From this look at 1 John 2, we have seen the first result of walking in the light is holiness, the second is obedience to God Him, and now the third is love. Unfortunately, the word love is losing its value and is being used to cover a multitude of sins.
When we stop to think how we use the word love in our every day life, we start seeing it associated with a variety of things. We of course, have its use in referring to a spouse or family member. To a person’s child. Love is also used of our favorite sports teams or of a food group or restaurant. It is also used of how a person tells a story or sings a song. It is really difficult to understand how a person can use the same word to express their love for their spouse as they uses to tell how they feel about pizza or steak! When words are used that carelessly they really mean little or nothing at all. Like other things, they have been devalued.
As John describes the life that is real, he uses three words repeatedly: life, love, and light. In fact, he devotes three sections of his letter to the subject of Christian love. He explains that love, life, and light belong together. Read these three sections (1 John 2:7–11; 3:10–24; 4:7–21) without the intervening verses and you will see that love, life, and light must not be separated.[1]
John not only writes about love but also practices it. One of his favorite names for his readers is “Beloved.” He felt love for them. John is known as the “Apostle of Love” because in his Gospel and his epistles he gives such prominence to this subject. However, John was not always the “Apostle of Love.” At one time Jesus gave John and his brother James, both of whom had hot tempers, the nickname “Boanerges” (Mark 3:17), which means “sons of thunder.” On another occasion these two brothers wanted to call down fire from heaven to destroy a village (Luke 9:51–56).
Verses:
7 Beloved, I am not writing a new commandment to you, but an old commandment which you have had from the beginning; the old commandment is the word which you have heard. 8 On the other hand, I am writing a new commandment to you, which is true in Him and in you, because the darkness is passing away and the true Light is already shining. 9 The one who says that he is in the Light and yet hates his brother or sister is in the darkness until now. 10 The one who loves his brother and sister remains in the Light, and there is nothing in him to cause stumbling. 11 But the one who hates his brother or sister is in the darkness and walks in the darkness, and does not know where he is going because the darkness has blinded his eyes. (NASB)
Key Takeaways:
- This section shows how Christian love is affected by light and darkness. A Christian who is walking in the light (simply meaning obeying God) is going to love their Christian family
- What is true in Christ ought to be true in each believer. Two ways of life are contrasted: those who walk in the light practice love; those who walk in the darkness practice hatred. The Bible repeatedly emphasizes this truth.
- To walk to love other Christians means to treat them the way God treats them—and the way God treats us
Closer Look:
Verse 7: Verses 3–6 introduce the issue of obedience, though it was surely implicit also in 1:5–10. But John’s insistence on obeying God’s commands as a test of one’s personal intimacy and knowledge of Him leads to a natural question: Which commands did John have in mind? The answer is offered here. John did not have in mind some new obligation which his readers had never heard. On the contrary the “command” foremost in his mind was an old one, “which you have had from the beginning” (cf. 2 John 5). No doubt John thought here especially of the command to love one another (cf. 1 John 2:9–11). He emphasized his point by adding that this old command is the word or message (logos, literally “word”; cf. 1:5; 3:11) “which you have heard” (the majority of mss. add again “from the beginning”).[2] Whatever innovations the readers might be confronting because of the doctrines of the antichrists, their real responsibility was to a commandment which they had heard from the very start of their Christian experience (cf. “heard” and “from the beginning” in 1:1; 2:24; 3:11). John’s affectionate concern for them is seen in his use of Agapētoi, literally, “Beloved.” He used the same word in 3:2, 21; 4:1, 7, 11 and Agapēte (“Beloved”)in 3 John 2, 5, 11.
The amazing thing is that Christian love is both old and new (1 John 2:7–8). This seems to be a contradiction. Love itself, of course, is not new, nor is the commandment—that people love God and each other—a new thing. Jesus Himself combined two Old Testament commandments, Deuteronomy 6:5 and Leviticus 19:18, and said (Mark 12:28–34) that these two commandments summarize all the Law and the Prophets. Loving God and loving one’s neighbor were old, familiar responsibilities before Jesus ever came to earth.[3]
In what sense, then, is “love one another” a “new” (1 John 2:8) commandment? Once again we see looking at the Greek helps to answer the question.
The Greeks had two different words for “new”—one means “new in time,” and the other means “new in quality.” For example, you would use the first word to describe the latest car, a recent model. But if you purchased a car that was so revolutionary that it was radically different, you would use the second word—new in quality. (Our English words “recent” and “fresh” just about make this distinction: “recent” means new in time, “fresh” means new in character.)[4]
The commandment to love one another is not new in time, but it is new in character. Because of Jesus Christ, the old commandment to “love one another” has taken on new meaning. We learn in these five brief verses (1 John 2:7–11) that the commandment is new in three important ways: it’s emphasis, example, and experience.
