First John

I John Chapter 1

Professor: Dr. R.J. Rushdoony

Subject: I John Chapter 1

Genre: Sermon

Lesson: 1 of 16

Track: #1

Year:

Dictation Name: RR308A1

[Unknown introducer] Let us worship God.

Oh give thanks unto the Lord. Call upon His name, make known His deeds among the people, sing unto Him, sing Psalms unto Him. Talk Ye of all His wondrous works, glory ye in His holy name, let the heart of them that rejoice that seek the Lord. Let us pray.

Our most good and gracious God and heavenly Father we praise you for your goodnesses to us. They are more than we can possibly acknowledge or give thanks for properly. We thank you for the plenty that you bestow upon us, and we sometimes thing of the great blessings that you give us such as our salvation, our families, our material goods. We neglect the simple pleasures and delights that you bestow on us. And we think especially this beautiful day of the wondrous beauty of your creation, we thank you that You have given us testimony of Your divine creative power that we can see on a day-to-day basis. We pray that would help us to become more and more aware of the fact that you are the sovereign God of the universe, that you govern not only the world that we see around us physically, but that you govern every aspect of our life and our being. Help us to rest assured and confident that we are in your sovereign hands, and help us to put our trust and our confidence in the wisdom of your providence. We pray that you would help us subject ourselves in thought and deed to your divine revelation. We pray that you would bless the time that we together in the word, help us to understand better Your words to us through this morning’s lesson. We confess our inability to serve You as we ought, we pray that You would remind us to do what is right, and remind us to seek forgiveness when we do that which is wrong. We pray now that You’d bless this time that we have together in worship and praise of You, in Christ our Savior’s name, Amen.

The scripture passage for this morning’s sermon is I John chapter 1, the entire chapter, the first epistle of John, chapter one.

“That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word of life;

2 (For the life was manifested, and we have seen it, and bear witness, and shew unto you that eternal life, which was with the Father, and was manifested unto us;)

3 That which we have seen and heard declare we unto you, that ye also may have fellowship with us: and truly our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ.

4 And these things write we unto you, that your joy may be full.

5 This then is the message which we have heard of him, and declare unto you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.

6 If we say that we have fellowship with him, and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not the truth:

7 But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from all sin.

8 If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.

9 If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

10 If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us.”

[Rushdoony] The letters of John are variously regarded by different peoples. The first letter in particular has a very strong following among modernists. Modernists scholars regard all three letters as not written by John, and do not think to highly of it, but the membership of modernist churches regard this almost as a gospel, but they misread it badly. The love it is talking about is not the humanistic love we are familiar with.

To cite an example, during most of Christian history marriage has not been based on love, but upon the faith, a common concern for it, and a congeniality of characters. Now of course marriage is seen as really invalid if there is no love, and the result is a very great cultural disaster. Salvation by love is a heresy and the first letter of John is very definitely not given to promoting such a heresy. When we go to the scholars that are the abler in dealing with this letter Alexander Ross sees this first letter as essentially against, to quote his words, “The deadly sin of antinomianism.” Very few people would realize that from their reading because the popular reading is so heavily influenced by Humanism. B.F. Westcott in the 19th century saw the letter as beginning to end dedicated to establishing the authority of, quote, “authority, and not love.” Thus John is very different then popularly regarded when two scholars see it as establishing authority and being against antinomianism.

Now as we study it, verse one says: “that which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon and our hands have handled the word of life.” This is the verse that perhaps echoes a popular greeting in the early church, in the days when the first members were getting old. It is said that as they were taken to church being held up and guided by other members, when they would see someone else who was an older person like themselves and who had seen Christ, heard Him and touched Him, they would greet one another with three statements. One, giving the greeting, the other answering, “Have you seen?” “We have seen” “Have you heard?” “We have heard” “Have you touched?” “We have touched.” That was their glory, they had heard, seen, and touched God incarnate. And we have that statement in verse one, perhaps the greeting came from this verse or perhaps drawn one of these older Christians who had known Christ, was echoing a very common greeting.

“For the life was manifested, and we have seen it, and bear witness, and show unto you that eternal life which was with the Father and was manifested unto us.” John then goes on to say, make no mistake about it, Jesus Christ was God incarnate. The person we saw, the person we knew was very God of very God. He had eternal life, He always was and always will be, he is God the Son. “That which we have seen and heard declare we unto you, that ye also may have fellowship with us, and truly our fellowship is with the Father, with His Son Jesus Christ.” John said that what we are preaching to you is really faith in God the Father, and more centrally God the Son who is His incarnation, and our fellowship can only be in this faith. “And these sayings write we unto you that your joy may be full.” Here again we see a thorough contradiction of the modernist perspective. Our joy is not made full because we are deeply in love with someone, man, or woman, child, or whatever, but because God the Father and God the Son have manifested their love for us, this is to be our central joy.

