What Does It Mean to Walk In Darkness?

"If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not live according to the truth" (1 John 1:6).

Walking in Darkness

1 John chapter 2, verses 8-11 give some real clear indications. It says that he who hates his brother is in the darkness and he who loves his brother abides in the light. Walking in the light means being a loving person and walking in the darkness means being a person of hate. But there is something more basic than that.

Verse 8 of chapter 2 says (at the end), "The darkness is passing away and the true light is already shining." What is this darkness that is passing away? Notice that the same word for passing away is used in 2:17, "The world is passing away and the desire of it." From this I would conclude that walking in darkness means being controlled by desires for this world instead of desires for God.

The reason this is called walking in darkness is that the only way people can desire things more than God is if they are blind to the light of God. To choose gravel over diamonds you have to be blind. Remember the picture of the man in a dark room. He feels a warm, soft fur with one hand and a cold sharp edge with the other, and draws in close to the warmth and softness of the fur.

But when the light goes on, he sees that the warm, soft fur is the under belly of a horrid, man-eating monster; and the hard, cold edge is the sword of the majestic Christ ready to save. The reason he was controlled by his desire for the man-eating monster is that he was in the dark. Everyone who loves the world more than God is in the dark. Only it's a willful darkness, because, as John said in John 3:19, "The light has come into the world and men loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil."

When you walk in darkness, you are controlled by the desires for the soft, warm underbellies of prestige and power and two-second pleasures (see James 4:14). This is the very opposite of what it means to have fellowship with God. Fellowship with God means that you see things the way he sees them and have the same desires he has. If we are controlled by desires for the world instead of desires for God, it doesn't matter whether we say we have fellowship with God or not; we don't have it. Instead we walk in darkness. "If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness we lie and do not live according to the truth."