Good morning to everyone and welcome to my special friend Augustine. I've spent a wonderful time in India with Augustine and saw the work he did there and I believe when I was there just a few years ago there were 150 missionaries so they're growing. That's wonderful. Kind of a tough time with the government in India now so you can pray for word for the world and that good mission there.

We're going to be looking at 1 John 2, 7-11 this morning and we have before us really a truly amazing text, an awesome text. And in this text John is explaining in the framework of love the distinction between the old and the new covenant. And I struggle with how to emphasize this truth to a level that conveys its importance. I really hope that you will give your full attention to the message that John has for us today because the concept, this truth which pervades the New Testament is the key to unlock our understanding of the Christian life and that's the distinction between the old and the new covenant and what it means for us to be living in this new covenant time.

Jesus instituted that new covenant in His blood at the Last Supper and what we see, the covenant was made, Hebrews 8 says, with the nation of Israel, with the house of Judah. God never made covenants with Gentiles. He made covenants with Israel. But the new covenant began to be fulfilled. There's a pre-fulfillment of that in the church because Christ instituted that new covenant and now we see it beginning to be fulfilled in the church age. It will ultimately be fulfilled in Israel.

Well, let's look at our text, 1 John 2, 7. John writes, “I write no new commandment to you but an old commandment which you have had from the beginning. The old commandment is the word which you heard from the beginning." Again, “a new commandment I write to you which thing is true in Him and in you because the darkness is passing away and the true light is already shining. He who says he is in the light and hates his brother is in darkness until now. He who loves his brother abides in the light and there is no cause for stumbling in him. But he who hates his brother is in darkness and walks in darkness and does not know where he is going because the darkness has blinded his eyes.”

We have four points this morning: an old commandment, a new commandment, light and love, and darkness and hate. In verse 7, John writes, “Brethren, I want you to again notice his tone and his intent. He says, my brothers, my loved ones, my fellow believers in Christ, I write no new commandment to you but an old commandment which you have had from the beginning. The old commandment is the word which you heard from the beginning." Now this is an interesting text to study. What is this old commandment? And what is the beginning that John refers to?

He started the epistle in chapter 1 by calling Jesus the beginning and referring to His incarnation, the time that the Word was made flesh and was manifest to us. John said He looked on Him, He spent time with Him, He handled Him with His own hands. This is the same way that John started his gospel, culminating in verse 14 where he emphasizes the truth that the Word became flesh. He became a man, He dwelt among us. And this incarnation of the Word of God, Jesus, the God-man, is a major emphasis of the entire epistle of 1 John. 

And I think it has a two-fold purpose. One is to emphasize the doctrine, the truth, that Jesus is fully God and fully man, refuting the false teaching that had come to these churches that Jesus was not really a man, but only appeared to be a man. It came from dualism, believing that the flesh is bad and the spirit is good, so they said that God's spirit would not take on flesh, so He wasn't really a man. And the other reason is to point us back to Jesus, to get our focus on Jesus, that which we have heard from the beginning and known.

It becomes very clear in these epistles of John what the old commandment is. Look at 1 John 2.24. He writes, “Therefore let that abide in you which you heard from the beginning. If what you heard from the beginning abides in you, you also will abide in the Son and in the Father.” Now look at chapter 3, verse 11. “For this is the message that you heard from the beginning, that we should love one another.” 

And if you go over to 2 John 1.5, he writes, “And now I plead with you, lady, not as though I wrote a new commandment to you, but that which we have had from the beginning, that we love one another.” And in verse 6 he says, “This is love, that we walk according to His commandments. This is the commandment, that as you have heard from the beginning, you should walk in it.” The old commandment is to love one another. 

So how is it that this commandment is old? How is it that it is from the beginning? Well, John is referring to the incarnation, to that which we heard from the beginning from Jesus in His ministry on this earth. And what did Jesus teach His disciples? In John 15.12 He says, “This is My commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.” In John 15.17 He said, “These things I command you, that you love one another.” The commandment that Jesus gave was to love, to love God and to love one another.

