At the time of the writing of this epistle, this letter to the churches, John is about 90 years old. His writing, which is inspired by the Holy Spirit, is brilliant. His writing is pure, divine truth. He pens one statement of absolute truth after another, in a cyclical fashion, each statement building upon the other, oftentimes restating the same truth but from a different perspective. It is really brilliant stuff that deserves our careful study and contemplation. And it must be careful study, because even though every word that he writes is inspired truth, there are certain statements that if considered in isolation, taken out of context with the whole of his writing, can lead a person into false doctrine.
And that is exactly what John is writing to avoid. In the seventy years or so since Christ’s ascension, the church had gone adrift from the sure anchor of the gospel. The church had suffered many attacks from false teachers and false doctrines that threatened to shipwreck the faith of many. It doesn’t take a seismic change in doctrine to lead one to spiritual shipwreck. It may only take what seems to be a minor change of course to lead one further away from the truth and eventually cause shipwreck.
Now John wrote this epistle he says in the first few verses of chapter one, that we might have fellowship with God and with Jesus Christ His Son, and that our joy may be full. That is the purpose of the gospel, that we might know God, to be known by God, that we might have life in Him, that we might have fellowship with Him, and that our joy might be full.
Then in chapter 2, vs 1 John says that he is writing that they sin not. And at the end of the letter, he says that he is writing that they might have eternal life. It’s interesting to note how all of these purposes work together, synchronistically. Our fullness of joy comes from our fellowship with the Father. Our fellowship with the Father is dependent upon our being cleansed from sin. And so, he now writes to them that they sin not. Because sin breaks that fellowship we have with God, and that results in a loss of our joy.
So the area in particular that John is concerned about is sin. He reveals sin as a hidden reef which threatens our faith, that robs us of fellowship with God, and takes away the joy of the Christian life. You know, the enemy tries to tell us that sin is not really a problem. That sin isn’t really sin. Or that God doesn’t really care about sin. Or that you can live in sin and still have fellowship with God. But John argues conclusively in chapter one that such thinking is a lie.
For instance, in the previous chapter, John said this is the message, that God is light and in Him there is no darkness at all. Darkness is a metaphor for sin. God is pure, God is holy and righteous, and there is no sin in Him at all. God cannot tolerate sin. God cannot condone sin. He cannot have fellowship with sin.
So based on that truth about God, John says that you can’t walk in darkness and have fellowship with God. You can’t live in sin and have fellowship with God. Sin breaks fellowship with God. 1John 1:6 “If we say that we have fellowship with Him and [yet] walk in the darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth.” Sin prohibits our fellowship with God. By living in sin, we quench the Holy Spirit. And God says His Spirit will not strive with man. God is light, and He cannot participate with darkness. He cannot abide with sin.
John goes on to show the nefarious ways in which the enemy tries to get us to accept sin and think that all is well. The enemy tries to get us to say we have no sin. To get us to think that we are somehow not guilty of sin. The law doesn’t apply to us so sin is not a problem. Or to just ignore the problem of sin altogether. Sin is never addressed in a lot of churches today. God is love, and that is all that they want to focus on. But John said in vs8, “If we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us.”
Instead of ignoring sin, or saying that sin is not an issue, or saying that we have no sin, John said the way to have fellowship with God is to confess your sins. “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”
Another way that Satan tries to deceive and cause a broken relationship with God is to say that sin isn’t sin. Something that you like, something that you think will make you happy, but which the word of God says is wrong, you say this favorite thing of yours is not sin. You over rule God’s word. And that’s exactly what John says in vs 10, “If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar and His word is not in us.” You have put yourself in the place of God and decided that what you want to do is not sin. Obviously, the word of God is not in you because the word of God says that it is sin, and you say it is not sin. Once again, the result is the same, you are abiding in sin, and because of that you cannot have fellowship with God.
