In all languages, light is the natural symbol for three things:
knowledge, joy, purity. The one ray is broken into its three constituent
parts. But just as there are some surfaces which are sensitive to the
violet rays, say, of the spectrum, and not to the others, so John's
intense moral earnestness makes him mainly sensitive to the symbolism
which makes light the expression, not so much of knowledge or of joy, as
of moral purity. And although that is not exclusively his use of the
emblem, it is predominately so, and it is so here. To 'walk in the
light' then, is, speaking generally, to have purity, righteousness,
goodness, as the very element and atmosphere in which our progressive
and changeful life is carried on.
Note, too, before I go further, that very significant antithesis: we
'walk'; He _is_--God _is_ in the light essentially, changelessly,
undisturbedly, eternally; and the light in which He is, His 'own calm
home, His habitation from eternity,' is light which has flowed out from
Himself as a halo round the midnight moon. It is all one in substance to
say God is in light, or, as the Psalmist has it, 'He covered Himself
with light as with a garment,' and to say, 'God is light.'
But, side by side with that changeless abiding in the perfect purity,
which is inaccessible, the Apostle ventures to put, not in contrast
only, but in parallel (_as_ He is), our changing, effortful, active,
progressive life in the light (God is); we walk.
So, then, the essential of a Christian character is that the light of
purity and moral goodness shall be as the very orb, in the midst of
which it stands and advances. That implies effort, and it implies
activity, and it implies progress. And we are only Christians in the
measure in which the conscious activities of our daily lives, and the
deepest energies of our inward being, are bathed and saturated with this
love of, and effort after, righteousness. It is vain, says John, to talk
about fellowship with God, unless the fellowship is rooted in sympathy
with Him in that which is the very heart of his Being, the perfect light
of perfect holiness. Test your Christianity by that.
Then, still further, there is implied in this great requirement of
walking in the light, not only activity and effort, and progress and
purity, but also that the whole of the life shall be brought into
relation with, and shall be moulded after, the pattern of the God in
whom we profess to believe. Religion, in its deepest meaning, is the
aspiration after likeness to the god. You see it in heathenism. Men make
their gods after their own image, and then the god makes the worshippers
after his image. Mars is the god of the soldier, and Venus goddess of
the profligate, and Apollo god of the musical and the wise, etc., and in
Christianity the deepest thing in it is aspiration and effort after
likeness to God. Love is imitation; admiration, especially when it is
raised to the highest degree and becomes adoration, is imitation. And
the man that lies before God, like a mirror in the sunshine, receives
on the still surface of his soul--but not, like the mirror, on the
surface only, but down into its deepest depths--the reflected image of
Him on Whom he gazes. 'We all with unveiled face, mirroring glory, are
changed into the same image.' So to walk in the light is only possible
when we are drawn into it, and our feeble feet made fit to tread upon
the radiant glory, by the thought that He is in the light. To imitate
Him is to be righteous. So do not let us forget that a correct creed,
and devout emotions, ay! and a morality which has no connection with
Him, are all imperfect, and that the end of all our religion, our
orthodox creed and our sweet emotions and inward feelings of acceptance
and favour and fellowship, are meant to converge on, and to produce
this--a life and a character which lives and moves and has its being in
a great orb of light and purity.
But another thing is included in this grand metaphor of my text. Not
only does it enjoin upon us effort and activity and progress in the
light and the linking of all our purity with God, but also, it bids us
shroud no part of our conduct or our character either from ourselves or
from Him. Bring it all out into the light. And although with a penitent
heart, and a face suffused with blushes, we have sometimes to say, 'See,
Father, what I have done!' it is far better that the revealing light
should shine down upon us, and like the sunshine on wet linen, melt away
the foulness which it touches, than that we should huddle the ugly thing
up in a corner, to be one day revealed and transfixed by the flash of
the light turned into lightning. 'He that doeth the truth cometh to the
light, that his deeds may be made manifest.'
II. So much, then, for my first point; the second is: The companions of
the men that walk in the light.
I have already pointed out that the accurate, perhaps pedantically
accurate, form of the antithesis would have been: 'If we walk in the
light as He is in the light, we have fellowship with God.' But John
says, first, 'we have fellowship one with another.' Underlying that, as
I shall have to say in a moment, there is the other thought: 'We have
fellowship with God.' But he deals with the other side of the truth
first. That just comes to this, that the only cement that perfectly
knits men to each other is their common possession of that light, and
the consequent fellowship with God. There are plenty of other bonds that
draw us to one another; but these, if they are not strengthened by this
deepest of all bonds, the affinity of souls, that are moving together in
the realm of light and purity, are precarious, and apt to snap. Sin
separates men quite as much as it separates each man from God. It is the
wedge driven into the tree that rends it apart. Human society with its
various bonds is like the iron hoop that may be put around the barrel
staves, giving them a quasi-unity. The one thing that builds men
together into a whole is that each shall be, as it were, embedded in the
rock which is the foundation, and the building will rise into a holy
temple in the Lord. Sin separates; as the prophet confessed, 'All we
like sheep have gone astray, every one to _his own way_,' and the flock
is broken up into a multitude of scattered sheep. Social enthusiasts may
learn the lesson that the only way by which brotherhood among men can
become anything else than a name, and probably end, as it did in the
great French Revolution, in 'brothers' making hecatombs of their
brethren under the guillotine, is that it shall be the corollary from
the Fatherhood of God. If we walk in the light, not otherwise, we have
'fellowship one with another.'
