1 John 2

⁷ Beloved, I am writing you no new commandment, but an old commandment that you had from the beginning. The old commandment is the word that you have heard. ⁸ At the same time, it is a new commandment that I am writing to you, which is true in him and in you, because the darkness is passing away and the true light is already shining. ⁹ Whoever says he is in the light and hates his brother is still in darkness. ¹⁰ Whoever loves his brother abides in the light, and in him there is no cause for stumbling. ¹¹ But whoever hates his brother is in the darkness and walks in the darkness, and does not know where he is going, because the darkness has blinded his eyes. ¹² I am writing to you, little children, because your sins are forgiven for his name’s sake. ¹³ I am writing to you, fathers, because you know him who is from the beginning. I am writing to you, young men, because you have overcome the evil one. I write to you, children, because you know the Father. ¹⁴ I write to you, fathers, because you know him who is from the beginning. I write to you, young men, because you are strong, and the word of God abides in you, and you have overcome the evil one.

I recently finished reading a biography of J. Heinrich Arnold entitled Homage to a Broken Man. I can honestly say it was one of the more powerful and beautiful books I have ever read. J. Heinrich Arnold was the son of Eberhard Arnold who founded the Bruderhof in Germany in the first half of the twentieth century. The Bruderhof, which is still in operation in various branches in the United States and around the world, began as an intentional effort at living out the Sermon on the Mount and teachings of Christ in the world. The story follows the ups and downs of the Bruderhof community with special focus on J. Heinrich Arnold and his family.

At a certain point, Heinrich and his wife are sent to lead the Woodcrest Bruderhof community in Rifton, New York. The Bruderhof community they were coming from (at “Primavera” in Paraguay) had been torn by dissension and strife and Heinrich himself had suffered a great injustice there. What the Arnolds encountered in Woodcrest was quite different.

One thing that struck Heiner and Annemarie almost daily was how straightforward people were at Woodcrest. Not always and not everyone, to be sure; but still, there were none of the intrigues and decades-long grudges that had come to poison Primavera. Instead, there was an insistence on open, honest relationships, and people took literally the “First Law in Sannerz,” a brief house rule Heiner’s father had composed in 1925: There is no law but love. Love is joy in others. What then is anger at them? Words of love convey the joy we have in the presence of our brothers and sisters. It is out of the question to speak about another person in a spirit of irritation or vexation. There must never be talk, either in open remarks or by insinuation, against any brother or sister, or against their individual characteristics – and under no circumstances behind their back. Gossiping in one’s family is no exception. Without this rule of silence there can be no loyalty and thus no community. Direct address is the only way possible; it is the brotherly or sisterly service we owe anyone whose weaknesses cause a negative reaction in us. An open word spoken directly to another person deepens friendship and will not be resented. Only when two people do not come to an agreement quickly is it necessary to draw in a third person whom both of them trust. In this way they can be led to a solution that unites them on the highest and deepest levels.[1]

The “First Law in Sannerz” is a compelling statement about the need for us to show love to one another. Of course, love might also be considered the first law of Christianity, or, we might more accurately say, love is the first and second law of Christianity. Recall the words of Jesus to the Pharisees in Matthew 22.

³⁴ But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together. ³⁵ And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. ³⁶ “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” ³⁷ And he said to him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. ³⁸ This is the great and first commandment. ³⁹ And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. ⁴⁰ On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.”

Jesus said that the first and second greatest commandments were the basis for “all the Law and the Prophets.” That means He was telling the people something they already ostensibly knew for it undergirded all that they had already been taught…yet it was something they did not really know. It was, in other words, and old commandment and a new one.

In 1 John 2:7-14, John fleshes out this idea of the importance of the commandment of love in ways both poignant and life-changing.

The command to love is old but is newly understood because of and through Jesus.

John begins this passage by reflecting on the old-but-new dynamic of the command to love.

⁷ Beloved, I am writing you no new commandment, but an old commandment that you had from the beginning. The old commandment is the word that you have heard. ⁸ At the same time, it is a new commandment that I am writing to you, which is true in him and in you, because the darkness is passing away and the true light is already shining.

The command to love is, John says, “an old commandment that you had from the beginning.” Let us remember Jesus’ statement following His giving of the first and second greatest commandments in Matthew 22.

⁴⁰ On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.

The command to love is present throughout all that God had already said and done to and among Israel. It is the foundation of all of His divine acts. Furthermore, the command to love others was spelled out explicitly in the Old Testament in Leviticus 19.

¹⁸ You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against the sons of your own people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the LORD.

