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1 John 2:7–8
“Beloved, I am writing you no new commandment, but an old commandment that you had from the beginning. The old commandment is the word that you have heard. At the same time, it is a new commandment that I am writing to you, which is true in him and in you, because the darkness is passing away and the true light is already shining.”
We return today to John’s first epistle. We have seen the first of John’s tests of life: that those who truly know God will keep His commandments and walk as Christ walked (1 John 2:3–6). In today’s passage, John begins to specify the commandment that he chiefly has in view, saying that the duty of love is at once an old commandment and a new one (vv. 7–8).
In verse 7, John addresses his readers tenderly as “beloved” and writes, “I am writing you no new commandment, but an old commandment that you had from the beginning.” The commandment in view is not novel. It was given to God’s people in the Mosaic law, where the Israelites were charged to love their neighbors as themselves (Lev. 19:18). Long before John took up his pen, the church had heard this teaching from the Apostles, who themselves received it from the Lord Jesus during His earthly ministry.
This insistence on the antiquity of the commandment served as a quiet rebuke to the false teachers troubling the Ephesian churches. Those teachers presented themselves as bearers of new revelation, novel insights into divine things that supposedly surpassed the simple ethics of the Apostolic message. John reminds his readers that the heart of the Christian life is not novelty but the ancient summons to love one’s brother and sister in Christ.
Yet in verse 8 John adds a further dimension: “At the same time, it is a new commandment that I am writing to you, which is true in him and in you, because the darkness is passing away and the true light is already shining.” The old commandment to love takes on a new character in the era inaugurated by Christ. The Lord Jesus revealed the love of God in His own person and ministry, and by His death and resurrection He has dawned on the world as the true Light. Those united to Him by faith have been transferred from darkness into this Light. The commandment is new because the age is new and because love itself has been embodied and accomplished in the One whom we now know.
This is why John can say that the new commandment is true “in him and in you.” It is true in Christ, who fulfilled it perfectly in His own life. And it becomes true in His people as we are conformed by the Spirit to walk in the love that marked our Savior. As the darkness of the present age recedes before the light of Christ, love takes on its proper shape at last in those who belong to Him.
Coram Deo Living before the face of God
The love that we owe to our fellow believers is not a higher Christian achievement reserved for advanced disciples but an ancient duty given to every member of God’s covenant people. May we receive it afresh today as the lived shape of our union with Christ, who first loved us and walked it perfectly before us.
For further study
- Deuteronomy 6:4–5
- John 13:34–35
- Romans 13:8–10
- 1 Thessalonians 4:9–10
The bible in a year
- Isaiah 15–17
- Ephesians 3