Then, still further, in this fellowship one with another, John
presupposes the fellowship with God for each, which makes the
possibility and the certainty of all being drawn into one family. He
does not think it necessary to state, what is so plain and obvious,
viz., that unless we are in sympathy with God, in our aspiration and
effort after the light which is His home and ours, we have no real
communion with Him. I said that sin separated man from man, and
disrupted all the sweet bonds of amity, so that if men come into
contact, being themselves in the darkness, they come into collision
rather than into communion. A company of travellers in the night are
isolated individuals. When the sun rises on their paths they are a
company again. And in like manner, sin separates us from God, and if our
hearts are turned towards, and denizens of, the darkness of impurity,
then we have no communion with Him. He cannot come to us if we love the
darkness. He
'Can but listen at the gate,
And hear the household jar within.'
The tide of the Atlantic feels along the base of iron-bound cliffs on
our western shores, and there is not a crevice into which it can come.
So God moves about us, but is without us, so long as we walk in
darkness. So let us remember that no union with Him is possible, except
there be this common dwelling in the light. Two grains of quicksilver
laid upon a polished surface will never unite if their surfaces be
dusted over with minute impurities, or if the surface of one of them be.
Clean away the motes, and they will coalesce and be one. A film of sin
separates men from God. And if the film be removed the man dwells in
God, and God in him.
III. That brings me to my last point: The progressive cleansing of those
who dwell in the light.
'The blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth from all sin.' Now if you will
notice the whole context, and eminently the words a couple of verses
after my text, you will see that the cleansing here meant is not the
cleansing of forgiveness, but the cleansing of purifying. For the two
things are articulately distinguished in the ninth verse: 'He is
faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all
unrighteousness.' So, to use theological terms, it is not justification,
but sanctification that is meant here.
Then there is another thing to be noticed, and that is that when the
Apostle speaks here about the blood of Christ, he is not thinking of
that blood as shed on the Cross, the atoning sacrifice, but of that
blood as transfused into the veins, the source there of our new life.
The Old Testament says that 'the blood is the life.' Never mind about
the statement being scientifically correct; it conveys the idea of the
time, which underlies a great deal of Old and New Testament teaching.
And when John says the blood of Jesus cleanses from 'all sin,' he says
just the same thing as his brother Paul said, 'the law of the spirit of
life in Jesus Christ makes me free from the law of sin and death.' That
is to say, a growing cleansing from the dominion and the power of sin is
granted to us, if we have the life of Jesus Christ breathed into our
lives. The metaphor is a very strong one. They tell us--I know nothing
about the truth of it--that sometimes it has been possible to revive a
moribund man by transfusing into his veins blood from another. That is
a picture of the only way by which you and I can become free from the
tyranny that dominates us. We must have the life of Christ as the
animating principle of our lives, the spirit of Jesus emancipating us
from the power of sin and death.
So you see, there are two aspects of Christ's great work set before us
under that one metaphor of the blood in its two-fold form, first, as
shed for us sinners on the Cross; second, as poured into our veins day
by day. That works progressive cleansing. It covers the whole ground of
all possible iniquity. Pardon is much, purifying is more. The sacrifice
on the Cross is the basis of everything, but that sacrifice does not
exhaust what Christ does for us. He died for our sins, and lives for our
sanctifying. He died for us, He lives in us. Because He died, we are
forgiven; because He lives, we are made pure. Only remember John's 'if.'
The 'blood of Jesus will progressively cleanse us until it has cleansed
us from _all_ sin,' on condition that we 'walk in the light,' not
otherwise. If the main direction of our lives is towards the light; if
we seek, by aspiration and by effort, and by deliberate choice, to live
in holiness, then, and not else, will the power of the life of Jesus
Christ deliver us from the power of sin and death.
Now, my text presupposes that the people to whom it is addressed, and
whom it concerns, have already passed from darkness into light, if not
wholly, yet in germ. But for those who have not so passed, there is
something to be said before my text. And John says it immediately; here
it is, 'If any man sin we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ
the righteous, and He is the propitiation for our sins; and not for our
sins only, but for the whole world.' So we have to begin with the blood
shed for us, the means of our pardon, and then we have the advance of
the blood sprinkled on us, the means of our cleansing. If by humble
faith we take the dying Lord for our Saviour, and the channel of our
forgiveness, we shall have the pardon of our sins. If we listen to the
voice that says, 'Ye were sometime darkness, but now are ye light in the
Lord. Walk as children of the light,' we shall have fellowship with the
living Lord, and daily know more and more of the power of His cleansing
blood, making us 'meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints
in light.'