Day Twenty Eight

Scripture Read:
1 John 1
1From the very first day, we were there, taking it all in--we heard it with our own ears, saw it with our own eyes, verified it with our own hands. 2The Word of Life appeared right before our eyes; we saw it happen! And now we're telling you in most sober prose that what we witnessed was, incredibly, this: The infinite Life of God himself took shape before us.
3We saw it, we heard it, and now we're telling you so you can experience it along with us, this experience of communion with the Father and his Son, Jesus Christ. 4Our motive for writing is simply this: We want you to enjoy this, too. Your joy will double our joy!

Walk in the Light
5This, in essence, is the message we heard from Christ and are passing on to you: God is light, pure light; there's not a trace of darkness in him.
6If we claim that we experience a shared life with him and continue to stumble around in the dark, we're obviously lying through our teeth--we're not living what we claim. 7But if we walk in the light, God himself being the light, we also experience a shared life with one another, as the sacrificed blood of Jesus, God's Son, purges all our sin.
8If we claim that we're free of sin, we're only fooling ourselves. A claim like that is errant nonsense. 9On the other hand, if we admit our sins--make a clean breast of them--he won't let us down; he'll be true to himself. He'll forgive our sins and purge us of all wrongdoing. 10If we claim that we've never sinned, we out-and-out contradict God--make a liar out of him. A claim like that only shows off our ignorance of God.

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What it means to me:
Where's the next installment of Isaiah? Well like I said in my last post, I'm really confused and I'd like to learn about it, instead of trying to stumble in the dark about it.

I like how John talks about the whole, "We have faith, because we have seen". To me that really just implied that he was complimenting Christians in their walk who believe though they have not seen. I have had it revealed to me though, that it means more. It implies to have seen the light of Christ, and not just saying one thing, but also sharing it because of our faith. Short, it talks about evanglising to others if we truely believe. John is sharing this for our strengthing of faith in Christ as so we should share our faith with others to strengthen others.

The next part, is really talking about God's perfectness. He is without sin. He is the sun in the night sky so to speak. Even though at night when we can't see the sun anymore, we know that it is still there, and in the morning it shines bright so we can go about our day without stumbling in the dark. John stresses the point that, just because we are covered in darkness doesn't mean that our actions go unnoticed. Like for example robbing someone's house during the night, they might sleep right through it, but in the morning everyone knows that there has been a break in. If we are going to witness to others we have got to strive to not be covered in darkness ( in otherwords, sin). If we say we are sinless we are lying, for we still sin, everyone sins, only one person in history lived without sin, and that was Jesus. John says, basically, to not be a hypocrite. Don't judge sinners, for you sin as well, also don't say one thing and do the opposite.

John then talks about walking a Christ like life, how it will be covered in the light. Just because you can see what your doing doesn't make it easy though. But at least you arn't stumbling in the dark anymore right?

Because Christ died for me, and for you, we have to oppertunity for eternal life, but we also have to admit our sins. Say your in a dark room with a light switch, and you know the only way you can see the door out of the room is to flick on the light switch that you know is there, you still have to turn it on. Just like we have to choose to except that Christ died for us.

Remember everyone is a sinner, but Christ also died for everyone so that everyone can live eternally if they put to death the sin that has held them back from a life in the light.

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Memory Verse:
"If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness."
1 John 1:9 (NIV)