d. iv. 1-v. 12. The Sources of Sonship: Possession of the Spirit as shown by Confession of the Incarnation.
- The Spirit of Truth and the Spirit of Error (iv. 1-6)
- Love is the Mark of the Children of Him who is Love (iv. 7-21).
- Faith Is the Source of Love, the Victory over the World, and the Possession of Life (v. 1-12).
13. "Hereby know we." Love to man is a proof that God abides within us, just as the stream argues the existence of the fountain. This Epistle of John is as full of tests of character as a complete chemical laboratory is amply furnished with tests of substances. Hence the constant occurrence of the phrases "we know" and "hereby we know." See iii. 24, iv. 13, 15, 16, v. 20, 15; John vi. 56, xiv. 20, xv. 5.
"That we abide in Him and He in us." Says Basil, "The Spirit is the place for the saints; and the saint is a place appropriate to the Spirit." Prof. Austin Phelps declares that next to the mystery of Three Persons in One Nature is the mystery of the Divine Spirit abiding in the human spirit. This mutual abiding, a favorite doctrine with John, is an expression of the most intimate and delightful fellowship. It is a strong incidental proof of the supreme divinity of Christ that he is frequently spoken of as one of the parties to this mutual abiding (John vi. 56, xiv. 20, xv. 5, xvii. 26); for no created personality can enter into and abide in another.
"He hath given us of His Spirit." The gift of the Spirit is the proof that God abides in believers. His testimony is direct and immediate when he cries in the heart, "Abba, Father" (Gal. iv. 6), or teaches us to utter the same joyful cry. (Rom. viii. 15.) His testimony is indirect and mediate when from the observed fruit of the Spirit (Gal. v. 22, 23) we infer the abiding presence of the Father and the Son. (John xiv. 23.) The direct witness of the Spirit being the ground of the inferential witness must precede it. Christians are sometimes said to receive of the Spirit and sometimes they are said to receive the Spirit. (Gal. iii. 2, 3, 5, iv. 6.) Only the latter is true of Christ. He has a capacity commensurate with the Spirit's infinitude.
14. "We have seen." "We" is emphasis as in i. 1-5 and designates those who had been eyewitnesses of the Incarnate Son of God working miracles, uttering matchless parables, interpreting the law of God with an authority equal to its Divine Giver on Mt. Sinai, and exhibiting a sinless character amid contradictions, insults, and persecutions, thus proving his claim to be the only begotten Son of God. While no man has beheld the Father, some did see in Jesus Christ the revelation of God.
"The Saviour of the world." He is provisionally the Saviour of all men. But he is really the Saviour of only those that accept Him by faith. (John iii. 16.) All who hear His gospel and do not obey it will be punished with an everlasting sentence. (Matt. xxv. 46; 2 Thess. i. 8, 9.) The Jews were not expecting a Saviour of the world, but a Deliverer of their nation only.
15. "Confess that Jesus is the Son of God." See verse 2 for the key to the meaning. It does not express the declaration of a fact, but the public recognition of the Person of Christ as the Divine Saviour, and submission to Him as Lord, and trust in Him for salvation. He who with the heart thus acknowledges Him, and with tongue confesses Him, is said to have Him and to have eternal life. "He that confesseth the Son hath the Father also."
"Abideth in Him and he in God." This reciprocal indwelling in God (iii. 24, iv. 13, 15, 16), and in Christ (John vi. 56, xiv. 20, xv. 5), implies the most intimate fellowship of the believer with the Father, and with the Son, in whom He is revealed. The conditions of this fellowship are love, confession and obedience. The effects are fruitfulness, assurance and guilelessness. The sign is the possession of the Holy Spirit who sheds abroad love in the heart and inspires the filial feeling, crying Abba, Father.
16. "And we." This pronoun is emphatic and denotes all "who can speak from the fullness of Christian experience as confessors of Christ." (Bishop Westcott.) Young converts who cannot say with confidence "we know," should be encouraged by the promise, "Then shall ye know, if ye follow on to know the Lord."
