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Please remain standing for the reading of God’s Word. My sermon text this evening is once again taken from 1 John. We are going to consider 1 John 2, verses 7–11. I will read verses 7–14 to provide context, but the passage we will focus on tonight is 1 John 2:7–11. You will find it on page 1210 in your pew Bibles. Dear friends, this is God’s word. Hear it with reverence and awe.

Beloved, I am writing you no new commandment, but an old commandment that you have had from the beginning. The old commandment is the word that you have heard.

At the same time, it is a new commandment that I am writing to you, which is true in him and in you, because the darkness is passing away and the true light is already shining. Whoever says he is in the light and hates his brother is still in darkness. Whoever loves his brother abides in the light, and in him there is no cause for stumbling. But whoever hates his brother is in darkness and walks in the darkness, and does not know where he is going, because the darkness has blinded his eyes.

I am writing to you, little children, because your sins are forgiven for his name’s sake. I am writing to you, fathers, because you know him who is from the beginning. I am writing to you, young men, because you have overcome the evil one. I write to you, children, because you know the Father. I am writing to you, fathers, because you know him who is from the beginning. I am writing to you, young men, because you are strong, and the word of God abides in you, and you have overcome the evil one.

The grass withers and the flower fades, but the word of our God endures forever. Please join me in prayer. Gracious Lord and Father in heaven, give us a humble disposition before your word, that we might receive it with faith, that we might embrace it in love, and that we might live it out in obedience. We ask that by your Spirit you would open our minds and our hearts once again to behold wondrous things from your word. We also ask that you would grant me the grace to declare your word with power, with the unction, grace, and assistance of your Spirit, for your glory and for the edification and building up of your saints. In Jesus’ name we pray. And all of God’s people said, Amen. You may be seated. The title of my sermon this evening is An Old Commandment, a New Commandment. There are three words you can be listening for tonight in my sermon: commandment, darkness, and light.

Well, friends, one of my favorite hymns is the simple yet beautiful hymn, I Love to Tell the Story. In fact, we will sing that hymn at the close of our worship service this evening. The refrain of that hymn is in the following words: I love to tell the story; it will be my theme in glory; to tell the old, old story of Jesus and His love.

Friends, as a wretched sinner saved by God’s amazing grace in Jesus Christ and Christ alone, apart from any works or good deeds on my part, the old, old gospel story of Jesus Christ crucified for the forgiveness of my sins and raised from the dead for my justification is a story that is ever new, ever fresh, ever relevant. For I continue to need my Lord’s forgiving mercy each and every day, and so do you. And so I hope that the gospel message, no matter how long you have been in the Lord, will be ever new and ever fresh for you as a follower of the Lord Jesus Christ. And whether or not you share my love for this particular hymn, as believers in Christ, I trust that the old gospel story of Jesus and His saving love is ever new and ever fresh to all of us as we seek to live out our faith as Christ’s disciples in the fellowship of His body, the church. Well, dear ones, speaking of something old that is also new and fresh, in our passage for this Lord’s Day evening, the Apostle John mentions something old that is also, in a sense, ever new. He calls this something a commandment. The Greek word is entole. In my sermon for this evening, we are going to consider what the apostle is referring to when he writes of this old commandment, which is also a new commandment. And we are going to explore the implications of this old yet new commandment for our life together as Christian brothers and sisters in the body of Christ, the church.

Now when we read and seek to understand this portion of God’s Word known as 1 John, it is vitally important for us always to keep in mind the original historical setting and context of this letter if we are to interpret and handle the Word of Truth responsibly. We especially need to become familiar with John’s terminology. One challenge in doing so with 1 John is that John does not clearly explain in explicit detail what the original setting or the original motivation was for writing this letter. It is not a typical epistle, as he does not identify himself explicitly at the beginning, and it lacks the usual features of ancient letter writing, such as an opening thanksgiving. Nevertheless, it has been classified as an epistle.

We must therefore reconstruct the historical situation into which John was writing, as the Holy Spirit guided him. We find clues in passages such as chapter two, verses 18 and 19, which provide insight into the original setting. If you turn to chapter two, I will read verses 18 and 19.

