Preached · March 17, 2013
Series · Rhythms of Grace
Text · 1 John 1 1; 1 John 1.5-7
Introduction and Review
Over the month of March, we've been digging into the book of 1 John — chapter 1 specifically, but really the whole of 1 John deals with the themes, the topics, the issues we've been talking about. By way of review, let's read our passage again. 1 John chapter 1, verses 5 through 7:
This is the message 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. 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, purifies us from all sin.
So let's review. Starting with the first part of March, we talked about the love of God. We talked about our misconceptions — the misconception that either God is out just to make you happy, or the misconception that God is out to get you. Our misconception is that God is out to get us; however, the reality is that God desires justice. Our misconception is that God wants us merely happy; the reality is that God wants us to be holy.
And we explored this deep truth: there was never a moment when God started loving you, because there was never a moment when God didn't already love you. He loved us first. We didn't have to convince him or cajole him. We didn't have to play any games with him. He loved us before we knew there was a God in the first place. He will love us even if we forsake him. He loves us. He always will. He always has.
And then, two weeks ago, we talked about confession. We talked about deceiving ourselves — three deceptions that the church John's writing to had. First, that God is okay with my darkness, my sin — and the reality is that God is light, God is holy, he can't stand darkness; it just makes sense. Our second deception is that my nature isn't fallen — but the reality is that we are broken. We understand that we live in a broken world filled with death and hunger and famine and genocide, and this doesn't happen by accident; it happens because of people like us. We understand that we are fallen, because we used the example of the diet or the exercise routine — none of us just one day decides "that's it." We always stumble, we always fall, we never do anything perfectly. And a third deception: "Yeah, sure, maybe God doesn't like sin. Yeah, sure, maybe humans are naturally fallen. But as for me, I don't make any mistakes." And we just said that's patently ridiculous. We are out of control.
And then we talked about this: the smaller we make the issue of sin, the less magnificent we make salvation from God. Or, put another way, if our sin is not that bad, then what Jesus did is not that good. If my sin issue is actually pretty small — it's not total, it's not absolute depravity, it's just a little bit of issues here and there — if it's not that bad, then what Jesus did on the cross, by offering up his body, offering up his life, being beaten and broken and bruised and killed, well, it's not that big of a deal, because it's not fixing that big of an issue.
The good news is not just that our God is a loving God. The good news is that our God is a loving God to us — a people who deserve no love. The gospel is not merely that God loves you. That by itself is pretty good. But it's even better than that: the gospel is that God loves us who are sinful. God loves us, people who deserve no love. God loves people who have rebelled and rejected the divine. That's good news.
It is only by the work of the Holy Spirit that we become aware of our brokenness and therefore our deep need for God. So this was our topic two weeks ago — the fellowship of the Spirit, the idea that we only become aware of our sin because of God's Spirit. And so we have to be honest with ourselves, we have to be honest with God. The moment we stop being honest about who we are in light of who God is, is the moment we stop growing as apprentices of Jesus, of Christ. Because this is the whole point. We don't just cognitively accept the love of God. We don't just cognitively accept the fact that we're sinful people. We actually want to emulate Jesus. We want to accept this so it changes us, so it takes part in our lives and our actions and what we do. This is what apprenticeship is: apprenticing ourselves to Jesus. And so we concluded: it's only when we get honest about the depth of our sin that we can get real about the depth of the cure. If we're not honest about how depraved we really are, then we can't actually get going with how much Jesus wants to help us.
The Depth of the Cure
So we've talked about two out of three issues: one, the fact that God loves us; and two, the fact that God loves us, a people who deserve no love. We've talked about the depth of the issue. Let's talk about the depth of the cure.
There are three ways in the book of 1 John chapter 1 where John, the author, deals with the cure. We're going to do this out of order. But beginning in chapter 1, verse 9, there's a bunch of if-then statements. Any logic and critical-thinking people in here? If you do this, then this will happen. So the first one to explore is: if we confess our sins. This is what we talked about last week — the importance of confession.
