us to see or reflects his glory. The thing that, before the sun, only came from him; when there is no sun again, will only come from him. God is light. In him there is no darkness at all.

That light refers to God’s holiness. Paul declares that God, the King of Kings, in his immortal sovereign holiness—this is 1 Timothy 6:16—dwells in unapproachable light. Why is it unapproachable? It’s unapproachable by whom? Well, by all, actually, apart from provision—especially sinners, especially us. It’s a light that incinerates, completely overwhelms.

In Exodus 33, God said to Moses, “You cannot see my face, for man shall not see me and live.” Even the sinless seraphim cover their faces. Isaiah 6 describes Yahweh on his throne. Above Yahweh stood the seraphim. Each had six wings: with two he covered his face, two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. And one called out to another and said, “Holy, holy, holy is Yahweh of hosts. The whole earth is full of his glory.” And what did Isaiah do when he caught a glimpse of this? “Woe is me.” This is a light, a glory that’s unapproachable, that would incinerate us apart from God’s grace.

We sang—it had special meaning for me after prepping this—”Turn your eyes upon Jesus. Look at his face.” The author of this book, after he wrote this, would look at Jesus’s face. We read about it. Smed started the Revelation series: Revelation 1:14. He looked at Jesus and he described him—his eyes were flame of fire, his face was like the sun shining in full strength. What happened to John when he looked at Jesus’s face? John tells us, “When I saw him, I fell at his feet as though dead.”

We need gospel protection to not die, to not be incinerated, annihilated by the light of this God. By God’s grace, we can be received and be comforted by Jesus. The gospel should not make us comfortable with God. The gospel makes us right with God. We’re going to be exploring that today. But it should not make you comfortable with God.

There’s no analogies—I racked my brain trying to come up with an analogy for this. The best I could come up with was like the light of God: think of the radiation coming from an unshielded core of a nuclear reactor. If you were to approach such a thing, you would be instantly annihilated. When you look at pictures of Hiroshima and Nagasaki when the light from the nuclear bombs went off, people vanished. There were shadows left behind—instant incineration. And this doesn’t even come close to the power of God and the glory that emanates from his being.

Workers in nuclear facilities wear specialized suits to shield and protect them from otherwise deadly exposure. They still have to stay away. But because they wear suits and the core is shielded, it would be a very bad thing for them to get comfortable with that power. Yet sometimes, because we know that we are shielded—we’re shielded from the consequences of being in God’s presence, from sin—coming face to face with a holy God, because of what Eric told us, not because of us, but because God made him who knew no sin to be sin so that we might be the righteousness of God in him. We are shielded by Christ. Our confidence cannot be in ourselves; it’s in Christ’s righteousness. God is no less glorious; we just got changed. We got made into one who could survive, not because of ourselves, but because we’re clothed with Christ’s righteousness. We’ve been forgiven. We’ve been cleansed. We’ve been saved. So don’t get comfortable with God. Rather, knowing how deadly sin is and how gloriously holy God is, we must approach him with grateful reverence, humble awe, and sober joy.

When you hear this, when you hear who God is, especially if you’re a Christian, don’t grow comfortable with that truth. I repeat it often—the phrase isn’t mine, but it’s true: The same sun that melts the wax hardens the clay. Make sure when you hear this, you don’t just nod, “Yeah, I know that. Oh, well said, Jake. That’s what the Bible says.” Worship. Say, “How must this affect me?” And then when you face a situation in which that must affect you, do the next thing that a Christian would do. Worship. Confess your sins. Turn from them. Please God. Walk in the light as he’s in the light. But I’m getting a little bit ahead of myself.

The light of God reveals. The Bible says, “Your word is a lamp to my feet,” speaking of itself, “and a light to my path.” God’s light is truth, and it exposes truth. It reveals lies. Paul writes in Ephesians 5:13, “When anything is exposed by the light, it becomes visible.” We’ll get to the rest of that verse later, but light exposes. 1 Corinthians 4:5 says, “The Lord will bring to light things now hidden in darkness and disclose the purposes of the heart.”

In John, the gospel of John, describing Jesus coming into the world, God being light revealed himself. The true light which gives light to everyone was coming into the world. We have seen his glory and the world ran from him because they were darkness.

John Stott says it is in God’s nature to reveal himself just as it’s the property of light to shine, and the revelation is of perfect purity and unadulterated majesty. We are to think of God as a personal being, infinite in all his perfections, transcendent—the high and lofty one. He who lives forever and ever, whose name is holy. And yet he desires to be known and has revealed himself.

This is why we read our Bibles. Don’t read your Bible every day to impress your friends, to have something to share at small group. Yeah, read the Bible every day because you must have something to share with small group. We are together in community and God grows you so that he can use you when you’re joined together member to member in the body to build up one another in love. The body causes the growth of the body and you cannot do that apart from God’s work in you.