John writes, “Children, it is the last hour, and as you have heard, that Antichrist is coming, so now many antichrists have come.” Apparently, some of these antichrists were infiltrating the churches under John’s apostolic oversight. Therefore, he is writing to them. Then in the next verse, verse 19, he explains more clearly who these antichrists were.

He says, they went out from us, but they were not of us. For if they had been of us, they would have continued with us. But they went out that it might be revealed that they are not all of us. When John says that they went out from us, he does not mean that they simply moved from one local church to another. No, when he says they went out from us, he means they have departed from the faith.

They once belonged to the Johannine church or churches; they once were members of the church. But they left, they abandoned Christ, they committed apostasy, and they promoted heresy. As we read through 1 John, we can reconstruct their heresy. We learn, for example, that they denied the full or true humanity of Christ. One of the earliest heresies in the early church was not a denial of Christ’s deity, but a denial of his full humanity. Jesus had to be both God and man in order to redeem and save fallen, sinful human beings like you and like me. Therefore, these heretics, these antichrists who had gone out, who had abandoned Christ and their confession of faith, were seeking to lead others in the Johannine churches astray. They denied the full or true humanity of Christ and therefore denied the incarnation—that Jesus Christ is the God-man. By denying the incarnation, they also denied what I preached on this morning: His atonement on the cross, and by implication, His resurrection.

In other words, their heresy was not a matter of secondary issues or matters where genuine Bible-believing Christians may have differences. This was a heresy that struck to the very heart and center of the gospel of Jesus Christ and the historic Christian faith. They and their heresy were apparently unsettling the faithful believers who had remained in John’s church. Therefore, they were showing hatred for the Christian brotherhood by creating a schism in the church through their heresy and by seeking to lead the faithful away from the truth of the gospel message.

And by the way, as an aside, let me say this: when it comes to being schismatic or dividing the church, it is often the case—especially in liberal, modernist, and mainline settings—that the remaining conservatives in the church, those who wish to adhere to the Bible as the word of God and to affirm the fundamentals of the faith, are accused by modernists of being schismatic or divisive. This is because they wish to uphold the truth of God’s Word. But friends, from a scriptural standpoint, it is actually the opposite. It is those who are heretical who divide the church in the worst way. Heresy is one of the most destructive forms of division, and heretics are the worst kind of schismatics. This is proven and demonstrated in 1 John. Therefore, John is seeking to warn his readers about these heretics. He is seeking to strengthen them in their faith so that they may stand firm against the deceptions of this particular heresy.

Well, that leads us to the first point as we consider our passage for this evening. Let us consider, first of all, the Old Commandment, which is also new. The Old Commandment, which is also new. Our passage begins with a tender, wonderful pastoral word: beloved.

John is not using this word in a formalistic sense. As we read through 1 John, we sense that John loved those who were under his pastoral care, under his apostolic oversight. He calls them beloved. He addresses them in Greek as agapetoi. You have heard of agape love, have you not? This is a uniquely Christian kind of love. It is a self-sacrificing love. He calls them beloved because he cares for them, and he desires to guard them, protect them, and shepherd them.

He says, Beloved, I am writing to you not a new commandment, but an old commandment that you have had from the beginning. I am writing to you, he says. In other words, he is explaining and expanding on what he has already said in the previous context. What he has been saying, for example, about keeping his commandments. In verse three he says, “And by this we know that we have come to know him, if we keep his commandments.” There is that word commandment again. He is also explaining what he means by, for example, in verse five, keeping his word. He says in verse five, “But whoever keeps his word, in him truly the love of God is perfected.” He is also explaining what he means in verse six by abiding in him. Verse six says, “Whoever says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way that he walked.” In other words, the way of Jesus.

One of the interesting aspects of these expressions is that they all point to the same reality, as I hope to show. Keeping the commandments, keeping his word, abiding in him, and walking in the same way that he walked—this is John’s way of describing what it means to observe the old commandment that is ever new. He describes this old commandment as that which you have had from the beginning.

