Tractates (Lectures) on the Gospel of John — Tractate 65

St. Augustine of Hippo

1. Chapter 1
2. Chapter 2
3. Chapter 3

The Lord Jesus declares that He is giving His disciples a new commandment, that they should love one another. A new commandment, He says, I give unto you, that you love one another. But was not this already commanded in the ancient law of God, where it is written, You shall love your neighbor as yourself? [[Leviticus 19.18]] Why, then, is it called a new one by the Lord, when it is proved to be so old? Is it on this account a new commandment, because He has divested us of the old, and clothed us with the new man? For it is not indeed every kind of love that renews him that listens to it, or rather yields it obedience, but that love regarding which the Lord, in order to distinguish it from all carnal affection, added, as I have loved you. For husbands and wives love one another, and parents and children, and all other human relationships that bind men together: to say nothing of the blame-worthy and damnable love which is mutually felt by adulterers and adulteresses, by fornicators and prostitutes, and all others who are knit together by no human relationship, but by the mischievous depravity of human life. Christ, therefore, has given us a new commandment, that we should love one another, as He also has loved us. This is the love that renews us, making us new men, heirs of the New Testament, singers of the new song. It was this love, brethren beloved, that renewed also those of olden time, who were then the righteous, the patriarchs and prophets, as it did afterwards the blessed apostles: it is it, too, that is now renewing the nations, and from among the universal race of man, which overspreads the whole world, is making and gathering together a new people, the body of the newly-married spouse of the only-begotten Son of God, of whom it is said in the Song of Songs, Who is she that ascends, made white? Made white indeed, because renewed; and how, but by the new commandment? Because of this, the members thereof have a mutual interest in one another; and if one member suffer, all the members suffer with it; and one member be honored, all the members rejoice with it. [[1 Corinthians 12.25]]-26 For this they hear and observe, A new commandment I give unto you, that you love one another: not as those love one another who are corrupters, nor as men love one another in a human way; but they love one another as those who are gods, and all of them sons of the Highest, and brethren, therefore, of His only Son, with that mutual love wherewith He loved them, when about to lead them on to the goal where all sufficiency should be theirs, and where their every desire should be satisfied with good things. For then there will be nothing wanting they can desire, when God will be all in all. [[1 Corinthians 15.28]] An end like that has no end. No one dies there, where no one arrives save he that dies to this world, not that universal kind of death whereby the body is bereft of the soul; but the death of the elect, through which, even while still remaining in this