“Again, a new commandment I write to you, which thing is true in Him and in you, because the darkness is passing away, and the true light is already shining.”
Verse 8 expands verse 7. Love in the family of God is the supreme way of demonstrating our fellowship with God.
Again,
John looks at biblical love from another viewpoint than verse seven. Biblical love is not new or novel, for his readers possessed it from the beginning of their salvation. However, from another viewpoint, it is new. John takes a second approach to the same subject of verse seven.
a new commandment I write to you,
Christians heard the “old commandment” to love others from the beginning, but now it is new in the sense of residing in the inner being of the believer. God’s love is old but not obsolete. The example was old, but the exhortation is new.
The principle of divine love in the believer is old from the viewpoint of time, but if we look at it in the context of the incarnation, it is new. Jesus demonstrated it as true. We can see it in believers as well.
PRINCIPLE:
God wants us to love with divine love.
APPLICATION:
God wants us to love as God loves. The good news of the gospel is that it gives us the capacity to love the unlovely. God gives us the ability to love beyond our natural ability.
Jesus never asked His disciples to do something that He did not do. He told them to love each other as He loved them.
Jn 13:34-35, 34 “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another. 35 By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.”
Some of us find that loving other Christians is quite a chore. Nevertheless, true believers love as Jesus loved. It is true in Him and in us. We have the same Savior, so there is a ground for loving one another. There is an affinity in regeneration.
What a word. This word blessed and confirmed 1 John 2:8b
Thanks….