Fellowship

As we begin to look into this lesson in the writings of John, we want to rightly divide the Word of Truth. In order to do this, we have to study to see whom the lesson was written to, who wrote it, and what the conditions of the people were.

We will find very good reason why the letter was written as such. When John sent this letter, Gnosticism and many other things had risen among the morning-time church. The minds of Christian people were being drawn away from the truth and Jesus Christ, and John was merely telling them this is that which was from the beginning. In other words, "This is what Jesus taught. I handled Him. I laid on His breast. I didn't get this from somebody who heard Him; I received it personally from Jesus Christ."

The very reason of the Gospel was fellowship. Sin put man out of fellowship with God and one another, and the plan of redemption was to bring man back into right fellowship with God and one another. The devil is working today on us as the people of God to destroy fellowship. Nothing grieves the heart of God any more than to see people who claim to be His people disfellowship other members. The dragon has gone out to deceive the whole world, and Jesus said he would deceive the very elect, if possible. There's a fine line between the possibility of being deceived and not being deceived. May God help us to realize this.

The devil will bring up things that really shouldn't bother anyone at all, in order to set brother against brother and to work strife. There are lots of things about which we all have our right to have an opinion. God made us that way. I'm not speaking of doctrinal truths or sinful things. For example, God may lead us in different vocations. If we're no careful, the devil will use it to cause disfellowship, or division.

The Bible plainly teaches us in 1 Corinthians 12:5, "There are differences of administrations, but the same Lord." There may be differences in operations, but the same God. There may be a situation that a congregation feels definitely led to work at, and they may be able to accomplish it, such as having a school. On the other hand, there may be another place where they feel definitely led not to do this. Even so, we can get along with one another. Where do we get into trouble? Whenever someone presses his opinion to the degree that he takes an attitude against another brother. Pastors, there's a danger of us following suit and starting something, such as a school, because somebody else has started one. A very grave danger that we face today is, we are to the place where many movements have gone. What is it? We're being tempted to turn to Bible schools and seminaries to try to teach the truth on a human level, but truth comes only by divine revelation.

Let's read the words of Abraham (he was later called Abraham) in Genesis 13:8, "And Abram said unto Lord, Let there be no strife, I pray thee, between me and thee, and between my herdsmen and thy herdsmen; for we be brethren." If a doctrinal difference exists, it can be cleared up if God will give us understanding. However, ideas and opinion and different operations in different places are another matter. Pastors/elders are only responsible for their own congregation. The pastors/elders must lead their congregation in the way that God is leading them, and they have to convince the people that the way they are going is the right way to go; so they must teach them how they feel they should go. This is not to say that they are teaching against others who may feel led differently concerning the matter; they are merely trying to lead their own congregation.

Jesus died to bring us into right fellowship with God and one another. It's wonderful. What precious fellowship we can enjoy! The Greek word from which the word fellowship is taken means, "having all things common." John said our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son. We can share in the things of God and the things of Jesus Christ.

True Light

John spoke very plainly in verses 5-7 of our Scripture lesson. He said: "This then is the message which we have heard of him, and declare unto you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. If we say that we have fellowship with him, and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not the truth: But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin."

If we look through this epistle, we will see that John certainly laid the truth down in a strong manner when he declared that walking in the light as God is in the light is a necessity. John was not setting forth an impossibility. He spoke of something that not only is possible for us to do but also profitable. Some may say that no one can walk in the light as God is in the light, but this is exactly what John received from Jesus. It's not what John said; this was the message that he heard Jesus teach.

Notice in 1 John 2:8 that he let us know the darkness is past and the true light now shines. I say this with all kindness: the religious world is full of light, but not the true light. When people think about God being light, they begin to say, "Now we have to make room for us. We are human beings." I want to make just as much room for us as the Bible makes. I have no desire to lift the standard higher than the Bible makes it, and higher than we can live by the grace of God. It's something livable.

Let's study the statement in the fifth verse of our Scripture text, which reads, "God is light, and in him is no darkness at all." In the truest sense, we cannot see God and we cannot see light. We only see objects which the light causes to appear, but we cannot see light because of its luster. The sun is a reflection, and the moon is only a reflection of the sun. Who can look straight into the sun? The luster of it is too great. In the natural realm, all the light that God has allowed to shine on the earth is a reflection. What is the sun a reflection of? All light is a reflection of God, the Father of lights.

