The Gospel IRL: Real Light (1 John 1:5-10; 2:7-11)

John presents us with two ideas about living in the light: understanding our own sinfulness and actually loving each other.

We like to rank our sins. Some of them we find pretty acceptable—buying or taking more than we need, judging others quickly, “little” lies, gossip, the pride of thinking we’ve earned what we have. Others, we can be prone to judging quickly and harshly.

We so often want to minimize our sin. It’s just a little bit. Like a bag of yeast, it’s so small. I can contain it, keep it under control. And yet like this bag of yeast mixed into bread dough, when our sin is mixed into our life, it grows, and we can’t control it. We can’t isolate it to one little corner anymore than we can isolate the yeast to one section of the bread. This is the darkness inside of us, the separation from God’s light that makes it harder and harder to see ourselves or the world clearly. 

Living in the light means agreeing with God that we have sinned and trusting that Jesus will forgive us and cleanse us and restore us. When we do that, the other thing that happens is that we will love one another in a way that is real and pure.