1 John 1:1-10 | Vision: Formed in Community

Listen to this week’s sermon, Vision: Formed in Community preached by Rev. Benjamin Kandt from 1 John 1:1-10.

Chapters

• 0:00 Scripture And Opening Prayer
• 2:05 From Resolutions To Formation In Community
• 5:10 Koinonia: Communion And Community Linked
• 9:05 The Church’s Human Answer To Artificial Companionship
• 12:20 What Real Fellowship Cost And Created In The Early Church
• 15:25 Why Small Groups Miss And How They Can Transform
• 18:15 The Pareto Principle Of Spiritual Growth
• 21:00 Walking In Darkness: Hiding, Not Just Sinning
• 25:00 Loneliness And The Lies We Tell Ourselves
• 29:20 Warning Signs And The Challenger O-Ring
• 33:00 Secrets, Accountability, And God Will Not Be Mocked
• 36:30 Walking In The Light: Practicing The Truth
• 40:20 Confession, Cleansing, And Safety In The Gospel

Transcript

Rev. Benjamin Kandt: 0:06

Hello everyone. This is Pastor Benjamin. You're listening to Sermon Audio from New City, Orlando. At New City, we long to see our Father answer the Lord's Prayer. For more resources, visit our website at Newcity Orlando.com.

Hannah Corlew: 0:20

Heavenly Father, we wish to see Jesus. By your Spirit's power, give us eyes to see his glory through Christ. We pray. Amen. If you're able, please remain standing for today's scripture reading, which comes from John 1, 1 through 10. That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon and have touched with our hands concerning the word of life. The life was made manifest and we have seen it. And we testify to it and proclaim to you the eternal life, which was the Fat which was with the Father and was made manifest to us. That which we have seen and heard, we proclaim also to you, so that you too may have fellowship with us. And indeed, our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ. And we are writing these things so that our joy may be complete. This is the message we have heard from him and proclaimed to you that God is light, and in him there is no darkness at all. If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and we do not practice the truth. But if we walk in light as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another. And the blood of Jesus, his son, cleanses us from all sin. If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. But if we for if we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say we have not sinned, we make him a liar, and his word is not in us. This is God's word.

Rev. Benjamin Kandt: 2:04

Well, welcome. My name is Benjamin. I'm a pastor here, and I have a public service announcement, which is that tomorrow, January 12th, is National Quitter's Day. So statistically, most people have quit their uh New Year's resolutions by tomorrow. Uh that's important. And interestingly, there's another stat that says that if you just simply tell your resolutions to somebody else, you're 65% more likely to keep them. And even more, if you schedule a follow-up meeting with the person you tell to follow up with you about your resolution, you're 95% more likely to keep your resolution. That's amazing to me. And it's actually quite relevant because last week we talked about what it means to be called into community, communion, excuse me. Today we're going to talk about being formed in community. There's something about our willingness to share in life with other people that is profoundly formative for us. So we have a definition of a disciple here, which is that disciples of Jesus are united to Jesus in communion with God, community with one another, and co-mission for the world. We are called into communion and we are formed in community. That's what we're going to talk about this morning, how we're formed in community. Now, we did, uh you've probably heard me say this before. Um, as churches, it can be hard to measure what matters. It can be hard to count what really counts. There's some things that are easy, like numbers of people in this room or budgets. Those are easy to count. That's why most people do that. But if your aim is actually transformation into the image of Jesus Christ, that's a little harder to measure. And so I've said before that there's really only three ways you can do that stats, stories, and self-report. And so we created an assessment, a self-report assessment called the Disciple Defined Check-in. And we've we've actually surveyed a handful of people in our congregation, and we found that actually New City is really remarkable at things like experiencing God's delight in them despite their behavior. New City actually has uh people answered this question positively. They said, in the last week, I can can I can think of a time when I did something because Jesus told me to, or didn't because Jesus told me not to. So we're quite obedient in certain ways, too. One of the things we found, though, is that we have room to grow in our willingness and ability to confess our sins to one another. It's not something we're bad at, we're just not as as good as we could be at it. Uh, and so this sermon really, in some ways, came from that data. I looked at the data, I thought, well, we're gonna talk about confession and how important it is, how formative it is in community with one another. And so, with that, if you have a Bible or a device, go ahead and get first John chapter one in front of you. You can look at the worship guide as well. And I want to look at uh an important word here that shows up four times in our text, and