Article December 16, 1972 Issue

The New Commandment

JOHN R. PETERSON

Just what is the difference, I asked myself, between the second great commandment and the new commandment that Jesus gave to us? I must admit I had rather confused the two. I knew that when Jesus stated his second great commandment, "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself"^{Mark 12:31;} in his answer to the scribe, he was really quoting Leviticus 19:18, in which that exact statement appears and with which his questioner would have been familiar.

Then in his last discourse with his disciples just before Gethsemane, why did he say, "A new commandment I give unto you,That ye love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love one another"?^{John 13:34;} If he meant just that we were to love each other, isn't this what he had stated as the second great commandment? Then why call it a new commandment?

I knew there must be some difference between the two commandments. What could it be? Well, when there is something we need to know, there is one sure place to go for it. I did some quiet praying and then waited for divine Mind to unfold the answer. The word "as" stood out to me. I looked it up in Strong's Exhaustive Concordance and found that the Greek word kathos, which is translated "as" in this verse, can also be translated more fully "according as," "how." If we take this expanded meaning, we could translate this commandment as requiring that we love one another in the same way that Christ Jesus loved his followers.

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