Beloved, I write no new commandment to you, but an old commandment, which ye have had from the beginning. The old commandment is the word which ye heard.
John writes with warm affection and tells them he is putting nothing new before them. What he asks about obedience and love is what they already received. So what does "the beginning" mean here, and why repeat an old command at all?
Older English translations begin this verse with "Brethren." The better reading is "Beloved."
In 1 John 2:7 we should read "Beloved," not "Brethren." The writer's heart was warm toward the people he addressed, and he wanted them just as warm toward each other. "The old commandment which we had from the beginning" is found early in the New Testament. The first word of our Lord recorded in the Gospel is "Follow me" (John 1:43). The last is the same, but stronger: "You follow me!" (John 21:22).
John's Gospel opens with "in the beginning." His letter says "from the beginning." The two phrases are not the same, and this verse shows the difference.
1 John 2:7 is equally conclusive. "An old commandment" which the saints had "from the beginning" cannot mean God's eternal purposes as such. It can only mean what our Lord commanded when He was with them here on earth. They did not hear it in eternity. They heard it in time, and only at that time... "He that is from the beginning" is the very same person as He "who was in the beginning." Both truths matter greatly to faith, but they are distinct and must never be merged into one another.
The same difference explains why the letter reads unlike the Gospel, though John wrote both.
In the Gospel, "in the beginning" points back to the whole earlier existence of God. The phrase states the eternal existence of Christ as the Word. John's great subject is God made known, and divine life shown on earth. So he speaks of the eternal Word and of His coming as a man. But in the letter he goes on to this same life reproduced in us. With that in view, he traces this life back to its origin and to its perfect display — what Christ was on earth. 1 John 2:7 seems to prove that this is the force of the passage. In days when people want something more perfect than Christ, it matters to insist on what was from the beginning.
The verse ends by tying the old commandment to "the word that you have heard." The two terms are not interchangeable.
He added nothing new to what God had already revealed. The commandment was as old as the Son of God come in flesh. Every blessing, every responsibility took its character from this marvellous beginning. The commandment was "the word" given by the Son of God on earth. Note that we cannot turn this around and say the word was the commandment. "The word" is a broader term than "the commandment."
The surrounding verses make the content clear enough — this is not a general call to keep rules.
John was conscious that the commandment he was writing about was not new. It had already existed "from the beginning." (This expression first appears in the first verse of chapter 1. It refers to the time when the Lord Jesus was alive here on earth.) The context here shows that the subject is the Lord's commandment to love one another.
A teacher who offers something newer is in a worse place, not a better one.
If it were not so — if it were new in this sense — so much the worse for the one who put it forward. It would no longer be the expression of the perfect life of Christ Himself. It would be something else, or a falsification of what Christ had set forth. This matches the principle already stated: obedience to the commandments of Christ. What He said was the expression of what He was.
The same test applies to anyone claiming fuller light today.
Anyone claiming to write something new about this life would be making the false claim to give light beyond what is already perfectly expressed in Christ.
This is why an old word steadies believers when the times around them change.
God's ways towards His people may vary with their faithfulness or unfaithfulness... but God's plans never change: His purposes are eternal... It is always so. In the darkest times faith finds its refuge in "that which was from the beginning."
- Beloved. John's heart is warm toward his readers, and he wants them warm toward each other.
- Beginning. "From the beginning" means the time when Christ lived on earth, not eternity. No one heard this command in eternity.
- Word. The old commandment is the word the Son of God gave on earth. But "the word" is the broader term of the two.
- Love. The command itself is the Lord's own: love one another.
- Nothing newer. Anything offered as beyond this is not progress. It is a falsification of what Christ set forth. In dark days, faith returns to what was there from the start.
Again, I write a new commandment to you, which thing is true in him and in you, because the darkness is passing and the true light already shines.
John has just said he is writing nothing new. Now he calls the same commandment new, because what was only true in Christ is now true in His people as well.
The commandment is old because it goes back to Christ's own words and life on earth. It is new because of where it now lives.
They were looking for something new. One thing, he says, I boast of is that it is old, because it is what Christ was when He was on the earth. But if you want something new, it is Christ as your life by the Holy Spirit now. It was true in Him when He was here below, but now all this truth of the divine nature is as true of you as of Christ. It is old, because it was in Christ Himself; but it is new, because it is in you, as well as in Christ Himself.
