1John 2:7 - The "Old" New Command, and the Three Beginnings

"Beloved, not a new command I am writing to you but rather an old command which you have had from [the] beginning.  The old command is the word which you heard."

-John directly channels the words of Jesus here, Who on the night before He was crucified gave to His disciples (and us!) what He called a ‘new commandment’ (John 13.34).  John’s gospel is the only one which records that specific scene - clearly it is for him something something of significant import.  It was a kainos new command - not a neos new command, not just a fresher version of something old (i.e. fresh wine - Matthew 9.17).  No, this is completely new.  God was doing a brand new thing, creating an entirely new spiritual family, one comprised entirely of fallen selfish people, and assembling together a body consisting of Jews and Gentiles alike, peoples of many different cultures and widely divergent values and preferences.  This new family, this new assembly was to be His primary means for disseminating the Good News about Jesus to the entire world - thus this command was to be vital to the success of this new endeavor.

-By this time, when John is writing this, this ‘new’ command was actually decades old, something which the church of Christ had heard since its inception, since its very ‘beginning’.  There are actually three significant beginnings referred to repeatedly in Scripture, particularly in John.  One is the beginning of the world, of space/time creation, generally viewed as a singular event (Genesis 1.1 Proverbs 8.23; Isaiah 40.21; Mark 10.6; John 1.1-3, 8.44, 9.32; Hebrews 1.10; 2Peter 3.4; 1John 1.1, 3.8).  Another is the beginning of Jesus’ ministry on earth (Matthew 4.17; Luke 1.2-3, 3.23; John 2.11, 8.25, 15.27; Act 1.22), generally beginning around the time of His baptism and when He subsequently began to preach and do miracles.  But there is another crucial beginning in play here, and that is the beginning of the church (Acts 11.15; 1John 2.24, 3.11; 2John 5).  We see the church in larval form as those few disciples began to follow Jesus and trust in Him for eternal life.  And we see it birthed on the day of Pentecost when God poured out His Spirit into the hearts and lives of all those who had believed in Christ, the body of Christ now empowered to journey together in community in the world as witnesses to the Good News about Jesus.  And this new command, which as John is writing here is now no longer new per se but is one which has been around for quite some time, was given specifically to and for the church.  Mission critical.  What is it exactly?  Let’s not miss it...!