I John, 2:9-11
Josiah Matthews · Dec 4, 2005
1 John, No. 10
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/48262338424782

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

Okay, well, let's get into it. Well, these are the three verses we're going to cover today. And we'll go ahead and read through them. It says, The one who says he is in the light, and yet hates his brother, is in the darkness until now. The one who loves his brother abides in the light, and there is no cause for stumbling in him. But the one who 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. Okay, so we'll look at this verse 9 first.

We'll kind of go through it phrase by phrase here, or even word by word in some cases. So, first we have the one who says, and this is actually all just two words in Greek, halegon, and it's the verb lego, to speak or to talk with apparent focus upon the content of what is said. And it's a participle. So, does everyone know what a participle is? I didn't really until I took Greek. I forgot it all. A participle is a verbal adjective.

So, in other words, it's the one who is saying. So, it's the saying one. So, in that whole phrase there, the one who says is the subject of the sentence. So the one who is saying is the participle. And it's present tense and active voice. He's doing the saying. And we're going to see that it would be best translated, the one who is claiming. And you'll see why that makes sense on the next slide. But for now, the one who is claiming. And next we have, OK.

Next we have the verb, he is, which is a me, and we're going to see this a lot today, and we've already seen it a lot in the chapter, the two chapters of 1 John we've gone through. So this is an essence verb, it means to be. I am a man, I am Josiah, those are describing qualities of my person. So this is the verb we would use to do that in Greek, In fact, you know, I've got this little keyword sheet going here. This is the word that's used the most in 1 John. So, 99 times it's used. It's an infinitive, which means it's to be, to be, and it's also in present tense as well. Now, here's why we used claiming on the last slide.

A lot of your versions are going to say, the one who says he's in the light. Well, actually, it should be better translated. It doesn't make that much of a difference, but better translated, it would read, the one who is claiming to be in the light. If we had saying here, it wouldn't make much sense. The one who is saying to be in the light. That obviously doesn't sound right. So, claiming is actually a better translation. The one who is claiming to be in the light.

And we looked at this little preposition, in, a couple weeks ago. And in this case, the preposition shows location. And in means to be entirely in something or in someone. And I'll show you this graphically. So what this verse is saying is that The one who is saying he is in the light. So here's the one and you can see that he is...

Do we have that laser pointer again Roger? In that drawer? Oh dear, I'm staying away from this today. Hold down the two buttons. I'm going to keep walking in front of that screen. There you go, there you go, and you just keep the blue button, thanks. Appreciate it, appreciate it.

Okay, so, what this is saying is that, this is describing the in, that little preposition in, okay? So, the light here, the circle is the light, and the one who is saying is in light, he's entirely in light, okay? He's claiming to be entirely in the light. That's the meaning of the Greek preposition in. It doesn't mean this. He's not claiming to be partially in the light. When he uses this word in, it means he's entirely in the light. So, as you know, when Scripture says that we're in Christ, it uses that same little preposition in. We're entirely in Christ as well. So that's what's going on here. Now the light, we've seen this before in 1 John.

And in the natural realm, light refers to light as we see with our eyes, but in scripture, light can be used many other ways. And Vine lists 12 other meanings for light, and I put those at the back of your notes on one of those extra handouts. We won't look at that today, but that's just for you to have, stick in your binder and keep. And what it does is it lists, it vines a list of the twelve other meanings of light that's found in Scripture. So you can use that when you need to.

But in this context, light seems to best refer to Christ Himself, and I'll show you why. And to be in the light, that whole phrase, to be in the light, specifically refers to our walk in Him. refers to our fellowship. It's not talking about our position in Christ or our eternal security, but it's talking about our walk in Christ, to be in the light. It's talking about our walk in Christ. Now, remember about a month ago when Doug read for us John chapter 1, verses 1 through 14.

