1 John
1Jo 2:7-11 - Old or New, what is it?
by Joe Holder
Brethren, I write no new commandment unto you, but an old commandment which ye had from the beginning. The old commandment is the word which ye have heard from the beginning. Again, a new commandment I write unto you, which thing is true in him and in you: because the darkness is past, and the true light now shineth. He that saith he is in the light, and hateth his brother, is in darkness even until now. He that loveth his brother abideth in the light, and there is none occasion of stumbling in him. But he that hateth his brother is in darkness, and walketh in darkness, and knoweth not whither he goeth, because that darkness hath blinded his eyes. (1Jo 2:7-11)
For the casual Bible reader, this would not be a good time to say God didn't write the Bible in "double-speak." But for the more thoughtful reader it should bear repeating. Whenever you find a Bible lesson in which similar terms are so carefully weighed and bantered back and forth, stop and pay attention. The writer (indeed, the Writer, the divine Author of Scripture) wants to capture your undivided attention. Ancient writers frequently used paradox to force the reader to think through ideas presented.
Actually this lesson contains strong evidence that John's original audience was Jewish believers. God gave their forefathers the Decalogue, the Ten Commandments, the "old commandment which ye had from the beginning." In the Old Testament we also find these ten words or laws condensed to two general principles, loving God and loving your fellowman. The first four commandments focus on our relationship with God. The final six focus on our relationship with our fellowman.
This glorious simplification of God's Law fits beautifully in John's writings here. He confronts Doectic gnosticism's grave error and its claim to superior knowledge. He charges its advocates with empty claims to Christianity without the traits required of authentic Christian conduct. Their mystical knowledge sought to complicate God and His laws so that only they and their initiated followers could practice it. John makes simplicity, not complexity, the superior mark of true Christianity.
Moses' Law taught love for one's neighbor; Jesus taught love for one's enemies! The two teachings do not contradict. John's audience had lived under the Mosaic code, their "old commandment," which they had from the beginning. Now they receive it from Christ in a fresh vibrant form, the "new commandment." In fact the old and the new were the same.
John loves to contrast darkness and light in his writings. Here he offers clear insight into his meaning with these two metaphors. No matter what you say, hate your brother or sister, and John says you live in the dark. And if you love (actions not words, remember) your brother or sister, John says you live in the light. Western culture has corrupted the Biblical idea of love. We speak and write of "falling in love" and "falling out of love." We refer to a sentimental attachment and say how much we "love" someone. We "love" a certain food or a good movie. We equate love with emotion and things that satisfy our appetite for pleasure. Tell a person that Biblical love has no reference to how you feel but to how you act, and you can expect their eyes to glaze over in confusion. We can't grasp love as action apart from our emotional sentiments. It just doesn't compute with us.
In the verses just prior to our study lesson John equates knowledge of God and His commandments with assurance. The natural question arises. Knowledge of which commandments did he have in mind? Is he implying something new? The gnostics claimed a higher knowledge not available to others. John demonstrates the exact opposite perspective for Biblical Christians. This knowledge refers to God's old original commandments, albeit presented and exemplified in a refreshing new way, the personal life of Jesus Christ.
Christ's incarnation introduced a light into the world that will never be extinguished. His followers have the opportunity to bask in that light to the extent they will follow Jesus and His example in the trenches of their ordinary lives. This course will transform an "ordinary" life into a bright shining life that glorifies God. John considers it far superior to superficial and arrogant claims of superior knowledge apart from the Christian walk.
He that loveth his brother abideth in the light, and there is none occasion of stumbling in him. This verse requires a constant state of action. The moment we allow hate toward our brother to enter our minds we draw the shades over our minds, shutting out the light. If you fully spell out the verb tense, the passage would read, "He that keeps on loving his brother keeps on abiding in the light...". Here we see the crisp distinction between our Western concept of sentimental emotional love and the Biblical concept of love as action. Sentimental emotions ride a roller coaster up and down. The love of which John writes appears as a constant. It remains the same.
There are always consequences to our conduct. We cannot escape them. John qualifies the constant of love in action with a double consequence. There is none occasion of stumbling. To the extent we maintain the constant of love in action we maintain ourselves in the light where we see things more clearly. The moment we allow hate to darken our minds we shut down our vision, our clear perception. Stumbling and a painful fall will surely follow.
John's use of the term brother emphasizes his intended audience as Christians. Can a Christian actually hate his brother? Apparently John thinks he can. But a Christian who hates his brother gives comfort to the enemy and shuts himself off in darkness where he will increasingly lose his keen spiritual judgment and begin to stumble and fall where he should walk with upright integrity. Such a believer has much to learn about God and about the Christian life. If he truly followed Christ, he would love his brother, not hate him. In loving God's children through our actions we stand in the clear light. We have a compass in our hands, and we face a clearly marked pathway before us. We travel that pathway with confidence and assurance that we walk with God in a way pleasing to Him. When we hate our brother or sister, we shut down the light, throw away the compass and look to no avail for the pathway we should travel. We jump this way, then that. We stumble over pebbles instead of climbing mountains with God.
The Life Change Series offers this comment about the character of the kind of love John defines in this lesson. "While the other loves are based on warm feeling, ????? is 'an intelligent, purposeful attitude of esteem and devotion,' 'a selfless, purposeful, outgoing attitude that desires to do good to the one loved.' 'In secular Greek it represented a love in which the mind analyzes and the will chooses the object to be loved. Thus it is not a term wholly given to emotion, but it involves the whole man, emotions, intellect, and will. ????? is a deliberate, free act that is the decision of the subject rather than the result of unbidden, overpowering emotion.'"
We live in an interesting era of Christianity. In the first and second centuries gnosticism challenged Christianity at its heart. Because of robust thinking Christians who recognized the danger of this error and exposed it, along with John, Christianity defined itself as distinct from this error. It survived in its own right and in its pure form, not fatally compromised by a synergistic union with gnostic error.
Today we see the New Age movement flourishing in our culture, and most Christians don't have enough knowledge of it to understand what it teaches, much less take it on intellectually or philosophically and defeat it. We take one-line shots at Shirley MacClaine and her claims to deity, but we don't have the slightest idea what New Age philosophy is about. How can we confront and defeat it if we don't know anything about it? Should we choose to remain ignorant, we will not recognize its more subtle forms when they present themselves as sincere Christian ideas simply stated in modern form. Will we survive this onslaught? Or will it overcome us?
I do not believe God will ever leave Himself without a true witness. But He will not allow His witness to be disgraced by a people too soft and too unconcerned to know Him and His truth well enough to discern and expose error when it knocks on our door. Will we sign up in God's gymnasium and begin a spiritual workout to regain our spiritual muscle? Or will we sit idly by and watch God's enemy overtake us? The answer lies with you and me, not with someone on the other side of the country.
1Jo 2:12-14 - Grand Repetition, Effective Teaching