IBS Application for 1 John 1:5-7

“This is the message we have heard from Him and proclaim 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 is from all sin.”

As the Church of Christ, we walk together with each other as one body. We have fellowship with each other as we have fellowship with Jesus. But darkness and sin have no place in the heart of God. We, living in Him, cannot continue to walk in our sin if we seek to be unified as one body. It is only by living in the saving grace of His blood that we can walk in the light and have fellowship with each other.

It’s inevitable that we will still sin. We sin everyday. But by accepting the grace of God, we are freed from our bondage to sin, and therefore can walk with Christ in the light. But the key to having unity and fellowship with each other apart from the weight of sin is to walk in the light with Christ.

Failing to walk in the light with Christ means being weighed down by the burden of sin. It means being yoked to sin while those who follow Christ take up His yoke instead. We cannot have fellowship or unity with each other if we walk unequally yoked. At that point, any interaction between one yoked to Christ and one yoked to sin is to be ministry from the Believer to the one still living in sin.

The key to having unity, as I’ve said, is to walk in the light with Christ. How? By fixing our eyes on Him, as He is the goal we ought to be running toward in this race we’re all running together. We throw off the weight of our sin and help each other get back up when one of us stumbles and falls. If we all work together to help each other reach our common goal, which is Christ, we will finish the race together.

This all only works if we have Christ in common with each other. Christ is to be the focus of each of our lives. When He is, we are compelled to help and have fellowship with everyone else who is also focused on Christ.

In the same way, we who have been called here to Ignite ought to have the same mind toward seeking Christ and being shaped into what He has called us to be for His name’s sake. The first step towards being a unit as Class 14 is for each of us to fix our eyes on Christ and not waver from what He is doing in our lives. With Christ as our focus, we will inevitably have unity within our class.

My application for this passage will be to start each day this week praying for a mind focused on Christ and what He desires for me and my teammates. I know that I and the others may end up stumbling and getting off focus throughout the week, so I will also pray not only in the mornings, but throughout each day that He would lead each of us to help each other get back up and start running towards Christ again when that happens. I will also pray for the endurance required to keep my focus on Christ all the days of my life, and that my heart towards Christ would be strengthened in this way, that I might continue to grow as a member of this Class and of His body.