Knowing Him by Keeping His Commandments

Scripture: 1 John 2:3–17

Read 1 John 2:3–17 before proceeding. Keep your Bible open throughout this session.

By this we know that we have come to know Him, if we keep His commandments.
1 John 2:3

The First Test

Last week John laid the foundations. The Word of life, heard and seen and touched by the apostles. The fellowship with the Father and the Son that is offered through their witness. The God who is light. The ongoing confession of sin and the cleansing that keeps us in the light. The Advocate at the Father’s right hand and the propitiation for our sins and the sins of the whole world. The foundations are now laid. In this session, John begins to build on them.

And he builds with a question that runs through the whole letter. How does the Christian know she truly knows Christ? How does the one who claims fellowship with Him know that the claim is real rather than self-deception? How, above all, does she know that she belongs to the God whose fellowship this is? John’s pastoral task across the letter is to answer this question: to give his readers the grounds on which they can know, with settled confidence, that they have eternal life. The answer will unfold across the letter in what commentators have come to call the tests of life. Three tests recur, woven through the letter in different combinations. Obedience. Love. Belief. In this session we meet the first and second of these tests for the first time.

A word of pastoral care before we begin. The tests can sound, to the anxious Christian, like new demands: new hoops to jump through, new standards to measure up to, new grounds for worry about whether she has done enough. This is not what John intends, and it is not what his letter does. The tests are not demands laid on top of the Gospel. They are markers of what the Gospel has already produced. John is not asking his readers to manufacture evidence of salvation. He is asking them to recognize the evidence that is already there in the life the Spirit has been shaping in them. The one who keeps Christ’s commandments has been shaped by Christ. The one who loves her brother has been taught by the God who is love. These are not prerequisites for fellowship; they are the natural fruit of a fellowship that already exists.

The order of assurance. Christian assurance begins outside of us, in Christ and His promise. His death and resurrection, His Gospel, His absolution, Baptism, and Supper are the objective ground of our confidence. John’s tests of obedience, love, and confession do not create salvation, preserve it, or justify the sinner (AC IV; FC Ep IV). They are fruits the Spirit works, and they help diagnose hypocrisy, expose presumption, and confirm what the Gospel has produced. When the fruits are weak, the answer is not to make the fruit the foundation. The answer is to return in repentance to Christ’s promise, from which real fruit grows. Throughout this study, read every test in that order: Christ first, fruit second.

In this session we will walk through John’s first treatment of the obedience test (2:3–6), his first treatment of the love test (2:7–11), his pastoral address to three groups in the congregation (2:12–14), and his warning against loving the world (2:15–17). These four movements set the pattern that will reappear throughout the letter. Each has much to give us, and each contributes to the assurance that is the letter’s pastoral heart.

By This We Know

John opens the passage with the first of many occurrences of a characteristic phrase. By this we know that we have come to know Him, if we keep His commandments. The phrase by this we know, in Greek, en touto ginoskomen, is one of John’s favorite constructions. It appears repeatedly across the letter, marking the places where John is giving his readers a way to evaluate their own standing in Christ. By this we know. This is how you can tell. Here is the evidence that what has been claimed is real.

Notice first the two forms of the verb to know. John uses the same Greek verb, ginōskō, twice, in two different tenses. By this we know (ginōskomen) is present tense: it describes the present recognition John’s readers may have. That we have come to know Him (egnōkamen) is perfect tense: it points to an entrance into the knowledge of Christ that has a continuing effect. John is not contrasting two different kinds of knowledge, one factual and one relational. He is saying that present recognition confirms a settled knowledge of Christ that began in the past and continues in Him. And that knowledge is not mere intellectual assent to theological propositions, though it includes that. It is the deep knowing of someone you are actually bound to, the kind of knowing that has been shaped by ongoing contact over time.

