Archive | July, 2008

image by miuenski

Ryan, my 15 month old son, was trying to eat his favourite addiction (Cheerios) on the front step the other day. His left hand held a spare set of keys that he’s decided to take everywhere. His right hand was clutching a bright blue ‘nail’ from his Little Tike’s Work Bench. He was squatting down in front of a Tupperware lid full of Cheerios, trying desperately to grab them with his already-full hands.

“Put the keys down so you can eat, bud,” I admonish him. No response.

“Here Ryan, let me hold your nail for you.” Still nothing.

I think he finally won by using a few spare fingers to shovel up the treats.

That little event perfectly illustrates the point John is trying to convey to his readers. The false-teachers were telling the church members that they were without sin. John brought the correction quickly: any claim to sinlessness is mere self-deception. But if we open up and let go of our sins . . .

. . .

The Deception: If we say that we have no sin (v. 8a, NRSV)

The Effect: we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. (v. 8b, NRSV)

We humans are gullible. Given a strong enough motivation and a long enough time frame, we can justify almost any action or belief. Sure, it sounds cynical, but take a serious look at humanity—both externally and internally—and I’m pretty sure you’ll begin to see the same thing. If you don’t believe me, try asking a psychologist who is trained in personality disorders!

The prophet Jeremiah wrote about our inclination towards self-deception:

The heart is devious above all else; it is perverse—who can understand it? (Jeremiah 17:9, NRSV)

Devious. What an apt word.

The false-teachers convinced themselves and their audiences that they were without sin. We don’t know if they thought they surpassed it, overcame it, or plan old transcended the good-evil dialectic. We only know their claim. It was quite an attractive belief.

John reminded his followers of the words of the prophet: the heart is devious. Sinlessness is self-deception. More sinisterly, any claim of sinlessness prevents God from healing our broken human nature.

. . .

The Solution: If we confess our sins, he who is faithful and just will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. (v. 9, NRSV)

This is the flip-side of the deception. If we would only learn to confess sin instead of hiding (like Adam and Eve in the trees), we would be forgiven.

The confession of sin is often emphasized today, but rarely written about in the New Testament. According to Kruse, there are only four other passage that deal with the personal confession of sin:

1. Matthew 3:6
2. Mark 1:15
3. James 5:16
4. Acts 19:18

From this comprehensive list, Kruse makes the observation that confession of personal sin is a public matter. The evangelical world has turned this verse into a bed-time liturgy, when it was intended to be a way to heal communities! Understanding the corporate nature of this confession makes the act far more difficult—but just look at the two results:

1. God will forgive us.
   God will remove the offense that blocked the divine-human relationship. Confession of our sin to each other allows us to be restored to God.
2. God will cleanse us.
   God will even remove the stain that resulted from the sin!

Think of it this way. An authority tells you not to eat ice-cream in the living room. However, the television’s in the living room and your favourite show is starting. The inevitable happens, and you spill a big glob of ice-cream on the shag rug. As it starts to melt into the 2 inch long fibers you’re caught. What happens?

1. You can claim that you didn’t do it and introduce a layer of deception into your relationship with the authority (who knows exactly what you did).
2. You confess what you did and the authority forgives you for your disobedience, and then steam-cleans the rug to remove all evidence of the offense.

I think the right course of action is clear.

. . .

Like a toddler clutching his precious items, we hold our shameful sins close to our heart. Maybe we even deceive ourselves into believing we are without sin. But when we hold on to our sins, we prevent God from healing us.

It’s time to confess quickly, and receive freely.

< 1 John 1:6-7 | Hypocrisy

1 John 1:10 | The Third Lie >

Image by Matteo Bonera

We hear the accusation, “hypocrite!” thrown around often today. Since this is an election year in the United States, all the political news pundits have the term at the ready. We all know that nothing takes the wind out of a successful campaign like a good exposure of hypocrisy.

Oddly enough, the word hypocrisy didn’t always have such pejorative connotations. In classical Greek, a hypocrites was simply a stage actor. In time, that neutral title started taking on its negative value. The root meaning of hypocrisy, though, can still be understood as someone acting out a part.

In 1 John 1:6, hypocrisy is just the first of three errors John points out for his congregations to avoid. The structure of the remainder of chapter one is quite easy to discern. John begins verses 6, 8, and 10 with the same words: “If we say” (NRSV). Each of these three units of text contain a deception that the false-teachers were spreading around John’s churches. John notes the deception, the effect it has on the believer, and the solution. This week we’ll look at the first problem: hypocrisy.

. . .

The Deception: If we say that we have fellowship with him while we are walking in darkness, (v. 6, NRSV)

The false-teachers that afflicted John’s churches claimed to have a good relationship with God, while living morally impure lives. John wrote to set things straight. After claiming in v. 5 that “God is light” (NRSV), the thought of relating to the light from a position of darkness is simply absurd. Where light is, darkness vanishes.

