5-11-08
Lovers & Haters
Knowing God & Loving People Part 7
1 John 2:9-11

Summary: Since the arrival of the new age of light is marked by love then those who lack love are obviously in the darkness.  Their claims to be in the light are false.  John only gives two categories: love and hate.  Any unrepentant hatred places a person in the category of darkness.  John is addressing the church split and giving a doctrinal and an ethical test.  The latter is the test of love (haters are in the wrong).  Hatred is any lack of love – the opposite of the five marks of love.  Haters are in the dark (fare from God) walking in the dark (futility), and blinded (contributing to their own darkness by their unwillingness).  The way of New Commandment love causes no stumbling (all stumbling is a stumbling away from love).  So use the pursuit of love to solve all your problems.

Introduction
True light (claims vs. reality)
Lovers and Haters: Which are you?
Haters and Darkness
Negative feelings
Lack of love
The Five Components of Hatred
Regarding your brother as a…brother
In the darkness (far from the presence of God)
Walks in the dark (futility)
Blinded by the dark
Lovers and light
Conclusion: Light is good – seek it (though love)

1 John 2:3-11 We know that we have come to know him if we obey his commands. 4 The man who says, "I know him," but does not do what he commands is a liar, and the truth is not in him. 5 But if anyone obeys his word, God's love is truly made complete in him. This is how we know we are in him: 6 Whoever claims to live in him must walk as Jesus did. 7 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. 8 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. 
9 Anyone who claims to be in the light but hates his brother is still in the darkness. 10 Whoever loves his brother lives in the light, and there is nothing in him to make him stumble. 11 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. 

Introduction
Review: Arrival of the new age of light marked by New Commandment love  
There are two ages existing simultaneously.  One is on its way in and the other is on its way out.  This present age – the age of darkness – is on its way out.  And the age to come – the age of light – is on its way in.  We are living in the dawn that comes between the night time and the day time.  There are still shadows and plenty of darkness, but the light of the coming day is already starting to shine over the horizon and push back the frontiers of the darkness.
And if you ask, “How do you know that is happening?”, John answers by pointing to the fulfillment of Jesus’ New Commandment.  Jesus commanded a new kind of love – love that centered on Him.  He commanded that we have a special love for those who love Him, and that we love them in the way that He loved, and that we do it for His sake and that it be an expression of love for Jesus Himself.  That new kind of love is what will dominate and define the age to come.  And so the presence of that new love now in Jesus and in His followers is evidence of the arrival of the new age of light.
Therefore those without the new love are part of the passing age of darkness
All that is in vv.7-8.  Today we come to vv.9-11 and John draws the obvious conclusion from that principle.  If the reason we know the new age of light has arrived is because of the new love that we observe in Jesus and His followers, then obviously those who do not have that new love are not part of this new age of light.  They are part of this present age of darkness that is passing away.  That is the point of vv.9-11.

True light (claims vs. reality)

Last week we studied vv.7-8 of ch.2, and the last thing John said was, “the true light is already shining.”  He could have just said that the darkness is passing away and the light is already shining, but he says “true light.”  He needs to say that because one of the major purposes of this letter is to rescue his readers from those who were promoting a false kind of light.  Pretty much every religion talks about light.  Everyone claims to be in the light.  But in today’s passage (vv.9-11) John is going to show us how to spot the bogus light.

9 Anyone who claims to be in the light but hates his brother is still in the darkness. 

This is the third time in this chapter that John has started a verse with the words “Anyone who claims…” (lit: “The one claiming” ὁ λέγων)

4 The one claiming “I have come to know Him”…
6 the one claiming he remains in Him…
9 The one claiming he is in the light …

John is very concerned about exposing the disparity between people’s claims and reality.  What you are is not determined by what you claim to be.
That is really a foreign concept in our culture.  The world thinks your religious status is nothing more than affiliation.  Someone asks you, “What is your religious affiliation?” and whatever answer you give is what you are.  If you claim to be a Buddhist you are a Buddhist.  If you claim to be a Christian you are a Christian.  They think of religion as a matter of preference, so there is no such thing as a false claim when it comes to religion.
But they are wrong.  Religion is not a matter of opinion or preference.  Some things are merely a matter of preference.  If I tell you that I am a supporter of some political candidate or party, then the mere act of speaking that makes the statement true.  But there are other things that are true or not true regardless of what you claim.  If I claim to be a horse that does not make me a horse.  It just makes me a mixed-up human being.  If you do not have the physical properties and the DNA of a horse, then any claim you make to be a horse is incorrect.  And it is the same way with Christianity.  You do not become a Christian just because you signed on the dotted line and affiliated yourself with Christianity.  If you do not have the properties and DNA of a Christian than your claim to be a follower of Christ is false.  And the DNA of a Christian is fulfillment of Jesus’ New Commandant: To love the people Jesus loves because Jesus loves them and in the way Jesus loves them. 

