I John, 2:7-8

So today we're doing 1 John 2, 7, and 8. You've got your Bibles open already. Who'd like to read 1 John 1-6 and then read 7 and 8 for us? Anybody? My little children, I'm writing these things to you so that you may not sin. And if anyone sins, we have an apostate, the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. And he himself is the propitiation for our sin, and not for ours only, but also for those of the whole world.

By this we know that we have come to know him, and to keep his commandments. The one who says, I have come to know him, and does not keep his commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him. By whoever keeps his word, in him the love of God has been truly perfected. By this we know that we are in him.

The one who says he abides in him ought himself to walk in the same manner as you walk. The law is, I'm not writing a new commandment to you, but an old commandment, which you have from the beginning. The old commandment is the word which you have heard. On the other hand, I am writing a new commandment to you, which is true in him and in you, because the darkness is passing away, and the true light is always shining. Great. Thank you so much. Good. So, let's see. Alright, so, let's do some review.

First of all, I'd say one of the first things we covered in Strongforce was the heresies that John was combating. Chapter one of this book was a vehicle of John to refute the claims of many Gnostics of his day and as we discovered, as we studied that these are many heresies that are still around today.

So, first he refuted the heresy that Jesus Christ was not really a man. This was held by the Docetists, I believe is how you pronounce it. The Docetists believed that it means to see or to appear, so they believed that Jesus was like a ghost or a specter.

He appeared as if he was a human, but he wasn't really a human. John refuted that very strongly, saying, no, we touched him, we talked with him, we heard him, we felt him. In every way he was real. And John was the one who could attest to have seen him. John was the one who, the Bible tells us, reclined on Jesus' shoulder. So, if Jesus had only appeared to be there, he would have fallen right through. So, John was very adamant about that.

The next Gnostic claim that we found was in verse 6, and it was that what we do in our bodies has no importance or is refuted, or in no meaning. So, any sin that you commit, anything that you do, it doesn't really matter because that's your body. physical, and if it's physical, it's evil, and if it's evil anyway, it doesn't matter. So if you choose to do immoral things, it doesn't matter. If you choose to do moral things, it doesn't matter.

Another thing that I didn't note on this is also there's the other logical conclusion that the physical part is evil and the spiritual is good, is to say that we should abuse our bodies. spend all of our time denying ourselves food, or denying ourselves, or whipping ourselves, or whatever our specific presentation or way that works out for us. But even still, John refuted that pretty strongly in 1 John 1, 6 and 7. In chapter 1, verse 8, John tells us that the person who denies that they I'm sorry, that denies that they have an indwelling sin nature is also wrong. And this is the one that I think we see most often today, or at least the one that I'm most sensitive to. Modern psychology wants to tell you, no, you don't have a sin nature. You're okay. I'm okay. You're okay. And it's just not the truth.

So John covered that, I'd say, very clearly, to say that when we deny we have a sin nature, it's definitely against everything the Bible has to tell us. John also taught against those who could claim that they have never sinned. This is a really common trait of a cult leader to say that I'm perfect, I've never sinned, I've not ever goofed up or made a mistake or anything to that effect. And there were those in those times, as there are today, who would claim that they'd never sinned and John tells us, This person calls God a liar, and the Word is not in him. And as we know, and as we'll see again later today, the Word is, or God's Word, or the Word of God, is often a word that John uses for Jesus, specifically, Logos, the Word.

Okay, so now the next thing, this is just a lightning-fast review, so we get through everything, and if you have any questions, please feel free to stop me. We're going on the nature of the Christian. John has been very realistic about our condition and we've really hammered home on this because we've been learning about, forever in Holly Hills, we've been learning about our position and our condition. And our position is where we are perfect, it's where we are eternally blessed, it's where we are crucified, dead, risen and ascended and seated with Christ. Our position is how God views us. We are seated at the right hand of God in our position, but in our condition, we're still here living out our day-to-day battles. We still hear the sound of our flesh calling us to do things that we know we shouldn't do, to harm others, to do things in our own interests rather than in the interests of others. John has been very clear about that struggle between our position and condition and really has dealt, I'd say, dealt primarily with our condition in a lot of these verses.

