Truth, Healing and the Fellowship of the Saints

Bad things happen to good people. We've seen that recently. Sometimes bad things happen to us, or to people we know. And sometimes, it's even caused by life in the church. For those of who have gone through these kind of hard times, one of the initial questions many people have is, "where were you God, when this was going on?"

Often the first person to get blamed is God himself. "God, why have you done this to me?" "God, why have you allowed this?" The thought behind these questions is that God must not be good. In our pain and confusion, we question the nature of God himself.

How do you recover from this kind of hurt? The first letter of John was written to a church in this kind of pain, and in the first part of the letter he sets down principles that are essential in answering these questions, in getting through pain, and in living a healthy Christian life.

That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked at and our hands have touched--this we proclaim concerning the Word of life. The life appeared; we have seen it and testify to it, and we proclaim to you the eternal life, which was with the Father and has appeared to us. We proclaim to you what we have seen and heard, so that you also may have fellowship with us. And our fellowship is with the Father and with his Son, Jesus Christ. We write this to make our joy complete. 1 John 1:1-4

There are two pillars that we must stand on, if we are to get the most out of life. The first pillar John gives us is that we need to base our Christian life on that which has been seen, on the proclamation of the Word of Life - Jesus Christ appearance into human history. That which the apostles had a personal experience of, and have written to us about, in the Word of God.

We base our Christian life on the historical truth that God put on skin and came to earth, died and resurrected, and will come again to judge the living and the dead. That is the historical foundation on which the church is based, and on which one's individual Christian life is based. That historical reality must become our truth. It's not how we are feeling, or what our circumstances are. We must stand on the truth of Jesus.

John continues to say this truth was proclaimed "so that you might have fellowship with us." There is no such thing, contrary to what many think, as a lone ranger Christian. We are very prone to this in the West because of our individualistic approach to life. Many of us have the opinion that "It's just me and Jesus. I don't really need a church - my faith a private issue. I can just watch TV, or whatever." This, however, is a completely unbiblical concept.

The New Testament knows nothing of individual, lone ranger, privatized Christianity. In the New Testament, the understanding is that we were saved into a family, we were saved into a people, we were saved into a historical movement that has gone all the way back to the creation of time.

We are part of a people. Pillar one is that I base my Christianity on a historical reality, not on how I am feeling at any given moment. Pillar 2 is the understanding that when we are saved, we are joining together with the fellowship of the saints. We have been called out of darkness into fellowship. A Christian will not grow and progress in their Christian life until we say "yes" to the fellowship of the saints.

Being a part of a regular Sunday morning celebration is a start. But, it goes way beyond the Sunday morning celebration to the breaking of bread, to the sharing of the heart, into the bearing of the soul with one another, until we do life with a group of people "so that you might have fellowship with us."

A Christian's life, then, moves from those two foundational pillars. Jesus, the Head, and the church, the body, joined together. This is the only foundation on which to recover from hurt. You cannot hope to recover from hurt or live a successful, overcoming Christian life unless your foundation is right.

Once we have these two pillars are in place, we are in a place from which to recover from deep wounds and deep pain. In John's situation, this is what was happening. This letter wasn't written in a vacuum. Things were going on back then. From looking at the clues in John's writings, and in Acts 20, it seems that Paul's prophecies about wolves in the church had come to pass. People had gone out from the church, and there had apparently been a church split. John was writing to a church in pain. People had come into the church, and had begun to preach that Jesus wasn't really the Christ. The very foundation of the Gospel was being attacked, and the church was splitting over this, and was in great pain.

John writes in the very first paragraph of his letter that if you want to make it through this pain, get on those first two pillars. Grab on to the historical revelation of the Word to us, and have fellowship with each other. With these two pillars in place, John then goes on to provide four principles for dealing with life. He continues in the next paragraph:

This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all. 1 John 1:5

If we want to process pain, this must be our fundamental affirmation: God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all. Psalm 18 says, "the ways of the Lord are perfect, and his ways are flawless."

The first person that the devil attempts to accuse is usually God Himself, "God, why did you do this to me?" But, we must be firm on our conviction that God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all. What God allows, He allows, and will use, to our benefit.

