Deep, dedicated, Christ-like love for brothers and sisters in Christ is the most visible characteristic of saving faith. You cannot carry around hate and anger and have any confidence you actually know Christ.

All right. How many of my fellow 90s kids have been on YouTube in the last couple of weeks to listen to In the Light, huh? I know you’re out there, I know. By the way, for those of you who do not fit that very narrow demographic that I’m talking about, there was a band called DC Talk that released one of the best-selling Christian albums of all time back in 1995 called Jesus Freak. And one of the most popular songs from that album is a song called In the Light, and it’s written like a prayer using the imagery of First John, chapters one and two. And as part of my gift to you this morning, I will not be singing this, okay? You don’t want that. Because I love you, I will not sing this song for you. Instead, I brought along another 90s kid to sing it for you. Pastor Jamie has agreed to give us the chorus. Sort of. I’m like 58% ready for this.

Show of hands, who knows this? Who can sing with me? Oh, great. Okay. I wanna be in the light as you are in the light. I want to shine like the stars in the heavens. Oh Lord, be my light and be my salvation. Cause all I want is to be in the light. All I want is to be in the light. It’s pretty good. I think we can be louder. Here we go. I want to be in the light. As you are in the light. I want to shine like stars in the heavens. O Lord, be my light. And be my salvation. Cause all I want is to be in the light. All I want is to be in the light. All I want is to be in the light.

Yeah! That was way more fun than me reading it, wasn’t it? That was way more fun than that. I have been preaching for 25 years. This is the first sermon that’s ever featured a sing-along. So that was fun. One of the most important words in that prayer is the word want or wanna, I suppose in this case, I want to be in the light as you are in the light. You know, a lot of times when we talk about obedience to Christ. We put that into terms of right and wrong behaviors, right? And choices. And we should. We should absolutely do that. Light and darkness are categories, right? They’re designations for righteous behavior that pleases the Lord. And evil that displeases the Lord. Definitely is that. But simply identifying right and wrong does not make the difference for you personally. Desire makes the difference, okay? Desire is what makes a difference. Knowing what is right is not the same thing as desiring righteousness. Identifying sin is not the same thing as rejecting it, hating it. We trust in Jesus. God begins a process of changing our desires.

He doesn’t just give us a list of behaviors and tell us what we should do and shouldn’t do on our own power. In fact, we couldn’t keep that even if we wanted to, right? We couldn’t keep it in our own power. But he gives us a new spirit. And with that new spirit, new desires within us that long for Christ and His righteousness. And one of the best ways to know that you have Jesus is simply to ask yourself, what do I want? What do I want? Do you want to be in God’s presence? Do you want to walk in step with the spirit? Do you long to apply God’s Word? And does your greatest joy come from knowing that God is glorified in what you’re doing? And on the flip side of that, is your sin becoming more disturbing to you? Do you see it as robbing you of joy instead of giving you joy? Do you see your confession of sin as a welcome relief and correction, because it gets you back to where you want to be? Where your heart longs to be. These are evidences of a heart that’s transformed by Christ. This is evidence of the Holy Spirit at work in you. Now, up to this point in the letter, John has not addressed specific examples of sin and righteousness. He’s only talked about the categories, right? But today that’s going to change. He’s going to take us into a topic I think is one of the most pervasive problems in the church today.

