Holiness, Truth, and Honesty

Introduction

Making your way to 1 John, chapter 1 John 1. We’re going to begin reading there in verse 5. In just a few moments, we’re going to read through chapter 2 in verse 11, a nice chunk of text here that I’m going to work from, and really kind of combine a lot of thoughts. Well, really, John is combining some thoughts that we may not necessarily think of combining ourselves as we discuss them, as I see people discuss them in the world. They aren’t often put together. But that’s the importance of reading Scripture and digging in and looking at what Scripture tells us. And so I want us to combine some of these ideas for example, holiness and truth, and honesty, with the idea of walking in the light, and how we’re able to do that.

You know, understanding the holiness of God and who he is with the reality and being honest with ourselves that we aren’t that, how do we manage that? How do we think through that? And John gives us a lot of good ideas to think through that concept and that reality as we consider God and who he is and who we are in his presence. So if you will begin reading with me in chapter one and verse five, first John one and verse five. It says, This is the message we have heard from him and proclaimed to you that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth.

But if we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his son cleanses us from all sin. If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us. My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. But if anyone does sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world.

And by this we know that we have come to know him, if we keep his commandments. Whoever says, I know him, but does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him. But whoever keeps his word, in him truly the love of God is perfected. By this we may know that we are in him. Whoever says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked. Beloved, I am writing to you no new commandment, but an old commandment that you had from the beginning. The old commandment is the word that you have heard. At the same time, it is a new commandment that I’m writing to you, which is true in him and in you, because the darkness is passing away, and the true light is already shining.

Whoever says he is in the light and hates his brother is still in darkness. Whoever loves his brother abides in the light, and in him there is no cause for stumbling. But whoever hates his brother is in the darkness, and walks in the darkness, and does not know where he is going, because the darkness has blinded his eyes.

1. God Is Light

Starting at the beginning of this concept, where John says, This is the message. He actually does this a few times within this letter. That’s always nice. When the writer says, Here’s what I want you to know. This is what we’re proclaiming. This is the message you need to hear. And the story, the story of us, the story of God, the story of his plan, it all begins with this simple message that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. This is the most fundamental truth that exists. That is that God exists in a purity that we cannot fathom. God’s holiness is described as light, and light removes darkness from anything that’s within its presence. I think we’ve all probably experienced this, even in the most simple ways.

I know sometimes, if you’re like me, you go to bed at night, you turn out the lights, and then you suddenly realize that behind your bathroom door, and maybe all the way even in your closet, you left the light on. And there’s just this little crack underneath the door between your room and the next room, whatever room it is. And at first it doesn’t even seem like it’s that big of a deal, but those of us who maybe struggle with sleep a little bit, we can get a little frustrated by that tiny little light. Some of you have no clue what I’m talking about because you go to sleep so fast. But for the rest of us, you get it, right? I mean, you lay there, it’s dark at first, but gradually that light becomes bigger and bigger in your room, and before you know it, you can see almost everything.

Even though it’s the closet light behind two doors just coming underneath the crack in the door. Because that’s what light does. That’s the power of light. And God’s holiness is so influential, and his presence is so powerful that even those who try to shut out the light and want to live in darkness cannot fully remove the glimmer of being created in the image of God. It can’t fully be taken away. In our world, and let me just try to work through this, and this is going to be kind of a little bit of philosophical thinking here, so just follow with me here. But in our world, we have people who have very warped ideas of justice, right? Or of morality, or of what good is or of what evil is.

But I want us to understand that even with warped ideas of justice or morality and good and evil, that people are still seeking justice and morality and good and evil. And without the light of God’s holiness, none of that would mean anything at all. I mean, even if they don’t recognize that, even if they don’t get it, ultimately, what it comes down to is if I don’t accept the idea of something that governs me that is beyond self, that is above self, then it’s all mere opinion anyway. And the concept of justice and morality and goodness and evil, it comes with a community concept. It comes almost inherently with relationship. And if I don’t believe that there’s something outside of me that governs me and everyone else, none of that makes any difference.

It all boils down to mere opinion at that point. And so what I want you to see is even those who directly try to oppose God and yet they maintain their warped sense of what justice is, they still accept the idea of justice in the world. They still accept the idea that there’s some standard to live by. And I would argue with you that this is the light of God shining on the world in ways that the world cannot comprehend or overcome. The light shines in the darkness, John says in another place. And the darkness cannot overcome it. No matter what they want to do or try to do, even those who want to oppose God cannot get rid of the influence of the light of his holiness.

