God is Light | 1 John 1:5-10 | This Week’s Devotions
This week's sermon from 1 John 1:5–10 confronts us with a truth we are tempted to soften: God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. That declaration is not background theology — it is the foundation of everything John says about sin, confession, and forgiveness. The five devotions below are designed to help you sit with that passage through the week, drawing on the broader witness of Scripture to deepen what you heard on Sunday. If you missed the sermon or want to revisit it before you begin, you can watch or listen here.
Day 1: The Holiness of God
Scripture Readings: Isaiah 6:1–8 & Exodus 33:18–23
Reflection:
Isaiah did not go looking for a vision of God's holiness. It came to him in the year King Uzziah died, which means it came in a season of national grief and uncertainty. Exactly the kind of moments where God tends to show up and reorient everything. What Isaiah saw was overwhelming: a throne, a robe filling the temple, seraphim covering their faces and calling out in a cadence that shook the foundations. "Holy, holy, holy is the LORD of hosts." The threefold repetition is not poetic decoration. In Hebrew, to repeat something three times is to declare it absolute and ultimate. There is nothing holier than the holiness of God.
Moses, standing in the cleft of a rock while the glory of God passed by, received a proclamation about God's character—his mercy, his grace, his patience, his steadfast love. But even this intimate moment came with a warning: no one can see God's face and live. The holiness of God is not primarily about moral strictness. It is about the ontological gulf between a perfectly pure God and a creation marred by sin. Light and darkness cannot occupy the same space.
When John writes that "God is light and in him is no darkness at all," he is making a theological declaration as absolute as the seraphim's song. He is telling you something about the very nature of the God you are dealing with. This is not an idea to be managed or softened. It is a reality to be reckoned with, and ultimately, through Christ, to be drawn into with wonder.
Questions to Consider:
Isaiah's response to God's holiness was immediate collapse and confession: 'Woe is me!' When is the last time your awareness of God's holiness produced genuine humility in you rather than just theological agreement?
God's holiness in Scripture is described both as terrifying and as beautiful—something to fear and to desire. How do you hold those two things together in your own worship?
John says there is no darkness in God at all. How does that absolute statement challenge any tendency you have to blame God for the darkness in your own life or in the world?
Day 2: Walking in Darkness
Scripture Reading: John 3:19-21 & Romans 1:18-23
Reflection:
Jesus declared a verdict that cuts uncomfortably close to home: people loved the darkness rather than the light because their deeds were evil. This is not primarily a statement about people who have never heard the gospel. John 3 is a statement about the human condition in its natural state, a condition that assumes moral neutrality but is actually active hostility to the light. Walking in darkness is not merely ignorance. It is preference.
Paul in Romans 1 traces the same logic with even more precision. He argues that all people everywhere have received a genuine knowledge of God through creation. People know his eternal power and divine nature because it is "clearly perceived." But instead of glorifying God as God, they suppressed that truth. The darkness Paul describes is not a passive state of being uninformed. It is the active choice to exchange the glory of the immortal God for something smaller, something more manageable, something that does not make demands on the self.
This is what makes John's statement so pointed. The claim to know God while living in patterns of unrepentant sin is not just inconsistency, it is a contradiction in terms. Light and darkness do not coexist. This is not meant to drive the struggling believer to despair. It is meant to drive the complacent professor to honesty. God's holiness is not a background condition. It is the sun around which everything else orbits, and you cannot pretend it is night.
Questions to Consider:
John says walking in darkness while claiming fellowship with God makes you a liar. That is a hard word. Where in your life might there be a gap between what you claim to believe and how you actually live?
Paul says people suppress the truth they already have. What truths about God do you find yourself most tempted to suppress or minimize because they are inconvenient?
How do you distinguish between a genuine believer who struggles with sin and someone who is merely using Christian language to cover a life lived in darkness?
Day 3: The Blood That Cleanses
Scripture Reading: Leviticus 17:10-11 & Hebrews 9:11-14, 22
Reflection:
Long before the New Testament explained it, God was teaching his people through blood. At the heart of the Levitical sacrificial system was a stark declaration: "the life of the flesh is in the blood, and I have given it for you on the altar to make atonement for your souls." Blood was not incidental to Israel's worship. It was central, because the covenant between a holy God and a sinful people required the acknowledgment that sin has a cost and that cost is death.
The writer of Hebrews stands at the other side of all those centuries of sacrifice and says plainly: "without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness of sins." Then he points to something those animal sacrifices could never accomplish. They could purify ceremonially, but they could not cleanse the conscience. They could be repeated endlessly, but they could not finish the job. What was needed was a better high priest, a better tabernacle, and a better sacrifice. All three came together in Jesus Christ.