Now what is interesting to consider here is that Jesus was born, He lived and He died under the old covenant, under the law of Moses. And what we see is that this commandment, the commandment of love, was consistent with God's command all through the Old Testament and with the Mosaic Law. Listen to how Jesus summarized the whole of the law in Matthew 22.37. He said to Him, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your mind. And the second commandment is like it, You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” He said that all the law hangs on these commandments, to love God and to love one another. 

In Romans 13.8 Paul gives us the same message concerning the intent and meaning of the law, summarized in love. He says, “O no one anything except to love one another, for he who loves has fulfilled the law.” So we see that the old commandment, the one that we've had from the beginning, that we heard from the beginning, the one that Jesus taught, was love. 

But in verse 8 of our text, John writes again, “A new commandment I write to you, which thing is true in him and in you, because the darkness is passing away and the true light is already shining.” What is this new commandment? In John 13.34 Jesus said, “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, as I have loved you, that you also love one another.” The new commandment is love. How interesting. The old commandment is love. Love summarizes, fulfills the law. The new commandment is love, agape, self-sacrificial love.

So what is the difference? Is there no difference between the old and the new commandment that John's talking about? Well, I don't think there is any difference between the old and the new commandment. The commandment is love. This is God's intent for His people, that they would love God and worship Him alone and they would love one another. 

Paul makes this explicit in that Romans 13 passage we referred to, saying that love does no harm. If the law said do not murder, do not steal, do not commit adultery, the one who loves does not do these things. If you love your neighbor, you will not take his wife, take his goods, or his life. So Paul says love in this way fulfills the law. And love is clearly the commandment of the new covenant. So the old commandment and the new commandment are the same.

However, there is a profound difference between the old and the new covenants. And this is the key to our understanding of much of this first epistle of John and the new covenant Christian life. There are a couple of things that we really need to get clear in our understanding of the contrast between the old and the new covenants because there are some very important things that are new. 

First of all, I want to establish and make clear that God's way of salvation, His way of justification of being made right with Him has been consistent since the fall, the need for man's redemption. From Adam until Moses, the Bible tells us there was no law. God gave the law to Moses at Sinai that was approximately 2,500 years after Adam, 2,000 years to Abraham, and 430 years between the promises given to Abraham and the coming of the law according to Galatians 3. So we had a vast expanse of time between Adam and Moses when there was no law. 

Then the law of covenant was in effect from Moses until Christ for approximately 1,500 years. Jesus instituted the new covenant in His blood when He came, making the law covenant obsolete. One vital truth we must understand and establish is that justification, salvation, has always been established on the same sacrifice, always by the same means, faith, which God prescribed. The gospel was justified by faith. Faith in the promise of God, of a substitute, of a sacrifice. Galatians 3 says that God preached the gospel to Abraham beforehand and that Abraham was justified by faith.

Turn over to Romans 4 with me, please. Romans 4.1. Romans 4.1, this is following that tremendous passage in chapter 3 explaining justification by faith in Christ. And Paul says, “What then shall we say that Abraham our father has found according to the flesh? For if Abraham was justified by works, he has something to boast about, but not before God. For what does the Scripture say? Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness. Now to him who works, the wages are not counted as grace, but as debt. But to him who does not work, but believes on him who justifies the ungodly, his faith is accounted for righteousness.”

Just as David also describes the blessedness of the man to whom God imputes righteousness apart from works. Blessed are those whose lawless deeds are forgiven and whose sins are covered. Blessed is the man to whom the Lord shall not impute sin. Abraham and David were justified by faith in the coming sacrifice of the Lamb of God. And my friends, we have been justified by faith. When we heard the good news message about Jesus' death on the cross, in our place for our sins, and we turned from idols, we turned from our own self-righteousness and our religion, and we turned to Jesus in faith.

