Big Questions: A Sermon on 1 John 1-2:2

I have a friend who was preparing to move back to his hometown of Minneapolis after college and a long trip abroad when he sent me a message asking for some advice. Now, this was not the normal moving questions—where’s a good place to eat, do you people up there really eat lutefisk—none of that. You see, my friend is Mormon, and he was preparing to come back to the Twin Cities with his Mormon family who had never lived anywhere but Utah. He had spent time doing mission work in Russia, finishing up school and, before returning home, he wanted to know some things about Lutherans, because, well, there’s a lot of us in Minnesota. Particularly, he wanted to know about salvation. 

What do Lutherans believe about salvation?

I told him we believe that we are saved by grace through faith apart from works of the law. We believe that Christ gives us the gift of faith in baptism, so we baptize infants, as well as adults, as a sign that it is not our will that matters but God’s will for us.

My friend read what I wrote carefully and responded with the question I have so often heard: “So… what’s the bare minimum that a person must do to achieve salvation?”

Isn’t that the question? In fact, it’s such a great question that I’m going to let it simmer for a minute, and turn to 1 John to find an answer. And 1 John 1-2:2 suggest two things.

1) We tend to do the wrong things

2) It would be nice if we didn’t do the wrong things, but when we do we have a God willing to forgive us.

I quote, “This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light and in him there is no darkness at all….[and] if we walk in the light as he himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another” (1 John 1:5, 7a).

Apparently, what we do matters. We can stumble through the darkness of this life, but it is an existence apart from God, not knowing God; in fact, denying God. Life without God is dark and sinister; we recognize people who live in that place, without hope not just for a future beyond this life but also for anything much to come of their time on earth. Depression and despair separate us from the light of the world. Somehow we have to find what it means to live life through Jesus-colored glasses.

So, I return to my friend’s question, “What’s the minimum a person has to do to know that they are saved?” I responded, in good Lutheran fashion, that we Lutherans dislike the word “do” when it comes to salvation; we don’t believe that we do anything, but it is Christ who does the saving work through us. I say that a lot—and honestly, I believe it very strongly—but I can see the worry my friend has with this approach. Why, then, are we here at all? What is the purpose of life if not to find salvation through Jesus Christ? It seems like a loving God would just skip this whole life on earth and push the divine fast-forward button and shoot us into heaven, do not pass Go, do not collect $200. These are the real questions, aren’t they? But 1 John also offers a peak at the answer.  

Why are we here?

We’re here to discover what it means to walk in the light, to find fellowship with one another, to discover our own unworthiness (what we often call “sin”), and then to discover that we have an Advocate in Christ Jesus who is going to save us nonetheless.

But it’s more than that. When God created the world he created everything

“good”—I hope you remember this from the creation story, after every day God saw that each and every created thing was good. We went and messed all that up, but underneath our patina of unworthiness there is something in our nature that was created good. I believe we’re here on this planet because it is fundamentally “good”—even if our experience of it is often not. All of creation is broken, but it is all subject to Christ. Therefore, all of creation is dying, but when Christ died a funny thing happened. Three days later, he came back.

Resurrection is at the heart of the Christian faith. One of the Confirmation students on their sermon notes from last week asked me the following question:

“If Christ was resurrected does that mean we will be resurrected, too?”  

Yes! That is the big picture. Paul writes in Romans, “If we are united with Christ in a death like his, surely we will also be united with him in a resurrection like his” (6:5). We spend a lot of time trying to escape this world, trying to search out heaven as if it is some distant and foreign place, when heaven lies right before our eyes; always an instant in front of us. When we walk in the light we walk in that reality; in that knowledge. See, walking in the darkness is not only an image for doing bad things; it is also—I think, primarily—an image for a life with no greater purpose.

I was once asked by another friend—an atheist:

"Why do you believe in God?" 

When most people ask this question I tell them something about Jesus, but I knew he had heard that before, and his question was not about faith but about reason. So I answered differently. Hardly even thinking about it, I said, “I believe in God because of my sin; because I believe that things in this world matter and I’m not worthy to fix them.”

Somehow, I had stumbled on exactly 1 John’s point. The only way you can believe in Christ is to believe that you are not worthy. We try to make ourselves into God, but we only end up walking in darkness, trying desperately to believe that we are the perfect people we wish ourselves to be. But as 1 John reminds us, “If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us” (1:8).

OK, let’s say you believe that much—and I realize that may sometimes be a stretch—but humor me for a minute. Let’s say you honestly believe that you are an imperfect person who cannot justify yourself apart from the grace of God. Let’s say you believe that Christ died on a cross for you and rose again on the third day. Let’s say you believe that God died to save all created things from a life without purpose; he did this not just for you, but your brothers and sisters, your friends and family, the people down the street, men and women and children throughout the country and the world who you will never meet and never know existed. Let’s say all this is true. Then let’s return to the big question of life's purpose--the question my Mormon friend asked, 

“Why do we live here at all? Why doesn’t Jesus just skip straight to the resurrection without the pain and suffering of this life?”

To this question we finally have a great, biblical answer. God’s will is always that we see things how they truly are. That’s what it means to walk in the light. It means to see that underneath all the suffering that we experience in this world there is something that God created and called “good,” and that all things called good are worthy of being resurrected; so worthy that in fact that in the end they will be resurrected with Christ into a life where the patina of sin will be washed away.