Walk in Love Like Jesus

Jesus is our advocate before God. 

In 1 John 2, John reminds us of two things. First, John’s call (from 1 John 1) to live in the light of obedience to God’s commands instead of in the darkness of sin should empower us to not sin. Second, he reminds us that we are all in a situation where sin remains a part of our lives. (1 John 1:8, 10) Because of sin’s continued presence in our lives, we need an advocate. We need someone to speak to God on our behalf so that we can be saved in spite of our sin.

It’s important to John, then, to tell us what kind of advocate Jesus is.

The way John describes Jesus’s advocacy is beyond our wildest dreams.

Propitiation - What it Means for Us

John says that Jesus is our advocate before God by being the propitiation for our sins. Propitiation means “atoning sacrifice.” It means, “wrath bearer.” It means that our sin had enormous consequences. As the Bible says elsewhere, “the wages of sin is death.” (Romans 6:23) In other words, we are guilty because of our sin, and as a result, we are destined for terrible consequences.

There was a debt that we owed God that we could never repay.

But Jesus interceded for us. He advocated for us. He atoned for us. He is the propitiation for our sins. He bore the wrath we were never going to be able to bear. He took on the terrible consequences of our sin–the wrath and the judgment of God that our sins deserved. God destroyed sin without our having to experience the forever death our sins deserve. That’s because Jesus is the propitiation for our sins. He Himself bore the wrath of God that we deserve because of our sins but that we would never have been able to endure.

And it is in this way that Jesus advocates for us when we sin.

Jesus’s sacrifice speaks to God for us. His advocacy is more than propitiation, but it is not less.

John goes on and says Jesus is not just the atoning sacrifice for believers, but also for the sins of the whole world. It is important for us as believers in Jesus to remember that Jesus’s death was enough for everyone, not just for people who believe. There’s enough of Jesus for everyone. There’s an inspiration to evangelism here if we will receive it. Jesus died so that everyone could be saved. We should invite them to meet Jesus because there is enough forgiveness, salvation, atonement, and propitiation for everyone.

Jesus’s sacrifice is the ultimate example of the love that God has for us. As Jesus says in John 15, “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.” (‭John‬ ‭15‬:‭13‬) Jesus laid down His life to bear God’s wrath for us. We trust Him because of His love for us. We love because of His love for us. “We love because he first loved us.” (1 John‬ ‭4‬:‭19‬) We obey Him because of His love for us.=

The Choice of Obedience - 1 John 2:3

In 1 John 2:3, John returns to something he said in chapter 1: if we do not obey God’s commands, we do not really know Him. In fact, if we claim we do know God, but don’t obey His commands, we lie. In fact, we don’t just lie–John makes an identity claim, he says, “that person is a liar,” and again, “the truth is not in that person.” (1 John 2:4)

John contrasts, “the truth is not in that person,” with “if anyone obeys His word, love for God is truly made complete in them.” (verse 5) 

So John lays a choice before us as believers: we can choose not to obey God. For believers who claim to follow and obey God, this makes us liars. It means the truth is not in us. 1 John 1 reminds us that we will not have fellowship with God in this state, because we cannot have a relationship with the God Who is light and yet walk in the darkness.

On the other hand, if we obey–choosing to walk in the light–John says that something equally radical happens. John says, “love for God is truly made complete in them.” Obedience, John says, is how we perfect our love for God. This is of extreme value. We were made to love God and to be loved by Him. 

It’s important for us to see here that John is not advocating legalistic perfection here. He has begun his teaching by reminding us that Jesus is the propitiation for our sin and our advocate before the Father. Our future sin in this life is certain. We will not obey perfectly. We will not walk in the light perfectly. But we must choose to join with the Holy Spirit’s work in our lives to obey God and to bend our lives to obedience to Him. We should be choosing to follow Him more and more. We should be turning from sin more and more. When we become aware of sin in our lives, we should be rejecting that sin and turning to obedience.

John says this is the path to completing and perfecting the love of God in our lives. 

Perfecting our Love for God - 1 John 2:5

The more we obey God, the more we will love Him.

Our love grows out of our obedience.

It’s an interesting claim that John is making.

Jesus says in John 14:15, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments.” The cause and effect is in the other direction here. In John 14, the love comes first, and the obedience flows out of it.

In 1 John 2, it is the opposite: our obedience makes love for God grow (to perfection!) in us. 

This idea from 1 John should help us remember what kind of King, what kind of Father, God is. If obeying His commands really helps us love God more, His commands must be good commands. They must really bring us joy. His commands must really lead us to life.

