This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.
1 john 1:5
Where does the Christian message begin? What is the first thing that people need to know about God?
Many would say the gospel begins with the love of God. “God so loved the world, that He gave his only Son” (Jn. 3:16). But the first thing John tells us is not that God is love, but that God is light. “This is the message… that God is light” (1:5).
Martyn Lloyd-Jones says that if we do not start with the holiness of God, we will not understand the gospel. “If God is only love and compassion and mercy, then the cross is surely meaningless, for if God is love alone, then all he needs to do when man sins is to forgive him.”
If you do not start with the holiness of God, you will not understand the gospel. And John wants us to know that we have eternal life, so he begins with the holiness of God. God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all.
Then John introduces the glorious possibility that we should have fellowship with God: “If we say we have fellowship with him…” (1:6). Fellowship with God is the greatest blessing a person can know. It is also the purpose for which we were made.
Fellowship means that you are a friend of God. You share in His life, and He shares in yours. Eternal life is a life of fellowship with God. Jesus said to the Father, “This is eternal life, that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent” (Jn. 17:3).
Where does the holiness of God fit in your understanding of the gospel?