It’s an area where I think that we have let our guard down. It’s the topic of hatred and anger toward others, particularly between people in the church. And this includes the whole package of sins that come along with hatred like bitterness, unforgiveness, slander, rudeness, things like that. This is an area where cultural sin has made its way into the church community. We’ve been pretty successful at some things, like standing for the value of life. We’re pretty good at identifying and addressing certain sins like sexual sins. But somehow, the hateful speech and angry attitudes of public discourse have made its way into the church. I’m not talking about Calvary specifically here this morning. I actually think we’re a pretty loving community. But I am saying generally, with Calvary included, this is darkness from the world that has had its effect on how the church relates together. Church, I want you to hear me on this this morning. Deep, dedicated, Christlike love for brothers and sisters in Christ is the most visible characteristic of saving faith. Jesus himself tells us this. I’m going to show it to you this morning. You cannot carry around hate and anger and have any confidence that you actually know Christ. So let’s get into it. We’re in First John chapter two today, verses 7 to 11. John starts with a description of the commandment to love our brother, that’s a little bit confusing, so I’ll start by untangling that. And then we’ll look at how love for our brothers and sisters in Christ is evidence of our connection to Christ. So here’s the confusing bit. 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. Well, that’s as clear as mud, huh? Right? Here’s an old commandment that is at the same time a new commandment. What’s going on here? Well, there are two interpretive keys that you need to have to understand this, to untangle it. And once you have them, this clears up quite a bit. And you can see why John starts with this. The first is to remember, the first key is to remember that John is writing to some people who are in the church, who have the potential to be misled by a false gospel that says that you can continue to walk in sin and still claim to know God. Okay? That’s the first thing that we must remember. And the second key is to realize that John is quoting Jesus when he calls this, what follows here, a new commandment. So this, this passage here, this is the setup for the instruction that starts in verse nine.

John first wants to root this commandment in the original Christ-given message of the gospel. Here’s how he does that. He starts by saying that this commandment is old because they’ve had it from the beginning. From the beginning here is referring to the time when these people that he’s writing to began their walk in Christ. When they heard the gospel and responded to Jesus. That beginning. Their beginning of their life in Christ. So John is saying he’s not giving the church some new updated gospel. It hasn’t changed since these dear brothers and sisters in Christ started following him. Hasn’t changed for us either. The call of Christ and the life of following Christ remains the same. Any proposed new way of relating to God is simply a false gospel that will lead you away from God, not toward him. That’s what these false teachers were teaching. They were offering a different gospel. He says that will take you away from Jesus. It will take you out of the light and into darkness. So what he’s about to say is the same old commandment they’ve already heard right from the very start with Jesus, and it has not changed. At the same time it is also a new commandment, not new in the sense that this has new content to it, new in the sense that Jesus meant when he called this a new commandment. In John chapter 13, Jesus is having Passover with his disciples.

Judas has left. He’s gone off to betray Jesus. And so the 11 are sitting there, and Jesus takes this opportunity to give them what he calls a new commandment. 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. Now even for Jesus, this is not new content. He’s quoting the Mosaic Law from Leviticus 19, which includes a long list of the ways that God’s people are supposed to treat each other with love and respect. And at the end of that list, the passage ends, you shall love your neighbor as yourself, I am the Lord. So if John says this is a new commandment, and he’s quoting Jesus, and if Jesus says, this is a new commandment, but he’s quoting Moses, in what way is this new? Well, it’s new because Jesus takes the instruction in the law and he says to his disciples, when you do this, all people will know that you are my disciples. So keeping this commandment will now be the mark of Christian discipleship under the New Covenant and the standard for measuring whether we’re keeping this new commandment will not be a list of do’s and don’ts like we have in Leviticus, and we have to interpret what it’s talking about.

The example, the standard is now going to be Christ Himself. Just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. You got to look to Jesus to find out what the love is supposed to look like. Last week I reminded us all to set our course on Jesus, right? Just to focus in on him, to make our lives look like his life. Well, here it is again. Jesus Christ’s righteousness is our aim to. To walk with him is our path. To emulate him is our goal. Now we’re going to do this imperfectly. But imperfection is not where we’re headed. To quote the apostle Paul from Philippians chapter three, not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own because Christ Jesus has made me his own. Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do. Forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. So what John is saying here, in this sort of a twisty but memorable way, is that the commandment he’s about to give them is a reminder. This is a reminder. It’s old. You’ve had this from the start. From the very beginning, nothing has changed. But it’s new. The standard is set by Jesus and fulfilling it shows the world that we know Jesus.

