Love and Light

Introduction

Christianity is all about love. That is an entirely true statement. However, we cannot just go around saying it because that can mean anything to people. Some may take that to mean that Christianity is about social politics. Some may take it to mean that following Christ means being accepting of gay marriage and other perversions of our time, leaving behind the very ethics of Scripture to pursue a modern view of love. Love is misunderstood, which is why saying Christianity is all about love needs some explaining.

But at the same time, we cannot back down from the truth of that statement. When God created mankind, he created us to love and be loved by him. When God made Eve out of Adam’s rib, he made her to love and be loved by Adam and to help her husband lovingly obey God, displaying the glory of the divine image they bore into the world.

Without love, there is no knowledge of God, no incarnation, and no Gospel. There certainly is no Christian life without it. The Christian life speaks the language of biblical love when combined with our confession of faith, and no understanding of theology or Christian living is accurate if not based on a biblical grasp of love.

The Commandment to Love

Last week we took a deeper look into what John is talking about when he talks about “Commandment” and “the Word”. We looked at what John means by giving them a commandment that is not new, and yet has a newness to it. The commandment to love God and love your neighbour goes back to the very start of creation. God created mankind to love him, and the kind of relationship we are created to have with God is one of submission, obedience, and worship while experiencing his love for us through providence and fatherly care for us. Loving faithfulness is a foundational part of God’s character, and as his image bearers we are created to love in a similar way to how God loves. The most important thing we can do it grow in our love for God, and if you love God more today than you did yesterday you have made the best possible use of your time and energy. When someone has realizes their role as an image bearer of God, they must embrace the kind of love they see in God as he has revealed himself in his Word. This is what it means to walk in the light, and this is what it means to obey God.

But while loving God is the first and greatest commandment, the second is unavoidably attached to it. Love you neighbour as yourself. As we will see in our text, while loving others cannot be more important than loving God as that would be idolatry, loving God and not loving others, especially other Christians, is impossible. As we continue to read, we begin to see why.

Love in the Dichotomy of Light and Darkness

John has continually described our relationship with God with a dichotomy. You are either walking in the light of who God has revealed himself to be through Jesus Christ, or you are walking in the darkness of ignorance and sin. There is no middle ground or grey area. At this point, John is still expanding on this basic concept of God being light and those who truly know him walk in the light. We’ve expounded on how that is done through loving obedience to God’s commands by emulating his character, but what the second command emphasizes is how living in the light of God’s character extends to how we treat other people. If God is kind to those made in his image, and if he loves his people with a love that motivated the bloody death of Jesus Christ, then the best reflection of God’s character is clear: love the people that God loves. Verse 9 tells us that whoever says he is in the light and hates his brother, his fellow Christian, is still in darkness. Verse 10 then gives us the flip side of this picture of the Christian life in terms of love for others, Whoever loves his brother abides in the light, and in him there is no cause for stumbling.

Once again, John’s famous light vs dark dichotomy comes out with a whole new layer to it. Before this we saw that John has solidified the truth that those who are in the light of God’s truth walk in the light through loving obedience according to what has been revealed through Christ and the through the Scriptures. Now we are being told that walking in the light also involves loving our fellow Christians, bringing us to the obvious conclusion that loving others is now additional to this loving obedience, but is actually part of it.

Defining Love

But what does John mean when he talks about love here? If there is one word in human relationships that has no shortage of definitions it is love. You may have seen gay pride banners saying “love is love” which is as much as to say, love is whatever we want it to be. As Christians, we define love according to how God defines it, which is why it is important to understand what John means when he says “love.”

To get a good biblical definition of Christian love, it is easy to turn to 1 Cor 13 for an accurate explanation. Love is patient, kind, not envious, not boastful, not proud or rude, exhibits faithfulness and hope in its attitude towards other Christians and as long as God’s love doesn’t fail us, neither should our love for each other fail. In that text, Paul is explaining to a church struggling with love what genuine Christian love looks like, but it is important for us to discern what John means in this context and how that gives us even more perspective to Paul’s explanation.

There are two clues in this text that help us discern John’s definition of Christian love. First, the dichotomy he draws between love and hate, leaving no room between the two, which is not how most of us would tend to think of love. Second, the phrase “no cause for stumbling” gives us a clue as to what is entailed in this kind of love.

Defining Hate

First, John draws a black and white contrast between love and hate. From reading these verses, it seems that John doesn’t leave room for a place where you don’t love or hate someone. This means that how John sees hate is maybe a little different than we do. We tend to see hate as intentional enmity and bitterness towards another person. We commonly hear the phrase “hate is a strong word” and John certainly thinks so too, but sometimes we don’t see just how hateful certain actions and attitudes can be. People tend to downplay their sins, and we may downplay things that God sees as hateful as not being so.