that word is koinonia. Now, I'm not one of those people that you know talks about how you think it means this, but the Greek says this because I'm a happy Protestant, and and I believe that the word of God belongs to the people of God, and that you don't need some priest or pastor to tell you what it really says because you're just a lay person. Uh-uh, not gonna happen. The reason I'm willing to use the Greek word koinanea today is because I think the word community becomes white noise. We hear it so frequently, and it means everything and nothing. And so I want to use the word koinanea. It's the word that's used in our text. Look with me at verse, it shows up four times, and and interestingly, what we call communion and community, the Greek text says has one word for, which is koinanea. So communion with God is koinanea with God. You see it in verse three, it says this uh so that you two may have fellowship with us, that's community, and indeed our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ. That's communion. Same word, fellowship, koinanea. Now it shows up again if you look with me at verses six and seven. It says in verse six, if we say we have fellowship with him, koinonia with God. Or look at verse seven, it says uh that we have fellowship, koinania with one another. You see how in the imagination of the Bible, communion and community are inextricably linked, so much so that it's the same Greek word, koinonia, it just depends on who's it's with. Is it with God? That's called communion. If it's with one another, that's called community. This is super important. It's super important because we live in a world that is starved for koinonia. Now, some people have said 2025 is the year, was the year of AI. It's when it went from this kind of peripheral thing to you can't ignore it. Everybody has some sort of interaction with AI at some point in their life now. And in there's kind of two different stances. Some people believe AI is just Google 2.0. It's cool, it's helpful, it's really can do more than what Google could. Other people believe this is a disruptive force that's like 10x the industrial revolution. That many of us might not have jobs in 10 years. Like it, I mean, that's the language people talk about with AI. But one of the things that's more relevant for us right here, right now, is that the number one use of AI right now is companionship. Companionship. Or I would use the word koinania. You see, 72% of teens use have an AI companion, and 31% say they prefer their AI companion to real human beings. Their friends, their parents, their family. You see, this is a huge societal crisis. Or maybe it's just revealing a crisis that's been there all along. Now you could take this one of two ways. You can go, oh man, things are going from bad to worse. Or you could say, the church was made for this moment. The church was made for this moment. Carrie Newhoff says it like this as the world becomes more artificial, the church becomes more human. But that means that we have to double down on what has been our value proposition for two millennia now, koinonia. We need to double down on it. Like this actually has to be true and to characterize and describe who we are as a people. One author put it like this this is a longer quote, but I think it's worth hearing. Talking about how the early church changed the Roman Empire, he says this. The early church was able to defy the decadent values of Roman civilization precisely because it experienced the reality of Christian fellowship in a mighty way. The reason why the early church could defy Rome is because of its koinonia. He goes on and says this. Christian fellowship meant, I love these phrases, unconditional availability and unlimited liability for our brothers and sisters. Emotionally, financially, and spiritually. When one member suffered, they all suffered. When one rejoiced, they all rejoiced. When a person or church experienced economic trouble, the other shared without reservation. And when a brother or sister fell into sin, the others gently restored the straying person. The brothers and sisters were available to each other, liable for each other, and accountable to one another. That's Quinanea. That's Quinanea. Now, the author goes on and says, the network of tiny house churches that were scattered throughout the Roman Empire experienced, listen to this, their oneness in Christ. Union with Christ, their oneness in Christ so vividly that they were able to defy and eventually conquer a powerful pagan civilization. The overwhelming majority of churches today, however, do not provide the context in which brothers and sisters can encourage, admonish, and disciple each other. We desperately need new settings and structures for watching over one another in love. Do you hear the call at the end there? For contexts and settings and structures. For us here, we call those congregations, communities, and circles. That's the context, the settings, the structures that we're we're trying to build here. But listen a house is to a home, what a small group is to koinania. Let me make that plain. Since today is about confession, let me just confess on behalf of all pastors everywhere. Small groups in many, maybe most churches, a lot of them are just not great, including New City. This could be real. Why? Or maybe a better question is well, then why do we still do them? Because they can be great. Because they can be life-changing and transformative. It's