Meditations on the Word: 1 John 2: 7-11

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. 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. (1 John 2: 7-11)

This is one of the most convicting and troubling passages so far in 1 John for me. I know the lingo, I affirm the core truths, I can argue theology all day long, I can teach and preach reasonably well. But loving my brother? That doesn’t come easily to me. How great it is to have someone praise a sermon or to make a solid argument in a theological discussion. The applause and adoration of man is a seductive elixir. Loving you’re your brother? Done properly and no one is going to applaud or say amen. You probably won’t get any credit for it and that is what makes it love. The Bible is clear that we don’t get salvation points for our own good works but that regardless of that our good works are still required. How weird is that? What is the point of self-sacrifice if it doesn’t change my eternal destiny? Plus it is hard to be Biblically loving. Really, really hard.

No Christian that I have ever met is as loving as he ought to be toward his brother just as no husband loves his wife as Christ loved the church (Eph 5:25). The standard is a pretty high one:

But when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together. And one of them, a lawyer, asked him a question to test him. “Teacher, which is the great commandment in the Law?” 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. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the Law and the Prophets.” (Matt 22: 34-40)

Can I get a cyber show of hands from anyone who loves God with all of your heart and soul and mind? How about those who truly love their neighbor or anyone else as much as they love themselves?

Here is the rub. We are not given the option of throwing up our hands and saying the standard is too high, so I am going to just ignore it. Jesus said that those two commandments, loving God and loving our brother are the foundations on which all of the Law and Prophets depend. Think about that!

We must love our brothers and if we don’t, we are still in the darkness. Period. It is categorically false to say that you are a Christian who hates his brother. It can be easy to be blinded by everything out there, even things that are worthwhile endeavors. We can get blinded by church, by study, by worship, by distinctive, by apologetics, by good works and in doing so forget to simply love one another in fact and not just in confession. Ultimately it is about love. All the confessions in the world won’t suffice. Hours of expository preaching won’t suffice. Complaining about the traditional, institutional church won’t suffice. Nothing we do means much if it isn’t done in love. In the next chapter John is going to get even more explicit as he describes people who don’t love their brothers.