“This then is the message which we have heard of him, and declare unto you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.” It was easy for the Christians being persecute, a high percentage before to long after this, having to die for the faith, to wonder why “why does God let this happen? Why does God face me with this type of persecution and a horrible death? Or all these trials and difficulties?” And John’s answer is “In Him is no darkness at all” there is no evil in God. We may not like what He allows to happen to us, we live in a fallen world, and when we are saved we are given the promise of eternal life and strength to fight the evils of this world, even though often we are heavily hurt by them. Think of all the Christians, even today, who are dying for their faith in various parts of the world, and the papers never report it.

“If we say that we have fellowship with him, and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not the truth:” Fellowship with God, fellowship with Christ and the Holy Spirit, means that we do not walk in darkness or in Sin. Darkness means, literally, the darkness of life, the ugliness of life that comes when God is not in it. But if we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ, His Son, cleanseth us from all sin.” Now this is not the gospel of love, it’s the gospel of Christ! Our salvation, he makes clear, is through Jesus Christ, not any love we may feel. It is interesting as faith in Christ comes into a culture evil recedes. But as the religion of love comes in, evil increase, as does hatred, because there is no God in that kind of religion. But if we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ, His Son, cleanseth us from all sin. It is the atonement, John says, that is our salvation, not love, not anything else, the atonement.

But “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.” This is to me always amazing to read. What John says “alright, so you’re a Christian, you believe, you don’t doubt anything, God has given you strength to deal with your problems. But in this world you’re still not sinless.” Now the amazing thing is that there are millions of church members here in the United States alone who hold to a doctrine of sinless perfection. They say that with their conversion they were made perfect and they do not sin any more. Well having known a few I know how obviously wrong they are in claiming this and it is amazing what absurdities people will people. The idea that people, in this life, can be sinless is ridiculous. So that as, John says, we deceive ourselves if we say we have no sin then too, the truth is not in us.

“If we confess our sins He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” John here speaks of the necessity for confession. There’s a long history of confession in the church. In the early church it was to the pastor unless it were a public thing were the congregation was sinned against, not just an individual; and in that case the sinner had to stand before the congregation and confess his sins. Then much later it became confession to the priest. This was abandoned by Protestantism which reinstated confession to the pastor. What has happened in recent years that confession in the protestant church is a rarity and in the catholic churches increasingly uncommon, and nothing is done about it.

I know one church which had more than one confessional before they rebuilt. Their membership increased greatly, but there is only one confessional, and not to well used. You can see also that the priesthood increasingly is less and less involved in the confessional because of this change. But John insists on the necessity of a confessional, it has to be done. Our confession is primarily to God who then will forgive us those sins we have committed, and will cleanse us from all righteousness [he meant unrighteousness].

“ If we say that we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and His word is not in us.” God has made clear in the Bible that all men are sinners, some are lost sinners, others are saved sinners, and that’s important to know. Lost sinners, saved sinners. If we deny that we have sinned, His word is not in us. How sad it is that millions of people in our country actually believe they have attained sinless perfection, and will regard you and me as sinners, unconverted sinners because we deny sinless perfection.

As you can see John begins his letter not with talk about love, the word is not mentioned in this first chapter, but talk about God, Christ, and salvation. Thus John’s letter will prove to be a surprise to anyone who thinks of it as the gospel of love. Let us pray.

Our Lord and our God we thank Thee for Thy word. We thank Thee that Thou art faithful, Thou art ready to forgive us our sins, to cleanse us from all unrighteousness, we thank Thee that day after day we are surrounded by Thy mercies and grace. Our God we thank Thee, in Christ’s name, amen.

Are there any questions now about our lesson?

As I indicated, this is an extremely popular letter, but it seems that is read by people only in terms of one thing, the gospel of love; a serious mistake. It is important therefore that we know this gospel so we can know our faith better, and can better answer the heretics who reduce the gospel to love. Let us now conclude with prayer.

How great Thou art oh Lord, how marvelous Thy ways, how glorious Thy word; make us strong in Thee and in Thy word, grant us Thy strength and Thy peace, grant that day by day we grow in grace and in an understanding of Thy kingdom. And now go in peace, God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Ghost bless you and keep you, guide and protect you, now and forever more, amen.