God is the beginning of light; all light came from Him, and everything He sets in order to be light is the reflection of Him. Just as the natural sun is a reflection from God, the Father of lights, even so, the spiritual Son, Jesus Christ, is a reflection of the Father. This is why Jesus is called the Light of the world. Nowhere is God ever spoken of as the light of the world. God gave the natural sun, and it gathers light from the Father and reflects it to us, and that light illuminates us.

Jesus Christ was sent as the Father's Son, and He came to reveal, or reflect, the Father. Jesus is the One who brings spiritual light and reflects the great God (who is a Spirit) to us as mankind. God, speaking to Moses and others, said of Himself, "I Am." What is God? "I Am that I Am." In other words, He is Light Unapproachable. No one can approach that Light, but we thank God for the Light of the world that came down to reflect, or reveal, the Father to us, so that we, through Him, can get a glimpse of the Father. God has been so minimized and man has been so lifted up that people see popes, priests, preachers, and many other images as God. We won't get a good look at God until we look at Him through Jesus Christ; then it is only through dark glasses, so to speak. It will take better eyes, a greater mind, a greater man than this flesh to look at God face to face as He really is.

The Greatness of God

When John said that God is light, he was speaking of the Light that is unapproachable. Even though it is unapproachable, thank God, through Jesus Christ, He has made a way whereby we can look through Christ and see the Father and see the Father's will. All we can see of this Light Unapproachable is what Jesus Christ shows us. There's no need to run off to college and say, "Look, I don't care what you fellows say. I am going to find out about God." We're not going to understand anything unless it's revealed to us through Jesus Christ. Not only is He the door of the church, but He's also the door of understanding: He opens that door and no man can close it, and He closes it and no man can open it.

John was merely putting God back in His rightful place in the minds of the people. Oh, if we could understand the greatness of God and how unapproachable He really is! The Old Testament teaches us that man brought the best he had and the most he had, yet he could not get close to God. God, through His love, sent His Son to pay the supreme price to open the way. He walked around on the earth and said, "I am the Light of the world. I have come to reveal the Father to you. Look to Me, and you will see the Father." The natural and the spiritual are closely linked together. God has two means of teaching us about spiritual realities: the Bible and nature. When Jesus walked on the earth, the New Testament had not yet been written, so He taught spiritual things through nature. We need to stop to consider how things function.

The only way we can see anything is by light. Again, we cannot see light, but we can see what light brings into view. We cannot see anything in darkness; in darkness we stumble. In this great universe, how did God ordain that we can see things by light? The first thing that happens is, light touches the object; then as it touches the object, it touches us and makes a picture on our eyes of that object. Why do I mention this? Because this is exactly how we see truth. How are we able to see God, who is truth? Christ came from God as the Light of the world, and He shines forth the light of truth. As He brings the light of truth, He also touches the heart and the mind of man, just as light touches objects in nature.

When Jesus walked here before the Holy Ghost was given, He said, "I have many things that I would like to tell you, but you cannot bear them yet." Why couldn't they bear them? Because the luster of those things was too great. However, after the Holy Ghost came, He put light on truth, and the Holy Ghost could touch the mind and the heart at the same time, enabling the truth to come into view; then man could see it clearly. This has never changed; it still works exactly the same way today. The Holy Ghost makes an impression on the mind, or putting it in the language of the Bible, God said He would write it on our hearts and on our minds. This is the way light and truth come.

The Real Proof of Having Salvation

Humanism is the worst enemy that the church has. The devil has used Catholicism, Protestantism, and many other "isms" until they've lost their force; now he's coming at the church with another impact of power, working through humanism as never before. Humanism is a teaching and a way of life. It has been here since the Garden of Eden, but the devil has given it a new garment today.

When John said, "God is light, and in him is no darkness at all," he was dealing with people who claimed to be spiritually advanced, but their lives showed no sign of it to the Apostle John, or even to the work of Christ. The test of all deep hidden union with God is righteousness in life. One thing that salvation does for everybody is, it will cause people to live right. It doesn't make any difference how many other things we can do, if we don't live right we don't have salvation.

One thing that people in false religion can't stand is straight preaching on living right. You can preach on some things and they will agree, smile, and shake their head yes! But if you start preaching on living right, keeping our heart and mind pure, paying our debts, and making restitution, many lose their joy. These things are the real proof that a person has salvation. If we're not living right, acknowledging our debts, backing up when we're wrong or willing to humble ourselves when it's needful, we don't have it, no matter who we are, preacher or lay member. We're not telling the truth when we say we have salvation but not living right.