there, it's possible. But listen, the thing that makes the difference is not the structure of the small group, but the people in the small group. Their willingness to show up in such a way where they know and love and are known and loved. And you think if I'm I'm just kind of talking strategy here, it's it's actually in our text. Community, koinonia is contingent. It's contingent upon something. Look at verse 3 here. It says this that which we have seen and heard, we proclaim also to you, so that you too, this is important, may have fellowship. May have koinonia. You underline that word, may. That's a contingent word. It's not a promise, it's not an indicative, it's not you will, it's you may, it's possible. So, what is it contingent upon? Two things knowing and loving. Knowing and loving. And so I want to look at verses five through ten to talk about what it means to know one another and to be known in community. And the reason why this is so important is because many of you are familiar, I'm sure, with the Pareto principle. Just simply says that 80% of the results come from about 20% of the work. And this is kind of true across the board. Like 20% of your clothes you wear 80% of the time. The Pareto principle of the Christian life of spiritual transformation is community where you are known and where you know others, with an openness that's unhindered, with a transparent trust, with a vulnerability, with a willingness to disclose things to others that they could hurt you with. That's what vulnerability really is. Vulneraire means wound. Can you do you tell people things in community such that if they wanted to, they could wound you with them? That's the Pareto principle of transformation into Christ-likeness. It's the 20% that does 80% of the results. So if you have it, you will be transformed into Christ-likeness. If you lack it, you won't. You won't have it. So what gets in the way? What gets in the way of us being transparent in trust in our communities, being known in community? Well, the Bible here, 1 John chapter 1, has a simple phrase which is walking in the darkness. Walking in the darkness. That's what gets in the way. Now, let me be clear on the front end. Walking in darkness is not about sinning less. It's about hiding more. When you are walking in darkness, it's not a it's not because you're sinning, it's because you're hiding. That's a huge difference and very important to just address at the outset. Yesterday, my little boy went, uh, he was playing flashlight tag in the dark with a bunch of his friends, and and I was driving him home afterwards, and he said, Daddy, we were playing flashlight tag, and it was really cool because when people were trying to find me, I would just turn my flashlight off, and they couldn't. It's like, yeah, dude. That's called walking in darkness. That's hiding. And he does it in a game with other children, and we do it in this game of life with one another. We turn the light out so we can hide, so we can't be seen. Now look at this. If you look closely at the text here, it's it's actually pretty brilliant. Verses six, eight, and ten, those even verses, all begin with this phrase: if we say, if we say, if we say. This is key. Look with me at verse six. If we say we have fellowship with him, that is God, while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. If we say one thing, but we do another, this is darkness. This is hiding. This is image management. This is pretending. This is holding secrets, but putting on a mask. That's what's talked about here in verse six. You see, and and the reason why this is so important is because this verse one, verse six, really, I think is about our relating to one another. We're saying one thing, we're doing something else. And and that gap there creates, it has a byproduct, and that byproduct is loneliness. The Swiss psychiatrist Paul Turnier says it like this: nothing makes us so lonely as our secrets. Nothing makes us so lonely as our secrets. Now, to be honest, loneliness is something that I have grappled with for as long as I can remember. And I had a pivotal moment, a turning point when I had brothers around me that knew me well enough to love me enough to speak to something. And what they spoke to was, hey, Ben, it's really hard to know you because you're impressive. Now you might think that that's like, oh, I have to, you know, that's it was it was wounding, but the kind of wounding that is the wounds of a friend are better than the kisses of an enemy. I felt wounded by that comment. And I believe the Holy Spirit led me to ask and answer this question on a daily basis. Today, will I be impressive or will I be known? And just the habit, the practice of intentionally voting for the kind to become the kind of person that discloses the secrets of my heart in relationship, even if it means I'm no longer that impressive. But because I long to be known, I don't want to be lonely anymore, that simple vote in that direction makes it to where loneliness, it's still a canary in the coal mine for me, but it's not a dominant experience of my everyday life. You say, if we say one thing and we do another, one of the primary results of that is loneliness. But look at verse 8. Verse 8 says this if we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. This is important. So the first one we're deceiving others, saying one thing doing another. Now we're deceiving ourselves. But look at the words that says, if we say we have no