If we confess our sins, he will forgive our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
The Story of Eustace the Dragon
To illustrate this, I thought I would read — this is second story time with Anthony — a passage from Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C.S. Lewis. This is part of his Chronicles of Narnia series. Lewis wrote a seven-book series which explored a lot of different Christian themes, from salvation and sanctification to the end times. This one is really an exploration of what the Christian journey is like, and what it is to grow up in Christ. And he does it in an action-adventure format: a bunch of people go out on a ship to explore these islands, and of course they have all these misadventures and learn moral principles from them.
There's a boy in this book named Eustace. And Eustace is a wretched little boy. He's mean and spiteful, and he hates all things to do with imagination, and he likes to pull pranks, and he likes to bully. He's not the kind of boy you'd like to hang out with. One day, while this crew of adventurers is out on an adventure, they end up on an island, and Eustace wanders off in an angry fit and ends up in a cave. He quickly realizes that this is a dragon's cave, filled with more treasure than he can imagine. He slips on a bracelet, claiming it as his own, and then he falls asleep. And he wakes up and quickly realizes that he has become a dragon. Everything that was inside of him — spiteful, mean, angry, jealous, bullying — has now externalized itself on his flesh. Eustace realizes that this is no way to live, as an ugly old dragon, and comes to a place of wanting to change. So Eustace explains to his cousin Edmund what happened:
A lion comes up. It wasn't afraid of eating me; I was afraid of it. But it came up close to me and looked straight into my eyes. And I shut my eyes tight, but it wasn't any good, because it told me to follow it.
Edmund asks, "You mean it spoke?"
Eustace says, "I don't know. Now that you mention it, I don't think it did, but it told me all the same.
And I knew I'd have to do what it told me, so I got up and followed it. And it led me a long way into the mountains, and there was always this moonlight over and around the lion, wherever we went. So at last we came to the top of a mountain I'd never seen before. And on the top of this mountain there was a garden — trees and fruit and everything. In the middle of it there was a well. I knew it was a well, because you could see the water bubbling up from the bottom of it, but it was a lot bigger than most wells, like a very big round bath with marble steps going down into it. The water was as clear as anything, and I thought if I could get in there and bathe, it would ease the pain in my leg. But the lion told me I must undress first. Mind you, I don't know if he said any words out loud or not. I was just going to say that I couldn't undress because I hadn't any clothes on, when I suddenly thought that dragons are snaky sort of things, and snakes can cast their skins. Oh, of course, thought I — this is what the lion means. So I started scratching myself, and my scales began coming off all over the place. And then I scratched a little deeper, and instead of just scales coming off here and there, my whole skin started peeling off beautifully, like it does after an illness, or as if I were a banana. In a minute or two, I just stepped out of it. I could see it lying there beside me, looking rather nasty. It was a most lovely feeling. So I started to go down into the well for my bathe. But just as I was going to put my feet into the water, I looked down and saw that they were all hard and rough and wrinkled and scaly, just as they had been before. Oh, that's all right, said I — it only means I had another smaller suit on underneath the first one, and I'll have to get out of it too. So I scratched and tore again, and this underskin peeled off beautifully, and out I stepped and left it lying beside the other one, and went down to the well for my bathe. Well, exactly the same thing happened again. And I thought to myself, oh dear, however many skins have I got to take off? For I was longing to bathe my leg. So I scratched away for the third time, and got off the third skin, just like the other two, and stepped out of it. But as soon as I looked at myself in the water, I knew it was no good. Then the lion said, "You will have to let me undress you." I was afraid of his claws, I can tell you, but I was pretty nearly desperate by now. So I just lay flat down on my back and let him do it. The very first tear he made was so deep that I thought it had gone right into my heart. And when he began pulling the skin off, it hurt worse than anything I've ever felt. The only thing that made me able to bear it was just the pleasure of feeling the stuff peel off. You know, if you've ever picked the scab off a sore place — it hurts like billy, but it is such fun to see it coming away. Well, he peeled the beastly stuff right off, just as I thought I'd done it the other three times, only they hadn't hurt. And there it was, lying on the grass, only ever so much thicker and darker and more knobbly-looking than the others had been. And there was I, as smooth and soft as a peeled switch, and smaller than I had been. Then he caught hold of me — I didn't like that very much, for I was very tender underneath now that I had no skin on — and threw me into the water. It smarted like anything, but only for a moment. After that it became perfectly delicious, and as soon as I started swimming and splashing, I found that all the pain had gone from my arm. And then I saw why: I'd turned into a boy again. After a bit, the lion took me out and dressed me.
