The Orthodox Faith Volume 4 by Thomas Hopko

Author:Thomas Hopko
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Orthodox Church in America / St Vladimir's Seminary Press
Published: 2016-02-24T00:00:00+00:00

The New Commandment

The commandments to love God and neighbor are found in the law of Moses. They are not commandments for God’s people. They are the commandments “written on men’s hearts” and given “by nature” itself (Rom 2.14–15). They are the commandments given by God, in His Words, to man “from the beginning” (1 Jn 2.7).

In the new covenant Church of Christ, however, there is a “new commandment” (1 Jn 2.8). It is the “new commandment” given by Jesus Himself to those who believe in Him.

A new commandment I give unto you, that you love one another; even as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another (Jn 13.34).

The new element in this “new commandment” is not the teaching of love, for this was written in the law. The new element is that believers in Christ must love as Christ Himself loves. The new commandment is to love “as I have loved you.”

Christian love must be the perfect love of Christ Himself which is wholly divine. Christian love must be the totally self-emptying love of the Lord Himself. It must be the divine love of God the Father poured into men’s hearts by the very Spirit of God. It must be the love that is absolutely faithful, perfect, eternal and divine.

Of all the men who ever lived on this earth, or who ever will live, only one has fully fulfilled the two great commandments of God; only one has lived absolutely and perfectly according to God’s laws; only one has loved the Father with all of His heart, mind, soul, and strength, and His neighbor as Himself. This is Jesus Christ, the child of Mary according to the flesh.

There is no one righteous before God’s law but Jesus. Only He has lived according to the law and by the teachings of the prophets. He alone is the one who has “fulfilled the law and the prophets” (cf. Mt 5.17, 7.12). He alone, of all men, has loved with perfect, sinless, dispassionate love.

He committed no sin; no guile was found on His lips. When He was reviled, He did not revile in return; when He suffered, He did not threaten; but He trusted to Him who judges justly. He Himself bore our sins in His body on the tree, that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By His wounds you have been healed (1 Pet 2.22–24; cf. Is 53).

Having no sin, Jesus took our sins upon Himself and became sin “for us men and for our salvation” (Nicene Creed). In this the perfect love of God was perfected in a human being, that all humans might share in the love and glory of God. As all of the holy fathers have said, “He became what we are, that we might become what He is . . . God became man that man might become god.”

For our sake God made Him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God (2 Cor 5.

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