A mini-teaching on John 3:16 and related passages:

John 3:16 For Elohim so loved the world that He gave His only brought-forth Son, so that everyone who believes in Him should not perish but possess everlasting life. (ISR)

And what is “everlasting life?”

John 17:3 And this is everlasting life, that they should know You, the only true Elohim, and יהושע Messiah whom You have sent. (ISR)

And how can we know him?

1 John 2:6 He that says I am in him, is bound to walk according to his halacha. 7. My beloved, I write no new commandment to you, but the old Commandment which you had from the beginning; and the old Commandment is the Word which you have heard. (AENT)

… In other words, someone who claims to be continuing in union with Y’shua ought to conduct his life the way he did – by walking in Torah!

1 John 2:4. He who says I know Him and does not keep His Commandments (poqadona) is a liar and the truth is not in him. But whoever keeps His word (miltha) in him, verily is the love of Elohim perfected; hereby we know that we are in Him. (AENT)

Let’s tie the verses above together using a footnote from the Aramaic English New Testament:

“Elohim is light” (1 John 1:5). Therefore, it can be argued that at Creation when YHWH said, “Let there be light” ( Genesis 1:3), that He in effect brought a part of Himself out to accomplish the creative act. The “Word” does this same feat, Psalm 33:6; John 1:1; a few lines earlier we read the “Word of Life.”

We have also seen before the direct linguistic relationship between the Hebrew and Aramaic roots for “Light” and “Torah” such as: “Your word (davar) is a lamp to my feet, a light (aur) to my path.” (Psalm 119:105) “For the commandment is a lamp. The teaching is a light (aur), and the way to life is the rebuke that disciplines.” (Proverbs 6:23) What makes this citation in Proverbs most profound is the word mitzvah (commandment), since tradition commonly calls the revelation at Sinai the Ten Commandments when in fact the Tanakh uses davarim (words)!

Keep this in mind while considering 1 John 2:4. Aramaic could not make a more forceful point. The fact is, poqadona and miltha are exceedingly close matches for their Hebrew counterparts mitzvah in Proverbs, and davar in Psalms. However, it is in this next passage that the full measure of John’s brilliance is shown:

1 John 2:7 My beloved, I do not write a new commandment to you, but an old commandment that you have had from the beginning. The old commandment is the word that you have heard from the beginning. (AENT)

The Commandment is the Word, which comes from the beginning! We must now realize that to translate this as “his Commandments” is wrong, but “His Commandments” is correct. “His Commandments” is the WORD which came from the very beginning of time. Many fail to understand this truth: It is impossible for Torah to have passed away during the lifetime of the Shlichim if John himself writes about the Word they have heard from the beginning. What else could this WORD be, except the living Torah!

John is a native Aramaic speaker and follower of Y’shua who knows that the WORD (or the Torah of YHWH) comes from the “Light”; he states that Elohim is Light and that we abide in that Light when we do His Mitzvot/Poqadona/Commandments.

Furthermore, the interchanging of “Word” and “Commandment” simply does not happen in any other language except Hebrew and Aramaic, the “word that you have heard” is the Shema!