And I think we'll see that played out today as well. As people saved by faith in Christ, we are now in possession of two natures. So we have our sin nature and our new nature. Our new nature is described in 2 Corinthians 5.17. When he was in Christ, he's a new creature, a new creation. And Romans 6. So that's what we are. We are a new creation. We are a new creature. We are something else entirely.

The continuing presence of the old man in the sin nature is confirmed by Romans 7, and it's tricky because we have Galatians 2.20 saying, I've been crucified with Christ, and in Romans 6 saying that we were baptized. Our old man was baptized into his death, and yet it persists. It remains a presence in our lives. It remains an ongoing battle. So, a lot of what John has been talking about is not salvation, but our battle with that ongoing sin nature.

This is an incredibly difficult book to read, an incredibly difficult book to teach, partially because it's so simple. and partially because it's so easy to misunderstand. We love law. We love to make a law out of things. We love to read everything in view of salvation, but that's not exactly the focus of John in this. So, forgiveness.

We learn in 1 John 1.9 and 1 John 2.1 that when we as believers commit sins, we have the ability to confess those sins and are forgiven them. However, this forgiveness that is given to us is not a judicial forgiveness. when Jesus' death on the cross, or with Jesus' death on the cross, rather, all of our sins have been washed away and forgiven already.

The case is closed on this. We are out of the courtroom. It is not as if there's an ongoing case going on. It's not as if there's an ongoing case wherein every new sin we commit puts us back in the defendant's seat. How many, how many, don't raise your hands, I'm sorry, How often do we view our life as, I screwed up, gotta go back into the courtroom and say, Jesus blood, then go back out and then go back in again because tomorrow we sin again. No. This is done. It is finished. The gavel has come down and as we'll see, we're never to be in the courtroom again. This judgment is passed. It's done. Christ's death is sufficient and was the propitiation for all of our sin, past, present, and future. So now, welcome to the family. Now God is your Father, and now we are children of God, once you've reached that point, once you've believed on Jesus Christ.

So we're in a family situation, and just as in a healthy family, when you transgress or sin against or hurt someone else, you apologize, hopefully, heartfeltly, not hopefully, heartfeltly apologize, and forgiveness is given. And that's an earthly family. displaying God's great trait here, what God has perfectly displayed. And as we know, some wounds in a family can be permanent, but As the Bible has taught us and the Bible teaches us, no sin is going to be permanent. There's no sin that we can't confess and repent of and have God forgive us for. So, this is the context we're now in. God has satisfied His own wrath towards us, as John 2, 1, which is Josiah, so well taught on that. And now God forgives our sins freely and we can be restored to fellowship with God and each other.

But is it too easy? John anticipates the next problem just as Paul did in Romans. Once again, just a fast review of what we covered a couple weeks ago. There we go. So, since we are sure to sin, why even bother? John is anticipating this logic coming out just as Paul. Paul did so more explicitly. Since we are sure to sin, why even bother?

And then the other side of it is that if God's grace and forgiveness, if He gives it so freely, we may as well just keep sinning and make him look more gracious and make him look more forgiving and more wonderful by our great sinfulness. And Paul responds in Romans 6, 1 and 2 by saying, may it never be. He's very adamant about the fact that this can never be, and John tells us in 2.1 with more of a loving hand, that he's writing these things so that we may not sin, not that we would sin more freely. So the purpose of both John and Paul in writing is to steer the believer away from sin and not towards it, but simultaneously to assure the believer that there can be no act of sin that will disqualify him or her from eternal life.

And that's, as we continue in John, we'll find that that's one of John's major focuses in writing this book. It's to assure us that we have salvation, that we are assured. So, proof of life. In the next verses, John gives us proofs that we're in good relationship with Christ.