Okay? This is an old and new commandment. And they could very easily, very easily lose it if they’re swayed by false teaching. So they must remember this. We must remember this church. I echo this statement. It breaks my heart when church loses focus on this indispensable truth that sits right at the very heart of the gospel. Here it is. Whoever says he is in the light and hates his brother is still in darkness. Just let those words rest on your heart for a moment. Let me read this again. Whoever says he is in the light and hates his brother is still in darkness. Here we have that very familiar phrase indicating the lie that we tell ourselves. Right? John’s been saying this over and over again. If we say, whoever says. Would you agree with me that we can say a lot of things that are not true? We can. We can absolutely say a whole lot of things that aren’t true. I think you’ll agree that just because something is said out loud doesn’t make it reality. And John has been pleading with us, pleading with us through these two chapters. What you say about your spiritual state and the actual state of your spirit may not correspond. You may be incorrect about yourself. And here’s the indication that you’re wrong. You say you’re in the light of Christ, but you’re carrying around hatred in your heart.

Don’t get too hung up on that word hate. You know, we use the word hate. We do. We use the word hate. When to describe the most extreme form of despising another person. So we think anything less than pure, unadulterated hatred is not covered by this statement. We give ourselves a pass because we’ll say, well, I don’t hate anybody, but I strongly dislike this other person. Right? This word covers any sort of ongoing unrepented anger or bitterness towards someone else. That’s what it means to hate. It’s carrying around division that you refuse to confess and repent and bring peace to, because you don’t feel any inner compulsion to do so. There is no gospel-sourced conviction in your heart that compels and requires you to make this right. That’s not pushing you. You’re content to despise and avoid. You’re content to judge and treat this other person with contempt. You have made peace with the brokenness. You’ve made peace with the brokenness of the relationship. That’s what it means to hate someone. And John says that if we do this with a brother or sister in Christ, someone in the church, then spiritually we aren’t who we think we are, no matter what we say. A little later, I’m going to talk about whether this applies to all people, even people outside of the church. But John’s focus here is on church relationships. He’s talking about the person who claims to know Jesus, but won’t do everything in his spirit, empowered life to make sure that there is no division between himself and another believer.

He’s saying that person only thinks he’s in the light. He’s not. He’s in darkness. He’s not a new creation in Christ at all. He has fooled himself. Now you might be thinking, well, why is this such a serious offense? You know, not everybody gets along with everyone. Sometimes personalities clash, right? Especially in a church our size. Right? There’s bound to be some differences of opinion in here. I can vouch for that, by the way, there are differences of opinion in here, right? Do we all have to be best friends? Is that what he’s saying? While it’s true that there’s always going to be people that you’re closer to, but it’s just this sort of thinking then that’s excuse making that opens the door for worldly ways of relating. They all start to sneak in when we start to make these excuses. John’s not saying we won’t be different from each other, right? He’s not saying that we must be close to everyone. What he’s saying is, is that ongoing anger and bitterness can’t find rest in a person who truly knows Jesus. It cannot settle into your heart. It won’t settle into your heart. When we start using cultural arguments to excuse sin in our hearts, we end up with something that might look like a church on the outside, but it’s actually just a group of spiritually dead individuals fooling themselves.

In Christ, God binds people together. Okay, that’s what he’s doing. He binds us together in a shared spiritual relationship. And that relationship is marked by deep love for each other. If anger and bitterness toward another person has rooted itself in your heart, and there’s no great conviction inside of you to reconcile that relationship, that’s evidence that you don’t have a relationship with Jesus that you think you do. The whole gospel. Think about it. The whole gospel message is reconciliation between God and us. It is the reality of divine forgiveness based on grace. It’s undeserved mercy. To receive that forgiveness is to be transformed by it. To claim that you have God’s gracious love but not display that gracious love to brothers and sisters in Christ is evidence that you don’t have the gospel at all. Listen to the next part of John’s argument. It brings clarity to this. Whoever loves his brother abides in the light, and in him there is no cause for stumbling. Again, when showing contrast, John does not say whoever says no, he says whoever loves. You see that? Do you see the change? Words aren’t the first evidence of where you’re at spiritually. Actions are. I’m reminded of James letter when he says, show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you my faith by my works. John says, the true reality of your spiritual state is not going to be revealed by the things you say, but by what you do.

