If you’ll turn within your Bibles to John’s first letter, chapter 2, beginning at the third verse:
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.
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.
I am writing to you, little children, because your sins are forgiven for his name’s sake. I am writing to you, fathers, because you know him who is from the beginning. I am writing to you, young men, because you have overcome the evil one. I write to you, children, because you know the Father. I write to you, fathers, because you know him who is from the beginning. I write to you, young men, because you are strong, and the word of God abides in you, and you have overcome the evil one.
Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life—is not from the Father but is from the world. And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever.
This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.
Let us pray. Lord, you have given us your Commandments to follow. You’ve called us to walk in your light and to walk as your son Jesus walked. Help us to learn and understand and know better how we may live for you in response to your grace and mercy. We pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen.
One of the best things about John as a communicator is how simple and straightforward he is concerning his goals and motives for writing. He wants us to know. He wants us to know what he knows, who he knows, and he wants us to know this so that we may have certainty in our faith and the assurance of salvation that complements and confirms the testimony of God’s holy spirit who indwells every believer.
He wants us to have head knowledge as a supplement to the heart knowledge given us by the Holy Spirit as a comfort because even as sinners redeemed by grace, we still have good reason to doubt whatever our heart tells us. We cannot trust or depend upon our feelings to serve us as the sole arbiters of truth.
Thus, John tells us precisely how we may know if we are a Christian. We know that just because a person says that they’re a Christian, that does not mean that they actually are. We know that there are people who have been within the church and leave the community of faith; although some do return if and when they eventually hear God’s call, repent, and accept his forgiveness. Meaning that church people are not always necessarily Christians. Therefore, we cannot say with absolute certainty who is a Christian or not.
One of the most common interpretations here of First John as a whole is that he was writing to address concerns about the proto-Gnostic heresy that was beginning to infiltrate this church. Gnosticism became a problem within the first few centuries of the church, and it has been a problem that has repeatedly resurrected itself over the past 19 centuries with a new face each time. The heresy of Gnosticism, named for the Greek word for knowledge, ‘gnosis,’ has never been about just one single specific problem but is diverse, possessing so many different facets that it is more a compounding continuum of errors rather than one great error, like Arius’s denial of the eternal nature of God the Son, which was addressed by the Council of Nicaea.
So, the unifying tenets and key identifier of Gnosticism is its dependence upon the revelation of extra special secret or hidden knowledge that is otherwise kept from the uninitiated. While John may well have been defending the Christian faith against it being identified with or co-opted by one of these groups, that defense was not his primary purpose. His goal—and this is why he is telling us this—is so that we would know God: God the Father, the Son, and Holy Spirit, and know that God has called and saved us.
This is why John repeatedly emphasizes our ability to know and why he teaches us the ability to know so freely—so that the truth about faith in Jesus Christ cannot be kept hidden from us. It is not a secret. But what does it mean for us to know? How do we know whatever we think we know? According to Merriam-Webster, there are at least 10 different uses and meanings for the English verb ‘to know.’
Just pause and think about that for a moment. I bet that offhand you can think of at least a half dozen or more different meanings and uses for ‘to know.’ Unfortunately, the Greek language here helps us better understand what John means. There are two different words in Greek that we translate as ‘to know’ and ‘knowing,’ which narrows down the range of meaning.
‘Oida’ is ordinarily used when a natural understanding, comprehension, or recognition is meant. In John 1:26, he writes, ‘John answered them, ‘I baptize with water, but among you stands one you do not know.” ‘Oida’ is used for the proper understanding that comes after the receipt of information. It is a knowing that is actionable and requires an active response. In John 3:10, Jesus answered Nicodemus, ‘Are you the teacher of Israel, and yet you do not know these things?’
It’s also the kind of knowing which is found within relationships; a personal kind of knowing, such as likes and dislikes or allergies, which might let you order the correct dinner for a friend in advance. Throughout his letters in the gospel, John uses these two words with great care and extreme prejudice for our benefit.
