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A New Commandment | 1 John 2:7-11 (Mark Evans: 12-24-23)
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John is preaching on the topic of love from the book of 1 John. He emphasizes that love for one another is not a new commandment, but an old one that has been around since the beginning. He explains that this commandment is both old and new because it has always been part of God's character, but it is now fulfilled in a new way through the birth of Christ. John encourages believers to love one another as a way of showing that they are walking in the light. He emphasizes that love for others is a manifestation of God's love in us. Now, if you have your Bibles, do grab them and make your way to the book of 1 John as we come now to what is our fourth sermon in this series of this wonderful epistle. And our Scripture reading for this morning will be from 1 John, chapter 2, and we will be looking at verses 7 through 11, 1 John, chapter 2, verses 7 through 11. And these are the words of the God who is light. Beloved, I am writing you no new commandment, but an old commandment that you have had from the beginning. The old commandment is the word that you have heard. 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. Whoever says he is in the light and hates his brother is still in darkness. Whoever loves his brother abides in the light, and in him there is no cause for stumbling. 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. While the grass withers and the flower fades, let us pray. Our gracious God and heavenly Father, we do indeed praise you for the truth that we just read, that your light, the true light is already shining such that the darkness has not overcome it. And so we do pray, Father, that you would give us eyes to see, that you would give us ears to hear, and help us to behold the Lord Jesus Christ once again, to see the King in his glory. And we ask these things in his name, amen. Amen. You may be seated. Well, as it is that time of year when sickness seems to be spreading around, I know for us we've gone to the doctor more than our usual number of visits this time of year. And it's always interesting to see the various tools in the doctor's toolkit as he goes about diagnosing a patient. There's the stethoscope to listen into one's breathing. There's that bright light that they seem to shine right in your eye, in your ears, even up one's nose. I know for me, my least favorite when I was a kid was the giant popsicle stick, the tongue depressor that you somehow have to manage to say, ah, while not gagging as the doctor looks in your throat. But of course, all these tests are just working towards an assessment of health. Is this person, is this patient healthy? What is the diagnosis? You might be able to hear that word, gnosis, in the word diagnosis. That's just the Greek word for knowledge. To diagnose is just to seek after knowledge. We want to know what's going on. What's wrong with us? Are we sick or are we healthy? Well, in many ways, we've seen, and we'll see again today, that is the Apostle John. John wants you to know, to possess a firm knowledge as to your spiritual health. He wants us to have this confidence that we really do belong to Jesus Christ, that we can say, I know him. He is mine and I am his. He really is my advocate. I really am the sheep of his pasture. So let's just remember where we are in John's letter. Indeed, if you haven't been with us, just know that John started us out by saying that he is seen with his very own eyes. The word become flesh, our Emmanuel, God with us. John the Apostle sat at his feet, visibly got to see God incarnate, got to see him resurrected and walking among us. Well, then John connected that truth to ordinary people like you and I, that is people who have not seen God incarnate with their very own eyes. But John said, you can know that you know him if you walk in the light, if you keep his commandments, if you follow in his ways, then you can be assured, even confident, that you belong to Jesus Christ. Just look down at your footsteps. And if your footsteps are following Christ, then you can know that you are walking in the light. Well, today, John continues that same thought, but now he says, look up and look at your brother and your sister. Look at the people sitting around you, because by your love for them, you will know that you're walking in the light. It's very simply a diagnosis of love. It's this test of brotherly affection that reveals God's love in us. That's a very simple question to begin thinking about even now. Do I love my brothers and my sisters? That is, do I actively, willfully, deliberately love my brothers and sisters? Or am I indifferent, lukewarm in my love for others? The Scripture tells us that a genuine love of God always shows itself in a love for the people of God. So we'll walk through this section, looking at this diagnosis of love in three parts, but it's all with a very simple point, and that is to love our brothers and sisters. And when we do so, we can know that we are walking in the light. So let's dive in. Let's see, firstly, John's new commandment that he has for us. This new commandment that in a very real way began the moment that our Savior was born on that Christmas morning. So let's see the nature of this new commandment. As we said last week, don't ever doubt John's affection for the people of