The last surviving apostle, the Apostle John emphasized that fellowship with the Father and with the Son meant ‘walking in the light’. 

He declared that there were some who were pretending that there was nothing wrong with them, that they did not sin.  So John set out to address the critical matter of our tendency to continually practice deception, to cover up the despicable, destructive things within us, such as greed, hatred and lust. He warned that we should not deceive ourselves or deceive anyone else.   

In dealing with this problem the Apostle faced the problem directly and writes giving instructions, so that believers would not sin.  He writes so that we would be freed from the worst aspect of our nature, the sad spectacle of moral failure and come to realize that lies are foolish and deadly and will get us nowhere.  Believers simply must ‘walk in the light’.  Anything else is a tragedy. 

In our lesson today the Apostle John will tell us about the three kinds of believers; the babies, the young men or women, the fathers and mothers and then describe the essential things about them. 

Note that John is writing to correct a false and twisted kind of Christianity that existed in his day and so he aimed his discussion at the issue of character, because character determines all behaviour.

He had first told us about the necessity of maintaining fellowship with God, for that was the only way to have the ‘abundant life,’ that God had in store for his children.  Now he will tell us how we can achieve this goal, or how we know that we are moving toward the goal.   

John knows that believers will have to deal with certain weaknesses and problems and so he deals with the things that were not really the kind of problems that would stop a believer from ‘walking in the light’.  This is of course a tremendous assurance for believers, for by reading this letter we learn not to exaggerate the importance of some of the difficulties we have. 

The first issue that John addresses is the non-problem of failure, making it clear that when there is failure and we know that this often happens, this failure does not make God hates us.  God is not put off from us by this, for the Father in his wisdom has provided an advocate who is always in his presence and who always pleads successfully for those he has saved. 

The sacrifice that Jesus has made is the reason that our foolish choices and moral failures will be forgiven, if we confess our sins.  With confession cleansing takes place and so we are not disqualified by failure. 

He also tells us that not knowing Greek or Hebrew will not disqualify us. Lack of education or ignorance will not prevent us from ‘walking in the light’. 

Simple obedience is pictured as a natural result from fellowship with God. Obedience assures the believer that his relationship with God is genuine. 

John addresses the claims of those who say they have intimate knowledge of God.  He bluntly says that those who claim to know God but are not obeying the commandments of God, are liars.  This means that these people are not to be believed, for the truth which is in Jesus is not known by them. 

This is an important matter, for those that say they know Christ but do not keep his commandments, are really saying that they reserve the right to disobey Him. They know better than He does and they will only keep those commandments that appeal to them.  They reserve the right to change Jesus’ commandments to suit their circumstances and to change things around to benefit themselves.  John calls those people liars. 

On the contrary, those that unreservedly accept that Jesus has the right to command and direct them and who will from their heart obey his commandments, are people in whom his love has been made complete, or perfected.  They are becoming more and more Christ-like.  They believe in the Scriptures as he did, treat people as he did, love God the Father the way he did and walk in the light where he is. 

Jesus is the example or the model. Those who say that they abide in God really ought to walk or to behave just as Jesus behaved during its life on Earth.  Jesus is the standard and example of behaviour for the Christian.

Note that “abiding” means to ‘remain’ or to ‘stay’.  This is a permanent relationship between God and the believer and speaks of His divine ‘indwelling’ of the believer.  This necessitates a specific relationship with God and with Christ.  This is intimacy and closeness. 

There is then an ethical component to “abiding”.  All genuine Christians must conduct themselves the way Christ did. 

This is not an option.  Those who claim to reside in God must follow the example of Jesus in their conduct.

Professing believers who claim to abide in God must:

-no longer love sin. Sin should horrify them.

-no longer plan to sin as was done before

-no longer look on past sins with fondness or delight

-no longer enjoy to sin

-no longer ‘abide’ in habitual sins. Sin should not reign over him.

