The new command: Stay in the light!

1 John 2.7-11.

In John’s gospel, Jesus gives his followers a new command. The way he talks about it, kinda suggests it’s not just a personal directive from their master, nor a commentary on the Law of Moses like he does in his Sermon on the Mount. This is a new command, meant to be added to all the other commands of the bible, followed just as intently.

John 13.34-35 KWL

34“I give you² a new command

so you² can love one another!

Same as I love you²,

you² can love one another.

35This is how everyone

will come to know you’re² my students:

When you² have love among one another.”

Like all the other things Jesus teaches, and possibly more so, Christians have sought any loophole possible for not obeying him here. Typically by claiming other Christians aren’t real Christians. Because they have different doctrines. Now, heresies I can understand, but we’re too often arguing over differences that are really slight, and insist we’re not merely nitpicking; this is a profoundly vital difference. Fr’instance full-immersion baptism, and absolutely not sprinkling: This has somehow attained the level of “profoundly vital.” You can read Christians’ articles on why this is so, and look at the ridiculous conclusions they eagerly, willingly jump to. Hopefully you’ll recognize their argumentativeness for what it actually is: Jesus wants us to be one, Jn 17.20-23 but the devil doesn’t, and it’s successfully convinced them it’s okay for them to oppose Jesus.

Following the devil’s lead, we nitpick away, and disqualify people from Christianity over these things. Slightly different doctrines, slightly different rituals, slightly different sins. They revere the wrong Christian leaders and teachers, and play the wrong worship music, and vote for the wrong candidates. They’re too young or too old, too formal or informal, too white or brown (although let’s pretend racism isn’t really our hangup; let’s pretend it’s politics again). Pick your favorite excuse.

Anyway. In today’s discussion on 1 John, we got John writing about a new command. And a number of commentators have decided John is writing about “the new command,” Jesus’s command in John 13 about loving one another.

Because, they figure, the author of 1 John and the Gospel of John is the same guy. Probably has the same audience. Probably the audience read the gospel, and knows John’s references to “new command” are about that new command. Plus, would John dare to issue a new command on his own?—he’s not God, not Moses, definitely not Jesus, and has no business declaring commands on his own initiative.

I would remind you it’s not wise to just assume the readers of 1 John have read John. If John really is a wise, Spirit-inspired author like we believe him to be, he wouldn’t make that assumption either; he’d make it clear he’s talking about Jesus’s “Love one another.” Is that what John’s doing in today’s passage? It looks like he’s actually not. Yes, loving one another is part of it, but the command actually isn’t loving one another; it’s “Stay in the light!”

It’s kinda obvious when we read today’s soundbite:

1 John 2.7-11 KWL

7Beloved Christians, I write you² not a new command,

but an old command which you² had since the beginning.

The old command is the message you² heard.

8Yet I do write you² a new command,

true for one and all:

The darkness is going away,

and the true light is shining already.

9One who says they’re¹ in the light

while hating one’s fellow Christian:

They’re¹ in the darkness right now.

10One who loves one’s fellow Christian

lives in the light,

and isn’t triggered by them.¹

11One who hates one’s fellow Christian

is in the darkness, walking in the darkness,

and doesn’t know where they’re¹ going

for the darkness blinds one’s eyes.

The whole purpose of John’s letter, plainly stated, is to keep John’s students away from sin. 1Jn 2.1 How we go about doing that, is we stay in the light which God is. This is John’s new command.

And it’s not all that new, as John pointed out. Every Christian’s heard it, in one form or another. Shun evil; stick to what’s good. Follow Jesus, walk like he did, and teach everyone what he taught. Mt 28.20 “What would Jesus do?” like the T-shirts say. The assumption one usually makes when they embrace a guru, is the goal of being just like that guru. The term “Christian” itself means “little Christ,” or Christ-follower. Does this really need to be spelled out?