If We Keep His Commandments

And the test John gives for this knowing is concrete. If we keep His commandments. The verb keep is not merely keep on the books, in a drawer, unused. It means observe, watch over, guard, carry out. It is the verb used for a sentry keeping watch over a post, or a steward keeping custody of something valuable. The Christian who keeps Christ’s commandments does not merely know what they say; she lives them out, carries them, guards them in the shape of her life. And this lived obedience, John says, is the mark by which we know that our knowing is real.

This immediately raises the question every thoughtful reader will ask. Does this mean we must perfectly obey Christ’s commandments in order to know we belong to Him? John has just said, a few verses earlier, that anyone who claims to have no sin is self-deceived. How can he now tell us that keeping His commandments is the evidence of knowing Him? Is he contradicting himself? Is he setting up an impossible standard?

The answer, as always with John, is found in paying close attention to what he actually says and does not say. John does not say, if we perfectly keep His commandments. He does not say, if we never violate His commandments. He says, if we keep them: meaning, if we direct our lives according to them, if we honor them as our rule, if we take them seriously as the shape of the life we are called to, if we return to them when we have wandered and confess when we have failed. Keeping is about direction and orientation, not about achieved perfection. The one who keeps Christ’s commandments is the one whose life is shaped by them, even as he continues to need the ongoing cleansing John described in chapter one.

The One Who Says and the One Who Does

John then sharpens the point with a contrast. Whoever says, I know Him, but does not keep His commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him. But whoever keeps His word, in him truly the love of God is perfected. By this we may know that we are in Him. Whoever says he abides in Him ought to walk in the same way in which He walked.

The contrast is between saying and doing. Claiming knowledge of Christ without showing it in the shape of life is a lie, John says. This is not intended to be cruel; it is intended to be clarifying. The Christian who says she knows Christ but whose life bears no resemblance to Christ’s commandments has described a contradiction. Words without corresponding life are just words. The profession is empty. The claim is not sustainable under scrutiny.

But the positive side (whoever keeps His word, in him truly the love of God is perfected) is rich. The word perfected here does not mean brought to sinless completion. The Greek word teleioo means brought to its goal, matured, completed in the sense of reaching what it was aimed at. When the one who has received the love of God keeps Christ’s word, the love is reaching its intended end in her life. It is doing what it was given to do. It is producing the fruit it was planted to produce. And this fruitful keeping of Christ’s word is the mark, John says, that we are in Him.

Walking as He Walked

John takes the image one step further. Whoever says he abides in Him ought to walk in the same way in which He walked. The image of walking was common in the ancient world for the shape of one’s life, the pattern of one’s conduct, the direction of one’s existence. To walk in a certain way was to live that way. And John’s claim is staggering. The one who abides in Christ ought to walk as Christ walked.

This is another high calling, and it is worth pausing to ask what John means. He does not mean that Christians must replicate the historical particulars of Jesus’s life: we are not all called to be itinerant rabbis in first-century Palestine. He means that the shape, the pattern, the direction of our walking should increasingly resemble the shape, pattern, and direction of His. Love for the Father. Obedience to the Father’s will. Mercy toward sinners. Truth-telling even when costly. Self-giving for the sake of others. Prayer. Compassion. Justice. These are the contours of Christ’s walking, and they are to be the contours of ours as well.

For the Lutheran Christian, this walking is not the ground of our salvation: that ground is Christ Himself, His cross and resurrection, His righteousness credited to us by faith. But the walking is the natural result of having been saved. The one who has been given the Spirit walks in the Spirit. The one who has been joined to Christ in Baptism walks as Christ walked. The one whose heart has been shaped by the Gospel naturally, over time, begins to look like the one whose Gospel it is. This walking is not mechanical imitation; it is the outflow of a life that has been renewed from the inside.

An Old Commandment Made New

John now moves to the second test, and he does so with a gentle play on old and new. 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. 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.

The commandment John has in view is the commandment to love, which he will name explicitly in the next verses. And he treats it as simultaneously old and new. It is old because it is not new in the sense of previously unknown. Jesus Himself gave the new commandment on the night He was betrayed: love one another as I have loved you. The commandment has been the Christian’s possession from the beginning of his Christian life. It is old in that sense: the heard word, the familiar teaching, the settled calling.