John was writing to a people who professed highly. We have moved into that very area of time again. Many have moved from an experience to a performance, but a performance won't do. We must have the experience. If God is in our heart and life, His Holy Spirit will produce a life lived in righteousness and godliness, just as the Bible tells us. John let us know that there could not be true communion with God, who is light, unless the worshiper walks in the light as He is in the light. All high-flying pretension to communion with God must verify itself by practical righteousness. I'm aware that this cuts deeply into emotional religion.

True Christians shouldn't and won't put too much value on our religion if the only place we can rejoice is at church. It's only emotional religion if it takes others singing and rejoicing to get us stirred and worked up. Real salvation doesn't "work up"; it works out. It's God who works it in us, and we must work it out. God is just as likely to bless us when we're alone. Some of the greatest times of rejoicing that I've ever had were when I was alone in my study and God flooded my soul so much that I just "walked the floor" and rejoiced. We need to have great pity for many who hold their head so high that they can't keep their feet out of the mud. All professions of knowing Jesus that aren't verified by obedience to Him are false.

Walking In Darkness

Let's read 1 John 1:6: "If we say that we have fellowship with him, and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not the truth." This great Apostle of love became a son of thunder to the primitive church who claimed lawfully to have spiritual communion with God; yet all the while, they were living in the darkness of sin. What did John say? "We lie, and do not the truth." That's lying of the worst kind. It's an acted-out lie: we speak the truth, we amen the truth, we rejoice over the truth, but we don't obey the truth. That's the reason Revelation 21:8 says that all liars shall have their part in the lake of fire. You see, there are many different kinds of liars mentioned in the Bible.

John claims, by the Word of God, that people who claimed to be spiritually advanced yet walked in darkness were not doing the truth. Four times in this first letter, John accused false teachers and the people they were leading of being liars. Some would think it was terrible if one of their pastors would call people liars four different times in one message. They would kick him out, yet they worship John. See, this is how messed up many are in their thinking. Many think it's wonderful when Paul named out some things, but when one of their pastors begins to name them out, there's trouble. That almost falls into the category of being a respecter of persons, and when we do that, we commit sin.

In four different places in this first epistle, John called those false teachers, who were misleading God's people, liars: 1 John 1:6, 1 John 2:4, 1 John 2:22, and 1 John 4:20...In 1 John 1:6 he stated that those who claim to have fellowship with God but walk in darkness are lying. John didn't mean people who are not obeying the Word. John was afraid that we would misunderstand him, so in 1 John 2:4, he repeated it, only in a clearer manner, saying, "He that saith, I know him, and keepeth not his commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him."

Men rise up and say that in verse 6, darkness refers to "this or that". The devil has it well fixed for the religious world. Religious men say that Babylon is the world, and when we come out of the world, we are out of Babylon, no matter what kind of religious mess we are in or how far it is from the truth. Then they come right along and teach that darkness is the vileness of this world, and that if we quit the drinking and the carousing, we've come out of darkness. No! John made it plain. When we say that we know Him and don't keep His commandments, we are the person he's talking about! When we walk in darkness and say that we have fellowship with God, we lie, and we're not doing the truth.

John was laying down the blunt truth that the man who says one thing with his lips and does another with his life is a liar. We say we love God, and we say we know God, but we don't keep him commandments. When we know His commandments and don't keep them, but walk our own way against the will of God, we're walking in darkness.

Jesus said men do not come to the light because they love darkness rather than light. He let us know that men engaged in evil tasks don't want a flood of light shed on them. On the other hand, when we're engaged in honorable tasks, we don't fear the light; we welcome it, and we come to it. We want our deeds made known. An honest-hearted individual lives honorably and righteously to the best of his ability, and he wants his deed out in the light. He will say, "Pastors, pour on all the light you can, because if there is anything wrong in my life, I want to know it so that I can straighten it up."

One of the most disastrous and grave dangers is to become adjusted to darkness. The works of darkness are done in the dark. In the past, I've been sent into different taverns, after some relatives, to bring them home. When I first walked into those places, for a little while, I couldn't see anything; so I just stood still a little bit and my eyes became adjusted to the darkness and I could see fairly good. Too many today are not walking in the light or even searching for the light. They've become adjusted to darkness, spiritually speaking. This is a very grave danger.

