Faith Grounded In A Real Jesus

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Over the past few weeks, we've been following John's argument. He's just setting up his letter, which would have been read aloud to these believers. And he's setting up his argument in the opening chapter, which is where we're still at. And he begins by grounding the Christian faith in the real person of Jesus, not an intellectual argument, but the real person of Jesus, the word of life, he calls him, the one that we have seen, heard, and we've touched, and we proclaim. He begins that way, and I think I've mentioned it every week so far. I'm going to mention it another week. The point is that Christianity is not built on some sort of a private spiritual experience. Christianity isn't some secret knowledge to discover. And it's also not something that can't be examined. You can examine Christianity and break it down and feel it, touch it, look at it. Christianity begins with Jesus and the testimony of those who knew him. It was those first followers. That's how any of us today know about Jesus, is because of those who followed him for years and years. And then after his death and resurrection, they went and they proclaimed what they had seen, heard, and touched.

God Is Light And Truth Matters

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John gives us the central message saying that God is light and in him there's no darkness at all. And what that meant for us is that if God is light and we do indeed believe God is light, then that means for you and I, we have to learn to walk in the lights. We have to walk out of the darkness and all the things that are hidden. This means that we have to bring our lives into the truth rather than building them around secrecy, deception, pretense, or denial, all of those things that we might be hiding or afraid will get rejected if we bring this out. In Christian community, we ought to. This ought to be the space that we can bring those out and bring them into the light. Now, that in and of itself, I think John could have ended his letter right then and there, but he continues to go because he knows how religious people use language like this: light, cleansing, fellowship. He knows how they can use that language and manipulate it against other people. He knows that people have this ability to turn spiritual maturity into a claim of superiority. Yes, you can be spiritually mature, and that's good. But when we turn it into like a superiority thing, we're like, I'm better than or more than, or you're not as whatever as me, that becomes a

When Spirituality Turns Into Superiority

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problem. And that's when John kind of is jumping in now to say, you can't do that. None of us can do that. Not 2,000 years ago, not John, not his fellow disciples, the 12 who followed Jesus, not this church. He says, none of us can do that. He says, if we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we say that we have not sinned, we make him, referring to Jesus, a liar. And his word is not in us. So we can deduct a few things. Otherwise, it it seems random, right? If you were just, if you were hearing this, reading this for the first time, it kind of seems random that he brings it up, but it's not. What we can deduct is that those who left the community, the original reason that prompts John to write, those who left the community believe that they had a deeper spiritual knowledge than those who didn't leave. Those who left thought themselves more spiritually mature and therefore better than those who stayed. And we can't reconstruct every detail of whatever this schism, whatever this split, division, separation was, but John's response suggests that their own spirituality allowed them to place themselves above others. Still happens today, right? And that's what was going on. They claimed to know God to the point, it seems they denied their own sin. They had gotten to the point where they believed that they were without sin. And in doing so, they've actually fractured Christian community and they failed to love the people that they left behind. Those are kind of some pillars of Christianity to love people and the unity and fellowship of community. And John's response is very direct. Any spirituality that places us beyond confession is just self-deception. Any spirituality that puts you beyond confession, the confession of your sin, your stuff, the things that are in the shadow, in the back room, any spirituality that allows those to go untouched is actually self-deception. Because according to John, all of us have sin. John, Peter, Paul. He doesn't say if they claim to be without sin. He says, if we, you and me, the person sitting next to you, in front of you, me, Liz, all of us, we all have sin. The apostles who walked with Jesus, those who witnessed the resurrection, those who devoted their lives to the point of death, they all had sin. You don't get in this life beyond the point of that. We all have sin. We all remain capable of deceiving ourselves. We continue every day to need forgiveness and cleansing. No amount, okay, hear me out. No amount of biblical knowledge, no seminary degree, no ministry experience, no spiritual discipline. No, there's not like an XYZ amount of church services that I go to removes the sin in your life. Sin is not something the new Christian struggles with. Sin is not something the person who doesn't know God struggles with alone, right? Sin is something that we all struggle with. Whether you know God, you don't know God, you're new to God, you've been going to church for a hundred years, we all struggle with sin. Pastors have sin. I have sin. Our leaders here at the church have sin. Our volunteers here at the church have sin. And it's not a Madison Church issue, okay? Theologians and scholars, the people who study these things and spend their whole lives dedicated to this, they have sin. Faithful parents have sin. Respected elders have sin. And even that person who seems to know everything about the Bible and goes to church every time there's an event. You know, I'm thinking of your aunt or your grandma, that person in your life who you're like, oh, that person, yes, even they have sin.