Let’s think of it this way. Imagine you are learning to play the piano. The teacher provides you with a piano that is in tune, it’s perfectly capable of playing the greatest songs ever written. And she gives you a music sheet with all the notes written out of a beautiful song that you are supposed to learn. And she tells you to learn to play that song perfectly. Now to do that, you must practice. In the process of practicing, you are going to make mistakes, aren’t you? But the key to learning to play the piece is not by pretending that the notes don’t matter. It’s not learned by hitting the wrong notes and just continuing on as if nothing happened. It’s not learned by playing any notes that you want to play if you think it sounds ok. The way to learn is to recognize the correct notes, and to recognize when you don’t play the right notes, and to correct it. That’s a poor illustration of what it means to recognize and confess your sin. That is what John refers to in chapter one as practicing the truth. To practice the error is to walk in darkness, but we confess our errors, we confess our mistakes, and practice the truth.
So the goal of the Christian life that John wants to emphasize is that you should not sin. He says in vs1 of chapter 2, “Little children, I am writing these things to you that you may not sin.” That is the goal. That is the standard. As 1 Peter 1:16 says, “YOU SHALL BE HOLY, FOR I AM HOLY.” We are to be conformed to Christ’s image, to walk as He walked, to follow in HIs steps.
Eph. 1:4 says, “just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him.” Ephesians 5:25 says, “Christ also loved the church and gave Himself up for her, so that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, that He might present to Himself the church in all her glory, having no spot or wrinkle or any such thing; but that she would be holy and blameless.”
God wants us to be free from sin so that we might have fellowship with Him and have fullness of joy. So make no mistake, God doesn’t want us to sin, He doesn’t want us to accept sin as a fact of life that we can’t really do anything about. He doesn’t want us to condone sin and say it’s ok. He doesn’t want us to ignore sin or try to act as if we don’t have sin. God wants us to be free from sin, but if we sin, He wants us to deal with it so we can be cleansed from it.
God doesn’t say He doesn’t want us to sin because He doesn’t want us to have fun. That’s what the devil tries to tell us. Sin looks like fun. In fact, sin sometimes is fun, but only for a season. God isn’t concerned with limiting your fun, God is concerned with a life of joy. Joy is eternal, fun is temporary. You can go out partying with your friends and start drinking and you may have a lot of fun for the evening. But it doesn’t usually end well. I was thinking yesterday of a friend I know that has recently reached the breaking point in alcoholism. Drinking was a lot of fun when he first started out as a young man. But over the years, drinking has taken it’s toll. He has now lost his family, ruined his health, suffered so much loss. Drinking is not fun anymore.
So John is writing unto them "That you may not sin.” That’s the goal. That’s God’s standard for fellowship, for joy. That’s the divine ideal. But the fact is that no one is able to attain to it perfectly. Sanctification is the process of being holy, but it is a process that will not attain perfection until Jesus returns.
In the prayer of dedication for the temple, Solomon prayed in 1Kings 8:46 that God would answer their prayer, “When they sin against You (for there is no man who does not sin).” And in Ecclesiastes 7:20 it says, “Indeed, there is not a righteous man on earth who [continually] does good and who never sins.” And we should all be familiar with Romans 3:23 which says, “For all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.” John in the previous chapter said that if we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar and His word is not in us.
So the fact that we will sin is a foregone conclusion, but that doesn’t mean that we have a fatalistic view of sin, that it is something which we can’t do anything about. We should all strive to live a life in which we don’t sin. We should all strive to play the notes to the beautiful song that God has written for us, so that we may live a life that is joyful and harmonious with God, and beautiful in God’s eyes. But a lot of times we don’t make much of an effort to do that. The author of Hebrews said in Hebrews 12:4 “You have not yet resisted to the point of shedding blood in your striving against sin.” In other words, you’re not trying very hard. There is much that we can do to resist sin. We fight against the temptation to sin on three fronts, from Satan, from the world, and from our own flesh.
In regards to Satan, James tells us to resist the devil and he will flee from you. And in regards to the world, 1Cor. 10:13 says, “No temptation has overtaken you but such as is common to man; and God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able, but with the temptation will provide the way of escape also, so that you will be able to endure it.” So if you fall into temptation it is because you did not take God's escape route that He provided. You did not rely on the strength of God to endure it or overcome it. And in regards to the flesh, Paul says to discipline your body and make it your slave, rather than being enslaved to the lusts of the flesh.