Abel and Abraham and Moses, they all looked forward to the sacrifice that God would provide, the perfect Lamb of God. All the sacrifices of the ceremonial law were pictures, types, of the sacrifice that God would provide, Jesus the Christ. These Old Testament saints were justified by faith in the cross. And the New Testament saints are justified looking back to that which has been accomplished at the cross of Christ and trusting solely in what He did for us by faith. So we must understand that salvation, justification, has always been by grace through faith. This is true of the Old and the New Covenant, and even the 2,500 years before the law came from Adam until Moses. This truth of justification is consistent.

However, there are some really significant differences between the Old and the New Covenants, especially concerning how God relates to us and how we live, how He prescribes that we should live, and the capacity that we have to love. Under the Old Covenant, there were endless external laws and prescriptions for how men had to live. It was an external code, a complicated, intricate system controlling every detail of how men lived. Sometimes new believers will tell me that I'm reading through the Bible. And I think, well, that's really good, maybe until you get to Leviticus. Not that Leviticus is not God's Word and profitable, but I'm saying, wow, what a complicated, burdensome system that the people in the Old Covenant had to live under.

And the religious leaders of Israel further compounded this burden by twisting and destroying its true intent by adding thousands of laws and teaching men that they were justified by keeping these rules. The key thing to see is that in the Old Covenant, everything was external, and man's behavior was regulated by laws. God's intent in this was to show man his sin and his need, the graphic nature and effects of sin in all those bloody sacrifices in the temple, and this to lead him to faith in Christ. 

But this was a life of burdensome external rules and regulations down to the very slightest detail. The book of Hebrews speaks volumes concerning the contrast of the Old and the New Covenants, and the primary focus is that the Old was external and that the New is better. It's an internal work of God, dealing with the problem of indwelling sin. 

Turn over to Hebrews 9 with me, please. Hebrews chapter 9, speaking of the Old Covenant and the tabernacle, the author of Hebrews writes in Hebrews 9 verse 7, “But into the second part the high priest went alone once a year, not without blood, which he offered for himself and for the people's sins committed in ignorance. The Holy Spirit indicating this, that the way into the holiest of all was not yet made manifest, while the way into the holiest of all was not yet made manifest.” The first tabernacle was still standing. The people of Israel had no access to God, no direct access to God before Christ died on the cross. 

He says in verse 9, "It was symbolic for the present time in which both gifts and sacrifices are offered which cannot make Him who performed the service perfect in regard to the conscience. Concerned only with food and drinks, various washings and fleshly ordinances imposed until the time of reformation, but Christ came as high priest of the good things to come. With the greater and more perfect tabernacle not made with hands, that is not of this creation. Not with the blood of goats and calves, but with His own blood, He entered the most holy place once for all, having obtained eternal redemption. For if the blood of bulls and goats and the ashes of a heifer, sprinkling the unclean, sanctifies for the purifying of the flesh, how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works in order to serve the living God?"

Back in chapter 7, verse 18, he said, “For on the one hand there's an annulling of the former commandment because of its weakness and unprofitableness. For the law made nothing perfect. On the other hand, there's the bringing in of a better hope through which we draw near to God.” These words speak of an internal work, the cleansing of the conscience and allowing us to have access to God, drawing near to God. 

That was something that they could not do in the old covenant as we see manifest at Mount Sinai when they were set parameters and anyone who would come near or touch the mount would be shot through with an arrow and we read about that in Hebrews 12 as well. The old covenant was a set of external laws and regulations which could never make anyone complete, could never make anyone perfect, but was meant to convince men of sin and need and lead them to faith in Christ alone. That's what the Sermon on the Mount is about.

Sometimes we'll hear preachers talk about the Beatitudes and apply that to our lives as Christians. Jesus is preaching the law to show the Jews their need. If you hear these sayings of mine, He said, what sayings? Do not hate in your heart. Do not lust in your heart. The far-reaching nature of the law, the perfect standard of the law. If you hear these sayings of mine and do them, you're likened to a man who builds on a rock, right? But if any man was honest in that crowd that day, he'd have to walk home and say, I've built my house on the sand. I have a need. That's the purpose of the law. 

