WHENEVER I TEACH a marriage seminar, I use lots of stories and examples. That’s always a good way to help make what might sound a little vague or abstract a little more concrete. If people identify with the stories, it helps them to feel a little more normal (Oh, so I’m not the only one who struggles with this?), which makes it easier for them to imagine that change is possible. Often, I’ll use an example of a marital argument that to me seems fairly generic, only to have a couple come up to me later and ask, “Have you been spying on us?”

Some of the teaching has to do with the difference between verbal and nonverbal behavior, between what we say and what we do, between the words used and how they are spoken. It’s one thing to say “I love you” with the kind of sincerity that comes with relaxed body language, an open facial expression, and a soft tone of voice. It’s another to say it distractedly while staring at your phone (in that situation, it might even be better not to say it at all!). And of course, you can only go so far in saying you love someone if you don’t live in a way that demonstrates the truth of that claim.

THE APOSTLE JOHN, as we’ve seen, is a big-picture person; he tells the story of Jesus in a way that gives it cosmic scope. Throughout his gospel, he plays with the contrast between light and darkness, seeing Jesus as the light who comes into a world where people prefer the darkness because of their sin. At the opening of his first letter, he reminds his readers that the gospel is the root of joyous fellowship: fellowship with God, fellowship with Jesus, fellowship with each other. He then makes a declaration about God that is fundamental to the letter:

This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all. If we claim to have fellowship with him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live out the truth. 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. (1 John 1:5-7, NIV)

“If we claim.” John will say this three times in verses 6 to 10. By this, he might mean, “Let’s just say for the sake of argument that someone says…” Or he could be saying, “Some people have been claiming this, but…” The recipients of the letter would have known how to read it, but at a distance of two millennia, we can’t be sure. Given what he says later in the letter, however, about people leaving the fellowship and trying to drag others with them, it’s likely that John is pointing to things that are actually being said.

Still, John could have written, “As those schismatics are saying…” By saying “If we claim” instead, he makes this a hypothetical that involves everyone — including those who may be tempted to listen to the schismatics. In essence, he seems to be saying, “If any one of us were to say the things that they are saying, here are the implications.”

The first claim that some people are making, then, is to “have fellowship with him,” that is, with God. It’s not necessarily that people were actually saying, “I have fellowship with God”; that may just be John’s language (again, given what he said in verse 3) for being a Christian. Nothing wrong with that claim, on the face of it. Wouldn’t everyone in John’s community be able to say the same?

But John is talking about what we might call a “true Christian,” or someone who as a Christian “live[s] out the truth.” Note the logic here: God is light. There isn’t an ounce of darkness in him. So let’s say someone claims to have fellowship with such a God. How can someone who has fellowship with light walk in darkness? That, my friends, is living a lie.

The alternative, of course, is walking in the light. Again, I hear echoes of Psalm 1 here. Throughout the Psalms (and in the Old Testament mindset), walking is a metaphor for how one lives, the moral path one treads. And in Psalm 1, God’s people must always choose between two paths: the path of righteousness that brings blessing, or the path of wickedness that leads to destruction. Here, John uses the language of light and darkness to describe a similar distinction.

One who walks in the light has fellowship with other believers. Given the context, we have might have expected him to say “has fellowship with God,” since that’s the claim he’s debunking. But for John, these two aspects of fellowship are inseparable, and the situation of people leaving the fellowship because of their own self-deception is uppermost in his mind.

The sentence could stop there, but it doesn’t. Lest there be any doubt as to what John means by “darkness,” he ends verse 7 with a direct mention of sin and the sacrificial death of Jesus on the cross. John will have much more to say about sin in the coming verses, including attacking the delusion that it’s possible for any Christian to be sinless. But we’re also getting a hint here of what some of the sideways teaching in the church might have been about: were some people beginning to think and teach that Jesus didn’t really have to die for our sins?

We’ll see it over and over as we go through the letter: for John, there is no gospel without the cross, and that means having to accept the fact of our sin. But first, let’s consider how someone could think otherwise in the first place.