A COMMANDMENT — a specific charge or instruction, not a body of law (that would be NOMOS). John uses it for the one thing commanded: love one another. 2 John 5 makes the paradox explicit — 'not as though writing you a NEW commandment, but the one we have had FROM THE BEGINNING' — which sits deliberately beside Jesus calling that same command NEW (John 13:34). Both hold in their own frame: new in the manner of the commanding, old in that it was there from the start. ⚠️ The letter is written to people being offered novelty, which is why it presses the old. → first discussed at 2 John 1:5