First John 2:9-11 Light versus darkness

So 1 John 2, I'll read the verses 9 through 11 in context, starting at verse 3, but I have verse 7 and 8 up there. But in verse 3, by this we know that we have come to know Him if we keep His commandments. The one who says, I have come to know Him, and does not keep his commandments is a liar and the truth is not in him but whoever keeps his word in him the love of god has truly been perfected by this we know that we are in him the one who says he abides in him ought to himself walk in the same manner as he walked beloved i'm not writing a new commandment to you but an old commandment, which you have had from the beginning. The old commandment is the word which you've heard. On the other hand, I am writing a new commandment to you. which is true in him and true in you, because the darkness is passing away and the true light is already shining. So that's sort of our context is to this commandment, this new commandment, new and kind commandment.

So verse nine, 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. The one who hates his brother is in the darkness and walks in the darkness and does not know where he's going, because the darkness has blinded his eyes.

I've come to realize that 1 John is all about... this is the book that's in him, abiding in him. If this is where you get this, and I always thought it was all from Paul, but no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no Okay, so I have four proposed purposes for this address of John. First, it's not a, I don't think it's a letter, because it doesn't match John two and three, right? In John, the second John letter, and the third John letter, he always writes, he writes to the elder at, or the elder, referring to himself, to the chosen lady in second John, and to Gaius in third John. And then at the end, he says in both of those epistles, he doesn't wanna go on and pen and ink, because I guess he's running out of ink or pen.

And he says that explicitly. So this, this first John, there's none of that. He doesn't address anyone, right? So I don't think there's any of these clear bookmarks for it to be a letter. First John is not a test of our faith, even though in the beginning it says, if we say we have faith, but do not exhibit these fruits, then we are in sin, or darkness, or we're unsafe.

MacArthur has that viewpoint, right? Because I've been talking to Jim a lot, and Roy, and yeah, there's sort of, and I have your book, by the way, They're sort of bringing this out, and that's true. What I thought starting out the book was, okay, it's written to us as believers, but it's those tests in the first chapter, if we say that we have no sin, I thought it was maybe a test for us, whether we're in fellowship or not. And I said, okay, that makes sense. It's written to believers. Are you in fellowship or not? But I don't think it's that either. Many commentaries take that, commentarians, commentators take that viewpoint, commentarians.

And that's how I understood, that's how I started with it. Then I presented a few weeks back McGee's, J. Vernon McGee's Five Purposes. And he said that you may have fellowship with God in Christ, that your joy may be made complete, another purpose that you may not sin, that you know you have eternal life, and that you believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. And so after absorbing that, I came up with the final bullet point for purposes that I think it is all about.

One, that we believe in Him. Two, that we know Him. Three, that we abide in Him. And four, that we know we abide in Him or are in Him. So I narrowed it down, not according to those that's that McGee has, but sort of the really what it's saying and everything. So let's just go through these purposes quickly. Purpose number one, that we believe in Him. And this is from John 1 John 3 23.

This is his commandment that we believe in the name of his son, Jesus Christ, and love one another, just as he commanded us. So there he says it. To believe him. And we are believing in this testimony, what are you saying about eternal life to that we have the eternal life. From the Gospel of John, in chapter 20, verse 31, he says, so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing, you may have life, and that's the eternal life, in his name. So that's, there's very clear purposes for believing in him.

1 John 5, 9 through 12, Let me read that, for the testimony of God is this, that he has testified concerning his son. The one who believes in the son of God has a testimony in himself. The one who does not believe in God has made him a liar, because he has not believed in the testimony that God has given him concerning his son. And the testimony is this, that God has given us the eternal life, and this life is in his son. He who has the Son has the life, and he who does not have the Son of God does not have the life.

