Something Old, Something New
Introduction: A strange thing is happening. I’m becoming fascinated with I John. As I mentioned a few weeks ago I entered upon this study with some fear and trepidation, and I haven’t lost that. But at the same time I am in the process of gaining an immense amount of respect for this Apostle who was willing to call it like he saw it—not mincing words, not worrying about whether others are going to agree with him, refusing to compromise his black and white view of Christian morality. Perhaps he could speak as he does because he was in his 90’s and had little to protect other than the Gospel, but whatever the reason, I think we need to listen to him.
We encountered the moral test for the believer’s faith (are we obedient?) in each of the first two chapters of I John. Remember? Verse 6 of chap. 1: “If we claim to have fellowship with him yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live by the truth.” Also in 2:4: “The man who says, ‘I know him,’ but does not do what he commands is a liar, and the truth is not in him.” Today we are introduced to the second major test of Christian faith, the social test (Do we love one another?). Here it is obvious that the Apostle is basing his teaching on what Jesus said was the Greatest Commandment—”to love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength, and your neighbor as yourself.” My goal for us today is to have this “Greatest Commandment” come alive and impact us in a very practical way.
John begins today with a paradox. He says, “I am not writing you a new command but an old one; Yet I am writing you a new command.” The paradox is that this social test for the believer’s faith is both old and new. How is it old?
The social test for the believer’s faith is old. (7).
It is old chronologically. It not only goes back to the beginning of Jesus’ ministry, but back long before the time of Jesus. One can go all the way back to the Torah, where in Lev. 19:18 it says clearly, “Love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord.” When you combine that with Deut. 6:5, “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength,” you have the Great Commandment exactly as Jesus quoted it. So the truth John is conveying is as old as revealed religion. But, secondly, it is also old in their experience.
It is old in their experience. John continues in verse 1, “This old command is the message you have heard.” They were converted under the Gospel message, which can be summarized in the command to love God and one another. Anyone under the false impression that the Gospel is just a string of theological affirmations is sadly mistaken. Jesus never left that impression; the Apostles never said so; in fact, such a notion could have come only from the false teachers who were plaguing the church. The command to love is the heart and soul of the message they heard and believed. Nevertheless, John also acknowledges that …
The social test for the believer’s faith is new. (8)
Verse 8: “Yet I am writing you a new command.” Though the commandment to love is as old as the Judeo-Christian faith, John’s listeners may need to think about love in different categories than they are used to. In what ways, may we ask, is the Great Commandment new? Well,
It is new in emphasis.
It is new in example.
It is new in the extent to which it reaches.
It is new in the lengths to which it goes.
It is new in the degree to which it is realized. (Those last three points are borrowed from James Boice, who in turn borrowed two of them from William Barclay, and I don’t know where hegot them. But they’re helpful, so I’ve included them.)[i]
It is new in emphasis. Love was certainly not absent in the OT period, but it is safe to say that it was not the focus. If there was a focus for God’s people, it was probably on God’s holiness and the need of His people to be obedient to His law. Jesus never lessened the importance of holiness or obedience, but He did place an entirely new emphasis on love in his teachings, and the Apostles followed suit. In fact, they taught constantly on the subject. You’re very familiar with the love chapter, I Cor. 13, but the themes of that chapter are all found in many other places in the NT. A quick glance at a concordance will show literally hundreds of references to love among believers.
It is new in example. Verse 8 goes on, “Yet I am writing you a new command; its truth is seen in him and you.” In the OT the truth about love was taught clearly enough but it was not modeled very well. In Jesus, however, it was modeled perfectly, and John goes on to indicate that some of his parishioners have also begun to model it well.
Turn with me please to the Gospel of John, chapter 13, where we will read a beautiful story about how Jesus set an unimpeachable example of love. “It was just before the Passover Feast. Jesus knew that the time had come for him to leave this world and go to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he now showed them the full extent of his love.”
Then the passage goes on to describe how Jesus, the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, took off his outer clothing and knelt down to wash the feet of his disciples. Now picking up in verse 12:
“When he had finished washing their feet, he put on his clothes and returned to his place. ‘Do you understand what I have done for you?’ he asked them. ‘You call me “Teacher” and “Lord,” and rightly so, for that is what I am. Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed our feet, you also should wash one another’s feet. I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you. I tell you the truth, no servant is greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him. Now that you know these things, you will be blessed if you do them.”
Jesus didn’t just teach love; He modeled it.
It is new in the extent to which it reaches. The OT made it clear that God’s people are to love their neighbors, but Jesus went further by redefining “neighbor” as anyone who needs our compassion and help, irrespective of race and rank. This would have been shocking to many Jewish people, for their rabbis viewed the sinner as a person whom God wished to destroy. “There is joy in heaven,” they said, “when one sinner is obliterated from the earth.” But Jesus was the friend of sinners and taught that “there is joy in heaven over one sinner that repents.” The rabbis taught, “The Gentiles were created by God to be fuel for the fires of Hell.” But in Jesus “God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son.”
