"Convicted but not Condemned"
Sermon by the Rev. Matt Kennedy

Easter III 2006
The Church of the Good Shepherd

1st John 1:5-9

Sometimes it amazes me to see God work in the church. In several of our bible studies we've been talking about conviction, being convicted of something by the Holy Spirit and sure enough today one of the primary passages that deals with spiritual conviction is right there in our readings. Let's turn to 1 st John 1:5.

“This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all.” (v.5) There's no darkness, or evil, in God. Last week during Christian Education we discussed the problem of evil. Some say that God cannot be both perfectly good and all powerful. Either he's not powerful enough to destroy evil or not good enough to want it destroyed. We said that both options are flawed. Evil is the result of the decision of free creatures to turn away from God, away from the light. God is all powerful and perfectly good. He created good creatures with the potential for evil. Without that potential, that freedom, there could be no love.

I could program my computer to say “I love you Matt” every time I turn it on. That wouldn't be real love. Love requires an act of a living and free will choosing to love or not to love. God didn't create evil, he created freedom. Free beings created evil when they turned away from God.

In God “there is no darkness”. He's pure light; pure glory; pure goodness. That's why it's such a dramatic shock when people who live in the darkness encounter him for the first time. I'm an early riser. I wake up at 4:00am. When we were first married, just like I used to in my single life, I would get up at 4:00 and flip on the bedside light. Anne is not a morning person. She didn't appreciate that. It hurt her eyes. A very similar thing happens when human beings encounter the truth of the gospel. A light is flipped on and people are, maybe for the first time, exposed to the truth about God and the truth about their own lives. And it hurts. In him there is no darkness.

You see your heart and mind from God's perspective. And you have a choice. You can say “It hurts, but in a good way. My life needs to change. I want to stay in the light.” or you can turn back into the darkness. If you choose to stay in the light, you repent of your sins, your darkness, and turn your life over to Christ.

And the light stays on. Attitudes and behaviors that never bothered you while you lived in the dark, begin to look and feel ugly. Think of all the things you've done during the night that you wouldn't do during the day. Well, when Jesus comes into your heart, it's always day. And those things are continually exposed to his light. And even though you may still be drawn to them, you start to see how ugly they really are. You want them out of your life. This is called conviction.

Conviction happens throughout your Christian walk. The more you expose yourself to the light: study the bible, pray, come to church, listen to sermons, take communion, hang out with Christian friends, the deeper the Holy Spirit shines his light into the dark recesses of your mind and heart, revealing more and more stuff. It happens to me all the time. This week I was reading about Peter who just before denying Christ three times bragged that he would never fall, never deny Jesus and I thought, “Man that Peter sure was full of himself.” and right then, the Spirit flipped on a light showed me something I'm really prideful about. That's conviction.

It doesn't feel good but it is a good thing. Look at verse 6, “If we claim to walk with him yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live by the truth.” Feeling conviction and acknowledging that conviction means that you're walking in the light. God is revealing your sins and your sinful attitudes so that they can be dealt with and healed. If you were walking in the dark you'd never feel conviction. Or if you did, you'd reject it and get back into the darkness ASAP. That's exactly what this verse is saying non-believers do. They hear the Word or they see the truth but instead of surrendering to it, they deny it. They rush back into the darkness. So someone who claims to be a believer but continually rejects the light; who sees the truth but consistently rejects it, may in fact, not be a believer.

We have to be careful. There're lots of believers, especially baby believers who struggle sometimes for years to get over addictive behaviors or some enslaving sin. The believer wants to be free, wants to be rid of it, admits it's wrong, and repents every time he falls, but, for a while keeps falling. This is a normal part of a baby believer's life. He has a humble and repentant heart. He wants to change. It's just a battle. And not just baby believers. We all have weak spots like that. God delivers us from them, but it's a long process and there're a lot of falls.

