Loving the Brothers

1 John 2:3-11
Shay Fields Life Group
January 1, 2013

Introduction

A. When I was growing up I attended a youth group in our local Presbyterian

church, and we sang youth group songs that you may recognize:

1. “This little _________ of mine, I’m gonna let is _____________”

2. “Thank you Lord for saving my _______________,
Thank you Lord for making me _______________,
Thank you Lord for giving to me,
Thy great _______________ so rich and _free.”
3. “And they’ll know we are Christians by our _____________, by our _____________
yes they’ll know we are Christians by our _______________ .”

B. It is that last song that beautifully summarizes our passage this morning, 1 John
2:3-11. Well, with one minor change:

“And we’ll know we are Christians by our love, by our love, yes we’ll know we are
Christians by our love.”

C. John argues that if we really want to know who the Christians are, take note of
those who love the brethren.

Body

A. We need to understand three things about people that John is criticizing in

today’s passage:

1. They had already left the church. 1 John 2:19:

They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us,
they would have continued with us. But they went out, that it might
become plain that they all are not of us.

2. They were spreading false doctrine that Jesus did not fully come in the
flesh. 1 John 4:1-3:

Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether
they are from God, for many false prophets have gone out into the world.
By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus
Christ has come in the flesh is from God, and every spirit that does not
confess Jesus is not from God. This is the spirit of the antichrist, which
Loving the Brothers
1 John 2:3-11
Shay Fields Life Group
January 1, 2013

you heard was coming and now is in the world already.

3. These false teachers were still trying to harass the local church and upset
its members, thus the reason for John writing the book.

4. John specifically mentions three claims these false brethren were making,
in today’s passage:

a. Whoever says “I know him” (2:4)

b. Whoever says he “abides in him” (2:6)
c. Whoever says he is in the light (2:9)

B. Here’s what John has discussed so far in his letter:

1. John bears witness to the fact that he saw and heard and even touched
the Savior, Jesus Christ, and He is the source of eternal life (1:1-4)

2. This Jesus Christ is the answer to our sin problem, both the once-for-all
Sacrifice and the ongoing Advocate on our behalf (1:5-2:2)

C. But this letter is meant not only to warn the church about false teachers, but to
encourage the church that they really do possess eternal life if they have
believed in Jesus Christ as Savior. 1 John 5:11-13:

And this is the testimony, that God gave us eternal life, and this life is in his Son.
Whoever has the Son has life; whoever does not have the Son of God does not
have life. I write these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God
that you may know that you have eternal life.

D. So John is adamant that those who are Christians will show love for one another
as Christ Himself showed His love for His followers (2:3-11)

1. True Christians believe in Jesus and seek to live like Him. (2:3-6)

And by this we know that we have come to know him, if we keep his
commandments. 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 be sure
that we are in him: whoever says he abides in him ought to walk in the
same way in which he walked.
Loving the Brothers
1 John 2:3-11
Shay Fields Life Group
January 1, 2013

a. What does John mean by the one who “abides” in Him? ( “abide” =
remain in, and describes someone who claims he is following
Christ)

b. “walk in the same way…” is a way of saying “live your life”. The
word (peripateo) means to “walk around in”, like you visit
Walmart and “walk around in” the store.

c. “and by this we know that we have really come to know Him” –

John uses a more specific version of the word “to know” to
emphasize that this is how we know for sure we have really
believed in and are following the Lord.

d. What are the “commandments” that we are supposed to be

keeping? John doesn’t tell us here, but later he does:

And this is his commandment, that we believe in the name of his

Son Jesus Christ and love one another, just as he has commanded
us. Whoever keeps his commandments abides in him, and he in
them.

e. This is certainly a reference back to Jesus’ in John 13:34-35:

A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just
as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all
people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for
one another.”

2. This is both an “old” truth that they already know, and it is a “new” truth
that they are continuing to learn (2:7-8)

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.

a. In what sense can we already “know” something, and yet still be

continuing to learn it?
Loving the Brothers
1 John 2:3-11
Shay Fields Life Group
January 1, 2013

b. Most of you have lived long enough that you have expertise in a lot
of areas of life, but who could say that they have mastered any
area of life yet? We are continually gaining new insights into those
very areas that we know a lot about.

c. In the same way, we can look back over years of loving brothers
and sisters in the Lord, and yet hardly a week or month or year
goes by when we are not challenged to learn to love others further,
in ways we haven’t been called to do before.

d. The longer you are married, the more you can say you’ve learned,
and the more you understand there’s much more to learn!