The second purpose, that we know Him from 1 John 5, 20, and we know that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding so that we may know Him who is true, and we are in Him who is true. There it is, knowing and being in Him. In his son Jesus Christ. This is the true God and eternal life So that verse says he has come and he is manifested and we beheld him And that's from first John 1 1 through 3. He has given us understanding so that the purpose is that we know him who is truth and We know that we are in him. So there's a to we know him and then we know we know him sort of a double in a way, isn't it? And that we possess the eternal life, which is in the Father, that's 1 John 1, 2. And that we may have fellowship with the Father and with his Son. All in that one verse, isn't it? Third purpose, that we abide in Him.

And this is a key purpose in this whole book, that you abide in the Son and in the Father, from 1 John 2.4. If what you heard from the beginning abides in you, you will abide in Him if His anointing abides in you and His teaching abides in you. chapter 2 verse 27 and then in 228 you will abide in him so that you will have confidence and you won't shrink away when he appears again.

So purpose, that we know that we abide in him. So there's that double, we abide in him and we know things and we know that we abide in him. We know that we abide in him because he has given us his spirit from chapter four, verse 13. The same scripture reference says that we know that he abides in us. By this we know that we abide in him and he abides in us because he has given us his spirit. given us of his spirit from 413.

So I think that the text source for this whole epistle, but address, because I really think he wrote this down to give it, he gave it to a bunch of people at one time, maybe in Ephesus. He did a sermon and he didn't write to them, but he gave this in person. Being that it doesn't have any earmarks of being a letter, But the source text, I think, is John 15.

I'm the true vine and the father's a vine dresser. Every branch abiding in me that does not bear fruit, he takes away. And every branch that bears fruit, he prunes so that it may bear more fruit. You are already clean because of the word which I have spoken to you. 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 unless you abide in me. I am the vine and you are the branches. He who abides in me and I in him, he bears much fruit. And apart from me, you can do nothing. If anyone does not abide in me, he is thrown away as a branch and dries up, and they gather them and cast them into the fire and they are burned.

If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, that's from 1 John 2.24, there's a match for that. Ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit, and so to prove you are my disciples. Just as the Father loved me, I have loved you. Abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love. as just as I have kept my father's commandments and I abide in his love.

And that's from, that John restates that in 1 John 3, 23, 1 John 4, 21. The last verse of this discourse in John 15, Gospel of John 15, is these words I have spoken to you so that my joy may abide in you, and I added the word abide because, but I think that that is appropriate to put that word abide in there, in that joy abiding, and so that your joy may be made full. And that John brings that up in 1 John chapter one and verse four, the same concepts. So this address of 1 John is basically this kind of blown out, you know, John 15. And other things too, I've found, it's really kind of neat. Okay, on to chapter 2, verse 9.

The one who says he is in the light, yet hates his brother, is in darkness until now. So the context to John 9 through 11 is John is addressing believers as if we are a believer who knows Christ. By this we know that we have come to know him if we keep his commandments. a believer who knows that he knows Christ, and I've kind of hit that point home in the last slides, and one who has complete assurance of his faith, I think. So it's not addressing believers who are unsure of their faith or doing a test of faith. It's for believers who have settled faith. A believer who's keeping Christ's commandments to love, his commandment to love one another from 1 John 3, 23, according to the standard that, how Christ loved us.

And that command comes from the gospel of John 13, 34. We discussed that a lot last week. A believer who is keeping his word and not just obeying a command, a believer who is walking by the light and in the light. And the standard for that is just as Christ himself is in the light from 1 John 1 7. John is addressing one who is abiding in Christ from 1 John 1 6 and 2 28.

And he's abiding one who is in fellowship with the father and with the son from chapter one, verse three. And he's addressing those believers who have fellowship with John and with the rest of the 11 apostles, because John says us in chapter one, verse three. I take that to mean John and the rest of the apostles who gave the first words of the gospel to these believers.

Many of them have died since then, but are there any alive at this point except John? Probably not. There's about 90, 95, yeah. So with John and the rest of the 11 apostles, and then extended to fellow believers, down in verse 7, because he says you'll have fellowship with one another, you know, your fellow believers, This point A I have contrasts this truism, but if we walk in the light as he himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another.

That's from 1 John 1, 7. So John goes back to this rhetorical argument kind of process he's using by presenting these false arguments and then kind of shooting them down, right? The false argument is stated above. The one who says he's in the light, but he's hating his brother is in darkness until now.