Rethinking Sin Beyond A Scorecard

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Now, let's talk about that. Because I've been talking about sin a lot. Let's talk about like what is sin. Because I would make the argument this morning that the the church has never, has not, I shouldn't say never, but has not in a really long time taught sin well. Because when I'm talking about sin, I bet that most of you think about like a rule book or checklist. You think of do's and you think of don'ts. Yes and no. That really is an incomplete understanding of sin. Yes, God establishes rules, and we should follow those rules. And some of them make sense to us, and sometimes they don't make sense to us, but nonetheless, we we follow them. God gives us commands, our actions do matter. John is going to address that. But when we stop there, we begin to approach faith as a moral scorecard. And then we ask how to count sins. Like we try to like scorecard it, right? Like murder, really bad. Don't do that. That's like 10 points. Lying depends why, right? And that's what we we begin to do. And then we also begin to assess people on how seriously they take their faith based on their sins. All the while asking, how close can we get to the boundary of whatever sin it is before falling over? Is this wrong yet? Or how much can I get away with before it's wrong? And this is one of the ways that the church has missed the seriousness of sin. Because as, and I'm talking about the whole Christian church around the world, what we have done is that we focus on behaviors that are easily identifiable that we don't necessarily struggle with. And then we highlight those as a way to make ourselves feel better, more spiritually mature, more set apart, meanwhile, ignoring the real sins in our own lives that remain hidden. For example, churches can speak with great urgency about sexual behavior. Don't do this, do this. Here are the rules, all of this, et cetera, et cetera, while also just remaining quiet about greed, their own, other people's. Doesn't matter. But that's visible and this isn't. We condemn addiction, right? We condemn addiction, whether it's alcoholism, drugs, whatever it is. We condemn addiction, but we praise forms of workaholism all the time. As a matter of fact, if you're not like a workaholic, you we we call you names like you're being lazy. Even though workaholism we know damages families, kids, your own body. We discipline people for visible failures. Aha. Caught ya. While excusing our own dishonesty, our own cruelty, our own pride, the way we manipulate others to get what we want, our contempt of others, the misuse of spiritual authority. And so when we're talking about sin, this rule-based understanding of sin doesn't help us. It helps people, I'll tell you how it helps. It helps people look and appear and feel righteous without actually becoming Christ-like, without actually becoming more loving. And as long as we've avoided the sins our community considers most shameful, we think that we're doing well. Well, the people around me think, you know, I'm doing well. So I must be doing well without ever coming back to Christ and saying, Christ, what is it? Jesus, what is it in my life? Search my heart. What is it that I need to do? Because it's not about what Stephen thinks or the people next to you think about the stuff that you're hiding. What is God trying to bring out of you? In Scripture, sin is not just the violation of a regulation. Sin is the force that takes away what God created you for. The life that God wants for you. Sin bends you toward death. Sin distorts our relationship with God and other people. And rather than trusting in God, we hide, we grasp, we try to get control, we attempt to secure life on our own terms. And that again distorts our relationship with God, with others. It teaches us to build identities around achievement or around approval. Or maybe your identity is built around shame or pain. The image that you want other people to see. You see, sin isn't this giant list of do's and don'ts. It's this thing that distorts who you are and who God created you to be. And the longer we hide our sin, the longer we're working against ourselves to becoming who God wants us to be and the life that He wants us to have. That's why John thus far has connected sin with darkness, and darkness with deception and hatred and lawlessness and death. Sin doesn't just make us guilty, it damages our ability to see clearly and to love faithfully God, others, and ourselves. I think a better definition of sin would be our participation in everything that resists life, truth, and the love of God. Sin keeps us from life, truth, and the love of God. And sin includes those things that we choose, but sin also includes those desires, habits, assumptions, institutions and patterns that are larger than one decision. Yes, sometimes we know exactly what we're doing. We tell a lie because the truth will cost us something. We wound another person because we're hurt. So why shouldn't they hurt? We protect our image because if I admit failure, maybe I will be unlovable. But at other times, sin is less conscious. You inherit, I've inherited, we all inherit patterns from our families, from our churches or communities, cultures. We participate in systems that we did not ourselves create, yet we participate in them. We repeat behaviors we don't seriously examine, we think it's fine, and we call certain forms of selfishness responsibility, control, leadership, and certain forms of indifference, wisdom. This doesn't mean that everyone bears equal responsibility for every form of evil, but I want to point out that every single one of us not only is the sin within, but the sin is around us, and we participate in it. Sin is personal, but it's never only personal. Okay? Sin is personal, but it's never only personal. Your sin doesn't just hurt you, it hurts those around you. It moves through families, organizations, churches, governments, and cultures. Human beings create systems, and over time, those systems begin forming the people who live within them. That is why Christians should be cautious. If you're a follower of Jesus, you should be cautious of any movement that divides the world neatly between righteous and wicked, right and wrong, good and bad. That should almost be your red flag of like, hey, wait a second. That can't be right. It sounds right, it sounds good right at the beginning, but we have to discern the universality of sin should produce humility, not hopelessness. It should humble all of us. We all make mistakes, inside and out. And it should also make us slower to condemn those around us. Because I'm a sinner and I know you're a sinner. I shouldn't judge you. We should be more willing to examine ourselves. It should teach us that spiritual maturity is not demonstrated by our ability to locate sin in someone else. Like, just because you're spiritually mature, that doesn't, you know, you don't get that badge because you're really good at pointing out the flaws in other people. That's not how that works.