We looked over these verses In Him was life, obviously Christ in this context. In Christ was life. And the life of Christ was the light of men. So that's what the light is in 1 John. It's Christ Himself. And then, this is about a month ago, where we looked at this passage, in verse 7 there, in the middle, you see that John talks about walking in the light. As he himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another. So we've seen it there. And then look at this, John also records Jesus as saying, I am the light of the world, He who follows me will not walk in the darkness, but will have the light of life." So there it's real clear that light is referring to Christ Himself and His life. So, up at the top, just to summarize it, the one who says he's in the light is the one who is saying that he is right now walking in Jesus Christ. He's right now walking in dependence upon Jesus Christ. Alright, now look at this.

The one who says he is in the light, and yet hates his brother. So, the same guy that's saying he's in the light, actually hates his brother, and hates is mis-sown. It means to hate, or to pursue with hatred, to detest. Pretty strong word. And also, this is a participle, so it would really be translated, the one hating his brother, or the one who is hating his brother. We also still have it in present tense, so he's right now and continuing hating his brother, and he's doing it himself, it's active. And so we'll translate it, the one who is hating. Now, in 1 John, This word hate is used one time of the world hating the Christian, and then it's used four times of the Christian hating his fellow Christian.

Now, brother, Adelphos, here brother refers to a fellow believer united together in Christ in the family of God. And then I listed different verses below, which you can look up, which talk about that the moment we're saved, we come into the position of an adult son, so there's this sort of a familial relationship in the body of Christ. We have God our Father, and of course Christ is the Son, and all believers are positioned in the Son, and so therefore God is our Father. So, different verses you can look at on your own. Adelphos is also one of the key words of the book, so you'll find that on your sheet.

The one who's saying he's in the light, and yet is hating his brother, is in the darkness until now. Is is our same essence verb, we're not going to go over all that again. It's the same verb. is in the darkness, same thing's going on, except this time we're in darkness instead of in light.

He's saying he's in the light, but actually he's in the darkness. Entirely in the darkness. And again, this is speaking of our walk, a believer's walk, or a believer's fellowship. So, this could be a saved person, and most likely it is, but he is walking in darkness. Even though he says he's walking in the light, but yet he hates his brother, so he's really walking in the darkness.

Now, darkness is skatia, Properly or literally, the darkness means lack of daylight, right? But in Scripture, metaphorically, it's used of ignorance of divine things and its associated wickedness or sinfulness and the resultant misery. In the entire New Testament, this word sketeia for darkness is only used 16 times. And 14 of those 16 times are used by John. And I listed them there. So John has the most to say of any author about darkness in the New Testament.

And in this context, John uses darkness to refer to a believer walking in sin and out of fellowship with Christ, who is the light. So he says he's dependent upon Christ. He says he's walking in Him, resting in his position in Christ, but he's hating his brother. So those two don't go together. So he's lying, and actually he's walking in sin. He's walking out of fellowship with Christ.

Alright, so let's summarize verse 9, kind of pull it all together briefly. Here's what we have. The one who says he is in the light, and yet hates his brother, is in the darkness until now. And we'll look at it pictorially again here. Alright, I'm in the light. He says he's in the light, but he hates his brother, so God's Word says he's actually in the darkness. You think that's cool?

Alright, so now let's look at the next verse. The one who loves his brother, abides in the light, and there is no cause for stumbling in him. So before you're talking about, in verse 9, we're talking about somebody who says they love their brother, I'm sorry, who says they're in the light, but actually they hate their brother. Now in verse 10, we're talking about one who actually loves his brother, and God's Word's going to tell us that he abides in the light.

But let's look at it here. The one who loves, Agapo, agape, agapao, I'm butchering that. It's the verb agapao, we'll look at it in a minute. But it means to have love for someone or something based on sincere appreciation and high regard. It's also a participle here, so literally it's the one who is loving his brother. It's present tense, active voice again, translated, the one who is loving.

This verb, agapao, is used 28 times in the book of John. It's also one of our key words in the book, the fourth most frequent. This is another one of the words of the New Testament that John dominates. Over half of the times where agapao shows up, are in John's writing, 72 out of 140 times. And so we've seen that a lot already. that John dominates certain words in the New Testament. I think it was sin or darkness John had the most to say. Then we just saw that he uses love more than any other author. What was it just a second ago we saw? It was darkness?