In the Sermon on the mount Jesus alluded to this major change of perspective. He said in Matt. 5:43: “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you: Love your enemies.” Love became new in Jesus because he widened its boundaries until there were none outside its embrace.
Most of us, you know, are capable of showing love to those who are lovable. Even that is a challenge at times to our natural selfishness, but we are pretty good at reaching out to those who are like us, those who are successful, those who have something to offer us in return. But Jesus spent the vast bulk of his time reaching out to the poor, the needy, the outcast, and the hurting. There is no doubt in my mind that Jesus would be found today in the AIDS ward of the County Hospital, not at the Rotary Club or in many of our churches. That’s the length to which real love goes.
It is new in the lengths to which it goes. No lack of response, nothing that men could ever do to him, could turn Jesus’ love to hate. The Gospel of John records that “He came unto His own but His own received Him not.” Yet He wept over the city of Jerusalem and instead of calling down judgment from heaven on his executioners he prayed, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
This is the same attitude He calls for us to have. In that same portion of the Sermon on the Mount we quoted a moment ago He went on to say, “Love your enemy and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven.” (Matthew 5:44). That is the length to which love will go.
It is new in the degree to which it is realized. This is indicated in verse 8, where it says, “Yet I am writing you a new command; its truth is seen in him and you, because the darkness is passing and the true light is already shining.” “True” here means “genuine,” and the point is that genuine love is now being seen not only in Jesus but also in those who are made alive in Him as well. The life of Jesus is being lived out in His followers, not perfectly but significantly!
This past week in the current issue of Christianity Today I read an article about Suzan LaBerge, who is the grown daughter of the LaBiancas who were killed by the Charles Manson family 20 years ago. She talked about her bitterness about growing up an orphan and how she dropped out of society, got on drugs, and almost died. But then she met Christ and realized that she would never find healing unless she learned to forgive.
She learned that Charles “Tex” Watson, the murderer of her parents, had become a Christian, and she began to write to him at the prison in San Luis Obispo. After a year she got permission to visit him. She eventually revealed who she was. “I told him I forgave him. By then, we both had tears in our eyes. We held hands to pray together at the end of the visit and I thought, ‘These are no longer the hands that murdered my parents.'” Suzan went on, “I felt so light, so free, and so unburdened. He’s my brother in the Lord.”
So far we have seen that the social test for the believer’s faith is old and it is also new. Third, our passage goes on to indicate that …
The social test for the believer’s faith is essential. (9-11)
A profession of faith without love reveals a life of darkness. Verse 9 reads, “Anyone who claims to be in the light but hates his brother is still in the darkness.” This is the fifth false claim John has dealt with in the first 19 verses of his epistle. Verses 6, 8, and 10 of chapter 1 record false claims about sin in the believer’s life. Chapter 2:4 records a false claim about knowing God. Now in verse 9 another false claim is mentioned. This person claims to be in the light; i.e., he claims to be a believer basking in the sunshine of a relationship with God, but at the same time he hates his brother. Perhaps there is someone in the church he can’t stand, or perhaps he was hurt by someone and can’t quit replaying the scene in his mind with the result that every time he sees that person, he sees red. Maybe it’s gone so far that he has plotted revenge. At the very least he would secretly rejoice if something evil happened to that person.
But lest we try to get ourselves off the hook, it is important to observe that hating one’s brother does not necessarily imply getting red in the face, cussing him out, or threatening him with bodily harm. Biblically “hate” often means simply to “love less.” For example, in Gen. 29:31 we read, “when the Lord saw that Leah was hated, he gave her a child.” Leah was Jacob’s wife, but not his favorite wife. He didn’t hate her; he just loved her less than he loved Rachel. There are many other examples of that usage of the term “hate.” I would suggest that many of the passages which speak of our hating our brother might well be interpreted as meaning to “love him less than we should” or “refusing to show love.” If you’re like me, that’s much more convicting. I have never had much of a problem with active hate. It’s been years since I lost sleep over someone who angered me. But there are many for whom I fail to show love or whom I ignore because I’m too busy.
In verse 10, as is John’s custom, he follows up one statement with its converse. Having declared that a profession of faith without love reveals a life of darkness, he now makes it clear that …
A life of love reveals a life of light. “Whoever loves his brother lives in the light.” In other words, demonstrating love to others is an evidence that the person so living has a life characterized by walking in the light. He is not a phony, not living a lie; rather he is a person of integrity and genuineness. Not only that, “there is nothing in him to make him stumble.” We stumble in the dark, not in the light.