So when John continues his exegesis by saying, ‘And by this we know that we have come to know him if we keep his Commandments,’ he uses ‘gnosco’ twice to tell us that we can have information that will confirm if a person has a personal, informed relationship with Jesus. We may know if a person has a relationship with Jesus by whether they keep his Commandments or not. Sounds pretty simple, right?
We can use that metric to surround ourselves with other Christians and then encourage one another to build up our collective faith. However, more importantly, you can know for certain if you are actually a Christian or not by using that same metric. So examine your own self.
Do you keep all of God’s Commandments? No, not all of them. Not perfectly. But really, who can? Jesus can and has for you if you trust him. Do you try to keep all of God’s Commandments? Yes, maybe most of them anyways. I think there is no ‘try.’ Do or do not. Perfection is required, and perfection requires intention.
Do you want to keep all of God’s Commandments? Yes, I do want to. I even want to keep the really hard ones. I want to keep them because I know that they are what is right and good and correct and proper. I want to obey God because I love him and because he loves me and because he wants what is best for me. So yes, I really, really want to keep them, but I do not because I cannot.
If you honestly care about whether or not you are keeping God’s law, then that is a very good sign. The reprobate and the unregenerate do not care about God’s law at all. If they happen to obey it in any small way, that is simply an accident and not by intent. They do not ever worry about being saved or about losing their salvation because they do not have it, and they do not want it.
If you have the earnest desire to obey him and make an earnest effort to obey him and feel remorse and guilt at your inability to obey him completely, then this should cause you to want to repent and confess your sins. If you confess and repent, then that is a positive confirmation that you know Jesus.
The good news is that he is faithful and just to forgive us and cleanse us of all of our sins when we do. That is why John explains this to us for the assurance of our faith, so that we may know, so that we do not have to wonder if Jesus will forgive us for any of our sins, so that we do not have to doubt our own state of salvation.
So, do you care about keeping his Commandments, or do you fear losing your salvation because of something that you have done or left undone? Then repent and accept the good news of the gospel because Jesus forgives you.
Next, John tells us what we must be doing if we’re going to walk in the light of God because he does not want us to continue to walk in the darkness. He wants us to live in fellowship, koinonia, with God. 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.
Just as he wrote earlier about koinonia fellowship with God, if a person says ‘I know him,’ says ‘I know Jesus,’ but does not keep his Commandments, then they are lying. If they’re lying, then the truth is not in them, and truthfulness is not in their nature, and they are not trustworthy.
However, when a person says ‘I know him’ and they keep his Commandments, they prove that they belong to Christ because the love of God is perfected in them. They’re filled with God’s love; God’s love for them is made complete because they love God in return. They are sharing koinonia with God the Father and God the Son, Jesus Christ.
If we are going to walk in the light rather than walk in darkness, then the first thing we must do is be truthful and honest in all things. If we are liars, then we remain in the darkness. So first, we must be honest with God about our sin and our need for salvation. Then we must be honest with ourselves about our own sinfulness. Finally, only then can we truly be honest with others.
Honesty in all things is a sign of Christ’s likeness; honesty truly is the best policy. So the second thing that John tells us that we must do is walk in the same way in which he walked. We must live, work, think, and breathe in the same way as Jesus. We must have the same character as Jesus.
Walking like Jesus is not only a part of how we walk in the light; it’s also a way for us to know that we are in him. Remember the early church? They were commonly called ‘the Way’ because they followed Jesus’s lived example. They walked like Jesus.
Although living and acting like Jesus is another way for us to have assurance that we are united with Christ in koinonia, it is so much more than just wearing a wristband with ‘WWJD’ (What Would Jesus Do) written on it. But how do we know that we are walking in the same way Jesus walked?
The first step is you need to read your Bible, both the New Testament and the Old Testament, because it is the best and most reliable source telling us everything that Jesus did and did not do. Both Scripture and the Holy Spirit testify that Jesus fulfilled and kept God’s law, so we know that he loved God and he loved his neighbor, and he showed us how to do likewise.
All of the historical stories in the Old Testament and the many regulations of the law remain helpful to us because they teach us the difference between holiness and sin. They convict us of our sin and show us the righteous consequences of God’s judgment—the penalty that we all deserve for our sins: death.