Okay, thanks. Now, at the end of your notes again, I gave you an extra handout just to keep, and it talks about the differences in meaning between two love words, agape and philia, two nouns and two verbs. So, you can take a look at that. Basically, there is difference in meaning, but it's not as different as some people would normally say. But you can take a look at that.

The one who loves his brother, so again, brother is the same word, so we won't go over that again. The one who is loving his brother abides in the light. Abide, meno, means to continue to be present. And in our context here, it speaks of occupying by faith our position in Christ and depending upon Him. It's the same meaning as in John 15. We'll look at John 15 here in a second. Abide is also one of the key words of the book. Another one of these words that John uses most. He abides in the light. The same construction as verse 9, so we won't put you through all the details again. In the light. Now this, for those of you who are interested in diagramming, I put this up here.

And actually everybody would be interested in this part, because this is the participle, the whole thing, the one who is loving. The one who is loving, that's the participle. And the whole phrase, the one who is loving his brother, is the subject of the entire sentence. So the one who is loving his brother is the subject of the entire sentence.

He is right now and continuing abiding in Christ. So for those who are interested in that, I put it up there for you. Now let's look at John 15 briefly. Remember, the phrase we're looking at right now says, the one who loves his brother abides in the light.

Well, John 15 says, Christ tells his disciples, abide in me, and abide has the same meaning here in John 15 as it does in 1 John 2.10. Abide in me and I in you, as the branch cannot bear fruit of itself unless it abides in the vine, so neither can you bear fruit unless you abide in me. I am the vine, you are the branches, He who abides in me, and I in him, he bears much fruit, for apart from me you can do nothing. So, look at that. We hear in this verse what we have is, the one who abides in Christ, he bears much fruit.

And now I want you to look at one other verse, Galatians 5.22 says, The fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. And so, of course, love is one of the fruit of the Spirit. And the point is that from both John 15 and Galatians 5, we see that God's fruit, which includes love, is produced in the believer by the Holy Spirit when the believer abides in Christ. And basically, that's saying what our verse today is saying, in fewer words. The one who loves his brother is abiding in the light. They go together. If you're abiding in Christ, you're going to be loving your brother. They just go together.

And there is no cause for stumbling in Him again. Now there is, is Amy again. Just to let you know. And there is no cause for stumbling in him. So this cause for stumbling, it's actually just one word. It's skandalon in Greek. An occasion for stumbling. And it's where we get our word scandal today. No cause for stumbling in him. John only uses it two times in all of his writings. Right here, and then in Revelation it shows up.

Now literally, Skandalon refers to the trigger, or old English, a tricker, of a trap. And I've got a little picture here for you. So here's a mouse trap. And the trigger, of course, is this part. And that's the part that has the bait. So when the little mouse comes and hits the trigger, or the tricker, tricks him, that's where he goes, bam, he's caught.

Well, that's how this word is used in the New Testament. That's its literal use. Metaphorically, it's used in the New Testament to refer to anything or anyone that causes another person to sin. So, when we start talking about the relationship between believers, and other believers, we see that a scandalon is something in my life that trips you up, that makes you stumble. I thought of an example.

This week, the Narnia movie comes out. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe. And if you're familiar with those stories at all, there's this part of the story where the witch offers Edmund candy, Turkish Delight, but she uses it to trick him and lure him back to her castle, and then she makes him her prisoner later on. But in this example, the witch and the Turkish Delight are both a scandal.

In fact, in the Bible, Satan is called a Scandalon. And in the story, the White Witch is synonymous with Satan, or an allegory of Satan. Anyway, and these are all of the verses in the New Testament where that word shows up, and you can take a look at those if you want to. And here's one passage, Romans 14.

So then each one of us will give an account of himself to God. Therefore, let us not judge one another anymore. So in other words, look to your own walk. Be concerned about your own walk with the Lord. But rather, determine this, not to put an obstacle or a stumbling block in a brother's way. Obstacle is our word skandalon. Stumbling block is actually another Greek word. But the point is, Paul's telling the Christians, don't do anything that's going to cause your fellow brother to sin.