Now what does he mean by “from the beginning”? Sometimes in John’s writings, such as John 1, verse 1, where he says, “In the beginning was the Word,” what beginning is he referring to in that context? It is clear from that context that he is speaking of the very beginning—the beginning of creation. The eternal living Word, the Lord Jesus Christ, existed from eternity, even before the creation of the world. But in this particular passage, it is clear, based on the immediate context, that he is not referring to the absolute beginning of creation here in verse 7.

Rather, what he means is that this old commandment they have had from the beginning—that is, from the beginning of their Christian experience, when they were converted to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. This is an old commandment. It is something they have known from the start of their walk with Christ as followers of His. At the same time, this old commandment is also described as a new commandment. He says, “I am writing you no new commandment, but an old commandment that you have had from the beginning.” The old commandment is the word that you have heard.

At the same time, verse 8, it is a new commandment—that I am writing to you. This may seem confusing. You might be wondering, “What is John saying? First you say you are not writing a new commandment, but an old one. Now in verse 8 you say, ‘in fact, it is a new commandment.’ What exactly is the old commandment, which is also, in a sense, a new commandment, that John is referring to in this passage?”

Well, here, let me address a couple of possible interpretations. There are two major possibilities. One view, held by many Bible-believing and sound scholars, may be called the moral law interpretation. In this view, the old and new commandment is the law of love. In other words, the commandment to love one another. To be clear, this is the majority view among most commentators, as far as I can determine. According to this interpretation, when John refers to it as an old commandment, he means it in the sense of moral law, such as the Ten Commandments. He says, “I am writing you no new commandment, but an old commandment that you had from the beginning.” It is old, in this view, because it is grounded in God’s commandment to love our neighbor as we love ourselves. As we are instructed, God’s people were instructed from the beginning in Leviticus 19, verse 18: “You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against the sons of your own people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Then the Lord supports this commandment with the statement, “I am the Lord.” He is the Lord, the authority. Therefore, we are to obey His commandments.

But according to this interpretation of the moral law, this old law—to love your neighbor as yourself, to love one another—is new in the light of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. For after all, Christ perfectly fulfilled the commandment to love our neighbor as ourselves. He fulfilled that commandment in His self-sacrificing love by laying down His life for us. And He calls us as believers to lay down our lives for one another. As John writes in 1 John 3:16, by this we know love, that He laid down His life for us. This is what real love, agape love, looks like. He laid down His life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers.

Now, if this interpretation of the moral law is correct, then it is not to be understood in a works righteousness manner or in a way that denies justification by faith alone. That is not what John is trying to do. Instead, if this interpretation is correct, it speaks of our love for the Christian brotherhood as one of the results, one of the outflows, of our salvation. Indeed, from that vantage point, this is correct, because when God saves us, He puts within our souls not only a love for the Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, the one who died for us, but also a special love for our brothers and sisters in the body of Christ. And that love finds expression as we love one another. Our Lord Jesus did indeed speak of this kind of love in the familiar passage, John 13:31–35, where Jesus Himself speaks of this new commandment. It says, when He had gone out, Jesus said, now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in Him. If God is glorified in Him, God will also glorify Him in Himself and glorify Him at once.

Little children, yet a little while I am with you. You will seek me, and just as I said to the Jews, so now I also say to you: where I am going, you cannot come. Then Jesus says this in verse 34 of chapter 13 of John’s gospel: “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” And John himself later, in the second epistle, verse 5, writes this: “And now I ask you, dear lady, not as though I were writing you a new commandment, but the one that we have had from the beginning, that we love one another.”

So again, at first sight, this moral law interpretation seems to have strong support when we compare scripture with scripture, and there is much truth in this moral law interpretation. But though it is a minority view, I would suggest to you that a better understanding of this new commandment, as John is speaking of it in our passage for this evening, is what might be called the gospel life interpretation. In this view, the old new commandment is not the moral law of God as such. It is rather the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ and the outworking of that gospel in the Christian community of the church. According to this view, John is using the term commandment to refer primarily to the gospel message, the good news of Jesus Christ, which was being denied by the heretics who were threatening John’s churches.