Edmund says, "Dressed you? With his paws?"
"Well, I don't exactly remember that bit, but he did somehow or other — in new clothes, the same I've got on now, as a matter of fact. And then suddenly I was back here. Which is what makes me think it must have been a dream."
"No, it wasn't a dream," said Edmund.
"Why not?" says Eustace.
"Well, there are the clothes, for one thing. And you have been — well, un-dragoned — for another."
The Meaning of Confession
Confession is not just about making me feel good. Coming to terms with all the mistakes I've made, all the people I've hurt, all the bridges I've burnt, is a painful — claws-into-dragon-skin painful — process. But it's a freeing one. I know no one's going to raise their hands to this, but you all knew what he meant when he talked about peeling off a scab. It's gross and nasty and painful, and yet freeing at the same time.
Now, confession is not merely an exercise in rehearsing our sins and mistakes to the air. Confession is not merely about us trying to wash ourselves clean, trying to scratch off our own scales. It just doesn't work. But there is a real God who really hears us and really forgives us. Forgiveness equals freedom. It means release. You don't have to impress anyone anymore. You have no one to make up anything to. The skin is off, and you are clean. Forgiveness also means a letting go, a release of what is holding you down, of allowing the dragon hide to be ripped from our skin. And this is what John means: if we confess our sins, he will forgive us, and he will cleanse us. It's more than just a writing off, "Okay, forgiven." It's more than just a forgetfulness. It's a cleansing.
Walking in the Light
Secondly, in 1 John chapter 1, verse 7, John writes:
If we walk in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and Jesus cleanses us from all sins.
And so again we see this cleansing. Now, when John writes "if we walk in the light," this does not necessarily equal walking in perfection. Nor does it really even mean walking without fault, or walking to the best of our ability without sin. And I'll show you why in a minute. Instead, what it means to walk in the light is to walk in relationship with God.
Now, we usually get this whole pursuit of holiness thing wrong. If we've been in church for any amount of time, you've been told to pursue holiness, pursue goodness, be good, all that kind of stuff. And this is the kind of stuff that gets us down and makes us feel bad, because we recognize — if we're honest with our lesson from two weeks ago — that we're naturally fallen, naturally sinful. And so just being told, "stop it," doesn't work very well. This is why we get this whole pursuit of holiness thing all wrong. We tend to pursue moralism, which is this outside-in kind of do-goodness: if I do things on the outside, externally, then my inside will be made right.
There's this thing Jesus talks about with the dishes. He's telling the Pharisees, "You hypocrites, you're like whitewashed tombs. The tombs are white, but you're filled with death on the inside." He says, take the example of a plate or a cup: if you washed the inside, then the outside would be clean as well. And me and Emily fight about this, because I wash pots and pans every once in a while, and I wash the inside of the pots and pans. And then she'll go back later and say, "Did you wash the outside of the pot?" No. And I'm thinking all sorts of reasons: one, I'm not eating off the outside of the pot; two, it's going to cook off on the burner anyway; and three, I'm just doing what Jesus told me to do, so back off.