And you're familiar with Paul's discussion about eating meat sacrificed to idols. And Paul sees that if I see meat there, even though it's been sacrificed to an idol, I'm going to thank God for that meat and eat it. But then he realizes that he may have a new brother in Christ who just got saved and who yesterday maybe sacrificed that very meat to the pagan god. And so if he sees Paul eating the meat from the temple, it's going to totally play with his mind and he's not going to understand it and he may go back to worshipping pagan gods or something. So Paul's telling the Christians to be careful of that and to avoid doing things that are going to cause our other brothers and sisters to sin. And so that's what's going on in 1 John.

The one who loves his brother is abiding in the light, and there is no occasion for stumbling in him. That is for someone else. Does that make sense? In him, from what I understand, In him is referring to his walk. So in his walk, there's nothing that would cause another believer to stumble. And of course, the other person's still making the choice to do something sinful, but he's being tripped up or confused by another believer. And so I've translated it this way.

The one who is loving his brother is right now and continuing abiding in the light, who is Christ, and there is nothing in his conduct or walk that would cause another believer to sin or to stumble into sin. Okay, and we've got plenty of time, so stop me if you want to say something. I just keep steam rolling ahead, so just interrupt me if you want to add something. Verse 11, But the one who 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." In this whole clause, the one who hates his brother is in the darkness.

There aren't any new words. In the entire book of 1 John, John reuses his words over and over again. And what we see this morning is that in three verses, John's already used every single one of these words already in the two previous verses. We won't look at those again. Everything's repeated. We'll translate it this way.

The one who is hating his brother is right now and continuing in the darkness. And then for the ones interested in diagramming, the one who is hating is again a participle. And that phrase is the subject of the sentence. So the one who is hating his brother is right now and continuing in the darkness.

In the darkness. Same construction as we've seen before. In the darkness. The one hating is entirely in the darkness. The next part of verse 11 says, and walks in the darkness. So the one who hates his brother is in the darkness, and he walks in the darkness.

And walk is peripateo, it's shown up already, and it's signifying the whole round of activities in one's life. It's how we live, it's how we conduct ourselves. that she was five times in the book. Because it's present tense, right now and continuing, you would translate it this way.

Walking in the darkness right now and continuing on into the future. In the darkness, again. Yep. Okay. She made that, by the way. Alright, so he's in the darkness. The one who hates his brother is in the darkness. He walks in the darkness. And then the next phrase is, he does not know where he is going.

And does know is oida. It's to know or to have knowledge of. It's actually perfect tense, which means a past action with ongoing results into the future. But it's an abnormal verb, and it's used by writers as if it's in the present tense. So, let's throw that out there. So, it's used as if it's in the present tense. Now, you're aware that there's several different words in the New Testament for knowledge or to know something.

Gnosko is one that shows up frequently. Oida is another. Epignosko is a little different than gnosko. That's another. What this shows is just some differences between gnosko and oida. And oida is our verb in this verse. Gnosko frequently suggests Inception, or the beginning of something, and, or progress in knowledge, while Oida suggests fullness of knowledge. And Oida is another one of the key words of the book.

He does not know where he is going. To withdraw oneself, to go away, to depart. It's present tense, active voice, indicative mood. Indicative mood is just the mood of reality. Hupago is only used once in the entire book. He does not know where he is going because the darkness has blinded his eyes.

And the darkness, same word, has blinded Tuflao, kind of a funny word, if they aren't all funny, that's a funny one, Tuflao, to blind or to make blind. And metaphorically, it refers to blunting one's mental discernment or to darken the mind. And in scripture, it's only used this way. It's never used of actually blinding someone, although that does come up, but a different word would be used.

A different verb would be used there. So in the New Testament, it shows up and is used metaphorically, referring to your mind being darkened. Aorist tense. And Aorist tense, in the indicative mood, it just means it happened in the past. It happened in the past as a matter of fact. So, the darkness has blinded his eyes, previously blinded his eyes. It's only used three times in the entire New Testament. And here's where it shows up.

