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I am seeking a new and shiny object. Innovation is cool. The new thing is the holy grail. I love it for sure. Many of us seem to. I am not alone in this.

It is a shock to know that the Word of God is eternal and there is nothing new about it.

  • God’s goal for us to love.
  • It always has been and always will be.

When we do not know God’s love for us and how to love others, it does feel new though. We become new beings in Jesus the Messiah.

May we experience God’s love anew today.

Beloved [Brethren], I am writing you no new commandment, but an old commandment that you had from the beginning. The old commandment is the word that you have heard. 8 At the same time, it is a new commandment that I am writing to you, which is true in him and in you, because the darkness is passing away and the true light is already shining. [1]

1 John 2:7-8

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Let us dig deeper:

Brethren—The oldest manuscripts and versions read instead, “Beloved,” appropriate to the subject here, love.

no new commandment—namely, love, the main principle of walking as the Messiah walked, and that commandment, of which one exemplification is presently given, the love of brethren.

you had from the beginning—from the time that you first heard the good news [gospel] preached.

a new commandment—It was “old,” in that Christians as such had heard it from the first; but “new” (Greek, “kaine,” not “nea”: new and different from the old legal precept) in that it was first clearly promulgated with Christianity; though the inner spirit of the law was love even to enemies.

  • Yet it was enveloped in some bitter precepts which caused it to be temporarily almost unrecognized, till the Good News [Gospel} came.
  • Christianity first put love to brethren on the new and highest motive, instinctive love to Him who first loved us, constraining us to love all, even enemies, thereby walking in the steps of Him who loved us when enemies.
  • So Jesus calls it “new,” Jn 13:34, 35, “Love one another as I have loved you” (the new motive); Jn 15:12.

which thing is true in him and in you—“In the Messiah all things are always true, and were so from the beginning; but in the Messiah and in us conjointly the commandment [the love of brethren] is then true when we acknowledge the truth which is in Him, and have the same flourishing in us” The new commandment finds its truth in its practical realization in the walk of Christians in union with Jesus.

darkness is past—rather “is passing away.” It shall not be wholly “past” until “the Sun of righteousness” shall arise visibly; “the light is now shining” already, though but partially until the day bursts forth.[2]

[1] The Holy Bible: English Standard Version (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles, 2016), 1 Jn 2:7–8.

[2] Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset, and David Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible, vol. 2 (Oak Harbor, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc., 1997), 527–528.