But this law could only bring wrath and condemnation. It could not make anyone perfect, could not deal with the problem of indwelling sin or empower us to love. Look at one more passage in Hebrews 10. You were just there. You have to go back. Hebrews 10 verse 1. He says, “For the law, having a shadow.” See, the law was a shadow. It was a picture. It was a type. It wasn't the true essence. 

“For the law, having a shadow of the good things to come and not the very image of the things, can never, with these same sacrifices which they offer continually year by year, make those who approach perfect. For then would they not have ceased to be offered. For the worshipers, once purified, would have had no more consciousness of sins. But in those sacrifices there is a reminder of sins every year, for it is not possible that the blood of bulls and goats could take away sins. Now look down to verse 8. Sacrifice and offering, burnt offerings and offerings for sin you did not desire, nor had pleasure in them which are offered according to the law. Then he said, behold, I have come to do your will, O God. He takes away the first, the law covenant, that he may establish the second, the new covenant. By that will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. 

And every priest stands ministering daily and offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. But this man, after he had offered one sacrifice for sins forever, sat down at the right hand of God. From that time waiting till his enemies are made his footstool, for by one offering he has perfected forever those who are being sanctified. But the Holy Spirit also witnesses to us, for after he had said before, this is the covenant that I will make with them after those days, says the Lord, I will put my laws in their hearts and in their minds and I will write them. Then he adds their sins and their lawless deeds I will remember no more. 

Now where there is remission of these, there is no longer an offering for sin. There's no longer a place, my friends, for a mediating priesthood. There's no longer a place to sacrifice on an altar, because Jesus offered Himself once for all, taking away sin. Therefore, there's a profound difference between the old and the new covenant. And the essence of this distinction can be found in the promises of the new covenant found in Ezekiel 36 and Jeremiah 31, reiterated in Hebrews 8.

Listen to Ezekiel 36. He says, “Then I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean. I will cleanse you from all your filthiness and from your idols. I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you. I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will keep My judgments and do them.” These promises of the coming New Covenant are restated in Jeremiah 31 and they are applied to the church as a pre-fulfillment of this New Covenant made with Israel in Hebrews chapter 8.

So what we see in Hebrews and in these promises concerning the New Covenant is that God would no longer relate to His people by law, by external codes of worship and behavior. But He would do a much more effective, much better internal work to deal with indwelling sin, to change the very nature of man, to make him alive in His Spirit and empower him by His very life living within the believer. This New Covenant promise of a new heart, of a new spirit, of the Holy Spirit, permanently indwelling the believer at the very heart and essence of the new life in Christ. 

And they relate in every way to John's description of the new commandment, love in a new way, my friends. Look back with me at our text in verse 8 and notice a couple of very important details that are not included in the old commandment. 1 John 2.8, again, “a new commandment I write to you, which thing is true in Him and in you. Because the darkness is passing away and the true light is already shining.” Notice also what Jesus said about the new commandment in John 13. He said, “I give you a new commandment that you love one another as I have loved you.” The true light is already shining. Jesus is the true light. And the darkness is passing away. 

The new age is coming. Jesus secured Satan's defeat on the cross in His death, burial, and resurrection. And He is coming again to establish His kingdom and the end of the ruler of this age and Satan's dominion on this earth. The work is done. Christ has conquered sin and death and hell and the light is shining. The darkness is passing away. We are anticipating the coming of Christ and the glorious revealing of the sons of God.

Jesus is that light. He is the manifestation of love. He was our example. This new commandment, this love was shown in Him. It is in Him. This is new, my friends. Jesus has manifest perfectly in His taking on flesh as God and becoming a man in His life, in His death, in His resurrection, the love of God in a way that we had never seen before. God demonstrates His own love toward us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Love as I have loved you, Jesus said. This is a new commandment.

