1 John Devo (NEW)

Good morning brothers! It is once again a pleasure and a blessing to address you all in a morning devo at a TLI course. For our devotional time we are going to be looking at 1 John 2:7-11.

As we have already been learning in this class, one of the first steps to reading any NT epistle is to ask the question who is the original audience, and surprise, that audience is not an American or a Filipino congregation!

In this instance the Apostle John is writing to Christian Jews, as is the case with his Gospel as well. Particularly in reading 1 John, this fact is important as we will see here shortly.

So with the original audience in mind, please turn in your Scriptures to 1 John, and please stand in honor of the word of God to be read today.

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.”

This is the word of God! Please be seated.

There is a lot to unpack here, butt for today I want us to focus on John’s use of light and darkness.

Speaking for myself, my usual reaction to this passage is to see light as righteousness and darkness as evil or sin!

But this can’t be the only explanatin because we look at 2:8 John writes that the darkness is passing away, well we can all attest to the fact that sin has not, and is not passing away even two thousand years later! So light and darkness must mean something else to John.

To be upfront, for John, light is the light of the New Covenant as revealed in the incarnation, death, and ascension of Christ.

Darkness then is the darkness of the Old Covenant sacrificial and temple system. Let’s see how we get there, then discover how that helps us better understand what John is telling his readers, so we can draw applicable applications for us today!

And to get a full understanding of what John means here we will need to look at his Gospel as well, a immensly valuable source for understanding how John writes!

And we see right from the beginning that John mentions light in John 1:4–5 “In him was life, and the life was the light of men. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.”

Light for John is the light of Christ. Particularly, it is the light that shines in the revelation of Christ as the Messiah.

But what does that make darkness? To understand John’s use of darkness we need to go one another step back in our exegesis. As to where we go, will, we need to go back to, “In the beginning….”

When we look Creation account in Genesis 1, which comes first, darkness or light? Well darkness, “for darkness was over the face of the deep…” And then light had to be created.

Well was this darkness, in and of itself evil?

no because when God creates day and night He declares both to be good. But the important thing to grasp here is that darkness came first. In fact, in Jewish reckoning of days, the new day began at sunset, which is why Sabbath begins then and why the Jews needed to take Christ down from the cross before sunset. Darkness begins the new day and daylight ends it. But most importantly, darkness precedes light.

So We know that John is writing to Christian Jews.

We know that the light is the light of Christ revealed in His incarnation, resurrection, and ascension. It is the light of the New Covenant

And what precedes the New Covenant, well the older Mosaic covenant, aka, the Jewish worship centered around the temple and sacrifices. So for John, one role that darkness plays is it represents the Old Covenant practices.

Now understand, the darkness in and of itself is not evil. It is simply the forerunner of the light. the Jews in the darkness of the Old Covenant were where God wanted them, where they needed to be. But when the light of Christ was revealed, when the New Covenant dawned on the Old, the darkness of the Old was replaced by the light. For where there is light, there is no darkness

And when light dawns, the shadows fade away. You see, these Christian Jews that John is writing to, some of them wanted to hold on to the darkness of the old covenant, which would be like preferring the shadow of your wife over the physical presence of her!

But as John states earlier in the letter, you cannot love Christ while holding to the sacrificial laws and ceremonies of the Old Covenant. Christ has arrived! Do away with the shadows!

And so once again, light is the revelation of Christ shining forth, while darkness is the ceremonial laws of the Old Covenant. And we see John use this imagery in his gospel, let me show you two contrasting examples.

In John 3, when Nicodemus comes to visit Jesus, it is not a coincidence that he comes “at night” as he comes as a representative of the Pharisees., aka the Old Covenant religious order  He is to sound out and understand this new light shining upon them. It might be that Nicodemus was afraid as well to approach Jesus, but the symbolism goes deeper than that!

Then, one chapter later, it is again not a coincidence that the Samaritan woman comes to Jesus when… in the middle of the day! And she walks away as a believer, something we should all see coming given the timing of her visit! And notice too, between the story of Nicodemus, and the Woman at the well, is a story of baptism… From the darkness of the Old Covenant, John takes his readers through baptism into the light of the New Covenant!

I could keep going on about the imagery o light in the Gospel of John but we must return to 1 John.

When we return to that statement of John that the darkness is passing away, we see that our understanding of what light and darkness represents holds up!

Because the darkness of the Old Covenant was passing away!