And we see how verse 9 and verse 7 are completely opposed to one another, right? The verse above says that if we are walking, are abiding in Christ, who is the light, we have fellowship with one another. And one another, of course, is as our brother, our fellow believers. The one man, or the one in verse nine, is having the opposite of fellowship with his brother, right? Not love, but the opposite of love and the opposite of fellowship. He's in this darkness and he's hating his brother. So all these opposites here that John is presenting.

And he's in darkness until now. The opposite of being in the light, I would say, is being in the dark. There's a number of translations that say, instead of until now, they say, still in the darkness. It means the same thing. He's still there and he's continuing on, but up until now, he's still in the darkness. And what I've come to think is a lot of these commentators say that this this person this believer is habitually in the dark or you know and yeah the greek might kind of say that but i don't know if john is really saying of this believer is habitually and so are you habitually in the dark or are you sometimes in sometimes not and it gets to this point where you're saying are you saved or not you know the habitualness and i don't know if i if I really agree with that.

Put them on because we want all the Zoom people, the smart people in the room to chime in here. Like Jim said, the opposite of being in the light is, you can't, I probably said it 50 times the same way, but the opposite of being in the light is being in the dark. And being in the light is energized by the indwelling, the energized life of the indwelling spirit of Christ, the Holy Spirit of the life of Christ, isn't it?

Just a thought here that one of the things that we tend to do is we depersonalize our relationship with God. We actually make it like here's a truth in scripture, isn't that wonderful? God is living inside of us moment by moment. Relationships exist. If he is in charge, if he is the one who we are at home with, that him being in us is pleasant. He's residing here and we know it and he knows it. There's a reciprocity that says, oh, I love you because you love me first. But not only that, When I look at you, Andrew, or I look at another believer, I look at you with his eyes. I see you as he sees you. Isn't that something? Yeah. Yeah. And it's a life, isn't it?

It's hard to... It's hard to express what you're expressing on PowerPoint slides, you know what I mean? You've got to go home and just kind of cogitate it. I guess what I'm saying is the source of hate is the opposite. It's the antithesis of being at home with him in us. We are expressing our sin nature at that point. I mean, we're not operating out of his new life, right?

I mean, that's, I think, what John is saying here. Right. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And I think I have a, I came up with a, not a chart, but an illustration here at the end that might give that. So dark, and correct me if I'm wrong, but you can boil it down to darkness is the presence of sin and light is the absence of sin. So John is basically saying that darkness is sin, light is the life of Christ. The believer who is abiding in Christ has the light. The one who is not abiding in Christ is in darkness. you can change out the meaning, or change out the words of light and dark with sin or not sin.

And I think that's appropriate. So on to verses 10 and 11 here. Verse 10 stands in positive contrast to verse nine. Verse nine is that one on the negative side who says he's in the light, but yet hates his brother and is in darkness. Well, verse 10 says, the one who loves his brother and abides in the light, there's no cause for stumbling in him. The believer in verse 10 is a son of the light and a son of the day, or he's walking in daylight.

And that's from 1 Thessalonians 5.5. So the believer in verse 10 then is at home in, or resting in, remaining in the light, hanging out in the light, and he's in the light of the day, and that's where he's abiding. So it's in 2-9 verses 2-10, we have two ones, two men who are referred to as one, or two women who are referred to as one. The one, verse nine's one man is hating his brother, and verse 10's one man is loving his brother. The verse 10 one is remaining at home in the light, and And so there's no sin obstacle that's going to trip him up, because he can see clearly.

His eye is clear, and his eye acts as a lamp to see the things that are ahead of him. And that's right from Luke chapter 11, 33 through 36, which we'll get to. Because that's a really elusive method. Make a pun, but that's a really illuminating verse to understand this 9 through 11, this whole lightness and dark.