God. Last week he used that term, my little children. Well, you see this week in verse 7, he addresses them as, quote, his beloved. Now that is not an empty term of endearment. It's not like in the South where they sometimes say, bless your heart, and really it's just an insult disguised as a blessing. No, John sincerely loves his people, and he wants to bring us into this fellowship of love. Now, perhaps John has Ecclesiastes in mind, though, when he says, there's nothing new under the sun, because first he says, beloved, I write to you no new commandment, as if John says, look, I'm not doing anything innovative here. What I'm about to say is not a press release. It's not original. It's not creative. It's nothing that an Old Testament saint would have been shocked by. John affirms as much in verse 7. He says, what I'm about to tell you is actually, quote, an old commandment that you had from the beginning, because we'll soon see John's just going to tell his beloved children one of the most foundational of Christian commandments, and that is to love one another. Now why is that not a new commandment? Well, you could flip back all the way to the Old Testament, what we read in the book of Leviticus earlier, written thousands of years prior to John. And as we just read from Leviticus, it reads, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord. It's sometimes thought, even taught, isn't it, that with the advent of Christ came a new teaching that was entirely novel, that Jesus uniquely taught his disciples to love one another. This was radically new, never to be found in the pages of the Old Testament. It somewhat underscores that idea that the Old Testament is a harsh religion of wrath and punishment, while the New Testament is upgraded to a religion of love. Well, friends, that is manifestly not true. Our God has always commanded his people to love one another. That's not unique to the New Testament at all. It's given in Old Testament law. In fact, you could even go back prior to Moses, you could look at Cain and Abel, and when they murdered, that's an example of breaking this commandment to love one another. You could even go back to the Garden of Eden and see how Adam's failure was simply a failure to love his wife as himself. God has always commanded his people to love one another. And that, of course, is because that is simply who our God is. I don't want to spoil a future sermon, but perhaps just as a teaser later on, John is going to tell us that God is love. God is love. That's a far stronger statement than saying God is loving, or at certain moments God loves us when he's in the mood for it, or should we have earned his love. No, John says, according to God's unchanging character, in his very essence, the core of who he is, God is love. And it could be nothing other than love. So it only follows that when God created us, when God created you and I in his likeness, he commands us to love. He says, be like me as much as a creature possibly can. And the second best way to do that is to love one another. So this is not new. So John says in verse 7, this old commandment is the word that you have heard, same as it always was. So we have it firmly established. John's not being creative here. And yet if you asked him, John, is your commandment to love one another, is it old or is it new? John would answer, yes. And I know, John, you misunderstood me. I said, is it old or is it new? And he would again answer, yes, to both. You see, in verse 8, he begins to unpack that for us, saying, at the same time, it is a new commandment that I am writing to you. It may seem like the old apostle is now talking out of both sides of his mouth. We might cry out in frustration, John, make up your mind. Is it old or is it new? You can't have it both ways. Pick one or the other. Well, John tells us exactly what he means when he says, yes, it's old, but it's also new. You see, verse 8, he says it's new because the commandment is true in him. Now we do have something truly new. Now for the first time in all of history, love is true in a person. Now undiluted, true, divine love has walked among us. Now pure love has put on flesh, our flesh. The eternal God, who is himself love, gave his son as the Lord of love. That is something truly new. And how is that so? What is it about the advent of Christ that makes this ancient commandment of love fulfilled in a profoundly new way? Well, we could answer that in three simple ways. Firstly, at his birth. The birth of Christ marked the advent of love in a way never before seen in history. As the old poem says, love came down at Christmas. The great Puritan Thomas Watson said that Christ incarnate is nothing but love covered with flesh. That there in the manger lay love embodied. Now why is that? Well, just consider where Christ came from. That he came from heaven above. He left the position of perfect communion with his Father. Just think of what it's like to be in the presence of someone that you truly love and who truly loves you back. That is the smallest glimpse of what it's like for the Son of God to enjoy the presence of his Father. It is untold riches of love. And the Son of God left that wealth to become poor for us. That he took on our flesh, our body, he took on a human soul and a human nature to become like us in every way except sin. He became as poor as poor gets. No doubt you know the phrase dirt poor. How about the phrase human