It’s inherent in creation. It is embedded in the universe. The wise man says he has set eternity in our heart. No matter how we try, we can’t get rid of it. And that’s why man, though warped and influenced by things that are not God themselves, still worship something. Everyone worships something, whether it’s the environment or some other cause or whatever it is, even if they don’t worship the one true God, they’re worshiping something in their life, and this is the influence, the reality that something pure and holy exists, even if we can’t comprehend it as humans at times. But as those of you who are sitting here in this audience this morning and listening to the word of God being read, probably most of you are believers in God, and so you accept the reality that God and his holiness and his light is actually understood to be a guide.

It is something to be followed, it’s something to be held on to, it’s something to be led by.

That God and who he is holy and pure and right. And I should be transforming myself and the way that I live and who I am to be like him and to be like his son, to be recreated after the image of his son and true holiness and righteousness, following after him and who he is.

2. A Commitment to Obedience and Truth

As he’s talking about some of these things, they’ve heard from the beginning about the presence of God and who he is and the word of life, if we’d have read the earlier part of this, and how we have fellowship with God and understanding that God is light, he is holy, he is set apart, he is pure, he’s different, and I’m seeking that. And I’m being led by it. And so the next part of this, if I’m going to walk in light, is not just appreciating God’s holiness, it’s not only understanding that God is holy, which is a critical step, it’s something important to realize, but it’s also a commitment to obedience to the one who is holy and right. It’s like taking that next step and working in a life that’s pleasing to him, in a life that’s going to please the creator, the one who did all of this, one who exists above it, who transcends everything that we see, everything that we know and we understand.

The next step in this, and what John talks about here is the importance of truth. He speaks about it in a few different ways within the letter. He talks about even in the reading here, and there’s some other ways within the rest of the letter, but he talks about the word, right? The word being in you, or truth being in you, or keeping commandments, or keeping the word. All of these relate to the idea that God’s message has been given to his creation. And then if we want to walk in the light of his holiness, we’re going to see that truth, we’s a lot said here about the idea of truth, and we’re going to follow it. One of the difficulties is in breaking this down is how John sort of blends it together with where we want to go next in the text.

But if we just see some of what he’s saying here, a lot of what’s going on in this text is people are saying things, and yet their actions, at least some of the time, don’t really match up with what’s said. If you like to mark your Bible, one thing I would suggest is in some way, in some fashion, mark these little lead-ins that say, if we say, or whoever says, there’s a number of them right here in just this short reading that we did within these two chapters. And it starts right in this beginning relationship between the holiness of God and who we are as people. God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie, and we do not practice the truth.

That we have fellowship with God. I mean, that I think that’s something that’s claimed by many people. That they have a relationship with God, that they have fellowship with God. But part of what John wants to see is we work through this text is words are cheap. Actions are what matter. Right? We can we can say all sorts of things, but what’s actually mattering in this text are the things that we do. Right? So they say that they have fellowship with God, and yet they’re still just walking in the darkness. And he’s gonna get into some examples later that we’ll talk about how people sometimes do that, and they are in denial about it, they’re blind to it. And so this is a bit of a reality check, what John’s saying here.

Am I matching up with what I’m saying? I say I love God, I say I want to obey his word, I say I want to do right, but then what do my actions actually reveal? And I can’t answer that for you. I can only answer that for me. You know, people I’m close to, I may be able to observe some things and maybe make some judgments and suggests some things to them. But ultimately, that’s a personal thing that we have to look within and ask ourselves, am I actually truly seeking to please God? This is not some superficial thing, like, oh, you know, I love God and I and I want to do his will, but then I still sort of do my own thing. Right?

And I have this concept, well, just, you know, I love whatever that means to me, right? This is sort of our cultural bent in this direction. I love God and I love people, whatever I mean by those words, and so that’s sufficient. That’s good enough. And actually, within the text, it sort of talks about all of that. It combines the idea of obedience and truth with the concept of love, which I want to come back to here in a few minutes. But this is all tied together and it all relates in a way that actually is convicting, I think, on both sides of this. I can’t simply say that I’m I love God and I know him and I want to do his will, and yet I just keep doing my own thing.