I read some commentaries and I'm not sure if they're off, but I didn't want to put it on the board just because I wasn't confident. They seem to insinuate, J. Vernon McGee also was the one that most notably I listened to through the Bible on this book, and he would continually say, those of us who do not begin to display these things in our lives have every reason to question our salvation. He continually said, and we'll get into how this is done, it's about process, it's about the continuing unfolding of God's grace and God's mercy in your life. And he says, if you don't see these things happening in your life, then you need to go to God and ask why. I'm not sure that for this passage that's the most correct interpretation, but I do think it's something that's worth thinking about.

As we display, as we talk about, you know, love is the commandment, the greatest commandment. If you don't see yourself loving your brothers and sisters in church, your family, if you feel hatred in your heart towards other believers, this is a red flag to examine yourself. So, what was I reading? Oh, in 1 Corinthians it says, if we judged ourselves, then you might not have to.

Is it difficult because John is not telling us that we are saved? He's not telling us. that we are saved by doing these things or creating any new law. Like we said, that's why this is such a hard book to teach, because we as humans, we always want to put a new law in. We always want to say, OK, well if I love my brother, then I'm saved. No, that's not what John's saying at all.

He's saying that you are saved by Christ, you're in your eternal position in Him, and as He continues to work out your sanctification, bring your condition up to the level of your position, you will love your brother more and more. And he is saying that someone not seeing these qualities in his or her life may have some reason to question whether or not they know God. This is tough stuff. Now, once again, they know God does not necessarily imply a loss of salvation. Someone can be saved and never know God. Someone can be saved in their position, they're positionally in Christ, and yet because they don't pursue Him in the Word, because they don't pray, because they're not in fellowship, because they're not receiving good teaching, they may not know God. It doesn't take away their salvation, it doesn't make them worse people, it just pulls them out of fellowship with God.

This is not at odds with eternal security or assurance of salvation. So, if you're reading it that way, you're reading it wrong. It's just, this is notoriously, especially in high school and middle school Bible studies, gets abused to say, oh, you better be watching yourself, better make sure you're not screwing up, because then you might not be saved anymore. So, John notes in these verses that there's a matter of process, not instant gratification. Once again, as Raj and I were talking about earlier, you can't confuse your position with your condition, because if you expect your position to be fully lived out right now, today, you're going to be disappointed, and you're going to think, well, I'm not living out my position perfectly, therefore I must not be in that position, and that's not what Paul or John says. So, he's saying that there's process. John is not necessarily writing this with salvation in view.

This is from the Bible called Knowledge Commentary, and I thought it was a great quote. I talked about it with Roger this morning, and you weren't sure exactly how you felt about it. Is that right? It's interesting. I'm not sure I totally... I mean, is there some thought? I mean, I had not thought about that.

Is there a distinction between what John says in terms of in him or in Christ? My first impression was to take it to be the same, Yeah, and mine too. This is why I thought this was so revolutionary. I'll read it just for us real quick. It would be a mistake to equate the concept of being in him, as John uses it here, with the Pauline concept of being in Christ.

For Paul, the words in Christ describe a Christian's permanent position in God's Son with all its attendant privileges. With John, the kind of relationship pictured in the vine branch imagery describes the experience that can be ruptured. With the resultant loss of fellowship and fruitfulness, Thus, here in 1 John, the proof that a person is enjoying this kind of experience is to be found in a life modeled after that of Jesus and obedience to the world. In short, chapter 2, verses 5 and 6 continue to talk about the believer's fellowship with God. It does have merit. All that 1 John was focused on was that you would have fellowship with God and fellowship with us. The book is about fellowship. The book is not about salvation. So, this is just saying, and so much of this imagery, as Josiah and Roger pointed out, and so much of the wording comes from the Book of John, comes from the sermons as recorded in the Book of John, and the upper room discourse in different places.