READ MORE: IF GOD DOESN’T FEEL LIKE YOUR FATHER

We would not grow in love for someone in response to obeying their commands if their commands led us to sorrow and turmoil. Instead, obedience to God’s commands leads us to the life we were always meant to live. That doesn’t mean our lives on earth are easy, but it does mean that, “we have fellowship with Him.” (1 John 1:6) It does mean that He’s going to bring us peace. It does mean that His joy is our strength. (Nehemiah 8:10)

When we remember that our love for God is perfected in our obedience to Him, it should inspire us to obey Him more, because we want to love Him more. Remembering that our obedience will make us love God more should also give us confidence to obey Him, because we know Who God is, and we know it’s safe to follow such a loving God.

Walk Like Jesus - 1 John 2:6

It’s important that we don’t get the wrong idea about obedience. When the Bible says we should obey God, it isn’t talking about lifeless rules being followed. There are some rules, and we should follow them–but John is talking about so much more than that.

Obedience in the Bible is leading us to something. John has already told us that obedience leads us to becoming people who love God perfectly.

Now John tells us that the person who obeys Jesus will live in Him. He has talked about this in 1 John 1–we cannot have fellowship with God Who is light unless we are walking in the light.

READ MORE: GOD IS LIGHT: WALK WITH HIM THERE

John continues by saying that if we are living with Jesus and in obedience to Him, we have to walk just as Jesus also walked. This idea of “walking” as Jesus walked is a word picture describing our whole lives. The Bible is saying our lives should be transformed to look like Jesus. Our actions should look like Jesus’s actions, but it isn’t just our actions. It’s also our attitudes, our emotions, and the way we think about the world and other people. It’s the way we process information, the way we respond instinctively to people and situations; all this and more should change, being transformed to be just like Jesus. That’s what John means when he says that anyone who lives with Jesus must “walk just as Jesus walked.” 

Our whole lives must become like Jesus.

It’s not mindless or lifeless obedience. 

It’s that everything about us is saturated with His light, so that our whole life–inside and outside–is transformed.

Walk in the Light of Love - 1 John 2:7-11

If we are living as Jesus lived and walking as He walked, our lives should be characterized by love for eachother. The Bible makes much of the need to love people who are outside the family of believers. “Love your enemies,” Jesus says, “and pray for those who persecute you.” (Matthew 5:44) That is not John’s emphasis in 1 John 2:7. John commands Jesus’s followers to love other believers. 

John says that anyone who hates a brother or sister in Christ is walking in darkness. They are far from God. They are not in the relationship with God that they could or should have. John actually gives this teaching in verse 8 and again in verse 11. His emphasis is clear.

John doesn’t just say that hatred for fellow Christians is a hallmark of darkness, he says that love for fellow Christians is a sure sign of walking in the light. John tells us that this kind of love is proof in both directions. Love of God’s people is proof that we are walking in the light. The absence of this love is proof that we are walking in the darkness.

John goes on and says that when we walk in the light of love–particularly love for fellow Christians–there is nothing to make us stumble. This is an interesting word picture. John seems to be saying that the love that God puts in our hearts for our fellow Christians can guide us in the way that we are supposed to go. This is a powerful idea. Our steps can be guided by love. 

We would certainly have to understand what real love is in order to do this–too often we misunderstand love as permissiveness or we think love is to approve of believers’s disobedience to God. This of course is not love. John has already connected the ideas of love and obedience. Jesus makes the same connection in John 14:15.

On the other hand, too often we don’t give any thought to love at all when we interact with others. We consider only ourselves. We don’t think about how our actions or inaction, our words or lack of words, our help or lack of help will affect our fellow believers. John says in 1 John 2:11 that this hatred for our brothers and sisters in Christ blinds us so that we don’t know where we are going. Our paths, which are meant to be illuminated by God and His Word (Psalm 119:105) and His love, (1 John 2:10) are now dark and treacherous. We’ll never be able to see where we are going and make the next right choice unless we let God’s love light our steps.

We must walk in love because Jesus walked in love. If we’re going to walk like Jesus walked, then every part of us must be tuned to love. How does what I’m doing right now show love to the people around me? How am I loving my family with this choice? How does my attitude show love to the people around me? How did the way I reacted to that situation affect the people around me? How did my emotions lead me toward or away from love, and what needs to change so that love is promoted next time? These are the kinds of questions we should be asking.

If anyone claims to live in Jesus, they must walk in love, just as Jesus walked.

Jesus models love for us in the greatest way possible—by dying for us as the propitiation for our sins. We are never going to propitiate anyone’s sins because Jesus’s sacrifice was enough to do that for the whole world once and for all. But we can follow His example to show radical love to the people around us. We can follow John’s teaching and be sure to show Jesus’s love especially to those who belong to the family of believers.