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Reject Apostasy, Cling to the Truth!The Watchtower—1983 | April 1
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So now I request you, lady, as a person writing you, not a new commandment, but one which we had from the beginning, that we love one another.”—2 John 4, 5.
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Reject Apostasy, Cling to the Truth!The Watchtower—1983 | April 1
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11. (a) Observing the commandment to “love one another” called for what? (b) Why could John say that this was “not a new commandment”?
11 The apostle asked the “lady” to observe the commandment “that we love one another.” (Compare 1 John 3:11.) Expressing Jehovah’s will for godly persons, Jesus had commanded his disciples to ‘love one another, just as he loved them.’ That commandment required not only neighbor love but also a self-sacrificing love, even to the point of giving one’s life in behalf of another. (Leviticus 19:18; Matthew 22:39; John 10:14, 15; 13:34; 15:13) It had been binding on Christ’s followers “from the beginning” of their dedicated relationship with God—in fact, since Jesus first gave it and certainly from the inception of the Christian congregation at Pentecost of 33 C.E. In that sense, therefore, it was “not a new commandment,” as John said.
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