Lovers and Haters: Which are you?
Repentance vs. unrepentance 
John divides humanity into two categories: haters and lovers.  The people in v.9 are haters and the people in v.10 are lovers.  Haters are part of the passage age of darkness and lovers are part of the coming new age of light.  And that is all there is.  Every single soul on earth is either a hater or a lover.  There is no third category.
And at first that is kind of hard to swallow, because no one hates everyone, so no one is a total hater.  And no one is a perfect lover either – we have all had some animosity toward others at various times.  So everyone loves and everyone hates.  And yet some people fit into the v.10 category of lovers – even though sometimes we hate.  And others fall into the v.9 category of haters – even though they also love.  So if both groups have both love and hate, what determines whether you are in the one category or the other?
Don’t make the mistake a lot of people make and say, “If your whole life is mostly characterized by hatred then you are in the darkness, but if your whole life is mostly characterized by love, and you only fail in your love once in a while, then you are in the light.”  That is a very, very common approach among Bible teachers, but it is a worldly perspective.  That is the way the world looks at sin and righteousness.  If your good deeds outweigh your bad deeds then you are OK.  That is not a Biblical perspective.
The Biblical way of thinking about it is this – if you have ever hated a single person for a single moment in your life, and you have not repented, you are guilty of being a hater and you are in the darkness.  But if you are repentant you are in the light no matter how egregiously you have hated in the past.  That is why we keep going back to chapter 1.  Remember?  Right at the outset of this book John prepared us for these passages that make it sound like you have to be perfect or you are not a true Christian.  John alerted us that no one is without sin, and if we confess our sins and come back into the light in full repentance we are completely cleansed.  God accepts genuine repentance as if it were righteousness.
So what determines if you are in the light or in the darkness?  If you are unrepentant about your lack of love you are in the darkness.  God requires that you love everyone – including your enemies.  So with every last person with whom you are in contact you have two options: love them, or be repentant over your lack of love for them.  God accepts both of those as love.
So lovers are people who have genuine, new commandment-type love and who repent over their lack of love.  And haters are people who have no new commandment-type love at all.  And they are unrepentant, so they are nothing but haters, because all the guilt of every incident of hatred in their lives still rests on them.  None of those incidents of hatred have been forgiven, and so they still bear that blame.

Haters and Darkness
Hatred defined
Negative feelings
Before we go any farther, let’s take a minute to define hatred.  Most of the time both the Greek and the Hebrew words mean exactly the same thing as the English word – hatred is hatred.  It means to have ill feelings toward someone – animosity, unforgiveness, a grudge, dislike, distain, disgust.  There are varying levels of hatred just like there are varying levels of love.  Just as it is possible to have a little bit of love or a lot of love toward someone, so it is possible to hate someone a little bit or a lot.  When we hate someone a little bit we use words like “dislike” or “I’m uncomfortable with that person” or something like that.  When it is more extreme we use the word “hatred.”  But it is all hatred.  Whether it is little or big, it is all hatred.

Lack of love
And in Scripture the word hatred can even refer to love that is less than it should be.

Genesis 29:30-31 Jacob lay with Rachel also, and he loved Rachel more than Leah.

Jacob had two wives – Rachel and Leah.  And what that verse clearly says is that Jacob loved Leah, but he loved Rachel more.

31 When the LORD saw that Leah was hated (same word as in 1 Jn.2:9, 11), he opened her womb.

Jacob loved Leah, but not as much as he should have.  So love that falls short of what it ought to be can be called a kind of hatred.
Hatred is simply the lack of love.  Just as the definition of darkness is “anyplace where there is a lack of light,” so the definition of hatred is “anyplace there is a lack of love.”

The Five Components of Hatred
So let’s remind ourselves of the five components of love we looked at last week.
Love involves…
1)	Having high regard for the person
2)	Desiring their best interests
3)	Desiring their happiness
4)	Prioritizing them above your own impulses and preferences
5)	Liking them – enjoying them and taking delight in them.
That’s love. 
So hatred is when you lack in those five areas.
1)	Low regard.  The person has little or no value in your heart.  They are not a treasure to you.  They are not worthy of a lot of your time and attention and concern.  And when a person is not of great worth in your sight then you will become…
2)	indifferent to the person’s best interests.  Instead of strongly desiring their best interests, you won’t care much about them.  And if they do something to hurt you, not only will you not desire their best interests – you might even desire their harm.
3)	Instead of strongly desiring the person’s happiness you are indifferent to their happiness.  It doesn’t cause you any sorrow if they are unhappy.  And again, if they do something to hurt you, you might even fall into the more extreme levels of hatred where you actually desire their unhappiness.
4)	Prioritizing own preferences above the person.  Where you lack love you will regard yourself and your own immediate desires as a higher priority than that person.
5)	Lack of delight in or enjoyment of the person.  You are blind to everything that is good and beautiful about them.  You cannot see the image of God in them. You cannot see them as a precious treasure that is highly valued in God’s sight. You cannot see them as being worth the blood of Jesus.  You cannot see what is good about them, and so they bring you no enjoyment of God.  You cannot enjoy God through them like you can with people you love.
Those are all marks of hatred.  Any time when there is a lack of love – that is hatred.  We usually do not think we are guilty of hatred because we are so generous in our definitions.  We tend to be real liberal in our definition of love.  Even the slightest, tiniest, weakest impulse of love we accept as genuine love.  We have the faintest little spark of affection for our wives, and we pat ourselves on the back and say, “Of course I love my wife!”
But at the same time we tend to be real narrow in our definition of hatred.  Only the most extreme negative feelings count as hatred.  “I don’t feel like strangling him to death, and therefore the negative feeling I have toward him doesn’t really count as hatred.”  That is why most people think they do great with love and they don’t have much of a problem at all with hatred.
And sometimes we even disguise our hatred as love.  We dislike the person in our hearts, but we act in kind ways toward them and then claim to love them.  It is possible to hide your hatred behind a veneer of love.  But if there is a hostile attitude in your heart then what you have is not true love.  I read this week about a Sunday school teacher who asked the class, “What does the Bible teach about how you are to treat your brothers and sisters?”  And one kid said, “Thou shalt not murder.”  You can’t argue with the kid’s theology.  You really shouldn’t murder your brother.  But if the 6th commandment is the first thing that comes to your mind when you are thinking about how to deal with a brother, you need to check your attitude. 