poor? How about manger poor? Kids, don't let any of those cute nativity scenes fool you. Just imagine what goes on in a manger or in a barn full of animals doing what animals do, stinking and smelling up the place. And keep in mind, our Lord is born there because there are no rooms at the Hilton down the road. It is booked. And keep in mind further that Mary and Joseph are then quickly on the run as there's this king who is trying to find their son and destroy their son. King Herod may not have been all that wise, but he was wise enough to realize that this infant king posed an immediate threat to his rule, a direct challenge to the Roman Empire because upon his shoulders would be a government without end and without measure. And so it is into these dark conditions that the God of light descends. We're right to ask why. Why having all these riches would he become so poor? Well, it's no other reason, no other sending purpose than his great love for his people, love for sinners like you and I, that he would come from heaven to earth to bring us from earth up to heaven. And secondly, you see the newness of this commandment, not just in his birth, but in his teaching. And Jesus himself told his disciples, we read it earlier, I'm giving you a new commandment that you love one another. Now again, in and of itself, that is not new. But then Jesus said something that was profoundly new. He told his disciples, just as I have loved you, go and do likewise. You are to love one another. Now that was radically new for Jesus was saying, now that you have seen me. Now that you have come to know the love of all loves, go and do likewise. It's often rightly said, you cannot give away what you do not have. If I do not have money, I can't give away money. If I don't have time, I can't give away time. Fairly obvious. But how much more so? If you don't have any love, you cannot give away love to others. And so our Lord Jesus came and he washed the feet of his disciples and he told them, I leave you with this example. Now go and serve one another. And so we see the newness of this love in his birth, secondly in his teaching, but thirdly, of course, it culminates in his sacrifice. Because Christ did not merely teach his disciples abstract classroom lessons from some ivory tower. No, he was sent by love. He lived this love and he died such love that as he told them, I did not come to be served, but to serve and to give my life as a ransom. There is no greater love than this. And so in light of this, his birth, his teaching, his death. Now we have something radically, profoundly new. So back to verse 8, John says, it is true in him. And you can see that because it is true in Christ, therefore it can also be true in you and I. True for those who are in Jesus Christ, in his disciples. But John's just getting warmed up. It might be tempting if you are there and you're hearing, you're reading this letter from John, you might think to yourself, well, John, easy for you to say. You actually got to see God incarnate. You got to sit at his feet. You got to witness his miracles. But not us, John. I mean, what do we have? All we have is this secondhand testimony. Well, John destroys such a perilous thought. And he tells the ordinary Christian, people like you and I, that we live in the brightest of lights, the best of times, in the fullest of hopes. For you see, he says in verse 8, that the darkness is passing away and the true light is already shining. You've got these two powerful truths. Firstly, that the darkness is fading away. Kids, darkness. It's just a simple shorthand way of saying all that opposes God, all that is against God's kingdom. And John says that darkness is diminishing. Darkness is expiring. Now, maybe you can't but help roll your eyes at that statement. And thinking, well, yeah, maybe John could claim that back then. But oh, if he were around today, he would be singing a much different tune. John was around today to witness this world and see the decay of Christianity, the rise of the sexual revolution, the erosion of Christian ethics, the decline of the church, the radical leftism and perversity of our culture, as we call evil good and good evil. Well, he'd probably revise his statement. He'd probably tone it down a little bit. He'd probably say something more like, no, the darkness is giving us a run for our money. The darkness actually seems to be winning. Well, friends, no, he wouldn't. In fact, he would double down on his statement. He would make us ashamed to even think such a thought. Because you see, his proclamation that the darkness is fading away finds its reality in the counterstatement of verse 8, that the true light has already begun to shine. That true light, of course, is Jesus Christ himself, the light who has come into the world. And as light, he came and he proclaimed, now the ruler of this world is cast out. I have come to bind up the strong man. I have come to defeat the principalities and powers and put them to open shame. That light marked the D-Day of the defeat of darkness. Now, kids, you could have been there and you could have seen the baby Jesus. You could have held up those little feet. Look at those cute little toes, cute little chubby baby feet. And you could have thought to yourself, this is the foot that will crush the head of Satan. And you would have been right. Now, that said, John is not unaware. He knows that evil is real. It's present. And