Holy Wit – Reflections
#4 (Walking in the Light: Studies Through 1 John)
Scripture References: 1 John 2:7–11
There is a certain kind of household argument that can last so long nobody quite remembers how it began.
It may have started over land, or money, or an insult at a wedding, or who failed to visit when somebody was sick, or who said what to whom after church while pretending not to say it. In some families, the quarrel becomes almost a member of the household. It sits at meals. It travels to funerals. It attends weddings dressed in respectable clothes and speaks to nobody except those who already agree with it.
Children grow up hearing, “We do not visit them.” Nobody explains much. They just know there is a side of the family that exists somewhere beyond the river, beyond the road, beyond the market, beyond the village, beyond the church aisle, but not beyond memory. Never beyond memory.
Memory, in such cases, is very well fed.
The original offense may be thin as paper by now, but the bitterness has become strong as a tree root wrapped around a water pipe. Everyone agrees it would be better if it were gone, but nobody wants to dig.
Then Sunday comes.
The same people who have not spoken to one another in years stand to sing of grace. They bow their heads while prayer is offered. They hear Scripture read. They nod when the preacher speaks of forgiveness, though preferably forgiveness in general and not the costly local variety that has names, faces, histories, and perhaps a seat three rows away.
This is where John walks into the room.
John is not a man easily impressed by religious fog. He does not let us hide behind Christian language while we keep our private darkness carefully folded and stored away. He writes plainly: “He who says he is in the light, and hates his brother, is in darkness until now.”
That is not a soft sentence.
It is not padded for comfort. It does not arrive with cushions, footnotes, and an apology for disturbing the family system. John simply says that if a person claims to walk in the light while hating his brother, that person is still in darkness.
A bitter Christian is a contradiction John refuses to soften.
This does not mean Christians are commanded to pretend they have never been hurt. John is not asking the wounded to call evil good. Love is not foolishness wearing a holy expression. There are times when boundaries are necessary. There are sins that must be confronted. There are dangerous people from whom others must be protected. There are wrongs that require justice, repentance, and wisdom.
But hatred is not wisdom.
Hatred is what happens when pain is enthroned. It is what happens when an old wound becomes an altar and the wounded person becomes its priest. Hatred does not merely remember. It rehearses. It does not merely grieve. It feeds. It does not merely say, “That was wrong.” It says, “I hope they fall, and I would like a front-row seat when they do.”
John calls that darkness.
The commandment to love one another was not new in the sense that God had never commanded it before. From the beginning, God’s people were never free to be holy in doctrine and cruel in heart. The command to love our neighbor was already written in the Law. But in Christ, the old commandment became new with blazing clarity.
Jesus did not merely command love. He showed us what love is.
He loved without approving sin. He forgave without pretending evil was harmless. He served the proud, corrected the foolish, welcomed the weak, wept with the grieving, rebuked the self-righteous, and laid down His life for sinners who had not yet learned to love Him. In Christ, love was no longer only a command written on a page. Love had a face, hands, tears, wounds, and a cross.
So when John says, “love your brother,” he is speaking first of fellow believers. Christians are commanded to love all people, even enemies, but John is pressing the family matter. If we claim to belong to the Father, then we cannot despise the Father’s children. We cannot say we love the Head while hating the body. We cannot praise Christ while quietly wishing ruin upon those He has redeemed.
This is especially important because the church is not made up of imaginary Christians.
Imaginary Christians are easy to love. They are polite, grateful, tidy, spiritually mature, and always available at convenient times. Actual Christians are more complicated. They misunderstand. They talk too much. They fail to notice obvious things. They arrive late. They need help. They say awkward sentences. They disappoint us. Sometimes they sin against us. Sometimes we sin against them and then discover that being the offender is less pleasant than being the righteous observer of other people’s failures.
The commandment lives there, among actual believers.
Love your brother means refusing to gossip when gossip would be delicious. It means praying for the person we are tempted to criticize. It means helping when help is needed and we would rather not be bothered. It means apologizing without delivering a courtroom speech in our own defense. It means forgiving because Christ has forgiven us, not because the other person has earned the right to be released from our bitterness.
It means telling the truth, but not using truth as a club. It means correcting when correction is needed, but remembering that we also stand by grace. It means giving quietly, visiting the sick, encouraging the discouraged, making room for the awkward, bearing with the weak, and refusing to treat the church as a place where people must be useful to us before we will love them.
It also means we stop calling bitterness by nicer names.
