Monday
1 John 2.7 “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.”
‘Dear friends’ is much weaker than the word John uses. ‘Beloved’ is the better word, especially in a letter that has love woven throughout. Like a theme in a symphony John keeps repeating the word love in all its variations – God’s love for the world, the believer’s love for God, Christians’ love for one another. Christians are ‘beloved’ because God has loved them, and we love each other because God’s love has called us into a loving community which manifests and practices the love of God in Jesus.
Tuesday
1 John 2.7 “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.”
Jesus said to his disciples in the upper room, “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another as I have loved you.” What was new in Jesus’ reminder was Jesus giving an example to follow – we love as Jesus loved, serving one another in self-giving kindness, compassion and understanding. And yet, “Love your neighbour as yourself” is an old commandment, a way of being that is rooted in tradition all the way back to Moses. Now, as the new people of God, “as God’s chosen people, holy and beloved” that old commandment is given new currency.
Wednesday
1 John 2.8 “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.”
Yes, it’s an old commandment, embedded in the law – “Love your neighbour as yourself.” But it is nevertheless new in its application, and in its enabling grace. Jesus has intensified and deepened what love looks like. It is self-giving, forgiving, costly, upholding and encouraging. Anyone who was in that upper room when Jesus washed and dried feet would totally get this! There, that night, the darkness of brooding fear and resentment saw the true light shining when Jesus took the basin and the towel and gave them an enacted seminar on love as willing service and gentle toughness.
Thursday
1 John 2.9-10 “Anyone who claims to be in the light but hates a brother or sister is still in the darkness. Anyone who loves their brother and sister lives in the light, and there is nothing in them to make them stumble.”
The claim to be a follower of Jesus has to be backed up by evidence, and that includes attitudes and behaviour consistent with Jesus’ own life and words. To hate another person is to live in that dark place of bitterness, jealousy, resentment, and self-protective distancing where such a person’s presence offends us. That’s not Jesus’ way. To love another person is, by contrast, to live in the light of generosity, to radiate affirmation, to enact forgiveness and reconciliation. To live in the light is to see the way ahead, and to follow that way with a heart transparent before God.
Friday
1 John 2.11 “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.”
John was one of those who wanted to call down fire on the Samaritans. He understand those darker passions of hate, as well as the simmering resentments of jealousy, offended-ness and dislike of difference. There are none so blind as they who will not see – hate refuses to see the person as a child of God, one made in the image of God, one for whom Christ died. That is a deep darkness of spirit that is only banished by the light and love of the God revealed in Jesus – the God who is Light and the God who is love. It is a practical impossibility to love God and hate another.
Saturday
John 2.12 “I am writing to you, dear children, because your sins have been forgiven on account of his name.”
Our earliest experience of faith is that of forgiveness, acceptance with God, and the assurance that if we confess our sins God is faithful and just and will forgive and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. (1.9) Experienced forgiveness lies at the centre and heart of repentance and faith. John is reminding all his readers, they are forgiven and cleansed in Jesus’ name. In one sense we shouldn’t need to be reminded; on the other hand we are daily reminded as we confess our sins, and are again forgiven, that we are saved by grace through faith, accepted by god on account of His name.
Sunday John 2.13a “I write to you, fathers, because you have known him who is from the beginning.”
By the time John wrote there would be at least one if not two generations of Christians had lived the life of faith in Jesus, and in fellowship with the Father. John is assuring those mature in the faith that what they believe goes back to the very beginning. They have known, and now know, the One “who was in the beginning with God.” Faith in Jesus Christ is contemporary in our experience, we live in him and he lives in us. But our faith is also rooted in the historic life and ministry of Jesus – the One who was made in every way like us the crucified Lord of Glory and risen Lord in whose life and light we live and move and have our being.
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