John 12. This is Jesus talking to the Pharisees and some of the Jewish leaders. John says of Jesus, But though Jesus had performed so many signs before him, yet they were not believing in him. The Pharisees were not believing in him. But this was to fulfill the word of Isaiah the prophet. Lord, who has believed our report, and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? For this reason they could not believe, for Isaiah said, He has blinded their eyes, and He hardened their hearts, so that they would not see with their eyes, and perceive with their heart, and be converted, and not heal them. These things Isaiah said, because he saw His glory, and he spoke of Him, Christ.

Nevertheless, many even of the rulers believed in Him, Jesus, but because of the Pharisees they were not confessing Him, for fear that they would be put out of the synagogue. for they love the approval of men rather than the approval of God. And Jesus cried out and said, He who believes in me does not believe in me but in him who sent me.

He who sees me, sees the one who sent me. And of course, even seeing here isn't talking about actually your eyes seeing Christ. It's talking about understanding who He is with your mind, and of course, depending upon Him. But look at the last verse. I have come as light into the world, so that everyone who believes in me will not remain in darkness. So there's our light, our darkness theme showing up, and then we have our blinding, the eyes showing up in this passage. Now, also see the same thing in Paul's writing here in 2 Corinthians.

If our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing, in whose case the God of this world has blinded the minds of the unbelieving, so that they might not see the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God. For God, who said, Light shall shine out of darkness, is the one who has shown in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Christ. Our word blinded, showing up, and then we have the idea of being able to see the light of the gospel, and what's being taught there is one's ability to understand the gospel, not literally see it with your eyes, but understand it. And then we have light shining out of darkness, and then the light of the knowledge of the glory of God. So a lot of the same things that we're seeing in 1 John, Paul uses the same words, the same ideas in his writings as well.

The darkness has blinded his eyes. I had to throw that in there. That was weird. Now, the other thing to mention is that this blinded his eyes. To blind the eyes is actually, the whole phrase is actually a Greek idiom, or a Greek figure of speech, meaning to cause someone to no longer have the capacity or ability to understand.

Alright, so let's summarize verse 11. What it's saying is that the one who is hating his brother is in the darkness, is in sin, because we saw that darkness refers to sin and to walking out of fellowship with Christ. So the one who hates his brother, the reality is, even if he says he's in the light, he's actually walking in sin. He's walking in darkness, out of fellowship with Christ. And then he says it another way, he walks in the darkness. and he does not know where he's going, because he's blinded by the darkness. And one more thought to throw out.

Have you ever walked in the dark? Or ran in the dark? Or rode your bike in the dark? Maybe on a path or a hiking trail? You stumble, you don't know where you're going. This actually happened to me a couple weeks ago. I went running about, oh, a little after four o'clock, and it gets dark so fast now. So I ran back on a trail, and it didn't occur to me that on the way back I'd be in the darkness. And it wasn't a road, it was just a trail. And man, I was stumbling all over the place.

So here's my little... That's not me, by the way. But it's similar to what John's saying. The one who is walking out of fellowship with Christ, is himself stumbling around. He doesn't know where he's going because the darkness, the sin in his life is totally obscuring his path. So he's going to be making more bad decisions. He's going to be doing more things wrong. He's digging himself a deeper hole.

That kind of idea. We could keep talking about that. So that one, assuming he's a believer, obviously, it's important for the one out of fellowship to give back in fellowship. Why continue down a path of walking outside of fellowship with Christ? You're just going to stumble more, you're going to make more mistakes, and so on. Well, that's pretty much it.

The keyword sheet continues to change. And the only reason is because the first class we taught on 1 John, I put up a key word sheet, and I had taken that information from a book, from a study book, and they apparently are using a different Greek manuscript than I'm using. So they have slightly, you know, they had meno, for example, being used 23 times. Well, the Greek text I'm using, it's slightly different. Meno shows up 24 times.

So what I'm doing is I'm changing it as we go through it to make it fit my text. Just so you know. Five years from now, we'll be confused. Yes. So anyway, we'll keep giving you the updated one. as we go through it. And then at the end you have extra handouts.