Regarding your brother as a…brother
There are a lot of different ways for you to think about a brother in Christ.  You can view him as just a part of the landscape – take no more notice of him than you do of a rock on the ground.  No real positive feelings or negative feelings toward him – just indifference.  That is a form of hatred.  You can view your brother as a nuisance – someone who encroaches upon your time and energy.  He is someone who just uses up your time and causes you headaches.  That is a form of hatred.  You can even view your brother as an enemy – someone you need to oppose and fight against.  That is a form of hatred.
Love is when you do not regard your brother as an enemy, or as a nuisance, or as a part of the landscape – but as a brother …
- a beloved child of the Father who adopted and forgave and loved you, a sibling who loves the same Father you love.
- a person whose joy and wellbeing are so supremely important that the Creator of the Universe said He will reward anyone handsomely who contributes to this person’s joy.
- one whose needs are your needs and whose interests are your interests and whose joy is your joy – and through whom God Himself can be experienced and enjoyed.
And where that attitude is lacking, there is hatred.  Hatred in the attitudes can be hidden way down deep so no one can see it but you.  But whether anyone else sees it or not, unrepentant hatred is incompatible with nearness to God.  So if you hate (if you fail to love with New Commandment love), you are in the darkness.  And until you repent you remain in the darkness.  Because it is impossible to love God and hate the people He loves.

1 John 4:20 If anyone says, "I love God," yet hates his brother, he is a liar. 
The Darkness of hatred
Skip down to v.11 for a moment and take a look at the three things John says about those who fail to love.  They are in the darkness, they walk in the darkness, and they are blinded.

In the darkness (far from the presence of God)

is in the darkness

That means far from the presence of God.  They read their Bible, and it is just print on a page.  They do not experience the thrilling joys and deep comfort and strengthening and nourishment and enlightenment and encouragement that should come through the Scriptures.  They pray and instead of their souls being lifted up into glorious communion with the Lord, they just sit there with a lot of distracted thoughts that are about as far from satisfying their souls as they could be.  Instead of their ministry being fulfilling fellowship with God it is a burdensome drudgery.  That is what happens with the Lord withdraws His favorable presence from your life, which is what the darkness is.  So these people are claiming to know God and to be in the light and to have fellowship with God, but the reality is they are in the dark – nowhere near the presence of God.

Walks in the dark (futility)
Then John adds, not only is he in the darkness, but he walks in the darkness. 
Walking refers to the day-to-day decision-making of life.  Every decision you make during the day is like taking a step in some direction.  Life is not supposed to be mere existence.  It is supposed to be a progression that gets you somewhere.  But when you walk in the dark you don’t get anywhere.  You do not know where to step, and when you do take a step you don’t know if that step will take you closer to your goal or farther from your goal.  You do not even know what the goal is!  For the person in the dark, life is a pointless meandering that leads absolutely nowhere but farther into the darkness, farther and farther and farther from the presence of God.  He might make some decisions that will get him some more money or power or pleasure in the short run, but money and power and pleasure in the hands of a man moving farther and farther from the light will not be able to bring joy or satisfaction to his soul.  He doesn’t know where he’s going or where he’s been or even where he is now in relationship to anything important. 
Stumbling in the darkness

Proverbs 4:19 the way of the wicked is like deep darkness; they do not know what makes them stumble.

They are forever falling down, and they don’t even know why.  The world’s theories about what causes stumbling in the human heart are endless.  There are as many different schools of psychotherapy as there are psychologists.  You know how many different theories of aerodynamics there are?  One.  All the people with different theories have died in plane crashes.  God has given us the ability to figure out aerodynamics fairly well.  But the human soul is way beyond our ability to master through research.  And so apart from accepting what God has revealed, we are left with nothing but aimless, groundless theorizing in the dark.  The world can figure out a few things at the margin to mitigate some extreme behaviors.  But they have no idea how to solve the deep problems of the heart because they do not know the cause of those problems.  They do not know what makes them stumble.

Blinded by the dark
And then John adds a third idea.  Not only is he in the dark (separated from nearness to God), and not only is he walking in the dark (a life of utter futility and aimlessness), but on top of that the darkness has a blinding effect on him.

and doesn't know where he's going, because the darkness has blinded his eyes. 

There are fish that live in areas where there is no light that have eye sockets but no eyes.  Spend enough time in the darkness and you lose your ability to see.  
The more time you spend away from the presence of God the more damage you do to your spiritual eyesight.  The darkness is not a neutral place.  It is a deadly place.  It destroys the ability of your soul to perceive.  People who persist in their wandering in the darkness become so blind that you can present them with light and they can’t see it.  Wisdom looks like foolishness to them.  Knowledge looks like folly to them.  Lunacy looks like intelligence to them.  Tell them that everything that exists spontaneously came into existence out of nothing and with no cause and for no absolutely reason and it makes perfect sense to them.  Tell them that their good deeds can somehow cancel out their countless millions of sins they have committed and they fall for it.  Tell them they will be able to get off the hook on judgment day by outsmarting God with some clever one-liner and they think that’s brilliant.  Unwillingness to see the truth, before long, becomes inability to see the truth.
You see this principle again and again throughout Scripture.  There are two massive walls that block off access to truth.  One is ignorance in the mind.  The other is hardness of heart.  People think they can find truth just by breaking down the wall of ignorance.  But no matter how much education and information you amass, if you do not do something about that other barrier, if you do not somehow break down the wall of hardness of heart – unwillingness to accept the truth – then all the education in the world will leave you just as devoid of truth as when you started.  And if you cling to that unwillingness too long, God will eventually judge you by allowing your unwillingness to become cemented into inability. 

Luke 8:18 Therefore, take care how you listen. For whoever has, more will be given to him; and whoever does not have, even what he thinks he has will be taken away from him.” 