So, I think it holds great merit. If you haven't heard Hal's tape on John 15, John chapter 15 on the vine and the branches, You need to pick it up. It's fantastic. He taught on it a year and a half or two years ago and it was amazing because that's another chapter that's often abused to make us feel as if we might lose our salvation. Oh, you might lose your salvation sometime tomorrow if you make a mistake. No. And Hal brings that into such wonderful, clear perspective. If you can get a hold of that tape, I'm sure we have it.

All the rambling is done, and now we're into the actual Bible, which is good. So let's do verse 7. Roger, would you read first? I'll read it for mine. No, it's all the better. Beloved, I am not writing a new commandment to you, but an old commandment, which you have from the beginning. The old commandment is a word which you have heard. All right. So, first word in this is brethren. It's how he's addressing the people.

The older texts that we have, have agapetoi, or beloved. In fact, this is not just any kind of love. It's based on the word agape, which we all know is God's love. It's the love God has. So, Wiest and others have said it would be best translated, God-beloved ones.

He opens up these two verses and continues in this passage by saying, remember who you are, you are the ones God loves. This is John who spent his entire Gospel, he never used his own name in his own Gospel, he only referred to himself as the disciple Jesus loved. That was all he wanted to be recognized as, the disciple Jesus loved. So now he turns to you and he says in verse 7, God beloved ones, beloved children of God.

So that's what he's not starting, like, okay, here comes the bad news. He's trying to remind us that this is all very good news. So John 1 speaks perfectly plain to his readers that they are not beloved of God. If that doesn't get your heartbeat going a little bit, check your pulse, because it might not be there. All right, no new commandment. Boy, this is the tricky one. This is where the law and commandment, because they're all so muddled in English, but in John's perspective, not nearly so much.

So, this is in the emphatic first position. I can't remember if we've discussed some of these in this class already, but in the Greeks, in sentence structures, order of sentence doesn't have the same implication on meaning as it does. In other words, John hit the ball is very different than the ball hit John. in English, but you could, because of the way that Greek works, it's an inflected language, so you could put John first or the ball first, depending on which one you wanted to make more emphasized, more important. And it would still have the same meaning, because you change the word, just like in Korean and in a lot of other languages, you change the word if you want it to be the object, and you change the word itself if you want it to be the subject, as opposed to ours where we always move generally subject, verb, object, and so on and so on. I pushed the button again. OK.

So anyway, in the Greek, since word order is not important in English, we find that the first position in the sentence was used to emphasize part of the sentence that was most important to the writer. In English, we would write it in caps and bolds, saying, no new commandment do I write to you. And we just don't really have a good vehicle to do this in English, save this possible way. Verbally, of course, we can do it, but it becomes harder in writing.

My fault. There we go. We're back on track. Okay. Brethren, so now we're going to look at the different parts of that no new commandment phrase. Oh, so sad. Did I push this button? Ta-da! Alright. So, let's look at new. There are two words in Greek that basically get covered in the English word new. One of these words is neos. Neos? Neos? Neos? Neos? Okay. And this is where we get our word neo, meaning new, so you have neo-orthodox, neo, what have you. And then this new refers to time and chronology.

It is the new used when you would say, I bought a new pot. When your new pot is just like your old pot, but the old pot has a crack in it, and the new pot is exactly the same, it was just made two years later. Basically the same as anything that came before it. There's nothing new about it except for the fact that it was chronologically made at a later date.

And then we have this one, which is Kynos. This is the new we find here. And this new means new in type or kind. So this would be as if to say flying as a relatively new way to travel because we never flew before and then we started flying as humans. Birds were doing it, of course. For us, it's a rather new kind of travel. It's a new type of travel.

So, what John is getting at here is, God's beloved ones, it's no new kind of commandment. I'm not writing you a new kind of commandment here. No commandment. This is the sticky stuff. I'm just going to gloss over this, because from what Roger told me, it was really well covered last week, and I don't want to spend... I don't want to spend too much time... I gave you extra. It's important to notice what John is not talking about here.