But how often do we apply this outside-in logic to our own lives? This idea that — and you've heard it all, and you're going to have to listen to me very carefully, because you're going to be able to twist what I say very easily — you've heard it all: "If I read my Bible, if I pray so many times a day, if I do my quiet time, then it's going to kind of soak in and affect the inside of myself, and then I'll be a better person." What I'm not saying is quit praying and reading your Bible — that's the twisted version. What I am saying is: don't do those things expecting that that's what's going to change you. Don't do those things expecting that that's what's going to turn you into the image of Christ. The truth of the matter is that we have to pursue God himself. Not just good things, but God himself. Pursue relationship with him, and then we are changed from the inside out. And there's a big difference.
And I can see some wheels turning, asking the question, "What is the difference?" I'll tell you: one way leads to consistent and constant guilt. One way always makes you ask, "What's the point?" or "Why isn't it working?" or "Man, I didn't do it this week and I feel bad, but I don't necessarily feel like I'm missing out on too much." You know what I'm talking about. On the other hand, when we pursue God himself, when we pursue relationship with God, when we stop pursuing holiness for holiness's sake but pursue God for the sake of a relationship with him, then something changes. Then our desires change, so that we actually want to spend time with him, we actually want to get into his word and pray and all those kinds of things. One way says, "If I get into his word and pray, I'll eventually want to spend time with God, I'll eventually want a relationship with him." And the other way says, "If I have a relationship with God, then naturally I'm going to do these things — pray and read my Bible." And I'm just using those examples. If we walk in the light, if we have fellowship with God, if we pursue him, then all these other things are going to fall into place.
And this is where I struggle. I struggle communicating this, as you can tell. I feel inarticulate, I feel inadequate to get this right, to say this correctly, because it's a fine line. And so many of us, me included, can fall off this line very easily, and we'll find ourselves in dead religion. But it doesn't have to be that way.
Now remember this deception from two weeks ago: this idea that God doesn't care about my sin. It's not true. God is holy, God is light, God does care about our sin. But he cares about it for our own sake. Because if we keep on walking in sin, if we keep on walking in these patterns of darkness and these patterns of hurt, then of course we're going to be hurt. We are going to end up dead. This is why we get this somewhat unexpected phrase: if we walk in the light, we have fellowship with one another. What? If we walk with God, we have fellowship with people? Which is somewhat unexpected — it's a little bit of a twist. But of course it makes sense. If we walk in relationship with God, and if we pursue him, then of course he is going to be acting and moving in our lives to remove these patterns of sin and darkness. And then of course we're going to be in better relationship with human beings. Because sin always, always, always puts a wall between you and me. Sin always puts us in some sort of battle with each other. Because if I'm being selfish, that means I'm trying to take for myself something that maybe you need. If I'm walking in pride, that means I'm making you feel worse about yourself. This is why, if we walk in relationship with God, our relationships with people come together. If we abandon the light, if we do whatever we want to do whenever we want to do it, of course we're going to lose relationship. Sin hurts people. But walking in relationship with God should naturally restore our relationships with people, as far as responsibility lies in us.
When We Do Sin
Now here's some really good news, and hopefully this will help clarify even better. Chapter 2, verses 1 and 2:
If anyone does sin, Jesus pleads our cause. He is the sacrifice who atones for our sins and the sins of the whole world.
So remember when I said "if we walk in the light" does not necessarily equal walking in perfection? Because John expects — John knows us. John realizes that we, of course, are going to mess up and make mistakes. And the good news is, even when we do screw up and mess up, there's still grace. Jesus does not just abandon us to our own devices. He pleads our cause. He's our counselor and our defender.
Now sometimes when we hear things like this, we get a distorted image of what's going on. "Jesus pleads our cause to the Father," is what chapter 2 says. And too often I've heard a gospel — and maybe you've heard this one too — that sounds something like Jesus trying to convince God the Father not to send us to hell. That God the Father is ticked off, and only Jesus is talking the Father down, so the Father will let us live. This idea that God's angry at you, but Jesus is going to convince him otherwise. But this is just not true. Remember what we talked about three weeks ago: the Father loved us first. The Father sent the Son while we were yet sinners and rebels and disobedient and ignorant children.
