D. Knowledge of God Evidenced by Keeping His Commandments (2:3-11)

The thesis of this section is that walking in the light involves obedience to the commandments.

1. The commandments are summarized as “walking as Christ walked” (2:6). Here is one of John Wesley’s favorite phrases to describe the essence of the sanctified life. The exciting implication is that the commandments are not arbitrary impositions designed to limit a believer but expressions of the nature of God as embodied in Jesus Christ. Thus they lead to the fulfillment of human personhood.

2. The commandments are embodied in love for the brothers (2:9-11). There is a dual purpose in the mind of the writer. Negatively, he is speaking against the loveless attitude of those who had seceded from this community of faith. Positively, he is emphasizing the centrality of love as the focus of the commandments.

John Wesley found in v.5 the possibility of perfection in terms of love: “‘Made complete’ means that the Christian’s love is entire and mature” (Marshall, 125). In no sense can this mean a state of perfection that excludes the possibility of sin (2:1).

The command to love is old since it has been the ideal of divine-human and human-human relations from the beginning. The OT summarizes the commandments in terms of love, demonstrating that love always has been the essence of biblical faith (Dt 6:4-5; Lev 19:18). The commandment is new in the sense that a new enablement is available to those who are in Christ. This meaning is implicit in the last half of v.8, because the darkness is passing and the true light is already shining. This is a graphic way of speaking about the eschatological dualism that informs all NT theology. In Jesus, the age to come has broken into the present age so that the power of the age of salvation may be experienced in the here and now (see Heb 6:5). The choice of language is precise. The old is passing while the new is already shining. Thus the idiom of the two ages is portrayed here by the symbolism of light and darkness. Unlike apocalyptic theology, there is not a radical separation between the two ages but an overlapping so that we now are living in the time between the times. The new commandment belongs to the new age “which has been ushered in by the shining of the true light” (Stott, 94).