John now begins to show the close link between our obedience and conduct to the characteristics of God, for divine indwelling produces certain traits in us.  God has a goal and we will now see what this goal is. 

In our lesson John will show us the love of God, the chief peril to obedience and what is the chief impediment to the believer walking in the light with God. 

THE TEXT

Verse 7.    John says that he is writing an old commandment which existed from the beginning.  This means that it did not originate with him, that he was not introducing some innovation.  The commandments of God are very old or ancient, for God had built them into his creation. 

In addition, they had heard this word of God from the beginning of Jesus’ earthly ministry, for he had revealed himself some considerable time before this. 

The love of God is perfected in those who keep the word of God (verse 5). This ‘love’ which is being perfected is obviously the supreme goal of the Christian life.  Christians are being transformed so that they can love as God loves. 

John indicates that the believers had heard it from the beginning.  If one interprets this as believers hearing this from the beginning of their Christian life, he's saying that this commandment  is something that they learned from the time they became a believer and it was part of the word of God that they had heard.  Obviously it was very important.  Jesus called this the first and great commandment

“Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart , with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.” 

So this commandment was very old, and had been violated from the days of old.  God had written this commandment and repeated it all through the Scriptures to lead men in the right direction.  This word of God was critical for any genuine believer. 

John is stressing that from the beginning, no matter how one interprets “beginning”, all men were told that they were to love God and to love their fellow men.

Verse 8.  Amazingly John now calls this old commandment a new commandment, saying that this commandment was in Jesus and was also in his readers . The truth of this commandment was first shown in the life of Jesus and the newness of what this first commandment entailed was shown in Jesus’ self-sacrifice.  This was a demonstration of a most extraordinary love for men and gave new meaning to the word “love”. 

In addition Jesus loved so much that he was obedient to his Father and fulfilled all the requirements of the Mosaic law. He broke none of the laws of God. He made it possible for men to receive eternal life. 

Because of his love all those who believed in him will have this love in them.  Jesus certainly widened the concept of love. 

Because this new commandment of love was now in them, they were not walking in darkness, their eyes were no longer blinded, they no longer hated nor were they indifferent to people, for the light of God was now shining through them. 

Light had triumphed over darkness.  Jesus had enabled them to walk in the light.

Verse 9.     Anyone claiming to be in the light and who hated the brethren was in darkness.  They could never be in the light of God while practicing hatred, for if they were in the light they would be practicing love. 

By saying that the person who hated was in darkness until now, John meant that that person had never come out of the darkness.  This was the same as saying that the person who hates is not a Christian. 

We might think that the word “hate” is strong, but John means for us to understand that not loving others in the Christian community was a very serious matter. Remember also that dictionary tells us that hate means:

 “a feeling of extreme hostility or extreme dislike of another”.   

So when a person hates another person, the only thing stopping them from killing the person they hate, is fear of being caught and being thrown in prison. To protect themselves from punishment, hate is often expressed passively and shows itself in indifference, prejudice, disregard, partiality, coldness.   

Whether shown actively or passively it is still hate and it comes under condemnation.  Those that hate are not Christians, says the Apostle. 

John taught as one writer puts it:

“There is no twilight in this spiritual world”.

Verse 10.   When someone loves his fellow Christian, he is demonstrating that he is living in the light. 

To walk in the light means that one is guided by the Spirit, understands the reason for Christian love, remembering the love that Christ showed to them while they were still enemies of God and so the command of Jesus meant everything to them.  They were walking in the light, were confessing their sins, were having fellowship with God the Father and his son Jesus Christ and so were declaring that Jesus ruled their lives and they were living in truth. 

Given this residence in the light, obeying all of God's commandments, they would see where they were going and would not fall to the temptation to sin, or to accept false beliefs.  By being in the light they were protecting themselves from temptations and the opportunity to stumble. 

This love of other Christians therefore becomes a measure of our walk with God. This test can be and should be applied to every believer.

One writer points out:

“Sometimes it's easy to think, “Following Jesus would be easy if it weren't for all the other Christians”.

