Impersonal
Love
(from Lesson 21 – 1 John 2:7)
We begin an introduction to the doctrine of impersonal or unconditional
love. This is a major theme in this first epistle of John and is a reason why
this epistle is John’s expansion and commentary on the doctrine that the Lord
Jesus Christ taught to the disciples in the upper room the night before He went
to the cross. The theme of that discourse had to do with the new commandment
that Jesus gave to the disciples, that they were to love one another as He
loved us.
This paragraph, 2:7-11, is the final paragraph in John’s introduction.
The first part of the introduction focused on staying in fellowship, walking in
the Light, and advancing as an infant. Now he is going to get into the advanced
skills and there are three that relate to the concept of love. The final and
ultimate one is that we share the happiness of Christ. As we learn grace
orientation we begin to respond in love for God. In doctrinal orientation we
learn more about Him and that love for God grows. But it becomes a major factor
here, it reaches a maturity when we get here; that is what John is talking
about when he says in verse 5, “but whoever keeps His word, in him the love of
[for] God has truly been perfected [brought to completion].” That is a process.
So now we get to personal love for God the Father, and that is going to be the
foundation for being able to have impersonal or unconditional love for all
mankind which is the new commandment that Jesus gave the disciples. That then increases our focus on Jesus
Christ. This is living our lives as Jesus did, walking as Jesus walked. The
more we learn about promises, the faith-rest drill, about God’s grace, the more
we learn about who and what Jesus Christ is and did in doctrinal orientation,
it develops pour love for God. We then understand the cross, so we understand
what real love is all about, and then we realise all that Jesus Christ did for
us and he becomes a model for our thinking and our living. This doesn’t happen
over night, it is a process and we have to master these spiritual skills.
In verses 3-6 John establishes the basic principles of keeping His Word
and abiding in Him and following the pattern of Jesus life. Then in 1 John
2:7 NASB “Beloved, I am not writing a new commandment to
you, but an old commandment which you have had from the beginning; the old
commandment is the word which you have heard.” He uses the address of agapetoi [a)gaphtoi], “Beloved.” It is
from the word agape which means
love. “Beloved” emphasises position in Christ. Because we are in Christ we are
beloved of God. Paul uses the word “Brethren,” as does James, but John uses the
word “beloved.” It is just a stylistic difference but it is still emphasising
the same positional truth doctrine, that he is addressing believers. This is
the term for the members of the royal family of God. Then he says, “I am not
writing a new commandment to you,” and there he is using an epistolary present,
that he is writing at this very instant no new commandment. For “new” he uses
the word kainos [kainoj], and it
is new in the sense of a new kind or something unprecedented, something that is
previously unrevealed. The word neos
[neoj], which is a synonym for kainos,
refers to something that is either new or recent. So he is saying that he is not
writing something that hasn’t been revealed or that his readers aren’t aware of
or that he hasn’t already taught them. He says, “but an old commandment which
you have had from the beginning.” The “from the beginning” is not talking about
eternity or the beginning of time as in John 1:1, it is talking about from the
beginning of your personal Christian life when you were beginning to learn
doctrine. They have been taught this again and again and again. Then he says,
“the old commandment is the word which you have heard.” The “word” is
translated from logos [logoj],
meaning “the message.” This is the same message he has talked about going all
the way back into 1:1, the message of life, explained in 1:3: “what we have
seen and heard we proclaim to you.” He is expanding on that message idea. This
is the old commandment which is the message which they heard from the beginning
of their Christian life. So they have been taught this.
1 John 2:8 NASB “On the other hand, I am writing a new
commandment to you…” It is not a new commandment in their experience, they have
been taught this again and again and again, but it is a new commandment for the
church age. That goes back to what Jesus said in John 13:34 in the upper room NASB
“A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have
loved you, that you also love one another.” Jesus calls it a new commandment,
but it sounds like an old commandment. The Old Testament says to love you
neighbour as yourself. So what is the difference? In the Old Testament the
commandment was to love your neighbour as yourself. The comparative is self and
the point in the way that was phrased in the Old Testament is that every person
is a sinner. We are all born with self-love, we are self-absorbed. The focus
that God is making under the Mosaic Law is that rather than focus on yourself
you need to focus on other people and put other people first. They can’t love
as Christ loved because Christ had not come yet and they don’t have the Holy
Spirit. When that passage is quoted in Galatians 5:14 it is immediately
followed by the mechanics to fulfil the love command which is “walk by means of
the Spirit.” Five verses later it is explained that this is a fruit of the
Spirit, and the fruit of the Spirit is first of all love. The reason Paul
listed love first in that grocery list of character transformations that take
place in the believer’s life as a result of the Holy Spirit is because he is
talking about love. Love is going to be related to other characteristics—love,
joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, which are facets of impersonal
love. It is not just an absence of mental attitude sins, there is something
positive to impersonal love. That is why in the New Testament the comparison is
no longer “love your neighbour as you love yourself,” it is now “love one
another as I love you.” It is stepped up. The comparison now is with the
perfect love of the Lord Jesus Christ for rebellious, hostile sinners. Romans
5:8 NASB “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while
we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” God’s love for us didn’t simply
involve an absence of mental attitude sins, it involved the fact that God was
going to do something that cost Him something in order to provide salvation for
a race that he had created in His image that had rebelled against Him and that
was completely hostile to Him. That is the new kind of love that Jesus said
would be the mark of the mature believer and the Christian disciple in the
church age. It is a new commandment and John emphasises this new commandment
again and again in his writings.
2 John 1:5 NASB “Now I ask you, lady [local church], not as
though {I were} writing to you a new commandment, but the one which we have had
from the beginning, that we love one another.”
1 John 3:23 NASB “This is His commandment, that we
believe in the name of His Son Jesus Christ, and love one another, just as He
commanded us.”
This is what is going to characterise the mature believer. He takes one
of the most difficult concepts, the most difficult of the spiritual skills that
we can’t get any other way other than through the Holy Spirit. We can’t produce
it on our own, we can’t wake up in the morning and say that today we are going
to start loving people, it is a production of the Holy Spirit; and we get there
by studying doctrine, learning doctrine under the filling of God the Holy
Spirit, day in and day out, and as the Holy Spirit works He produces maturity.
And one day we wake up and begin to realise that we are executing this mandate in
our life, it is produced by God the Holy Spirit, it is not self-generating.
1 John 4:21 NASB “And this commandment we have from Him, that
the one who loves God should love his brother also.” Notice the relationship.
Love for God precedes love for one another. Why? Because love for God becomes
the motivation for loving one another. It is love for God that gives us the
virtue so that we can love one another. Love without virtue is meaningless. The
only way that we can have virtue in our love is by making God first. And if God
is not the priority, doctrine is not the priority, and we haven’t come to love
God, then whatever love we have for other people is going to be tainted by our
spiritual immaturity and our carnality. Love is not self-centred and until this
is understood what real non-selfish love is, which is exemplified by Christ on
the cross, there is no concept of what it means to say “I love you.” Most
people run around thinking that love has something to do with emotion and
sentiment, and something that is rather superficial, and then as soon as life
begins to get tough they fall apart.
Jesus expanded on the concept in John 15:12-15 NASB “This is
My commandment, that you love one another, just as I have loved you.
Our understanding of impersonal love starts with understanding the cross
and it advances from there.