Brotherly Love (1 John 2:7-11)

In the previous passage, John had stressed the importance, indeed the necessity, of obedience to the commandments of God. Yet he would have realised that it is possible to so focus on these commandments in general that individuals can fail to focus on any in particular. What is essential, as far as obedience is concerned, is to concentrate on obedience to commandments that are relevant to the situation. It would be absurd for a thief to claim in his defence that he had not broken the seventh commandment while he was stealing an item. His duty was to have kept the eighth commandment as well.

The commandment that John stresses to his readership is the requirement to love one another. He is addressing a situation in Ephesus and its surroundings in which false teachers have come in with a wrong, heretical doctrine and disturbed the churches. In such a circumstance we might say that the most important thing is to deal with the heretics. John would not deny that such a response is important, yet we must remember what happened in Ephesus.

In Revelation 2:1-8, the ascended Christ sends a letter to the church in Ephesus by the hands of John (probably sent some time after John had sent 1 John to the same church). In that letter Jesus commends the church for its doctrinal commitment when he says, ‘I know your works, your toil and your patient endurance, and how you cannot bear with those who are evil, but have tested those who call themselves apostles and are not, and found them to be false’ (Rev. 2:12). Yet he proceeds to threaten the church with the loss of its lampstand (to function as a witnessing church for him), and the reason why this punishment would occur was that the church in Ephesus, while good in many things, had one serious defect: ‘But I have this against you, that you have abandoned the love you had at first’ (Rev. 2:4). For whatever reason, the readers of John’s letter had failed to take on board his warning about brotherly love and, therefore, they were in great spiritual danger.

Of course, we know that the Bible stresses the importance of Christian love. The well-known verses of 1 Corinthians 13, with its beautiful description of real Christian love, are a permanent challenge to us to seek divine aid in achieving this state of heart. Such love is more than eloquent words (‘If I speak in the tongues of men and of angles, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging symbol’), more than spiritual gifts (‘And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing’), more than expressions of charity (‘If I give away all I have’) and more than mere self-sacrifice (‘and if I deliver up my body to be burned’).

So what does John say about brotherly love? If we are familiar with 1 John we will know that it is one of the dominant themes of the letter, to which the author returns often throughout it. The number of references to it in this letter indicates that it is a theme we have to understand and implement, otherwise our Christian profession can be called into question. Therefore we need to pay close attention to what John has to say in each of his passages about brotherly love. In doing so with regard to our passage, we will observe that he mentions five features of brotherly love.

First, brotherly love is a commandment about which new converts should receive instruction (v. 7). John reminds his readers that his current emphasis on love was not a new aspect of Christian living, an aspect that he only mentioned because of the current problem. Instead, John reminds them that they had heard of the importance of brotherly love from the onset of the gospel in Ephesus. The Book of Acts describes how the gospel was brought there by Paul, Apollos, Priscilla and Aquila (Acts 18:19–19:40), and John states here that they taught the necessity of brotherly love. This reference by John is a reminder of the common teachings of the various apostles and preachers of the early church.

Did the church in Ephesus in its early day practice brotherly love? An answer to this question can be found in Paul’s letter to the Ephesians which was written about thirty years before John sent this letter. Note that Paul says their brotherly love was a stimulant for his prayers for them: ‘For this reason, because I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints, I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers’ (Eph. 1:15-16). Did Paul give instructions about brotherly love in his letter? He did: in 4:2, he exhorts them to bear with one another in love; in 4:15-16, he urges them to speak the truth in love so that they would grow as a body in which each part grew in love; in 5:2, he reminds them to ‘walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God’; in 6:23, he reminded them of the source of this love: ‘Peace be to the brothers, and love with faith, from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.’ So the Ephesian church’s beginning, in the content of what it was taught and practised, was familiar with brotherly love. John’s claim was indeed true: ‘Beloved, I am writing you no new commandment, but an old commandment that you had from the beginning. The old commandment is the word that you have heard’ (v. 7).

Second, brotherly love has always to be a fresh experience (v. 8a). Having stated that the notion of brotherly love was basic to Christian corporate life, John now reminds his readers that brotherly love of the past was insufficient for the situation of the present. John is not suggesting that Christian teaching needs to be changed (as Robert Candlish put it, ‘doctrinal Christianity is always old, experimental Christianity is always new’). The apostle links this fresh experience of brotherly love to the experience of Jesus as well as to the experience of his people. This newness is therefore an expression of the reality of union with Christ.