Consider your own life. Even knowing that you can never measure up to the standard of Jesus in this life, how closely does it resemble his? How closely does it resemble the lives of his disciples? Do you imitate them as they imitated Christ? Does your life of Christ’s likeness, does your walk with Jesus even register on the scale of comparison? Are you trying to be like Christ so that God will love you, or are you trying because you know that God already loves you as his child, and obedience is how you show your love for him?
That is a lot to take in and think about, I know. John knew it too, which is why he gets even more specific, writing, ‘Beloved, I am writing you no new commandment but an old commandment that you have 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’m writing to you, which is true in him and in you because the darkness is passing away and the true light is already shining.’
Confusing, right? What is all this about old commandments and new commandments? See, John was just merely using Jesus’s language. If you feel confused, then that’s okay because the disciples were confused when they heard the same thing from Jesus during his last night with them.
Jesus told his disciples, ‘A new commandment I give to you: that you love one another just as I have loved you. You also are to love one another. By this, all people will know that you are my disciples if you have love for one another.’ And that’s what John is telling us now.
This may surprise you, but John does not record Jesus being questioned about the greatest commandment. That exchange is recorded in the other three gospels with some variations in context but never the content. The answer which Jesus gave in Matthew was, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment, and a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets.’
This may also surprise you, but Jesus’s new commandment was not really a new command; it was just a new way of saying the old. That is what John is trying to convey here. The old commandment of the word that you have heard refers to God’s law, the Hebrew Scriptures that God’s people have had from the beginning.
However, at the same time, it is also a new commandment because of how Jesus restated the whole law so simply and how effective it is now. Jesus and the other gospels boiled the law of God down to love God and love others as you have been loved. By love, Jesus meant ‘agape,’ the Greek word for self-sacrificial love or unmerited love.
When we examine the whole of redemptive history—God’s election, the patriarchs, his rescue of Israel from Egypt, the giving of the law to Moses, the conquest of Canaan, the reign of David, the Babylonian exile—their return, the narrative of Scripture exemplifies God’s love for his people, his agape, and demonstrates how they were supposed to be loving others.
The whole history of Israel is one long story of God loving us. Because Jesus is God made flesh, he spent his whole life and his entire ministry physically demonstrating God’s agape for his people. When Jesus declared to his disciples, ‘Love one another just as I have loved you,’ as his new commandment, he merely restated or rephrased what God the Father has always said and done.
Now plainly, John explains to us that the second thing we must do if we’re going to walk in the same way in which he walked—walking in the light like Jesus—is that we must agape others. That is what Jesus did; that is how Jesus lived; that is how Jesus walked.
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.
We must love others like Jesus does if we want to abide in God’s light. If you hate your brother or sister or your neighbor—or even strangers—then you cannot be living in God’s light, and you are still consigned to the darkness. If you love others, if love for the other fills your heart, then surely the light of Christ fills you.
But if you feel hate or contempt for others, or if you are so apathetic that you do not care enough about them even to hate them, then you are blind, lost, and wandering alone in the darkness without either agape or koinonia. But if you agape your neighbor, and you agape others, then know that you truly are, and you will be known as a disciple of Christ.
If you keep his Commandments and love others, then you prove that you agape Jesus and that he agape you. John’s third and final exhortation for how we may walk in the light is: do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him.
Building upon what we learned about ‘cosmos,’ the world, last time, the broader understanding of ‘cosmos’ that John presents goes beyond a basic understanding of the universe or the whole unit of God’s created order—not inclusively meaning each and every individual part. For John, it encompasses and describes the fallen creation, of which the evil one, Satan, is the ruler.
Once we understand this aspect of John’s use of ‘cosmos,’ it puts John 3:16 into a whole different light: ‘For God so agape the fallen creation that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him from within that fallen creation should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the fallen creation to condemn the fallen creation but in order that the world—meaning those whom he has redeemed from out of the fallen creation, representing the whole of that fallen creation—might be saved through him.’
