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1 John 2 Commentary
By Rev. Valerie D. ConleyHow much do you love God?
Verses 1-11. Christians declare their absolute love for God. We proclaim to love Him with everything in us, to desire Him, and to gain a true, deep relationship with Him. Yet, as we listen to John tell us how we achieve this, we find that we fall short sometimes.
Truth is of God and we are tested every day, in every relationship with His truth. God’s truth is simple: those who love God obey His commandments and love each other. We must see things as God sees them if we are to meet His standard of righteousness and bless His name. God sees believers as His family. John opens this chapter by describing his readers as “My little children.” We know that we are God’s children, and as such we are His family. God desires a loving family because as we will see in chapter 4, God is love. Loving anyone involves knowing them. We must know God to love Him, and the only way we can know the Father is by knowing the Son, as it is the Son who has revealed the Father to us.
The test of knowing Jesus is love. If we love Jesus, we obey God’s commandments. If we love Jesus, we love each other as brothers and sisters in Christ. Understand that John is not focusing on non-believers in these commands. We know that we are to love all people, even our enemies (Matthew 5:43-48); but in this letter, John is focused on the relationship between God and His children and between the children and one another.
It’s all about having the truth in us. John describes God’s truth as light. To have the truth in us is to be in the light. The light that shines through truth is love. To say we love God and lack love is to expose ourselves as being liars and those who are still walking in darkness. Love is the proof of our being children of the light (1 Thess. 5:5).
John uses contrasts and we find two sets here. He contrasts light with darkness and love with hate. He is teaching us that we either have God in our hearts or we don’t. We are either walking in the light or in darkness; we are either walking in love or hate. Whatever we think of as a definition for hate doesn’t really apply here because John is not using Webster’s definition, he is using opposing positions to teach us that God is one thing: love; and to be anything other than that is to be the complete opposite of what God is.
Loving God is not so much a declaration of the lips, but rather a lifestyle governed by obedience to His Word and a constant willingness to practice patience and forgiveness with each other. When we don’t forgive each other or are at odds with one another we expose ourselves as not truly knowing Jesus and having God’s love in our hearts. The simplest way to look at it is we do unto others as God does unto us. John opened this section explaining that Jesus is our Advocate who stands before the Father when we sin pleading our case. When we confess our sins, we are forgiven and cleansed. Likewise, if we are walking as Jesus walked and have God’s love in our hearts, we will forgive each other of trespasses whether the other person confesses their wrong or not. In doing so we are passing the test of knowing Jesus and we are showing that God’s love lives in our hearts. When we don’t obey God or don’t forgive for the sake of maintaining our loving relationships with each other than we are walking in darkness and stumbling over the hardness of our hearts. We are refusing to forgive even though we accept God’s forgiveness toward us, and those things show that God is not truly living in our hearts because our hearts are still hard.
Verses 12-17. We are equally saved by grace, but we were not all at the same spiritual level of maturity. The fathers of whom John speaks are the most spiritually mature; young men are not as spiritually mature as the fathers, but they do possess sound doctrine and can fight against deception, and those referred to as children have only a basic knowledge of God. Regardless of our spiritual maturity, Christians should not love the world. John is speaking to the attributes of the world that lead to sin: the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, all things which are against God’s commandments.
Verses 18-23. John identifies antichrists as those who deny the Father and the Son. In his case, antichrists were church members who were denying the deity of Christ and His resurrection. In our case, we must be cautious of who we listen to, who we take counsel from. Church members will either promote the right spirit of a church or they will sow discord. Anyone who sows discord in the body of Christ is not walking in the spirit of Christ, they are not walking in the light and those are the persons we all need to avoid.
Verses 24-29. John ends this chapter by encouraging his readers to stay in the truth. The truth is God is love and if we love God we obey His commandments and walk in love with each other. Do not let this truth get away from you because of those around you who are walking in darkness. When you hear someone complaining about the pastor, or putting down another church member, or sowing strife and division in the body of Christ than you are not to fall in with them. You are to stay true to Christ’s message of love and reconciliation. We stand on God’s side because the truth is in us and we understand that all people are fallible and that the glory of the church is not based on the members of the fellowship; but rather on the mercies and grace of a loving, forgiving, compassionate heavenly Father who looks beyond all our faults, sees our need, covers our weaknesses and forgives our sins. We stand with Jesus who said to those who would stone a woman caught in the act of adultery, “He who is without sin among you, let him throw a stone at her first.” (John 8:1-11) To know Jesus is to understand the meaning of those words because that is the heart that keeps the church walking as Jesus walked and keeps us in the light of God’s truth.
Reread 1 John 2 and see ifyou hear it in a different way.