God’s word is primarily revelation of him. And you have to get the eyes of your heart onto God regularly. You have to know who you are, who God is, if you’re going to know who you are and know how to relate to him rightly. So read your Bible every day. Meditate on what you find there—not as trivia, not as an instruction book for life or rules, but to know God first and most. Answer every day, “What did I learn about God today? How did God reveal himself to me?” And then evaluate your life. Is there any area of your life that needs to be affected that isn’t because of this truth? If you are walking in the light, give God the glory—he did that. And if sin is revealed, don’t hide it. Don’t cover it up. What do Christians do when they see sin? “Yeah, God, you showed me what you already knew. I agree with you—that’s sin.” And as we’ll see, he is faithful and just, not to destroy you for that sin—that’s what his justice demands—but he’s faithful and just to forgive you and to cleanse you from that sin.

2. Sinners Must See Themselves Accurately

Because God is pure light—point two—sinners, in order to have fellowship, we must see ourselves accurately. We must know God and we must see ourselves accurately. We can’t flip the order here. In order to see ourselves accurately, we must know God. But knowing God, or knowing who God is, isn’t sufficient if it doesn’t affect us. John’s first point is: If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie. We do not practice the truth. That just makes sense. After declaring God’s nature as light, John counters a common lie: that we can be saved while continuing to make a deliberate practice of sinning.

“I’ve been forgiven. Anything I do to sin…” This is a distortion of the gospel. “I’ve been forgiven sins. Nothing can separate me from the love of Christ.” Both of those things are true if you’ve been saved. And this next part—if you believe it—means you’re not saved. You lie, because if you say, “Because I’ve been forgiven, I can just go ahead and sin. God will forgive that too.” There’s a lot of truth there, and there’s a subtle lie.

This subtle lie is critically important. Salvation isn’t just having sin forgiven so you are no longer under its consequences, but it’s having the power of sin removed, all for a goal. This is the greatest good of the gospel. It’s great news to have your sins forgiven. And it’s great news to no longer be sin’s slave. But the greatest news is that you have fellowship with God. You’ve been saved by God from God to God. And that’s this word “fellowship” here. This word “fellowship” is not an on-again, off-again, “Oh, I feel good with God today.” This is being made right. It’s a partnership, a close relationship, a unity, a oneness with God. It’s often used to describe marriage. This is the word fellowship (koinonia) that we use to describe our relationship with each other often. And if you go up, this was the reason—if you look at verse three—this was the reason John’s writing: so that you may have fellowship with us, horizontally, Christian with Christian, even with John the Apostle, because their fellowship is with the Father and the Son, Jesus Christ.

So if you say you’re saved, if you say, “I have fellowship with God,” and you say, “I’m going to continue to walk in darkness,” you’re lying. Because light and darkness can’t have fellowship. Remember, that’s fundamentally definitional to what light is. You can’t say, “I’m going to continue to make a deliberate, ongoing practice of sinning because I’m forgiven and, don’t worry, I’m still saved.” You are lying if you’re saying that; you are living a lie. If that’s your relationship to the gospel, praise God you’re hearing this. You need to stop believing that now. Turn from your sin and walk in the light.

Being saved results in a dramatic change in a person. Being forgiven, united with God, results in a dramatic change in a person—a change in standing before God (justification) and also a change in our nature. The Bible describes Christians as children of light. True fellowship with God doesn’t just stop at changed status. God makes us new people with new nature and a fundamentally changed relationship to him.

I’m going to read Ephesians 5:8, and listen with awe. Paul writes, “For at one time you were darkness”—to Christians—”but now you are light. Walk as children of the light.”

The result is that we have real fellowship with God. If you are a believer, you have real fellowship with God—not based on what you do (that could be changed), but there’s a fundamental change in your relationship with God that’s grounded in something outside of you. We’re going to see that in the next verse. The blood of Jesus Christ cleanses us from all sin if we walk in the light—not because we walk in the light, but if you walk in the light, the blood of Jesus Christ cleanses you from all sin. This is a grounding that’s outside of you, not dependent on who you are and what you do in yourself. John says in 1 John 3:9 that nobody born of God makes a practice of sinning or walking in darkness. To claim that you are God’s while you continue to be like the world—you’re lying. It’s not true. And ultimately it won’t help you. You will have to come face to face with this God and his light even if you deny it now. So if we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth.

So in verse 7, John turns and he gives a positive command or positive statement: If we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sins. This is in contrast to living a lie. He says, live who God saved you to be.