If you listen the wrong way – with a bias against the truth – then even what ability you did have to understand will be taken away.
And in the context of 1 John 2 this is applied to love.  The more you give in to the way of hatred the more remote will be the possibility of ever returning to love.  Indulging negative feelings toward someone does a certain amount of injury to your spirit that makes it a hundred times harder to recover and start loving that person again.  The hardest people to love are those people you have allowed your heart to harden against because once you wander down that path of darkness it is very, very hard to get back on to the path of light.
The blindness of the lost is a blindness that they willingly embraced.  Look back up at v.9 for a moment.

9 The one who says he is in the light but hates his brother is in the darkness until now. 

The “until now” points back to the “already” in v.8.  What does it say about a person if the light is already shining right now at this moment, and yet he is in still in the darkness?  If there is light available but you are still in the darkness that means you must have a heart that is unwilling to turn toward the light.  And the surest sign of a heart like that is a lack of love for your brothers and sisters in Christ.

Lovers and light 

In contrast to all that is v.10.

10 The one who loves his brother remains in the light and there is no cause for stumbling in (him).
No stumbling in the light
The last word in that sentence can be translated either “him” or “it.”  In my judgment “it” is the correct translation – referring to the light.  There is no stumbling block in the light.  Nothing about the way of love causes stumbling. 
Stumbling means sinning.  The picture is of someone trying to make his way toward holiness but getting tripped up in that effort and falling on his face.  In the darkness that happens all the time, and you don’t even know why.  But there is no stumbling block in the light.  Nothing on the path of love will make you stumble into sin.
At first that doesn’t seem to match our experience.  From a human point of view it seems like the way of love is fraught with all kinds of obstacles and potential stumbling blocks.  A young couple fall in love and because of their love for one another they are faced with all kinds of temptations toward sin that didn’t exist before they fell in love.  If you really delight in hanging out with someone, there are all kinds of temptations you can fall into.  You can become selfish and get upset if they don’t pay enough attention to you.  You can get jealous if they spend their time with someone else.  You can be tempted to neglect other important things because you spend too much time with them.  A pastor can love his church so much that he neglects his own family.  Or he can love his wife so much that he ends up neglecting his ministry.
It seems like the way of love is filled with stumbling blocks.  If you look at your own life – who do you tend to sin against the most?  Isn’t it those you love the most?  We are polite to strangers and rude to our husbands and wives.  We would never dream of yelling at an acquaintance, yet we raise our voices with each other.  Familiarity breeds contempt.
So how can John say there is nothing in the way of love to cause stumbling?  The answer is John can say that because that there is nothing in the way of love to cause stumbling.  All those things I mentioned before are not temptations caused by love – they are temptations to depart from the way of love.  The boyfriend who is tempted to defile his girlfriend morally is not being tempted by love.  He is being tempted to indulge his own impulses even at the expense of her best interests.  That is the opposite of love.  If he loved his girlfriend his desire for her purity would be greater than his desire for physical pleasure.
The woman who gets upset because she’s not getting enough attention from her friend is being tempted toward selfishness.  That is the opposite of love.  If she loved her friend she would be concerned about her friend’s happiness above her own preferences. 
Being rude to your family is not a product of love – it is the opposite of love.  If you loved them as you should you would show them courtesy and kindness because of how much you desire their joy.
There is nothing in the way of love that causes stumbling into sin.  It is only departures from that way that cause stumbling.  That is why Paul can say…

Romans 13:8 he who loves his fellowman has fulfilled the law.

There is just one command: love.  Every other law in the Bible is just an example of what love looks like.  If you love God you are not going to worship idols or put anything above God in your life.  And if you love people you are not going to steal from them or lie to them or commit adultery against them or murder them.  Every law is just an outworking of the one law of love.  So while you are on the path of love you are obeying all God’s commands, and nothing will make you stumble into sin.

Conclusion: Light is good – seek it (though love)