But then again it is a new command. Following Moses’s teachings didn’t turn the Hebrews into people who asked themselves, “What would Moses do?” Especially since the scriptures record Moses’s screw-ups as much as his accomplishments. So really you don’t follow Moses; you follow the Law. Whereas in being Christian, we do follow Jesus, ’cause he never secrewed up. We obey Jesus’s commands too, but Jesus personifies his own commands to a level Moses never even approached. Following Jesus is following his commands. Following him is a command in itself.

So while it’s not new, it kinda is. There’s never been a guru we could follow to the level we follow Jesus. And frankly, if we’re not willing to follow Jesus to that level, we suck as Christians.

The point of following Jesus, as stated in verse 8, isn’t because “the darkness is past,” as the KJV puts it. Παράγεται/parághete is a present-tense verb, which means the darkness is currently passing. It’s not gone yet. We gotta work at it! When we follow Jesus and walk in the light, we’re helping to drive darkness out. The more of us that are in the light, the fewer places there are for dark to be. Christianity spreads, darkness recedes. And on New Earth, darkness will be utterly gone.

Hatred means you’re not in the light.

You can easily see why commentators confuse this “new command” with Jesus’s command to love one another. Loving one another is integral to living in the light. Note verses 9-11, where John straight-up wrote if you hate one another, you’re not in the light. These two commands are very closely connected.

John literally used the word ἀδελφὸν/adelfón, “sibling,” which I translated “fellow [Christian].” The general idea is we’re siblings in Christ—sisters and brothers whom God equally adopted as his children. If we hate our fellow Christians, we’re hating family. And if we refuse to work out our disagreements, and accept idle prejudices and assumptions made about different denominations, we’re in the wrong. It violates Jesus’s command to love one another. It means we’re still in the darkness, no matter what we claim.

This is a hard principle for some Christians to follow. For many, partisanship doesn’t just trump Christianity; it is Christianity, to these partisans. Many’s the time I’ve heard a Christian just rip on a politician who happens to be a fellow Christian. “Hey,” I’d point out, “you know she’s Christian?” In response I’d get a blank or shocked stare… followed by a sputtered diatribe about how anybody who thinks as she does, votes as she does, or is in the party she’s in, can’t possibly be Christian. Not a real one, anyway. And I shouldn’t be such a sucker that I believe these phonies’ professions of faith.

Meanwhile I’m being shouted at by someone who’s not acting all that Christlike right now. Who’s actively demonstrating what John meant by being blinded by the darkness.

Now yes, we Christians are allowed to judge one another, provided we do it fairly, mercifully, in love, and with the goals of building one another up and restoring relationships. So it’s fully within my rights and duties as a Christian to critique a fellow Christian’s manner of following Jesus. If they’re doing it wrong, I can say so—just as if I’m doing it wrong, they can say so. But in none of this judgment are any of us allowed to hate the person we’re critiquing. Not ever.

Were I to hate the other Christians: All the building up, the fairness, the rightness, the mercy, the love, would be gone. ’Cause the judgment wouldn’t be about love and restored relationships. It’s about anger, envy, vengefulness, and damage. I’d be in the pitch-black dark.

Even if they’re horribly sinning, I shouldn’t be triggered by them. The word σκάνδαλον/skándalon was used to translate the Old Testament word מִכְשׁוֹל/mikhšól, “a rock one trips over,” which is why it’s so often interpreted “stumbling block” (KJV “there is none occasion of stumbling in him”). But properly a skándalon is the trigger of an animal trap. The part of the mousetrap where you put the peanut butter. “Stumbled” implies they induced you to sin, but “triggered” makes it quite obvious how they do that: We get angry, then use the anger to justify everything evil we do from then on. But God wants his kids to control our emotions way better than that.

When we behave this way, we’ve no clue how destructive and hurtful we’re being. We’re in the dark, remember? Properly the light drives out sin, not people. Yet we drive away the fellow Christians we hate, and we offend all the pagans watching from the outside, who rightly respond “If that’s how Christians behave, I want nothing to do with it.” So much for spreading the light.

If we’re angry, we must work it out. If we hate, rebuke the haters. Otherwise we Christians are to love one another, period. No exceptions.