Now, the outflow of the good news is, of course, love for God and Christian unity, love for the Christian family, Christ’s church. In other words, loving one another. So the law of love, loving God and loving your neighbor, is closely connected to the gospel. It is an outflow of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

But in this particular passage, John uses the term entole, commandment, to refer to the gospel message according to this understanding. At first glance, it might seem that the moral law interpretation is supported by the parallel passages from the Gospel of John and from 2 John that I just read to you. However, friends, this Gospel life interpretation is supported by John’s own definition of the Old Commandment.

Did you miss it? I hope not. If you go back to verse 7, he says, Beloved, I am writing you no new commandment, but an old commandment that you had from the beginning. Again, this raises the question: what is the old commandment? He tells us what it is at the end of verse 7. He says, the old commandment is what? The word that you have heard. The old commandment is defined as the word that you have heard. And in the context of 1 John, how does John define that word?

If you go back to the very first chapter, the very first verse of the very first chapter, he tells us. He says, that which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon and have touched with our hands, concerning what?

The word of life. The life was made manifest, and we have seen it, and testify to it, and so forth. In 1 John 1, verse 1, that word, that word of life—ultimately, it is the living word, the Lord Jesus Christ—but how do we reach the living word? We reach the living word through the gospel message. So the word is the gospel message of eternal life through Jesus Christ, the living word.

This interpretation, this gospel life interpretation, is also supported in John’s epistle, the first epistle, chapter 3, verse 23, where John shows us how he uses the terminology of commandment in this particular epistle. In 1 John 3:23, he says, “This is his commandment: to believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ.” This is the Gospel call. This is our response to the Gospel call. The commandment is to believe in the name of God’s Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another, which is the outflow of that faith, just as he commanded us.

Now, Dr. Richard Lenski was a Bible-believing Lutheran scholar and a confessional Lutheran. We appreciate our Reformation cousins, the Lutherans. They understand many things correctly. They do not understand everything correctly, but we can still learn from them. I believe Dr. Richard Lenski, in his commentary, is very helpful on this matter.

He comments, saying, “It is important to note that by commandment John means the word which you heard, the word that is, ‘in you by faith,’ that is not in those who contradict and make God himself a liar. It is called a commandment or commandments because we are bidden to receive, to believe, to keep, and to follow it. Obeying the word so often means believing it. Disobeying it is unbelief. John is not speaking of a moral commandment, of the law that demands love, or of this law as it is used in the gospel. Again, he is using this term commandment, the old commandment, to refer to the gospel.”

And the outflow of believing and receiving the gospel will be not only love for God, but love for one another as brothers and sisters in the body of Christ. Beloved, our love for one another as brothers and sisters in the body of Christ is grounded in and flows out of God’s love for us in Jesus Christ, which is revealed in the gospel message—the love of God. As 1 John 4:13 tells us, we love because He first loved us. Believing the gospel and loving one another in the body of Christ are inseparable. You can distinguish the two, but they go together. The outflow and fruit of trusting in Christ for salvation include a love for your fellow believers in Christ. Dear listener, are you resting in Christ alone? And are you demonstrating Christian love for your brothers and sisters in the body of Christ?

But another thing we learn in this passage as we seek to identify and understand how John is using the terminology of Old Commandment and New Commandment and so forth is this: in verse 8, we learn about the fading darkness and the shining of the true light. The passage says this: “At the same time, it is a new commandment that I am writing to you, which is true in him and in you, because the darkness is passing away and the true light is already shining.” You know, sometimes, especially if you are someone who follows the news closely, it may seem as though the darkness is growing worse. It seems to be getting darker and darker.

And certainly, if we walk by sight and not by faith, that is how it will seem. But we who are in Christ are called to walk by faith, not by sight. We know by faith, because God has promised it in His word, that the light is shining. The light of the truth of God’s word shines in your soul, dear Christian. As you have embraced the gospel, you have received by His grace the Holy Spirit, and that Spirit is working in you day by day to conform you more and more into the image of Christ and to prepare you for glory. So as you grow in the knowledge and love of your Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, as you grow in the word, and grow in your communion and fellowship with God, the light is becoming brighter and brighter within your soul, and the influence of that light upon those around you is expanding.