The commandment here is love for one another. Something turned it from a powerless demand into a new one.
The second proof is love in verses 7-11. It was an old commandment without power when our Lord was here with His disciples. It became a new one when He died and rose. It was always true in Him, and then, in that way, it became "true in him and in you."
The men who first heard the command were not yet living it.
The old commandment was true in Christ. When He said it, He loved them all, as none could love but God. He loved them perfectly. Do you imagine that they loved one another at that time? Were they not as jealous of each other as you could well imagine godly people to be? We find them always ready to quarrel, keenly arguing which of them should be greatest.
One phrase in this verse unlocks the whole letter.
The Gospel shows us things that are true in Him. But the Epistle speaks of "a new commandment … which thing is true in Him and in you" (1 John 2:8). This brief sentence gives us a key to the whole letter.
In John's Gospel the light shone and the darkness did not take it in. Here the outcome is different, and the change came with redemption.
Note the remarkable contrast between John 1:5, "The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it," and 1 John 2:8. … In His life He was the Light of men. But men were darkness, opposite in nature, and the Light did not dispel the darkness at all. It stayed, as before, darkness, and did not take in the Light. But redemption came in — there was a new state of things. Christ had overcome the power of darkness, and brought into existence a new condition of men in resurrection.
There is a real difference between "is passing" and "is past."
The Apostle wrote, "The darkness is passing," and not, "is past." We must wait for the world to come before we can say it is past. Yet it is clearly passing away, for the true light has begun to shine in Christ and in those that are His. When God acts in judgment and puts out the false life and light of this world, then the darkness will be past indeed.
The darkness gives way one person at a time.
The darkness then is not past, indeed far from it; but it is passing. Where? In every added Christian. … wherever grace acts, and no matter where, if there are fresh saints of God, the darkness so far passes away. It passes effectively in every Christian.
A believer who looks at how little light he shows may find that claim too generous.
In Him is no darkness at all (1 John 1:5). But in us the darkness is passing. The true light already shines — the life of Christ (and the life was the light of men) given to us and displayed in us. In us the light may shine only a little, and may dispel only a little of the darkness — yet in wonderful grace He credits us with it being "true in him and in you."
- Old — the command to love is not an invention; it is what Christ said and was while He was here on earth.
- New — His death and resurrection made it true in His people, so the same commandment is new in them.
- True — "true in Him and in you" is the key to the whole letter: the Gospel shows it in Him, the letter looks for it in us.
- Passing — the darkness is passing, not past; it goes back one believer at a time, and only the world to come will say it is gone.
- Credited — the light in us may be small, yet grace still counts it as true in us as it is in Him.
He who says he is in the light, and hates his brother, is in the darkness until now.
John's letter is full of claims people make about themselves. This verse tests one of them — saying you are in the light — and the test is how you treat your brother.
The verse begins with what a man says. In this letter, that word is a warning sign. A real believer does not go around announcing his spiritual position.
"Saying" has a bad character in this letter. The true saint of God does not speak casually about being in the light. He knows he is, he blesses God for it, but he is serious about what is so solemn. He leaves it to others to boast, "I am in the light," while they mean, about a true saint, "You are in the dark." What could be more insulting to the Lord, or less worthy of a Christian? The right and true course is not saying but showing that one walks in the light by a godly life.
A person can claim something he does not have. So John gives a way to check the claim.
To claim to be a child of God, to claim to be born from above, to say, We know God and dwell in the Son, is to claim to be in the light — the light of life. But a person can make that claim when the reality behind it is missing. So claims have to be tested, and the test of this one is very simple. If there is no active love toward those who share the same nature and life, the claim to be in the light is a false claim.
Why does one test settle so much? Because in God, light and love are never apart.
If the light is now going to shine in and through us, we ourselves must be in the light. If anyone says he is in the light and yet hates his brother, his claim is false. He is in darkness. That is, he does not know God — he is not in the light of God revealed in Christ. No one can be in the light of God who is not in the life of God, which is love.
The ESV ends the verse "is still in darkness." Older translations read "is in the darkness until now" — and that wording reaches back over the man's whole past.
Notice, he does not say only that he is in darkness now, as some would have it. That is true, but not the whole truth. He is in the darkness, and he never was out of it. He is in the darkness until now. That does not allow the possibility of a soul having been in the light, in the sense in which John is speaking here, and getting out of it again.