This, therefore, is why we can stop living in fear — not only of our past mistakes, but of our next mistake. There's not some mysterious line that you're going to cross that will ensure that the Father will stop forgiving you. And that's why — and listen to me closely — that's why we must get it out of our heads that God is asking us to do good, to stop making mistakes, to cease sinning, in order to be in relationship with him. Let me say it again: this is why we have to get it out of our heads that God is asking us to be better in order to be in relationship with him. Because that's just the same old tired religions of the past thousands of years, across thousands of civilizations. If we think Christianity is merely about being good so we can know God, ceasing sinning so we can go to heaven, making no mistakes so God can be pleased with us, then we aren't truly believing the gospel anymore. Instead, we must accept the good news that God already loves you, already sent his Son to die in your place, and already accepts you. Instead, what God is asking is that you would be in relationship with him, know him — truly know him — spend time with him, be with him. And he, God, the Holy Spirit, and the grace of Jesus, is going to be the one that transforms you into the image of his Son.
We can't transform ourselves, ladies and gentlemen. We can't do it. And we can't keep trying to impress God, because God already loves you. Once we accept that, then the whole way we live our Christian lives changes. Either way, the dragon skin's coming off. But when it's by you, when you're the one trying to achieve it, it's hopeless and pointless and endless. But once you realize that God's love and acceptance is not something to be achieved but something to be accepted — to live in, to bask in, to swim in — then you can finally allow God to remove the dragon skin and wash you clean in the rhythms of his grace.
Rhythms of Grace
Oh yeah — rhythms of grace. Now, I kind of regret that I made such a big deal about this over four weeks, because you're going to think Jesus himself is going to come down or something. It's not like that. What I want to share with you — and I made up the whole title of the series, "Rhythms of Grace" — is actually fairly simple, but hopefully it's profound. Because I think what I'm about to describe kind of describes the whole way that our Christian lives should come together.
In 2 Corinthians chapter 13, verse 14, this is what Paul writes as a conclusion to his letter:
May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of God and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.
And this has been the pattern for this month. We've talked about the love of God, we've talked about the fellowship of the Spirit, and this morning we're talking about the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ. And I think this succinctly sums up the whole of our Christian lives.
Let's talk about the Trinity really quickly. The Trinity is this idea that we believe in a God who is three persons but one substance. We believe that he is three persons, at the same time serving and ministering to us in different ways, but at the same time he is one God. We do not believe in three gods, but one. And again, this is where my inadequacies bubble to the surface, because it's hard to put this into words, into language — into English, into any language. This diagram pretty much sums up our belief in the Trinity: the Father is not the Spirit, the Spirit is not the Son, the Son is not the Father, but the Father is God, and the Son is God, and the Spirit is God. This is the Trinity.
Now here's what I think we've been seeing this past month: the love of the Father, the fellowship of the Spirit, and the grace of the Son. What I think happens is that the Father's love sends out the Spirit. The Father's love sends out his Spirit to tell us, "You are in deep need of the love of God." And when we accept this — the fellowship of the Spirit working inside of us, telling us about our sin, telling us about our deep need for God — the fellowship of the Spirit sends us to the Son. And what the Son does is say, "Grace, grace, grace. Be forgiven, be cleansed, be washed." And the Son then sends us, by his grace, to the Father who loves us, and then fills us with his Holy Spirit. And that Holy Spirit then reminds us that there is the Son of God who says to us, "Grace, grace, grace." And that grace sends us to the Father, and the Father sends the Spirit. You're picking up what I'm putting down.
This sums up our mission statement as a church, Good News Community Church: connecting, serving, growing. The Father is serving, because he is the one who sends the Spirit and sends the Son — sends his Son to die on the cross, sends his Spirit to us to say, "You're in deep need of God." And the Spirit is connecting us — connecting us to God, connecting us to one another. And then the Son is growing us up into his image. Ephesians chapter 4: we grow up into the head, which is Christ. And as we grow up, we get closer to the Father, who is serving and sending.