But it is also new. It is new because, in Christ, the commandment has taken on a new depth, a new form, a new power. The love that Christians are called to is a love that did not fully exist in the world before Christ’s coming. It is love shaped by the cross. Love that lays down its life for the brother. Love that persists when returning love is absent. Love that reaches enemies. Love that reflects the love of the Father who sent His Son for those who hated Him. This is not a refinement of old ethics; it is the emergence of something new, something that has become true in Christ and in those who abide in Him, something that is the shining of the true light in a world of darkness.

The Darkness Is Passing

And John makes a striking claim. The darkness is passing away and the true light is already shining. Notice the tense. Present, active. The darkness is passing: it has not yet fully passed, but it is in the process of being overcome. The true light is already shining: not will shine, but is already shining, right now, in the age in which the Christian lives. This is the realized dimension of New Testament eschatology. The victory of the light is not only future. It has begun. It is underway. The one who abides in Christ is already living in the shining of the light, even while the darkness is still passing around him.

This is a hopeful word for Christians who sometimes feel the darkness is winning. The cultural pressures, the hostility from outside, the corruption within the Church, the darkness in our own hearts: all of these can make it feel as though the light is overwhelmed. John insists otherwise. The true light is already shining. Darkness is in retreat, not advance. The one who walks in the light walks in what is coming, not in what is going. The outcome is not in doubt. The light has already prevailed, and its shining is already visible, in every faithful Christian life that reflects the character of the Christ who has overcome the world.

Love and Hate in the Light

John now names the second test directly. Whoever says he is in the light and hates his brother is still in darkness. Whoever loves his brother abides in the light, and in him there is no cause for stumbling. But whoever hates his brother is in the darkness and walks in the darkness, and does not know where he is going, because the darkness has blinded his eyes.

The test is as sharp as the first. Claiming to walk in the light while hating a brother is incoherent. The two cannot coexist. If the claim to be in the light is real, it will show in love for the brother. If hate for the brother is present, the claim to be in the light is exposed as false. John does not soften this. He states it three times in three different ways, each time pressing home the same point. The Christian’s relationship to fellow Christians is a mirror of the Christian’s relationship to the light itself.

The Word Brother

A word about the word brother is in order. John is not here using it in the broadest sense of all human beings. He is using it in the specifically Christian sense: brother in Christ, fellow member of the family of the Father. The test John is giving is directly about how Christians treat other Christians. Love for the church community. Refusal to hate within the family of faith. The specific application of the love command to those who share our Baptism and our communion.

This does not mean John has no interest in love beyond the Christian community. The Lord Jesus was clear that love for enemies and neighbors of every kind is the Christian calling. But the test John is giving in this passage is a specific one. He is asking his readers to look at how they treat the brothers and sisters in their own congregation. He is asking them to consider whether the relationships within the family of faith are marked by love or by hate, by welcome or by resentment, by patience or by contempt. And this relational pattern, within the Christian community, is a truthful measure of whether those relationships are being shaped by the light.

Hate as Deep Orientation

The word hate is strong, and John’s first readers would have felt its full weight. In the biblical world, to hate someone was not merely to feel dislike; it was to hold a settled orientation against their well-being. It was to wish them harm, to work against them, to refuse to rejoice when they rejoiced or to weep when they wept. The one who hates his brother is not merely someone who has an occasional irritation with a fellow Christian. He is someone whose settled stance toward a brother is against rather than for. This is incompatible with walking in the light, John says, because the light itself is shaped by love.

And John adds a poignant note about the one who hates. He walks in the darkness, and does not know where he is going, because the darkness has blinded his eyes. This is the tragic situation of the hater. He cannot see clearly. His own orientation against his brother has distorted his vision of everything. He thinks he is walking purposefully; in reality, he is stumbling in the dark, not knowing where he is going. And his blindness is self-inflicted: the fruit of his own hatred, which has turned him away from the only light that could have illumined his way.

