New Love

Dear friends,  I am not writing you a new command but an old one, which you have had since the beginning. This old command is the message you have heard. Yet I am writing you a new command;  its truth is seen in him and in you, because the darkness is passing  and the true light  is already shining (1 John 2:7-8)

John speaks here about a commandment which is at one and the same time an old commandment and a new commandment. What is the old commandment of which John speaks? It was old in the sense that   it is   already there in the Old Testament. In Leviticus 19:18 the Law says, "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." The commandment already existed in ancient Law. It was old in the sense that this was not the first time that John's hearers had heard it.
 
But this commandment was new in that it had been raised to a completely new standard in the life and teachings of Jesus Christ. It could be argued that people did not really know what unconditional love was until they saw it in Jesus. A hamburger can become a new thing to a person when they taste it after it has been prepared by a master chef. A piece of music can become a new thing when orchestrated by a master conductor. An old thing can become a new experience in the hands of a master. And love became new in Jesus Christ.
 
In Jesus love became new in the extent to which it reached. In Jesus love reached out to the sinner and the outcast. Love became new in Jesus because He widened its boundaries until there were none outside its embrace.   In Jesus love became new in the lengths to which it would go. Nothing anyone could ever do to Him could turn Jesus' love to hate. He could even pray for the mercy of God on those who were nailing him to the Cross.
 
In Jesus love reached a standard which it had never reached before, and it is by that standard that Christians far and wide are commanded to follow.