What Does 2 John 1:6 Mean?
And this is love, that we walk according to his commandments. This is the commandment, just as you heard from the beginning, that you walk in it.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
And this is love, that we walk after his commandments. This is the commandment, That, as ye have heard from the beginning, ye should walk in it.THE KEY
The verse makes love a path: what reaches your ears from the beginning becomes the ground beneath your steps.
THE MEANING
Love reaches you as a way of walking: what you have heard from the beginning takes shape in how you move through life. The verse gathers the plural commandments into one commandment and describes it as something you walk in.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
Love is only an inner feeling, unrelated to the way I live.
THE ROOT
ἀγάπη
agapē
GROWS FROM
ἀγαπ-
agap-
The Greek word-family stem for love.
The word names love; the line immediately gives it a lived form: walking according to his commandments. The verse joins love and the way you move through life without reducing one to the other.
ALSO GROWS
agapaō: to love
ἀγαπάω
The verb shares the stem and shows the same love as an action.
agapētos: beloved
ἀγαπητός
The related word names someone as loved, linking love expressed in action with the one who receives it.
περιπατῶμεν
peripatōmen
GROWS FROM
πατέω
pateō
To tread or walk; the stem at the heart of the verb for walking about.
English “walk” can sound like a neutral metaphor, while this verb keeps the sense of treading a path. It appears twice around the commandment, making what is heard a way to inhabit in ordinary movement.
ALSO GROWS
pateō: to tread or step upon
πατέω
This is the tread-stem within the verse’s word for walking.
katapateō: to trample
καταπατέω
The compound keeps the same tread-stem, showing how a shared root can carry different kinds of movement.
ἠκούσατε
ēkousate
GROWS FROM
ἀκου-
akou-
The Greek word-family stem for hearing or listening.
“heard” in this verse is ēkousate. The English sentence can make receiving and living seem separate, but this hearing-family also includes a verb for heeding or obeying. The verse moves from what you hear at the beginning to how you walk, with reception echoing into response.
ALSO GROWS
akoē: hearing; a report or message heard
ἀκοή
It links the act of hearing with the message received.
hypakouō: to heed or obey
ὑπακούω
It carries the hearing-stem into responsive action, echoing the verse’s movement from hearing to walking.
THE PATTERN
Love takes shape as a way of walking: what is received becomes lived.
And now, Israel, what does the LORD your God ask of you, but to stand in awe of the LORD your God, to walk in all his ways, to love him, to serve the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your living soul,For this is the love of God, that we guard his commands; and his commands are not heavy.THE THREAD
The one who says he remains in him ought himself also to walk, just as that one walked.The same Greek verb, περιπατέω (peripateō, “to walk”), appears here and in 2 John 1:6. One verse names love as walking in the commandment; the other makes that walk resemble his.
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