This is a sobering word for Christians in every age, including our own. Congregations can be marked by patterns of grudges held, offenses nursed, resentments kept alive across years. Where these patterns take root, the light does not shine clearly. Brothers and sisters who have come to hate one another, even in the restrained forms that polite congregations tolerate, are walking in darkness, and the Church’s witness is diminished by it. John does not counsel us to manufacture affection we do not feel; he counsels us to lay down the hatred, to return to the light, to let the love of God that has been given to us shape how we treat those with whom we share the Gospel.

Three Addresses

John now pauses his argument to address specific groups within the community. The passage is structured with striking care. He writes to little children, to fathers, and to young men, each group addressed twice, in an interlocking pattern. I am writing to you, little children, because your sins are forgiven for His name’s sake. I am writing to you, fathers, because you know Him who is from the beginning. I am writing to you, young men, because you have overcome the evil one. I write to you, children, because you know the Father. I write to you, fathers, because you know Him who is from the beginning. I write to you, young men, because you are strong, and the word of God abides in you, and you have overcome the evil one.

Three groups. Three reasons for writing to each. The structure is deliberate, and the force of it is to address the whole congregation through these specific addresses. Whether John means three distinct age groups in the literal sense, or three stages of Christian maturity, or three roles within the congregation, or all of these at once, the effect is that every member of the community finds himself addressed. Because interpreters differ over whether John is describing age, spiritual maturity, or a rhetorical way of addressing the whole congregation, the reading offered below should be received as pastoral appropriation rather than as the only possible account of the passage’s structure. What is not in doubt is that the reasons John gives for writing are profoundly pastoral.

Little Children

On this reading, the little children here are the youngest or newest Christians, though John uses the same tender address elsewhere for the whole congregation. And John says he writes to them because their sins are forgiven for His name’s sake, and because they know the Father. This is pastoral wisdom of the highest order. The youngest Christians sometimes struggle most with the question of whether they really belong. They have less lived experience of God’s faithfulness. They may still be wrestling with whether their sins are really forgiven, whether their conversion was real, whether they are truly part of the family. John tells them directly. Your sins are forgiven for His name’s sake. You know the Father. You belong. The things you sometimes doubt are already true of you, because they are true of anyone who has been born of God, including the youngest among us.

Fathers

The fathers are those who have been in the faith the longest. And John writes to them, he says, because they know Him who is from the beginning. This too is precisely right. The gift of long Christian life is not more information, not more experiences, not more religious credentials. It is deeper, settled acquaintance with the eternal Son who was from the beginning. The father in the faith has come to know Christ over years, through many trials and joys, with the kind of knowing that only time in the relationship produces. And this knowing is his possession. John writes to confirm it, to remind the fathers of what they have been given by the years, to encourage them that the long journey has produced what it was meant to produce: deep knowledge of the Lord.

Young Men

The young men, spiritually mature but not yet fathers, receive the most extended attention. John writes to them twice, with expanded reason. You have overcome the evil one. You are strong. The word of God abides in you. You have overcome the evil one. The repetition emphasizes what John sees in this group. They are in the active middle of Christian life. They have passed through the initial insecurities of the new Christian. They have not yet reached the settled depth of the fathers. They are in the years of spiritual warfare, and they are winning. The word of God abides in them. They have overcome the evil one. This is pastoral encouragement to those who are bearing the main weight of active Christian engagement in the congregation’s life.

Every Member Addressed

The cumulative effect of these three addresses is that no member of the congregation is left out. The newest believer hears that her sins are forgiven and she knows the Father. The most seasoned saint hears that she knows the eternal Christ. The ones in the active middle years hear that they are strong and that the word abides in them and that they have overcome the evil one. John wants the whole congregation to hear him. And he wants each group to hear, specifically, the word that is for them in their particular season of Christian life. This is what a good pastor does. He does not simply broadcast general truths. He attends to the particular needs of the different kinds of people in his care and speaks to each of them where they are.

