1 John 2:7

7. First interlude. Twice in this chapter St. John interrupts the current of thought in order to express the personal purpose and feeling of his writing. Other writers would have done this at the introduction; but he has begun with the full propounding of his subject, and his personal references come in parenthetically by the way. This interlude meets the objection that his doctrine is a novelty. The commandment is not, as some think, simply the law of brotherly love, (though 1 John 2:10-11 show that to be included,) but the entire preceding injunction of 3-6, requiring our knowing and abiding in our great propitiation that is, in the divine fellowship and perfect love summarized in 1 John 1:6-7. This was no new commandment; indeed, they had heard it from the beginning; that is, from the first announcement of Christ’s gospel to them. This newly delivered injunction is the same old word they had ever heard, even from the beginning of their Christian knowledge, 8. Again That is, under another view of the subject, the commandment is new. It is, on opposite sides, at the same time both old and new. Even when first preached through Christ it was old, both as a natural and eternal divine obligation, and as a record in the Hebrew revelation; and it was new by the revelation of our example, propitiation, and advocate, Jesus Christ; and this newness is a true thing both in the Christ and in the believer in him and in you. It is true in Christ as unfolding a new force in the law of love; it is true in you as being pledged by your interest in the propitiation (1 John 2:2) to perfect obedience to, and oneness with Christ. The darkness once shading that law of love is past by this revelation of Christ; and the true light now shineth by which the force of that law, or commandment, is made luminous. The old commandment is, therefore, a new one.