Now, that doesn’t mean that words are useless. Far from it, actually. Confession. Our confession of Christ is vital, right? It needs to be coming from our mouths. It needs to be declared. But our words can mislead us if they aren’t matched by the passions, desires, and actions of a transformed heart and mind. Those will always go together. Whoever loves his brother, that person can have confidence that he is indeed walking in the light of Christ. That love shows the connection that we have to Christ and the unity that we have with each other in Christ. I was reminded of a picture that I saw several years ago of something called the Get Along shirt. Have you seen this before? They look like they’re getting along nicely, actually. It looks like it’s working really well. The idea, of course, is that no matter how upset they are, there’s still brother and sister. That doesn’t change. So they’re bound together. They’re tight together. They have to stop fighting. You don’t get to go to your room and forget about it, okay? You make peace. You’re tied together. So you have to get along. Church. The Holy Spirit is our Get Along shirt. We are united by the Spirit of Christ who bonds us together in our walk with Jesus. No amount of bitterness or anger is acceptable within the body of Christ.

Notice I didn’t say that it won’t be there sometimes. I’m saying it’s not acceptable. It can’t remain. Because a gospel that reconciles us to God cannot reside in the heart of a person who won’t reconcile with other people. Any ongoing, determined unwillingness to lay aside anger or hatred is evidence that you might not be wearing the get along shirt of the Holy Spirit. But those who do love their brothers and their sisters in Christ with merciful, gracious, peacemaking love, we have nothing to fear. That’s evidence that you know Jesus. That’s the evidence. Praise God for that. If anger and bitterness brings deep conviction inside of you to go and to be reconciled, that is gospel work in you. Praise God. That’s what’s happening. That is otherworldly. And I mean that literally. It is otherworldly. Our culture believes that hatred is a virtue. That’s what we’re being taught. That hatred is a virtue. We’re encouraged to hate and berate, belittle, cut down and dismiss our enemies. We’re encouraged to put people into categories and call them names and declare them unworthy of love and respect. And here’s where I get in trouble this morning, but I’m going to risk it. The whole public discourse of our country is becoming a disgusting thing to me. It is a disgusting thing. My soul is burdened by it. We have politicians who are supposed to be our leaders. They are supposed to stand for us.

They are degrading people made in the image of God. They stir fear and anger to give license for people to hate other people. We have celebrities creating demeaning so-called art to destroy people. We have gossip mills running 24-7, tearing people’s lives apart. We have news media whose sole purpose is to stir anger for money. That’s what they’re doing. They’re stirring your anger for money, for clicks and likes. And while I can’t stand seeing the moral decay of public speech into this chaos of angry darkness, what makes me even more upset is to see the influence of that evil on the church that is supposed to be different from that! We’re supposed to be different church. Our community is supposed to be a bright light shining against that darkness. Our love for each other and for everyone in general is supposed to be stark against that backdrop. But instead, I hear Christians, even sometimes here at Calvary sound just like the angry rhetoric. I hear Christians parrot the slander of other people. I watch Christians refuse to reconcile. I watch Christians carry around bitterness and say worldly things like, well, you know, sometimes it’s just better to avoid people. Some people aren’t worth your time. They carry their bitterness like a badge of honor instead of the evidence of something very spiritually wrong inside their hearts. Love for all of our brothers and sisters in the church community indicates vital Spiritual abiding in the light of Christ.

With it, we don’t need to worry about the possibility that we might be in darkness. I read that phrase ‘no cause for stumbling’ as saying that there is no concern that you’re on unsure ground. I get that from what he says next about being in blindness. If your heart’s desire is to be in the light of Christ, you can be sure that you are if gospel love compels you to make sure that you have peace between you and everyone else in the church. Because here’s what it looks like if you don’t have it. But whoever 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. Do you see the progression of that? If we carry hatred in our hearts, then we’re in darkness. So what do we do? We walk in darkness and we don’t know how to get out of it because the darkness blinds us. There is nothing in the darkness of sin that will help you get out of sin. There’s nothing there. You just wander further and further into it. You become more and more angry. The grudge sets in. The cement becomes solid. The excuses begin to mount. The bitterness drills down deep into your heart. And nothing in the world will solve this problem because you can’t solve darkness with more darkness. That’s not how it works. This is one of the more compelling descriptions we have in Scripture of the problem of sin.

