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.