Again, from 1 John 1 7, but if we walk in the light as he himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another. So a byproduct, a fruit of walking in the light is fellowship, koinonia, which we covered a lot last week. Koinonia is a shared association, a communion with intercourse, intimacy, both with Christ, right, and with fellow ones in Christ, our fellow man in Christ, our fellow believers.

So the man, or the one, in verse 11, who is hating his brother, obviously has no koinonia with his brother. This word, this hate word, one who is hating his brother, And I don't know, you can shoot this down if you want to, but I'm defining it as impatient. A hater is one who's jealous, arrogant, braggadocious, unbecoming, selfish, self-serving, easily provoked, and one who keeps tabs or keeps score on the wrongs of others, one who rejoices in unrighteousness, has breakdowns from little or petty burdens, and despairs and expresses hopelessness.

And what that is, is just, I just reversed the first Corinthians 13. Right, that's good. It's just love, and you just take the total opposite, and that's the list you get. And I'm like, wow, yeah, that sounds kind of like it's someone who, you know, can't bear a burden. because first corinthians chapter 13 and love bears burdens so one who is not in love or is hating you know will snap at any little burden is placed on him or her they'll snap like a twig won't they so um I don't know if you, anyone wanna push back on that? No, it's good, it's good. Because how do you, hate isn't really defined. I don't think any time in scripture, but you see the fruit of it, you see men acting in hate and things like that, but you don't see a list, a refrigerator list like I have here. So you can paste that to your refrigerator. So, verse 11.

Yeah, what I'm gonna do here in this slide is just look at what Jesus said about lightness and dark, which is, it's really, it's really great. So in John, the Gospel of John 11, nine, he was talking to the Pharisees, and he said, are there not 12 hours in the day? If anyone walks in the day, he does not stumble because he sees the light of this world.

Jesus was talking to his disciples there. going to raise, you know, Lazarus, Lazarus. OK, so yeah, so you know, he said, OK, let's let's go to let's go to Jerusalem. The disciples are saying, hey, wait, the Jews are going to stone you. You want to go to Jerusalem? Yeah.

So he says, OK, if anyone walks in the day, he doesn't stumble because he sees the light of the world. If anyone walks in the darkness, then he stumbles. And was he was he purposely trying to delay The Lazarus to he was delaying that until he was doing so that Lazarus died Evident to everyone that Lazarus was dead. He had been dead for four days. He was in a tomb Yeah, and Martha said Lord you we don't want to roll away a stone. It's gonna sink So he everyone knew he was dead, you know you starting to smell Yeah, and Jesus said, you know Aren't there 12 hours in a day?

You know, whoever's walking in the day, he's not going to stumble because he's walking in the light. Yeah. So he's talking to his face. Yeah. Cause I just, I just pulled the verse and I, I think I read it once, but I, so he's talking to his disciples there.

Um, but yeah, stumbling and, and seeing by the light of the day. Here in Luke 4, 18, and this, correct me if I'm wrong, is when he was in the temple and he said these things, the spirit of the Lord is upon me because he anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor. he has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of the sight to the blind to set free those who are oppressed." And that wasn't he saying? He was in Nazareth and he was quoting Isaiah.

Oh, okay. This beginning of the ministry basically. Nazareth, but wasn't he saying, doesn't he follow this up with saying, here today you've the scripture is fulfilled yes your presence yeah so that you can read the whole of isaiah yeah he stopped uh he stopped short yeah okay let me say this this is true right now folks i'm starting yeah right we have a We have a context checker here, Jim. Jim's been doing the tough work putting the Gospels together. I'm doing the harmony of the Gospels. Oh, good, good. You're providing the context here for the verses that I'm just pulling from. So in Luke 639, he was speaking parable.

A blind man cannot guide, oh, this is a blind man guiding, leading the blind, right? Blind leading the blind. A blind man cannot guide a blind man, can he? Will they not both fall into a pit? Or, to state another way, they'll stumble. They'll both stumble together into a pit. Which really agrees with verse 11 from 1 John chapter 2. They're both directionless, they both have no true navigation system.