If you’re only willing to walk in darkness that blinds you, you’re not going to be able to see your way out of the darkness. For those without Jesus, sin is both the problem they’re in and the power that keeps them there. I’m regularly reminded of this when I’m talking to someone who’s suffering under the weight of some really difficult thing in their life, but at the same time, they’re absolutely convinced that the solution must be something other than Christ. They want a solution that’s made up of the very same darkness that constitutes their problem. Okay. They want it to be made out of the same cloth. To switch the metaphor here, they want a shovel to dig their way out of the hole they’re in. They want to cling to a bucket of water that will keep them from drowning. Solutions to sin that are comprised of sin just drive you further into that sin, into the darkness. If you refuse to put down your anger and repent of your sin and be reconciled to people in the church, you’re walking in darkness. You’re not who you think you are. If you refuse to do that, you’re in darkness. And hear this church, John, is saying that that refusal, okay, that refusal is a sign of your own blindness. That refusal, that excuse-making refusal is the darkness. It is the sin at work in you. Sin masks itself with a kind of false righteousness that makes you feel like you’re seeing correctly, but you’re actually blind.

Don’t miss this. john says this guy is walking, but he doesn’t know where he’s going because he’s blind. Making this one of the scariest passages in all of the Bible. He’s walking. Do you see that? He’s moving around. He’s confident that he’s in the right place. He’s sure that he’s going to be where he needs to be. But he doesn’t know where he’s going because he’s blind. Jesus said, the whole world will be able to see that we are his disciples. Why? Because we love one another, and the love we have for each other is so gracious, that we will stand apart from the world around us. But if those who call themselves the church refuse to show each other this love, who are we really? Without a doubt, there should be no grudges, no avoidance, no corrupting, entangling sins between us. Bitterness will destroy a church. Perhaps you’ve been in situations like that before. This is why every membership class, right at the very end, we charge every person who wants to join us to do everything they can, not only to avoid gossip and slander, but to confront it when they do hear it happening. Division between believers in a church doesn’t just hurt the church, it hurts our witness to an unbelieving world. If someone has come to your mind this morning as I’ve been talking, I’ve been talking about this reconciliation stuff.

If someone has come to your mind this morning, listen to it. That’s the Holy Spirit at work. That’s how God works. He transforms our minds. He guides our paths by changing our thoughts. That moves us toward gospel reconciliation. If you’ve got somebody in mind, go to them. Don’t excuse yourself. Go, confess, repent, forgive and be reconciled so that we can be the community of Christ that we are all designed to be. Go confirm that you walk in the light. Let me just close this morning with a word about people outside the church. Does this old new commandment give us any responsibilities there? Strictly speaking, John is talking about our love for people in the church as the mark of our unity in Christ. But someone, I suppose, could take this to mean that while we can’t hate fellow believers, hatred for people outside of the church doesn’t count. I imagine someone who thinks this might reason, well, John is so specific about loving other Christians that he must see a difference for non-Christians. But that’s what’s called an argument from silence. Okay, it’s a logical fallacy. Just because John is choosing to focus on unifying Christian love doesn’t make hatred outside the church acceptable, you see. Jesus said we are to love our enemies. Same Jesus that told us that the mark of Christian discipleship will be Christian love told us to love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us.

Paul said, our love for non-Christians should compel us to do everything we can to make friends and become like the other people, so far as we can, without violating God’s law to go so far as we can so that we might share the gospel with them. We’re to help the poor and the widow, the orphan, the immigrant, the sojourner. We’re to pray for our leaders. Paul says that our reputation with outsiders should be excellent. Above reproach. And when we are mistreated, we turn the other cheek. We willingly suffer for the sake of Christ, never returning hatred for hatred because we don’t represent this world. We are ambassadors of the Kingdom of God. We’re ambassadors for another world. So there’s no loophole here. Okay? On the contrary, the picture of Christian love for those outside the church is simply an extension of the love that we have for each other. It is different only in the fact that it might not be returned to us. See, the expectation is when you love a fellow believer that the love will be brought back to you. Our love for the world is no different. The people in the world is no different. It’s just that we can’t expect that they will love us back. We can’t expect those who are walking blindly in the darkness of their sin to love us back, but that doesn’t lessen our love for them. After all, that’s what Jesus did for us while we were still sinners. Right, church? Let’s pray.

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