1 John 2:7-11 - Love of the Family of God

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 i. 5 - ii. 28. GOD IS LIGHT.

a. i. 5 - ii. 11. What Walking in the Light involves: the Condition and Conduct of the Believer.

• Fellowship with God and with the Brethren (i. 5-7).

• Consciousness and confession of sin [committed before forgiveness] (i. 8-10).

• Obedience to God by Imitation of Christ (ii. 1-6).

• Love of the Brethren (ii.7-11).

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7 Beloved, no new commandment write I unto you, but an old commandment which ye had from the beginning: the old commandment is the word which ye heard

7. "Beloved." While enforcing the commandment to love, St. John gives expression to love by this endearing epithet.

"From the beginning." He probably means from the commencement of the Christian faith of the readers. "The new commandment" of love is ever new, because it has new sanctions daily with our increasing knowledge of Christ. It was new when the disciples saw Him on the cross and heard Him pray, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." It was new when they saw Him after His resurrection, and again after the cloud received Him out of their sight. It had an especial newness when the Paraclete on the day of Pentecost came into their hearts, flooding them with love. As we have an ever-increasing ability to apprehend with fresh power the beauty of Christ's character, so the command to love Him and all who bear His image will be new. "While life advances and our spiritual life unfolds the Gospel must be always new." Hence there is no irksomeness, no theadbareness in real, hearty Christian service. To stationary Christians this commandment is always old, but to advancing believers, who have through the inner revelation of Christ by the Holy Spirit, more and more perfect vision of Him, love is more and more abundantly shed abroad in their hearts.

1 John1:5-10 - God is Light

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 i. 5 - ii. 28. GOD IS LIGHT.

a. i. 5 - ii. 11. What Walking in the Light involves: the Condition and Conduct of the Believer.

• Fellowship with God and with the Brethren (i. 5-7).

• Consciousness and confession of sin [committed before forgiveness] (i. 8-10).

• Obedience to God by Imitation of Christ (ii. 1-6).

• Love of the Brethren (ii.7-11).

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5 And this is the message which we have heard from him, and announce unto you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all

5. "This is the message." The revelation of God's moral character; which must be known before we can be assimilated to its beauty and purity. Harmony must rest on a mutual knowledge and a moral likeness and sympathy. This constitutes true spiritual fellowship. The incarnation brings God to the knowledge of men. The work of the Spirit in the believer conforms him to the image of God revealed in Christ.

In God is No Darkness

"This then is the message which we have heard of Him, and declare unto you, that God is light, and in Him is no darkness at all." (1 John 1:5 KJV)

The Greek is very emphatic here — not a fleck, not a spot. Here John strikes the great error which seemed to ascribe both good and evil to God. If good and evil were bound up in God, if sin and holiness were bound up in God, then man could consistently say. "I have participation and fellowship with God, even if I live in conscious, daily sin, for God is a being of mixed character, and I am like Him in that sense." Now, in inculcating holiness upon men, John must see that the conception of the model is right, and hence he aims to clear the character of God of all such false conceptions; and this is the way he starts out, this is the message — "that God is light," undimmed, unmixed light, in whom is no darkness at all, not a fleck of darkness nor of evil nor of sin in His nature. You see John does not prove this, he simply asserts it; that is the style of John, the nearest writer to the Lord Jesus in his form of expression. The Lord Jesus did not often reason, but spoke from authority, gave expression to His own intuitions of truth. And John, as an intuitive writer, simply announces his intuitions, St. Paul reasons — has long and involved chains of argument. Hence John makes the declaration, under the illumination of the divine Spirit, that God is unmixed in His character, a being of unmixed holiness, love, truth, and in Him is nothing to the contrary. Now, then, he can clinch his nail. "If we say that we have fellowship with Him, and walk in darkness," in an element that is directly contrary to His character, there is a great mistake somewhere, a falsehood somewhere; the truth is not in the utterance. "If we say that we have fellowship with Him," participation of His moral likeness, "and" still "walk in darkness," walk in sin, in untruth, "we lie," John is a very outspoken writer; he does not mince matters and say we are mistaken and do not the truth, do not exemplify the truth, do not live out the truth, but, "we lie, and do not the truth." He then goes on: "But if we walk in the light," abstain from sin, are victorious over sin, "if we walk in the light as He is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us from all sin."

— Mile-Stone Papers, Part 1, Chapter 11.