Like all the early Christians, John’s first readers were
facing false teaching that threatened to separate them from their relationship
with each other and with Christ. While
there are times when John tells us exactly what the false teachers were saying,
there are times when we are required to infer the false teaching from the
correction John gives. We learn the
disease by reading the prescription labels.
It seems to be the case that John’s congregation was being tempted to
take sin too lightly, to view it with a frightening level of indifference, to
see sin as inconsequential to their lives with Christ.
To be sure, this is one way of dealing with the
unremitting reality of our own brokenness.
If we are able to deny sin itself, justify any behavior we want, or even
claim a certain kind of perfection, we are able (we think) to side-step the
problem sin presents. But this is not
John’s solution. His is radically
different from the temptation to suppress the sinfulness of sin. Instead, the closer we look at the depth and
power of sin and all of its consequences in our lives the more we learn that
God as greater than all of that. The God
who forgives does not forgive small and inconsequential things, He forgives the
very thing that becomes our ruination.
Disciples of Jesus Christ do not live forgiven lives because they have
diminished sin, but because God has done something about all their sin.
To remedy the false teaching John tells his readers that all
“sin is lawlessness.” Everything that is
contrary to the will and character of God is a breaking of His law. John does not make distinctions between the
large, visible sins and the small or private sins implying that only the ‘big’
acts of rebellion are lawless while the others are not. All that goes against God’s law is sin and
all sin is lawlessness – every inclination, every action.
John, however, does not leave us there. Christ “appeared to take away sins, and in
him there is no sin.” John knows our
lives are riddled with brokenness and that Christ came to fix that problem. In fact, knowing the extent of sin is our
doorway into understanding why Christ came.
If John’ s readers were denying their sinfulness, were they changing the
reason why Christ came? If I have
decided that I no longer suffer the ravages of sin, who then does Christ
become? It is a short path from the
softening of sin to Christ being reduced from a Savior to a moral example or a
great human teacher. Changing my need
changes my savior.
But, if John’s congregation holds to the teaching they have
heard from the beginning about their need and their true Savior, then both the
problem is rightly understood and the remedy is rightly accepted. Jesus Christ came to take away sins, not to
be listed among some of the greatest philosophers or teachers in history. And the only way to get to that saving God is
to take sin seriously.
The lighter we take sin the smaller and more unnecessary
God becomes to us. But if we look
unflinchingly at the power and ubiquity of sin and turn to the only One who can
cure us, God becomes Lord and Savior of our lives.