So when John writes that "the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin," every word carries freight. Not some sin, all sin. Not occasionally—cleanses, present tense, ongoing action. The blood of Christ is not a historical event you look back to merely with gratitude. It is the present-tense reality that stands between you and condemnation every single moment of every single day. You are not clean because you have been good enough. You are clean because he was, and because his blood has been applied to your conscience once for all.
Questions to Consider:
The sacrificial system was God's way of teaching Israel that sin is serious and that atonement requires a substitute. How does understanding that background deepen your appreciation for what Christ accomplished at the cross?
Hebrews says the blood of Christ purifies the conscience, not just external behavior. What does a cleansed conscience feel like, and how does guilt function differently for a believer than for someone without that cleansing?
John says the blood cleanses us from 'all' sin. Is there a sin in your past or present that you struggle to believe is covered by that word 'all'? What would it mean to take God at his word on this?
Day 4: The Danger of Self-Deception
Scripture Reading: Jeremiah 17:9-10 & James 1:22-27
Reflection:
Jeremiah delivers one of the most unsettling diagnoses in all of Scripture: "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately sick; who can understand it?" He is not talking about other people's hearts. He is describing the default condition of every human heart. That includes the hearts of people who consider themselves devout and sincere. The capacity for self-deception is not a personality flaw. It is a spiritual disease that afflicts everyone without exception.
James puts a practical face on the same problem. He describes a person who hears the word of God and walks away unchanged, like someone who glances at their reflection and immediately forgets what they looked like. The image is almost comic, but the point is deadly serious. Religious activity without genuine transformation is not neutral. It is actively dangerous because it produces the false confidence that something real is happening when it is not.
This is precisely what John is addressing in 1:8 and 1:10: "If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves." The first denial ("we have no sin") is a claim about present nature. The second ("we have not sinned") is a claim about past history. Both are lies. Both make God a liar. The remedy is not self-improvement or more careful introspection. The human heart is too sick for that to work. The remedy is confession: bringing what is true about you into the light where God already sees it, and receiving the forgiveness and cleansing that only he can give.
Questions to Consider:
Jeremiah says the heart is deceitful 'above all things.' What are some of the ways you have caught your own heart telling you that something was fine when it was not?
James warns against hearing the word without being changed by it. What is the difference between a Sunday that leaves you slightly informed and a Sunday that leaves you genuinely transformed?
What makes confessing sin to God feel difficult or unnecessary? What does that resistance reveal about what you actually believe about God's character?
Day 5: Faithful to Forgive
Scripture Reading: Psalm 32:1-7 & Micah 7:18-20
Reflection:
Psalm 32 begins with two of the most relieved words in the psalter: "Blessed is the one whose transgression is forgiven, whose sin is covered." David knew what it was to carry sin he had not confessed. He describes it as the physical sensation of heaviness, of bones wasting away, of the Lord's hand pressing down on him. He had tried silence, and silence had made it worse. When he finally acknowledged his sin to God and stopped hiding his iniquity, something broke open: forgiveness, relief, the sound of songs of deliverance.
Micah closes his prophecy with a rhetorical question: "Who is a God like you, pardoning iniquity and passing over transgression?" He gives us the image of God treading sins underfoot and casting them into the depths of the sea. These are not timid metaphors. They are attempts to capture the sheer extravagance of a God who does not just forgive but forgets, who does not keep a running ledger but hurls the record away.
John tells you in 1:9 that if you confess your sins, God "is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." Notice the basis: not God's sentimentality, but his faithfulness and his justice. The forgiveness is grounded in the cross, where justice was fully satisfied. God is not overlooking your sin when he forgives you. He is declaring that it has been dealt with. In Christ, God has dealt with sin completely, finally, and at enormous cost. Confession is not groveling. It is coming home.
Questions to Consider:
David describes the physical and emotional weight of carrying unconfessed sin. Have you experienced that kind of heaviness? What finally moved you to bring it into the light?
Micah asks, 'Who is a God like you?' as an expression of amazement at divine forgiveness. When did God's forgiveness last genuinely astonish you rather than simply being something you take for granted?
John grounds God's forgiveness in his faithfulness and justice, not just his mercy. Why does it matter that forgiveness is justice and not leniency? How does the cross make confession different from simply hoping God will look the other way?
Continue the Journey
We hope this week in the Word has been a blessing to you. If you'd like to continue through 1 John with us, the full Walking in the Light series is available on our website. And if you are new here and curious about the faith and convictions that shape our preaching and teaching, we warmly invite you to explore what we believe.