The word "brother" here works at the level of claim. The family a man claims decides whom he owes love.
Notice that it is a claim; a profession. The Lord always takes men up on their profession. His profession sets his responsibility. In his actual state he is not a brother. As to his profession he has brothers that he ought to love. His hatred of them proves that he is in the darkness.
This hatred has a specific target. It goes after the life of God in a believer, not his faults.
This is not hating the traits of the flesh in a Christian. It is hating the believer because he has the life that shone in all its loveliness in the Son of God… A true believer loves other believers because they are his brothers, because they share the divine nature and belong to the family of God. The flesh may show itself, in us or in them, and hold that love back. But the love is there, and it is normal for a believer to express it.
The verse is not only a warning to people whose claim is empty. It also tells a believer what to do when a brother truly wrongs him.
If a brother is hard, impatient, or faulty in some other way, this is meant to test you. Be all the more careful if anything in him upsets you. But why should not your heart go out to win him? Why give up love where it is so much needed? You ought also to pity, if you believe a brother has done serious wrong. Should he not be a matter for your earnest prayer to God, however much you condemn the evil?
- Claim — the verse opens with a man's own words about himself. This letter treats "saying" with suspicion. A life shows real light; a mouth only announces it.
- Test — every claim needs checking, and the check is simple. Where love toward fellow believers is not working, the claim is false.
- Nature — the test works because light and love meet in the life of God. No one is in God's light who is not in God's life.
- Verdict — "until now" reaches back across his whole past. He is not someone who left the light; he was never in it.
- Turn — a brother's faults are there to test you. Pity him, pray for him, and win him with love.
He that loves his brother abides in light, and there is no occasion of stumbling in him.
John's letter has just drawn a line: whoever claims to be in the light while hating a brother is still in the dark. Verse 10 gives the other side. It raises two questions. Why is love the proof that a person is in the light? And what does it mean that such a person trips nobody up?
The order of John's sentence matters.
I find the apostle John saying, "Whoever loves his brother abides in the light." He does not say, "Whoever abides in the light loves his brother." Of course that is quite true. But my loving my brother is the evidence that I abide in the light. And the result follows: "in him there is no cause for stumbling."
Words are not the test here.
Whoever loves his brother abides in the light. He doesn't have to say he is in the light. He doesn't make claims about himself. The love he expresses, flowing from the life that he has, proves it.
Love works as a test because of who God is.
So far we have had the first great principle of the divine life — obedience — walking in righteousness. Now comes the other side: loving the brothers and sisters. You are in the light, for God is light. Well then, God is love, and you cannot have one part of God without the other. If you have the light, you must have the love. When Christ was here, He was the light of the world. But He was love too. So if you have Him as your nature, you will have both.
The love John tests by is not a personality trait.
You find mere pleasant nature in dogs and other animals. That is animal nature. But love for the brothers and sisters is a divine motive. I love them because they are of God. I have fellowship in divine things with them. A man may be very unpleasant by nature, and yet love the brothers and sisters with all his heart. Another may be very pleasant, and have no love for them at all.
The next verse gives the opposite case, and the contrast makes the point clear.
This is the contrast with verse 11. There the one who hates his brother is in darkness, walks in darkness, and does not know where he is going. We have no light in ourselves, just as the moon only has light when it is in the light of the sun. So the one who hates his brother is in darkness. He is all dark himself, and so he becomes a cause of stumbling to others. He stumbles himself and acts as a stumbling-block.
But not every offence is the believer's fault. Christ Himself offends people.
If he stumbles at Christ, it is his own fault. We should never be a stumbling-block by not being like Christ. There is no greater snare, and no greater sin, than the fear of offending when Christ is the offence.
This love is tested when a brother gives you good reason to strike back.
"Whoever loves his brother abides in the light"; and he loves, even though there were painful inconsistencies that made a heavy demand on his love. In this way love is only proved the more... If retaliation had been at work, or an ungracious wish for harm to someone who had failed, there would be a cause for stumbling. Such is a man's natural feeling under provocation, but it is the denial of Christ, and so of the Christian.
John states the case in absolute terms. Christians still know the flesh at work in them.
As so often in 1 John, the believer is seen here as in the divine nature in an absolute way. Sadly, in our mixed condition, the flesh often shows itself, and the flesh does give cause for stumbling, even in a Christian.