The difference is that non-believers don't care. That's who John's talking about someone who falls but won't admit they've fallen. Someone who sins, but refuses to acknowledge their sin; who's been convicted but rejects the conviction. Who sees the light, but returns to the darkness. If you're a believer you just won't do that very long. You'll do dark things but you won't ever want to live in the darkness, so even if you fall a million times, a million times you'll repent and return to the light. And as you do, the light grows stronger and the darkness fades. You grow, you become more and more sanctified.

This process not only helps you grow, it strengthens the fellowship of the church. Look at verse 7, “But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with each other.” When every believer in a church is walking in the light, being convicted and repenting, then the fellowship is strengthened. How? Well, over time, as you're walking in the light, consistently convicted of your own sin, it becomes far easier to see when you're in the wrong. When you live in the dark it's really easy to see how everybody else is wrong. You're pretty blind when it comes to you. The longer you live in the light the more you see your own sins and the less you concentrate on the sins of others. When conflicts come up you'll be willing to see where you're in the wrong. You'll be willing ask and give forgiveness. You'll be eager to be at peace.

This is why the church is called a fellowship. Not that we never fight and never have conflicts and never get annoyed with each other, but we're committed to one another, committed to forgiving and asking forgiveness, committed to discuss issues we have with each other and make peace, committed to our brothers and sisters here even when things get rocky, committed to walking in the light together. We live in a world where relationships break up all the time, divorce, betrayal, unfaithfulness. The church is called by God to be a counterexample to that; a light in the darkness.

And we can be that. Going back to verse 7, “the blood of Jesus, his son, purifies us from all sin.” Now, we've talked about how Jesus' sacrifice on the cross gives all who trust in him eternal salvation through the forgiveness of all their sins past present and future. But John is pointing to a different aspect of that sacrifice here. The blood of Christ, he says, “purifies” you. It makes you clean, washes your heart. The blood of Christ is a sanctifying agent.

You come to faith in Jesus Christ and God enters your heart and begins the process of turning on the lights, bringing sinful attitudes, behaviors, and ways of thinking to light. When he does that you repent and surrender those sins to him. He forgives them but that's not all. He purifies.

That's where the blood comes in. When sins are brought to light and you offer them up, the blood of Christ begins to wash you clean so that the stain of that particular sin on your heart and mind, over time, is completely taken away. Let's say you have a problem with drinking. In your pre-Christian life you'd get drunk every Friday night. You become a Christian and one day, maybe a year or so into your Christian life, you're still doing it. Well, God leads you to Eph 5:18, “Do not get drunk on wine which leads to debauchery.” Uh oh. God's turned on a light. You've been convicted. You know what you have to do. You repent. “Lord I love to get drunk on Friday's but I've just seen that I've been sinning against you and against the body that you've given me. I repent. I turn my drinking over to you. I want to change and I commit to change. Please help me.” But you've been getting stone drunk on Friday's for 20 years. How on earth are you going to stop now?

That's where the blood comes in. God not only forgives you, but, over time, takes away the desire to get drunk. He cleanses the stain by the blood of Christ. He purifies your heart. At some point you'll get off work on Friday afternoon and you won't even want to go get wasted. You might fall down many times in the cleansing process. That's okay. Whatever you do don't turn away from the light. Admit you've sinned, repent, get back up and keep going, the promise of God is that he will purify your heart and mind by the blood of Christ. He will cleanse you. You will be free and clean.

That's where verses 8-9 come in. “If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.” There is no stain, no habit, no behavior, no desire in your heart or mind that God, if you let him, can't purify. The most important word in verse 9 is the word “all”. He will purify you from all the unrighteousness you turn over to him. But you have to turn it over.

That's where I want to stop this morning. Every Sunday we have the opportunity as a body to examine ourselves in the light of God's Word and confess and repent of our sins; to make peace with God and each other. Maybe as I've been speaking the Lord has convicted you of something in your life. If so, don't leave church this morning until you've made peace with God. If it involves another person, don't leave until you've made peace with that person. Let's walk in the light together.

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