sin, present tense, right here, right now. This is why what I'm saying is walking in the darkness is not about sinning, it's about hiding. All of us sin. Jesus assumes that since he taught us to pray every day, forgive us our debts. It's assumed that you will sin on the daily if you're walking with Jesus. I'm telling you that right now. But what is deadly is saying, I have no sin in my life. In fact, it's it's it's the key of self-deception. You begin to believe your own your own press. Psychotherapists say that lying is the foundation of psychopathology. It's lying, it's a it's a deception at the core of your being. That's what John the Apostle is speaking to here. What does this mean? It means you live around with just this sense of like, I'm good, I'm alright. I don't really need much, I don't really need people, I don't really need anything from anyone else. And you begin to believe your own press. I was walking with one of our elders last year, and uh many of you have taken strength finders before, I'm sure. And and in my top five is woo, which is to win, it's winning others over, all right? And I'm walking with one of our elders, and he said, You know what, Ben? Um I think you are best at winning yourself over. And what was he saying? He was loving me in that moment, and he was telling me, hey, you're really good at coming up with an idea and then convincing of yourself, convincing yourself that it's true. Oof, if that's true, and it is, man, do I need to be careful. Because it's so subtle, so easy to deceive ourselves, to just in the in the subtlest way lie to ourselves. Who lies to you more than you? I mean, seriously. Some of you are like, the devil, the father of lies. Okay, fine. I will concede, I will concede the devil lies to you more than anybody else. Silver medal is still not great. Like you deceive yourself so frequently, you lie to you so often, and and and you think that this isn't that big of a deal. It's not that big of a deal. Nobody's hurt by it. I'm just covering up something that's like really just it's only me for me to know. And there's these warning signs that you're ignoring in your life. We're coming up on the 40th anniversary of the space shuttle challenger exploding 73 seconds after takeoff over Cape Canaveral, about 50 miles east of here. On January 28th, 1986, uh, it was a Tragedy. It was a tragedy. And immediately afterwards, there was an investigation to find out what went wrong. And they found out what went wrong was there's these things called O-rings that are meant to seal the boosters properly. But they, because of the cold temperature in Central Florida, they didn't seal properly. Now listen, an O-ring is 7.1 millimeters thick. That's pretty thin. And it was enough to destroy, to explode this entire rocket and take seven astronauts' lives with it. And they found out that there was actually discussion and debate among the engineers because they knew when temperatures got to a certain coldness, the O-rings failed. They knew it. But they discussed and debated whether or not it would be enough to compromise the mission. Listen, some of you have subtle signs right now in your life that are gonna destroy you if you don't do something about it. Your spouse is talking to you about it, your friends have mentioned it. It's like, hey, are you are you okay? Are you sure? Your conscience is talking to you about it. That little voice, the Holy Spirit, even now has brought to mind things that you probably should confess to God and to other people, and you're coming up with excuses why it doesn't really matter. Listen, it will destroy you in a moment. Small things, subtle things you don't think are that big of a deal, will ruin your life if you don't come into the light with them. Do not deceive yourself. We don't just deceive ourselves, but we lie about God. Look at verse 10. Verse 10 says it like this. If we say we have not sinned, remember it said, have no sin, that's present tense. Have not sinned, that's past tense. If we say we have never sinned, we make God a liar and his word is not in us. What's going on here? Why is it why is it that we accuse God of lying if we say we've never sinned before? Because God calls you a sinner. That's why. He's already evaluated your life, he's already come back with his appraisal, and his appraisal on your life is sinner in thought, in word, in deed, in things that you have done and things that you have left undone. You are a sinner. And we look at God and we say, Nobody's perfect. I'm only human. I mean, I'm not as good as some people, but I'm not as bad as others. And God says, You're trying to make me a liar right now. You stand condemned under my law, worthy of condemnation because of your life, by nature and by choice. And to deny that is to call God a liar. You see, the gospel comes with a scalpel's cut before a healing balm. It confronts us before it comforts us. Our condemnation is the black velvet upon which the brilliant brightness of the diamond of the gospel can shine. But if you deny the fact that you are a sinner standing in just condemnation under the wrath of God, if you deny that you make God to be a liar. Christians have been praying this for a thousand years now. This is what it says Almighty God, to you all hearts are opened, all desires known, and from you no secrets are hid. Cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of your Holy Spirit, that we may perfectly love you and worthily magnify your holy name