WALKING IN THE LIGHT PART 2

What does it take to know God?

English Standard Version Chapter 2

And by this we know that we have come to know him, if we keep his commandments. Whoever says “I know him” but does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him, but whoever keeps his word, in him truly the love of God is perfected. By this we may know that we are in him: whoever says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked.

Last week we learned that a person who claims to have fellowship with God but walks in darkness is a liar.

Today the text revisits this question from a slightly different angle, answering the question, how then do we know that we have fellowship with God? And another way to phrase that is “know God.”

Unfortunately the idea of knowing God is not altogether strait forward. It is part objective, in the sense of we can read about God in scripture, and part subjective in that we each encounter and understand God slightly differently. But whatever the objective and subjective experience of God, John points us to the reality that knowing God results in obedience, which I think has both the inner willingness to act upon our knowledge of God, and the actions themselves.

Here’s why I think both are important. Legalism is doing the right thing because we ought to do it. But the obedience of love, to which we are called, is obedience from a willing heart. And while they may both do the same actions, legalism is a life of drudgery and hypocrisy because you are constantly doing what you don’t want to do! But the heart change that comes with repentance and love for God begins to embrace what God says because God says it not because you are trying to climb a moral hierarchy! This is what Jesus was referring to when he called the Pharisees “white washed tombs” they may look good on the outside, but the inside is full of death and decay. And no wonder! spending your life doing what you don’t want to do sounds pretty rough.

This is life lived knowing what God wants us to do, but not knowing God! To know God is to embrace and trust his character. And that character should shape us so that we manifest obedience.

So immediately this raises some questions:

1. Which commands? We will unpack this more next week, but the command underlying this discussion is love…for now, I think the willingness to be submissive and obedient is the point, in preparation for that later command.

2. What is the difference between keeping his commands and law keeping? (that Paul condemns)

First, I think that it is fair for us to consider how the New Testament generally views the law. Jesus tells us that the greatest commandment is love God and the second is like it—love others. Paul in Romans 13 tells us that love fulfills the law—which is to say that a person who loves their neighbor will not sin against them. At least on some level love drives the action.

By contrast law keeping, is driven by

In the book of John, Jesus gives the command to “love one another.” And also in John 14 connects the idea of love, with obedience, (14: 15) If you love me, you will keep my commandments,

and john 14:23 lays out a connection between love and obedience and God’s abiding presence.

The command to love seems to be the command foremost on John’s mind here, but we will unpack that more later.

And the opposite is also true—if we say we know him and do not keep his commands, we are liars! This links us back to Ch 1: where he tells us that we lie if we claim fellowship with God but walk in darkness. This is a parallel, if not simply restated point. Part of walking in the light is knowing God, and part of knowing God is obedience. Thus I think that we can say people who walk in darkness are marked by disobedience, or a propensity to venture into their own ideas about what is good or bad.

Commandment/word keeping is the key to perfected love.

What is perfected love? Or made complete? a special experience of God’s love due to the Christian being in right alignment with God? or possibly made complete in the sense that this is the destination of God’s love for us and our love for God. The “ideal state” This appears to be love directed at us.

By this we know we are in him—if we abide in him, we will walk the same way he walked.

How do we abide in God? John 15 is instructive here. It is the image of a vine to which we Christians have been grafted. It means that we at our best when we are tapped into God’s word and love. That is when we are focused on God, and working on our connection to him. There is some ambiguity to this, but certainly, if you go through a day without reflecting on godly things. Without praying. Without considering God’s perspective on a situation, you are likely trying to draw sustenance from another source—probably yourself. We are not independent plants! We are branches, and that’s the metaphor of abiding. So the discipline of abiding is that we continually return to God and God’s word as our source. And the more we do this, the more we will act like him, and think like him, and manifest his essence in the world.

How did Jesus walk? The best answer to this might be keeping God’s commands—In love toward others, but also “to do the will of him who sent me and finish his work” John 4:34 Jesus’ walked in obedience.

I don’t want this to be sterile to you, so an illustration of this dynamic is order. Consider a marriage relationship.

No relationship will last long if the individuals in the relationship only think of themselves. No, every relationship requires people to do things that build intimacy. At a minimum, this means time. We must spend time with our beloved, or there is no “abiding” with them. But following Gottman’s lead, another aspect of building intimacy is familiarity—you have to know what your spouse thinks, feels, wants, hopes etc. the good, the bad, etc. The best way to maintain intimacy appears to be sharing your innermost world with your partner. But sharing can become uncomfortably vulnerable, if there is no baseline of trust between the two. And we foster trust in part by understanding the other person’s boundaries and respecting them—this is commandment keeping. Thou shalt not ignore me for ESPN all saturday; thou shalt not immediately attack me with your list of demands when I get home from work, etc. You ignore these requests and boundaries to the peril of the relationship. Indeed the moment that we violate these requests or boundaries, we find that our partners immediately withdraw—this is the opposite of abiding!

And so with God. If we want to know God and abide with him, we must spend time, and get to know what his personality and his boundaries. Then we must take them seriously and respect them, not out of a legalistic drive, but rather from a place of love, accepting that these commands will help the relationship to stay on track!