NOTHING NEW

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. 

(1 John 2:7 – NAS)

 
John makes a point of telling his readers that what he is speaking of should not be anything new to them: they have heard these lessons before. In fact, he points out that what he is talking about were the first things they encountered as they began their fellowship with Christ.

It’s part of our human nature to crave something new. We want something fresh to excite us, something different to add variety to the regular routines of life. But we also have a tendency to treat older things with less respect, perhaps because we think age makes them useless. We look at the limitations that descend upon the human body with increased age and we assume that the same is true of all things under the sun, including the standards and laws by which we shape our lives.

But this isn’t want God originally designed, nor does He change the basics of His intentions.

John wants to be clear that the foundation of what he is saying in this letter is the nature of God’s love, and His commandment that we love one another. There is nothing new in this, for it is part of the fabric of the Lord’s creativity from the very beginning of the world. And it is the beginning point of anyone’s walk as a believer in Christ.

We have become believers because (in whatever fashion it came to us) we heard and accepted that Jesus manifested God’s love for us. We have become believers because we know that without God we make a mess of our lives to such a degree we could not possibly come near to the holiness of the Lord, even though that is our deepest rooted desire. We understand that Jesus became the sacrifice that clears the way for us to run directly into the heart of God without having our flaws destroy us.

However it is that we begin our lives in fellowship with Jesus, we know it beings with love. This is nothing new to us. It is the oldest thing in belief, the rock bottom foundation we stand on.

And that is perhaps the strongest metaphor for what John says here.

There is nothing new in the message he seeks to convey. The foundations of our faith and understanding have been there since the beginning of our commitment to following Christ. The love of God is the rock beneath our feet.

What “new thing” could give us a greater, more reliable foundation? What “new thing” would be so secure and certain that we barely think about it?

There is nothing that can be so unendingly certain as the love of Christ. And there is nothing that can be so unendingly live-giving as acting on His commandments.

There’s nothing new in His commandment that we love the Lord and love one another. It is the starting point for all other acts of faith.

Why does John make this point, though?

He was writing at a time when Gnosticism had attempted to invade the practice of the faith. Gnostics enticed people off the path with promises of new, special knowledge that only “the In Crowd” could access. The old lessons were for simpletons: the new lessons they had would give them the world.

John reminds his readers that the reality is they were given the key to God’s kingdom from the very beginning. It was nothing hidden, nothing secret. It was the first thing they learned.

There is nothing deeper, stronger, more lasting and durable than the love of God. And He proved it by dwelling with us as Jesus, sacrificing Himself for us in order to let us draw near to the Most Holy. And when we accept this sacrifice, we accept His commandment to love each other.

What “new lesson” or “new commandment” can be greater than that?

Nothing “new” can supersede that first lesson. Why would we look for such? We knew how great it was from the beginning.