Old Command

Sometimes the more things change, the more they stay the same. Sure, there’s a lot of new stuff going on - social media and electric cars and drones - but in the end it all comes back to people, and how you make them feel. And sometimes the new technology doesn’t help.

When John wrote to the early church, a couple millennia of history had flowed by and, to those early Christians, it was a brand new world. Christ had come, sin and death had been defeated, the old law had been fulfilled and there was a new law of love. To them, the cross was as new and fresh as the Internet is to us. It was a time of new ways and new ideas.

Yet John, after telling the church that Christians will be marked by the way they obey Christ’s commands and by the way they imitate Christ, writes, “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.” (1 John 2:7).

This new gospel, John says, and this new law of love, are really no different than the standard set at the very start. In the garden of Eden God made man and told him two things: obey God and be productive (by tending the garden). Now Jesus comes, and the new law of love and the core of the Gospel message is to obey Jesus, and be productive (by making disciples).

Why would I expect anything different? After all, the entire point of Jesus’ sojourn on earth and sacrifice on the cross was to fix what Adam broke when he didn’t obey. It took those thousands of years for God’s plan to reset our relationship to be carried out, but God’s intent for that relationship never changed.

Jesus is now the risen Lord, but he wants from me the same things that God wanted from Adam: Obedience and productivity. Some things never change. Thankfully, one of those is God Himself.

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