3. No one can claim to know Christ and yet hate his brother (2:9-11)

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.

a. Now the point of the passage is really made clear: whoever these
separatists are, they expose their deceptiveness by the way they
treat other Christians: they “hate” them.

b. John gets even more pointed later on in this epistle:

I John 4:20: If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he
is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen
cannot love God whom he has not seen.

I John 3:14: We know that we have passed out of death into life,
because we love the brothers. Whoever does not love abides in
death. Everyone who hates his brother is a murderer, and you
know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him.

c. Hating one’s brother is forbidden in the OT Law:

Leviticus 19:17: “You shall not hate your brother in your heart, but
you shall reason frankly with your neighbor, lest you incur sin
because of him.
Loving the Brothers
1 John 2:3-11
Shay Fields Life Group
January 1, 2013

Deuteronomy 19:11-12: “But if anyone hates his neighbor and lies

in wait for him and attacks him and strikes him fatally so that he
dies, and he flees into one of these cities, then the elders of his city
shall send and take him from there, and hand him over to the
avenger of blood, so that he may die.

d. In John’s perspective, the world hates the disciples, and in hating

the brothers these false teachers are proving they are still “in the
world (John 15:17-19):

These things I command you, so that you will love one another. If
the world hates you, know that it has hated me before it hated you.
If you were of the world, the world would love you as its own; but
because you are not of the world, but I chose you out of the world,
therefore the world hates you.

Conclusion

A. Over and over in the NT we are commanded to love those who claim Christ as
Savior, and the reason for the repeated commands is because Christians were
having so much trouble loving one another!

Ephesians 4:31-32:
Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from
you, along with all malice. 32 Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving
one another, as God in Christ forgave you.

B. Why is this such a problem? Why might we not love each other better?

C. What we fail to understand sometimes is that we are much better together, than
apart, like the Everly Brothers discovered:

excerpt from The Chicago Sun-Times:

Everly Brothers Voices’ Blended Perfectly, But Their Lives Often Didn’t

The concept of harmony was both intrinsic to the music of the Everly Brothers
and sometimes foreign to their personal relationship.

Nevertheless, Phil, who died Friday at age 74, and Don, 76, forged an endearing
sound and a half-century career that saw them hit the Billboard Top 40 chart 26
Loving the Brothers
1 John 2:3-11
Shay Fields Life Group
January 1, 2013

times, influencing artists ranging from the Beatles and the Beach Boys to Linda
Ronstadt, Simon & Garfunkel, Neil Young and Alison Krauss.

Don usually sang the baritone notes and most of the lead parts while Phil
handled the higher range, their voices intertwining organically, almost
supernaturally, on classics such as “Cathy’s Clown,” “Wake Up Little Susie,”
“Crying in the Rain,” “Bye Bye Love,” “All I Have to Do Is Dream,” “Walk Right
Back” and “Claudette.”

Phil was born in Chicago into a family of traveling musicians and lived in Iowa as
a child, but the brother act he formed with Kentucky-born Don in the mid-1950s
drew its inspiration from the sounds of the Appalachian Mountains.

Country and bluegrass acts such as the Delmore Brothers, Osborne Brothers and
Louvin Brothers formed a template for the close-harmony sound, and the guitar-
playing Everlys took it in a smoother, pop-rock direction.

The influence of Texan Buddy Holly, with whom they toured in the late 1950s,
also can be heard in their sound (and Phil would serve as a pallbearer at Holly’s
funeral following his fatal plane crash in 1959).

Behind the scenes, their partnership was sometimes problematic — they battled
drugs, managers and each other. At a California concert in 1973, their feuding
erupted onstage and they split, barely speaking for a decade, during which time
they pursued solo careers with minor success.

A reunion that began in 1983 resulted in a well-received live album and two
excellent studio albums, “EB ’84” (which featured the Paul McCartney-written hit
“On the Wings of a Nightingale”) and “Born Yesterday.”

Jerry Shriver and Maria Puente, “Everly Brothers Voices’ Blended Perfectly, But
Their Lives Often Didn’t, The Chicago Sun-Times, January 5, 2014.

D. Brennan Manning was an author, priest and acclaimed public speaker. He is

probably best known for his book, The Ragamuffin Gospel. Manning once said:

The greatest single cause of atheism in the world today is Christians: who
acknowledge Jesus with their lips, walk out the door, and deny Him by their
lifestyle. That is what an unbelieving world simply finds unbelievable.

E. “And they’ll know we are Christians by our love, by our love, yes they’ll know we
are Christians by our love.”
Loving the Brothers
1 John 2:3-11
Shay Fields Life Group
January 1, 2013