1 John 2:7-11

The new commandment, which is also old: that of brotherly love, 1 John 2:7.

1 John 2:7. Beloved introducing a new view of the subject by a term appropriate, no new commandment write I unto you, but an old commandment which ye had from the beginning. The apostle had spoken of ‘commandments' and of the one ‘word,' but he had not as yet said ‘commandment.' Now, our Lord had associated the latter with brotherly love as a ‘new commandment' (John 13:34): hence he distinguishes between his Master's ‘giving' and his own ‘writing.' ‘What I now write is not new, as He gave it: for the old commandment is the word which ye heard in the ever memorable saying that lived in the Church from the beginning of the Christian revelation.'

1 John 2:8. Again, resuming and as it were correcting, there is a sense in which a new commandment I write unto you, which thing is true in him and in you: ‘my saying that it is new is a true thing both as it respects Him who “gave” it and you who read what I “write.” It was new with reference to the old law, which the Saviour fulfilled and consummated and re-enacted in the supreme self-sacrifice rehearsed or anticipated in the feet-washing at the time when He gave it; the law of love was perfected and proclaimed anew, and with an illustration never given to it before. It is new in us, who fulfil it with a new spirit, after a new example, and with new motives, as in short a commandment which is the fulfilment and the fulfiller of all law or word of God.

Because the darkness is passing away, and the True Light now shineth. When St. John said ‘true in Him,' he referred to Christ, whose ‘walk' had been spoken of, as also to the Speaker of the new commandment unnamed. He still defines Him without name as the ‘True Light:' light as opposed to the darkness of sin, and true, as the reality of which all former revelation was the shadow and precursor. But the Person of Christ is now lost in His manifestation: the perfect revelation of law and of love in their unity is fully come; the darkness of self and sin is only in act of passing.

1 John 2:9. It would require a long sentence to supply the unexpanded thought here. In nothing is the newness of the evangelical teaching more evidently seen than in the diametrical opposition it establishes between loving and hating. There is no middle sphere: in the Gospel, love is taught in its purity and perfection as the light of life in the soul, which leaves no part dark, no secret occasion of sin being undiscovered and unremoved; and hate is taught as the synonym of not loving, being the secret germ of all selfishness. Hence he that saith he is in the light, and hateth his brother, is in the darkness until now, notwithstanding the light shining around, and notwithstanding his profession, and notwithstanding his possible dwelling among Christians whom he calls brethren.

1 John 2:10-11. Here there is no ‘but:' we have a pair of counterparts strictly united. He that loveth his brother his brother being every living man, in this passage as in some others abideth in the light. It is presupposed that he is in it; but for the sake of what follows the abiding is emphasized; as indeed the ‘abiding' always follows hard on the ‘is:' and there is none occasion of stumbling in him. Stumbling-block or offence is sometimes what makes others to fall either intentionally or innocently or in-advertently. But here it is that secret selfishness which takes manifold forms, almost all the forms of sin: the light from Christ entering through the spiritual eye makes the whole spiritual body full of light, and nothing remains undiscovered or un-removed that could cause the fulfiller of this law to fall. It is the high ideal of the ‘new commandment; ‘but one that is here said to be realized in him in whom ‘the love of God is perfected' or has its full effect. But now comes in the awful antithesis, containing the whole history of the loveless spirit he that hateth his brother who does not love his neighbour as himself is in the darkness, and abideth in or walketh in the darkness it is his sphere, and he both receives and diffuses it and knoweth not whither he goeth: ‘whither,' because he is in the darkness, and it hath not yet been revealed what the end of that will be, ‘how great is that darkness' ‘he goeth,' because the darkness ‘hath blinded,' as it were once for all, his eyes to the path on which he is.