1 John 1:7

Walking in the light means walking in the sphere that the light prescribes. The idea is more where we walk than how we walk. Had John said "according to" the light rather than "in" the light, he would have been requiring sinless perfection for fellowship with God. We must be open and responsive to the light that we have, which increases as we grow in our knowledge of God’s will.

"How do we do this? If I enter a lighted room and walk around in it, I am walking in the light; I am moving in a sphere which the light illuminates as it shines not only on me but upon everything around me. If I were to personalize the light, I could also say that I was walking in the presence of the light. Since according to this passage God not only is light (1 John 1:5), but He is also in the light, to walk in the light must mean essentially to live in God’s presence, exposed to what He has revealed about Himself. This, of course, is done through openness in prayer and through openness to the Word of God in which He is revealed.

"By contrast, to ’walk in darkness’ (1 John 1:6) is to hide from God and to refuse to acknowledge what we know about Him." [Note: Idem, The Epistles . . ., pp. 60-61.]

"One another" evidently means God and us rather than our fellow believers and us in view of the context. We share the light in which God dwells. Another view is that John meant that we cannot enjoy fellowship with God if we neglect fellowship with other Christians. [Note: Barker, p. 310; Westcott, p. 20.]

Two things are equally true of believers who walk in the light according to this verse: we enjoy fellowship with God, and we are experiencing cleansing from every sin.

"This ["every sin"] refers to man’s sinful nature in general, although it may include the wrong acts which can occur even when a Christian is living ’in the light.’" [Note: Smalley, p. 24.]

"The thought is not of the forgiveness of sin only, but of the removal of sin. The sin is done away; and the purifying action is exerted continuously." [Note: Westcott, p. 21.]

God cleanses us at conversion in the sense that He will never bring us into condemnation for our sins (cf. Romans 8:1; 1 Corinthians 6:11; Ephesians 1:7). However, we need continual cleansing from the defilement that sinful daily living brings because it hinders our fellowship with God (cf. John 13:10). The "blood of Jesus" is a metonymy for the death of Jesus. [Note: Ryrie, p. 1467.] A metonymy is a figure of speech in which a writer uses the name of one thing for that of another associated with it or suggested by it. It is Christ’s death that cleanses us, not that Jesus’ blood cleanses us like a kind of spiritual soap.

"What John has in mind here is the cleansing of the conscience from guilt and moral defilement which is so insisted on in the Epistle to the Hebrews (Hebrews 9:14; Hebrews 10:2; Hebrews 10:22), and which takes a leading place among the saving benefits of the redemptive self-sacrifice of Christ." [Note: Bruce, p. 44.]