Yes, it is a dark world in which we live, but the darkness, praise God, is fading. The shining of the true light is already present in principle. And one day that true light will shine with such glorious brightness that we cannot even begin to imagine it. When Jesus returns in glory—Jesus, the light of the world—His glorious, majestic, divine light will shine upon our world in true and full consummated glory. Though this old yet new commandment—the good news of Jesus Christ and the love for one another that His gospel inspires—though the darkness of this present sin-cursed age is fading and the true light of Jesus Christ and His saving word is already shining, we are called to walk by faith, not by sight. Again, to quote Lenski, he says: At one time, the darkness of paganism enshrouded the readers. Now the genuine light is in them. Christ and the gospel have come into their hearts. And you know what?

That light is shining, shining more and more as the gospel is proclaimed, as sinners are effectively called to faith in Christ and brought into His kingdom, as faithful churches are planted, and as the nations are gradually taught to observe all things which He has commanded us to observe.

As this takes place, yes, the darkness remains, and it will always remain dark. There will always be spiritual darkness until our Lord returns. But for those whom God is calling, the light is growing brighter and brighter. Each and every day, we are drawing closer to the time when Christ, the light of the world, will return in His glory.

We are told in this verse, verse 8, that the new commandment which I am writing to you is true in Him and in you. Again, Lenski says, John emphasizes that the truth is first in Him. His deity, His cleansing blood, His atonement—everything connected with Him—is true and real. Let the heretics lie and call these things untrue. All that is in you, connected with you—your cleansing through the Son’s blood, your forgiveness of sins, your walking as He walked—are true and real. Let the heretics lie and call them untrue or unreal. Their so-called knowledge, their supposed special insight or understanding, is actually self-deception. The light they claim to have is not genuine. It leaves them in the former darkness. As John reminds his readers in chapter 1, verse 8, he says, “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.”

That was perhaps one of the things claimed by these heretics, these antichrists. They claimed sinless perfection and said they were walking in the light, but they were actually walking in darkness. But praise God for the light of the gospel, for it is this light that is the old yet new commandment, and it is a light that, when it shines in your soul, leads you to love the Lord your God and to love your neighbor as yourself. Friends, in closing, in Galatians chapter 4, verses 4 and 5, the Apostle Paul writes: “When the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons.”

Before the coming of Christ to this earth, the world lay in deep pagan darkness. And yes, there is much darkness still in the world today in the 21st century, but how dark it was before Jesus came. The coming of Christ was the central turning point of redemptive history.

His advent changes everything. For with his incarnation, his obedient life, his atoning death, and his glorious resurrection, with all of this, the true light is already shining. And brothers and sisters, it is shining in our hearts as his followers. It is shining in our fellowship, as the body of Christ.

It is not yet shining in its full consummated glory, of course, for that awaits our Lord’s return. We live in this present age in the tension of the already not yet. We are already saved, but not yet fully saved in the consummated sense. We are already victorious in Christ, but we are not yet fully there.

But praise God, the light has begun to shine. If you know Christ as your Savior, you have tasted the goodness of the Lord and have seen, by faith, the glorious light of your Savior. This light has begun to shine, dispelling darkness wherever it is believed. Is the true light of Christ already shining in your heart? Is it shining at Grace Church? Does it show itself through the love we demonstrate to one another as brothers and sisters in Christ?

By the grace of God, may the light of the gospel continue to shine with ever greater fullness, so that we may observe and embrace this old yet new commandment and share it with others. Amen. Let us pray. Heavenly Father, we thank You, Lord God, for the gospel and for the hope and peace it gives us. We thank You for the old, old story of Jesus and His love, which is not merely old and dry as dust, but old yet ever new, for it is ever relevant to us as sinners saved by grace, as sinner saints. Lord, we pray that we may love this old, old story, that we may always desire, above all things, to make Jesus known and to know Him better. In His name we pray. And all of God’s people said, amen. Let us close our time of worship this evening by rising, and we will sing together number 438. I love to tell the story, number 438.