Sometimes we call it discernment. Sometimes we call it being realistic. Sometimes we call it having standards. Sometimes we call it remembering the facts. But John says hatred blinds the eyes. That is a frightening truth, because blind people often do not know what they are not seeing.
Hatred makes us confident in the dark.
It convinces us that we understand the whole matter. It edits memory in our favor. It turns people into categories. It makes mercy look naïve and contempt look sensible. It lets us say, “I am walking in the light,” while stepping carefully around every command of Christ that would require us to put down the old grievance.
But the true light is already shining.
That is John’s hope. The darkness is passing away, not because human beings have improved themselves, but because Christ has come. His light exposes what we would rather keep hidden. It reveals not only our sins, but also our Savior. The same Lord who commands love also supplies grace. He does not merely point at our bitterness and condemn us. He calls us out of the darkness and teaches us to walk in the light.
And so the question becomes wonderfully practical.
Whom must I stop hating?
Whom must I begin loving in obedience to Christ?
What phone call, visit, apology, prayer, gift, silence, correction, forgiveness, or act of service would make the commandment visible in my life?
John will not allow love to remain a decoration on Christian speech. It must become the furniture of Christian living. It must be found in homes, churches, markets, meals, hospital rooms, funeral gatherings, messages sent, messages not sent, words spoken, and words swallowed before they become poison.
“He who loves his brother abides in the light.”
That is where Christians belong.
Not in the old room where the quarrel sits at the table and is fed like an honored guest, but in the light of Christ, where mercy has entered, truth has spoken, and love has work to do.
#HolyWitBibleStudy #GordonMcGinnis #WalkingInTheLight #1John2
#4 (Walking in the Light: Studies Through 1 John)
Scripture References: 1 John 2:7–11
There is a certain kind of household argument that can last so long nobody quite remembers how it began.
It may have started over land, or money, or an insult at a wedding, or who failed to visit when somebody was sick, or who said what to whom after church while pretending not to say it. In some families, the quarrel becomes almost a member of the household. It sits at meals. It travels to funerals. It attends weddings dressed in respectable clothes and speaks to nobody except those who already agree with it.
Children grow up hearing, “We do not visit them.” Nobody explains much. They just know there is a side of the family that exists somewhere beyond the river, beyond the road, beyond the market, beyond the village, beyond the church aisle, but not beyond memory. Never beyond memory.
Memory, in such cases, is very well fed.
The original offense may be thin as paper by now, but the bitterness has become strong as a tree root wrapped around a water pipe. Everyone agrees it would be better if it were gone, but nobody wants to dig.
Then Sunday comes.
The same people who have not spoken to one another in years stand to sing of grace. They bow their heads while prayer is offered. They hear Scripture read. They nod when the preacher speaks of forgiveness, though preferably forgiveness in general and not the costly local variety that has names, faces, histories, and perhaps a seat three rows away.
This is where John walks into the room.
John is not a man easily impressed by religious fog. He does not let us hide behind Christian language while we keep our private darkness carefully folded and stored away. He writes plainly: “He who says he is in the light, and hates his brother, is in darkness until now.”
That is not a soft sentence.
It is not padded for comfort. It does not arrive with cushions, footnotes, and an apology for disturbing the family system. John simply says that if a person claims to walk in the light while hating his brother, that person is still in darkness.
A bitter Christian is a contradiction John refuses to soften.
This does not mean Christians are commanded to pretend they have never been hurt. John is not asking the wounded to call evil good. Love is not foolishness wearing a holy expression. There are times when boundaries are necessary. There are sins that must be confronted. There are dangerous people from whom others must be protected. There are wrongs that require justice, repentance, and wisdom.
But hatred is not wisdom.
Hatred is what happens when pain is enthroned. It is what happens when an old wound becomes an altar and the wounded person becomes its priest. Hatred does not merely remember. It rehearses. It does not merely grieve. It feeds. It does not merely say, “That was wrong.” It says, “I hope they fall, and I would like a front-row seat when they do.”
John calls that darkness.
The commandment to love one another was not new in the sense that God had never commanded it before. From the beginning, God’s people were never free to be holy in doctrine and cruel in heart. The command to love our neighbor was already written in the Law. But in Christ, the old commandment became new with blazing clarity.
Jesus did not merely command love. He showed us what love is.
He loved without approving sin. He forgave without pretending evil was harmless. He served the proud, corrected the foolish, welcomed the weak, wept with the grieving, rebuked the self-righteous, and laid down His life for sinners who had not yet learned to love Him. In Christ, love was no longer only a command written on a page. Love had a face, hands, tears, wounds, and a cross.
