Recently, a friend of GraceWorks International sent in a question wanting to know some details about the first chapter of 1 John. Eager to dive into these kinds of discussions, Joe responded in a way that addresses the specifics of the question by giving his interpretation of the passage while leaving room for other ways of understanding the text.
Question: I’ve been thinking about 1 John, and I'm puzzled by a phrase in 1 John 1:7. I have gone back and forth on the meaning of "...fellowship with one another..." Does this mean our fellowship with God or our fellowship with each other?
Joe Duke: Your question is insightful, and I love this discussion!
As you may know, most people interpret the “one another” in 1 John 1:7 as referring to fellow believers. Of course, most of the “one another” passages in the New Testament refer to the relationship believers share with each other. So, this view is not without support. But few people have considered that “one another” in 1 John 1:7 could be referring to the believer and God.
It's easy to get lulled into complacency about the spiritual dimension of the unseen world. Maybe our western mindset is so thoroughly conditioned by the Enlightenment that this world of angels seems at worst a fantasy and at best impractical. But angels exist. They’re real.
I don’t know how many times I’ve encountered an angel. I suppose many times. Maybe when I’m finally in God’s presence, He’ll roll the video footage of all the angelic encounters in my life. I think I’ll be stunned, and I’ll certainly be grateful. Even though I can’t recall page after page of my angel sightings through the years, I do have a vivid memory of one especially powerful experience with an angel.
God is perfectly loving, perfectly kind, perfectly just, perfectly powerful, perfectly holy, perfectly wise, perfectly present. His character is flawless. His purposes are unstoppable. On the other hand, you are I are none of that. We fall short in every way. We’re all sinful.
Hundreds of years before God-in-the-flesh arrived on earth, Isaiah painted a picture of hope when he said, “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light” (Isa. 9:2a). The prophet predicted the arrival of Jesus the Messiah centuries before His birth. Jesus is a great light. Have you seen that great light? Have you embraced His forgiveness. Are you experiencing a brand-new life? Is Jesus personal and real to you or along with Santa Claus is He just the figurine of a cultural holiday?
GraceWorks: GraceWorks International is a fairly young ministry but clearly growing. What are you hoping to accomplish?
Joe Duke: Yes, we’re just under two years old now! That’s hard to believe. When I stepped away from my Senior Pastor role at LifePoint Church, I knew I wasn’t done with ministry and that a fire still burned in my bones to see people grow and change. I started GraceWorks primarily to provide clarity in all things grace and see people grow in the grace and knowledge of Jesus.
Children seem instinctively drawn to the baby Jesus. Most nativity sets feature a removeable Jesus which means it’s easy to lose Jesus. Jesus is usually the first thing children reach for when eyeing those figures depicting the first Christmas. So, we’ve searched our house more than once for the missing Jesus. One year, we found Jesus in the back of a toy dump truck but no worse for the wear.
But the typical nativity scene is missing one prominent figure who was present that first Christmas—a red dragon. The dragon is part of the unvarnished Christmas story that rarely gets told. It’s a story that reaches far into the past and stretches infinitely into the future.
People using the phrase, a real Christian, might as well be saying, I double-dog dare you. Rather than relying on the content of a cogent argument, they default to simplistic fighting words—a real Christian. Using the phrase, a real Christian, is a kind of mic drop designed to leave anyone holding an opposing view in stunned silence. End of discussion.
But the way most people use the words, a real Christian, is fundamentally flawed. In current vernacular, that phrase is almost always tied to behavior. Real Christians do or don’t do certain things. This reliance on behavior violates the very definition of Christian salvation. A Christian is not one who behaves himself or herself into salvation or proof of conversion. We’re saved “not by works of righteousness which we have done,” but by God’s mercy (Tit. 3:5).