Whoever Loves His Brother

John has strikingly described the love commandment as both old and new (1 John 2:7–8). It is old because it was given to the people of God long before the Apostles wrote. It is new because in Jesus Christ it has taken on a fullness and a power that mark a new era in redemptive history. In today’s passage, John applies this commandment directly to his readers, framing love for the brethren as a test by which the reality of one’s place in the light of Christ may be examined (vv. 9–11).

The structure of these three verses turns on the contrast between two professions and two conditions. In verse 9, John writes that “whoever says he is in the light and hates his brother is still in darkness.” The profession of fellowship with God, who is light, is meaningless without love for fellow believers. To claim a saving relationship with the God whose very nature is love (4:8) while harboring hatred toward those whom He has redeemed is to make a profession that the life itself contradicts. The claim does not place us in the light; the absence of love proves that we are not yet there.

Verse 10 of 1 John 2 sets the positive case alongside this negative one. “Whoever loves his brother abides in the light, and in him there is no cause for stumbling.” Here John uses one of his characteristic terms, “abide,” to describe the settled fellowship with God in which the believer dwells. This abiding shows itself in the love that we extend to fellow Christians, and it removes causes for stumbling. The lover of the brethren neither falls into the snares that hatred would lay for him nor causes others to fall by his hardness of heart.

Verse 11 returns to the negative profession with even sharper imagery. The one who 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.” Hatred is not a minor blemish on a Christian life. It is a sign that a person is groping about in spiritual blindness, unable to discern where he is heading. Such a person cannot perceive his danger because his vision has been darkened.

We must not soften John’s words. He does not say that the absence of love among Christians is a regrettable failing in those who otherwise belong to the light. He says that it is a mark of those still in the dark. Those who look on believers with active resentment, who refuse the simple forbearance that the gospel requires, are warned that they might not yet have come to the light at all.