And many, many Christians live as the walking wounded, crippled by the scars other Christians have inflicted on them.  Yet this measure still stands.  If we can't love each other, then we have no way to claim a real love for God.  Our relationship with God can be measured by our love for other Christians.” 

So without love there is nothing left.  Doing the right things, believing the right truths are not sufficient.  Hating your brother means you are basically denying the faith.

Verse 11.    On the other hand, those that hate their fellow Christians have never come to the light at all but continue to reside or to live in darkness. They are opposed to fellowship with God since God is “light”. 

Those in darkness are unbelievers, and 1 John 3:19-21 explains why they are like that. 

Remember that blindness is a spiritual condition connected to deliberate disbelief. (Romans 11:9, 2 Corinthians 4: 4) See also John 12:39-40. 

Those walking or residing in darkness are said to be blinded and do not know where they are really going.  

The verse is speaking of the unregenerate, who show this as they go about in daily life.  So this explains the violence, the immorality, and the wickedness in our society.  These people who are unregenerate do not know where their behaviour will lead them, but they stumble along damaging themselves and everyone around them. 

The word “blinded” also indicates “to make insensitive” and we clearly understand that those who are blinded will come to the place where their hearts are so hardened that nothing can soften them.  Their non-response to truth means they are hardening their own heart.

Verse 12-14.    After using the precise words defining who the genuine believer was as opposed to the false believer, which of course would enable those in the community to test themselves and to know who they really were in Christ, John now gives some additional words of reassurance. 

But note also that after this reassurance he gives extremely strong warnings. 

John addresses those whom he calls little children, or literally “born ones”; (this word has nothing to do with actual physical age or sex for it is possible for a eighty-year-old person to be only six months old in the Lord), reminding them of the basic Christian position that their sins had been forgiven when they came to Christ.   

This reminder would be extremely important to the young Christian. They are reminded that they are no longer under condemnation, their guilt has been taken away, their destiny is laid out for them and there is provision for continual cleansing, so that their sins committed in future can be forgiven. 

This fact of the forgiving of sin is true of all those who come to Christ. Everybody begins as little children spiritually.  It is a time of rejoicing for the one coming to Christ, for he realizes that sin is a really bad thing and it leads to destruction and forgiveness is an extremely great thing for it leads to eternal life.   

It is generally a time when there is tremendous emotional euphoria, for the new Christian realizes that they are “completely forgiven”, nothing is left to forgive.  Their sins had been forgiven because of Jesus.  Stressing this fact would be important for the babies in Christ. 

They are no longer immature, juvenile in their behaviour, unstable, difficult to be with, but they are like Christ because they have spent a long time with him.   

Becoming a father or mother is not something achieved overnight, but this position is arrived at after many years of intense, deep, spiritual relationship. 

Then John addresses the young men, and their distinctive mark is that they have overcome the evil one.  They are aware that life is a struggle, that Satan is out to get them and they have now consistently begun to fellowship with God and been deliberate in their behaviour.  But they are not yet mature, and are not fully experienced in the Christian life.  But they have turned away from the path of evil.   

They have achieved spiritual victory.  So they can be confident that God would keep them and expand their knowledge of Him.  They are strong, says John.  They can resist the devil and do great works.  They do not have to be afraid of him, for by coming to Christ they know they have defeated that deceiver and liar.  They have achieved this great victory and are strong enough in Christ to win many more battles. 

Note the importance of the word of God.  They need the food of the word of God and should live in them.  Their strength will come through the word of God and they are exhorted that the word of God should be made at home in their hearts. 

God has established the Word of God as the instrument and source of growth and it is impossible to grow and reach the full grown stage without the Word of God abiding in that individual. 

Once a person comes to Christ the devil has lost that part of the battle.  But though he cannot stop a person from becoming a Christian, he can stop that new Christian from becoming a strong Christian.  And that is precisely what he tries to do.   

