EVENING SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 4/27/2025 8:27 PM
My Worship Time Focus:
PT-1 “Loving in the Truth”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: 2 John 5-6
Message of the verses: “5 Now I ask you,
lady, not as though I were writing to you a new commandment, but the one
which we have had from the beginning, that we love one another. 6 And this is
love, that we walk according to His commandments. This is the commandment, just
as you have heard from the beginning, that you should walk in it.”
MacArthur states that “The Greek phrase kai nun (‘and now’) that begins verse 5
provides a logical link to verse 4. John
did not hesitate to ask this Christian lady to love; his request was perfectly
consistent with living in the gospel truth.
The parenthetical statement, not as though I were writing to you a new
commandment, but the one which we have had from the beginning, that we love one
another, echoes 1 John 2:7-11.”
MacArthur then writes that we should go back to chapter six in his
commentary for impute on the verses from 1 John 2:7-11. Those Spiritual Diaries from that chapter
began on 10:4 2024 and ended on 10:14 2024.
He then goes on to write “John was not writing a new commandment never
before revealed, but was reiterating the one which she had heard from the
beginning of her Christian life. Divine
revelation is clear that love is the defining mark of a true believer, and the
lack of it characterizes unbelievers. In
1 John 2:9-11 John declared,
9 The one who says he is in the Light and yet
hates his brother is in the darkness until now. 10 The one who loves his
brother abides in the Light and there is no cause for stumbling in him. 11 But
the one who hates his brother is in the darkness and walks in the darkness, and
does not know where he is going because the darkness has blinded his eyes.
I for one am happy that John MacArthur explained
that John was not writing a new commandment that had never been revealed
however he was reiterating the commandment that this lady had heard from the
very beginning when she became a believer.
I have to say that this was a big confusing to me but at least I know
that there was not new revelation about loving.
MacArthur
goes on to write “In one sense, what John wrote was not a new commandment
translates kainos, which refers not
to something new in time, but in essential character. The command to love is not unique to the New
Testament. The Old Testament Law
provided a summary of how to love.
Deuteronomy 6:5 commands, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all
your heart and with all your soul and
with all your might,’ while Leviticus
19:18 adds, You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ When asked to name the greatest commandment
in the Law, Jesus replied by citing those two commands: ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all
your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the great
and foremost commandment. The second is
like it, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments depend the whole
Law the Prophets’ (Matt. 22:37-40). The
Ten Commandments, the summation of the Law, are divided into two sections. The first four commandments describe how to
love God; the last six describe how to love people. Thus Paul could write that ‘love is the
fulfillment of the law’ (Rom. 13:10).
4/27/2025 8:55 PM
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