If you don’t remember all the details and nuances of this passage and all the subpoints and particulars of this sermon, at least remember this: being in the light is good and being in the darkness is bad.  Can we all agree on that?  Is that easy for you to see in this text?  They way of love leads into the light, which is a good place to be.  And the way of non-love leads into the darkness, which is a horrible place where you definitely do not want to be.
One reason why John uses the images of darkness and light is because they are so broad.  Light is connected with knowledge, clarity of understanding, truth, purity, righteousness, and joy, and darkness is connected with ignorance, lostness, error, sin, evil, and despair.   So following the way of love touches on a whole lot of areas of life.  Following the way of New Commandment-type love will improve your situation in many different ways.  And falling off the path of love will darken your life in many different ways.
So my two applications for this passage are very simple: 1) avoid the darkness, because it is bad; and 2) seek the light, because it is really good.  And that may seem a little on the elementary side to you, and it is – but we need it because our flesh still hasn’t made it out of elementary school.  In fact, our flesh is worse than just being childish.  It is really more like insanity.  Think of the insanity of the flesh when it comes to hatred.  Hatred is the way into the darkness, which is a path of destruction.  It is the way of stumbling and falling and ignorance and evil and misery and death.  And so what is our first impulse when someone hurts us?  Our first impulse is to go the way of hatred rather than the way of love, right?  To harbor unforgiveness and hard feelings and negative thoughts and grudges toward that person.  Think about the incredible foolishness of that: “Oh – someone hurt me. I think I’ll destroy myself.  I’ll just plunge into the darkness of anger and bitterness and self-pity and just destroy myself.”  That’s the natural response of the flesh.  “I don’t like being hurt, therefore I’m going to go take a path that leads to pain and devastation.”  And so as elementary as it is, we need to be told – don’t run into the darkness.  Nothing good happens in there.
Instead, when something in wrong in your life, look to New Commandment-type love to improve your situation.  No matter what is wrong in your life – whether it be 
frustration with your kids, 
boredom at work, 
struggles in your marriage, 
depression, 
temptation, 
lack of direction, 
inability to understand Scripture or to find the wise choice in some decision; it is all darkness.
And the solution to darkness is light.  And loving people is the path into greater light.  So use love for people to solve your problems.
If you have darkness in your life, turn your attention to loving people with New Commandment love more.  If you are depressed, step up your New Commandment-type love.  If you are discouraged and have no energy and have no motivation and life is droning on and on with joyless monotony, let the pain of that drive you to say this: “The only solution for me is to experience greater fellowship with God.  And that will mainly come through enjoying God by loving His people, and loving them because of how precious they are to Jesus Christ.”
If you are confused in the darkness and fog of some hard decision, and you need light from the Lord to show you which way to go, tell yourself, “I need to get into the light and the path into the light is the path of love.  What can I do to increase my enjoyment of God through loving His people?”
If your husband is breaking your heart or your kids are driving you crazy tell yourself, “The only solution to this is for me to move farther into the wonderful, glorious light of the glory of God. And that pathway into that light is the pathway of pouring out my heart in love for my family after the pattern of Jesus’ love.”
It is amazing how an inward, selfish focus will backfire.  When you are unhappy, the flesh tells you to focus on eliminating unpleasant things and increasing pleasant things so you will be happy.  And so your focus turns in on yourself and on whether your circumstances are pleasant or unpleasant and whether or not people are treating you well.  And that is a sure ticket to depression.  All that does is fix your attention on where people are falling short in loving you, and it will make your miserable.
But if you have an attitude that says, “I am willing to suffer anything as long as I can have the joy that comes from nearness to the heart of God..,” and you realize that that joy comes in the greatest measure from loving the people God’s loves with New Commandment-type love, that is when Christ’s joy will be in you and will be made complete (Jn.15:10-12).

Benediction: Eph.2:4-10 because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, 5 made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions… 7 in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus 

Devotionals
Day 1: The God who guides by turning on the lights 

Isaiah 42:16 I will guide them; I will turn the darkness into light before them

What is wonderful about this attribute:
Christians have tended to fall into one of two errors on either side of the truth when it comes to following God’s guidance.  Some focus so much on the immediate, direct, personal aspect that they tend to fall into the error of superstitious mysticism.  They look for messages hidden in circumstances or coincidences, or they turn the Bible into a book of magic - randomly opening to a verse, taking a phrase of that verse out of context to apply to their situation, and then assuming it is a message from God.  That approach is superstitious.  There is no rational basis for believing that some feeling or some coincidence carries a particular message.
Others see that error and overreact to the other side and end up erring by making God’s guidance nothing but impersonal, indirect, general information recorded in the Bible that is the same for everyone; God does not speak directly to anyone, He just gave us the Bible – so God’s speaking is exactly the same for every human being on the planet.  The problem with that is that Scripture speaks of God speaking to us and guiding us as individuals. 

Isa.30:21 Whether you turn to the right or to the left you will hear a voice behind you saying, “This is the way; walk in it.”

Furthermore, if God’s only communication to us is in the print on the page of the Bible, then what are we to make of all the promises that God will guide us on the condition that we repent of our sin?  The Bible can be read by anyone – even unbelievers.  Everyone can read the Bible, but not everyone receives guidance from God.  When David cries out to God in this psalm for guidance, he is not asking God to drop a copy of Scripture out of heaven into his hands.  David had the Scriptures, yet he still prayed for guidance.
So what is the truth that lies between the errors of superstitious mysticism on the one hand and no direct, individual speaking on the other hand?  The doctrine of enlightenment.
God speaks to us individually not by the misuse or misinterpretation of His Word, but by opening our eyes to the proper interpretation and application.  God guides us through His Word not by showing us what wasn’t really there, but by showing us what is there by simply turning on the lights.

Ps.43:3 Send forth your light and your truth, let them guide me; let them bring me to your holy mountain, to the place where you dwell.

Those who fall into the superstitious error have the problem of never knowing for sure if what they are hearing is God’s voice. But if you understand that God speaks to us not through or impressions or coincidences, but through enlightenment, then you do not have to ask the question, “How do you know if it is God?”  If there is light, of course it is God.  How do you know when someone has turned the lights on in a room?  You know by whether or not you can see clearly.  God does not give special, superstitious insight into where the chair is – He just turns on the lights so you can see plainly where it is.
Imagine you are trying to make a basic wisdom decision that there is no direct statement about in Scripture.  For example, should you buy a house right now or just rent?  How will God going answer your prayers for guidance?  Should you watch for some strange coincidence that has to do with buying or renting and try to interpret it?  No.  God does not use darkness and obscurity to communicate.  He uses light.  The most common way is for Him to answer a prayer for guidance in a case like this would be to simply open your eyes to wisdom by means of providence.  For example, He might bring a wise realtor your way who explains to you the various costs and risks in the current market, and who points out the various factors that should be considered.  And after having all that explained the decision becomes an easy one.  It is easy because now the lights are on.  You can see clearly what the wise course is.  That is the voice of God.  God providentially moved all those factors to bring you to a point of being able to see the wise course.
How do you know it was God’s voice?  Because the light is on.  It is as plain as day to any unbiased person who considers the facts, that it is the wise course.  
It works the same way with interpreting Scripture.  Paul wrote to Timothy and explained some principles in the beginning of 2 Timothy 2, but he did not expect Timothy to fully understand them until God gave Timothy enlightenment.