So we can overcome sin, we can practice the truth to eliminate sin, but if we sin, John says we have an advocate with the Father. The word advocate in Greek is “paracletos”. It is the same word that Jesus used when He promised the disciples that He would ask the Father to give them another Comforter. The word literally means, called alongside to help. We have a diving Helper. God doesn’t just tell us not to sin, and leave us on our own to resist and keep from sinning. But He gives us the Helper, the Spirit of Christ, to comfort us, to convict us, to control us, to give us the power over sin.
That word paracletos also can be interpreted as Intercessor. An intercessor is one called alongside to help, but in the position of a defense attorney. And John identifies our Intercessor as Jesus Christ the righteous. In the position as an Intercessor, Jesus is not declaring our innocence. He is not saying that God should not count our sin as sin. But He is saying, count their sin against Me. Charge Roy’s sin on My account. I will pay for it through death on the cross. He is righteous, He is holy, He is the spotless Lamb of God that takes away the sin of the world upon Himself. He became sin for us that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him.
Isaiah 53:4-6 speaks of this intercession saying, “Surely our griefs He Himself bore, And our sorrows He carried; Yet we ourselves esteemed Him stricken, Smitten of God, and afflicted. But He was pierced through for our transgressions, He was crushed for our iniquities; The chastening for our well-being [fell] upon Him, And by His scourging we are healed. All of us like sheep have gone astray, Each of us has turned to his own way; But the LORD has caused the iniquity of us all To fall on Him.”
And Romans 8:34 asks, “who is the one who condemns? Christ Jesus is He who died, yes, rather who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who also intercedes for us.” It is because Jesus is the righteous, Son of God, the One who created us, the One whom holds together all things by the word of His power, the One who is the exact nature of the Father, the exact radiance of the Father’s glory, because He died in my place, because He took the wrath of God upon Himself, I am free from the condemnation of sin. And because I am forgiven and made righteous through Him, I have fellowship with God and the fullness of joy.
If we sin, not only do we have an Advocate with the Father, but Jesus Christ the righteous is also, according to vs 2, “the propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for those of the whole world.” Propitiation is one of those words that we may hear only in the Bible. It’s not a word used in common language today. And so it’s not very well understood.
Propitiation means quite simply Satisfaction. As I said earlier, God did not suddenly decide to stop counting sins, but He stopped counting them against us that believe, and instead counted it towards Jesus Christ. But the point made in propitiation is that God must count sins. If God is just, if God is holy and righteous, if God is the Judge of the Earth as the Bible says He is, then He must count sin. He must vindicate those who have suffered. He must punish the evil doers. And the Bible teaches that God will judge the earth and everyone that has lived on the earth. Every thought, every word, and every deed will be judged. God is a God of justice. And justice must be served. Those who break God’s laws must receive the punishment due them.
In the Old Testament, there is a picture of propitiation that helps us to understand propitiation. God gave Moses instructions for the building of the tabernacle and later for the temple. And inside the courtyard of the temple, there was the holy place and inside the holy place was the Holy of Holies. It was the place that God met with His people, and only once a year could the high priest enter it to make atonement for the sins of the people. The high priest would go once a year to placate God, to satisfy God, to appease God’s wrath against the sins of the people by the sprinkling of the blood of an animal sacrifice on the mercy seat.
Inside the Holy of Holies was the Ark of the Covenant. And inside the ark there was the covenant of Moses, which was the 10 commandments. I find it interesting that inside the Holy of Holies, there is a box, and the box contains the word of God. That’s it. There is no statue, no representation of deity, just the word of God in a box, a jar of manna and Aaron’s rod. When we want to worship God we don’t go bow down to a statue, or kneel and pray to a statute, but we go to the word of God.
So the box was made with gold, and the lid was gold. And the lid on the top of the ark was known as the mercy seat. On each end of the ark, there was a cherub, a cherub made out of a piece of solid gold with its wings going across the lid. Cherubim were angels whose particular purpose was to be guardians of the holiness of God. Above the ark was the Shekinah glory of God, which was the light and smoke in which was the presence of God.
