In The Light

DEVOTION 1 JOHN IN THE LIGHT 1 John 1:5-7 5 This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all. 6 If we claim to have fellowship with him yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live by the truth. 7 But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin. NIV Simply be association the difference between light and darkness is day and night, or good and evil. The deeds done in the light are seen where the deeds done in the night are hidden from sight. Do we live our lives out in the daylight for all to see or do we live, at least a portion of our lives, in the darkness? Do we deceive even our own self thinking we are living in the light, but keep some thoughts, activities, behaviors that are done in the darkness? Now is this speaking about those individuals who simply claim the name Christian, but have not really been born again? They attend a church, on Sunday morning, they think that doing some good deeds will win them a place in heaven, but they simply live for their own human plans and desires. Maybe this speaks to believers who really have not changed their way of living, but claim they have. Could this be to believers that have accepted Jesus Christ as their personal Lord and Savior, but simply have had their thinking infiltrated by the concepts of human thinking? Maybe this speaks to believers who simply have never changed the way their think, and they still believe in the human effort, still trust in the flesh, in their own efforts to be good. All of those situations would be in some sense walking in darkness, not actually seeing the truth of the scriptures, not actually trusting God for every aspect of their lives as we are admonished to do. Surely no one thinks they have every lived or will ever live without sin in their lives, sin which could be defined as deeds of darkness, but it is not by any human effort that we can be free of all sin, for it is by the blood of Jesus Christ that we are cleansed of sin. That is what is truly meant by walking in the light, knowing it is Christ who has cleansed us. Even in the brightest of light we still fail to achieve perfection, but walking in the light exposes that imperfection, and so we can acknowledge the need for Jesus every moment of our lives and true fellowship, true koinonia means we cannot hide this from each other either. We cannot have those false fronts of perfection, but should admit to each other our inability to be perfect, and our need for Christ and his purification. We need to truly walk in the light.