02.01.03. 1John 2:7-17 The law of love ...
§ 3. 1 John 2:7-17 THE LAW OF LOVE
We have been given clearly to understand that “to keep the word’’ or ’“the commandments” of Jesus and to walk as He walked is the only test of really “knowing” Him; Jesus is “the way,” and we are to examine His manner of “walking,’ and so ourselves to find it. But there is one pre-eminent commandment of Jesus and one supremely memorable word — commended in the fullest sense by His example — “A new commandment I give unto you, that ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another. By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another” (John 13:34-35). “If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love; even as I have kept My Father’s commandments, and abide in His love... This is my commandment; that ye love one another, even as I have loved you. Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. Ye are my friends, if ye do the things which I command you” (John 15:10-15). This commandment of mutual love was no longer, when St. John wrote his Epistle, a new commandment. It was already old — something heard and received and held from the very beginning. And it is more than a commandment given in worda and received by the ear. It has been an experienced reality in Christ who gave His life for them and also among themselves. This is what St. John means by saying it is “true in him and in you.” Nevertheless, John can repeat Christ’s word and call it “again a new commandment,” because they are standing at the dawn of a new day. The old dark night, alike of Jewish exclusiveness and heathen depravity, is passing away, and in the new catholic fellowship of the Church the genuine, light of the world has begun to shine. In this new world of light the old commandment of mutual love becomes a new commandment, demanding a new application. And it is peremptory. To claim to belong to the new world of light is an idle boast if a man hate one who is his brother in Christ — that is, if he do not actively love him. For St. John knows no middle state between loving and hating. Whatever he may say, one who hates his brother belongs to the old dark world and stumbles as he walks (John 11:9-10), having his stumbling-block in himself because he has not light in his heart, and he misses his way, like a blind man (John 12:35). But he who loves his brother lives in the light. He knows his goal and sees his way, and has no occasion to stumble. And St. John writes to his Christian people as those who have the glad, free hearts of children, because in coming to belong to Christ they have received the forgiveness of their sins and been set free from all the entanglements of the old dark world, and again because they have thus learned to rejoice in the knowledge of the Father.
He writes to them also as fathers who have the secret of wisdom and experience, because they have known Him who has been from the beginning the way and the truth and the life.
He writes to them once again as youths who have perennially the strength of youth, because they have won the victory over the evil one in the power of the divine word which abides in them. Let them separate themselves utterly, then, from the old dark world. The love of the Father is totally incompatible with the love of the old world. That old world has for its contents the desire for selfish satisfaction and external show and personal aggrandizement.
These things do not come from the Father, but from the world which ignores Him. And this world and all its desires are passing away. It is only by doing the will of God that we can attain to the life which abides.
Beloved, no new commandment write I onto you, but an old commandment which ye had from the beginning: the old commandment is the word which ye heard. Again, a new commandment write I unto you, which thing is true in him and in you; because the darkness is passing away, and the true light already shineth. He that saith he is in the light, and hateth his brother, is in the darkness even until now. He that loveth his brother abideth in the light, and there is none occasion of stumbling in him. But he that hateth his brother is in the darkness, and walketh in the darkness, and knoweth not whither he goeth, because the darkness hath blinded his eyes.
I write unto you, my little children, because your sins are forgiven you for his name’s sake. I write unto you, fathers, because ye know him which is from the beginning. I write unto you, young men, because ye have overcome the evil one. I have written unto you, little children because ye know the Father. I have written unto you, fathers, because ye know him which is from the beginning. I have written unto you, young men, because ye are strong, and the word of God abideth in you, and ye have overcome the evil one. Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and the vainglory of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world. And the world passeth away, and the lust thereof: but he that doeth the will of God abideth for ever.
1. “The beginning’’ which St. John refers to must be the beginning of the Christian tradition when they first received the word of Christ and heard the new commandment. This new commandment is already old; and has behind it experienced reality in the love of Christ and of Christians. Christ is “the Way,” and in walking as He walked they too have found the way. This must be the meaning of “which thing is true in Him and in you”—truth meaning reality to St. John (as he spoke above, 1 John 1:6, of “lying and not doing the truth,” i.e. not making it real in action); but, none the less, it is still a new commandment involving new applications.
It is easy to understand (if this interpretation is right) what St. John’s meaning was. “The new commandment” had been given to Jews at Jerusalem, and the first disciples in Jerusalem showed themselves zealous in following it. But they were all Jews brought up under the same sacred but narrow tradition. And when it appeared that Gentiles also were to be “brethren” and were to be admitted to a perfect equality of fellowship with Jews — that is, men whose traditions pious Jews had learned to execrate and who were accustomed to eat unclean meats in unclean ways — it was from the Church of Jerusalem, which had been foremost in the race of love, that the fiercest opposition arose.
