‘And now I beseech you, lady, not as though I wrote to you a new commandment, but that which we had from the beginning, that we love one another. And this is love, that we should walk after his commandments. This is the commandment, even as you heard from the beginning, that you should walk in it.'
He then moves on from faith and trust in Jesus Christ, God's Son, to the further aspect of the commandment that they love one another. This was the new commandment (John 13:34), but he emphasises that it is not new in the sense of novel and recent, for it was given by Jesus Christ and known by them from the beginning of their Christian lives. This is no novelty such as the false prophets were presenting. It is based soundly in the words of Jesus Christ.
‘And this is love, that we should walk after his commandments. This is the commandment, even as you heard from the beginning, that you should walk in it.' To walk after His commandments is to walk in the light (1 John 1:7). He stresses that this love, which results from walking in the light, involves obeying God's and Christ's commandments. Indeed these were centred in the reality of love, for they were to love God with heart, soul, mind and strength (Deuteronomy 6:5-6), and their neighbour as themselves (Leviticus 19:18), which would be revealed in the way they lived their lives. Those who did such things would live in them (Leviticus 18:5; Ezekiel 20:11). Their eternal life was given by the Father through His Son (1 John 5:11-12), but it involved living lives pleasing to Him because we are in Him that is true (1 John 5:20), and Jesus had made clear that they should walk in them (John 14:15). These are the commandments given by God and expanded and explained by Jesus (e.g. Matthew 5-7).