An Old Commandment That’s New (1 John 2:7–11) from South Woods Baptist Church on Vimeo.

I should have known that I was in for a rough ride. I was young, inexperienced, and yet eager to serve a congregation just twenty minutes from my hometown. I found the search committee, for the most part, to be warm-hearted and interested in my emphasis on expositional preaching and a discipling ministry, that is, until they later discovered what that meant. But the tip that should have clued me in was the chairman’s repeated emphasis, “We just looovvve each other!” (Yes, he stretched it out!) I heard it from a few others too. It sounded convincing. No doubt, some among them did love one another. It’s just that after I began my ministry, they were hard to find. Their idea of love just didn’t square with that of Jesus washing the disciples’ feet and laying down His life at the cross.

You’ve probably heard the same kind of talk that didn’t filter down into true deeds of love. Maybe it has even be descriptive of you at some stage before the gospel of Christ grabbed you and by a supernatural act of regeneration, transformed you so that you started seeing people differently and finding your heart inclined to love even some who appeared hard to love.

That kind of love has the unmistakable imprint of Jesus Christ upon a life. So important is this evidence of love in true believers, so characteristic of one in union with Jesus Christ, that John keeps repeating it throughout his epistle as a mark of assurance that you belong to Christ (3:10–20; 4:7–12; 4:15–21; 5:1–2). Without this mark of loving one another in the body, we have no ground of assurance that we’re in Christ.

As Pastor Matt noted in last week’s text (1 John 2:3–6), we can have assurance that we’re in Christ—not some vague, mystical experience as some thought, but the reality of the saving life of Christ evidencing Himself in our deeds. John presses that truth throughout his letter. So, we know that we’ve come to know Christ “if we keep His commandments” (2:3).

Yet by keeping His commandments, John doesn’t imply a kind of rigid legalism by which one follows his perception of the letter of the law while divorced from the spirit of it. Remember when Jesus was asked what was the greatest commandment? His reply hung all of the commandments of God on two prongs: love God and love your neighbor. So the connection to verses 3–6 in our text proves to be explanatory by amplifying what it means to follow Christ’s commands. The focus on the commands of God centers life on loving God and loving others even as Jesus Christ did.

Here is the certainty that we’re in Christ: believing the gospel is evidenced by Christ-like love. Believing the gospel comes first. In no way does John suggest that if you can work up a good measure of love toward others that God will save you. Rather, love for others flows quite naturally out of the new birth. How is that worked out in our text? Let’s consider it under three questions:

What is this old but new commandment?

How do we have the motivation and the power to keep this old/new commandment?

How does keeping this commandment mark genuine Christianity?

1. What is this old but new commandment?

With great tenderness and certainty of his care for them, John writes, “Beloved, I am not writing a new commandment to you.” By that he meant that he was not switching things in mid-stream by creating new practices for people to do if they would be Christians. He was not like those who lured people from the fellowship of the church to follow after the strange teaching that denied the humanity of Christ and excused sin by emphasis on spirit while ignoring the physical. No, this is no new commandment “but an old commandment which you have had from the beginning.” The beginning of what? He probably means either the beginning of the gospel proclamation by Jesus Christ or the start of their Christian lives—more likely the latter (1 John 3:11). In either case, he’s reitera[...]