Summary
Old Command or New? The Answer is Yes
When the apostle John writes to a church besieged by false teachers, he does something curious: he insists he is writing both an old commandment and a new one 1 John 2:7-8. Is it old or new? The Answer is Yes. The command to love is as ancient as creation itself, and yet it has been made entirely new in Jesus Christ.
Love was woven into the fabric of creation from the start. Adam and Eve were made in pure love—love toward God, love toward one another, love toward the creation entrusted to them. Loving was not a chore but their very nature. Then came the rebellion. The moment they ate from the tree God had forbidden, sin entered the world, and with it came the inability to love. They were banished from the garden, and they acted on behalf of all of us. Their separation from pure love became our inheritance.
The command, however, did not disappear. Through Moses the Lord told Israel, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself" Leviticus 19:18. Centuries of rebellion followed, then four hundred silent years between the Testaments. The command stood; mankind could not keep it. Held up against Paul's description of love—patient, kind, not envious or boastful, not irritable or resentful 1 Corinthians 13:4-7—we stand condemned. Trying to love our neighbor in our own strength is exhausting and irritating precisely because it is no longer natural to us. The command to love cannot be fulfilled by us.
The command to love is fulfilled in Jesus' grace. "God so loved the world that he gave his only Son" John 3:16-17—not to condemn the world, but to save it. The light entered the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it John 1:5. On the cross, Jesus took the full weight of our darkness upon himself, bore the wrath our sin deserved, and three days later rose victorious. Love itself, the second Person of the Trinity, entered creation to redeem it.
This is why John can say in the very next breath that the commandment is also new—"true in him and in you, because the darkness is passing away and the true light is already shining" 1 John 2:8. Jesus reshapes the old command when he tells his disciples, "Love one another: just as I have loved you" John 13:34. The command is no longer measured by our striving but by his prior love for us. And he did not leave us to attempt it alone; he sent the Holy Spirit, the advocate and helper, to dwell in us and shape us by his grace.
So the answer to the question is yes—both at once. Yes, it is the old command: love your neighbor as yourself. Yes, it is a new command, because it no longer rests on your ability, your willpower, or your desire. It rests on the power of God at work in you through his Holy Spirit. We look upon our neighbor through the lens of Christ, concerned for their well-being and their soul, and we find that we can love—not because we loved first, but because he first loved us 1 John 4:19.
Video citations
- "The Answer is Yes" 5-26-24 — If you would please open your Bible to the first letter of John chapter 2, if you're using a Pue edition of the Bible, this can be found on page 211 in the New Testament. We're in 1 John chapter 2.…