Saturday, August 31, 2024

Those in Darkness (1 John 1:6)

 

EVENING SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 8/31/2024 10:00 PM

 

My Worship Time                                                                               Focus:  “Those in Darkness”

 

Bible Reading & Meditation                                                           Reference:  1 John 1:6

 

            Message of the verse:  “If we say that we have fellowship with Him and yet walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth;”

 

            Now to say that a person is in darkness would mean that they are not a true believer, and so John is writing some of these verses in this first chapter of 1 John to those who are not believers, those who walk in darkness.  They claimed to have fellowship with God, to share common aspects of life with Him, that is eternal life.  I want to look at John 17:3 “"This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent.”  Now back to our look at 1 John 1:6, However, that claim is meaningless if one continues to walk in the darkness.  Walk refers to manner of life or conduct.  I have a list of verses that goes along with this last sentence:  Rom. 8:4; cf. 13:3; Eph. 4:1; Col. 1:10;; see also Deut. 10:12-13; Ps. 119:1; Mic. 6:8.  Now it is there that genuine salvation is manifest, not in a mere profession that one possesses eternal life.  There are some people that you talk to about how to be born-again and they will tell you that that happened to them at an earlier time in their life, and then you can see from their life that there is no fruit.  To profess one thing and live in contradiction to it is to lie and not practice the truth.  MacArthur writes:  “Jesus indicted the Jews’ superficial earthly religion by declaring to them, ‘The eye is the lamp of the body; so then if your eye is clear, your whole body will be full of light.  But if your eye is bad, your whole body will be full of darkness.  If then the light is in you is darkness, how great is the darkness!’ (Matt. 6:22-23).  In this analogy, the Lord argued from the lesser to the greater.  If it is a negative thing to be in the dark physically (blind), it is much worse to be in the dark spiritually.  John in his gospel taught that Jesus was the true light for a sin-darkened world (John 1:4-5; cf. 8:12).  But since sinful humanity prefers darkness over light (John 3:19-20), no one who claims to be a Christian and yet lives in darkness (meaning that they continually practice evil deeds) is actually saved (1 John 3:4, 9, cf. Matt. 7:17-18; 13:38; John 8:42-44).”

 

            Now we will look at James 1:22-25 to show that those who really embrace the truth heed what James has written here:

 

22 But prove yourselves doers of the word, and not merely hearers who delude themselves. 23 For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man who looks at his natural face in a mirror; 24 for once he has looked at himself and gone away, he has immediately forgotten what kind of person he was. 25 But one who looks intently at the perfect law, the law of liberty, and abides by it, not having become a forgetful hearer but an effectual doer, this man will be blessed in what he does.

 

            The truth is that believers posses God’s life and that makes them new creatures in Christ made for good works, and have the indwelling Holy Spirit (Rom. 8:11; 1 Cor. 3:16; 2 Tim. 1:14). MacArthur concludes:  “Thus they cannot ignore the existence of personal iniquity and walk in darkness (cf. Col 1:12-14).  No matter what anyone claims for himself, the genuineness of faith can always be seen in one’s life by the love of righteousness (Matt. 7:15-20).”

 

8/31/2024 10:25 PM

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