Fellowship

1 We proclaim to you the one who existed from the beginning, whom we have heard and seen. We saw him with our own eyes and touched him with our own hands. He is the Word of life. 2 This one who is life itself was revealed to us, and we have seen him. And now we testify and proclaim to you that he is the one who is eternal life. He was with the Father, and then he was revealed to us. 3 We proclaim to you what we ourselves have actually seen and heard so that you may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. 4 We are writing these things so that you may fully share our joy.

5 This is the message we heard from Jesus and now declare to you: God is light, and there is no darkness in him at all. 6 So we are lying if we say we have fellowship with God but go on living in spiritual darkness; we are not practicing the truth. 7 But if we are living in the light, as God is in the light, then we have fellowship with each other, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, cleanses us from all sin.

8 If we claim we have no sin, we are only fooling ourselves and not living in the truth. 9 But if we confess our sins to him, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all wickedness. 10 If we claim we have not sinned, we are calling God a liar and showing that his word has no place in our hearts.

A wife commented to her husband as they were traveling in the car, “When we dated, we always sat so close together, and now we are so far apart.” From the driver’s seat, the husband responded, “I haven’t moved from behind this wheel; if anyone has moved, it is you.”

This may help us in thinking about our relationship with God. If God seems distant to us, it is not because God has moved. If we walk in the light, we enjoy God’s purifying presence and the fellowship of all who are in the light. But if we walk in darkness—that is, away from the light of God—how can we expect to remain connected with God? We know God’s light pushes away the darkness, and Jesus comes to bring us out of our darkness (see John 8:12; 10:14-18; Luke 15). But if we continue walking in darkness, that is like running away from God.

The apostle John shares God’s remedy for this: to confess our sins. To confess is to agree that we have sinned and disobeyed God. As Tony Evans puts it, “If God calls it sin, you cannot reduce it to a bad habit … you cannot say it is a personality disorder … you cannot say everyone else does it.” If God calls it sin, then it is sin.

Let us daily confess our sins to God, asking for forgiveness.

Father, open our eyes to see things the way you do. We enter your cleansing light to purify us from all our filth. In your name, Amen.