For all of you who are in a missional community — raise your hand, missional community people. I love you guys. Maybe this will make some sense to you: out, up, and in. The Father sends out the Spirit and the Son. And the Spirit is dwelling within us and bringing us in, connecting us with one another and making us be honest about who we really are. And the Son is growing us up as we worship, and as we realize the holiness of God the Father, and how great and awesome and wonderful he is. This is the Christian life.
Now, a quick warning: these cannot be hard and fast and absolute. Because at the same time, we have to realize that the Son also ministers in different ways. The Son is also in us, making us the body. And the Father is also causing us to worship and grow up. And the Spirit is also sending us out to do his mission in this world. So don't get the idea that these are hard and fast and absolute and can't be changed. But I think this is a helpful paradigm to think about what the Trinity is doing in our lives.
Application
Now, how does this apply to our lives? Some of you struggle with love. Some of you struggle with accepting the fact that anybody loves you, much less God. To you, God is angry, demanding that you have to achieve more and perform more and accomplish more tasks and check more things off of an ever-growing to-do list. And what this tends to do in your personal life is make you awfully self-centered, because all you can do is think about, "How can I get more love, because I don't have any?" That's a painful place to be. And what I think God is telling us is that we can accept the fact that God's love for you is absolute, and unconditional, and free. And the best way to put that into practice is to go and serve someone else — to go show someone else what unconditional, and perhaps irrational, love looks like. The love of the Father sends us out.
Some of you struggle with fellowship, with loneliness, with feeling like God is distant, like feeling that people aren't worth the effort because people only cause pain. But know that you are the temple of the Holy Spirit, that the God of the universe is dwelling within you. Your temptation is going to be to hide from people, to withdraw from them. But instead, do what the Spirit is doing right now, which is to draw close to people. I'm not asking introverts to become extroverts. I'm not saying you need to change the whole of your personality. But what I am saying is that you have to learn to trust, to enter into deep, meaningful, accountable relationships with people — because this Christian life was not meant to be lived alone. You can't do it.
Some of you struggle with grace. You feel like you have to prove yourself to God. You feel like the Christian life is a list of do's and don'ts, and if you ever fall off the wagon, it's over, you're done, you have to do penance. You struggle to believe that you can move past your old mistakes. Or you struggle always thinking about what potential new mistakes you're going to make. You can't seem to do anything but spin your wheels. Maybe you find worship meaningless and pointless. But know that there is grace that forgives sins old and new, that accepts you for you. Instead of seeing spiritual growth as a checklist, see it as a dance — something with a groove, something that takes rhythm and grace and mercy and probably some stumbling around. And don't pursue holiness for the sake of holiness; pursue the Holy One. Spend time with him. Don't seek him for what he can give you. Don't pursue him for results. Just seek him.
Conclusion
This is the rhythms of grace. And I think all of us can pretty much fall into one of those three categories at any given time — and maybe those categories shift and change. But when we come back to the love of the Father, and the fellowship of the Spirit, and the grace of Jesus Christ, we can be confident in knowing that we are the sons and daughters of God. And there's no changing it. We can be confident in growing up into the image of Jesus Christ, God's Son. And we can have fellowship with God and with one another, as he peels off the dragon skin and washes us clean. New. His people.
Closing Prayer
Let's stand.
Jesus, we remember you coming in on those streets of Jerusalem, as a whole nation cried, "Help us." God, we cry out the same thing. We are a broken people, and we cry out, "Help us." May your Spirit revive within us a desire to know you for you — not for what you can do for us, not to pursue holiness for holiness's sake, but to pursue relationship with you, because you are good and loving, and you have already accepted us. May you show that to your people, and may they live that out. May they know your love and your grace and your fellowship, God. In your name we pray. Amen.
This is a transcript of the sermon as preached, lightly edited for readability.
