CLEAN – podcast 5 (Walking in the Light)

Douglas Jacoby Podcast

For additional notes and resources check out Douglas’ website.

Introduction

• OT: Purity and cleansing are more about forgiveness than about transformation.
  • Yet, for fairness and balance, holiness was the goal, and then as now involved a quest, a process...
  • E.g, Exodus: facilitation of forgiveness and holiness: laws, priesthood, tabernacle; Leviticus: atonement and holiness; Numbers: the journey of faith continues, with penalties for sin; Deuteronomy: obedient love / loving obedience.
• Two-stage salvation
  • Baptism: past sins
  • Confession and repentance: future sins
• Far too many believers are confused about what it means to walk in the light.

Scriptural study: 1 John 1:6-2:7

• Contrast: light / darkness
• Walking in light assumes some degree of failure
• We do not move to the darkness every time we sin (though we do if we give up on Christ.)
• What is walking in darkness?
  • Darkness is pretense.
  • It's also lack of openness.
  • Those in the dark ignore, twist, or reject God's word.
• How we live -- how we obey Christ -- does matter.
  • Yet if we slip, we have an advocate.
  • Walking in the light is the way of obedience.
  • Walking in light is walking as Jesus walked: openness, honesty, obedience to the Father, a life centered round others (love).
• There's one more key dimension of walking in the light (1 John 3:1-3).
  • Walking in light isn't only ongoing forgiveness and ongoing obedience.
  • It's also ongoing transformation!
  • Protestants tend to see the crucifixion of Jesus as their means of forgiveness, while Orthodox theology highlights the resurrection (the other side of Jesus' atonement) as a source of new life -- becoming like God.
  • We too should appreciate that God's plan is for us to become like Christ (see also Rom 8:29 -- for this we will need to embrace suffering).

Prayer for purity at the level of:

• Conscience / heart / motives
• Thoughts
• Words
• Actions