“This is the message we have heard from
Him and declare to you: God is light; in Him there is no darkness at all” (1
John 1:5).
Even in a well-lit room, there are shadows.
Outside it is brighter, but there is darkness out there, too. As
I look out the window from my desk, I see an apple tree with six inches of snow
on each branch. That tree is “white as snow,” but even it is in darkness
because the sky is overcast. David prayed in Psalm 51:7, “Cleanse me with
hyssop, and I will be clean; wash me, and I will be whiter than snow.” God is light, and in Him
there is no darkness at all.
“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, purifies us from all sin” (1 John 1:7). The
word purifies means “keeps on
cleansing.” It is a continuous washing. Walking in the light means that as soon
as you sin, you are aware of it, you confess it, and it gets cleansed. The
result? We have fellowship with one another. Walking in the light does not mean
never sinning, but it does mean that obedience is your normal state of being.
“We proclaim to you what we have seen
and heard so that you also may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is
with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ” (1 John 1:3). When we are
walking in the light, we also have fellowship with God.
The forgiveness you received from Christ
at your salvation has set you free from sin and guilt. Now your goal is to stay
free. That means staying cleansed from sin; and in order to confess and get
that cleansing, you need to know when you have sinned. You are most likely to notice
your sin when you are in the light.
“In the year that King
Uzziah died, I saw the Lord, high and exalted, seated on a throne; and the
train of his robe filled the temple. Above him were seraphim, each with six
wings: With two wings they covered their faces, with two they covered their
feet, and with two they were flying. And they were calling to one another: ‘Holy,
holy, holy is the Lord Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory.’ At
the sound of their voices the doorposts and thresholds shook and the temple was
filled with smoke. ‘Woe to me!’ I cried. ‘I
am ruined! For I am a man of unclean lips, and I live among a people of unclean
lips, and my eyes have seen the King, the Lord Almighty.’ Then
one of the seraphim flew to me with a live coal in his hand, which he had taken
with tongs from the altar. With it he touched my mouth
and said, “See, this has touched your lips; your guilt is taken away and your
sin atoned for” (Isa. 6:1-7).
In the presence of complete light,
Isaiah saw his sinfulness, confessed, and was cleansed immediately.
How do you walk in the light? First, confess every sin to God as soon as you are
aware of it. “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and
just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness” (1
John 1:9). God forgives the sins we confess to Him, and He forgives them right
away. This cleanses us whiter than snow and gets us back into the light.
Often, we sin for a while, get clean,
sin for a while, get clean, sin for a while… That is the method of the average
Christian. That is not walking in the light! Walking in the light continually
cleanses. When we make a habit of keeping short accounts with God, it becomes
more natural to be obedient. When we disobey, we are brought up short right
away, and the sin gets cleansed right away.
The Scripture says, “Light
has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because
their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the
light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be
exposed. But whoever lives by the truth comes into the
light, so that it may be seen plainly that what they have done has been done in
the sight of God” (John 3:19-21). When you walk in the light, you are asking to be reproved. Some children do
everything to hide what they have done wrong. Others do everything to get
caught. They want to be corrected. God wants us to be the kind of people who want to get caught.
The trouble is that when you are in sin,
you won’t want to come to the light. The solution? Program yourself ahead of
time for what you will do when you get into sin.
Suppose I am in flight training, and
there’s a red handle in the cockpit marked Eject
Button. I don’t practice pulling the red handle. But I program my head so
that if the wrong lights go on or there’s smoke in the cockpit, I don’t need to
stop and debate with myself about what to do. I pull the red handle! I am
trained to eject in certain situations.
When things are going well, program
yourself to say, “Turn to the light; turn to the light; turn to the light.”
When something goes wrong, that training will tell you to turn back to God.
(To be continued October 29…)
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