Truth - Creator and Maintainer of Fellowship

Jesus made it plain in John 3:21, "But he that doeth truth cometh to the light, that his deeds may be made manifest..." John let us know that Christian truth is never only intellectual; it's always moral. In other words, God doesn't reveal truth to us so that we can have better understanding; He reveals truth to us so that we can live better. Truth doesn't merely exercise the mind; it exercises the whole personality. Not only is truth the discovery of abstract things, but it also is concrete living.

Let's study some of the words in the New Testament that are used along with truth. They are very significant. Romans 2:8 speaks of not obeying the truth, Galatians 2:14 speaks of not walking uprightly according to the truth, 2 Timothy 3:8 speaks of resisting the truth, and James 5:19 speaks of erring from the truth.

Verses 6-7 of our Scripture text say, "If we say that we have fellowship with him, and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not the truth: But if we walk in the light [there are two ways we can go], as he is in the light [In other words, there is no darkness at all. It is still holiness or hell.], we have fellowship one with another..." What was John teaching? He was teaching that truth is the creator and maintainer of fellowship, and that if we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship: fellowship with believers and individual fellowship with God. By keeping right fellowship with God and the Son, Jesus Christ, the Christian is in right fellowship with every child of God around the world, even though he has never seen them. Too many who claim to be Christians today don't enjoy this kind of fellowship.

When it comes to human fellowship, we must have a common interest and a common spirit to enjoy association. A person might have many friends, but he will not spend time with them if there is not a common interest. To enjoy common interest, a like spirit, and like desires, whether it is on the human level or in the spiritual realm. Too many try to force themselves to enjoy something that they really don't enjoy. Some are like the hound dog that the skunk walked up and kissed. He said, "I have enjoyed about all of this that I can stand." That's about the way a lot of people are. They can only take about thirty minutes on Sunday morning. Oh, they say they enjoy it, but they have enjoyed about all they can stand. What's the trouble? Real fellowship and common interest are not there. They aren't really a part of this great common salvation that has been wrought in the hearts and lives of other men and women.

The Real Object of Christianity

First John 1:7 is a Scripture that many are very confused about. The very Scripture that God sent to drive away confusion has become confusing to the people of God in our day and time. John said, "But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin." This Scripture is used to prove that a person can never get free from sin, and that one must be cleansed from sin every day. Then they refer to the next verse of Scripture and say that if you are one of those who say that you live holy and free from sin, you are a liar.

People use this Scripture to say that everyone sins, either knowingly or ignorantly, in thought or deed, and that a person has to be cleansed from sin day by day. Now, if there was a bit of truth in that, then John was a most confused teacher. Why? Because in the forepart of verse 7, he said, "If we walk in the light, as he is in the light..." (Remember, in Him there is no darkness at all.) But according to false teachers, in the last part of the verse, he told us that we all have darkness, we all have sin, and we all need to be cleansed of sin every day.

If we only look at verses 8-10, it will read as if all Christians sin, and Christ must daily cleanse us. On the contrary, if we will look at the first part of verse 7, we will see that he made it plain that we are not in fellowship with God if there is any darkness in our life. When John said, "We walk in the light, as he is in the light," he was merely expressing that we walk with nothing hidden, nothing covered, and nothing secret, that we have been obedient to God to the best of our understanding, and that we hold fellowship with God.

At the beginning of the message, we told you that the very object of the Gospel and the plan of salvation was to bring us into right fellowship with God. One lesson that the Bible teaches in both the Old and the New Testaments is that God does not fellowship sin of any kind. he is pure. The object of education is to get rid of ignorance, the object of medicine is to get rid of disease, and the object of Christianity is to get rid of sin. The object of Christianity is not to make room for sin or to make a covering for it, but to bring sin to Him and have it removed and get rid of the operation of sin in the lives of people. The prayer of the Christian is, "Deliver us from evil." This was Christ's prayer for us.

Cleansed Through Faith in His Blood

If we look closely at 1 John 1:7, we will notice that it is not the blood that John was talking about as a ground for forgiveness, but the blood is a power, or an agency, for cleansing us and keeping us clean. How do we know this is so? John was addressing those who had been forgiven and restored to the family of God. The epistle was written to the church, people who were walking in the light. John made that plain in the beginning of the verse when he said, "But if we walk in the light." He was speaking of a cleansing that those who are walking in the light, receive.

