Last night’s Bible study looked at 1 John 2:7-11, where John continues developing the idea that love is the ultimate identifying mark of the Christian. This commandment to love God and to love each other (Matt 22:36-40) is hardly new, since it is found in Deut 6:5 and Lev 19:18, and has always been God’s intention for mankind. However, in other respects, it is new (a fact recognised by Jesus in John 13:34-35 and reiterated in James 2:8), simply because Jesus is the embodiment of love and demonstrated for us what this love actually looks like. It is new, because, in the unfolding of Christian experience, it has developed new power, meaning, and obligation, and closer correspondence “with the facts of Christ’s life, with the crowning mystery of His passion, and with the facts of the Christian life.”
When following a recipe or understanding a technical engineering drawing, the facts are laid out for us to follow and there should, in theory, be no variation in the end product! But, of course, following a recipe or understanding a drawing depends on personal interpretation and there will sometimes be great variation in the end product. The command ‘love God and others’ can be interpreted in so many different ways by people of different upbringings and personalities that we needed some more objective way to assess this; we also needed to see the utter selflessness of God’s love demonstrated for us (see John 15:9-13).
John continues to reflect on light and darkness, going on to say that if we claim to be in the light but hate our brother or sister, we are actually still in darkness. The ‘true light’ is already shining (see John 1:1-5, John 8:12) – Jesus is the ‘real thing’, not simply a shadow! By His Holy Spirit, He seeks to convict us of our sin and lead us into light. ‘Hate’ here means more than simply ‘not getting along with’ or ‘not liking’: it denotes a deadly intent to harm. (Acts 8:1-3) We should always remember, also, that ‘love’ is a choice, a verb, not a feeling. Love is the identifying mark of the Christian and will be how others will know that we belong to Christ. (John 13:35)