<p>1:6 <em>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- </em>This speaks of the commandment which we readers received &quot;from the beginning&quot;. But &quot;the beginning&quot; in John frequently if not always refers to the 'beginning' or Gk. 'first association' which the twelve disciples had with the Lord Jesus. Again, we are spoken of as if we are them, and their experiences were ours. Those twelve men who walked around Palestine with their Lord are symbols of us all. There is a continuity in Luke-Acts between &ldquo;the disciples&rdquo; who followed the Lord, and &ldquo;the disciples&rdquo; as a title for all the Christian believers. We are their continuation. Or John could also have in view his first preaching of the Gospel to Kyria; whereby we can understand that the up front bottom line of John's first preaching of the Gospel was a call to self-sacrificial love. Not theology but the call to love as the Lord loved His people in the death of the cross.</p><p>The &quot;commandments&quot; plural are comprehended in a singular commandment; and as noted elsewhere (see on Jn. 14:15; 1 Jn. 2:3), the reference is to the singular, fundamental commandment to love as the Lord loved us. This was what the Lord had preached from &quot;the beginning&quot; of His ministry (see on Jn. 1:1), and what John had likewise preached up front at the &quot;beginning&quot; of his preaching to Kyria. It is this principle of loving as the Lord loved us, to death on the cross, which is the light in which we should walk, deciding all issues in the light of His example and its imperative to us.</p>