And I don't know how many times you guys have gotten up in the middle of the night, or maybe you're in the living room and then you turn off all the lights to go to bed, and you turned off too many lights. And you just can't, it's total black. trip over the dog. Yeah, you don't know. There's a lot of things to stumble on. You know, foot rests and things that you don't remember are right in front of you, or wall. I've done that many times. So that's, that's a perfect example of being blind in the dark. You just don't see. So here's this Luke 11, 33 through 36.

Not one after lighting a lamp puts it away in a cellar or under a basket, but on the lampshade so that those who entered may see the light. The eye is a lamp of your body. When your eye is clear, the whole body is also full of light. But when it is bad, your body is also full of darkness. Then watch out that the light in you is not darkness. If therefore your whole body is full of light, with no dark part in it, it will be wholly illumined, or illuminated, as when the lamp illumines you with its rays. So there you have one of your whole being, that being light, the light of Christ. And you can see clearly, your eyes clear, you have ways to see all those stumbling blocks in front of you. You know what I like about this verse is, you think the eye is a lamp of your body, so the light shines out, right?

That's not what he's talking about. He's talking about the light shining in, letting the light shine in. In other words, don't close your eyes to the gospel, you know? So let it shine in and illuminate your whole body. Yeah, and then we have, I think, we have light within us, too. We have the light of Christ, and we don't have the darkness will fade away, things like that.

It's really, that passage right there really kind of hits, it's like Jesus was saying these things back when he was walking around with John in Galilee, and John listened to these things, and then he, He's just restating them in this address in another way. It's really amazing. And so I think these verses sort of answer or are the commentary on 9, 10, 11 really well. And you just kind of have to sit with them and think about them. Oh, here's my revised illustration. So I came up with this, and this is... You're taking after your dad. Yeah, he came up with this too, he used to mine.

So this vine, or this tree that's in the ground, The soil, it's rooted in, those roots are gonna be in the source of eternal life, God the Father. So there's joy, there's peace, there's love, there's mercy, there's grace, there's holiness, omnipotency. There's infinite supernatural resources in the soil that these roots, Christ's roots are gonna kind of soak up. The nutrients are fed by the word and the sap. And I got that from Andrew Murray, the sap and the fatness, the life, and that's light that these roots are soaking up.

And Christ is our vine. The vine, The strength and quality of the vine is from the fatness and the sweetness of the soil, is what Murray says, Andrew Murray. And the vine, all that the vine has, in its nutrients is at the disposal of the branch. So we are fed by the vine and get all our nutrients from the vine and we produce fruit. So in Galatians 5, 22 through 25 are those fruits. 1 Corinthians 13 is the proper type of fruit of love that we are to have.

Ephesians 2.10 would be good works that we're to do by abiding in this vine. So abiding, meno, and I I put all the things that meno-abiding can mean. Remain, remaining in place, sheltering in place, sojourning, tearing, continuing in, continuing to be present in, being at home with, making your abode with, dwelling, hanging out with in Christ as our vine. So, and then, on top of that, that vine and Mia's branches are in the light. So I tried to put this light canopy over it and tried to express what that means in 1 John and John chapter 15.

Opposed to this, here's ourself. The self is the mind, and then in the soil, it's rooted in its source, Adam, right? And self, and self-confidence, and our talents, and our strengths, and our weaknesses, emotions rooted in the soul, maybe religion, earthly temporal resources instead of supernatural ones. And the nutrients that the self gets are from the world, the flesh, and the devil, the darkness.

And then the fruit that's produced is Galatians 5, 19 through 21. That's the bad fruits. And we bear those fruits if we abide in self. And we've heard that a lot here, right? Two trees abiding in Christ or the other tree, tree of life. Things like that, and so this poor scary vine operates in the realm of darkness, as we see. And you can abide in self, can't you? Do the same things by abiding in self. So let me know if there's, I think it's pretty good. There might be some problems with those two illustrations. So anyway, so we'll close up here.

Our Heavenly Father, we thank you for these rich verses in your Word, and we thank you that we can abide in Christ, and that we have the tools and resources through your Word to know what that means, and that day by day, moment by moment, we can do that.