No wonder that the devil fights so hard to divert new believers into the false methods of maturing, telling them that there is such a thing as instant spirituality and instant maturity.  He tells them for example that if they get the experience of speaking in tongues, reciting certain prayers, reading certain books, praying in a certain style, singing certain songs, having dreams and visions of Christ, that means that they will be mature. 

All these things, though they might have their place, are used by Satan to divert the requirement and the effort to study the Word of God and be obedient to the Spirit.  The Spirit beckons everyone to use the Word of God, to have it penetrate into our consciousness and produce maturity. 

In verse 13 John has switched from the original word used in verse 12 meaning ‘little babies’ to the word emphasizing the child's immaturity and need for instruction.  So this is the growing stage of their faith.  They are exhorted to be strong in the face of the evil one.  They have to study and be instructed for that is how they will grow. 

The Fathers and mothers are reminded that they have known the God that was from the beginning, the Eternal God and so they live in his presence and focus their thoughts on him and like David long to live in his presence.  See Psalm 27:4 and Psalm 1.  So they must think of who they are and where they are, and stay or abide in Christ. 

It is important to consider this maturing process, from little children, to young men and women, and to fathers and mothers.  Scriptures speak of the milk of the word which is necessary for the babes in Christ, and for “strong meat which must be used to increase strength later on in the spiritual journey. 

According to John, the ‘little children’ has come to know the Father. He is not the uncaring, stern, kill-joy father that many outside the faith often believe God the Father is, but the true, strong and tender-loving Father. 

We should understand that the Father intends for us to develop and mature.  He does not want believers to constantly keep talking about the joy they experienced when they were converted and the joys of infancy.  He wants them to grow. Christian should never remain as ‘babies’. 

So John speaks of the young ones who have grown strong, fighting and resisting the devil, doing the work of God, growing and maturing, bearing the burdens and then he speaks of the full-grown.

Verse 15.   The love of God must be the focus for these three groups just mentioned and without which they will come to naught. 

So the Apostle focuses on the greatest danger to fellowship with God.  This is what will prevent Christian maturity, stunt growth, lure believers away from God, trap and delude them.  This is a greatest source of defeat.  

John warns that we cannot mix the love for God with the love of the world, for this is contradictory.  They are mutually exclusive.  There are two alternatives.  A person can love the world or a person can love the Father. 

This is a specific area of sin that is very dangerous. 

Now we can abuse this passage as was and is often done and condemn Oprah, hip-hop, reggae, calypso, country and western music, playing a piano, using a telephone, as well as anything that some Christian opinion makers currently do not like.  People often label anything that they do not like as “worldliness” and the things they do not like change and shift over time. People might be surprised to learn that playing the piano or the organ both at one time was regarded as performing a work of Satan. 

We should understand that John makes a division; he says we have two enemies.  We are warned not to love the world and then we are warned not to love the things that are in the world. 

Remember now that there is nothing wrong with loving the physical world for God made and maintains it.  The skies, the trees, the mountains are quite beautiful.  In fact we know that God built beauty into the world and appointed people as his regents to look after the earth.  We should not destroy the earth.  We are warned that God when he returns will destroy those who destroy the earth. 

The Bible does not say that the world with people of different practices, customs and cultures is wrong, for we are told that God himself loved it and sent his only Son to save the ‘world’. 

There is a world that believers must not like.  This is the world that hated and hates Jesus. It consists of religious men and secular men that were indifferent to him, who could not care less about him or what he taught and what he represented.  Those men were only interested in power and politics. 

They hated Jesus because he was against their basic philosophy.  That world is concerned only about this life, honour that comes from men and it taught and propagated that the only important thing was this life. It was unconcerned about the honour that came from God and did not care about God and what he wanted.  That world would fight any activity that opposed its philosophy and practice.  

The anti-Christ world of Jesus’ day has its modern counterpart. So John says it is important not to think and act like the world.  If a person does that they forfeit love from God.

He mentions three categories of things. 

First, is the “lust of the flesh”.  This is the sinful nature, the sinful tendencies present in the body. 

