Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to 1 John · About this commentary
An Old Commandment and a New One
1 John 2:7-8
7 Brothers, I write no new commandment to you, but an old commandment which you had from the beginning. The old commandment is the word which you heard from the beginning. · WEB
The same commandment is called old and new in consecutive sentences, and the letter does not treat that as a contradiction to resolve.
Verse 7 insists on age. No new commandment, but an old one which you have had from the beginning — and the old commandment is identified as the word they already heard. Nothing is being added to what these readers received, which is precisely the reassurance people need after teachers claiming advancement have left the congregation 1 John 2:19.
Verse 8 then says the opposite without apology: again, a new commandment I write to you. The letter offers no reconciliation of the two statements, and the reason is embedded in what follows.
What makes it new is not its content but its situation. It is true in him and in you — it has been lived out in Christ, and it is now being lived out in the readers. A command that has been kept is not the same thing it was when it had only been given, though the words have not changed.
The reason given is temporal: the darkness is passing and the true light already shines. Both verbs are present. The darkness is not gone and the light is not waiting, which is the letter's honest picture of the readers' moment — and it prepares the next paragraph, where a man can claim to be in the light and still be standing in the dark 1 John 2:9.
What the commandment actually is, the letter does not say here. It says it later 1 John 3:23.
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