But even more profound and more instructive as to the difference between the Old and New Covenant is the truth expressed by the two words in verse 8, "in you." This love is true in Him. It's manifest in Him. The great truth of the New Covenant is that this love, this agape, self-sacrificial love that is new in the life and death of Christ, this love, this new commandment that is in Him is also in us, in the believer. 

Listen to 1 John 2.5, “but whoever keeps His word, truly the love of God is perfected in him. By this we know that we are in Him.” 1 John 4.12, “no one has seen God at any time. If we love one another, God abides in us and His love has been perfected in us.” 1 John 4.17, “love has been perfected among us in this that we may have boldness in the day of judgment because as He is, so are we in this world.” 

Romans 5.5 says, “Now hope does not disappoint because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit that was given to us.” They did not have this in the Old Covenant. The Holy Spirit was with them. Now He is in us. In the New Covenant, God has done an internal work in the one who is saved, who believes. He is now a new creation in Christ. Romans 5.21 tells us that it is God's intent in saving us to make us new men, to change us from being in Adam under law, sin, and death, to being in Christ under grace, righteousness, and life that grace would reign in our lives, that we would live new lives of righteousness in a new way.

Not by the letter, but by the Spirit. We died with Christ. We were crucified with Christ that our body of sin, the body controlled by indwelling sin, might be rendered powerless. We were united with Christ in His death, burial, and resurrection. We died to sin. We died to the law. We were raised to newness of life. And now because we are new men, because we have new hearts and new spirits, and because the Holy Spirit permanently indwells us, and the very power that raised Jesus from the dead works in us, we are able now through faith, one day at a time faith in Jesus Christ, able to love as Jesus loves. 

We are able to love because of the internal work of Christ and the fact that we now live under grace and not under law, and the Holy Spirit empowers us and lives in us. These are the truths of the new covenant. And that is why John says, “I write you a new commandment,” which is the old commandment of love, but in a new way. 

Turn over to Romans 7 with me please. Look at a couple passages. Romans 7, 5. Paul continually draws this distinction in his writing in Romans 5, 6, 7, and 8. Romans 7, 5, “For when we were in the flesh, the sinful passions which were aroused by the law were at work in our members to bear fruit to death. But now we have been delivered from the law, having died to what we were held by, so that we should serve in the newness of the Spirit and not in the oldness of the letter.” It's a new way. 

Romans 8, 1. Look down to Romans 8, 1. “There is therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit. For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made me free from the law of sin and death. For what the law could not do, and that it was weak through the flesh, God did by sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh. On account of sin, He condemned sin in the flesh in order that the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit.” 

And again, in Romans 13, 8, Paul says that the fulfillment of the law, the righteous requirement of the law, is love. Something profound has happened in the new covenant. God has performed an internal work on us. He has changed the very essence of who we are, making us new men, taking us out of Adam, putting us into Christ, and Jesus lives in us. Now we are able to love in a new way.

So we see the old commandment. We see the new commandment. Now in verses 9-11, we see John highlight again the contrast between the believer and the unbeliever with the truths of light and love and darkness and hate. Look at verse 9. “He who says he is in the light and hates his brother is in darkness until now. He who loves his brother abides in the light and there's no cause for stumbling in him. But he who hates his brother is in darkness and walks in darkness and does not know where he is going because the darkness has blinded his eyes.”

We need to keep in mind here John's main purpose and intent in writing to the believers. He wants for us to have assurance of our salvation. And one of the primary ways that John says we can have assurance is by the love that God has put in us, by His Spirit that He has given to us. And this love is manifest out through us toward God and man. 

So John here equates love with those who walk in the light. Remember from chapter 1, it's the believers who walk in the light, and it is unbelievers who walk in darkness. Here John says those who love their brother, those who manifest this new covenant reality of salvation and regeneration and the life of Christ in us, abide in the light. And he says there's no cause for stumbling in him. In contrast, the one who says he walks in the light, but hates his brother is a liar. He does not walk in the light, he does not love, but hates.