For example God built our bodies so that it needs food to maintain life.  The ‘flesh’ takes us beyond that so we crave special delicacies, and we are pushed to the sin of gluttony, which is eating more than we need, demanding newer and newer creations.  We elevate these to the level where they mark us out as better than others who do not appreciate the importance of these new delicacies. 

Similarly God has created us so that we need shelter.  The ‘flesh’ demands that we get luxurious shelter with ease and luxury.  We don't care if others and this includes family and friends, have no shelter as long as we have our luxurious shelter.   

So we indulge the ‘flesh’.  That is the lust of the flesh.  It takes us in all kinds of directions and it urges us to license with no limits. 

Then John tells us about the “lust of the eyes”.  This includes what pleases the mind. God has made us so that we like to inquire, explore and analyze things.  We want to know everything and refuse to accept certain things.  We grow into the world of the occult and the future, getting into superstitions and the powers of the demons.

The eyes push us into greed and we are never satisfied.  We desire what we do not have and do not need.  We want more and more. We want to impress people. 

The love of beauty that God has given us is perverted into vulgarity, loving the erotic, loving pornography, coveting another person’s body, something which the Bible calls idolatry.  Such is the lust of the eyes. 

Then there is the “pride of life”.  One writer defined it thus:

“Basically, this is the desire to awaken envy or adulation in other people.  The first two divisions had to do with satisfying ourselves, not as God intended us to be satisfied, but beyond that.  But they were directed toward us, and only incidentally involved others.  The pride of life, however, cannot exist except as it relates to others.  It seeks to create a sense of envy, rivalry, and burning jealousy in the hearts of others and gives us pleasure in doing this to them.  It is the desire to outshine or to out rank someone else”. 

Man was designed to love and to serve only one Master.  See Matthew 6:24.  It is impossible to serve two masters; it cannot be done.

Verse 17.   John tells us another reason why we should not love ‘the world’.  Loving this world is an absolutely foolish choice.  It is only  temporary and it is passing away.  All around us is change and decay.  Everything is turning to dust.  The philosophy and preferences of the world will come to nothing.  The things of God and the will of God is the only permanent thing.  The things of God is what we should crave.  

Why would anyone want to place their life on that kind of shaky foundation?  Why would anyone want to love the things of the world knowing that it has no future? 

So John invites the brethren to stay in the love of God.

CONCLUSION

Let us remember that Jesus said this about life.  There are only two things that a person can do with their life. In Matthew 12:30 he said

“He that is with me gathers, but he that is against me scatters”.   

So before we continue let us ask the question.  Are we gathering or scattering? 

If we live for the world, if we love its glory, if we want its fame, if we think that the world can give us something important, if we are emotionally tied to the philosophy of the world, its behaviour and the goals of the world, we are scattering. 

It will bring us nothing but death.  The world brings fantasy, illusion, appearance, mentally playing us for fools based on what the world knows we desire. 

We cannot fix the world or bring in a golden age or Christianize the world. The Scriptures teach us that the world will get worse and worse in the immediate period before Jesus returns. 

Our contribution and responsibility is to be salt and light.  We can only retard decay and we should do that. We do this by bringing the love of God to the attention of the world, using our influence honour the Lord. 

We cannot make the darkness go away forever for the candle set on a hill will not burn forever.  We must offer hope to those in darkness and point people who are lost to a home. 

So the love of God in us should make us look for those that are broken, those that are treated badly and those that are in pain. 

We must engage the world and be ministers of reconciliation.  We must tell the world that Jesus loves them and that he will make their life different because of that love. 

We are the ones God has called to bring his ‘light of love’. 

We know that when we engage the world it will hate us just as it hated Jesus.  Jesus fascinated the world.  Many came to him.  Many benefited from him but most abandoned him. 

There were those of genuine faith who came to him, stayed with him and they worked for God.  We are benefiting from their work.  We must continue the task that they have left and bring the ‘light of love’ to the world.