Throughout our series on 1 John there has been an obvious polarity in the authors letter. He speaks of light and dark, there is no grey. He speaks of believing or not believing – living a life of purity inspired by love of God or living sinfully – living obediently or disobediently – living for the Father and his kingdom or for self and the world.
In our world this is all a little stark and not consistent with our contemporary interpretation of the mercy of God who surely would give a little bit and allow some grey, allow some room for maneuver so that we can maintain our comfortable faith in a Jesus of our making that demands little and creates lots of space for us to live according to our own will.
However to do this, to demand grey and comfort is to deny our calling and undermine the witness of the church. It makes a very clear statement about our commitment and about where we stand, whether we ‘believe in’ Jesus or not. And when I say ‘believe in’ I do not mean our philosophy or doctrinal beliefs but our response to the person of Jesus Christ.
1 John seems, to me, to be asking us to respond to the person of Jesus Christ faith, love and obedience; to bear witness to the testimony of Jesus Christ in ‘our hearts’ and not ‘our heads’; to side with him; to trust him; to side with him and back him all the way.
Once more it seems to me impossible for us to only partially side with Jesus as it is to be partially born again. Jesus is either the truth about God and about life and the way it was created to be lived or he is not. Siding with Jesus puts us in conflict with a world that believes in grey and confronts a church who lives in a cosy relationship with the world and puts us in the firing line of God’s refining fire.
Jesus can never reduced to be an innocuous possibility amongst many possibilities; we must never proclaim a tame gospel. We must be moved by the truth of Jesus into faith in Jesus and be willing to live with our heart on our sleeve regardless of the cost.