Do Not Love the World

John now turns from encouragement to warning. Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the desires of the flesh and the desires of the eyes and pride of life, is not from the Father but is from the world. And the world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever.

This is one of the most important warnings in the letter, and it has been quoted and meditated on across Christian history. The word world here does not mean the created order in general; God’s good creation is not to be despised. Elsewhere in John’s writings the word world often refers to the fallen human order organized in rebellion against God: the pattern of life that sets itself against the Father’s purposes, that is shaped by values contrary to His, that operates on assumptions incompatible with the Gospel. This is the world we are warned not to love.

The Incompatibility

John states the incompatibility starkly. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. The two loves cannot coexist. This is not because the Father is jealous in some petty human sense. It is because the two loves are ordered toward incompatible ends. Love for the world pulls the heart toward what the world values. Love for the Father pulls the heart toward what the Father values. When these pull in opposite directions, as they do on most of the important questions of life, the heart that tries to love both finds that one will eventually crowd out the other. Jesus said essentially the same thing when He taught that no one can serve two masters. The human heart is oriented toward one primary love, and whichever love is primary will reshape all the others.

The Three Desires

John gives a specific analysis of what the love of the world consists of. The desires of the flesh, the desires of the eyes, and the pride of life. Three currents that run through the fallen human order and that pull the heart away from the Father.

The desires of the flesh are the cravings that arise from the body and its appetites when those appetites have been distorted by sin. Food, drink, sexual pleasure, comfort, rest: these are created goods, and their ordinary enjoyment is not sinful. But when they become masters rather than servants, when they drive the life rather than being ordered by it, when they become the primary thing the person is seeking, they become desires of the flesh in John’s sense. The flesh is not the body as such; it is the body’s appetites when they have become disordered.

The desires of the eyes are the cravings for what one sees: the stirring of covetousness by the display of goods, the longing for what belongs to someone else, the pull toward images and scenes that promise satisfaction. This is the engine of modern consumer culture, though it is as old as the human heart. The eyes see, and the desires rise. The Christian in a visually saturated culture knows this temptation intimately. John’s warning applies directly.

The pride of life is perhaps the subtlest of the three. It is the craving to be someone, to be recognized, to stand out, to have a standing in the world that is impressive to others. It is the hunger for status, for achievement, for the public markers of significance. It is a love for being-looked-upon as someone important. And it is a distortion of the good desire to contribute meaningfully; it becomes the need to be seen as contributing, which quickly becomes the need to be seen, full stop. This too is of the world, not of the Father, and it pulls the heart away from the simplicity of a life lived before God rather than before the audience of the world.

The World Is Passing

And John’s closing note is eschatological. The world is passing away along with its desires, but whoever does the will of God abides forever. This is the same realized eschatology we met earlier in the passage. The world is not only going to pass; it is in the process of passing even now. What looks permanent is actually fading. What looks stable is actually temporary. The goods the world offers (its pleasures, its possessions, its recognitions) are going. They will not last.

But the one who does the will of God abides forever. The word abide is deeply Johannine: it runs through the Gospel of John especially in chapter fifteen’s vine-and-branches teaching, and it runs through the letter we are studying. To abide is to remain, to continue, to stay in place. The Christian who does the will of God abides. He remains. He continues. While the world with its desires is passing away around him, he is anchored in what does not pass. This is not merely a promise of heavenly reward after death. It is a statement about what is already happening. The world is already fading; the Christian is already anchored. The orientation of the heart toward the will of God is already being connected to what will remain when everything else has gone.

This is deeply liberating for the Christian who feels the constant pressure of a world that seems impossibly attractive, impossibly dominant, impossibly permanent. It is none of these things. The world is passing. Its attractions are fading even as they call. And the one whose heart is oriented toward the Father, whose life is shaped by the Father’s will, whose love has been anchored in the Father’s love; this one is already standing in what will still be standing when all the rest is gone. The contest is not between two equally permanent realities. It is between what is going and what remains. The Christian’s investment is in what remains.

