Sin: The wrong path

Here at the beginning of the year, today’s lesson may convey a misconception. This is not a New Year’s resolution. Instead, it is a review of what most of us already know and have sought to cultivate during decades of our lives: seeking out a path illuminated by God’s love and following its lead, wherever it takes us.

Who? What? When?

Our focus narrows on 12 verses in 1 John, not to be confused with chapter 1 of the Gospel of John. Although there are common themes and allusions between the fourth Gospel and the letter of 1 John, evidence tells us they were not written by the same person.

Given the thematic connections with the fourth Gospel, the letter was likely written by a first or second generation of John’s disciples. First John was written near the turn into the second century. Lacking a salutation and typical closure, 1 John is likely a sermon or lecture, not an epistle. Therefore, I’ll call the author “Pastor John.” He appears to be a person who understood the human condition as well as Judaism, Hellenism, and Gnosticism.

And why?

Pastor John identifies his reason for writing at least four times. These statements of purpose are different:

• so you might have koinonia (fellowship) (1:3-4);
• so that you might not sin (2:1) and so you know your sins are forgiven (2:12);
• so you know there are deceivers (2:26); and
• so you have eternal life (5:13).

The concepts of fellowship, avoiding sin, forgiven sins, testing deception, and eternal life are all Pastor John’s version of Jesus’ invitation to live under the reign of God from now on.

If one believes that God, our Creator, beckons creation toward its mature potential, then living in right relationships with other humans, creation, and the Creator/Sustainer is both our means and our goal in this world. It helps us as we lean into future fulfillment, whether in this world, the next, or both. It is our eschatological hope that can motivate us—our sense of hope that keeps us moving forward. Further, the risen Christ is evidenced in the sacred breath (Holy Spirit) and the church (when it is functioning as the body of Christ).

A mode of life

That toward which followers of Jesus lean is what Pastor John calls the light in which God walks (1:5-7). We know that our experiences of koinonia (literally, a deep intimate companionship or fellowship) can be spotty and fleeting; it takes effort, kindness, patience, and forgiveness for koinonia to develop satisfyingly. Pastor John reminds his readers that our fellowship is superficial if we are not walking in the light of God as revealed in Jesus Christ. He invites us to focus on the light and then notice that we are not alone; fellowship emerges around us.

God’s light (1:5) is not always easy to recognize since there is, in life, a lesser quality of light. God’s true light is grounded in authentic light. Sounds mystical, doesn’t it? Pastor John is using language well-known to the religious movement Gnosticism, which had infiltrated Hellenism, Judaism, and the church. Typical of all three religions was an alignment of the images of light/darkness with the notion of life/death.

Hellenism saw these as cosmic forces or divine beings, but not so Judaism and Christianity, which saw light/darkness and life/death more as a matter of life choices and not divine powers. God is one, light. Gnostic Christians, however, used language that suggested God was both light and darkness (somewhat like yin/yang).

For Pastor John, there is absolutely no darkness in God. Darkness, while not a cosmic power, is an absence of genuine light. “The ultimate notion is that the real meaning of light is the luminosity [we] need in order to find [our] way in [our] daily as well as [our] spiritual [lives]” (Bultman, The Johannine Epistles, p. 16; edited for inclusivity). We are to walk in the light, lest we stumble into darkness.

During an eclipse, the moon, with no malice intended, blots out the sun, creating an unusual darkness to emerge around onlookers. Perhaps such an event is a metaphor for how, by the choices in our lives, we can block ourselves from seeing God’s light and drift off into twilight. The moon does not make a choice in the same sense as we do, but the horizon’s eerie twilight it creates at midday can be similarly disorienting.

Darkness leads to danger

In our times of personal darkness, we are especially vulnerable to making bad decisions. Pastor John cautions his readers to be wary of the danger of denial. First John reminds me of Keith Miller’s book Sin: Overcoming the Ultimate Deadly Addiction. Opening ourselves to shadowy behavior, skirting what we know to be right-relationship behavior, can become addictive and lead us down a path of slavery to darker behavior. Such slavery is the binding force of denial, which destines us not to travel the path leading to our and creation’s full potential, but to the path of entropy and death.

Pastor John’s words on this are as follows: “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us” (1:8). Turning a blind eye to our mixed motives and our culpability in relationships gone sour is a sure way to mislead ourselves and to derail our path to the koinonia of Christ. It is failure to test our own behavior with a fearless moral self-inventory. Overcoming our denial of our sin is a critical path to authenticity and trust in God’s promised forgiveness, love, and care.

Integrity is critical for walking in the light. It is not a matter of legalism, but authenticity and mutual trust. Right relationships and living in koinonia as a child of God depend upon being trustworthy. Trusting and being trustworthy are important for healthy relationships; trust opens a door to the kind of wholehearted love, agape, which cares about the other (people and creation) as much as oneself. Critical to facilitating such integrity is the instrument of confession, taking ownership where we’ve missed the path of light. Aligned with confession, it is vital that we accept forgiveness as well as offer forgiveness for self and for others.

Confession is rarely discussed in modern churches; perhaps our lack of confession has led to the problems that our nation and our denomination experience these days. It seems we are more prone to criticize and make accusations than to confess our culpability in social crises. I’m reminded of James 5:16, where we are urged to confess to each other!

While a great tool to combat denial and the death to which it leads, we fear the judgment that confession might provoke—if not from God, then from others. We church folk need to be doing the hard work to create a climate in which we can confess to each other, trusting we will be loved through our failures and then to be open to counsel and wisdom offered to discern the light. We are to help each other in the koinonia.

Like Paul’s urging, Pastor John says that churches are not to trust every nice-looking “spirit” that culture sweeps their way. He offers tests of the spirits. One is the degree to which our behavior is in alignment with the light of Jesus’ way. “Now by this we know that we have come to know him, if we obey his commandments” (2:3). The verses of today’s lesson spell out precisely what commandments he was
writing about: our truthfulness to self and to others, as well as our behavior toward each other.