through Christ our Lord. Amen. This is a collect for purity. Why? Because it acknowledges off the bat God is the one from whom no secrets are hid. Why make them out to be a liar? There's something about secrets, which is that secrets are always on their way to going public. Secrets are always in the process of coming to light. A couple years ago, uh there was a large church that was imploding because the founder was caught in some significant sexual sin that he had hid for decades and gotten away with it. And the number, the list of people who knew this church, were trusted by it, was psychologically informed, uh loves the church pastorally, that list was really short, and I was on it. And so I got flown out there to be a consultant and a teacher, and I spent hours and hours and hours and hours and hours with some of the people closest to this man. They were all baffled. Except for one person, his sister. And she looked at me and she said something that in the moment gave me chills. And when I think about it now, it is disruptive to me emotionally. She said to me, Ben, God will not be mocked. She said, I've seen this happen before. Men, women who hide things for decades, it usually comes out in their 60s or 70s. Of course, she was quoting Galatians chapter 6, which said which says, Do not be deceived. God will not be mocked. That which you sow, you will also reap. If you sow in darkness, you will reap destruction. It will come out. All secrets are in the process of becoming disclosed. Why don't you beat them to the punch? Why don't you get there first? Why don't you be the one that goes on record against you before what you sow, you eventually reap. And so with that, let's turn to something a little bit more happy. What the Apostle Paul, what the Apostle John calls walking in the light, or verse six calls practicing the truth. If walking in darkness is living the lie, then walking in the light is practicing the truth. Look with me at verses seven, five, seven, and nine. It says this this is the message we have heard from him and proclaimed to you that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. Verse 7. But if we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship, koinania with one another. And the blood of Jesus, his son, cleanses us from all sin. Verse 9. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. One of the things that happens when I prep for sermons is I meditate on this text and I pray through it and I ask the Lord to speak to me through it first. And one of the phrases that I lingered over that I believe the Holy Spirit was just illuminating to me was this phrase, as He is in the light in verse seven. As He is in the light. You see, this is the primary motivation to come out of darkness. I want to be where He is. I want to be with Him. One of the evidences that you belong to Jesus, that you've been made alive to His beauty and goodness, is that you don't want to stray too far from Him. You know that sin unconfessed is a hindrance to your communion with Him. And you don't want that because you love, enjoy, delight in your nearness to Him. This is the heart cry of a Christian. I want to be where He is as He is in the light. I want to come out of darkness. I want to be where He is. It's the joy of your life. And when you're there, you look around and you notice everybody else that's walking in the light. Oh, there's other people here. It's a party. Being in the light is so much better than being in the darkness. And so this motivation, this light living lifestyle enables us to have koinonia with God and koinanea with one another. One of the reasons you don't feel loved, one of the reasons it's hard for you to feel loved by God and by other people is that it's impossible to love a mask. It's impossible to love a mask. You put on a persona. People love the persona. You even bring that persona to God. God, He won't love the persona because He'll only love the real you. And so He'll do things in your life to try to get you to take the mask off. Remember our call to worship, Psalm 32? David says, When I kept silent, my bones wasted away. My strength was dried up like the heat of summer. For day and night, your hand was heavy upon me. I pray that God's hand is heavy upon you if you're living in the darkness. It's the severe mercy of God to you. He's willing to sap your strength so much that you go, it is unbearable to live in the darkness anymore. I have to come out. God is so humble, he takes any motivation for you to return to him. Well, just think about it. I said a moment ago, the highest motivation is I want to be with you, God, but fleeing hell is a legitimate motivation that God receives you from. What a humble God He is. And so listen, you who are in the darkness with a mask on, maybe the fact that you don't feel loved or known or cared about, maybe that's a motivation enough to take the mask off. Verse 7 and verse 9 teach us that the gospel alone can create the kind of safety we need in order to walk in the light. It's only if we have great confidence that the blood of Jesus, his son, will cleanse us from all sin. Or verse 9, if we confess our sins, he's faithful and just to forgive us of our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. This alone creates the safety that we need. The word confess, if you if you look at it, it's it's the words homo and legato, which just means to say the same thing about you that God already says about you. That's all a confession