I believe that much of the confusion about 1John 1:7 is due to not realizing how many different ways the blood is used. In the thought of figures throughout the Scriptures, the blood of Jesus Christ is used figuratively, just as "God is light" is used figuratively. God is more than light; God is love, and He is many things revealed to us. Nevertheless, figuratively speaking, God is light. Likewise, the blood of Jesus Christ is used figuratively. In the truest sense, blood does not cleanse anything; in fact, it will make spots that cannot be removed. We use expressions from songwriters about being washed in the blood of the Lamb; but the truth of the matter is, we didn't get a drop of His blood on us. If we had, we would have been spotted. It wouldn't clean us up a bit. If we had to actually have the blood of Christ on us to be cleansed from sin, there would have been only a few people cleansed, because He didn't have enough blood to go around. The blood is therefore a figure. We are saved through faith in His blood, yet we don't get a drop of it on us.

In Romans 3:20-26 we read: "Therefore by the deeds of the law there shall no flesh be justified in his sight: for by the law is the knowledge of sin. But now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets; Even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe: for there's no difference: For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God; Being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus; Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God; To declare, I say, at this time his righteousness: that he might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus."

How does a sinner get rid of past sins? He must come to Christ. All people who are out in the world have sinned and come short of the glory of God; therefore, every sinner must come in old-time repentance with a real penitent attitude and confess and forsake sin; then God, in loving mercy, will remove the sin as far as the east is from the west, never to be remembered against that person again. Once He removes it, that person who was once a sinner is cleansed from sin. To be cleansed from sin means that one is free from sin through faith in His blood. However, it doesn't stop there. In the third chapter of Romans, Paul said we are justified through faith in His blood. In other words, we are cleared of the sins that are past through faith in His blood.

We Are Saved by His Life

Romans 5:8-9 tells us: "But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then [there is more to it than just being justified, or cleansed from the sins of the past], being now justified by his blood [How did we get justified by His blood? By faith in His blood.], we shall be saved from wrath through him." Some say that Jesus covers us like an umbrella, and no matter how we live, He stands between us and God, and we will never get into trouble as long as we live. That's just another branch of false eternal security teaching, and there's not an ounce of truth in it. That would make Christ a minister of sin, and it would make Him shield and cover us for things which He has sent others to hell for.

Let's read verse 9 again, "Much more then, being now justified by his blood [What are we justified from? The sins of the past, we shall be saved from wrath [He was speaking of getting under the wrath of God in the future. How? through him." Verse 10 goes on to say, "For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved [this is future salvation, everyday living] by his life." If through His death, through the shedding of His blood, we can be saved from sins that are past, then through His life coming into us, we can be saved from sin in the future. This is what Paul was telling us. His death cancelled the sins of the past, and His life keeps us from sins of the present and future. This is exactly how John used the blood.

Again, verse 7 of our scripture text reads, "But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin." What is the secret of the text? John was a Jew. He was writing to many who were Jews, and they understood what John meant when he said, "The blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth us from all sin." Every one of them understood that the life was in the blood. Deuteronomy 12:23 and Leviticus 17:11 tell us that the life is in the blood. The essential part of every sin offering was the blood. The rest of the sacrifice could be eaten. The sacrifice for sin, or the atoning for sin, was burnt up. It didn't matter so much about the body.

The Jews were taught not to eat or drink the blood, even when they ate the flesh of those sacrifices. Why? Because the life was in the blood. Through the shedding of blood, Christ laid down His life. It is too cheap to say that He spilled His blood; He willingly laid down His life. In the Old Testament, an animal's life was taken involuntarily, but the Lamb of God did more than shed His blood: His blood is a figure of a consecrated life that was willingly laid down for you and me.

An Ever-acting Power

We can read in John, the sixth chapter, that Jesus taught the disciples, "I am the Bread that came down from Heaven. Except you eat My flesh and drink My blood, you have no life in you." The Jews murmured that this was a hard saying, because they had been taught all their lives not to drink the blood; but He was telling them to drink it. Jesus saw they were confused, so He went on to tell them that He was not talking about His corporal flesh. He said, "How are you going to eat My flesh when I ascend back to the Father?" Then He taught them that the flesh He wanted them to eat was His words, and the blood that He wanted them to drink was His Spirit. It's the real life.

A better translation of 1 John 1:7 reads, "If we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the life of Jesus Christ cleanses us [or keeps us clean] from all sin." When Jesus said, "Except ye drink my blood," this takes us a step further than having faith in His blood. Faith in His blood will remit the sins that are past, but we have to drink His blood to have any life in us. How do we drink it? When we drink His Spirit; in other words, when the Holy Spirit moves in, the very life of the sacrifice comes into our life. If we read verse 7 with the word life rather than the word blood, we will be able to understand the true meaning of it.