So when John says, “love your brother,” he is speaking first of fellow believers. Christians are commanded to love all people, even enemies, but John is pressing the family matter. If we claim to belong to the Father, then we cannot despise the Father’s children. We cannot say we love the Head while hating the body. We cannot praise Christ while quietly wishing ruin upon those He has redeemed.
This is especially important because the church is not made up of imaginary Christians.
Imaginary Christians are easy to love. They are polite, grateful, tidy, spiritually mature, and always available at convenient times. Actual Christians are more complicated. They misunderstand. They talk too much. They fail to notice obvious things. They arrive late. They need help. They say awkward sentences. They disappoint us. Sometimes they sin against us. Sometimes we sin against them and then discover that being the offender is less pleasant than being the righteous observer of other people’s failures.
The commandment lives there, among actual believers.
Love your brother means refusing to gossip when gossip would be delicious. It means praying for the person we are tempted to criticize. It means helping when help is needed and we would rather not be bothered. It means apologizing without delivering a courtroom speech in our own defense. It means forgiving because Christ has forgiven us, not because the other person has earned the right to be released from our bitterness.
It means telling the truth, but not using truth as a club. It means correcting when correction is needed, but remembering that we also stand by grace. It means giving quietly, visiting the sick, encouraging the discouraged, making room for the awkward, bearing with the weak, and refusing to treat the church as a place where people must be useful to us before we will love them.
It also means we stop calling bitterness by nicer names.
Sometimes we call it discernment. Sometimes we call it being realistic. Sometimes we call it having standards. Sometimes we call it remembering the facts. But John says hatred blinds the eyes. That is a frightening truth, because blind people often do not know what they are not seeing.
Hatred makes us confident in the dark.
It convinces us that we understand the whole matter. It edits memory in our favor. It turns people into categories. It makes mercy look naïve and contempt look sensible. It lets us say, “I am walking in the light,” while stepping carefully around every command of Christ that would require us to put down the old grievance.
But the true light is already shining.
That is John’s hope. The darkness is passing away, not because human beings have improved themselves, but because Christ has come. His light exposes what we would rather keep hidden. It reveals not only our sins, but also our Savior. The same Lord who commands love also supplies grace. He does not merely point at our bitterness and condemn us. He calls us out of the darkness and teaches us to walk in the light.
And so the question becomes wonderfully practical.
Whom must I stop hating?
Whom must I begin loving in obedience to Christ?
What phone call, visit, apology, prayer, gift, silence, correction, forgiveness, or act of service would make the commandment visible in my life?
John will not allow love to remain a decoration on Christian speech. It must become the furniture of Christian living. It must be found in homes, churches, markets, meals, hospital rooms, funeral gatherings, messages sent, messages not sent, words spoken, and words swallowed before they become poison.
“He who loves his brother abides in the light.”
That is where Christians belong.
Not in the old room where the quarrel sits at the table and is fed like an honored guest, but in the light of Christ, where mercy has entered, truth has spoken, and love has work to do.
#HolyWitBibleStudy #GordonMcGinnis #WalkingInTheLight #1John2
Holy Wit – Reflections
#4 (Walking in the Light: Studies Through 1 John)
Scripture References: 1 John 2:7–11
There is a certain kind of household argument that can last so long nobody quite remembers how it began.
It may have started over land, or money, or an insult at a wedding, or who failed to visit when somebody was sick, or who said what to whom after church while pretending not to say it. In some families, the quarrel becomes almost a member of the household. It sits at meals. It travels to funerals. It attends weddings dressed in respectable clothes and speaks to nobody except those who already agree with it.
Children grow up hearing, “We do not visit them.” Nobody explains much. They just know there is a side of the family that exists somewhere beyond the river, beyond the road, beyond the market, beyond the village, beyond the church aisle, but not beyond memory. Never beyond memory.
Memory, in such cases, is very well fed.
The original offense may be thin as paper by now, but the bitterness has become strong as a tree root wrapped around a water pipe. Everyone agrees it would be better if it were gone, but nobody wants to dig.
Then Sunday comes.
The same people who have not spoken to one another in years stand to sing of grace. They bow their heads while prayer is offered. They hear Scripture read. They nod when the preacher speaks of forgiveness, though preferably forgiveness in general and not the costly local variety that has names, faces, histories, and perhaps a seat three rows away.
This is where John walks into the room.
John is not a man easily impressed by religious fog. He does not let us hide behind Christian language while we keep our private darkness carefully folded and stored away. He writes plainly: “He who says he is in the light, and hates his brother, is in darkness until now.”
That is not a soft sentence.
