Beloved, I am writing you no new commandment, but an old commandment that you had from the beginning. The old commandment is the word that you have heard.
7 Brethren, I write no new commandment This is an explanation of the preceding doctrine, that to love God is to keep his commandments. And not without reason did he largely dwell on this point. First, we know that novelty is disliked or suspected. Secondly, we do not easily undertake an unwonted yoke.
The seventh verse may be supposed either to look backward to what immediately preceded (and then it is walking as Christ walked that is here represented as no new, but an old commandment; it is that which the apostles would certainly inculcate wherever they brought Christ's gospel), or to look forward to what the apostle is now going to recommend, and that is the law...
Commenting on 1 John 2:7-11
Brethren, I write no new commandment unto you,.... Some understand this of faith, which this apostle calls a commandment, Jo1 3:23; but it rather intends the commandment of love, especially to the brethren, of which the apostle says the same things as here in his second epistle, Jo1 2:5; and this sense agrees both with what goes before and follows after, and is a considerable...