Like I said, notice you’re not saved because you walk in the light. Walking in the light, rather, is evidence of your fellowship with God. If you are united with God who is pure light and he’s done this miracle—you didn’t do it—if you are united with God, that was all of him. So far be it for you to boast except in Christ, except in God and the work that he’s done. But when God saves you, it’s apart from works, but it’s certainly going to be manifested and made evident by works—by the way that you walk, by the way that you habitually live. What direction are you going? Whom are you trying to please?

Vertical fellowship with God made possible by the gospel inevitably leads to true horizontal fellowship with other believers who are also walking in the light. I can’t tell you how many hours I spent—it’s embarrassingly many—trying to figure out who the “one another” is in this verse. Is this God? Because you look at the immediate pronouns: If we walk in the light as he’s in the light—right? So us and he. And in the previous verse, it’s us and God having fellowship. So do we have fellowship with God if we walk in the light? Yes. And yet, do we have fellowship with one another if we walk in the light? Also yes. I can’t tell you for sure what John had in mind here. I sort of think it’s both. That’s the… we know that the purpose for writing was so that we would have fellowship with one another horizontally. We would be united together fundamentally because our fellowship is with God.

So, I don’t know. I’ve gone back and forth. I’m not even going to claim that I know for sure here. Someday I might be convinced, but just know that vertical fellowship with God inevitably leads to true horizontal fellowship with other believers. This needs to affect the way that you say “fellowship.” “Oh, we’re having fellowship night at small group.” That doesn’t mean check out because we’re just having dinner. Like, you’ve got to prep for Bible study night and just show up on fellowship night. What is it saying? This is saying, in light of God uniting us to him and making us children of light, doing away with who we used to be and making us completely different, cleansing us with Jesus’s blood and then uniting us together horizontally with one another because we’ve been united to him, we need to go enjoy the fruit of that fellowship. This is why love for one another is foundational in John, foundational in the Bible, foundational for the Christian. It’s a litmus test of salvation, a litmus test of “Do you have fellowship with God? Are you abiding in God?”

1 John 2:10, just a few verses later, says, “Whoever loves his brother abides in the light, and in him there is no cause for stumbling. But whoever hates his brother is in the darkness and walks in the darkness and does not know where he is going, because the darkness has blinded his eyes.”

So don’t wait around to see if you’re in the light, saying, “Hey, I wonder how my life’s going to go. I wonder if I’m in the light.” But rather, if you see a fellow Christian—somebody else who says, “I want to trust God. I love him. I’ve been united to him.”—love that person. Love that person as a fellow child of light, as a brother in Christ. Love them with the same love, same type of love, as God showed you when he died for you, gave up everything, emptied himself, and, like Eric said, took your sin on him so that you could become the righteousness of God in him.

This is what First John 3 is all about. 1 John 4, when it likens our love—love is definitional for the Christian. He says, “You’ve heard this message” (1 John 3:11). You’ve heard this message that you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another. Jump down to verse 16 of chapter 3: “By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers.”

Do you see this walking in the light? We could go into all kinds of different ways that walking in the light is manifested, but it’s not primarily saying, “Hey, I’m going to go do a lot of good works.” It’s saying God has changed my relationship to him. He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. If he has transferred you from darkness to light, walk as children of the light. How do you know if you’re children of the light? Well, you’re not going to love the world; you’re going to love God. You’re going to love the brothers.

And notice what he says: But if we walk in the light as he’s in the light, we’ll have fellowship with one another, and we won’t have sin—that is not what he said. If you walk in the light, the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses you from all sin. Do not smuggle merit, good works into this relationship. Don’t confuse the fruits of light with the cause of it.

So does this mean that to be in God’s presence, in this unapproachable light—God who is pure light, in whom there’s no darkness—you must be sinless? Yes and no. Eric talked about that: When God looks on you, because of Christ, he sees Christ’s righteousness—perfect righteousness. And yet, until what 1 John 3 talks about—”We’re beloved; you’re God’s children now, but what will be hasn’t yet appeared.” That sinless perfection that we will have one day hasn’t yet appeared. But we know that when he appears, we’ll be like him, because we’ll see him as he is.

And so that brings us to the third point. Because God is light, in order to have fellowship with him, sinners must see ourselves accurately. We have to see ourselves clearly and respond with confession and dependent faith.

3. We Must Confess and Depend on Christ Alone

There’s two lies here that are possible. If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves. That would be denying that you’re sinners by nature. Remember the first lie was saying that I can walk with God while sinning. Well, this is another lie that says that we can walk with God because we aren’t actually sinners. If so, you deceive yourselves, right? You’re lying still.