We need to settle in our own minds and hearts this fundamental pillar of truth: God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. If we are firmly seated on this pillar, we move on to the next principles, found in the next 2 verses:

If we claim to have fellowship with him yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live by 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, purifies us from all sin.

The second principle is that once we have determined that God is true, we need to determine that we are going to walk in the light. Walking in the light means that we take all of God's word, not just that which we find pleasing to us. Some of God's word is pleasing - it's like cake with whipped cream frosting (if you like whipped cream frosting). Other parts of the Bible are medicine - like Kaopectate. Some medicine tastes really bad, and sometimes the cure can almost kill you. But, if the cure is severe, it is only because the sickness is severe.

Whether we get whipped cream cake or Kaopectate, we need to hold to these two principles: God is light and in Him is no darkness at all, and if we say we walk in the light but walk in darkness, we have no fellowship with God or men.

So, there must be a determination that we are going to walk into the light. It must be settled in our heart that we are going to accept God's word whether it tastes good or whether we find it distasteful. It's all good. Sometimes walking in the light means taking a very hard and narrow road, and making decisions that we would not otherwise make.

I am constantly amazed that so many Christians think they can be Christians without walking in the light. John continues in verses 8-10:

If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness. If we claim we have not sinned, we make him out to be a liar and his word has no place in our lives.

In order to process or make it through pain we must have first determined that God is perfect and that he has never done anything wrong, and have made a determination that we are going to walk in the light. Then, the third principle we need to embrace is that we then need to make the hard choice to confess our sins; and this isn't just to God - this needs to be a plural, church-based transparency.

James chapter 5 says, "confess your sins to one another that you might be healed." A lot of people's healing is not forthcoming because they have not wanted to come clean with the body. The Catholic Church's practice of confession is a good thing, however we don't need to go to a priest or a pastor to confess our sins. It also doesn't mean we need to confess our sins to the entire church. We just need to go to someone that we have fellowship with and confess our sins, and then we pronounce forgiveness to one another.

The point here is that "church" is not just about Sunday morning; you need to get this. This confessing, this joining together, can't all happen on Sunday morning. It can start there, but we have to determine that we are going to give ourselves to the body, not just on Sunday morning, but in our daily lives.

This is all about honesty. There is a camera commercial where the hook is "image is everything." I have seen that in a lot of Sunday mornings. But if you want to hang on to your image, you cannot be a Christian. There is no gospel that says, "I am going to have a private relationship with God." We can have none of that. There is only one type of Christianity, and it's the one that says, "I am going to come clean with God, and come clean with my brothers and sisters." It's based on honesty and vulnerability.

God heals pain, and God heals shame. There is no shame in this kind of Christian life. But unless we come to the understanding that God is perfect and He will do nothing to harm me, and we determine that we are going to walk in the light, and that we need to confess our sins and become honest with God and with each other.

Step number 4 in our emotional healing is found in 1 John Chapter 2:

My dear children, I write this to you so that you will not sin. But if anybody does sin, we have one who speaks to the Father in our defense--Jesus Christ, the Righteous One.

Principle number four is that there is only one righteous one, and his name is Jesus. But how can we do this church life if the only perfect one in it is Jesus? It's a bunch of sinners getting together. We, on our own, have no hope of getting this right.

The only reason that the church can function at all is because Jesus is the righteous one. He did it - he succeeded. He succeeded where the first Adam failed, and He sits now at the right hand of the Father where He now intercedes for us. He is the righteous one. In Him is our success, and our healing. Therefore we put all of our stock, all of our hope and place all of our weight on the foundation of Jesus Christ.

Jesus is the reality on which our faith rests. It's not about how we feel. We determine the God is light and in Him is no darkness at all. We determine that we are going to walk in the light... all of the light, and we confess our sins and live transparent lives before God and the fellowship of the saints. Finally, we put all of our hope in Jesus, the Righteous One.

That's how - and the only reason why - any local expression of church can work. In the context of this reality, we can receive healing. And only in the context of an open life in the fellowship of believers can we successfully live the Christian life.