I don’t put a lot of effort into figuring out what it is he actually wants. I’ve decided I can sort of follow my own truth and God will be happy with whatever I’ve ever I give him. This is the kind of cultural mindset that is prevalent, that is completely not in keeping with what we just read here in 1 John chapters 1 and 2. Now, those who live in the darkness, they do not practice the truth. They follow lies. In an effective way, it says here, they make him a liar. Obviously, he’s not a liar, but they’re denying the very things he says. Because while they claim to have fellowship with God and walk in the light, they don’t. And so rather than following the truth, they believe the lie.

Paul has a lot to say about that in Romans chapter 1. And they don’t have the truth in them. This is actually a pretty scary concept, all of this. Right? I mean, it’s a little bit like what Jesus says in Matthew 7 that there’s going to be people who say, Lord, right? And he’s going to say, I don’t know you. And this is one of those things that’s it’s really tricky. Like if we care about this and it matters to us, we’re probably okay. Right? And if we don’t, if we think it doesn’t apply to us, we’re probably not. It’s sort of like humility. Like when we think we’re humble, we probably aren’t. You know, it’s one of those tricky paradoxes that we deal with in life.

If we think, oh, God’s grace is just going to cover everything, it’s really not that big of a deal. Probably in danger. But if we are humbly seeking God and seeking to do his will, and yet at the same time we appreciate what he’s done for us through his son, which John also talks about in this text, we’re in a good place. Right? And so a lot of this comes down to the idea of the heart. I appreciate Zach reading through Psalm 86 in part of his prayer this morning. You can go to texts like that and see almost everything we’re talking about this morning. The idea of God’s holiness, the idea of how desperately we need him and how we need forgiveness and we need mercy.

How important it is that we have truth. Teach me your way, the psalmist says in Psalm 86. Right? It’s not just that he wants God to forgive and he wants God to be merciful, he actually also wants God to teach him the right things to do, to be guided into truth. And so it’s not mercy without truth. It’s not truth without mercy. They’re actually blended together in a beautiful way that is in accord with God’s entire plan, ultimately realized through the Messiah. And so the moment we discount truth or the importance of truth, we’ve missed it. We don’t understand the holiness of God. We don’t really appreciate who he is and what that means. When we feel like truth just isn’t really that important, that obedience isn’t actually that significant.

Once we go down that road, we’re on the wide path that leads to destruction. And we don’t appreciate what it actually means for God to be pure and holy and to exist in light and for in him to be no darkness at all. And yet at the same time, the text tells us how gracious and merciful and loving God is.

He talks about how there’s none like you among the gods in verse 8. He says, Teach me your way in verse 11. You do great and wondrous things. He’s appreciating God’s holiness, his majesty. But in verse 15, but you, O Lord, are a merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness. Turn to me and be gracious to me. Give your give your strength to your servant and save the son of your maidservant. He understands all of this. And the reality that he desperately needs God’s grace at the same time, he’s not sacrificing God’s holiness. He’s not belittling God’s truth. It all works together in an understanding of someone who has a pure heart, who’s seeking after the will of God. And so it’s interesting that John really, throughout most of the letter, points to a couple things that actually relate to not being of God, or not being in the truth, or walking in darkness.

3. Practicing Sin and Hating Your Brother

The first of those is pretty obvious. We’ve just been talking about it. It’s the idea of practicing sin or practicing unrighteousness. In fact, if you go to John, 1 John chapter 3, verses 1 through 10, which we’re not going to read all of this, but he just basically says it’s obvious, right? The people who are born of God, those who are offspring of God, they live righteous lives. They practice righteousness. And the concept here is kind of this ongoing sort of lifestyle. And so there’s actually a lot of comfort and assurance, which we’re getting to here in this letter as well. This is not the idea that you’re living your whole life passionately trying to serve God and you sin, and he’s like, oh, sorry, it’s all over.

You’re no good anymore. No, that’s not the message of John in 1 John. He’s talking about someone who’s practicing sin or someone who is practicing righteousness. This is the way they walk. And he’s not talking about someone who realizes they’ve sinned and they confess. Well, he actually is talking about that in chapter one. He says, if you do that, he is just and faithful to forgive your sins and cleanse you from all unrighteousness. So we don’t have to live in fear every day. That’s the point John’s making. If we are living a life of righteousness, if we are seeking after truth, we don’t have to live in fear constantly. But if we’re practicing sin and we’re walking in sin and we’re living in sin and yet claiming to walk in the light, we better be really fearful.

