02/22/2026 - Truth & Love - 1 John 1:5-10

So I was thinking about this picture and this framework, I was thinking about camping and I was thinking about this idea of darkness and light and thinking about how there's really nothing in creation that is more different than darkness and light. You could say big and small, right? But that requires context. Right? How big? How small? You could say hot and cold. But I actually recently did a survey in our fourth and fifth grade class in Redemption Kids I was teaching a few weeks ago, and I asked the question, how cold is too cold? [00:10:18] (39 seconds)  #LightVsDark

We know what they represent. You're either in the light or you're in the darkness. There's no in between. In fact, darkness is defined as the absence of what? Light. They're polar opposites. Again, remember the context of this letter. Remember these lies of the false teaching of the day watering down who Jesus was, who Jesus is and what it means to follow him, watering down the truth of God's word, watering down their view of sin. The lines between darkness and light, truth and a lie, are being blurred. They're becoming fuzzy. [00:11:32] (43 seconds)  #GuardTheTruth

Does that sound familiar to you at all? But John wants us to be clear. There is a stark difference between the light of God and the darkness of this world. There is no in between. So the question for us this more is how do we recognise darkness in our own lives, in our own day and age, where we face many of the same watering down and the fuzziness of the line, just as these Christians did in this day. How do we recognize darkness? It is anything that is not of God or in God. [00:12:15] (39 seconds)  #DiscernLight

Anything that is apart from God. Again, John said, God is light, which means anything apart from Him, anything that's not from Him is in the darkness. Where do we fall prey to darkness like this in our lives? I think it's when we water down the truth of God's word. And we see this all over the place. We see churches that do this. And that's why we want to be so protected here in teaching the truth of God's word faithfully and boldly. [00:12:54] (32 seconds)  #HoldFastToTruth

We don't pick and choose what we want to teach. We just water it down to mean what we want it to say. When we do that, we blur the lines between darkness and light. I think we also, though, can do this even maybe on a personal level when we mix the world's teachings, the darkness, with the light. I think we've got to be careful about this. The things we listen to, the people who influence us, all right, the voices in our lives, are they speaking truth? [00:13:26] (30 seconds)  #GuardYourInfluence

Again, this is where the lies of Gnosticism really start to fall apart because if God is light and there is no darkness in him, then it's impossible for someone who walks in the darkness to have fellowship with the God of light. This fellowship here that John writes about in verse six, Nate talked about a little bit last week. It's the word Greek word koinonia, which I love. It's this idea of participation or communion. There's a picture of intimate relationship with each other. [00:15:24] (33 seconds)  #TrueKoinonia

John's point is this how could someone who is in the darkness have an intimate relationship koinonia with a God who has nothing to do with the darkness? It's impossible. To say that it is possible is to lie, John says, and to not practise the truth. Now, what does it mean to walk in darkness? What are we talking about when we talk about this idea of walking in darkness? And the word here for walk means to make one's way. And in Scripture, we see this idea of a walk used to refer to the way someone lives. [00:15:56] (42 seconds)  #NoKoinoniaInDarkness

used to refer to the way someone lives. Our walk is our living. It's everything we do. It's the decisions we make. It's the direction we're heading. Our walk is who we are and how we live. It's our lives. So when John talks about walking in darkness, he's talking about someone deliberately living in the darkness, living apart from God and His truth. Darkness in a person's beliefs and in their behaviour. And then in verse eight, he clarifies this even more. He says, If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. [00:16:34] (46 seconds)  #WalkReflectsLife