“Now this is the gospel message we have heard from him and announce to you:
God is light, and in him there is no darkness at all.”
(NET)
1 John 1.5 is key to understanding the next section of the letter (1.5-2.11). John is going to lay down some pretty fundamental principles of fellowship, the same fellowship he told us was one of the central purposes of his writing (1.3).
Zane Hodges writes that
“These principles [of fellowship with God] are of immense practical value to the everyday lives of all Christians. By these principles believers may test the reality of their personal communion with God. They may also discern whether they have come to know the God with whom they commune”.
Simply then, as we move into this next section of 1 John, we are going to see if the personal relationship we claim to have with God is genuine or something we merely claim to have. As Hodges writes, we will also see if we actually know the God with which we claim to have personal fellowship and communion.
The first thing we learn about our fellowship with God is that our fellowship is with One who is light, and in whom there is no darkness at all.
God being described as light tells us that He is pure and holy. There is nothing untoward about His nature and character, there is nothing about Him that is untrue, deceitful, or deceiving.
This sets the conduct, character, and morality bar very high for us, and as we move through the rest of 1 John we are going to see that to have true and intimate fellowship with a pure and holy God, we too must work hard to live in the light and not to live in darkness. As we move through this challenging letter then, things in our lives that need exposing and removing will brought into the light, and we will begin to see what a life of obedience and love truly looks like.
James Travis 