The word for law, as I'm sure was discussed last week, is namas. The word used for, and John used for mosaic law, the commandments given in the first five books of the Bible, the law, law. And this is not the word that John uses here. He doesn't use the word law. Instead, the word is entole, and it means a precept or an order. It does not have to do with the law that is one is punished for breaking and rewarded for keeping, but is a precept or an idea or a command to follow.

Later, in verse 7, John equates the Old Commandment to the Word, which you heard from the beginning. The word logos in Greek is one of the ways that John refers to Jesus. And this is obviously also tied to John 13, 34 and the commandment to love. A new commandment I give you, that you love one another as I have also loved you, that you also love one another. So, Roger pointed this out in our phone discussion, or email the other day, that John uses the word, logos, the word to refer to Jesus.

So, that's, and it will equate it again, that Jesus is this command, and walking in Jesus, as Jesus walked, is what the goal here is. Had. This verb is in the imperfect tense, in the continuous state. So essentially it's saying something that they've had for their entire lives as Christians. and still have today.

It's not new news. They won't be surprised. They're not going to be shocked. When he referred to it, we kind of have to jimmy because we weren't there. We have to think, oh, what does it mean? You heard it from the beginning. They knew. They were the ones who received it. They had no question in their mind. Oh, okay, keeping that commandment. Okay, that's easy. So, way easier for them to understand than for us, as is often the case.

From the beginning, the beginning can mean two things, possibly more, but specifically here it can mean the beginning of all things. which would be things discussed in Genesis chapter 1 and John chapter 1. But in this context it does make more sense, I think, to think of the beginning in terms of the time when they first heard the gospel, or another commentator said, the beginning of their Christian experience.

So I think that makes the most sense given the tenure of the fact that John started with, in the book of John, John started with the beginning of all creation because He was trying to prove that Jesus was God. But in the book of 1 John, he spent more time trying to prove that Jesus was a man. So he probably just starts from the earthly ministry, that Jesus was all God and all man. So, in his defensible case, the beginning is probably that time, when they first had their Christian experience.

Alright, the Word. As previously noted, the Word is one of the ways that John references Jesus Christ. Now we get on to verse 8. Would someone like to read that one? Mark? Yeah, sure. On the other hand, I am writing a new commandment to you, which is true in Him and in you, because the darkness is passing away and the true light is already shining.

A whole family of NASB readers, that's great. Alright, again, the Greek word here is phalan. It can be literally translated again, moreover, further, or on the other hand. And Nasby chooses, on the other hand, great translation. What sense does it make to say, well again, in English, what sense does it make to say, again, I'm telling you something different? It makes way more sense for us to say, on the other hand, because it's more showing both sides of something or giving you another perspective. So anyway, again, works fine. But for modern English, I definitely prefer, on the other hand.

Alright, does anybody have the time because this one takes forever. Alright, so how can a commandment be both old and new? It's a paradox and it's really difficult for us because it's obvious that he's referencing pretty much the same thing. He said the old command was Jesus, and the new command is something, obviously, that's not going to come from somewhere else. How can it be the same thing? How can the commandment to love be both old and new? Is he confused? Has he made a mistake? Is he goofed? The commandment of love is both old and new.

Old because John's reader have had it from the beginning of their Christian experience, and new because the unfolding of Christian experience has developed new power, meaning, and obligation. And close correspondence with the fact of Christ's life, the fact of his resurrection, with the crowning ministry of his passion and with the facts of Christian life." So it has this sense of being old in chronology, but new in the fact that it's always new, it's always fresh. Never wake up in the morning and say, I'm so tired of loving my brother. It's so boring. No, it's always new, everyday new. So, it's a whole new... Yes, so it maintains that paradox of being both old and new.