It was indeed a new commandment that they had to obey. Or, again, when St. John passed from Jerusalem to Ephesus — when the sacred city fell and was trodden underfoot — it was indeed a new world, wholly alien to his old traditions, into which he passed. It was a world in which all the various races which bordered upon the Mediterranean Sea and others from the further east were mixed indiscriminately together, in which religion had borne a meani4 as different as possible from what religion had meant in Jerusalem, and wholly new ideas possessed the minds of men. The old world was gone, and the new world in which the light was to triumph through the fellowship of the Church was appearing. The veil that was spread over all nations was passing away.
Again then the old commandment became a new commandment. Because it still held true that Christianity could only triumph through the exhibition among men of a human fellowship of love utterly transcending all racial differences and prejudices.
It was, in fact, in great measure because it did exhibit such a fellowship, because, in spite of all the prejudices and suspicions felt against the Christians, the heathen world could not restrain its astonishment at seeing how they loved one another, that it won the heart’ of the world. Alienated from the world of the Roman empire, often debarred from their old trades and occupations, partly because the occupations themselves were tainted with idolatry, partly because the suspicions and prejudices of their fellows drove them out, the Christians were forced to develop a social and economic system of their own, on the basis of their religious principles, for mutual support and encouragement. And it was a fine expression of the law of brotherhood, really believed in and applied.
If we leap over the intervening centuries, with their glory and their shame, and come to our own time, we can very well understand how the old commandment becomes a new commandment. Thus, when the Englishman, proud of his superior race, finds himself in Africa or India required really to welcome and love as brethren in Christ men of a totally different tradition and civilization (or absence of civilization) from his own, truly for him the old commandment has become a new commandment of amazing difficulty. Or when the breakdown of our old social system, with all its naive inequalities of privilege and conditions, brings us face to face with a new and turbulent demand for justice, as meaning not less than equality of opportunity for all men, and the abandonment of an old status of privilege for the few, a status which in lapse of time has come to be a second nature, truly with deep searchings of heart we find out that the old commandment has become a new commandment, and that we must obey it or be convicted of “lying and doing not the truth.” Or to put the same problem from another point of view. The old idea of the duty of almsgiving seemed simple. We were to give of our superfluity to help the poor and miserable.
We were not concerned with the causes of misery and poverty. Our business was to supply relief in this case and that, as they were presented to our notice. But now it appears that something much more is wanted — “not charity but justice,” as it is phrased, though the idea of charity is thereby degraded. All this relief work is unavailing. We have to attend to the grounds and sources of the dominant evil of ignoble poverty. We see that except in comparatively small proportions and in far more remediable forms it need not exist. A luster sooW orders order more worthy of being called “ charitable “ — that is, inspired by love and brotherhood — has to be created. Again the old commandment has become a new commandment, and we are staggered at the greatness of its demand.
It would be out of place to enlarge here on these new demands. It is enough to suggest how again and again the old commandment becomes a new commandment. We know Jerome’s familiar story of St. John, when a very old man, being carried down into the Christian assembly Sunday after Sunday, and saying always the same thing, “Little children, love one another.” Did they complain — ’’We have heard this so often before”? Yes, St. John would say, but even every week and to every man the old commandment becomes a new commandment and demands a new effort. We have no sooner settled down in our theology or our practice into a routine than we have begun to “make the commandment of God” (or His truth) “of none effect by our tradition,” and the prophetic spirit is needed to awaken us to some fresh beginning.
2. St. John, we observe, sees things in extremes. We shall have to notice this characteristic later on. But here we see that he acknowledges no middle ground between “loving” your brother and “hating’“ him. As our Lord said, ’* He that is not with me is against me,’* so St. John would reckon selfish indifference or the weak sort of pity which does not exert itself practically to remedy the evils which it perceives (1 John 3:17) as hatred. Hatred is everything which is not active love; as again our Lord says, “Inasmuch as ye did it not — depart from me.” It is only the full force of active love which can really illuminate the heart of man and free him from internal stumblingblocks and show him both the goal and the way. But we are always tempted to narrow down the commandment to suit our own lethargy. So with brilliant irony Clough parodies our treatment of the sixth commandment — “Thou shalt not kill, but needest not strive Officiously to keep alive.”
St. John would have us believe that unless we really “strive to keep alive’’ we do in fact “kill.’’
3. “Because the darkness hath blinded his eyes.” He has become as blind as a mole.
Having refused to see, at last he cannot see.