Church Cultures That Punish Honesty

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But unfortunately, churches have spoken about sin that makes honesty nearly impossible. A lot of churches have. We've made it to the point where I can't admit what I did because I'll be punished, I'll be shamed, they'll make an example out of me. Churches that say, well, everyone sins, but then create a culture in which admitting sin costs you your dignity. Cost you relationships or employment or ministry opportunities or your standing in place among the community. Yes, everyone sins, but don't admit it here. We preach grace while rewarding the appearance of perfection. We tell people to confess, yet we fail to become a people we can trust with the truth. And in some churches, sin becomes a s a tool of control. Leaders who emphasize guilt and fear because the shame people are easier to manage. And in other churches, the language of sin is avoided altogether because it has been used so destructively. It's swinging the pendulum on the other side, where we use sin either too much or we don't use it at all. Where we talk about sin as, oh, it's just a little mistake. You just fell short of your potential. It's just a failure to be the best version of yourself. But John offers a different way, another way. John refuses to minimize sin on the one hand as this little thing. Oh, oops, no big deal. Because sin destroys love, sin fractures trust, sin produces pain and suffering and death. So John isn't going to minimize that because your pain and suffering matters and ought not to be minimized. And at the same time, he doesn't weaponize sin because God's purpose isn't humiliation. God's purpose in admitting our sin and bringing that stuff into light is forgiveness and cleansing and restoration. If we confess our sins, John writes, he who is faithful and just will forgive our sins and cleanse us from all righteousness. Confession means agreeing with the truth. It's not just saying, well, nobody's perfect, because that phrase can sound humble while allowing us to avoid responsibility that we need to take. Genuine confession. When we're talking about confession, and as we move into communion in a moment and we have this opportunity to come to the table as our vernacular is and to approach Christ, genuine confession becomes specific. It's I'm sorry I lied because I wanted to protect my image. It's I withdrew affection because I wanted another person to feel punished. I ignored harm because acknowledging it would have required something from me that I didn't want to give. Tell me if you do this too. I assigned motives to someone without asking whether or not my assumptions about them were true. I cared more about being seen as right than becoming someone who is loving. These are the things as we approach the communion table, we ought to bring to Christ. Not just, I'm sorry, I lied, I'm sorry, I ignored harm. But God searched my heart. What was my why? Why did I do that? And the truth is, you're not going to understand every layer of your motivations right away. But confession begins when we stop defending what we know is already untrue.

Confession That Leads To Restoration

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And when we do that, John says, I'm writing these things so that you may not sin. His purpose is not to make sin feel inevitable or insignificant. Grace isn't an excuse or permission to continue destroying ourselves and those around us. John wants us to resist sin, to reject deception, to practice love, and to walk in light. Because of Jesus, confession doesn't end in rejection. Accountability isn't humiliation. Failure is not your permanent identity marker. We can name what we have done, we can receive forgiveness, we can make repairs where repair is possible, and it isn't always possible, but we can make repairs where it is possible and learn new ways of living. The good news for all of us today is not that Christians no longer sin. It won't happen on this earth. We know it won't. You can read the end of the Bible, okay? It's not gonna end here. Okay, spoiler alert. You're never going to reach perfection on earth. You're never gonna be fully what we, the Christians, we use this word sanctified, and it is to be made without sin or to be made right, completely sinless. We know that that doesn't happen until we die. We know that the work begins, it begins, but we're told that it is when we die that Christ finishes that work. That then the good news for us today, and what I hope that as we go forward, Madison Church, a community, as we look around the people in the room, I hope that we can become a community where we don't have to lie about it. Where we can trust one another with it. I don't know, and Dimon, I don't I don't think we're there. I think we've got work to do. But I want to get there. I hope you do too. I want us to get there. I want us to step into the light because the God that we meet in the light isn't waiting to destroy us. He's not waiting to say, gotcha, look at this, look at that.

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He's waiting to embrace us, to hug us, to love us, to give us his best, to welcome

Becoming A Community That Trusts

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us.

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So let's walk into that together as a community. Let's agree with one another, to covenant with one another, to forgive, to cleanse, to restore, to set one another free, to participate in the work that Jesus has started, that Jesus is doing, that Jesus will continue to do, and he will one day finish.