The First Epistle Of John

As we have before seen, it is not John's object to propound anything new to the churches, but to awaken them to a living sense of that which had always constituted the burden of his instructions; to guide them in the right application of that which they already knew. What he had always held up before them as the one command of the Lord, the sum. and substance of all other commands; as the foundation whereon rested the essential nature of practical Christianity; this is what he would have them lay to heart anew, and this he introduces with a new personal address: "Brethren, I write no new commandment unto you, but an old commandment which ye had from the beginning. The old commandment is the word which ye have heard from the beginning."

We here find confirmation of what we have before remarked, viz. that although John speaks of commandments in the plural, yet he does not mean a number of single commands; for he here refers them all back to that One, which is itself no new commandment, but has been known to them from the first proclamation of the Gospel, and is here designated as the Word which they have heard from the beginning. We are not to understand by it merely the word as preached by John himself in these churches, but also as made known to them by the Apostle Paul. It was still, although in different forms, the same word which had ever been preached to them and received by them; and this preached word had for its central point that one command.

We shall now be able, of ourselves, to perceive what John means by this one command. It is the command which Christ bequeathed as his last legacy to his disciples, -- the token by which they should be recognized as such, -- after he had instituted the holy supper as the pledge and the symbolic seal of his own ever-continued fellowship with them, and of their consequent mutual fellowship with one another; the command namely, that they should exercise towards each other the same self-sacrificing love which Christ had manifested for them, and would continue to manifest even unto the end. (John xiii.34, 35). He himself (John xv.10, ff.), sums up all single commands in this "new commandment," as he there terms it, in what sense we shall presently consider. From all this it is evident, that the Apostle cannot here be speaking of single isolated commands, in the sense in which they are so regarded from the standpoint of the Law. For this Love is not a thing to be enjoined by an outward law, -- is not a thing to be placed as a single command side by side with others. Love is something which can be produced only from within, which manifests its presence in the living spirit as an inward necessity, which contains in itself the impulse to all good and makes all other commands superfluous. The aim of all others is embraced within the scope of this, and in it are they all fulfilled; in the words of Paul, "Love is the fulfilling of the Law." It springs unconstrained, from the inward experience of redemption, from fellowship with Christ, and from the new moral bent of life grounded therein.