NOTES for Jo2 1:6
It would seem that nothing could be more opposite than love and the law, love and the dry religious prescriptions. And John meanwhile considers the manifestation of love particularly the fulfillment of the commandments! How is it possible? The answer to the question can be the fact that it is in particular commandments given by God, and especially the Decalogue, that form the basis of the Torah. And the Torah however is not reduced only to the law, in the time of the apostle, in the Synagogue and in the Church were widely spread the representations on the Torah, as the internal spiritual core, on which was based the entire life of man, the spiritual life, quite as life in general. This spiritual core was called the inner Torah, and the relationships of love that bind a person with others and with God turn out its heart. But to grow in oneself the inner Torah without relationships with God and others was impossible, and these relationships were regulated by the commandments. So the fulfillment of commandments became the expression and the realization of love, including the love of the neighbor. But in the light of the Christian revelation, were added to these traditional representations the new semantic connotations. And first of all, it is of course about this love, about which the Savior Himself spoke as "a new commandment".
Indeed, such love does not already become any more simply a relationship, as it was before (at least, that is particularly how the authors of most of the biblical books understand love: it is for them before all a relationship with another person, having in mind at the first place, good to that another), but also to that spiritual environment, without which there is no Kingdom. Love becomes in a way the nature of the Kingdom, its spiritual substance, just as the natural elements become the natural substance of the non transformed world. And the relations of love connecting all its inhabitants with each other, quite as with the Christ become the shape, giving quality to this substance.
In such a situation, the inner Torah turns out already not simply a spiritual core of man, but also his form defining his personal spiritual quality and the quality of his spiritual life in the Kingdom. Then the words of the apostle acquire a new sense: indeed, in order that love becomes the environment of life, completely organic for man, the inner Torah, inconceivable without the fulfillment of the commandments, has to become for him the only form. Here involuntary come to mind the words of the Savior that He came not to destroy the Torah, but to bring it to fullness. To the fullness suitable for the Kingdom.