The other, in verse 10, is that if you say that you have not sinned—denying that we have sinned, saying that what I did wasn’t actually sin. That’s being like Adam and Eve, hiding, covering, ignoring, justifying sin. Don’t do that. Rather, what do Christians do when they sin? I’ve said it over and over again: What do Christians do when they sin? We don’t come to church putting on our Sunday best—don’t let them see the struggles that we had at home. Maybe I’ll hide them from my friends and hide them from God. That’s the opposite of what Christians do. That’s what religious people do. That’s what every religious person does in the world that’s not a Christian, that doesn’t follow true and godly religion that makes you right with God. They say, “I’m either going to pretend what I did isn’t sin, pretend there is no such thing as sin, or hide my sin so nobody sees it.” That’s it. That’s every other religion.

And we’re going to do a religions series this summer, later this year. That’s the summary: You’re either going to hide your sin, pretend it isn’t sin, or justify your sin. Christians’ response is confess your sin. When you see who you are before God in the light of God, the only response is not to hide your sin—confess. But even in this, you must know there is nothing meritorious in confessing sin. Right? If you were to go to a judge—a righteous judge—says, “How do you plead?” and you say, “Guilty,” that doesn’t get you off. All it does is speed up the trial. Like, we all know that you’re guilty and you’re going to get the punishment. And yet, this is the right response by every faithful person in the Bible—whether it’s Isaiah in the throne room, Job with God, Peter when he recognizes Jesus, or the justified tax collector: “I’m a sinner. God, have mercy.” In the light, Christians confess our sins. And when we do, God is faithful. Here’s the crazy maker: He’s just to forgive us and cleanse.

How can God be just to pass over sins? If you’re a Christian, you know the answer and you glory in it. And that’s why we have to move on to chapter 2, verse 1.

4. Pursue Righteousness, Depending on Christ Alone

Because God is pure light, sinners, in order to have fellowship with him, must pursue righteousness—depending on Christ’s. You must fight sin seriously. That’s what John says in 2:1. He goes, “My little children, I write this to you so that you may not sin.” With pastoral, fatherly tenderness but seriousness, John makes sure that we don’t take his statements about the presence of sin in you as license to sin.

I remember one of my kids, when I was disciplining them, I said, “What did you just do when you lied?” “I sinned.” “Yeah. And so now there’s going to be consequence. I need to discipline you.” And the kid looked at me and said, “Yeah, but Dad, everybody sins,” as if the presence of sin in everybody diminished its seriousness. John doesn’t want that to be the effect. So he goes, “I need you to get this. I’m writing to you so that you may not sin.” Pursue sinlessness—walking in the light, increasingly so, being conformed with the image of who God is.

But when you do sin, remember that your standing before God is not your own righteousness, but Christ’s. So how can God be merciful? How can he be just when he’s merciful? Jesus the righteous, our propitiation.

Eric took us to the throne room earlier. When we stand before God, Satan, the accuser (Revelation 12:10), accurately can point out, “Jacob deserves judgment and condemnation. God, you can’t let that stand. You disclosed yourself in Exodus 34 as Yahweh, him who will not clear the guilty.” But he also declared himself to be merciful and gracious, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin. So God had passed over sins formerly committed. He had to put forward a payment. If he was to be both merciful and just, there had to be a payment—one on whom all of our sin was placed for everyone who would believe, everybody who would receive mercy. That sin has already been dealt with; it’s already been paid.

So now, in the throne room, when there’s an accusation, Christian, you and I have a defense attorney—an advocate before the righteous judge. And Jesus doesn’t say, “Oh, he didn’t mean it. He didn’t do it.” He can point to his wrists, his hands, his feet, the hole in his side, and remind his Father, “Remember that wrath you were pouring out on me for those three hours while I hung there in darkness? Remember—it’s finished.”

My little children, if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. He is the payment for our sins. And not just the sins of John the apostle, not just the Jews, not just a particular group of people, but all the people in the world—any who would believe. This only applies and only saves those who believe. And it’s not like God the Father is standing reluctantly, saying, “All right, you got me, Jesus.” God the Father sent him. God loved the world in this way: He gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.

Christian, you must know—whether you’re a Christian or not, you must know today—that God is light. You must see yourself accurately, and in response, pursue righteousness and depend only on Christ’s, not your own.

Don’t stay in limbo or wonder. Don’t be passive, but rather walk in the light. And if you see today that you are not in the light—if you say, “I’ve been trusting in my own righteousness. I’ve been content to sin against this God. I deserve destruction. I deserve his wrath.” Well, do today the same thing that every Christian must do in front of that message: Believe with faith. Confess and repent. And then Jesus will be your righteousness before the throne of God.

Band, can you come up and let’s proclaim together our only hope? Let’s declare Jesus our righteousness before God, our perfect judge who sits on the throne.