So they had heard this before, this command to love. Yet, in Christ, this old command was new.

⁷ Beloved, I am writing you no new commandment, but an old commandment that you had from the beginning. The old commandment is the word that you have heard. ⁸ At the same time, it is a new commandment that I am writing to you, which is true in him and in you, because the darkness is passing away and the true light is already shining.

In what sense is it new? It is new because it “is true in him and in you” (v.8). That “in him” is crucial. The “him” is Jesus. What John is saying is that the command to love is rooted in the person and actions of Jesus Christ. Furthermore, since we are “in him” we can now conceive of it in a new way. Paul also used this language of “old” and “new” and “in him” in 2 Corinthians 5.

¹⁷ Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come.

And yet, it is not merely that being in Christ allows us to conceive of this command in a new way. It is also that those in Christ are empowered to fulfill the command in a new way. D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones’ reflections are helpful at this point.

            But though it is in that sense an old commandment, it is also a new one in that it is possible now in a way that it was never possible before. The Lord Jesus Christ, by coming into this world and by doing what He has done has made this old commandment in a sense a new commandment because there is a new possibility connected with it. John puts it like this: “Again a new commandment write I unto you, which thing is true in him and in you.” “This thing,” says John, “which I am now emphasizing has been realized in Him and in you. Look at the people in the old dispensation. They had this command to love, and yet they found it very difficult. But in the Lord Jesus Christ we see it fulfilled and carried out. The Lord Jesus Christ has fulfilled the law of God. He loved men and women in the sense that the Old Testament meant; it has been realized in Him, and it is true in Him.”[2]

In other words, we can now fulfill this commandment because it has been realized in Jesus. It has been accomplished in Jesus. Christ has fulfilled the command to love and we who are in him can fulfill it now by and through His strength.

Jesus becomes therefore both the interpretive key and the enabling key of this passage. In his Sanctorum Communio, Dietrich Bonhoeffer put it in these terms:

Nor do we really know what love is from the dangers of war, the sacrificial death of our brothers, or from personal experiences of love shown to us; we know love solely from the love of God that manifests itself in the cross of Christ…[3]

Would you learn to love? You will never do so outside of Jesus. He is the path to love.

If we do not love, we are not followers of Jesus.

But this does not mean merely that Jesus has now opened up new possibilities for us. Love, for the believer, is not a possibility. It is a necessity.

⁹ Whoever says he is in the light and hates his brother is still in darkness. ¹⁰ Whoever loves his brother abides in the light, and in him there is no cause for stumbling. ¹¹ But whoever hates his brother is in the darkness and walks in the darkness, and does not know where he is going, because the darkness has blinded his eyes.

Your actions can negate your confession. A lack of love weighs more than your creed. To say you are “in the light” but to hate your brother is to prove that you remain in darkness. In the 6^th century, Caesarius of Arles wrote:

If a man hates his brother, he walks in darkness and does not know where he is going. In his ignorance he goes down to hell, and in his blindness he is thrown headlong into punishment, because he withdraws from the light of Christ.[4]

We cannot claim to be in Christ if we do not love. To be in Christ is to show the love of Christ. Love is the greatest evidence that we have been born again. Even so, in our day we must raise a warning about what this does not mean. To say that love is the greatest evidence of being a follower of Jesus is not the same thing as saying that those who love always are followers of Jesus. I appreciate and agree with the caution given by Marianne Meye Thompson when she wrote:

            We must guard against a serious misinterpretation of verse 10 at this point. Whoever loves his brother lives in the light can be construed to mean that anyone who genuinely loves others is in fact walking in God’s light. But that view misses two important items. First, it takes into account only one of the epistle’s “tests of life.” Confession of Christ provides another important boundary of the realm of light (2:22-23; 4:2; 5:5-8). Second, it fails to consider adequately the historical situation of the epistles. Against the backdrop of a specific problem and situation the epistle reminds its readers of the long-standing command to love each other. The statement whoever loves appears, on the surface, to mean “any one at all who loves.” But the whoever should be taken in a more limited way. It refers to “the one of these two groups,” and has in view specifically those loyal to the Elder, as over against the secessionists. In other words, John asks who truly manifests the love for their brothers and sisters that Jesus commanded, those who have left the fellowship or those who have remained?[5]

This is important for two reasons. First, it takes seriously the historical and literary context of these words. This is something we should always do when interpreting scripture. Second, by linking love to confession of Christ it keeps the notion grounded in Jesus and the gospel and prevents it from becoming a tautology. What, for instance, of those who love love? An historical example might be Dante who, like many other people of his time, were fixated on love as love.

