1 John 2:7-11 Dear friends, I am not writing you a new command but an old one, which you have had since the beginning. This old command is the message you have heard. Yet I am writing you a new command; its truth is seen in him and in you, because the darkness is passing and the true light is already shining. Anyone who claims to be in the light but hates a brother or sister is still in the darkness. Anyone who loves their brother and sister lives in the light, and there is nothing in them to make them stumble. But anyone who hates a brother or sister is in the darkness and walks around in the darkness. They do not know where they are going, because the darkness has blinded them.
From the beginning of time, from the time of Adam and Eve, we have heard the story of love. John is the apostle of love, reminding us of this commandment of love in the chronicles of the Old Testament and in the story of Jesus and his redemptive power in the New Testament. God was pleased with the man and woman He made. When He finished creating all that is and especially man in his image, He was very pleased: God saw all that he had made, and it was very good. (Genesis 1:31) God loved what He created. He gave man a preeminent position in his creation: ruler over all He had made. Right from the beginning, we see the love of God expressed towards his special creation made in his image. Of course, the story quickly changes as we discover the waywardness of God’s newly created beings. They fail to rule in harmony with God’s will. Adam and Eve fail by disobeying God’s one and only commandment: you must not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. (Genesis 2:17) They learn with that act that they do not have to be subservient to the Creator but could make their own decisions, good or bad. This disobedience creeps into everything that people do. Mankind’s self-willed decisions even break the bonds of love between God and his much-loved creation. Rather than loving God with all their hearts, minds, souls and strength, men and women move towards loving themselves first. Rather than being caretakers of the pristine environment; people exploited the environment for their own temporary good and personal gain. Humans became destroyers of other humans as wars and destruction became the game of life, not God’s attributes of mercy and grace. Restrictions and barriers became part of existence, separating people from one another and requiring laws to determine what is good and bad. Rather than loving others as they want to be loved, men and women became suspicious of everyone, especially anyone who is different from themselves. With all these changes, people began to live in shells of their own making. Because of this lack of love for God and for others, mankind’s history reveals the exploitation of all that is around him, including other men, tribes, and nations. We have a history tainted with blood and destruction; hundreds of millions have been put to death by other men, and the natural environment is stressed to support the will of mankind’s self-interest. Created in God’s image, people naturally know that killing and destruction are not the intention of God for his people. As with Adam and Eve, made to exist in harmony with each other, all that was made was to exist in everlasting love. Nothing was made to experience violence and mayhem; all was made to reflect God’s enduring love for the life that He imprinted in everything on Earth. We must agree with John: Anyone who claims to be in the light but hates a brother or sister is still in the darkness.
Yet I am writing you a new command; its truth is seen in him and in you, because the darkness is passing and the true light is already shining. As John writes this, he now turns his focus to the Christ and the new creation. Jesus came into the world to deliver mankind from the disease of sin and death as He brings in God’s new covenant of grace. A spirit of violence and destruction has led man into a caldron of eternal damnation. After the contamination of sin, people cannot look to an eternity without judgment. Mankind was under the wrath of God, for the cancer of sin was a threat to the existence of everlasting goodness and harmony in the universe. Consequently, an eternal extraction of sin was necessary, and this came in the form of God sending his own son in human form: Jesus Christ. Jesus possessed all the likeness of God. Jesus said, If you really know me, you will know my Father as well. From now on, you do know him and have seen him. (John 14:7) He obeyed God in everything. He became a living propitiation for our waywardness from God, correcting the vileness of sin in mankind by becoming a perfect sacrifice for the sinful nature of men and women. If we die with him at the cross by faith, we will live eternally with him by that same faith. As Christ was raised from this earth, caught up in the clouds to be with God, we too will be caught up to meet God. This is THE TRUTH, embedded in the teachings and works of Jesus Christ. John says the darkness is passing. Before Jesus, no permanent solution was found for man’s condition of sin. But Jesus brought light into the world: everlasting light, God himself. In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning. Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made. In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it. …The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world. He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. Yet to all who did receive him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God—children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God. (John 1:1-6; 9-13) Now Jesus is the light of God, the image of love, personifying everything that God is, as the perfect representation of God. If you know Jesus, you know God. If you hear the voice of the Holy Spirit inside of you, you hear the voice of God. The new creature, birthed by faith in Jesus Christ and his works, has the relationship with God that God intended for Adam and Eve. In his life, Jesus demonstrated so much love and goodness that He willingly obeyed his Father, going to the cross for a sinful creation. In his teachings, He even announced that humans should love everyone as God loves everyone, sending the benefits of the sun and rain on the good and the evil. Even after Noah’s generation was destroyed because of their violent and unloving nature and actions, God repented of this destruction. He decided to allow mankind to exist even though their intentions were evil, not merciful or harmonious with God’s creation. We see this same enduring love in his design not to eliminate Cain’s biological existence. Out of his love for Cain, He allowed the murderous Cain to continue with life and with propagating, even though he killed a human made in God’s image. Cain was doing the exact opposite of God’s nature. God continued to send his sun and rain on Cain and his progeny. The command of loving God and your neighbor has always been God’s desire for mankind. John presents Jesus as the fulfillment of God’s desire for man. Love with the concomitant eternal life is the message of Jesus Christ. To fulfill all of the commandments, to be like God, to be one with him, we must follow Jesus’ command: Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. And secondly, Love your neighbor as yourself. (Matthew 22:37&39)
When we fail to love; we are walking in darkness. If we claim to know Jesus, claim to be his followers, and then walk in hatred, bitterness, and anger towards others, God is not in us. These attitudes have nothing to do with God. With a true metamorphous from the old man and his nature to the new man born IN CHRIST comes an abundance of love. We cannot say we know God and his nature if we fail to love others, even our enemies. But anyone who hates a brother or sister is in the darkness and walks around in the darkness. They do not know where they are going, because the darkness has blinded them. We have no right to judge our brothers and sisters, but we might look askance when they speak evil of others, even with malice towards destroying their enemy. When we move into that domain of evil, there is no ending to what we might do to others who do not look like us or believe as we do. What a dangerous position to be in, for we are saying we can hurt or destroy others that God made in his image. We are then shaking our fists in God’s face, telling him we do not need to love those we consider unlovely. The Old Testament law was a schoolmaster to bring us to Christ. God dealt with people on the playing field we designed. Since we were violent, God used violence to control people. But violence only leads to violence, as we can see in the accounts presently before us. Men will go to war because of something that happened maybe 400 years ago, seeking revenge for something that happened to their ancestors. This is the playing field that flesh believes is satisfying and corrective. But Jesus came into our lives, talking about forgiveness, mercy and grace. We may accept these attributes for the ones who reciprocate the same things to us, but for those who have an evil intent towards us, our flesh tends to desire destruction or punishment for them. Jesus personified God’s love. He went to the cross willingly without complaint to rescue men and women from their violent nature. If we walk in darkness, we have lost our direction toward goodness. Neither do we understand that the light of God has come into our existence in the form of Jesus Christ. Darkness has blinded the people of God in so many ways. Every day, we need to turn to the true light of the world, Jesus. Let us be lights, not dispensers of darkness. We must point to God, not deliver even more confusion to a dark and sinful world.
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