John was merely saying that the saints keep fellowship by walking in the light, or truth, of God's Word. We will find there is a privilege that belongs to that fellowship. What kind of fellowship are we in? We're in fellowship with the Father and the Son. We will find there is a member in that fellowship that has an ever-acting power working to cleanse away everything from our life that would pollute it. This power works to cleanse away everything that can possibly spoil that fellowship. In other words, the blood of Jesus Christ was shed, and faith in His blood will cleanse us from all sin. The life of Christ coming into our life will work a cleansing action on us. First John 5:18 says, "We know that whosoever is born of God sinneth not; but he that is begotten of God keepeth himself, and that wicked one toucheth him not."

The word cleanse in 1 John 1:7 comes from the Greek word katharos, which means to keep "free from impure admixture, without blemish." The cleansing power of God in our lives through the Holy Spirit does a daily, complete, cleansing work, not from some sin, but from all sin.

Let's read the Amplified Version of 1 John 1:7, "But if we [really] are living and walking in the Light as He [Himself] is in the Light, we have [true, unbroken] fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanses (removes) us from all sin and guilt---keeps us cleansed from sin in all its forms and manifestations." It doesn't say the removing of sin, but "removes us from all sin." This is what Jesus Christ prayed for. He prayed, "Father, do not take them out of the world; keep them from the evil that is in the world."

Verse 9 in the Amplified Bible reads, "If we [freely] admit that we have sinned and confess our sins, He is faithful and just [true to His own nature and promises] and will forgive our sins dismiss our lawlessness) and continually cleanse us from all unrighteousness---everything not in conformity to His will in purpose, thought and action." He will keep us clean.

Failure to Walk in the Light

1 John 1:8 says, "If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves..." Those who use the seventh verse as a cleansing from sin day after day for Christians use verse 8 to support it. They say, if you say that you have no sin, you deceive yourself, and the truth is not in you. Let's study this in the light of God's Word and in the light of the context.

First of all, John was dealing with folks (then and now) who had failed to walk in the light. They had done worng, yet they failed to own it as sin. As a pastor, I know that we also are in such a day. People say, "I have failed. I know I have come a bit short," but it is hard to get them to say, "I have sinned." This goes along with the kind of business John was dealing with. See, when we do wrong, fail God, and don't walk in the light, we have sinned; and whenever we say that we don't have any sin when we do have sin, we're deceiving ourselves. People don't think this is sin anymore.

The devil has gotten people's minds so twisted that they think they can live just about any way they want to live and still get by. When a pastor preaches to them from God's Word, they make up their minds while he's preaching what they're going to do, but no one can convince them that they've sinned.

I'll give you a living illustration. I've visited different people who have missed attending church quite a bit. I visited them to see what the trouble was. They told me, "Oh, we just got busy. (It had been five or six weeks since they had been in the services.) Don't worry about us. We were starting a garden and a lot of other things. We just got busy; we haven't done wrong." They had been taught that the Bible teaches us "to neglect not the assembling of ourselves together". See, they were allowing themselves to become blind to the Word and allowing deception to work.

Sin is a transgression of what the Word commands. This is why there's no power in some congregations: sinners are trying to teach Sunday school, sinners are trying to sing, and there may even be sinners trying to preach, hollering, "Lord, send the power down!" God is saying, "The power is already down. You need to get where it is." We're living in a day when people have a form of godliness but deny the real power thereof; so we've gone from power to perils. What a perilous time! God never intended the church to have such perils. He wants us to have power. Perils come because people deny the power, and the power will not come because people will not obey God.

I'll never join in a prayer meeting trying to pray for God to send down the power. I've learned by pastoring people that if we'll obey God, He will send the power. God wants to make Himself known, and He wants to show Himself strong. The eyes of the Lord go to and fro over the whole earth to find people with perfect hearts so that He can show Himself strong in the midst of them.

Many people walk in darkness and try to bluff their way and say they have fellowship with God. Then when the truth goes forth and points out what sin is, within their hearts they settle it, "I don't have any sin," and they deceive themselves. This is what John was dealing with. He was writing to folks who blamed everything and everyone else for their shortcomings, and they refused to own their sin. I've never seen a time when people are so full of excuses. They'll say, "So-and -So didn't act right" or "The Sunday school teacher was too bold in his statement."