In Bologna and immediately afterward, Dante and Cino each passed at least three sonnets back and forth until sometime in 1306, when Cino was able to return to Pistoia. The poems are personal, affectionate, and literary. Dante grows reminiscent: “I have been together with Love since my ninth year,” he tells Cino, who had asked about how Love and desire might be controlled, “and I know how he curbs and spurts, and how, under his sway, one laughs and groans.” And, in a flash of self-exposure, “He who urges reason and virtue against him acts like one who raises his voice in a storm.”[6]

Or consider St. Augustine’s confession of his earlier intoxication with love.

I was not yet in love, but I was in love with love; such was my inner need that I hated myself for not being more in need. I was looking for something to love, in love with love and hating the safety of a path free from pitfalls…[7]

How very saccharine this is and how much like the modern world’s sentimental view of love! Intoxication with love itself does not mean you have or are demonstrating the love of Christ. That could simply be mere sentimentality or outright lust. Our culture is obsessed with love but seems to know very little about it.

Certainly we must agree that it is possible to love but be outside of Christ. Those who do so do not love as they would love if they understood and embraced the cross, for, as we have said, the person and work of Jesus defines love as nothing else can. But lost people can love others. Does that mean they are believers?

Perhaps we should put it like this: it is possible to love and not be a genuine follower of Jesus but it is not possible to be a genuine follower of Jesus and not love.

Because of what Christ has accomplished for us, we are free to love.

Verses 12-14 may seem to take a different reaction, but I am going to approach them as part of our text. In fact, I think they are speaking of what Christ’s work has accomplished for us and, on that basis, the ways in which are now freed to love.

¹² I am writing to you, little children, because your sins are forgiven for his name’s sake. ¹³ I am writing to you, fathers, because you know him who is from the beginning. I am writing to you, young men, because you have overcome the evil one. I write to you, children, because you know the Father. ¹⁴ I write to you, fathers, because you know him who is from the beginning. I write to you, young men, because you are strong, and the word of God abides in you, and you have overcome the evil one.

You will perhaps notice that your translation has these verses set off as a block quote. Many translations do this. This is because these verses read like liturgical material. That is, they read like an ancient hymn or responsive reading or something that would have been read aloud in church. That is likely the case. Regardless, is a beautiful and helpful series of verses.

Notice, for instance, that John mentions various age groups as well as what has been accomplished for them.

¹² I am writing to you, little children, because your sins are forgiven for his name’s sake.

¹³ I am writing to you, fathers, because you know him who is from the beginning. I am writing to you, young men, because you have overcome the evil one. I write to you, children, because you know the Father.

¹⁴ I write to you, fathers, because you know him who is from the beginning. I write to you, young men, because you are strong, and the word of God abides in you, and you have overcome the evil one.

This is what Christ has done for us! He has forgiven us. He has given us the true knowledge of Christ. He has freed us from the tyranny of the devil. He has given us the true knowledge of the Father. He has made us strong. He has given us His word. He has given us victory.

We are, in other words, now free to be the kind of people that Christ has called us to be. And what kind of people has Christ called us to be but a loving people?

Here again it is helpful to remember not only what we have been freed from but also what we have been free to. We have been freed from sin and its curse. We are now freed to love! We have been freed from the power of petty jealousies and feuds. We are now freed to love! We have been freed from the obsession of self-exaltation and preservation. We are now freed to love!

By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another. (John 13:35)

Let us hear what the Spirit says to the Church.

 

[1] Mommsen, Peter (2015-04-30). Homage to a Broken Man: The Life of J. Heinrich Arnold – A true story of faith, forgiveness, sacrifice, and community (p. 274). Plough Publishing House. Kindle Edition.

[2] Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Life in Christ: Studies in 1 John. (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2002), p.193.

[3] Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Sanctorum Communio: A Theological Study of the Sociology of the Church. Dietrich Bonhoeffer Works, vol.1 (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1998), p.167.

[4] Gerald Bray, ed., James, 1-2 Peter, 1-3 John, Jude. Ancient Christian Commentary on Scripture. Gen.Ed., Thomas C. Oden. New Testament, Vol. XI (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2000), p.181.

[5] Marianne Meye Thompson, 1-3 John. The IVP New Testament Commentary Series. Ed., Grant R. Osborne. Vol. 19 (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1992), p.60.

[6] R.W.B. Lewis. Dante. (New York, NY: Penguin Group, 2001), p.90.

[7] Augustine, The Confessions. Everyman’s Library. (New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 2001), p.45.