On the Day of Atonement, the high priest entered with fear and trembling into the presence of God in the Holy of Holies, and sprinkled the blood of the sacrifice on the mercy seat. The blood covered the law, so to speak. It was the sacrifice made to appease the judgment of God, to be the propitiation, or the satisfaction, for the sins of the people.
But actually the whole sacrificial system prescribed in the Old Testament by God didn’t satisfy Him. The sacrifice of Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, year after year after year, and all the sacrifices in addition to that, all of the burnt offerings, all of the sin offerings, all of the trespass offerings, all of the other offerings offered millions of times through history never satisfied God. None of those sacrifices ever paid for one, single sin. They all just pointed to the ultimate sacrifice that one day would atone for sin. And that ultimate sacrifice for all sins, of all people, was made by Jesus Christ on the cross. He was the propitiation, He was the spotless Lamb of God that takes away the sins of the world. Nothing else could do that, the other sacrifices could only symbolize His sacrifice. And His sacrifice was sufficient, it satisfied the wrath of God against sin, once and for all.
The Bible says that punishment for sin is death. God said, “If you eat of the tree, you will surely die.” Sin entered into the world and then death by sin. It is appointed unto man once to die, and after that the judgment. God is just, He is holy. He is the Supreme Judge over all the earth. He will not lie concerning what He required concerning His law. He will mete out justice as demanded by His word. Jesus satisfied that requirement of the law.
But that satisfaction for sin is applicable only for those who have accepted Jesus as their Savior and Lord. For those who have not, who reject Christ, there remains the wrath of God. In John 3:36, it says, “He who believes in the Son has eternal life; he who doesn’t obey the Son shall not see life but the wrath of God abides on him.” The condemnation of the law abides on the one who rejects Christ. If you reject Christ, then the only way that God can be satisfied for your sin is to require your death.
Romans 6:23 says, the wages of sin is death. Thats the bad news. Then the good news, “but the gift of God is eternal life to everyone that believes. First Thessalonians 1:10 says, “Christ has come to deliver us from the wrath to come.”
First Peter 2:24, “He Himself bore our sins in His body on the cross so that we might die to sin and live to righteousness.” First Peter 3:18, “Christ also died for sins, once for all, the just dying for the unjust.” And then 1 John 2:2, “He is Himself the propitiation for our sins.” He was our substitute, He took our place, and paid our price, that we might have life through Him.
Rom 3:23-26 says, “for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, being justified as a gift by His grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus; whom God displayed publicly as a propitiation in His blood through faith. [This was] to demonstrate His righteousness, because in the forbearance of God He passed over the sins previously committed; for the demonstration, [I say,] of His righteousness at the present time, so that He would be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus.” God is just, He requires justice, but He is the Justifier, meaning that He has provided a way for us to be justified by transferring our guilt upon the righteous Son of God.
One last point that needs to be made. John says at the end of vs 2, “He Himself is the propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for those of the whole world.”
Does this mean that Jesus has literally satisfied the wrath of God for the whole world? Does the whole world mean that everyone is saved? Has Jesus satisfied God’s justice for everybody who’s ever lived? If so, then why be concerned about condemnation? Why all the warnings and why preach the gospel?
The answer is found in Leviticus 16; 17 when God gave instructions about the day of Atonement, God made it clear that the high priest was making atonement only for the people of Israel. The Day of Atonement was only for the Jews. But he great news for the rest of the world comes to light in the new covenant. Here in vs2, John says Jesus is the propitiation, He is the atoning sacrifice, not just for the Jew’s sin, not just for the select ones, but for the sins of the world. Every person, from every tribe and nation has the offer of atonement presented to him. God has made salvation available to whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord, shall be saved.
I pray that if you have not accepted the free gift of salvation, the forgiveness of sins, the cleansing from sin and the righteousness of Jesus Christ that you would do so today. Today is the accepted time of salvation. The inviatation is open and waiting and has been extended to all who will believe. Call upon Jesus today and be saved from the condemnation of your sin, and receive life from God, that you may have fellowship with God, and that your joy may be full.
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