Gathering the Threads

John has given us, in this passage, a great deal of ground. Two of the three tests of life have been introduced: obedience and love. The pastoral wisdom of addressing three distinct groups in the congregation has been modeled. The warning against love for the world has been articulated with searching clarity. Each of these contributes to the letter’s great pastoral aim: that we may know. The Christian who keeps Christ’s commandments knows she knows Him. The one who loves her brother knows she abides in the light. The one who does not love the world has the love of the Father in her. John is not laying new burdens on his readers; he is giving them the markers by which they can recognize that they already belong.

For the Lutheran Christian, the pastoral care in this passage is particularly important. The tests can sound, to an anxious conscience, like new ways to fail at the Christian life. They are not. They are descriptions of what the Spirit is already producing in the life of the baptized, and they are given to us so that we can recognize His work and take confidence in it. The walking as Christ walked is not the achievement that makes us Christians; it is the gradual shaping that marks the Christian life from the inside. The keeping of the commandment to love is not our effort to earn God’s love; it is the natural outflow of the love we have already received. The refusal to love the world is not self-deprivation; it is the recognition that the world is passing and the Father is eternal, and wisdom lies in anchoring the heart where it will not be dislocated by time.

And underneath all of this is the assurance John is building. The Christian who finds in herself some real, though imperfect, keeping of Christ’s commandments has evidence that she knows Him. The one who loves the family of faith, even imperfectly, has evidence that she abides in the light. The one whose heart has been turned from the things of the world, even partially, has evidence that the love of the Father is in her. None of these tests requires perfection; all of them look for direction. And the direction, where it is present, is the Spirit’s own work, being manifested in the life that John is helping his readers learn to recognize.

For Discussion

The following questions are for group discussion or personal reflection.

John says that keeping Christ’s commandments is evidence that we know Him. How do you hear this, as an invitation to assurance, or as a new demand? What do you think accounts for the difference?
The call to walk as Christ walked is a high calling. What does it look like, concretely, in your own life right now? Where is the Spirit moving you in this direction, and where do you still have a long way to go?
John’s test of love is specifically about love for the brother: the fellow member of the family of faith. How is the climate of love in your own congregation? Where is it strongest, and where has it been eroded?
Of John’s three addresses (to little children, to fathers, to young men), which best describes your current season of Christian life? What is the word John speaks to your particular group?
The three desires John names (of the flesh, of the eyes, the pride of life) remain alive and well in our culture. Which of the three do you find most tempting? How do you navigate it?
The world is passing away, but whoever does the will of God abides forever. Where have you experienced this contrast: something of the world that was once attractive to you passing away, and something of God’s will becoming more precious?

Looking Ahead

Next week John turns more directly to the crisis that shapes much of the letter: the false teachers who have left the community and are now trying to draw believers after them. John will name them with a startling word: antichrists. He will explain their appearance as itself a sign of the last hour. And he will remind his readers that they have an anointing from the Holy One, the Spirit who teaches them what is true, so that they are not defenseless against the distortions the false teachers are spreading. This is a passage about discernment, about the Spirit’s instruction of ordinary Christians, and about the confidence that the faithful can have in what they have been taught from the beginning.

Before next session, read 1 John 2:18–27 at least twice. Pay attention to John’s language about the last hour, the antichrists, and the anointing that abides in believers. This is dense material, and it will repay careful reading.

Closing Prayer

Father of light, whose true light is already shining even as the darkness is passing away, give us grace to know You by keeping Your commandments and loving the brothers and sisters You have given us. Grant that we may walk as Christ walked, not in the strength of our own striving but in the power of Your Spirit who abides in us. Turn our hearts away from love for the world that is passing, and anchor them in love for You who abide forever. And whatever our season of Christian life (little children, young men, or fathers), let us hear the word that is for us, so that we may know that our sins are forgiven, that we have overcome the evil one, and that we know Him who is from the beginning. Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.