Verse 8: Yet Jesus had called that commandment “new” (John 13:34) and John pointed out that it had not lost its freshness. It is really still “a new command” and its truth is seen in Him and you. This last assertion seems to mean that the command to love came to realization first in Jesus Himself and then in His followers. The next phrase, “because the darkness is passing away and the true Light is already shining,” is best related back to the claim that he was after all writing a new command to them. His point was that the command to love (which Jesus and His followers exhibit) belongs to the new Age of righteousness which has begun to dawn. It does not belong to the old Age of darkness which was passing away. Christ’s Incarnation brought a light into the world which can never be extinguished. The love He manifested and taught His disciples to manifest is a characteristic of the Age to come. It is the darkness of the present world and all its hatred which is destined to disappear forever (cf. 1 John 2:17a). In speaking this way, John gave to the terms “light” and “darkness” a slant differing slightly from what they had in chapter 1. There light was defined in terms of the fundamental character of God (1:5). In that sense, the light has been shining as long as there has been a revelation of God to man. But here John wrote of the Incarnation in particular as the point at which the light began to shine. The new Age has dawned and its true character can now be defined in terms of the special revelation God has made of Himself in His Son. And above all, that revelation is a revelation of divine love.
The new commandment of verses 7 and 8 is love as the Lord commanded it in John 13:34 and 15:12: “This is My commandment, that you love one another, just as I have loved you.” In one sense it’s old, Leviticus 19:18. What does Leviticus 19:18 say? “…but you shall love your neighbor as yourself” (NASB). Again, love your neighbor as yourself. In one sense it is an old commandment, in another sense, it is new in its degree, character, and quality. Also, it has a whole new emphasis because love as Christ loved us. In verse 8, the pronoun which looks at the command is given in John’s Gospel. Verse 8 says this, “On the other hand, I am writing a new commandment to you, which is true in Him…” and so on. That’s not the hard part. Let’s see what is next, “On the other hand, I am writing a new commandment to you, which is true in Him and in you, because the darkness is passing away and the true Light is already shining.” Just as the world is seen as passing away in 2:17, so also is darkness in verse 8. In light of the apocalypse, which is yet to come, this is an amazing assertion. Despite increasing iniquity, the light will overcome the darkness.
Let’s move down to verse 18 to illustrate this. “Children, it is the last hour; and just as you heard that antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have appeared; from this we know that it is the last hour.” The words “is coming” is present tense. Obviously that’s the future. “Just as you heard that antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have appeared.” So what I am getting at is the present tense can be used of the future. That is not an uncommon thing in Greek. It’s called the futuristic use of the present tense. That is what you have in verse 8 when John says, “Darkness is passing away and the true light is already shining.” I think John is saying that darkness will pass away and the true light will shine. And you say, “The darkness is passing is way and good night because I have to get my stuff in order. We got the Book of Revelation! Then the time of tribulation to follow.” However, that signaling horn will not honk so it must be saying that darkness will pass away and the light will shine in the future. Probably it is a futuristic present is what I am getting at. The light probably is the gospel of Christ and so on.
Verse 9: It follows that anyone “who says that he is in the Light and yet hates his brother or sister is in the darkness until now.” This warning is intended for Christians as the words “his brother” plainly show. An unsaved person can indeed hate a brother (or sibling) of physical kin, but since the person has no spiritual kin, the person cannot really hate “his (spiritual) brother.” If John thought that no Christian could hate another Christian, there was no need to personalize the relationship with the word “his.” But the opinion, held by some, that a true Christian could never hate another Christian is probably not accurate and is contrary to the Bible and experience. Even so great a man as King David was guilty of murder, which is the final expression of hate. John was warning his readers against a spiritual danger that is all too real (cf. 1:8, 10). And he was affirming that a Christian who can hate his fellow Christian has not genuinely escaped from the darkness of this present passing Age. Perhaps the term brother is used in verse 9 John is not saying it cannot be true of believer. John is not saying a believer would never do this but this is a practice, this is exactly what the dualist would do. The dualist would say, “I’m walking in the light” then they hate a person who makes profession of the faith. To put it another way, the believer has much to learn about God and cannot legitimately claim an intimate knowledge of Christ. If the believer really knew Christ as they ought, the believer would love their sibling.
Verses 10–11: By contrast, whoever “loves his brother and sister remains in the Light” of the new Age which has dawned in Christ (cf. v. 8). “There is nothing in him” (in one who loves his brother) “to cause stumbling.” Hatred is a kind of internal “stumbling block” which can lead to disastrous spiritual falls. But the calamities to which hatred leads are avoided by one who loves his brother.
This is not so, however, for one who hates his brother. Such a person “walks in the darkness, and does not know where he is going because the darkness has blinded his eyes” (cf. v. 9). A Christian who harbors hatred for a fellow Christian has lost all real sense of direction. Like a man wandering aimlessly in the dark, he faces potentially grave dangers.
[1] Warren W. Wiersbe, The Bible Exposition Commentary, vol. 2 (Wheaton, IL: Victor Books, 1996), 485.
[2] John F. Walvoord and Roy B. Zuck, Dallas Theological Seminary, The Bible Knowledge Commentary: An Exposition of the Scriptures, vol. 2 (Wheaton, IL: Victor Books, 1985), 889–890.
[3] Warren W. Wiersbe, The Bible Exposition Commentary, vol. 2 (Wheaton, IL: Victor Books, 1996), 486.
[4] Ibid.