I mean, even the commandment to love our neighbor is an Old Testament commandment. And to love the Lord our God, these are Old Testament commandments that Jesus then reaffirms. And then he says, a new commandment I give you. Which thing, which confused me when I was reading it, and this is the satisfactory explanation that I found. The word which thing here is ho, which is the neuter relative pronoun. Examples of relative pronouns in English, anyone? There we go. Which? Okay. Anyway, neuter relative pronoun, I was thinking more like it.

But as a pronoun in Greek, they have to agree, in Greek, this is the great thing about Greek, it has to agree in gender and number. If we say it, it could be a male dog, it could be a woman, a female dog, it could be anything. But for us, and also Greek words are masculine and feminine, so it has to agree in gender and number with its antecedent.

That's the thing that it refers to, or that the pronoun refers to. To say, I saw the dog, it was pretty. It is the pronoun, the dog is the antecedent. It is referring to the dog. So, in this case, being a neuter relative pronoun, it is likely to refer to an abstract truth or fact.

This understanding gives us a translation, which fact is true in him and in you? Which fact is true, but which fact is then the next question, or what fact? It's most likely that it is referring to the love that is true in both Jesus and as the believer is now permanently in Christ, in the believer. So this fact of love is true in, or the commitment to love is true in the believer and in Christ.

The interpretation agrees very well with the context in that John goes on to say in verse 9, the one who says he is in the light yet hates his brothers in darkness till now. So he kind of sets this off against someone who hates his brother is the opposite of this. Now we get on to the darkness. Oh, we're going to end way early today. That's great. Last time I went like 10 minutes over. Darkness in John's speech denotes much of the same things that it still denotes today.

Obviously, darkness imposes blindness on whomever it has engulfed. So if it's dark in a room, you can't see. You're not necessarily blind, but you can't see. This is also why we use the expression, he is totally in the dark about this and that. Yeah? So he's totally in the dark. So it has that kind of nuance, and it also has the nuance of having moral insensibility to divine light. It could also be moral blindness or obtuseness. We still use darkness in this way.

It's not such a far throw. We talk about, how was that movie? Oh, it was really dark. I just walked out feeling icky. And you can mean dark in terms of how much light was in it, and you can also mean dark in terms of the content of it was so obviously ungodly that it made you realize that it was, and we can use the word in English as well as in Greek, dark to describe it.

And so, he's saying that because the darkness is passing away. So, passing away in Greek here is paragatai and it means to pass by, to go past. During John's time it was a metaphor to disappear. Wiest, and I put it in the notes, but I didn't put it on the thing, Wiest references it, and he says in this verse, it's as if the darkness is passing like a circus parade. You see a circus parade passing, the darkness is passing, and once it's gone, you know how parades start big, and then they kind of get a little bit smaller, and then they get big again, and then they get smaller, and then eventually they're gone. And that's how Weiss describes what John is referencing here, by passing away.

Once again, just to be clear, talking about our condition, our condition, not our eternal position in this context, it displays the element of process in our Christian lives. If we are in a healthy relationship with Christ, we will continue to pass from darkness to light, as our condition is conformed to our position. Christians can still get caught in sin, in cycles of sin. As Paul wrote to the Corinthians, you're doing things that even pagans are ashamed to do.

Somehow Christians can get in deeper than non-Christians because the devil, Satan, has very little reason to attack a non-Christian. He has very little reason to try to stimulate the flesh of a non-believer. It's already in control. However, a believer has an enemy. I mean, if you're in a room with five people and you're the only Christian, you've got news. You're the only one with an enemy in that room. And that enemy is going to be working to stimulate you to hatred, to anger, to all the sins and the evil things listed in the Bible, or listed in the New Testament.

So, it's something to be distinctly conscious of, is that in the parade analogy, we can run up and try to see the parade again for our whole lives. and keep up with the darkness as Christ continues to try to wash it away from us. It doesn't mean we've lost our salvation. It doesn't mean that we're not saved. If you see a Christian whose fruit is not like you'd expect a Christian to be, it doesn't necessarily mean that they're not a Christian.

