Perfect Love

Thank you for reading this sermon from Christ Fellowship. I hope and pray that this sermon will be a blessing of grace and truth to you. With that said, let me encourage you not to use this sermon as a replacement for your local church. Christ Jesus did not establish his Church simply for us to consume content. Instead, He calls us to be part of a real, covenant family. 

1 John is a beautiful letter, written to early Christians who were struggling to believe the Gospel. There was a very specific form of false teaching at the time that had already led many people away from the Church. This false teaching denied the humanity of Christ Jesus and the reality of sin.

John wants to defend the Christian faith against this false teaching – but his argument is more than logic. He’s going to defend Christianity by appealing to light and life and love… fellowship with the Father and fellowship with the Church.

Christianity is not an empty system of beliefs. It’s a relationship and a fellowship. It changes everything. It makes a difference in your life and I’m excited for us to look at this together.

1:1 That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we looked upon and have touched with our hands, concerning the word of life— 

The word of life is Jesus – not an idea, but a person. He’s an eternal person. He had no beginning, and He will have no end. But Jesus has a voice and a real body. He smiled. He wept. He hugged.

² the life was made manifest, and we have seen it, and testify to it and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and was made manifest to us— 

John’s talking about the Incarnation – God the Son, who was with the Father, came to earth and took on flesh. He was “made manifest” – visible, tangible, real!

³ that which we have seen and heard we proclaim also to you, so that you too may have fellowship with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son Jesus Christ. 

This verse is crucial to our understanding of the letter. The Apostles personally witnessed the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. And then, they preached that good news for a purpose – not simply to convert people to a religion, but to draw people into fellowship with God and with His Church.

Fellowship is the Greek word koinonia – it’s a bond of love that has a shared goal or purpose. And it is impossible to understand the blessing of salvation without this bond. It describes both our union with Christ AND our union in Christ with each other. It is the experience of salvation.

Think about almost every hero story we find to be compelling as humans – every book, every movie, every TV series… Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, the Avengers, Stranger Things – there’s always a shared purpose or a common goal that the relationships form around. And it’s the relationships that drive the story forward. That’s not just good story telling – it’s the image of God in us. The shared experience matters to us.

John continues:

⁴ And we are writing these things so that our joy may be complete.

John includes here a second purpose in writing this letter. Joy. That’s a word that means so much more than happiness. It’s deeper. It’s richer. It’s a confidence, an assurance, deep in the soul… a heart at peace. A heart resting well in the Father’s love.

And now we get to the main body of John’s letter.

 ⁵ This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. 

Light and darkness are universal ways of describing good and evil. Many eastern religions think of god as a balance of light and darkness. John says no. God is pure light. Not even a hint of a shadow exists in God.

⁶ If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. 

John will use this phrase “if we say” three times. He’s referring to and correcting a couple of false beliefs. But notice, it’s not just that we think the wrong things. These false ideas threaten our fellowship.

This first one is the claim that we can have fellowship with God and at the same time walk in darkness. That’s impossible, because you won’t find God in the darkness. And that’s because God is holy – He doesn’t dwell in darkness. He doesn’t associate with evil.

But there’s more here than the typical understanding of holiness versus sin. A theme we easily miss is safety versus danger. If you have fellowship with God, then you’re walking in safety. Walking in darkness is unsafe, which is why most animals are active in the daytime. It’s why we avoid dark alleys. It’s why so many people are afraid of the dark!

That’s another way to think of this. Yes, he is talking about choosing sin instead of God. But what does that mean, practically? It means choosing danger instead of safety. And that’s absurd! No one walking in safety would choose to abandon that safety for danger. Unless we are convinced the darkness isn’t dangerous. And that’s what sin does to us… it’s deadly, but it has us convinced we are safe.

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

Our safety is provided by union with Christ, whose blood cleanses us from all sin. And because we have union with Christ, we also have union with each other. John describes it as walking together in the light – which means we have safety in numbers!

So, what is John correcting here? He’s correcting the false idea that sin isn’t a problem – that we can have real, meaningful fellowship with God and His church without repentance. He’s challenging the belief that we can follow Jesus and keep living the exact same life we lived before. It doesn’t work.

Now for the second false belief:

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

In the first part, John taught that light and darkness don’t have fellowship with each other. But here, he corrects the other extreme – claiming that we have no sin at all.

And he uses simple words to make sure we understand. You can’t be a true Christian if you deny your own sin.