There’s a subtle point I need to bring out here. John used the metaphor of “walking” to describe these people’s relationship to darkness. Let’s be honest: we all sin. You know it. I know it. John knew it too! He’s not talking here about people who sin, but about people who walk in that sin—those who make a practice of sinning. There’s grace, forgiveness, and cleansing provided for us sinners, but to think that we can make a habit of walking around in the dark while claiming fellowship with Light Incarnate is nonsensical.

“Religion without morality is an illusion.” (Stott 79)

. . .

The Effect: we lie and do not do what is true; (v. 6b, NRSV)

Living in that sort of hypocrisy leads to two offenses:

1. We lie about our relationship with God.
   This effect is self-explanatory. To walk in darkness while claiming fellowship with God (or other Christians, for that matter) is a lie.
2. We do not do the truth.
   What a curious expression: “do what is true” (NRSV). We assume that truth is something we know. For John, truth is something you do. The simple and direct prophecy from Micah 6:8 comes to mind:

He has told you, O mortal, what is good;
and what does the LORD require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness,
and to walk humbly with your God?
(NRSV, emphasis mine)

The truth is something we do.

. . .

The Solution: but if we walk in the light as he himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin. (v. 7, NRSV)

In order for the hypocrisy John described to be resolved, either God’s light has to coexist with darkness, or we learn to live in God’s light. Since the former will never happen, we should get on with the latter. To encourage his congregation in that direction, John offers two benefits of living life “in the light” (NRSV).

1. Fellowship with each other.
   Here again John surprises us with his logic. You would expect that walking in the light would lead to fellowship with God. Instead, John brings out the point that walking in the light allows us to have genuine fellowship with each other. To be sure, we have fellowship with God—but that divine-human fellowship is made concrete in our human-human life together.
2. Purification by Jesus’ blood.
   John is very direct here. It’s not Jesus’ life or his resurrection (although those are both very important). When we walk in the light, we are made pure because of Jesus’ brutal death. He was (and is) our sacrifice. The logic of this benefit is a bit difficult—if we walk in the light, doesn’t that mean that we have left our sins behind? Yes and no. Yes, we’re no longer walking in darkness, but we still do dark things. The difference is, when you’re walking in the light, those dark deeds are quickly exposed. Kruse explains it well:

“Walking in the light does not mean that those who do so never sin, but that they do not seek to hide that fact from God” (Kruse 65).

. . .

The call to us is to walk in the light, and to not be deceived by those who walk in darkness yet claim Christian fellowship. Darkness vanishes in the presence of the smallest candle, let alone the consuming fire of God’s presence.

< 1 John 1:5 | Light

1 John 1:8-9 | Self-Deception >

Photo by Paco CT

Have you ever heard Death Cab For Cutie’s “Marching Bands of Manhattan”? It’s a fantastic song that breaks typical songwriting convention. Most pop songs start with a verse, then build to a chorus. The musicians pull back for a second verse, only to build back up for another chorus before going all out on a bridge and guitar solo.

Death Cab’s song puts the two verses at the front and then repeats the chorus until the song ends. Essentially, the entire song is a lengthy crescendo. Every four or eight measures a new instrumental line is added and the intensity of the song increases. After four minutes of accelerating tension, you’re left expecting some major climax. Instead, you get a cut-off lyric and a single note on the piano. “Your love is going to [bing].” (Incidentally, “bing” is my self-appointed technical term for a single note on the piano during a pop song.)

In a way, verse 5 of first John functions like a similar anti-climax. John just spent four verses stressing his status as an eye-witness to Jesus. Then in verse five we get even more build-up:

This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you,

Are you ready for it? We’re all expecting something big. What is this secret that John the eye-witness has to share with us? What message did Jesus tell him that he’s finally getting around to sharing with us?

that God is light and in him there is no darkness at all. (NRSV)

Huh? Jesus never said that. Check out the gospels—it’s not there.

. . .

Every writer is distinct. In fact, biblical scholars can run a statistical analysis on the vocabulary of different letters to help determine whether or not they were written by the same person. We too have our favourite words and expressions, whether we realize it or not. One of John’s favourite concepts was the contrast of light and darkness.

After reflecting on verse 5 a bit more, the simple message—God is light and has no darkness in him—makes a little more sense. Listen to what John’s Gospel has to say about God and light:

In him was life, and the life was the light of all people. (1:4 NRSV)

The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it. (1:5 NRSV)

I am the light of the world. (8:12 NRSV)

As long as  I am in the world, I am the light of the world. (9:5 NRSV)

While you have the light, believe in the light, so that you may become children of light. (13:36 NRSV)

I have come as light into the world. (12:46 NRSV)

What’s common to all these references? Jesus is always the referent—not God the Father, as John shares with his church in 1 John 1:5. John is making a powerful statement in this fifth verse. In reality, it’s not an anti-climax—a mere piano tone at the end of a long song—it’s a definitive statement: Jesus is God. To put it in Jesus’ own words, according to John: “The Father and I are one” (John 10:30 NRSV).