What is plain in this text is that hating your brother puts you on the side of darkness, and loving your brother puts you on the side of light. Since John has given no wiggle room in between these two states, it is clear that if you do not love your brother or sister in Christ, you actually hate them according to John. Why is that?

Well think of it like this, we often think of love as something positive and hatred as something negative. Maybe I love my wife with a valyue of +10 and I hate my worst enemy with a value of -10 and everyone else kinda falls somewhere in the middle. If someone is at a value of 0 I don’t love them or hate them, I am indifferent to them. That is not how God defines hatred. Just like cold isn’t really the opposite of heat, but rather the lack of it, hatred in God’s eyes is not the opposite of love but simply the lack of it. Where there is no love, there is hatred. This makes sense when we see what Jesus commands us to do in Luke 14:26

Luke 14:26 ESV

“If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children and brothers and sisters, yes, and even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.

Here Jesus is not asking you to have spite for your family members, rather he is commanding us to withhold a certain love from them that we only have for Christ. The kind of love that holds priority over our lives is not for them, as important as they are to us, it is for Christ. There is a lack of total commitment to anyone else because the only one we can say has our undivided loyalty is Christ.

When we think of hatred as a lack of love, it makes this dichotomy between love and hate make much more sense. It also adds a good deal to what we are called to as believers. Verse 9 is not merely a command to not feel enmity towards another Christian, it is a command to not be indifferent towards them. This text not only describes those who show resentment, but also to those who show indifference to their fellow Christian.

No Cause for Stumbling

The second clue that helps us understand what John means by love in this text is found at the end of verse 10,

1 John 2:10 ESV

Whoever loves his brother abides in the light, and in him there is no cause for stumbling.

This last phrase is interesting. What does it mean that someone who loves his brother has no cause for stumbling? The word translated “stumbling” is where we get the word “scandel” from, but the word in greek means to cause someone to sin and in the New Testament it is always used to talk about being a stumbling block, causing or tempting another Christian to sin. That being the case, loving one another for John means being careful not to set anything in front of another Christian that may cause them to stumble into sin. There are a few ways that this plays out.

First, it means showing the patiance to others that we expect for ourselves. In chapter 1, John showed us how important it is to admit and confess that we, as children of light, still stumble in the darkness, although we do not walk in it. The assumption of love is that other Christians are in the same boat. This means that we should not only be aware of the sins we are prone to and avoiding sinful situations, it also means being aware that others struggle with sins as well and being both gracious and thoughtful as a result. Too often, professing Christians will demand grace for the sin they struggle with and at the same time demand perfection from other Christians. This is not only unrealistic, it is unloving and therefore hateful. Grace that is willing to forego our rights for the sake of the struggles of another brother or sister is how we take other’s sins seriously while at the same time showing affection and love for them.

Second, it means not sinning against other Christians.

Third, it means being available to help other Christians in any way they may need it.

Forth, it means finding the balance between calling out sin and showing grace. Both are equally vital.

Conclusion: Loveless Christianity: Blind in all the wrong ways

Verse 11 ends this short piece on Christian love by repeating the dark state of someone who fails to show love to a brother or sister in Christ and adds that they are not only walking in the darkness, but they are blind to their own state. They certainly think they are walking in the light, and they cherry pick the parts of their life that looks like godliness, but in reality their treatment of other Christians shows where their heart really is. Verse 11 is a reference to John 12:40 which describes the blindness of those that saw the miracles and signs of Jesus and still refused to believe. They are not just blind to what they are doing, they are blind to the truth. John lays it out plainly for us to see, you cannot be a Christian and not care lovingly for other Christians. It is impossible. If you don’t love and invest and commit to your brothers and sisters you don’t understand what the Gospel is all about.

Christ showed us what God is like by being the light of the world, and anyone who has been informed by this revelation will see that God is a God who patiently loves those he has called to be his. It’s not that hate disqualifies you from being a Christian, rather it displays a core misunderstanding about what the Gospel is. You cannot love God if you don’t love those that he loves.

But when love is visibly present in our lives, it is the evident work of Christ in us. Obedience is all about image, it is about making Christ look good by displaying his character in our lives. There is no more effective way that this is done than in our love for one another. Not the mere appearance of love, but one that is genuine and heartfelt, that puts the good and rights of other above ourselves. This displays the genuine love of Christ on the cross dying for those he loved before the foundation of the world to be his. May our church be one known for a love that buts no stumbling block before each other, but rather exemplifies Christ powerfully to a world in desperate need of genuine, godly love.