Chapter 2 (NIV–the verses in this chapter were taken from this version. Each chapter will be from a different version to avoid copyright issues.)
v. 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:
(Bible Knowl Comm NT) “…obedience to God’s Word (‘His commands,’) v. 3) results in a rich and full experience of God’s love: God’s love is truly made complete in him. …an obedient believer has a deep full-orbed acquaintance with ‘God’s love.’ ”
(Moody) “perfected” = “matures. … Love for God expresses itself in obeying His commands.”
(Vincent’s II) “Keepeth His word. Note the changed phrase: word for commandments. The word is the revelation regarded as a whole, which includes all the separate commandments or injunctions.” “Is the love of God perfected. … the obedient child of God is characterized, not by any representative trait or quality of his own personality, but merely as the subject of the work of divine love…” “The phrase the love of God … It is not possible to settle the point decisively, but I incline to the view that the fundamental idea of the love of God as expounded by John is the love which God has made known and which answer to His nature. … This interpretation does not exclude man’s love to God. On the contrary, it includes it. The love which God has is revealed as the love of God in the love of His children toward Him, no less than in His manifestations of love to them. The idea of divine love is thus complex. Love, in its very essence, is reciprocal. The perfect ideal requires two parties.” Footnote: “the genitive case, of God, of the Father, represents God as the subject of the emotion.” (Cultural) “obeys his word. To do so had always been a way of showing love for God.”
v. 6, Whoever claims to live in him must live as Jesus did.
(Bible Knowl Comm NT) “the proof that a person is enjoying this kind of experience is to be found in a life modeled after that of Jesus in obedience to His Word.”
(Moody) “Obedience, in turn, results in imitating Jesus.”
(Cultural) “Teachers on moral subjects often offered examples as role models, with God as the greatest example.”
(ESV) “The way that led to the cross.”
v. 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.
(Bible Knowl Comm NT) “the command to love one another. … Whatever innovations the readers might be confronting because of the doctrines of the antichrists, their real responsibility was to a commandment which they had heard from the very start of their Christian experience.”
(Moody) Old Commandment and New Commandment: “Jesus raised the OT’s injunction to ‘love your neighbor as yourself’ (Lev. 19:18) to a higher level: ‘love one another even as I have loved you’ (John 13:34).
(ESV) “1:7-11 The Abiding Commandment in a Transient World. John’s focus shifts to the love commandment and the challenge of living out the Christian message in a world where ‘darkness’ (vv. 8, 9, 11) and ‘the evil one’ (vv. 13, 14) seem to dominate.”
(Life) “2:7-8… Love is the key to walking in the light, because we cannot grow spiritually while we hate others.”
v. 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.
(Bible Knowl Comm NT) “Yet Jesus had called that commandment ‘new’ (John 13:34) and John pointed out that it had not lost its freshness. …the command to love came to realization first in Jesus Himself and then in His followers. … the command to love… belongs to the new Age of righteousness which has begun to dawn.” Regarding the use of ‘light’: “but here John wrote of the Incarnation in particular as the point at which the light began to shine…its true character can now be defined in terms of the special revelation God has made of Himself in His Son.”
(ESV) “the darkness is passing away. The age to come has not yet fully arrived (see 3:2), but is progressively advancing in this world, for the true light is already shining.”
v. 9, Anyone who claims to be in the light but hates a brother or sister is still in the darkness.
(Bible Knowl Comm NT) “ ‘the love of God’ could mean either His love for a Christian or a Chrisitan’s love for God.” NIV gets it right: “God’s love.”
(Moody) “who hates his Christian brother, as the Gnostics did, remains in the darkness of his unregenerate life.”
(ESV) “hates his brother” = “John often writes in black-and-white terms for emphasis.”
(Wiersbe) These kinds of people cause trouble in Christian groups. They think they are ‘spiritual giants’ with great understanding, when actually they are babies with very little spiritual perception.”
(Life) “2:9-11 … These verses are not talking about disliking a disagreeable Chrisian brother or sister. … John’s words focus on the attitude that causes us to ignore or despise others, to treat them as irritants, competitors, or enemies.”
v. 10, Anyone who loves their brother and sister lives in the light, and there is nothing in them to make them stumble.
(Bible Knowl Comm NT) “Hatred is a kind of internal ‘stumbling block’ which can lead to disastrous spiritual falls.” Which are avoided by loving instead.
(Moody) “…this [remaining in Christian fellowship] will enable him to avoid stumbling into the sin of apostasy, something of which the Gnostics were guilty.”
v. 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.
(Bible Knowl Comm NT) The person hating has lost all sense of direction.
(Moody) These are all traits of the Gnostics.
(Wiersbe) “Satan is the Prince of Darkness and he extends his evil kingdom by means of lies and hatred. Christ is the ‘Sun of Righteousness’ (Mal. 4:2), and He extends His kingdom by means of truth and love.” These kingdoms “are in conflict today.”
FIRST JOHN 2 MEDITATION vv. 5-11.
Our love for God is perfected when we have His commandment and keep it (John 14:21, 23). Not because we “know a lot.” Or because we have great faith. Or because we are friends with everyone in church. When we have and keep, we show Him our love. We love Him, so we seek out His will and respond, desiring to match up with His mindset and express it in action with love to others.
His commandment is not new, having been spelled out in the OT. But it is new in that it is fresh, for being born again makes the commandment more immediate and important. It is new because we see them in a new context, no longer dead in sin, but alive in spirit. We are no longer using the commandments to try to be worthy, but obeying in gratitude to express love for who He is and what He has done for us. The commandment seems new because the driving force behind it, honoring Him in spirit and truth, is new.
Because His divine light or illumination is shining in us, we see the commandments differently; they are not too hard to follow any more, because they have become vehicles to display our love.
If we love our brother it is because we are responding to the light of how God has revealed Himself. If we hate our brother, we are in darkness; we are not reading the Word and seeing what God is like and how we can imitate Him. Our own selfishness, biases, and prejudices are in the way, blocking the light. But the way is open to loving others when we are loving God. The same Spirit will help us to both.
