1 John 2:7-8

[tqpix]

I don't get this:

7 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.
8 Again, a new commandment I write unto you, which thing is true in him and in you: because the darkness is past, and the true light now shineth.

Can someone please explain this to me?

 

[Theophorus]

He is saying that the "new" commandment, which is to love your brother (and God also), and is repeated throughout the epistle, is the same, or the summation, of the prior commandments of God. Notice that later in 3:11- 12 he repeats the commandment about loving your brother and contrasts it with Cain who slew his brother.
I would say that the "old" refers to the Law of Moses, that being the whole of the first 5 books or the pentatuch, others would limit it to being the Law Moses recieved from God on mt Sinai, and others would say that the "old" is the ten commandments only.

 

[PaladinValer]

The New Commandment is to follow the Torah the way God originally intended people to and the way Jesus revealed to us: not necessarily literally but in its spirit, which is summed up in the Lord's Two Great Commandments.

 

[Mayflower Pilgrim]

The New Commandment is to follow the Torah the way God originally intended people to and the way Jesus revealed to us: not necessarily literally but in its spirit, which is summed up in the Lord's Two Great Commandments.

 

[tqpix]

I guess it's the word "again" that's confusing me. First, he said that he writes no new commandment, then he said "again" he writes a new commandment.

 

[PaladinValer]

Yes, he did.

 

[billwald]

Consider it poetry.

 

[JohnJones]

It was new in the beginning of the gospel, but its old to them because they've had it since the beginning of the gospel.