Is the Love Command Old or New?
In John’s Gospel, Jesus says to his disciples, “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another” (John 13:34). Yet, the divine command to love each other is hardly new; it can be found all the way back in Leviticus: “You shall love your neighbor (וְאָהַבְתָּ לְרֵעֲךָ; ve’ahavta le’reakha) as yourself” (Lev 19:18). Did Yeshua forget his Father's earlier declaration, or was there something new in Jesus’ command to his disciples?
If the tension between John 13:34 and Leviticus 19:18 were not enough, the other Johannine literature complicates the old/new dichotomy. Just before stating that “whoever loves their brother or sister abides in the light” (1 John 2:10), the first letter of John reads, “I am writing you not a new commandment (οὐκ ἐντολὴν καινὴν, ouk entolēn kainēn), but an old commandment (ἐντολὴν παλαιὰν, entolēn palaiān) that you had from the beginning. The old commandment is the word that you have heard. At the same time, it is a new commandment that I am writing to you” (1 John 2:7-8). In 2 John 1:5, the author says that it is “not as though I were writing you a new commandment, but the one we have had from the beginning—that we love one another.” Clearly, the writer refers back at least as far as the Mosaic commandment of Leviticus 19:18. Which is it? Is the command old or new?
The broader context of John’s Gospel provides an answer. The key phrase in John 13:34 is Jesus’ call for his disciples to love each other “as I have loved you.” He repeats himself two chapters later, saying, “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you” (John 15:12). Then comes the clarifier: “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends” (15:13). Thus, Yeshua’s command is both old and new: it is old in its reaffirmation of the love described in Leviticus 19:18, but it is new in that it calls for self-sacrifice. Leviticus had required a love for others based on the care for one’s own life, but the newness of Jesus’ commandment lies in the willingness of believers to emulate him by giving up their lives for one another.
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