2 Timothy 2:7 Reflect on what I am saying, for the Lord will give you insight into all this.

We need God to open our eyes so we can understand the meaning and significance of what He said in His Word, and to give our hearts the ability to accept and delight in what He said in His Word.  The Spirit works in our hearts and transforms our affections and desires and biases so we are willing to accept the truth when the lights go on.
If you are looking for insight, do not expect God to give it by means of misuses of His Word.  The way God speaks to you through Scripture is by opening your eyes to what is there.  And once He has done that it is obvious it was His voice because the correct interpretation is plain to see.  You can point it out to anyone who knows the proper way to interpret the Bible and they will say, “Of course – I can see now that that is what that passage means.”

Experiencing this attribute:
Every time it is clear what you should do or what a passage in Scripture means, the reason it is clear is because God has turned on the lights for you.  Each time a principle in Scripture makes good sense to you and is a delight to your heart and you are willing to accept it; it is because you are, at that moment, the direct recipient of enlightenment from God.  All of us experience God’s guidance countless times each day.  But that experience has no impact on our ability to love God unless we are aware of it.  The experience of being guided by God increases our love for Him only when we pay conscious attention to the fact that He is guiding us.
We tend to think about guidance from God in times when it is not clear to us which way to go.  But it is important to also realize that in the countless times each day when it is clear which way to go (or it is clear what something in Scripture means, or it is clear what is so wonderful about an attribute of God) – the reason it is clear is because you were experiencing God’s guidance.  He has turned on the lights!  Any time the lights are on, and you can see a situation or a decision or a text of Scripture clearly - realize that that is not just your own intellect.  It is a direct, personal experience of God Himself!  You are experiencing what it is like to be guided by Him!  When a truth clicks while you are studying your Bible or listening to a sermon, and a principle becomes clear - don’t miss the fact that you are experiencing the very presence of God and are receiving grace directly from Him. If you have a sense that something is wrong and you should not do it – that is not just your memory banks.  It is the actual voice of God - a direct experience of Him!  Without that direct action of God the wrongness of the act would not come to mind.  Or it would not seem wrong.  Learn to take the direct, immediate voice of God’s Spirit seriously.  When the lights go on that means He is in the room! Talking to you! 

Think: Consider all the things you know for sure God wants you to do today. Each of those is clear only because of His blessed illumination.

Day 2: the God who Commands His Love

Psalm 42:8 By day the LORD commands his love, at night his song is with me
Ps 57:3 He sends from heaven and saves me, r rebuking those who hotly pursue me; s Selah God sends his love and his faithfulness. t 

What is wonderful about this attribute:
We cannot command our own love.  There are times when we ought to love something, and wish we loved it, but we do not, and changing that requires far more than a mere command or resolution of the will.  When we discover a decline in our love, in order to reverse that we can, by God’s grace, enter into a process that will eventually lead toward increased love, but we do not have the power to simply command our own love.  But God can!  For the God who commands all His own affections, neither His anger nor His love are outside of His immediate control.  We can resolve to love and fail. He cannot.  In Him all resolve is immediate success.  All that is required for the fullest and deepest love is for Him to merely intend it.
The need for a command implies that without the command the action would not be carried out.  We are not the natural objects of love, as though something in us were so lovely and attractive that we would, by our nature, somehow attract God’s love.  Just the opposite.  We resist His love.  We rebuff it and ignore it in ingratitude and make ourselves even less worthy of love than we are naturally.  But He overcomes the resistance of our resistance.  He commands our love, so it must come to us. 
He is the God who can command His own love, and He has commanded it.  All day long, while we are distracted from Him by our daily responsibilities and activities, He still commands His love to be with us.  While we immerse ourselves in trivia, forgetting Him, He requires of His love that it not leave us.  While our hearts are drawn to the triplet adulterous husbands, the world, the flesh and the devil – God will not permit His jealous love for us to die away.  When someone we love irritates or hurts or betrays or ignores us, so often we can feel the love instantly drain down to almost nothing.  We can even feel it convert itself to hostility.  But God’s love is not subject to that. 

Lord, how marvelous is Your great love!  What disaster it would be for me if Your love were anything like mine. 

Experiencing this attribute:
Each time you sin or are reminded of past sin, realize that your sin cannot overcome God’s commanded love. 
Each time you struggle to love someone, let that struggle cause you to take delight in the fact that God can (and does) command His love for you.
Each time you enjoy loving someone who is dear to you, let that illustrate to you how much God enjoys loving you.

Think: Think of as many expressions of God’s love that you are experiencing right at this very moment as you can.

Day 3: the God whose people are worthy of love

John divides humanity into two categories: haters and lovers.  The people in v.9 are haters and the people in v.10 are lovers.  Haters are part of the passage age of darkness and lovers are part of the coming new age of light.  And that’s all there is.  Every single soul on earth is either a hater or a lover.  There is no third category.
No one hates everyone, and no one is a perfect lover either.  So what determines if you are in the light or in the darkness?  Lovers are people who have genuine, new commandment-type love and who repent over their lack of love, and haters are people who have no new commandment-type love at all.  And they are unrepentant, so they are nothing but haters, because all the guilt of every incident of hatred in their lives still rests on them.  None of those incidents of hatred have been forgiven, and so they still bear that blame.
Most of the time both the Greek and the Hebrew words mean exactly the same thing as the English word – hatred is hatred.  It means to have ill feelings toward someone – animosity, unforgiveness, a grudge, dislike, distain, disgust.  There are varying levels of hatred just like there are varying levels of love.  Just as it is possible to have a little bit of love or a lot of love toward someone, so it is possible to hate someone a little bit or a lot.  When we hate someone a little bit we use words like “dislike” or “I’m uncomfortable with that person” or something like that.  When it is more extreme we use the word “hatred.”  But whether it is little or big, it is all hatred.
And in Scripture the word hatred can even refer to love that is less than it should be.