It just means that they're not fruitful. Yeah, I'll kind of leave that at that. Arnold Fruchtenbaum, in a lecture that I heard him give, he said, he was discussing forgiveness, God's unconditional forgiveness, and someone said, Well, if I can sin all I want and if I can live my whole life in darkness and basically squander all my riches in the pleasure of this world and in my sin and in my anger and in my other evil tendencies, what's to keep me from doing that?" And Frithjomphom said, just try it.

And his purpose in that, as he continued to explain it, was God will not rip the blanket out from under you on salvation. God is not going to take away your salvation. God will take you out of this world. As we learned in Ananias and Sapphira's case, as we see in other cases, God will take you out of a situation, God will take you out of out of this life, it means precious little to him, whether you're alive in here or dead and with him. So, if we're not actively pursuing Christ, there can be repercussions, but they are not repercussions of salvation. We don't need to run around wringing our hands, oh, am I saved? Oh, am I saved?

But we do need to be cognizant of these things, and that's why John bothered to write them in the first place. True light. I love this. This is such an interesting thing. I had no idea because the New King James here says true light and it's actually not a very satisfactory translation. It's better to say genuine.

The word here is alathinos and it shares the same root word as alathēs or, well, essentially just true or truth. So, there are plenty of passages in Scripture that display God's truthfulness to us, but there's a distinction between that. So, first, let's look at some of the ones that use this aliphase, that discuss God's truthfulness.

Titus 1.2 says, "...in hope of eternal life, God, which God, who cannot lie..." God cannot lie. Anything He says is truth. It is truthful. It is not possible that God would lie.

Romans 3.4, Certainly not! Indeed, let God be true, and every man a liar, as it is written, that you may be justified in your words, and may overcome when you are judged.

John 3.33, He who has received his testimony has certified that God is true.

So, in this true light thing, another one of these long ones, I apologize. PowerPoint's just so fun. I mean, you have all these little ins and outs, and you jump around, the words dance for you, and when you're sitting at 11 at night, trying to put all the finishing touches on this, it seems so exciting. Like, oh, no one's going to fall asleep if my words dance.

And there's a downside to it too, I guess. Alright, so in the culture, this is what I love about this word, genuine. It was a word used for gold. It was a word used in this situation too, quite commonly, but it was used for gold. That's the image that really grabbed me. If gold was pure and uncontaminated by other metals, you know, not mixed in with silver or mixed in with other things to try to make more gold out of less real gold, it could be said to be a leathinoster. Genuine gold. Genuine gold.

This verse is saying that Christ is the genuine light, the pure light. And once you have that, then the true light makes sense. But it's not to say that He's the true light, as in the light that does not lie, but it's the true light as in saying He's the genuine light.

Furthermore, anything else is a counterfeit, made to imitate that light. So Satan is the counterfeit light. We know that he can attempt to deceive mankind by masquerading as an angel of light, even seeing him called the Morning Star in the Old Testament. Satan is still trying to be the light, the false light. I know it's not fully related, but even still, you hear the word anti-Christ and we take that to mean in English the against Christ, but it's not. It's not so much the idea of against Christ as the replacement Christ, the false Christ. the deceptive, the counterfeit Christ. So, in this case, Satan is the counterfeit light that we need to be looking out for in the world.

And in such things as worldly philosophy, business psychology, we're going to see this counterfeit light and we'll say, oh, they're making people feel so good. Oh, they're helping people with their problems, and it may be true. But if it's just drawing them towards this counterfeit light, what true good is it really doing them or us, for that matter? So, anyway, we're not just trying to make happy people. Hopefully we're leading people towards the genuine light that is already shining.