John says more about brotherly love when he says that it is true as well as new. The word ‘true’ has different meanings: it can refer to what is right as against what is wrong; it can refer to what is genuine as against what is pretence; and it can refer to what is lasting as against what is temporary. Sometimes the word has one of those meanings, at other times it includes them all. John here wants us to understand the word as expressing all of them. True brotherly love is always right and genuine because that is how Jesus reveals true brotherly love.

It could be that John is referring to the way that Jesus revealed ‘brotherly love’ when he was here on earth – such as his forgiveness of the sins of his disciples, his patience with their ignorance of and indifference to his teaching, his self-sacrifice on their behalf on the cross, and his desire to meet them on the morning of his resurrection. Yet I think John, in using the present tense, is also asking his readers to think about the current brotherly love of Jesus: although he is in heaven at a spatial distance from them, he still provides for their needs, forgives their sins, shows his patience, and desires intensely the day when they shall be in his presence forever. So we can say that the current love of Jesus, as well as the love he showed when he was here on earth, is a role model for his disciples to imitate every day. While this love will not be in them in the perfection it is in Jesus, it will be in them to a degree. In other words, brotherly love reveals union with Jesus in heaven.

Third, John writes that brotherly love is the hallmark of the new world order (v. 8b). There are several ways by which to view history. We can look back and regard it as a sequence of events that has nothing to do with us; or we can assess it from the point of view of the major actors on the stage of time and their ideas; or we can regard it as a visible expression of the providence of God. John gives us another way of seeing it when he writes that ‘the darkness is passing away and the true light is already shining’. Those two clauses can be written over the history of the world ever since the first coming of Jesus. The old world order is depicted as ‘darkness’ and the disastrous situation was brought about by the absence of brotherly love in human society. Into this dark world, a light began to shine when Jesus was born; the light increased as he revealed through his perfect life the love that continually shone in his heart. But what happened to the outshining of love after Jesus left the world? John says it continues to shine in the disciples of Jesus when they display brotherly love. This is an amazing assessment of a group of Christians displaying brotherly love – such are showing the world in a bright, clear and warm manner what the kingdom of God is like.

Fourth, brotherly love is the test of all claims to belong to the family of God (v. 9). In this verse John probably is referring to the false teachers and their followers who had separated themselves from the churches in the vicinity of Ephesus. John does not write that those people say that they hate others. Instead he means that their wrong actions were an expression of hatred towards those who walk in the light. Love and hatred are more than attitudes; they are also actions, and we should not separate them. An action is only a public expression of an attitude.

The idea of brotherly love as a test of genuineness is found elsewhere in the New Testament. One solemn reference concerns the Day of Judgement as it is described in Matthew 25 in the parable of the sheep and the goats. Jesus makes it clear in that passage that the presence or absence of brotherly love will indicate whether or not professors were true Christians. His words – ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me’ (Matt. 25:40) – ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me’ (Matt. 25:45) – reveal that brotherly love is the evidence of true Christianity. Actions express attitudes. If we don’t show brotherly love, John would say that we are not true Christians.

I have heard some strange ways of avoiding this requirement. For example, a person once said to me of another Christian, ‘I love him but I don’t like him.’ If what was meant was that the speaker did not like sinful attitudes in the other person, then the statement was acceptable. But if the speaker had no reason for not liking the other person, he needed to be told that he had a sinful attitude in his heart, an attitude that could become soul-destroying in the future. We are not to use human ingenuity to avoid the clear statement that true Christians practise brotherly love from the heart.

Fifth, brotherly love is essential for Christian progress (vv. 10-11). We can only move on steadfastly towards heaven by walking in the light of brotherly love. Is John exaggerating when he says that brotherly love removes the possibility of stumbling? Let’s think about some sins of stumbling that happen when we don’t engage in brotherly love. Take sins of the tongue. If I don’t say wrong things about another Christian, I will not stumble in that way. Take sins of the heart such as jealousy of or despising another Christian’s position or achievements? If I stop such thoughts by appealing to Jesus for help, I won’t stumble in that way. Most sins in the Christian life or in a Christian church are caused by lack of brotherly love in one way or another. John provides a simple remedy – brotherly love. Sadly a person without brotherly love has a serious condition – spiritual blindness.

Sometimes a person says that he has not made much progress in the Christian life. Such an expression may be stating an increasing awareness of indwelling sin, and when said in that way it is a good sign of spiritual discernment. Yet at times a person can be aware that other factors are hindering his spiritual progress. It is useful for such a person to search his heart and see whether or not he is maintaining an attitude of heart that cannot be described as brotherly love. Because one thing is certain – the only people who are making progress towards heaven are those who are marked by ongoing brotherly love that is fresh and new through a living union with Jesus Christ.