This is the message which we have heard from him and announce to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.
John’s argument is: As light is opposed to darkness, God is opposed to sin; as darkness cannot exist in the presence of light, sin cannot continue in the presence of God; as light reveals the darkness and extinguishes it, God reveals sin as it really is and abolishes it. Fellowship with God necessitates the absence of the practice of sin because in God "is no darkness at all." Maclaren comments: "To the positive statement John, in his usual manner, appends an emphatic negative one: "Darkness is not in him, no, not in any way.’ He is light, all light, only light." (248) Woods translates the Greek phrase: "no, not even one tiny particle!" (216). There is not the slightest taint of darkness, or sin, in the character of God. God is morally perfect.