This is the Wyss translation. I just thought it was nice, pretty good, pretty together, not too long, and yet I'm still not confident enough with my Greek to do my own expanded and explained, so I steal them from others. Here's the Wyss translation. Divinely loved ones, no new commandment am I writing you, but a commandment, an old one, which you have had constantly from the beginning. The commandment, the old one, is the word which you heard. Notice the word is actually capitalized there. The word which you heard. Come on. No. There we go. Again, a commandment, a new one I am writing to you. Which fact is true in him and in you? Because the darkness is passing away and the light The genuine light is already shining.

And that's pretty much what I had to present. I knew I'd be a little bit short and I did so intentionally. Last time I taught, I tried to draw up a series of possible applications that we could have in response to the verses that we just read. And to be honest, I felt a little artificial. I felt like I was, you know, unwrapping your Christmas presents for you, which is never fun.

So what I'd love for us to discuss, unless there are any profoundly confusing questions or issues of great unclarity, I'd love for us to talk about how this verse will affect next week for us. Don't all stand up at once. How about some additional observations from the verse? Yeah, please. That's great. Yeah, we'll take it. I'm not sure about the application. Yeah.

I thought, really, in verse 8 there, it talks about, on the other hand, I'm writing to you a new commandment, which is true in him. and in you, your first thought is, well how can this, this is actually talking about, I thought it had a neat reference to the fact that Christ desires to live his life in you.

And I kind of mentioned that in the email too. I saw that, kind of speaking to that point, that his, the commandments he's talking about is Christ's very nature, and Christ is our life, so his desires to live his life in us, in you. So I thought that was kind of a reference to that. So I thought that was kind of interesting.

In the midst of kind of telling us about, you know, commandments, and like you say, our first thought of commandments is, well, okay, your mind goes back to the Mosaic law, and Christ is not talking about commandments in that sense, as you pointed out. He's talking about actually a relationship where he will live his life out through you.

Absolutely. I would say kind of a Calvinistic approach to the last part of the day. We would often think of ourselves as totally depraved. Life on this earth is a full continuation of failure or whatever you want to call it. I think that last sentence really did one for me.

In fact, the darkness is passing away. We're not saying it's gone, it's passing away, but the key thing is that the Christ light is already shining through us. We're still in darkness, that light is already there. That's the truth that we should claim and promise in our life. Oh, absolutely. I just want to kind of repeat that for the tape, because I don't know if they could hear you from here.

I think if I could sum it up, but that's absolutely right, that the darkness is passing away and the true light and our depravity in this darkness is just passing away and that Jesus Christ The true light is already shining. The funny thing about it, and I didn't notice this until you said that, but we don't do anything to make the darkness pass away. We're not passing the darkness away, we're not praying the darkness away, we're not... Christ, the true light is already shining and that is why the darkness is passing away. And what a great application. That the light is shining and that's what's making the darkness pass away. That's incredible.

Maybe the application that you're talking about is just that, too. It's that focus upon the crisis and not necessarily, you know, like in the next week, you know, you go through your day and, you know, you mess up here, but you do this, so you do that, and it's really easy to get down about that or be, or feel like. go trapped by that sin and beat yourself up and guilt yourself and that's the worst thing that could ever happen. How can I do this to my savior? So many spiritual songs and praises are written about that trying to please God and trying to please him doing this and that and a lot of times it's just If our focus is upon that, it really becomes what we can do for God, and not who He is in us. That's where the real transforming power comes, and I think that, just that idea, you know, to get next to Him, to move beyond that, and coming into a better knowledge of that is really difficult, but ends up being an amazing thing in our lives.

Amen. Amen. Well, I know that that's just the warning bell, but the coffee is still up there, so. Someone like, oh, April? Something that reminds me of the darkness is passing, but light is always shining. It's just like with a cloud or a storm cloud, you know, it covers up the light, but it's still behind the cloud. It never goes away. Absolutely. Great. Is there anything else that anyone's going to be angry about all week if they don't say it right now? Okay. That's fantastic. Ryan, would you close us in prayer? Is that okay?