Bring him out into the sunshine, and it will make no difference. That is fundamentally the meaning of hell — that a man has so long refused the truth and the right that at last he has no faculty to recognize it or welcome it.
4. “The children’’ and “the fathers” and the “young men” to whom St. John writes are not to be interpreted as distinct classes of the community, as when St. Paul writes to parents and children, husbands and wives, masters and slaves. They are different names for the whole body in different aspects. All have, or should have, the heart and freshness of childhood, the wisdom and experience of age, and the strength of youth. We may compare (1) “Except ye... become as little children, ye shall in no wise enter into the kingdom of heaven “ (Matthew 18:3); and (2) “I am wiser than the aged, because I keep thy commandments” (Psalms 119:100); or “For honourable old age is not that which standeth in length of time, nor is its measure given by number of years: but understanding is grey hairs unto men, and an unspotted life is ripe old age” (Wis 3:8); and (3) “Even the youths shall faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall: but they that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength” (Isaiah 40:30-31). In each of its three aspects, as children, as fathers, as youths, St. John gives a double message to the Church, saying first “I write,” then “I wrote.’’ It is very difficult to see any significance in the use of the two tenses, unless we take the simplest explanation, and suppose that St. John was interrupted in writing the Epistle after the threefold “I write,’’ and began again by almost repeating what he had said already. The two messages show most difference in the first case, the message to “children.”
It runs first ’’because your sins have been forgiven you for his name’s sake.’ The “name ’’of Christ carries with it the thought of all that is revealed in His person and office. It is because of what He is and has done that our sins have been forgiven. In the second instance it runs, “Because ye have known the Father.” But as in 1 John 2:3 to have our sins forgiven through Christ our propitiation is shown to involve “knowing”
Him, so here to have our sins forgiven on account of Christ’s name is treated as identical with having known the Father who bestows the forgiveness, for it is to enter into the intimate relationship of children to their Father. The message to “fathers” is the same in both cases: “because ye have known Him who is from the beginning”- i. e. the eternal Word or Son of the Father, in the knowledge of whom we are admitted to the true wisdom, the fellowship in the eternal counsels. The message to the young men is slightly expanded in the second delivery — “because ye have overcome the wicked one” being preceded by the words “because ye are strong and the word of God abideth in you.” Thus the ground of their victory is shown. (St. John has, as we shall see later, no hesitation in witnessing to a personal adversary whom they have overcome — the devil.) This threefold message to Christians as “children” as “fathers” and as “young men’’ is full of inspiration, and suggests a community at once full of childlike confidence and freshness, wise with the wisdom of God and triumphant over all forces of evil.
5. “The world” in a bad sense means here as elsewhere human society as it organizes itself apart from God or in rebellion against Him. In this world mankind has lost its true centre and object, and seeks its gratification in selfish desires and its objects of worship in idols. It is rooted and grounded in a lie — the idea of human independence of God, and it will pass away “even as a dream when one awaketh.” The only abiding life is rooted in the truth,
which is the will of God. And the contents of this godless world, the characteristics of “ worldliness,” are: (1) “the desire of the flesh,” which includes all the selfish appetites, every form of passion for appropriating things we desire without regard to the intention of God, whether the passion be sexual lust, gluttony, vanity, the love of money or revenge; (2) “the desire of the eyes,” i.e. the desire to make for ourselves a world pleasing to contemplate, again without regard to the purpose of God; as when men seek v selfishly to fashion a beautiful world for themselves within a narrow circle, surrounding themselves with beautiful and pleasing objects and persons without regard to others who are left outside in ignorance and hunger — ’’hiding themselves from their own flesh”; (3) “the vain-glory of life,” i.e. the exultation in all the visible show of life, as a sign of what man can accomplish, without any thought of God, the creator of all that is. “Is not this great Babylon which I have builded?” This account of “the world” and of its contents goes home to our consciences to-day, as we contemplate the civilization at the foundations of which the Great War has struck its blow, and causes us to read with trembling St. John’s warning.
6. We must notice that “brother” in the New Testament means a fellow-Christian. It is in the “love of the brethren” that we are to learn ’’ love ’’ for all men (2 Peter 1:7). Perhaps in the parable of the Last Judgement our Lord calls all suffering men His “brethren,’’ but elsewhere the word means always fellow-Jews or, as in the vast majority of cases, fellow-Christians. This limitation embodies a great principle.
All men are meant for brotherhood, as the Church is meant for all men. But brotherhood is hard to realize. It means, as the New Testament understands it, so much. And the Christians knew that their entrance into brotherhood began with their redemption through Christ from the world of sin and selfishness into the family of God.