Genesis 29:30-31 Jacob lay with Rachel also, and he loved Rachel more than Leah. 31 When the LORD saw that Leah was hated (same word as in 1 Jn.2:9,11), he opened her womb.

Hatred is simply the lack of love. Just as the definition of darkness is “anyplace where there is a lack of light,” so the definition of hatred is “anyplace there is a lack of love.”
Love involves…
1.	Having high regard for the person
2.	Desiring their best interests
3.	Desiring their happiness
4.	Prioritizing them above your own impulses and preferences
5.	Liking them – enjoying them and taking delight in them.
And so hatred is when you lack in those five areas.
1.	Low regard.  The person has little or no value in your heart. They are not a treasure to you. They are not worthy of a lot of your time and attention and concern. And when a person is not of great worth in your sight then you will become…
2.	indifferent to the person’s best interests.  Instead of strongly desiring their best interests, you won’t care much about them. And if they do something to hurt you, not only will you not desire their best interests, you might even desire their harm.
3.	Indifference to their happiness.  It doesn’t cause you any sorrow if they are unhappy. And again – if they do something to hurt you, you might even fall into the more extreme levels of hatred where you actually desire their unhappiness.
4.	Prioritizing own preferences above the person.  Where you lack love you will regard yourself and your own immediate desires as a higher priority than that person.
5.	Lack of delight in or enjoyment of the person.  You are blind to everything that is good and beautiful about them.  You can’t see the image of God in them, you can’t see them as a precious treasure that is highly valued in God’s sight, you can’t see them as being worth the blood of Jesus. You can’t see what is good about them, and so they bring you no enjoyment of God. You can’t enjoy God through them like you can with people you love.
There are a lot of different ways for you to think about a brother in Christ. You can view him as just a part of the landscape – take no more notice of him than you do of a rock on the ground. No real positive feelings or negative feelings toward him – just indifference. That is a form of hatred.
You can view your brother as a nuisance – someone who encroaches upon your time and energy. He is someone who just uses up your time and causes you headaches. That is a form of hatred.
You can even view your brother as an enemy – someone you need to oppose and fight against. That is a form of hatred. 
Love is when you don’t regard your brother as an enemy, or as a nuisance, or as a part of the landscape – but as a brother…
- a beloved child of the Father who adopted and forgave and loved you,
- a sibling who loves the same Father you love,
- a person whose joy and wellbeing are so supremely important that the Creator of the Universe said He will reward anyone handsomely who contributes to this person’s joy, and
- one whose needs are your needs and whose interests are your interests and whose joy is your joy – and through whom God Himself can be experienced and enjoyed.

Dear Lord God, the Father of all compassion, You call Yourself “love,” the One who gave His Son to shed His blood for those You love; open the eyes of Your servant to grasp something of how high and how wide and how deep and how long is Your love for Your people.  Let me be astounded at how much affection You have in Your heart toward __________, so that my affections for him/her will increase. 
Forgive me dear Lord for the lovelessness in my heart toward people.  I have been so indifferent about the happiness of so many whom You have placed near me.  I barely listen when they tell me about their joys, and when they have trials I either forget to pray for them altogether, or my prayers are a forced discipline rather than an expression of deep longing and desire like they would be if I were the one suffering.  Oh Lord, have mercy on this cold, hating heart!  Grant Your servant proper repentance.  Show me the areas of lovelessness that I haven’t even noticed yet, and keep showing me more until my heart really is properly broken of the sin of hatred in my life.
But at the same time I rejoice in You, dear God, because of the love You have placed in my heart for Your people.  I really do love Your Church.  And I love them because they are Your Church.  I love Your generosity that flows through them, and Your wisdom, and Your love, and Your peace, and Your compassion, and Your encouragement and strengthening, and Your beauty that is reflected in them, and Your joy that comes out as we laugh together.  I know, Father, that all that I love in them is lovely because it is from You.  You are my Lord; I have no good besides You.  And as for the saints in the land; they are the glorious ones in whom is all my delight because that glory is Your glory.

Day 4: The Darkness of hatred

1 John 4:20 If anyone says, "I love God," yet hates his brother, he is a liar.  

1 John 2:11 But the one who hates his brother is in the darkness, walks in the darkness, and doesn’t know where he’s going, because the darkness has blinded his eyes.

John says about those who fail to love: they are in the darkness, they walk in the darkness, and they are blinded by the darkness.

1)	In the darkness 
Being in the darkness means being far from the presence of God.  They read their Bible, and it is just print on a page.  They do not experience the thrilling joys and deep comfort and strengthening and nourishment and enlightenment and encouragement that should come through the Scriptures.  They pray and instead of their souls being lifted up into glorious communion with the Lord, they just sit there with a lot of distracted thoughts that are about as far from satisfying their souls as they could be.  Instead of their ministry being fulfilling fellowship with God it is a burdensome drudgery.  That is what happens with the Lord withdraws His favorable presence from your life, which is what the darkness is.

2)	Walks in the dark
Walking refers to the day-to-day decision-making of life.  Every decision you make during the day is like taking a step in some direction.  Life is not supposed to be mere existence.  It is supposed to be a progression that gets you somewhere.  But when you walk in the dark you don’t get anywhere.  You don’t know where to step, and when you do take a step you don’t know if that step will take you closer to your goal or farther from your goal.  You don’t even know what the goal is!  For the person in the dark life is a pointless meandering that leads absolutely nowhere but farther into the darkness - farther and farther and farther from the presence of God.  He might make some decisions that will get him some more money or power or pleasure in the short run, but money and power and pleasure in the hands of a man moving farther and farther from the light will not be able to bring joy or satisfaction to his soul.  He does not know where he is going or where he has been or even where he is now in relationship to anything important. 