Rarely does anyone say, "It's my fault. I have sinned. There's no one to blame but me." That's how the prodigal son received forgiveness. He came to himself. For months he had been blaming his father. Perhaps he thought, "He's too strict, and he doesn't really stand by me. And that brother, who could live with him! He's a stinker." The more he blamed someone else, the deeper he got in the hog-pen, but he finally came to himself and said, "This is my fault. I've sinned." When he reached that point, he started for home, and his father met him coming up the road.

When we go our own way, we do wrong. Our own way is walking in darkness. Isaiah said that the Lord laid on Him the iniquity of us all. What's the iniquity of us all? It's having our own way. When John said, "If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves," he wasn't blighting the experiences of people who were living holy and free from sin. When we study these verses in the light of the context, we will find that he was talking about people who were not walking in the light, yet they still claimed to have fellowship with God. When they were taught the Word of God, they said, "We don't have any sin." Well, if we have walked in darkness, we have failed God we have refused to walk with God, and we have sinned; therefore we must confess and forsake it.

Hindrances to Fellowship With Christ

Fellowship is not to be taken for granted. many have fallen short of the rich experience that God wants them to have. John mentioned four things that are hindrances to fellowship with Christ. I will cover three of them. The first one is hypocrisy. In verse 6 of our Scripture lesson, we read, "If we say that we have fellowship with him, and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not the truth." In other words, their mouths were saying one thing, but their lives were saying something else. They were professing to honor Christ but were deliberately rejecting Him in their living.

If we are in this condition, there is hope for us. In verse 9 he said, "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." Thank God, even the hypocrite can be cleansed from sin, if he will confess. That's why John put that verse in there. If we cover our sin, we won't prosper. That doesn't mean that we won't prosper financially or in health. No, he was saying that if we cover our sin, we won't prosper spiritually, because every time we get around where God is and His truth is going forth, He is going to jerk the cover off. We may even keep it covered all of our life, but when we die and come up to the Judgment, it will be uncovered there. We can't keep it covered. The Bible says to beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy. There is nothing covered; all things are open and naked with Him whom we have to do.

If we are a hypocrite, God has our number. We may fool our wife and family and the preacher for a while, but we don't have God fooled one minute. When we do worng but refuse to own our sin, we are deceiving ourselves, and the truth is not in us.

The second thing John mentioned that keeps people from fellowship is impenitence. Let's read verses 8 and 9 of our Scripture lesson again: "If we say that 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..." Verse 2 of the second chapter says, "And he is the propitiation for our sins..." Here john was dealing with people who had been living for God but had done wrong. In essence, he was saying, "If we will be humble enough to confess our sins, God will forgive us; but if we allow the devil to fool us and get us to say that we don't have any sin, we will deceive ourselves."

Impenitence is refusing to recognize our failures as sin. People say, "Oh it's only frailties of the flesh." Well, God doesn't forgive frailties of the flesh; He only forgives sin. John was merely making a way of escape for the Christian who does have failure and sin, but he was in no way teaching that all Christians live in sin and need to have a daily cleansing from sin. Any one of us could have a failure.

We read in 1 John 2:1, "My little children, these things write I unto you, that ye sin not. And if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous." John wrote that we sin not; then he wanted us to know that if we do sin, there is a way out for us, thank God. However, that is not the way we are to live; that's an exception. The rule is to live without sin. That's the way God wants us to live, and that's the way we can live. Of course, we need to grow and develop in our experience. The Bible makes room for all of that. Nonetheless, God's plan is that we live without sin.

Impenitence hinders true fellowship. We can't really confess our sin the way the Bible teaches to confess sin without being penitent and broken. We can't receive forgiveness from God when we go to Him with the attitude, "Sure, I have sinned. So what? Everybody does it." Confessing our sin means more than that! What does confessing sin mean? It means humbling ourselves before God with a broken and contrite spirit. When we confess our sin, we own it before God and say, "These deeds are mine. Your Word is right; I am worng. I am so sorry. Lord, forgive me and give me the strength, the wisdom, and the ability to do right. I don't want to do wrong anymore."

Self-Sufficiency Hinders Fellowship

We learn more about self-sufficiency from 1 John 1:10. John faced humanism, just as we face it today. Many out in the world will actually rise up and say, "Preacher, go talk to a drunkard somewhere. I don't need salvation. I haven't sinned.

