Transcript:

The passage goes like this we have heard from him and declare to you God is light, In him there is no darkness at all. If we claim to have fellowship with him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live out the truth.

So what’s all this about? So you’ve just read a small passage and it starts this is the message. Now, the message is about who God is, which, of course, Jesus presented, taught and lived during his public ministry, and it’s the message that continues to come from Jesus, speaking through his spirit within the community, just as Jesus promised, and the message is that God is light. Now, john has two reasons for the statement. Firstly, he wants us to contemplate that the human Jesus, in whom the light of God was visible, that’s what he wants us to contemplate. Secondly, he wants to underline the necessity for us to remain in him, in Christ, if we are to be in the light.

Now, clearly, there are those who claim that they are in communion with Jesus and that that is enough. What they do is irrelevant. They do is irrelevant. However, john is saying that it’s not enough to claim to believe.

Real faith includes obedience and it’s demonstrated in the way we actually live, and the truth is something that must be done. It must be lived.

We must live in the life that we claim to share, and all of us, as followers of Jesus, we’re called to live a life of light, and we can find a whole lot of similar images throughout the gospel, for example, those who do what is true come to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God.

And in the letter to the Ephesians, Paul puts it this way we must do the truth in love, which means living as children of light. So living in communion with Jesus involves living in community with others, with the community of disciples. But I think it’s important to remember that when we do mess up in life and we walk in darkness by behaving in ways that are not in accordance with the life revealed to us by Jesus, all is not necessarily lost, so long as we don’t fool ourselves that it doesn’t matter. It does matter. It is sin, but it’s from sin that Jesus saves us. So the call is to embrace the life of Christ, to live in the life and the light of Christ and to do the truth, to live the truth, and we will always be faithful disciples.