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

Confession is necessary. It is impossible to walk in the light without confessing our own darkness. Confession leads to two new realities – forgiveness and cleansing. Both are required to restore our fellowship with God. We need to be forgiven and we need to be cleansed.

John doubles down on this by repeating it.

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

In other words, God says we have sinned. If we deny our sin, we are calling God a liar.

To summarize what we have read so far – sin is real. Darkness is real. It’s not OK to keep walking in it without repentance. We need to confess.  And when we do, we are brought into fellowship with God through Jesus, where we have safety and joy in His forgiveness. But let’s keep reading:

2:1 My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. 

John explains how the God of light and holiness can have fellowship with sinful people like us. The answer is that Jesus became our advocate. John portrays Jesus in legal terms as the One who pleads our case before a judge – like a defense attorney who has never lost a case. But Jesus does more than plead our case, because He doesn’t use our record. He uses His own record. Look at verse 2.

² He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only but also for the sins of the whole world. 

That word propitiation means that Jesus offered Himself to the Father as a sin offering. Instead of pleading our record, Jesus offered His own perfect record and stood in our place as the accused.

In other words, Jesus argued our case before the Father – not by claiming that we are innocent, but by suffering our guilt.

John adds that this sin offering was good enough for the sins of the whole world. Not that everyone will be saved. John himself says in chapter 5 that only those who believe in the Son of God will be saved and that we must be born of God.

Instead, he means here that Christ’s death was sufficient for all who believe and has been made available to the whole world – not to any specific race or class of people – because all of us are equally guilty because of sin.

And in the very next verse, John provides a test. How do we know we have fellowship with God? How do we know this forgiveness is at work on the inside? How do we know we are walking in the light? John says:

³ And by this we know that we have come to know him, if we keep his commandments. 

The order is crucial here. John started with the reality of Christ, the reality of sin, our need for confession and repentance, our trust in the work of Jesus our Advocate – and only now, after establishing our fellowship with God through Christ – only now does he mention obedience.

Our obedience is not the grounds of our fellowship with God, but it is the evidence of our fellowship with God. It’s not the cause, but it is the test.

Jesus often illustrated this with a fruit tree or a vine. An apple tree produces apples because it is an apple tree. A pine tree doesn’t produce apples because it is not an apple tree. If I staple apples to a pine tree, it doesn’t make it an apple tree.

Obedience works the same way. God does the work necessary on the inside to help us produce fruit on the outside. And really, no tree produces fruit on its own. It needs healthy soil and water and sunshine. It is our continued fellowship with God and His people that makes obedience possible.

Our roots sink deeply into God’s means of grace and as we experience fellowship with Him, we grow. But the opposite is also true.

⁴ Whoever says “I know him” but does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him, 

No evidence? No fellowship with God. If you’re not producing any apples, then you’re not an apple tree. And now we come to the heart of the matter and the heart of this sermon series. The true test is the Father’s love. Do you know it? And do you show it?

⁵ but whoever keeps his word, in him truly the love of God is perfected. By this we may know that we are in him: 

⁶ whoever says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked.

This is the first mention of the word “love”, and it is arguably John’s favorite word. He uses it 39 times in his Gospel, more than all the other 3 Gospels combined. He uses the word love 26 times in this short letter, more than any other book in the New Testament besides the Gospel of John.

In English, we only have one word to describe a concept that the Greek Bible splits into four different words – four types of love. And John specifically uses the word “agape”, which is the highest form of love.

It’s not a friendship kind of love or a romantic kind of love or even a family kind of love. It’s deeper – a kind of love we aren’t supposed to think is even possible.

It is a selfless love, a sacrificial love, an unconditional love, and a love that never ends. It’s a love that isn’t based on temporary feelings but on a permanent decision to love without expecting anything in return.

And here’s the crazy part. It’s a love that God extends to the undeserving, the ungrateful, even to His enemies! It’s a forgiving love, a healing love, a transforming love.

This is the kind of love the Father has for His people and it’s the kind of love He commands us to have for each other. It is the basis of our fellowship with Him and with each other.

Let me try to say this as simply as I can – your obedience is a response to that love, never the cause of it. God doesn’t love you because you deserve it.

You obey because you believe He loves you. Any other way would cheapen His divine love into something conditional and earned…

Instead, it is a love so amazing, so divine that it demands my soul, my heart, my all. This is the Father’s love for you, a sinner.