Dr. James Boice makes an intriguing suggestion in his commentary on these verses. He says, “In these verses John introduces the important idea that ‘our love and hatred not only reveal whether we are already in the light or in the darkness, but actually contribute towards the light or the darkness in which we already are.’”[ii] The one who walks in the light has more light day by day. The one who walks in darkness is increasingly darkened. Which brings us to our third point:
A life of hate leads to greater darkness. Verse 11 says, “But whoever hates his brother is in the darkness and walks around in the darkness; he does not know where he is going, because the darkness has blinded him.” There seems to be a progression in this verse. The one who hates, rather than loves his brother is viewed first as “in darkness,” then as “walking in darkness,” which adds the idea of a constant sphere of activity, and finally he is “blinded by the darkness.” When a man has hatred in his heart, his powers of judgment are obscured; he cannot see an issue clearly. It is not uncommon to find a person opposing a good proposal simply because he dislikes the man who made it. We see this constantly in Congress, as a certain segment of legislators feel duty-bound to oppose whatever the President suggests because he’s of the other party, but sadly, it also happens in the church. Barclay put it well when he said, “No man is fit to give a verdict on anything while he has hatred in his heart.”[iii]
Friends, we have received a clear call here to love one another. Please, let’s not view this as just one more item of intellectual understanding. Let’s practice it. If you have hurt someone, say you’re sorry. If someone has hurt you, forgive them. If a hurting person comes across your path, reach out to them and show them the love of Christ.
Now I had some discussion with myself about how to treat verses 12-14. Almost all commentators see these verses as a parenthesis. At first glance it seems to have very little to do with what comes before or after. But I think a more careful examination reveals that John, who unquestionably had a pastor’s heart, adds these verses to soften the blow of what he has written so far. He knows how desperately people need encouragement. If all you do is criticize them and tell them how high the standards are and how poorly they measure up to the standards, the result will not be greater effort but discouragement and apathy. They will not try harder; they will quit trying.
Any good coach knows that. One can keep the highest of standards before the players constantly, but if they aren’t praised for what progress they are making they will often actually retrogress.
A parenthetical word of encouragement (12-14)
It doesn’t take a genius to recognize that verses 12-14 are poetic in their structure. John addresses three groups of Christians twice each. He writes to children, fathers and young men; then he writes to children, fathers, and young men again. Many scholars have agreed, and I see no reason to challenge them, that these three groups represent three different stages of maturity in the spiritual lives of his readers. The children are brand new believers. The fathers are seasoned believers who have achieved an advanced stage of spiritual maturity. The young men are the ones in between, who are energetically engaged in the business of Christian living and who are expected to be the church’s first line of defense in spiritual warfare. If this is a correct interpretation what we learn is that
Those new in the faith enjoy foundational Christian experiences. Look at the two statements addressed to the children: “I write to you, dear children, because your sins have been forgiven on account of his name… and because you have known the Father.” These two spiritual realities are foundational for the Christian life. To know that one’s sins have been forgiven and to have a personal relationship with the Father is where it all starts. John affirms his readers in this regard. He knows that the majority of them have sincerely sought God’s face and he affirms their relationship with God.
On the other hand, the older mature Christians, addressed as “fathers,” are dealt with in a slightly different way in verse 13.
Those old in the faith enjoy a deep communion with God. “I write to you, fathers, because you have known him who is from the beginning.” That statement is repeated exactly in verse 14. The addition of the words “from the beginning” to what has already been said about the new believers, suggests the idea of God’s unchanging faithfulness together with the spiritual trust and wisdom which such knowledge brings.
Those “in between” enjoy victory as they fight the enemy. The author says three things of these people. First, he says they are strong. We might have expected John to encourage them to be strong, but instead he wishes to assure them of that which they have already attained and of the fact that under God they are able to meet Satan’s attacks. Secondly, he explains why the young men are strong—not because they are strong in themselves, but rather because God has made them strong through His Word which is abiding in them. Psalm 119:9 asks, “How can a young man keep his way pure? By living according to your word.”
And thirdly, John tells of the results that come from the fact that the young men have been strong; namely, they “have overcome the evil one.” Victory! That is what is needed. Consequently, believers must not stop with the A, B, C’s of the faith (like the forgiveness of sins and a personal relationship with God); rather they must seek to grow strong so that they may take their proper and needed place in the Christian warfare. John’s readers, on the whole, were on the right track and he wants them to continue.
Conclusion: Isn’t it great how God combines encouragement with careful scrutiny of our lives? He knows how desperately we need hope while undergoing judgment. I think if Christ were here in the flesh today, He would urge us to practice love for one another. But He would also say to many, “Keep on keeping on. You’re on the right track. Don’t give up.”
DATE: September 24, 1989
Tags:
Love
Hatred
Encouragement
[i] James Boice, The Epistles of John, and William Barclay, The Letters of John and Jude.
[ii] James Boice, The Epistles of John, 67.
[iii] William Barclay, The Letters of John and Jude, 49.