is. Confession is not saying I'm sorry. You've watched enough detective shows. You know that they're asking for a confession. They want you to tell the truth about what you did or didn't do. They don't want you to say I'm sorry. That's all confession is, just telling the truth to God and to one another. This is the state of my soul. This is what's really going on, this is what's actually happening. This is confession. This is why Dallas Willard said any successful plan for spiritual formation will be significantly similar to the 12-step program. This is step four. If you're not familiar with the 12 steps, saved countless lives and led many people out of addiction. Step four says this: we made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves. Step five, we admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs. The devil is in the details, but the spirit is in the specifics. What stops you from taking a searching and fearless moral inventory is that you don't believe that if you do it and if you confess it, that he will cleanse you from, the word is all of our sins, all of our unrighteousness. Cleanse. It's the word catharsis. Oh, to be free from the burden of guilt and the shroud of shame through the glorious experience of confession and cleansing from all unrighteousness. The great reformer Martin Luther, I believe, had diagnosable obsessive-compulsive disorder, subtype religious scrupulosity. That's what I believe. I'm a diagnostician, so I know these things, okay? That's what I would diagnose him as. And in his religious scrupulosity, before he became a Protestant, he would confess his sins all the time to his confessor, a priest. He'd confess things like breaking wind while taking the mass and things like that. It was like, it was too much. It was too much. And his priest kind of got fed up with it after a little while. And the priest said, Listen, Martin, just love God and get over yourself. And Luther said, Love God, I hate him. Ooh. All of his confession beneath the surface was an attempt to justify himself before God. Because Luther knew what hopefully we all know that if God is just, you must be condemned. So why does verse 9 say, if we confess our sins, God is faithful and just? I thought the justice of God was bad news for sinners. Because the justice of God is bad news for sinners outside of Christ. Anyone who belongs to Jesus, God has already dealt with your condemnation on Christ and his cross. Which means the verdict over your life is no longer sinner condemned. It is there is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus. So the justice of God is gloriously good news for us now. We have the freedom to be honest. We have the freedom to walk in the light. So tell him your misery and plead his unshockable mercy. He's not surprised. Let 2026 be the year of no secrets. What do you have to lose? Let me tell you, you have to lose. Socially, you have to lose your image. If you start telling the truth about who you are, stop pretending you will lose your image. I promise you that. Psychologically, you have to lose a sense of independence. You can't, there's no no-man as an island if you're confessing your sins to one another. It's not possible. Third, spiritually, you tend to lose your iniquity. Jesus himself said in John 3, the reason people don't come into the light from the darkness is they love their sin. Some of you won't come into the light, even as a result of this sermon. I have no doubt about it, because you will resist the Holy Spirit through the Word of God, and you love your sin more than anything else. You do tend to lose your iniquity if you start confessing your sins. But what do you have to gain? What do you have to gain socially? You have to gain intimacy. You'll finally experience what it means to be known by somebody. Psychologically, you tend to be healed. Remember, our assurance of pardon was James 5, 16. If we confess our sins to one another and pray for one another, we will be healed. Some of you cannot be healed in the area of your life because you won't confess it. And there's healing on offer to you. Spiritually, you stand to gain freedom. Listen, the devil has this boot on the neck of everyone in darkness this morning. Come out. It's for freedom Christ has set you free. Confess your sins to God and to one another and get out from under his oppressive boot on your neck. Freedom you stand to gain. Okay, so if this is true, the kind of community that would be safe enough for us to confess these things is not one that's only a place where we're known, but one where we're meaningfully loved. And this is where I want to end. We're a community where we are loved. You remember earlier I quoted that that long quote about what koinonia looks like in these two phrases, unconditional availability and unlimited liability. That is what koinonia is. Are you willing to be unconditionally available to one another? And are you willing to be unlimitedly liable to one another? You remember Cain? Am I my brother's keeper? Yes, you are. If you're not who is? Listen, the the reality of a loving community is that we recognize that to be united to Jesus, we don't have the luxury of flying so low. If we're in union with God through Christ, we're in union with one another through Christ too. So if one person in the body that is New City is injured or hurt or struggling, we all are. That's the nature of it. But we're Americans, we love expressive individualism, so that steps