Exploring 1 John: We Lie When we Walk in Darkness
Exploring 1 John: We Lie When we Walk in Darkness
1 John 1:6 - We must walk in the spiritual realm in our physical walk in this life.
”If we say that we have fellowship with Him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth;“
1 John 1:6 NASB1995
So in researching this next verse, I ended up in an impenetrable thicket of divergent thought from Biblical scholars. The argument is primarily between two interpretations: Is John, in his treatise of 1 John, exploring tests of our salvation or is he evaluating if your sanctification is progressing with tests of fellowship? This verse is considered a watershed (crucial dividing line) between these two schools of thought. Both sides make excellent points. Let’s start with the tests of salvation - this is the preferred view of the majority of the scholars that are found in the aggregated commentary on Precept Austin. Here is how Gary Derickson, professor of Biblical Studies at Corban University interprets the majority view of 1 John describing tests of salvation from Precept Austin:
According to this view John's purpose in writing the epistle was to encourage his readers, who were understood to be believers, to assure themselves of their salvation by verifying the validity of their profession through tests of spiritual life. These tests include doctrinal agreement with the apostles' teaching and submission to their standard of conduct, namely, loving the brethren and living righteously. Eternal life, understood as a soteriological term, is the subject of the epistle, with Christian certainty serving as the dominant theme throughout the work. Salvation is the subject of the epistle's prologue in its focus on the "Word of Life" and the apostolic proclamation of "eternal life" (1Jn 1:1-2). With eternal life as its central subject, the epistle develops three tests by which members of the believing community can recognize that they do indeed possess that life.
These three tests of the Christian life are belief (truth), righteousness (obedience), and love. These indicate whether a person has eternal life, and is therefore in communion with God, or does not and is merely professing faith. Passing these tests produces assurance of salvation, since there is a correlation between possession of life and production of fruit as evidence of eternal life. John's purpose was not to cause his readers to doubt their salvation, but to find assurance in it. Fruit can be used either to reveal the absence of eternal life in an individual or to assure him of the presence of that life.
According to this test, if you walk in the darkness, you are not practicing belief (truth), righteousness (obedience), and love in your Christian life. Let’s do a word study on walk; this word has been examined before but it is always worth repeating the understanding from the Greek. The Blue Letter Bible lexicon for the NASB1995 shows “walk” to come from the word περιπατέω or peripatéō. The Biblical usages are as follows; this word is used 95 times in 88 verses in the NT:
to walk
to make one's way, progress; to make due use of opportunities
Hebrew for, to live
to regulate one's life
to conduct one's self
to pass one's lifewalk
John is focusing in on the way to live and how we conduct ourselves, coming from the Hebrew to the Greek. So let’s look at the contrasting viewpoint, that this is about tests of fellowship. Interestingly, one of my top go-to Bible commentators, David Guzik, is in this camp:
If we say that we have fellowship with Him, and walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth.
If we say that we have fellowship with Him: John first deals with a false claim to fellowship. Based upon this, we understand that it is possible for some to claim a relationship with God that they do not have. We can also say that it is possible for someone to think they have a relationship with God that they do not have.
Many Christians are not aware of their true condition. They know they are saved, and have experienced conversion and have repented at some time in their life. Yet they do not live in true fellowship with God.
And walk in darkness: John speaks of a walk in darkness, indicating a pattern of living. This does not speak of an occasional lapse, but of a lifestyle of darkness.
We lie and do not practice the truth: God has no darkness at all (1 John 1:5). Therefore, if one claims to be in fellowship with God (a relationship of common relation, interest, and sharing), yet does walk in darkness, it is not a truthful claim.
The issue here is fellowship, not salvation. The Christian who temporarily walks in darkness is still saved, but not in fellowship with God.
If John said “That is a lie,” it means he thinks in terms of things being true or being lies. John sees things much more clearly than our sophisticated age does, which doesn’t want to see anything in black or white, but everything in a pale shade of gray. The modern world often thinks in terms of “my truth” in an individualistic sense. John focused on the idea of God’s truth, ultimate truth.
Guzik is of the opinion that the saved Christian who walks in darkness (what he first calls a temporary thing) is not in fellowship with God but is still saved. However, he then goes on to say that this walk may be a pattern of living and not a temporary lapse, so in effect he agrees with Precept Austin. Interesting comparison - I think I am probably inclined to go with the tougher, but likely more accurate interpretation that more commentators support. John is saying that our walk in the physical realm is really a daily walk in the spiritual realm and if we walk in the darkness of sin and the desires of this life, we are lying if we say that we are in fellowship with God. If any man is in Christ, he is a new creature (from 2 Corinthians 5:17).
I really liked the thoughts about walking in darkness from a sermon by John Piper that was linked on Precept Austin:
The reason this is called walking in darkness is that the only way people can desire things more than God is if they are blind to the light of God. To choose gravel over diamonds you have to be blind. Remember the picture of the man in a dark room. [this was an analogy that Piper used in a previous sermon]. He feels a warm, soft fur with one hand and a cold sharp edge with the other, and draws in close to the warmth and softness of the fur.
But when the light goes on, he sees that the warm, soft fur is the underbelly of a horrid, man-eating monster; and the hard, cold edge is the sword of the majestic Christ ready to save. The reason he was controlled by his desire for the man-eating monster is that he was in the dark. Everyone who loves the world more than God is in the dark. Only it’s a willful darkness, because, as John said in John 3:19, “The light has come into the world and men loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil.”
When you walk in darkness, you are controlled by the desires for the soft, warm underbellies of prestige and power and two-second pleasures (see James 4:14). This is the very opposite of what it means to have fellowship with God. Fellowship with God means that you see things the way he sees them and have the same desires he has. If we are controlled by desires for the world instead of desires for God, it doesn’t matter whether we say we have fellowship with God or not; we don’t have it. Instead we walk in darkness. “If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness we lie and do not live according to the truth.”
What an interesting contrast! The person in darkness gravitates towards the soft fur of a creature that would kill him, but moves away from the hard edge of the sword of Truth wielded by Christ! I know that I stumble around in darkness, sometimes preferring the two-second pleasures that lead to eternal night to foregoing those pleasures and continuing fellowship with God. I grasp at the fun and leisure and have that weird reluctance to turn away from the pleasures of this life. I think John will definitely have an impact on me as I continue this exploration.
My next devotional examines 1 John 1:7 - If we walk in the Light
Heaven on Wheels Daily Prayer:
Dear Lord - Help me to come out of the darkness of this world and its attractions and walk a spiritual walk in Fellowship with You! Amen.
Scripture quotations taken from the (NASB®) New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1971, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. All rights reserved. lockman.org
Precept Austin was accessed on 3/30/2024 to review the commentary for 1 John 1:6.
The Blue Letter Bible was accessed on 3/30/2024 to review the lexicon for walk.
Enduring Word commentary by David Guzik is used with written permission.
Excerpt from Desiring God sermon: By John Piper. © Desiring God Foundation. Source: desiringGod.org
John Piper is founder and teacher of desiringGod.org and chancellor of Bethlehem College & Seminary. For more than thirty years, he served as pastor of Bethlehem Baptist Church, Minneapolis. He is author of more than fifty books, and his sermons, articles, books, and more are available free of charge at desiringGod.org.