It is not padded for comfort. It does not arrive with cushions, footnotes, and an apology for disturbing the family system. John simply says that if a person claims to walk in the light while hating his brother, that person is still in darkness.
A bitter Christian is a contradiction John refuses to soften.
This does not mean Christians are commanded to pretend they have never been hurt. John is not asking the wounded to call evil good. Love is not foolishness wearing a holy expression. There are times when boundaries are necessary. There are sins that must be confronted. There are dangerous people from whom others must be protected. There are wrongs that require justice, repentance, and wisdom.
But hatred is not wisdom.
Hatred is what happens when pain is enthroned. It is what happens when an old wound becomes an altar and the wounded person becomes its priest. Hatred does not merely remember. It rehearses. It does not merely grieve. It feeds. It does not merely say, “That was wrong.” It says, “I hope they fall, and I would like a front-row seat when they do.”
John calls that darkness.
The commandment to love one another was not new in the sense that God had never commanded it before. From the beginning, God’s people were never free to be holy in doctrine and cruel in heart. The command to love our neighbor was already written in the Law. But in Christ, the old commandment became new with blazing clarity.
Jesus did not merely command love. He showed us what love is.
He loved without approving sin. He forgave without pretending evil was harmless. He served the proud, corrected the foolish, welcomed the weak, wept with the grieving, rebuked the self-righteous, and laid down His life for sinners who had not yet learned to love Him. In Christ, love was no longer only a command written on a page. Love had a face, hands, tears, wounds, and a cross.
So when John says, “love your brother,” he is speaking first of fellow believers. Christians are commanded to love all people, even enemies, but John is pressing the family matter. If we claim to belong to the Father, then we cannot despise the Father’s children. We cannot say we love the Head while hating the body. We cannot praise Christ while quietly wishing ruin upon those He has redeemed.
This is especially important because the church is not made up of imaginary Christians.
Imaginary Christians are easy to love. They are polite, grateful, tidy, spiritually mature, and always available at convenient times. Actual Christians are more complicated. They misunderstand. They talk too much. They fail to notice obvious things. They arrive late. They need help. They say awkward sentences. They disappoint us. Sometimes they sin against us. Sometimes we sin against them and then discover that being the offender is less pleasant than being the righteous observer of other people’s failures.
The commandment lives there, among actual believers.
Love your brother means refusing to gossip when gossip would be delicious. It means praying for the person we are tempted to criticize. It means helping when help is needed and we would rather not be bothered. It means apologizing without delivering a courtroom speech in our own defense. It means forgiving because Christ has forgiven us, not because the other person has earned the right to be released from our bitterness.
It means telling the truth, but not using truth as a club. It means correcting when correction is needed, but remembering that we also stand by grace. It means giving quietly, visiting the sick, encouraging the discouraged, making room for the awkward, bearing with the weak, and refusing to treat the church as a place where people must be useful to us before we will love them.
It also means we stop calling bitterness by nicer names.
Sometimes we call it discernment. Sometimes we call it being realistic. Sometimes we call it having standards. Sometimes we call it remembering the facts. But John says hatred blinds the eyes. That is a frightening truth, because blind people often do not know what they are not seeing.
Hatred makes us confident in the dark.
It convinces us that we understand the whole matter. It edits memory in our favor. It turns people into categories. It makes mercy look naïve and contempt look sensible. It lets us say, “I am walking in the light,” while stepping carefully around every command of Christ that would require us to put down the old grievance.
But the true light is already shining.
That is John’s hope. The darkness is passing away, not because human beings have improved themselves, but because Christ has come. His light exposes what we would rather keep hidden. It reveals not only our sins, but also our Savior. The same Lord who commands love also supplies grace. He does not merely point at our bitterness and condemn us. He calls us out of the darkness and teaches us to walk in the light.
And so the question becomes wonderfully practical.
Whom must I stop hating?
Whom must I begin loving in obedience to Christ?
What phone call, visit, apology, prayer, gift, silence, correction, forgiveness, or act of service would make the commandment visible in my life?
John will not allow love to remain a decoration on Christian speech. It must become the furniture of Christian living. It must be found in homes, churches, markets, meals, hospital rooms, funeral gatherings, messages sent, messages not sent, words spoken, and words swallowed before they become poison.
“He who loves his brother abides in the light.”
That is where Christians belong.
Not in the old room where the quarrel sits at the table and is fed like an honored guest, but in the light of Christ, where mercy has entered, truth has spoken, and love has work to do.
#HolyWitBibleStudy #GordonMcGinnis #WalkingInTheLight #1John2
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