First in a series of studies of 1 John 1:5-10
“This is the message which we have heard from Him and declare to you,
that God is light and in Him is no darkness at all” (1 John 1:5).
Fully assuring his readers in the first five verses that not only had he heard about
Jesus but that he saw Him personally, the Apostle John here moves his credibility a
step forward by declaring that the message he is sending them has come to him
directly from Jesus.
That message is intended to help them deal with the Gnostics, who believed they
could have a relationship with God and live in sin at the same time. To refute that
idea, John declares, “God is light,” then contrasting light and darkness.
Light is representative of purity, and darkness is representative of sin—the two are
incompatible, thus demonstrating emphatically that the philosophy of the Gnostics
is false. As “light,” God has “no darkness at all” or no sin at all.
To realize the absolute purity of God is to understand the kind of life God wants us
to live. For us to have a significant relationship with Him, we must make it our goal
to weed sin out of our lives and hold tightly to Jesus. Only then can we expect to
spend eternity in heaven.