Because we are in darkness and we are in despair. This is what he’s talking about in 1 John chapter 3. Right? And it’s pretty obvious which side of things we are on, at least between us and God, may not always be between others. If we’re living a life of sin, it’s obvious we’re we’re not born of God. We’re not really from him. This is the point John’s making about some who had left this group, and the life that they’re living is not in accordance with the will of Jesus Christ. And so he’s making this point. Hey, just look at what they’re doing and how they’re living. It shows. Right? But if you’re following the word of God, you’ve received truth. He talks about it in the latter part of chapter 2, and you’re following that’s also evident.

Right? And so this is all extremely important to have this idea if we’re going to walk in the light, that we are committed to obedience in Jesus Christ, that we are not practicing sin. This is not something we’re continually returning to and living and not and not thinking it’s a big deal. Sin is a big deal. That’s what John says. And we don’t practice sin. We don’t walk in sin. We’ve covered a lot of this as we’ve been preaching through Romans over the last few weeks. This is not the life we’re choosing. It’s not okay. None of that is right. But the other one’s interesting to me, the second item that relates to not being of God, not being in the truth or of the truth, not being in the light or walking in darkness, and that is his repeated cadence of talking about hating your brother.

All the way back in our reading. He’s pretty general at the beginning, and he’s talking about keeping God’s commandments and the importance of that and how we ought to walk in the same way that Jesus walked. And then he goes into this other sort of subtopic here. In verse 9, whoever says he is in the light and hates his brother is still in darkness. Whoever loves his brother abides in the light, and him there is no cause for stubborn stumbling. But whoever hates his brother is in the darkness and walks in the darkness and does not know where he is going because the darkness has blinded his eyes. I mean, that would be enough just for John to say it there in this text, but he actually keeps going.

He says it a number of other times. In fact, at the end of that text we just talked about in 1 John chapter 3, he points out these two realities again. Whoever does not practice righteousness is not of God. This is chapter 3, verse 10, nor is the one who does not love his brother. He continues, for this is the message. Great. This is really clear. John wants us to understand this is the message from God. That you’ve heard from the beginning that we should love one another. We should not be like Cain. Cain who killed his brother because he was mad at him, he was jealous of him. And there’s this whole section about this idea of loving one another. By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, verse 16.

And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers. Verse 19 By this we shall know that we are of the truth and reassure our heart before Him. For wherever our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart. God’s grace superabounds above sin. This is the message here in the words of Paul. We’re going to take the words of Paul and superimpose them here in the letter of John. It’s the same point being made. Right? You can have reassurance in your heart that even when your heart condemns you, if you are passionately serving God and seeking truth, he’s greater than our heart. Isn’t that amazing? We have confidence before God, if our heart does not condemn us. And whatever we ask, we receive from him, because we keep his commandments and do what pleases him.

Verse 23, and this is his commandment that we believe in the name of his son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as he commanded us. Interesting. That all this talk about truth and the word of God and keeping commandments and all this, John just keeps pairing this with loving each other. It’s a part of it. And what that tells me is what John’s saying is if we’re interested in truth and if we’re interested in keeping his word, if we’re interested in walking in the light, if that matters to us, yes, we will be very interested in the truth of God’s word, but equally connected to that, love the Lord your God with all your heart, your soul, your mind, and your strength, you will love your neighbor as yourself.

You can’t separate the two.

4. Being Honest With Myself About Who I Am

Right? Words are cheap. We can say all day that we love our brother or that we love our sister or that we want to follow God or whatever the line is that we want to utter. But what John’s saying is the actions reveal who we really are. The way we actually treat brethren. The commitment that we actually have to truth. That’s what actually makes a difference, not the things that we say. Not that I claim all of this. It’s whether or not I actually do it in my life, honestly and sincerely. And so this is where the idea of honesty comes mixed into this idea of holiness and truth and being honest with myself about who I am. All the way back to the end of chapter one now.

In this sort of matrix of holiness and truth and now honesty. This is what John has to say. God is light. Right? He is holy.

