I remember reading and being very confused by 1 Jn 2:7-8 the first time I read it on my own. The text says:

“Beloved, I am not writing a new commandment to you, but an old commandment which you have had from the beginning; the old commandment is the word which you have heard. On the other hand, I am writing a new commandment to you, which is true in Him and in you, because the darkness is passing away and the true Light is already shining.”

Questions like these were going on in my mind: What is the old command? What is the new command? Are there even two different commands? Why does he not just tell us what the commandment is right away? Is that command in 1 Jn 2:15 the command he is talking about? Why does the teaching after 1 Jn 2:7-8 not seem new in any way (it seems consistent with Old Testament teaching)? But when you look at what John is doing in this section, questions soon become answered or are outright dispelled.

            1 John 2:7-8 has a context, and that context helps us understand what John is doing. This should not at all be a surprising idea; words, phrases, and even sentences are defined and explained by the other words, phrases, and sentences that surround them. John has been focusing on the idea of God being light (1 Jn 1:5) and how we can be sure we truly have fellowship with Him (1 Jn 1:6-7). He continues down this line of thinking for a large portion of the book, sometimes using different ideas, such as God being love, to push forward thoughtful self-examination in his readers. The overarching idea that John is getting at in these sections is something like “let’s be genuine Christians,” or said negatively, “let’s not be fakers” (cf. 1 Jn 1:4; 5:13). Knowing this will help us see what John is doing in the verses following 1 Jn 2:7-8.

            Not only does 1 Jn 2:7-8 take place in a larger discussion on being a genuine follower of Jesus, but these verses are also directly related to those that follow them. 1 John 2:7-11 makes up a consistent idea, and it will be this section that answers the questions posed above. So, what connects vv. 7-8 to vv. 9-11? The answer is the idea of light and darkness. The new paragraph begins in v. 7 by an address to the readers, “beloved,” and then John talks about writing an old commandment. In v. 8, he talks about writing a new commandment. In this verse, he explains how this command can be seen as new, specifically because of Jesus, who is the light (Jn 1:5, 9; 8:12), and whose work has made it such that the darkness is passing away. From here, John goes off about how you can know if you are in the light or not, with a focus on loving your brothers. And in this lies the answer to our questions, because the test in vv. 9-11 reveal what the commandment is. It turns out the commandment is to love, specifically to love your brothers.

            This is an old commandment, found stated explicitly in the books of Moses, but it is also a new commandment because of where we are at in redemption history. Moses wrote in Leviticus the words of the LORD when He said, “you shall love your neighbor as yourself” (Lev 19:18). Jesus Himself teaches this, and He says that the whole Old Testament hangs upon this command and the greater command to love God (Matt 22:36-40). So, this is an old commandment – it has been prescribed long before the incarnation and continues to be prescribed after Christ’s ascension (see Rom 13:8-10; Jam 2:8). Clearly the command to love one another was not only prominent in the early church but existed before Christ’s coming, which makes it “the word which you have heard.” But it is not just an old commandment; this is not an either/or situation. This is a both/and, it is an old and new commandment. The reason it is new is because of the new reality that exists through Jesus. Being truly God, Jesus brought light into the world and even now the light is shining because He has conquered the grave for us. We live in an age where a command to love can be obeyed in a way like never before, because Christ has come, and not only physically shown us what it means to love (see 1 Jn 2:6), but His ministry for us right now makes it so that we can truly love (see Jn 14:12-14; 1 Jn 2:1-2). This command to love is old yet new.

            But now we are left with a new question: why was John so cryptic in revealing what the old yet new command was? And the answer to that lies again in the context. We have already discussed that John is more broadly working on this idea of a genuine disciple of Jesus. And in the preceding verses in chapter two, he has employed a particular way of doing this. He begins with the phrase [A] “the one who says” and from there, we see [B] a claim, [C] the evidence, and [D] the truth. This four-part strategy is done in both 1 Jn 2:4 and 1 Jn 2:6. 1 John 2:4 says “[A] The one who says, [B] ‘I have come to know Him,’ [C] and does not keep His commandments, [D] is a liar, and the truth is not in him.” This same four-part strategy is employed again in 1 Jn 2:9, the verse that explicitly begins the love/hate discussion. So, John could have said, “The commandment is to love the brothers,” and he does do this later on in the book (1 Jn 3:11), but this commandment is one the readers know so well, so in a way, it is unnecessary to spell it out (see Jn 13:35). “You must love other Christians” is Christianity 101. It should be the first thing that pops into the head of a believer when he is told to act like a genuine disciple of Jesus. So, you should be able to walk into a church and say “What is the commandment?” and you should hear people say “love.” This is essentially what John does at the end of verse 8. So, he is not really being cryptic, we just don’t know the basics of being a follower of Jesus well enough, and that’s why we miss what John is doing.

Bibliography: “1-3 John,” BECNT, Robert W. Yarbrough, pp. 99-102