“YET I AM writing you a new commandment, which is true in him and in you” (1 John 2:8). Here John rewrites what he recorded in his gospel from Jesus: “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; even as I have loved you” (John 13:34). Again: “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:12–13).
This “new commandment” and this “my commandment” is the commandment to love and to love specifically—“as I have loved you.” To be in Christ is to love as Christ loved.
This is important: “true in him and in you”—there is not one code of conduct for the Divine and another for the human. The commandment is true in Him and in you. That is the most breathtaking sentence ever uttered. The Divine acts on the same principles He requires of us! India, the most religious and philosophical nation of the world, never arrived at that. There is always one code of conduct for the gods and another for man. Samarthi kokhuch dosh nahin lagta —“to the strong there is no blame.” They are above the law of karma.
Jesus put Himself under the law of love and called it “my commandment”—a commandment which He obeyed and gave. Interestingly enough, that commandment to love is being discovered as the law of life and not merely the commandment of Jesus. Eric Fromm, as a psychiatrist, said that the necessity to love is the most deeply ingrained thing in human nature. You must “love or perish,” said Smiley Blanton, another psychiatrist. The commandment which Jesus gave is being found to be the same commandment that life is giving. Is Jesus then the Author of that life?
O Jesus, Thou didst lift up the laws underlying our beings, and didst call them “my commandments.” They are Thy commandments, for they are Thy creations. Help us to live by Thy law of love and we shall find it the law of life. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: “True in him and in you”—that gives me a moral universe and not a moral multiverse.