And we are so far apart we can’t even fathom that. I can’t even grasp how separate I am from God when it comes to holiness and righteousness. And yet I’m supposed to be seeking that. I’m supposed to be holy as He is holy. And yet I’m also supposed to be honest with who I am. I mean, this is the challenge, isn’t it? And we’ve just talked about the importance of holiness and seeking holiness and the importance of truth and what that means and obedience in our life. And yet at the same time, John says, don’t be deceived. Like, don’t pretend like you don’t have a problem with sin and you haven’t struggled. Because you’re just living in delusion, if that’s the way you think. That is not reality.

Right? And so he talks about this one who says he has fellowship with God and yet walks in darkness, and so he’s lying and not practicing the truth. And what we need to do is walk in the light as he is in the light. And when we do that, we have fellowship with one another, and we have fellowship with God, and we’re cleansed from our sins. But here’s what he says about sin in these three verses at the end of chapter one. If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves. And the truth is not in us.

Like probably none of us are going to go around and say, I have no sin. But sort of what we’ve been aiming at this whole time is like, how do we actually act? Do we act like we have no sin? Do we put off an aura like we have no sin? And so what that looks like is when someone else has a struggle with sin, we marginalize them or we look down on them. We want to separate ourselves as if we haven’t had a problem like that. That’s kind of how this functions in reality. Because it’s not that we’re going to go around saying these kinds of things, or at least most people wouldn’t, if we are. That’s kind of another level of delusion. But it’s that the willingness to sort of act like I exist in a place where I have no sin.

And so through doing this and self-justification, I kind of feel better about myself than maybe this other person who has sinned. But what’s interesting is that person is probably actually in a much better place. It’s like the publican and the sinner. You know, the public and who talked about how great he was and in all of this, how God was so lucky to have him in his life, and yet the publican is there beating his chest, saying, Lord, be merciful to me, a sinner. Which one went home justified? And so if we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves. And the truth, listen carefully, the truth is not in us. If we aren’t honest with where we are and who we are and where we’ve been, we’re not in the truth.

And we’re not in God. And we’re not in the light. If we confess our sins, he says, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. Sort of like the one who hates his brother, he doubles up on this concept. Slightly different line here. If we say we have not sinned, right? So this is a little bit of past tense. Right? Like we have not sinned. The other one’s like we have no sin. Like I don’t, I’m I’m not dealing with sin. Sin’s not really a temptation for me anymore. I’ve defeated it. I don’t have to think about it anymore. This other one’s a little bit more retrospect, like, oh, that was never really a big problem in my life.

You know, if we deceive ourselves and think that’s how it’s, we also are living in delusion. And the truth is not in us. Verse 8, and his word is not in us. So one of my big things I want us to see this morning as we look at this text is when we think about truth, it’s not just the things we read here. I mean, that’s that’s important. That’s big, and John does talk about that. But it’s also my honesty about who I am in relationship to this and to him. That’s also truth. And if I’m unwilling to be honest with that truth, I’m not walking in the light. I’m walking in the delusion of darkness. I am blinded. I don’t know where I’m going.

These are things John says, not me. I’m just quoting the lines right here from the text. Right? And he gives this example that he repeatedly gives about if I claim to know God and to walk in the light and to practice truth and all this stuff, and yet I hate my brother. I’m actually blinded. And the truth is not in me, and God is not in me, and the light is not in me. None of that actually exists. I am in total delusion. And I desperately need to do what’s talked about in chapter one and verse nine, and that is confess the struggle I’m having. It admit how much I need the grace of God. Which he abundantly offers. Now, it’s interesting as he describes our relationship to sin.

I think many people would say, if we went through this, you know, we admitting that we have sin, we struggle with sin, admitting that in the past we’ve struggled with sin. And if we talk about that, well, that’s just admitting that sin’s okay, we can keep sinning and all that, and it’s all going to cover us. And of course, in the in a situation in a certain way it does, because God’s grace is powerful enough to do that when we confess our sins to him. But it’s interesting how John talks about this. He runs through those three verses about sin and how we acknowledge sin or try to act like we don’t have it. But this is what he says to these people, my little children.