It wasn’t gone completely because the temple still stood and sacrifices where still being offered. But that time was coming to an end And with the destruction of the Temple in 70AD, the sacrifices that defined the Old Covenant where completely abolished by God himself.

Now, lets look at verse 9

1 John 2:9 “Whoever says he is in the light and hates his brother is still in darkness.”

Reinterpreting it in our understanding of light and darkness

“Whoever says he is in the light of Christ, and hates his brother who is also in the light of Christ, is still in the darkness of the old covenant.”

Why would hating their brother mean that these Jewish Christians where still in darkness of the old covenant?

Because the brother they where “hating” was their Gentile Christian brother. And their hatred stemmed from the truth that the Gentile Christians where not commanded to follow and abide by the ceremonial and sacrificial laws of the Old Covenant.

These Jewish Christians where causing division in the body where there should be unity in Christ.

To complete our “new translation” of this passage:

Whoever loves his brother in christ abides in the light of Christ, and in him there is no cause for stumbling. But whoever hates his brother in christ is in the darkness of the old Covenant and walks in the darkness of the old covenant, and does not know where he is going, because the darkness of the old covenant has blinded his eyes.”

Now it could easy to sit back and relax and say, well, we are in the clear! We are in zero danger of going back to the Old Covenant! I have had pork all week and man, is it tasty!!

But really, what is John addressing here?

He is addressing division in the church. A division caused by one sect of Christians drawing the line on makes a believer some other than where Christ has drawn that line.

According to Scripture, your brother is anyone who calls on the name of the Lord Jesus Christ to be saved and looks to Him as their Lord and Savior.

Period

The Jewish Christians still drew the line at Old Covenant ceremonies and John rightly says to them they still walk in darkness if they do that.

Tell me, do we suffer from unity issues because we are too quick the draw the line in a smaller circle than what Christ has?

Do we too readily draw the line of separation between brother and not brother at a Calvinistic understanding of soteriology?

-If you don’t believe in election you are no Christian!

-If you hold to election you trample on the free will of man!

Or maybe closer to home, do we draw the line at belief over the active working of the Holy Spirit?

-If you are cessasionist there is no room in the body of Christ!

-Or if you believe in the continuing public workings of the Spirit I want nothing to do with you!

Do we seek to make our liturgical practices the dividing line?

-High liturgy is the most God honoring way to worship!

-NO, high liturgy is repetitive and not filled with spiritual conviction, you are a papist and hate the Spirit!

Do we sharply and bitterly divide over baptism?

-If you baptize your infants you bring unbelievers into the covenant of faith!

-If you only baptize on profession of faith you are denying the holy infants God has given you!

this brings up an important part of loving our brother, it is not a wholehearted endorsement of everything that everyone believes! Loving your brother means very much confronting them where you think they are wrong! But it does mean loving your brother and not hating and disfellowshipping him!

I am a Reformed, Cessasionist, High Liturigual, Infant Baptizing Christian! And I will debate with any other brother over my beliefs! But, let me emphasize, I can, no, I must do so in love. I can hold to my convictions dearly, and truly believe in the wrongness of a baptized brothers beliefs, but I must do so without hate in my heart and anger towards his congregation because despite these differences, he is my brother in Christ.

And these are just examples of division that threaten the body of Christ outside of a local church body.

Do divisions in your own body threaten it where unity should reign?

Are people excluded because they listen to the “wrong person”

Is a brother shunned within your church because he refuses to outright condemn another Christian brother with whom their may be disagreements but nothing rising to heresy?

Is absolute conformity with the statements of a leader demanded as entrance to inclusion and justification within the body?

All these are drawing the line of fellowship where it should not be drawn! If this is where you are drawing the line of Christian love then you are clinging to a new darkness, not one stemming from the Old Covenant, but a darkness of sectarian division. A darkness based off of pride that you know who best to call your brother.

If you are doing this, stop! Immediately! Confess your sin to your brother, ask for forgiveness and go to God! And pray for your heart to be softened!

Do you know of those causing these divisions, harboring hatred towards their brothers! Confront them and call them to repentance!

Brothers, we are brought together by the light of Christ, may the darkness of divisions and hatred be far from us and may our love and unity show to the world around us the manifold wisdom of God as displayed in His church.

I end then with a paraphrase of 1 John

Whoever says he is in the light of Christ, and hates his brother in Christ, is still in the darkness outside of the light. Whoever loves his brother in Christ abides in the light of Christ and in him there is no cause for stumbling.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen!