A Study of 1 John 2:3-11
Introduction
Whenever I write a book, if possible we also publish a separate study guide. Some people use the study guide individually, but it’s most often used for small groups. Many Christian books have study guides, which are designed to help readers apply the content set forth in the main book. Sometimes I write the study guide; other times people on our staff do. But the purpose is always the same. We want people to think about and assimilate the truth about which we are writing. We want it to be real and relevant to daily life.
I think we can call 1 John a study guide for the gospel of John. The apostle John covers the same territory, emphasizes the same themes, and makes the content of His Gospel relevant to daily life. The relationship between the Gospel of John and the book of 1 John is remarkable. But while the gospel of John is narrative and doctrine, the book of 1 John is practical and conducive to application.
So we are studying the study guide for the gospel of John, and that study guide is this small epistle of 1 John. Today we’re coming to chapter 2, verses 3 through 11:
Scripture
3 We know that we have come to know him if we keep his commands. 4 Whoever says, “I know him,” but does not do what he commands is a liar, and the truth is not in that person. 5 But if anyone obeys his word, love for God is truly made complete in them. This is how we know we are in him: 6 Whoever claims to live in him must live as Jesus did.
7 Dear friends, I am not writing you a new command but an old one, which you have had since the beginning. This old command is the message you have heard. 8 Yet I am writing you a new command; its truth is seen in him and in you, because the darkness is passing and the true light is already shining.
9 Anyone who claims to be in the light but hates a brother or sister is still in the darkness. 10 Anyone who loves their brother and sister lives in the light, and there is nothing in them to make them stumble. 11 But anyone who hates a brother or sister is in the darkness and walks around in the darkness. They do not know where they are going, because the darkness has blinded them.
Background
If you’ve been listening to these studies, you know the proposed background. John wrote and began to circulate his Gospel, the Fourth Gospel, which emphasizes the fact that Jesus is both God and man, and that He both died and rose again.
But there were nominal believers in the church without strong theological foundations. They had a strong Hellenistic background, and they held gnostic-like views. They reacted to John’s Gospel, criticized him, rejected him, and probably they said, “He was a great man in his day, but now he is old and senile.”
These critics left the churches. There was a population drain from the churches in that area, which was very alarming, especially to those who stayed behind. They were berated and criticized by the deserters, who planted doubts in the minds of those who remained true. They said, “You are as foolish as John and as senile.” So the people who remained in the churches were riddled with doubt and insecurity. John wrote this letter to give them answers and assurances. That’s why the book of 1 John is so rich in talking about the assurance we have in all aspects of our salvation.
In this passage, John comforts and strengthens his people with three biblical ideas.
1. Genuine Christians Have an Assured Faith
First, he told them they had an assured faith. The theme of this paragraph is in the first nine words: “We know that we have come to know Him….” That’s really the theme of the entire book. This is a theme that threads itself through every verse of this letter.
I want you to notice something about this. In the gospel of John, the apostle states his purpose for writing it at the end of the book. He does the same thing in this letter of 1 John. These two statements of purpose are very similar, yet there is a distinct differentiation between them.
- John 20:30-31: Jesus performed many other signs in the presence of His disciples, which are not recorded in this book. But these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in His name.
- 1 John 5:13: I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life.
John wrote his gospel so that we would have the information we need to believe in Christ and thereby to have eternal life. He wrote his first letter to those of us who have done that, to reassure us that we may know we have eternal life.
And so 1 John 2:3 says, “We know that we have come to know Him….”
One of my favorite Gospel Songs talks about this assurance:
Jesus, what a friend for sinners,
Jesus, lover of my soul.
Friends my fail me, foes assail me,
He, my Savior, makes me whole.
Hallelujah, what a Savior! Hallelujah, what a friend!
Saving, helping, keeping, loving
He is with me to the end.
The song was written by evangelist J. Wilbur Chapman, who came to Christ as a teenager. He decided to prepare for the ministry, but he began to have doubts about his salvation. Was he really saved? Was he really going to heaven? One day he had the opportunity to talk with the famous evangelist, D. L. Moody, and he confessed to him that he had no assurance of salvation. He didn’t know if he was really saved.
Moody quoted John 5:24, which says, “Very truly, I tell you, whoever hears My word and believes in Him who sent me has eternal life and will not be judged but has crossed over from death to live.”
Moody said something like this: “Have you heard the Gospel and believed in Christ?”
The young man said, “Yes.”
“Then do you have eternal life?”
“That’s just it,” said Chapman. “I don’t know for sure.”
“Well,” said Moody, “see here, young man. Whom are you doubting?”
In a flash, Chapman realized his lack of assurance was really the sin of doubting the plain-spoken words of Christ, and from that moment on he had assurance. And he went on to write the hymn I love: “Jesus, what a friend for sinners; Jesus, lover of my soul.”
The apostle John has always been an excellent source of encouragement for people who are doubting their salvation, and here in verse 3 he tells us we can know that we know Him. We can have an assured faith.
2. Genuine Christians Have an Improved Life
But let’s go on with verse three. There is a conditional statement. The verse says: We know that we have come to know him if we keep His commands.
What does he mean by His commands? Does he mean we have to perfectly keep the Ten Commandments? That doesn’t seem to be what John means. The key to understanding this is to see how he uses the word “command” in his book of 1 John. He uses this word a total of fourteen times. As we read through the book, it becomes clear he uses it in a very specialized and limited way.
Look at 1 John 3:21, where John wrote: “And this is His command: to believe in the name of His Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as He commanded us.”
In other words, on the basis of the finished work of Christ on the cross, we enter into an authentic relationship with the living God, and His Holy Spirit comes to live inside of us. The Holy Spirit brings with Him a divine, supernatural kind of love that the Bible calls agape. Suddenly we find ourselves beginning to be concerned with the physical, emotional, spiritual, and eternal needs of people around us.
Let’s go on to verses 4 and 6: Whoever says, “I know him,” but does not do what he commands is a liar, and the truth is not in that person. But if anyone obeys his word, love for God is truly made complete in them. This is how we know we are in him: Whoever claims to live in him must live as Jesus did.
John does not say that when you come to Christ, all your problems will be solved and all your difficulties will go away. What he does say is that we begin the process of learning to live as Jesus did. We begin the process of becoming more Christlike.
Let me show you another verse about this. Over in 1 John 4, we have verse 17. Notice the very last part of the verse: In this world we are like Jesus.
This is our improved life. We live as Jesus did. In this world we are like Jesus. The way this works is gradual and very simple. When we receive Jesus as our Savior and make Him the Lord of lives, the Holy Spirit comes into us—into our bodies, minds, and souls. He takes the Scripture we are reading, the truth we are absorbing, the sermons we are hearing, the problems we are facing—He takes all of it and uses it to gradually create in us a Christlike personality.
If none of that has happened in your life, you cannot have assurance of salvation. But we know that we know Him if we have trusted in His name and He is beginning to do a work of sanctification and transformation inside of us.
As I researched this sermon, I found the testimony of a man named Larry Nemitz of Minnesota. When he was a boy, he gathered with his parents to watch a Billy Graham Crusade on their black-and-white Zenith television set. As Larry listened, he believed, and he literally felt a bolt of electric power running through him. From that point, he believed in God. But as a teenager and young man he didn’t live for the Lord. Years later, while reading a Christian book and listening to Christian messages on cassette tapes, he prayed again to receive Christ as Savior with greater understanding.
He said, “This time no power came upon me, and I wondered why. After eight to ten months of listening to [the] tapes and studying the Bible and asking Jesus into my life, I realized that even without the feeling of power, I was changing. I stopped swearing, stopped going to bars to meet the ladies, and I couldn’t get enough of studying my Bible. A deep desire began to grow in me to share the salvation message….”
Nemitz admitted that he didn’t know if he was truly saved or not at age 12, but he gained assurance of salvation when he reconfirmed his decision and saw how the Lord was changing his habits.
Look again at this paragraph of Scripture:
3 We know that we have come to know Him if we keep his commands. 4 Whoever says, “I know Him,” but does not do what He commands is a liar, and the truth is not in that person. 5 But if anyone obeys His word, love for God is truly made complete in them. This is how we know we are in Him: 6 Whoever claims to live in Him must live as Jesus did.
The truly born-again Christian has an assured faith, an improved life, and thirdly a distinctive love.
3. Genuine Christians Have a Distinctive Love
Let’s continue with verses 7 and 8:
7 Dear friends, I am not writing you a new command but an old one, which you have had since the beginning. This old command is the message you have heard. 8 Yet I am writing you a new command; its truth is seen in him and in you, because the darkness is passing and the true light is already shining.
This sounds like a riddle doesn’t it? I am not writing you a new command, yet I am writing you a new command. What does John mean?