And this makes clear that he walks in darkness, that he does not believe Jesus, and thus he has no grounds for assurance. John tucks a couple of details in here that I think are really important. Remember that his secondary theme or purpose is to call the believers back to truth, to sufficiency in Christ and away from those false teachers. 

Notice he says, the one who walks in light, the one who loves his brother, in him there's no cause for stumbling. But the one who walks in darkness, the one who hates his brother, who does not have the truth or believe Jesus, this one does not know where he is going. This one has blind eyes. He cannot see. He does not know the truth. This reminds us of Jesus' teaching concerning the false teachers of His time, the Pharisees. Remember He said that they are blind guides. 

And what happens when the blind leads the blind? They fall into a ditch. John didn't want the believers to be drawn away into false teaching and to fall into the ditch. The false religious teachers are focused on the external, on the works and the law in that passage in Matthew 15 where Jesus spoke. And Jesus is focused on the internal, the need for the change on the inside. He says it's not what goes into a man that defiles him, it's what comes out of him.

John is telling us that those who hate, who do not have the capacity to love, who walk in darkness, are blind. They do not know where they're going. They think that they know the truth. They think that they have the answers, that they are okay and that God will receive them. But the truth is that if they do not walk in the light, if the love of God is not perfected in them, then they do not know the truth. They do not have the truth. They have nothing to offer and they lead men into the ditch to perdition.

I get so concerned sometimes when I hear Christians talk about, I read this book or I read that book and I know the guy's a false teacher, but I found some good truth in there. Find some good truth in the Bible. What the believers that John wrote to, what we need to understand, if we are to have assurance of our salvation, if we are to know that we have eternal life and we are going to be discerning and avoid false teaching, is that Jesus came to institute a new covenant. 

He came to bring abundant life. He came not only to justify us, but also to regenerate us and release us from the power of sin and death and hell, so that we might live a new life, that we might show the power of the Gospel in our lives as we walk in the light in Christ by faith. The one who walks in the light, there's no cause for stumbling in him. He knows the truth. He has the truth. He shares the truth.

But the one who walks in darkness, he doesn't know. My new life is explained in the new covenant by Christ's death, my death with Him, my resurrection with Him, and His life in me. Paul said, “I've been crucified with Christ. It's no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. In the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and gave Himself for me.”

We need to understand this distinction between the old covenant and the new covenant. The commandment of God is the same, love. But the capacity of the believer in the new covenant to love, because of the new birth, because of the life of Christ in us, because of the internal work of God and the new way of life in the Spirit, is infinitely beyond that of the old covenant. So when men tell you the law is binding on believers, or they call you back to the law of life, or to give yourself a test and see how you're doing keeping the law, they walk in darkness.

We must understand that the essence of the Christian life is Christ in you, the hope of glory. And I want to just close with reading Ephesians 3, verse 14, as Paul explains how it is that God intends we should live out this new life. Romans 6 really explains to us the reason why we can have a new life. And in Ephesians 3, verse 14, Paul explains in his prayer for the Ephesians how God works this out.

He says, “For this reason I bow my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, from whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named, that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man, that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the width and length and depth and height to know the love of Christ, which passes knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God. 

Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that works in us, to Him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever. Amen.” God intends that we live by faith. He imparts strength to our inner man as we abide in Him, there is a new way, God's way in the new covenant for us to love Him, to love one another, is to abide in Jesus one day at a time.

Praise God for the new covenant in Christ. And what a privilege to live in this time and to be a witness for Him. Let's close in prayer. Father, we're so thankful that You teach us, that You give us truth, that You don't lead us into the ditch. I just pray that You would help us to know Your Word, to study, to be eager to know You and understand the truth, that You'd help us to believe You and depend on You and trust You just to stay clear of false teaching. Help us to be discerning, Lord. And help us to have a great love, Your love for men, that we might be bold and clear in taking opportunities to share the truth with them, Lord. And thank You that You save men when they believe Jesus. It's in His name we pray. Amen.