on our toes a little bit. Be biblical, not American, in our commitment to community. And if I were to boil it all down, what does it mean to love in this way? It's that one word, commitment. It's commitment. Now, look at verses one and two with me. It says this, that which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we looked upon and have touched with our hands concerning the word of life. He's talking about Jesus here. He's saying, Me, John the Apostle. I walked with him, I talked with him, I got to see and touch and feel him. And some of us go, that would be nice, wouldn't it? To see Jesus, to touch him, to hear him, to feel him. Listen, the resurrected and ascended Jesus sits at on the throne of the universe in heaven with a human body, and that is the source of the good news. But he has a body on earth too. It's you. It's you. I can remember being in a circle, and uh one of the guys in my circle confessed a sin that he was clearly ashamed of. And so I looked at him after he confessed his sin and I said, Do you believe in the Pauline doctrine of the body of Christ that is ours through the mystical union of Christ by the Holy Spirit by faith alone? And through tears, I said, I think so. And I hugged him and I said, I love you. God loves you. Jesus died for you. The sin is forgiven. And in that moment, the arms of Jesus were around my brother. This is commitment to one another in the body of Christ. This is how we create the kind of safety that enables us to be fully known. Now, some of you are like, that is weird. I'm just not gonna do it. Listen, I get it. I had at lunch with somebody else in another circle of mine, and he was like, hey, dude, he's one of those guys that finds Christian community corny, and so most of his friends aren't believers, and because they're kind of just edgier, I guess. And he's like, Listen, none of my friends would do this circle thing. It's really uncomfortable. And I said, Hey, listen, I think you're probably right, and your friends are dying for it. I said, Listen, I have in my private practice as a counselor, I have a lot of men who are successful entrepreneurs, military guys, really successful. I mean, just impressive externally in all kinds of ways, and they come to see me for counseling because they're paying for friendship. Because, listen, our cultural commitment to counseling is just this deep aching desire for confessional community coming out in a secular age. And and I recognize that. And so people are willing to pay for this, they're dying for it, they're starved for it, there's a hunger for it. Um, and as we close, if you don't think this is relevant beyond your kind of spiritual life, Kurt Thompson makes the point in his book, The Soul of Shame, fantastic book. You should read it. He says shame is a primary means to prevent us from using the gifts that we've been given. You are vocationally hindered by walking in darkness. God has given you gifts. He intends for you to use it in our city, those gifts in our city to bring goodness and truth and beauty and light. And yet, when you You're shrouded in shame because you don't confess your sins to God or to one another, you are you're trapped. Some of us, though, we're not walking in the light because we're running. I'm not going to make too much out of this, but Corey Tenboom says if the devil can't make you bad, he will make you busy. Some of us, the primary need for commitment in community is that we need to slow down. Use the all of life guide. Create a to do to don't list for 2026. But you know what ought not be on that list? Koinania. It's a non-negotiable. In fact, it should be prioritized and scheduled, or it won't happen. And just because your in-laws are in town doesn't mean you don't show up to whatever you've already committed yourself to. It's the kind of thing that ruins, erodes Christian community over time. So hopefully I've convinced you of something. I don't know. But if you're still thinking, well, is it worth it? Look with me at verses three and four. It says this, and this is where we'll close. That's which we have seen and heard, we proclaim also to you, so that you too may have fellowship with us. And indeed, our fellowship is with the Father and with His Son, Jesus Christ. And we are writing these things. Here's the phrase, so that, purpose cause, so that our joy may be complete. Listen, I know everybody in this room wants joy. And what John is saying here is if you sow koinonia, you will reap joy. Why is that? Pleasure is sourced in your senses. You smell a good aroma, you hear nice music, you taste something that's pleasurable, right? That's your senses. Happiness is sourced in your happenstance, your circumstances. But joy is sourced in securely attached relationships with God and one another. If you want joy, you need to pursue koinania like it's worth more precious than gold to you. Because if you sow if you sow koin and nea, you will reap joy that is full and flowing over. Let's pray. Spirit of God, be at work among us and in our midst. I long that people for people to come out of darkness and into light where you are. God, we praise you that you are light, and in you is no darkness, none whatsoever. Let the beauty and the brilliance of your light captivate us, ensnare us, and lead us back to you. Would you put out of taste our iniquities? Would you put out of taste our commitment to our own image and our independence? We wish to see Jesus. We pray this in his name. Amen.