It's much easier to keep track of what's happening if you don't try to write it as one-liners. This: final Runnable newRef = new Counter()::show; is the

It's much easier to keep track of what's happening if you don't try to write it as one-liners. This: final Runnable newRef = new Counter()::show; is the same as this: final Counter counter = new Counter(); final Runnable newRef = counter::show; Which is roughly equivalent to this: final Counter counter = new Counter(); final Runnable newRef = () -> { counter.show(); }; Which is, of course, not the same thing as final Runnable newLambda = () -> { new Counter().show(); }; The rest of the differences follow naturally from this distinction.