- Nature — God is light and God is love. You cannot have one part of Him without the other. So light in a person shows up as love.
- Evidence — the verse runs from love back to light, not from light to love. Love is the proof, and it makes no announcement.
- Source — this love is not a pleasant temperament. It is a divine motive. Unpleasant people can have it, and charming people can lack it.
- Effect — the one who loves neither trips himself nor trips others. The one who hates is dark, and he trips other people up.
- Limit — never cause offence by being unlike Christ. But never fear offence when Christ Himself is what offends.
But he that hates his brother is in the darkness, and walks in the darkness, and knows not where he goes, because the darkness has blinded his eyes.
John moves from what a person says to where he lives. Is a man who hates his brother a believer gone wrong, or someone who was never in the light at all?
The verse does not begin with what the man does. It starts with what he is, and the walk makes that public.
"Whoever hates his brother is in the darkness." This is his state, and that is what really decides the matter. Anyone who hates his brother is a murderer in principle, as John shows later (1 John 3:15)... It is not just what he does or how he walks — he is in darkness. His ruthless behaviour shows it. Words and deeds proclaim his state. What are his words? "He hates his brother." And what his deeds? "He hates his brother." "He walks in the darkness." The walk shows what the man really is. We walk in the light because we are in the light. It is not a theory but a deep reality.
Hatred settles the question, and the reason lies in who God is.
The first great principle of the divine life is obedience — walking in righteousness. Now comes the other side: loving the brothers. You are in the light, for God is light. Well then, God is love, and you cannot have one part of God without the other. If you have the light, you must have the love. When Christ was here, He was the light of the world. But He was love too. So if you have Him as your nature, you will have both... This is true in detail too. If I am walking in hatred toward my brothers, I am walking in darkness. But the apostle only gives the principle here.
The phrase is not loose language for a bad mood. Commentators differ on how far it can apply to a believer. Darby grants that walking in hatred is walking in darkness "in detail." Others limit the words to a fixed position outside the light.
This is not simply someone in a state of darkness. That can happen to a true Christian who falls under a cloud and holds bitter thoughts against his brother. It means someone who is in "the darkness" — a system where there is no revelation of God. "The darkness" is the absence of the revelation of God. It stands in contrast to "the true light", which is the revelation of God.
John weighs the word "brother" as a claim, not as a certainty. And "until now" rules out the idea of a man slipping out of light he once had.
He is in the darkness, and he never was out of it. He is in the darkness until now. This leaves no room for a soul who was once in the light — in the sense John means here — and then got out of it again... Notice that it is always profession, so John tests it as such. The brother by profession counts as a brother. There is responsibility in the relationship a man professes, whether it is real or not.
He is not standing still. He is going somewhere, and that is the tragedy of it.
There is no middle ground here. John is emphatic: a person is either in the light or in darkness. Love goes with light, and hatred goes with darkness. No true believer hates another. That is completely contrary to the new nature. But darkness is the very home of the unbeliever. What is more, he walks there. He makes progress, no doubt, but in evil. He has no definite end in view, so he is an aimless wanderer, his eyes blinded by the darkness he has chosen.
Nothing lights the road ahead of such a man, because he has no living hope on it.
Those marked by enmity to the children of God are therefore in the darkness. They live and walk in the darkness; blinded by the darkness in which they walk, they do not know where they are going. The light of the Christian hope and prospect does not shine on their path; they do not have in their souls the cheer of trusting Christ as "the way, and the truth, and the life" (John 14:6).
The object of this hatred is not a person's faults. It is the life of God in him.
This is not hating the traits of the flesh in a Christian. It is hating the believer because he has the life that shone in all its loveliness in the Son of God... A true believer loves his brothers and sisters because they are brothers and sisters. They have the divine nature and belong to the family of God. The flesh may show itself, in us or in them, and hold love back. But the love is there, and it is normal for the believer to express it.
- Darkness as home. Hatred is not first an action but an address. The man is in the darkness, and his words and deeds only announce where he lives.
- Darkness in motion. Blinded by the darkness he chose, he still walks and still makes progress — but with no end in view, heading somewhere he cannot see.
- Darkness exposed. God is light and love. A claim to the light that carries hatred collapses, because you cannot hold one half of His nature.
- Darkness tested. "Until now" means he never left the light, because he was never in it. John weighs the profession, and hatred of the divine life in another sinks it.