Proverbs 4:19 the way of the wicked is like deep darkness; they do not know what makes them stumble.

They are forever falling down, and they don’t even know why.

3)	Blinded by the dark
The darkness has a blinding effect.  The more time you spend away from the presence of God the more damage you do to your spiritual eyesight.  The darkness is not a neutral place.  It is a deadly place.  It destroys the ability of your soul to perceive.
People who persist in their wandering in the darkness become so blind that you can present them with light and they can’t see it.  Wisdom looks like foolishness to them.  Knowledge looks like folly to them.  Lunacy looks like intelligence to them.  Unwillingness to see the truth, before long, becomes inability to see the truth.
There are two massive walls that block off access to truth.  One is ignorance in the mind.  The other is hardness of heart.  People think they can find truth just by breaking down the wall of ignorance.  But no matter how much education and information you amass, if you don’t do something about that other barrier - if you don’t somehow break down the wall of hardness of heart – unwillingness to accept the truth – then all the education in the world will leave you just as devoid of truth as when you started.  And if you cling to that unwillingness too long, God will eventually judge you by allowing your unwillingness to become cemented into inability. 

Luke 8:18 Therefore, take care how you listen. For whoever has, more will be given to him; and whoever does not have, even what he thinks he has will be taken away from him.” 

If you listen the wrong way – with a bias against the truth – then even what ability you did have to understand will be taken away.
And in the context of 1 John 2 this is applied to love.  The more you give in to the way of hatred the more remote will be the possibility of ever returning to love.  Indulging negative feelings toward someone does a certain amount of injury to your spirit that makes it a hundred times harder to recover and start loving that person again.  The hardest people to love are those people you have allowed your heart to harden against.  That’s because once you wander down that path of darkness it is very, very hard to get back on to the path of light.

Deliver me, dear Father, from the insanity of being attracted to the darkness and the path of destruction. Hold me back from venturing anywhere near the way of stumbling and falling and ignorance and evil and misery and death.  When someone hurts me and my lunatic flesh wants to respond by stepping down a path that leads away from You and straight into pain and devastation, open my eyes to see the folly of that response.  Let me instead be attracted to the light.  When someone hurts me let all that is within me long for nearness to You in the light.

Day 5: The light of love
1 John 2:10 The one who loves his brother remains in the light and there is no cause for stumbling in it.

There is nothing in the way of love that causes stumbling into sin.  It is only departures from that way that cause stumbling.  That is why Paul can say he who loves his fellowman has fulfilled the law.  (Romans 13:8)  There is just one command: love.  Every other law in the Bible is just an example of what love looks like.  If you love God you are not going to worship idols or put anything above God in your life.  And if you love people you are not going to steal from them or lie to them or commit adultery against them or murder them.  Every law is just an outworking of the one law of love.  So while you are on the path of love you are obeying all God’s commands, and nothing will make you stumble into sin.
One reason why John uses the images of darkness and light is because they are so broad.  Light is connected with knowledge, clarity of understanding, truth, purity, righteousness, and joy, and darkness is connected with ignorance, lostness, error, sin, evil, and despair.  So following the way of love touches on a whole lot of areas of life.  Following the way of New Commandment-type love will improve your situation in many different ways, and falling off the path of love will darken your life in many different ways.
Instead, when something in wrong in your life, look to New Commandment-type love to improve your situation.  No matter what is wrong in your life – whether it be frustration with your kids, boredom at work, struggles in your marriage, depression, temptation, lack of direction, inability to understand Scripture or to find the wise choice in some decision – it is all darkness.  And the solution to darkness is light. And loving people is the path into greater light.  So use love for people to solve your problems.
If you have darkness in your life, turn your attention to loving people with New Commandment love more. If you’re depressed, step up your New Commandment-type love.  If you’re discouraged and have no energy and have no motivation and life is droning on and on with joyless monotony, let the pain of that drive you to say this: “The only solution for me is to experience greater fellowship with God.  And that will mainly come through enjoying God by loving His people, and loving them because of how precious they are to Jesus Christ.”
If you are confused in the darkness and fog of some hard decision, and you need light from the Lord to show you which way to go, tell yourself, “I need to get into the light and the path into the light is the path of love.  What can I do to increase my enjoyment of God through loving His people?”
If your husband is breaking your heart or your kids are driving you crazy tell yourself, “The only solution to this is for me to move farther into the wonderful, glorious light of the glory of God.  And that pathway into that light is the pathway of pouring out my heart in love for my family after the pattern of Jesus’ love.”
It is amazing how an inward, selfish focus will backfire. When you are unhappy, the flesh tells you to focus on eliminating unpleasant things and increasing pleasant things so you will be happy.  And so your focus turns in on yourself and on whether your circumstances are pleasant or unpleasant and whether or not people are treating you well.  And that is a sure ticket to depression.  All that does is fix your attention on where people are falling short in loving you, and it will make your miserable.  But if you have an attitude that says, “I am willing to suffer anything as long as I can have the joy that comes from nearness to the heart of God,” and you realize that that joy comes in the greatest measure from loving the people God’s loves with New Commandment-type love, that is when Christ’s joy will be in you and will be made complete (Jn.15:10-12).

Eph.2:4-10 because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, 5 made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions… 7 in order that in the coming ages he might show the incomparable riches of his grace, expressed in his kindness to us in Christ Jesus 

Teach me, dear Lord, how to look to the fulfillment of New Commandment- type love to solve the problems in my life.  Show me, Father – what problem do I have right now that needs to be addressed by stepping up my love for Your people?