This is chapter 2, verse 1. I’m writing these things to you so that you may not sin. This whole message here, it’s about helping us not sin, not the opposite. Being sincere and being honest and being truthful about our situation, about who we are, that is something that helps us not sin. It’s not something that encourages us to sin more. When we deny the sin, and when we try to act like everything’s okay and we pretend like it’s not a problem, that’s what encourages sin. And so he’s writing these things to try to help people not sin, but the grace of God is abundant. But if anyone does sin, this is the power of God’s message. We have an advocate with the Father.

He’s righteous. He has standing before God. He is our advocate. He can go before God and say, Brent did this thing he knows is wrong, and he confessed it, and he desperately wants to be in a right relationship with you, and he wants to walk in the light, and God listens.

That God’s holiness is not sacrificed. The truth is not belittled. Grace is not ignored. But all of them work together in just the right way to help me in my relationship with God and with his son, Jesus Christ. By this it is evident, John says, chapter 3 and verse 10, who are the children of God and who are the children of the devil. It’s one or the other. It’s not a comfortable thing to think about, but this is the reality. Right? This is a very binary type of situation. You’re a child of God or you’re a child of the devil. There’s nothing in between. And he says it’s evident. Who’s who? The ones who practice righteousness are of God. Right? So if you’re not practicing righteousness, you’re not of God, nor is the one who does not love his brother.

Chapter 3 and verse 10. As you continue down the chapter, I want us to consider the next thought that John offers. He says in verse 18, little children, let us not love in word or talk, but in deed and truth. John’s not all that worried about what people say. That’s not proof of much. John calls us to love indeed and in truth, in reality. So not just saying the right things, right? Sometimes parents with our kids, you know, you guys say the right things and we feel really good about it, and then maybe it doesn’t quite happen. And it’s like this learning experience we all have to work through. And so in the moment we’re real excited because you say the right things to us. But then it doesn’t always stick, does it?

But you know what? It’s not just kids. How many times have I said to the Father, I’ll never do that again? And yet there I am, struggling. You know. Am I honest with my situation? Am I honest about needing help? Am I honest about confession? These are the sorts of things that fix the problems that we have through God’s plan and through his wisdom. Not hiding it, not pretending. That’s what makes us not of God. Not abide in the truth. And not walk in the light. It’s what takes away, it robs us of assurance. And so we protect our reputation or our image, whatever it may be at times, and at the same time we sacrifice the assurance we have from God. This is the promise he has made to us, he says, eternal life.

Conclusion

It’s for those who are willing to confess, to admit that they need him desperately. By this, John says, we shall know that we are of the truth and reassure our heart before him. For whenever our heart condemns us, God is greater than our heart. Your heart condemns you this morning. There’s an answer for that. The answer to your heart condemning you is not that you go hide and don’t say anything about it. That you pretend like God doesn’t know and that even others don’t know, because often they do. But even if you can hide it from every human being on the face of the planet, God knows. And so the answer is not to go hide and act like everything’s okay when it’s not. God is greater than our heart.

And so when our heart condemns us, the answer is to confess our sin and realize he’s faithful to forgive. We can do that this morning. If you’re living in a state of doubt, in a state of fear, you can change that right now. You can give it to the Lord. You can lay your burdens on him. You can tell him about the struggles you have. You can ask for help from the brethren. You can realize that what you desperately need is to live a life of righteousness before God, to love people around you and allow them to love you. It’s what God wants for us in his wisdom. It’s what he’s created in the church so that we can all be fully equipped. We can all be those who are working to measure up in the fullness of Christ, Ephesians chapter 4 talks about, so that we come together with him as head, and we form a body that is for his glory in which his spirit dwells.

And that is available to every single person here this morning. If we’ll be humble enough to admit we need him. That sin has ravaged our life. And it’s time to admit that. And say how desperately we need God. And so in this whole story, there’s holiness, there’s truth, there’s grace, there’s honesty. And all of this is working for us. Something that is far greater than anything that we can have here. Where in the end there’ll be a new heaven and new earth where righteousness dwells and will be forever with the Lord. Do you want that? You want the peace that comes from knowing you have that. You can come be baptized into Christ this morning. Give your life to him. That’s where it starts.

Having the assurance of Jesus Christ and His blood to cleanse you. He’s an advocate of the Father on your behalf. There’s nothing greater than that. Can we help you this morning? Come now as we stand and we sing together.