So when John now tells us, ‘Do not agape the cosmos or the things in the world,’ he is not telling us to not emulate God the Father’s agape for the world, but for us to not love the world more than God or instead of God. The cosmos has fallen because of sin. So now, just like fallen humanity, the cosmos only loves itself and the things of itself. That is why the world hates Jesus Christ and hates Christians: because we are in the world, yet are not of the world.
We no longer belong to the cosmos or its ruler. So John is speaking to us here about making a choice, or maybe it’s better to say he’s warning us to not choose something. We must choose or not choose between the love of God, love for God, and love of the world, love for the world. Our hearts do not have enough room to love both, making it a simple either/or binary choice: Jesus or the evil one.
If the love of the Father is in you, then the love of the world—the love for the fallen creation, which is under the dominion and authority of the evil one—cannot be in you. But if love for the world fills your heart, then you cannot and do not love the Father.
Then John reminds us about all the many different things that belong to and come from the world which we are not to agape: ‘For all that is in the world—the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life—is not from the Father but is from the world.’
The desires of the flesh are all of the lustful longings which come from our physical and sinful nature. These include sins like gluttony, murder, lying, Sabbath breaking, the dishonoring of parents, sexual sin, and even the inclination or thought to commit them. The desires of our eyes are all of the lustful longings and covetousness which come from jealousy and envy, which our eyes lead us to sin with by elevating our idolatry of self over agape for others. These include sins like theft and coveting, along with any thought about committing them.
The pride of life are all of the pretensions, arrogance, and conceit that we feel on account of our physical existence and presence. This includes every form of idolatrous and false worship—worshiping the creation instead of the Creator, attributing any importance, worth, and meaning to ourselves or our lives apart from our status as the image bearers of God, denying the authority of the Lord over our lives, falsely claiming and deluding ourselves into thinking that we are the masters of our own lives—believing that the sole purpose of our life is the satisfaction of each and every one of our wants and desires, no matter the price or cost to others.
But John does not give us this list to condemn those who are on the wrong side, those who still love the world. He gives it to us so that we will stop and remember that we were once on the wrong side and that we have been rescued from it. He wants us to withhold judgment because he holds out hope for those who are still on that side. I hope that one day they will repent, be brought out of the darkness, and be cleansed in the light of Christ just as we are being cleansed.
And so finally, John concludes with a warning and a promise: ‘And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever.’ If you continue to agape the cosmos and live in koinonia where cosmos, then you are duly warned that the cosmos and everything which remains within it is passing away.
The world is defeated, and soon it will be destroyed, just as when he said earlier, ‘The darkness is passing away.’ The world, darkness, and the evil one are all identified together as one by John, and they are what God has already triumphed over because the true light is already shining.
Jesus said, ‘I have come into the world as light so that whoever believes in me may not remain in darkness.’ Jesus Christ, God the Son, came into the world to bring us out of the darkness and into the light of God’s love, to cleanse us of all our sin and unrighteousness with his blood, to teach us and help us to obey his Commandments because they are God’s will for us—to give us eternal life, his life, so that we may enjoy koinonia with God the Father and God the Son and all of his elect forever.
John wrote all of this to assure us that we will enjoy koinonia with Jesus by teaching us how we may know that we are truly saved by the grace of God. Remember, the world is passing away along with all of its sinful desires, and all of our desire for the world. The darkness is passing away because the light is already shining. The Lord God is that light; that light is Jesus Christ.
Everyone who lives obediently to him and who keeps his Commandments is walking in that light. So now, we can remain confident and steadfast in our faith because we can know that we are in that light if we’re truthful and honest in all things, if we look more like Jesus, act more like Jesus, and obey the Father more like Jesus does than we do like the world and its ruler.
We can know, and the world will know that we are in that light and that we are Jesus’s disciples if we love others as we are loved by Jesus—by loving our brothers, our neighbors, and strangers instead of hating them. We can know that we are in that light because we love the things of God instead of the things of the world, abhorring, rejecting, and turning away from all of its sinful offerings.
So Christians, my brothers and sisters, take courage and find that assurance of faith that you need here in John’s words. There’s no need to doubt yourself or to question your salvation if how John says you may know is true about you. So do you know that you are a Christian? I truly hope and pray that you have received that assurance of faith.