This is the next entry in the Text(s) of Scripture series with yours truly and Thomas. Our text this go-round is 1 John 2:4-11:
We can be sure we know him if we obey is commands. The man who says, “I know him,” but does not do what he commands is a liar, and the truth is not in him. But if anyone obeys his word, God’s love is truly made complete in him. This is how we know we are in him: Whoever claims to live in him must walk as Jesus did.
Dear friends, I am not writing you a new command but an old one, which you have had since the beginning. This old command is the message you have heard. Yet I am writing you a new command: its truth is seen in him and you, because the darkness is passing and the true light is already shining.
Anyone who claims to be in the light but hates his brother is still in the darkness. Whoever loves his brother lives in the light, and there is nothing in him to make him stumble. But whoever hates his brother is in the darkness and walks around in the darkness; he does not know where he is going, because the darkness has blinded him.
Thomas:
This passage makes apparent that the Word is not fulfilled until it is obeyed. That is why prophecy is only cautionary and rhetoric if it is not fulfilled. When prophecy is fulfilled, the words achieve their full purpose and meaning. We should view the words of Christ in the same way: that God’s love is not made complete in us until we obey his words.
Obedience has often been maligned for being “works” or “the law” or false “justification.” True obedience is not like this. As John writes, obedience is a journey or pilgrimage: “whoever claims to live in him must walk as Jesus did.” Obedience is staying on the right path, the path we are on because of faith as well. Faith and obedience need each other to survive and grow—the “law” or “works,” in their sparsest and cruelest followings, do not need faith. Obedience is finding the old within the new, as Jesus himself was the new covenant that fulfills and surpasses the old covenant. This obedience to the Word, to Christ, is not a woeful and bleak struggle against the flesh—it is a purifying pilgrimage that sees the light at the end of the tunnel. Often when the “struggle against the flesh” is framed in conversation the struggle is made out to be futile. We never seem to be able to win out over it. That is the narrow-minded and short-sightedness of viewing obedience as only “works.” When we have faith and works, we can trust that though we struggle, and sometimes struggle mightily, we can rejoice “because the darkness is passing and the true light is already shining.” The Word is the light that shines on our faith-journey. Our obedience to the Word of Christ is the calling we all follow faithfully as we pilgrimage to the place where the true light is already shining.
If we lose our way, as the person who hates their brother does, we will find darkness precisely because we have strayed from the path of our pilgrimage. We have no longer been obedient to the race we have been called to run, to borrow from Paul. This is why viewing obedience not as “works” but as walking in the footsteps of Christ makes sense of the grim outlook of John’s example here. If we step off the path and are no longer obedient, and the more we are disobedient and venture further and further from the narrow road we have been called to travel on, we loose sight of the Light of the Word and become lost in the darkness. Like a traveler who becomes lost in the wilderness, or a horse who ventures off the path in the night, we may suddenly find ourselves in the impenetrable darkness of this world. We should fear for our selves and our soul, but we should never fear that Christ has abandoned us. His Word is written on his followers’ hearts, and those who have lost there way should repent and begin to follow his commandments. When we follow his commandments, we will find the darkness of our surroundings and our soul begin to fade, as the darkness fades at dawn, and the Light of Christ the eternal Word will guide us back onto the pilgrim’s path.
Dave:
I want to focus on the connection between obeying God’s “word” and “walk[ing] as Jesus did.” We sometimes focus so much on the “word” as a set of commands and restrictions that we forget Jesus is the incarnate “Word.” You can’t imitate the “walk” of a written word.
Written words can offer instruction, guidelines, and rules useful to a practice. I’ve read lots of things about playing guitar — the rules of music theory, things to avoid or to do (“use the back of your picking hand thumb to produce pinched harmonics…”), stories of other players’ successes and failures. But with any difficult technique, at some point I need someone to show me how it’s done. Then I need to just do it, to get it into my own hands and fingers until it becomes automatic.
So it is, I think, with following Jesus. The written words of scripture are transformative. They begin to seep into our ways of thinking about what life is for and how it should be lived. But the words aren’t given for their own sake, and they aren’t given alone. The walk of Jesus, his way of dealing with people, his way of relating to the Father, his strength in temptation, his heartbreak over evil and suffering, his sacrificial death, is there for us to observe as well. So “word” is only really “Word” in us when our “walk” starts to look like our Rabbi’s.