John was dealing with people who were self-sufficient; they had humanistic ideas. Today there are multitudes of people who are self-sufficient. Humanism is being taught in our schools, it's being aired over the television and the radio, and we can read it in the newspapers. What's the big move of the devil? He's causing men to feel that they are self-sufficient: they think that they can get along without God, and that they don't need Him.

John said that people who say they haven't sinned make Him a liar. Why? Because he said all have sinned and come short of the glory of God. There's not a person anywhere who has come to the age of accountability and has not sinned. Old humanistic ideas are even working in the churches. We're not self-sufficient. We need God more today that we've ever needed Him in our lives. The spirit of humanism is wrecking homes and wrecking lives, and it's teaching our children self-sufficiency.

When my children were in school, humanism began to be set forth. They were taught that they were independent of other persons, that they each have a right to their own ideas and their own rights, and that nobody could tell them just exactly what to do. It went so far with one of my children, that he came home one day and said, "Dad, you mustn't spank me any more. The teacher has been telling us that we are independent, that we have a right to our own thoughts, and that our parents don't have good reason to put their thoughts on us. And they said if you smack me, I can just dial this telephone number."

I said, "All right, go ring the number real quickly."

He said, "What for?"

I said, "Because I want that teacher to come and watch me while I smack you."

One time a woman came to me and said that she had a son who was nipping in a certain thing that was wrong. She said, "What am I going to do?"

I just stood and looked for a little bit and said, "What do you mean what are you going to do?"

"Well, what am I going to do with him?"

I said, "You need to do with him just as I did with my boys when I found that they had gotten into something they shouldn't have. When I got done with them, they didn't pick that thing up any more."

There's still something we can do about some of these things. The Bible still says to train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it. Many don't understand the Scriptures. They say, "Oh, I've trained my child in the right way, but he's out in sin" or "I trained him in the way of the Church, but now he's down in Babylon." That Scripture isn't specifically dealing with religious training. No, that Scripture is dealing with training a child in the way he should go in the home, and he will not depart from it. Why? He can't depart from it; it's a part of him. If we would go to some of the southern states, we would find that those little children say, "Yes, sir" and "No, sir" when you speak to them. People in the stores say, "Yes, sir" or Yes, ma'am." Training becomes a part of a child. We might as well try to "take off his ear" as to take that training away. It becomes the moral principle and bible of his life, and he cannot depart from it.

How's Our Fellowship?

Thank God for fellowship, and thank God for the work which God has wrought through Jesus Christ that has brought us in to this glorious fellowship that we can enjoy. Let's be wide awake to the fact that the enemy is working in an effort to work something in each of our lives. It doesn't take much. All we have to do is allow one of our opinions to develop into an attitude, and that's not hard to do. If we don't do much praying, opinions will develop into attitudes, and attitudes will cause us to start judging others according to our opinion. Whatever we mete to our brother will be put on us; God will start getting on us. The devil is working to spoil fellowship on two levels: between us and God and between us and the people of God.

l give you an example of how we ought to live. Let's say that I've been really close to someone, but due to a difference about something, fellowship has been broken. Even though I might not always be welcome in his home, I would still visit him and pray with him.

n I first began to serve God, I got frustrated because there were so many things I didn't understand. I wanted all men to think well of me, and I went a lot of different directions when I heard that somebody didn't think well of me. Finally, God had to wake me up to the fact that my experience didn't rest on what people thought of me; my experience rests on what I think of people.

Scripture says as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men. If others don't want to live peaceably, we can't help that; but we can live peaceably by the grace of God. Through the power of God's Holy Spirit, we can mortify the deeds of the body. Yes, we still have flesh to keep under, and we have feelings. We will never become so sanctified that we can't feel pain when our finger gets mashed, and we'll never get so sanctified that we won't feel badly when somebody runs us down.

re are going to be times when we will be hurt. Somebody will misuse us. The flesh will say, "If I were you, I'd cut them down good," but if we, through the Spirit, mortify the deeds of the body, we will live. God knows those thoughts are going to come to our mind. He understands that. However, when they come, He waits to see what we're going to do about them. If we give vent to the flesh, we'll act wrong, but we can, through the Spirit, mortify the deeds of the body. We must say. "Lord, help me to get rid of this thought."

is our interest in the things of God? Do we still love the truth? Do we still love the worship services? Do we still love the work of the church as much as we ever have? How about our fellowship with others? Do we have an opinion that differs from another and the devil has caused us to allow that opinion to become an attitude? Do we put someone else down because he feels something ought to be done that we think ought not to be done? How free do we feel around them? This is the test.

[The End]