so he says, we can think of this as two overlapping ages. Indeed, there's this present age. It's characterized by darkness and it's fading away. And there's an age to come. And that's already dawned with the advent of Christ. The darkness is fading out. Light is fading in. You probably at home have one of those dimmer switches that you can slowly slide up or down. And as you slide it, the light gets progressively dimmer and dimmer or it gets brighter and brighter. Well, that's what John is saying. The evil is fading out and the light is starting to shine brighter and brighter. That's what John does not call for us naivete. Indeed, when you look out on this world, there is darkness. Let's be clear about that. You can even look within your own heart and see remaining darkness. And yes, nowadays, you don't even have to squint to see it. We have all manner of corruption in the state, sexual deviancy, broken marriages, broken families. We have adultery, abortions, addictions, atheism, and the list goes on and on. But hear John's truth. John is not saying that there is no darkness whatsoever or that you're just imagining it. But you do need to hear him say that whatever darkness you encounter, you need to know it is a fading darkness. It is an expiring darkness. It is a darkness that cannot and will not win. And that is simply because the true light that can never be extinguished has already begun shining. The moment those angels at Bethlehem said, glory to God in the highest, they meant glory to God in the highest. And so with that, in our final section, John says we are to know this in our heart of hearts as we walk it out in our lives. Last week, remember, John left us saying, imitate Christ. Walk in his footsteps. Well this week, John tells us exactly what those footsteps should look like. Quite simply, can we answer the question, do I love my brother or sister in Christ? You see, verse 9 puts forward the test. Whoever says he is in the light but hates his brother is still in darkness. As you know, John does. He starts by confronting man's propensity to deceive himself, for us to lie to ourselves, to trick ourselves. And so he addresses this professing person who says, yes, I am in the light, yet he hates his brother. As Charles Hodge once said, men can be very pious without being very good. Right? How easy to go to church, read my Bible, check all the boxes, and yet have no love. Just be a noisy gong. To that person, John says, you can say that you're in the light all you want to, but you are actually shrouded in darkness. As is said, you can have your own opinions, but you cannot have your own facts. We simply cannot claim to follow the first commandment and love the Lord our God if we do not keep the second commandment and love our fellow brother and sister. You see this at the world at large, that those who would often trumpet love and tolerance and acceptance the loudest are often those the most filled with hatred. Jesus said it best, if even the light in you is dark, how great is that darkness. Even fallen man's best attempts at love are actually shrouded in darkness. That's why if you're here this morning and not a Christian, don't just rush out to love people. No, what you need first is the forgiveness of sins. You in fact need a new heart that loves the Lord thy God so that you can love your neighbor as yourself. That's why John says in verse 11, such a person walks in darkness and does not even know where he is going. I think we can think of the apostle Paul prior to his conversion, how he hated Christians, persecuted Christians, wanted to kill Christians. He was walking in utter darkness, but he wouldn't have described it that way. He could have gone up to Paul, Paul, what are you up to today? And he would have said, well, I'm hunting Christians today because of my great love for God. He was that self-deceived, but then what happened? Then the light bulb goes on and he goes from darkness to light, wrath to grace. He experiences the light of Jesus Christ and then what happens? Well, he starts to say things that are very unlike Paul, estranged things like, I'm so thankful for my brothers and sisters. My love for Christ spills out in love for others. He starts to do the hard things that love demands. He's willing to have hard conversations, to rebuke, to admonish, to encourage. He's willing to endure hardships and suffer for others. He's willing to be imprisoned for his fellow brothers and sisters. At one point, he even says, I am willing to be cut off if it means others get to come in. Now, what can explain this bizarre behavior from the former persecutor, the former terrorist? Well, nothing other than the love of Christ now compels him because indeed, friends, once you have come to know the love of Christ, that love cannot but express itself in love to others. It cannot be bottled up. It cannot be confined. So great is this vertical love that it always goes horizontal. And so John says, if you say that you know God but hate your brother, you are in darkness. Now, you might say, well, I don't possess the kind of hatred that Paul the persecutor had. Or as we say today, we might use the expression, Hitler hated the Jews. And you might think, well, obviously, this test doesn't apply to me. I don't walk around with pathological hatred. I'm a pretty easygoing guy. I'm a pretty laid back kind of gal. Just remember, in Scripture, to hate is often as simple as