. . .

What does it mean that Jesus and his Father are light? While it’s easy to find a whole range of ideas for the metaphor of light and darkness, two meanings predominate in John’s thought:

1. Light means truth and darkness means ignorance. This is the more benign of the two meanings. John had a bunch of people touring his churches claiming things about Jesus that were false. “If you want to be like Christ,” said John, “Don’t walk in such ignorance: let me remind you of the truth I witnessed.”
2. Light means purity and darkness means evil. Here it gets more serious. It’s one thing to be ignorant but quite another to be evil. God is absolute purity, with no evil in him at all. “If you want to be like Christ,” says John, “don’t continue to walk in sin: be pure.”

Where does this teaching leave us? God has chosen show us just what his purity and truth looks like in action: Jesus Christ. If we claim to be Christians, we need to allow the Spirit of God through John to remind us what Jesus’ life of purity and truth looked like in action, and then to then follow suit.

< 1 John 1:4 | Joy

1 John 1:6-7 | Hypocrisy>

Let’s start with a couple definitions from my favourite online dictionary: Ninjawords (it’s fast like a ninja):

• Happiness: joy, the emotion of being happy; good luck; good fortune; prosperity
• Joy: the feeling of happiness, extreme cheerfulness; an activity etc. which causes this feeling

Here’s what my big Canadian Oxford Dictionary has to say about it:

• Happy: feeling or showing pleasure or contentment
• Joy: a vivid emotion of pleasure; extreme gladness

Semantically, these words overlap and intertwine quite fluently in English. Although it’s difficult to nail them down, there is a difference between them. You wouldn’t say, “Man, that Baconator from Wendy’s filled me with joy yesterday.” (That is, of course, unless you really love your bacon!) Conversely, you probably wouldn’t say, “I’m happy my brother made it through surgery without dying”.  There’s got to be something deeper than happiness there.

The basic difference between these two words is the quality of the emotion: joy is stronger—more lasting—than mere happiness. It’s this deep, enduring sense of utter contentment that John has in mind when he writes:

We are writing these things so that our joy may be complete. (1 John 1:4, NRSV)

. . .

Before we look any closer at the this verse, we need to settle a textual issue. Some translations (NAS, NIV, NRSV) say “that our joy may be complete”. Other versions (KJV, Amplified) say “that your joy may be complete”.  That little pronoun really changes a lot. It’s fair to ask, “which is it?” Does John want his joy to be complete, or does he want his people’s joy to be complete? (Although you could legitimately answer, “both”, only one sense is intended in this sentence.)

In Greek, the difference between “your” and “our” is one letter. In transliteration, “your” is hēmōn, while “our” is humōn. The difference is between an eta and an upsilon.  You can see why it would be easy to mistake one for the other while copying the texts by hand.

Without going into a lot of detail, modern scholarly consensus suggests that “our” is the proper translation. (According to the United Bible Society’s Greek New Testament, the translation is rated {A} which means the text is “certain”.)

. . .

After a quick reading of this translation, John can almost seem selfish. He wants the people in his churches to have fellowship with him, the Father, and the Son so that he can be filled with joy. But let’s look deeper.

You may have noticed that John consistently uses the first person plural to refer to himself in the first four verses of this letter. In many other places in the letter, he uses the first person singular. Why did he chose to start the letter using “we” instead of “I”? It’s because John sees himself as part of a group of people—the twelve apostles—who were eyewitnesses to Jesus. He knew that he had a responsibility as one of the last living apostles to ensure that the truth about Jesus continued on in spite of the lies of the false-teachers.

John is not being selfish by stating that his joy will be complete when his people experience authentic Christian fellowship—quite the opposite. John knows that he will never be content until he has fulfiled his twofold responsibility:

• to the people in his churches, to keep them in the truth;
• to Jesus’ commission to be a faithful witness.

Both obeying Christ’s commission, and seeing the fruit of that obedience was necessary for him to experience joy.

. . .

What gives you joy? Take a minute and think about it. I hope it’s more than a Baconator (as delicious as those six strips of hickory smoked bacon piled high atop two 1/4 lb. patties of fresh, never frozen, beef can be.)

For the believer, joy is found in the twofold process of our obedience to the voice of the Spirit generating the Son’s intended results. And with joy like that available, why continue to chase mere happiness?

< 1 John 1:3 | Fellowship

1 John 1:5 | Light >