There's one showing the different ways light is used in the New Testament. The different ways that brother, Adelphos, is used in the New Testament. Because Adelphos shows up a lot in the New Testament and it doesn't always mean my brother my brethren in Christ, it can refer to my actual literal brother, blood brother. And then also, love, the Greek word, there's two main words for love in the New Testament, and those have different meanings.

And so, you have a handout on that. And again, those are just for your own personal study to file away. So, we want to, by God's grace, help to equip you guys, you know, to study the Word, to teach the Word. the local church is the place for that. Maybe everything we go over you won't be interested in, or you may not use it again, but yet some other people may.

That's one of the purposes of the local church. If a person wants to become equipped, they shouldn't have to go off to seminary. Christ didn't tell the early church to establish seminaries. He told them to establish local churches. So anyway, that's why we're teaching the word verse by verse, even word by word sometimes.

What do you guys have to add? We're done early, which is nice. I have a question on page nine. It says, Yeah, basically it's just even now. Right now. Yeah. Yeah. Right now. Right now he's in the darkness. Yeah. Actually I noticed that we said up to this moment. So it says presently right now. Just emphasizing. So it doesn't, I just wondered if it didn't have anything to do with that.

But now you're switching back or what? What do you mean, switching back? I don't know, like, he's in the darkness until now, but now he's going to go back. I don't believe that's the purpose of it. It's emphasizing it right now. I mean, he says, because he says he's in the light, but nope, right now he's in the darkness, I think is what he's saying.

Amory, I saw another thing, it goes back in verse 4. It's the same kind of construction. It's the one who says, and it's also the one who's trying to claim it. So it's interesting, John, he does this over and over again, he comes back, same kind of approach. You know, he's making you realize you can't say that. I believe you can't. You can't walk contrary to who you are. This is a great book. It's just so practical. Our walk. should match our talk. In other words, there's no reason why it shouldn't.

But that's not legalism. I mean, it's so refreshing to study this book for me because I, you know, in the past would never want to talk about conduct, would never want to talk about, you know, my condition. I just would want to talk about my position. But that's imbalanced because God's Word talks about our condition a lot, you know. But it's not legalism.

He's not at all putting anybody under the law. Even in verse 6 there, he said, the one who says he abides in Christ ought himself to walk in the same manner as Christ walked. But he's just saying, hey, if you're abiding in Christ, then you're going to be walking in Him. You're going to be glorifying Him in your walk. It's like John 15. If you abide in me, you'll bear much fruit. By the way, apart from me, you can do nothing. So you're not going to bear any fruit if you're not abiding in me. But if you abide in me, you're going to bear all kinds of fruit. So, that's cool. Anybody else?

I have another thought. and say, Christ is the light. Let's go back to Genesis. After creation, God provided light. He said, let there be light. That was before the sun and the moon were created. This is right now. He is telling, this is Christ. The sun is coming. He's here. He's part of this creation. He's the light. I don't know. It's a thought. I do know this, that in the new heavens and the new earth, there will be no light. Because it specifically says, is it Christ himself or just the glory of God? That's the light. The literal light. You see what I'm saying?

But do you think Christ was mighty? Do you think Christ was mighty? Like, not like he created Christ, but he always was. Yeah. Christ was there. In fact, when you go to first John, or the book of John, Christ was the creator. The son of the creator. Not the father.

I think you're the beginning God, and then let there be light. I think the sun's right there. What do you think, Roger? I do know this, that when Christ said, let there be light, he actually created the light. That obviously wasn't Christ. Because Christ wasn't created, he always was. He was the creator. But it's interesting that light would be the first thing he would create. Because he is light. And of course on the Mount of Transfiguration, the Transfiguration of the Mount, of course the disciples saw the light. overwhelmed by the light of Christ.

Alright, let's pray. Dear Lord, thanks for letting us study again through 1 John. And I pray that we would depend upon you, that we would walk in Christ because of all that you've done for us, because you've positioned us in Him, and because He is now living in us, and because we're under grace and not law. And please give us wisdom this week with our families and with our jobs and with our friends and with our neighbors. In Jesus' name, amen.