failing to love, neglecting to love. You can think of that famous proverb that whoever spares the rod hates his child. That's not seething, diabolical hatred. No, it's just hatred in the sense that it fails to do what love demands. And that is John's sense of the word hatred. We can hate our brothers and our sisters simply by failing to love them, serve them, submit to them, build them up, pray for them, and so on and so on. It's when our selfishness issues forth in lovelessness that we have hatred. And so let's see how John encourages us out of that hatred. Verse 10, he says, put on this, whoever loves his brother abides in the light, and in him there is no cause for stumbling. And now just as the word hate is often misconstrued, how much more the word love. There are perhaps few words more mangled, more redefined by our world than the word love. And our current cultural moment to love someone simply means that you endorse, you affirm whatever it is that makes that person happy and fulfilled. Love is a kind of unconditional tolerance. But of course, such a definition is as perverse as it is contradictory to Scripture. We know what love is, and we know more of what love is, simply by God's word. This is why knowing God's word is so important. It gives us rightly ordered loves and rightly ordered hatreds. The word starts to shape us to where we intuitively begin to know. Oh yeah, my father, my father in heaven would love that. Or oh no, I know my father in heaven, he would not like that. I know my father's will well enough to know he would love that and he would hate this. And John proclaims that what God particularly loves is when his people love one another. And it's as Christ himself said, the world will know you're my disciples by your love for one another. My wife was speaking with a non-believer just a couple of weeks ago, and she happened to make this passing comment regarding some of the Christians that she had been interacting with. It was to the effect of, I'm so encouraged by your friends, they're so pleasant, they're so kind, they're so patient, they're so humble. This particular lady happened to work in customer service, and no doubt she's used to rude, arrogant, entitled people. But she said, there's just something different about your people, as though she couldn't quite put her finger on it, but she recognized there's something different, there's something special going on here. And John says, we are called to be that light when we willfully, purposely, faithfully set our minds on loving one another. And when we do that, we can be confident that we are walking in the light. You see, verse 10 does not say that whoever says or claims to love his brother. No, he says, whoever loves his brother is walking in the light. The Christian can have this confidence, this knowledge that the love of God really is being worked out in him or her. And so, Christian, that is a question to lay before yourself. Do I love the family of God? Do my affections run the deepest for those that I break bread with? Because John is not summoning us to a kind of generic, universal, love everyone sort of disposition. Not that he would disagree with that necessarily. But the idea is that from a strong center, from a strong nucleus that goes from the household of God outward is this deep love. And I just hear again the particular word that John uses over and over and over. That of brother. Verse 9, brother. Verse 10, brother. Verse 11, brother. The question is not, do you love mankind? Do you love your brother, your sister? That's the language of the household of God, the family of God, the covenant community, the church, the bride of Christ. As Paul says in Galatians, let us do good to everyone, especially to those of the household of faith. It runs so counter to our modern egalitarian age. This popular idea that I'm supposed to love the guy halfway across the world who I've never met and who I will never meet just as much as I love you. We know that popular mantra, think globally, act locally. John says, think biblically and love brotherly. Friends, our God has made us into the family of God. God has knit our hearts together in love. He has adopted us in Jesus Christ. He has unified us by the spirit. He has brought us out of darkness and into his marvelous light, not merely as individuals, but as the household of God, that we get the privilege to be a living, breathing picture of his great love for sinners. And as we do that, we abide in the light and know that we are the disciples of Christ and the world even knows it as well. Here is the Lord of love who came down to be with us as our Emmanuel. Let us pray. Our gracious God and heavenly Father, we praise you that you are the God indeed who has called us out of darkness and into your marvelous light. We praise you for the truth of what we have read this morning, that you would take us from being sinners to saints, that you would show us the love of God in Christ such that we could truly love one another, that in doing so we could radiate you, the God of light, to the watching world, that we could know that really the Lord Jesus Christ is our shepherd and we are the sheep of his pasture, and that nothing can separate us from the love of God in Christ. We pray that by the power of the Spirit this reality would only grow more and more as we live in the light that never fades and conquers the darkness. In Christ's name we pray, amen.