There is virtual agreement among commentators that John is talking about the command to love one another. That is the Old Command. Look, for example, at the next book in the Bible, or the next letter—2 John, and verse 5: And now, dear lady I am not writing you a new command, but one we have had from the beginning. I ask that you love one another.
What is the New Command? Look at John 13:34, where Jesus said: A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.
John was using a kind of riddle to emphasize his point. He was saying: I’m not telling you something new, but something old—love one another. I’m not telling you something old, but something new—love one another.
The command to love one another went back to the Old Testament, where the two greatest commandments were to love God and to love one another. But when Jesus came, He personified love and made it available to us in a fresh way by His Holy Spirit.
Romans 5:5 says, “God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us.”
We’re not very good at loving God or others in our own fallen, sinful personalities. But when we are yielded to and walking with and filled with the Holy Spirit, the love of God is spread abroad in our hearts and we’re able to love even the unlovable.
One commentator said, “To walk as Christ walked is to put in practice the old commandment and so make it new (ever new and fresh), as love is as old as man and fresh in every new experience.”
Recently I read a fascinating article by Karl Faase, who leads a Christian ministry called Olive Tree Media. The story was about Karl’s father, Hans, who was born in Germany in 1932. Like all young people of that era, he was in the Hitler Youth Movement, though not by choice. When he was eleven years old, he was put on a train with other children to be taken away to fight in the war. His mother bravely pulled him off the train. If she had been caught they both would have been killed. After the war, Hans snuck out at night to steal potatoes to keep his family alive.
In 1955, he immigrated to Australia, met a woman named Florence, and got married. But inside he was full of turmoil. He said there were dark spots inside of him because of his family’s dysfunction and his upbringing and the Hitler movement. His relationships were unhealthy and dysfunctional.
Then a new pastor came to their town who had been influenced by the Billy Graham crusades. He held an evangelistic mission, and Hans attended. During the course of the meetings Hans trusted Jesus Christ as his Savior. Here is what he said:
He spent the next day working on the farm and then as he returned back to their home on the property, he wrote:
Going home that night seemed to be something special. The two boys came running to meet me and hand in hand we walked home. Florence seemed to have a different aura about her too. Things just seemed to be different and a pleasure to be in. But the truth was, at that moment, I had no idea what it was about or the reason for it.
As time went by, he realized what the difference was: Jesus had come into his heart and was beginning to teach him how to truly love others.
Now, John goes on to make this explicit in the last part of our paragraph:
9 Anyone who claims to be in the light but hates a brother or sister is still in the darkness. 10 Anyone who loves their brother and sister lives in the light, and there is nothing in them to make them stumble. 11 But anyone who hates a brother or sister is in the darkness and walks around in the darkness. They do not know where they are going, because the darkness has blinded them.
Here again John is talking especially about the deserters, about those leaving the church because they were rejecting the implications of the Gospel of John, which the apostle had recently published. John was saying, those who are deconstructing their faith and rejecting the true identity and Lordship of Jesus Christ are walking in darkness. They cannot be channels of His love. They don’t know what they’re doing or where they’re going. They don’t love you.
But because you belong to Christ, you have an assured faith, an improved life, and a distinctive love. You are walking in the light as He is in the light. You have fellowship with one another and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanses us from all sin.
Conclusion
This is a good time to ask yourself if you are certain you know Christ as Savior. This is a part of my own testimony. I don’t remember a time when I wasn’t trusting Jesus as my Savior. I grew up in a very Gospel-filled family and church, and from infancy I heard about Jesus Christ. I grew up praying and reading my Bible and feeling I had a relationship with Christ.
Then when I was twelve years old or so, an evangelist came to our church and preached about the danger of thinking you are saved when, in fact, you are not. A lot of people are cultural Christians. Maybe they have a Gospel background; maybe they go to church; perhaps they’ve even been baptized. But their lives have never been touched and transformed by the blood of Christ. He told us we needed to make sure, to know for sure.
That evening I went home troubled. What if I’m not really a Christian? I was too shy to talk to anyone about it, but I went in the bathroom, which I knew was private, and I knelt down and prayed something like this: “Dear Lord, I think I’m a Christian, and if I am, I thank you. But if I’m not, I want to become your child right now. Please, if you’re not in my heart, come in right now.”
And then I got up, left the bathroom, and have felt assurance of my salvation ever since.
Perhaps someone listening needs to do the same. Nail it down. Make sure. And let the Lord Jesus Christ give you an assured faith, an improved life, and a distinctive love.