"Know and have believed." Sometimes knowledge is the ground of faith, as the banker's acquaintance with the good character of the borrower is his reason for trusting him; and sometimes faith is the path to knowledge, as when the child believing the teacher comes to know the alphabet. Paul speaks of the unity of faith and knowledge, i. e., faith ends in knowledge. (Eph. iv. 13.) This is the genesis of all spiritual knowledge. A general acquaintance with Christ and self-surrender to him prepares us for that appropriating faith in his promise of the Paraclete whose office it is to glorify the living Christ revealing Him in the heart. As a practical truth in the spiritual realm, believing precedes knowing. Then in turn knowledge lays the foundation for a higher act of faith, as Paul knew whom he had believed, and on this ground he was fully persuaded or had a perfect faith that he could safely trust the deposit of himself in His hands until the day of judgment. Thus, by first believing and then knowing, and on this new basis believing again, the Christian climbs Jacob's ladder from earth to heaven.
"The love that God hath in us." Believers are the sphere in which God's love manifests itself to all who know them. "God is love." In verse 8 these wonderful words are associated with the initial knowledge of God in the soul's new birth. Here they are repeated in connection with the believer's activity, growth and Christian perfection. God in Christ is set as the type for human action and the model to which the believer must be conformed, not only in the future world, but in the present life, for "As he is so are we in this world."
"Dwelleth in God and God in him." See verse 15, note. This mutual abiding enables the adult believer to rise to the heavenly order described in Col. iii. 3, "For ye died and your life is hid with Christ in God." Death to sin is requisite to perfect fellowship with God.
17. "Herein has love been made perfect with us." Some exegetes say that it is God's love to us which is here described, but we agree with Alford that "this is forbidden by the whole context." God's love is always perfect, but man's love to God shed abroad in the heart by the Holy Spirit (Rom. v. 5), meeting various obstacles, limitations and antagonisms (Gal. v. 17; 1 Cor. iii. 1-3), is at first feeble and imperfect. But when the flesh is crucified, love filling the soul's whole capacity is said by the Spirit of inspiration to be perfected. Again, "the love of God" in this Epistle commonly means our love to Him, and not His to us (ii. 5, iii. 17, v. 3). If it means the love which He has implanted in us, He is the direct object of that love and we are the responsible subjects. "Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart." It is best to interpret "herein" as referring to what precedes; to our abiding in God and God in us. "That we may have boldness." Rather in order that we may have boldness in the day of judgment. The Greek thus strongly expresses the purpose for which our love is made perfect by the mutual indwelling.
"Boldness." This strong Saxon word is the best translation of the Greek. In the A. V. it is rendered by the weak word "confidence," as in ii. 28. It is a compound word meaning "say everything," and signifies the utmost intrepidity and freedom in speaking. The R. V. uniformly renders it "boldness" everywhere in this Epistle and in Heb. iv. 16, where it means the fearless trust with which perfect love regards "the judge of the quick and the dead." This boldness attends the present contemplation of the day of judgment by those who love God with all the heart, mind and strength.
"Day of judgment." This future day is demonstrated by the human conscience, and by divine revelation. It is authenticated by the resurrection from the dead of the appointed Judge (Acts xvii. 31) who declared that he would judge the whole human family, and confirmed this solemn prediction by his greatest miracle, his victory over the grave.
"Because as He is, so are we in this world." John's statement is what in logic is called an "enthymeme." One of the premises not being expressed is carried along in the mind. This premise is the thought that the Judge will not condemn those who are facsimiles of Himself. This is the syllogism:
- The final Judge will acquit facsimiles of Himself.
- We are in this world facsimiles of the final Judge.
- Therefore the final Judge will acquit us.
Says Bishop Westcott, "The ground of boldness is present likeness to Christ." Says Alford, "In these words, the sense must be gained by keeping strictly to the tenses and grammatical construction, not by changing the tenses, nor by referring the words in this world to Christ, as Christ was in this world we are." This is true, but it is not the truth declared in this verse. Our essential likeness to Christ is "not in our trials and persecutions; nor by our not being of the world as He is not of the world; nor in that we, as sons by adoption through Him, are beloved of God, nor in that we live in love as He lives in love; but in that we are righteous as He is righteous (chap. 1 29, iii. 3-6, 10, 22); this love being evinced by our abiding in love." Alford furthermore asserts that the ground of our boldness is "because we are absolutely like Christ Himself, because He lives in us, for without this there can be no likeness to Him." Westcott concurs with Alford. He says, "The likeness of Christians to Christ is to His character as it is at present and eternally, not to any one attribute, as love or righteousness, but to the whole character of Christ as it is made known; and His high-priestly prayer serves as a commentary on the view which St. John suggests of the position of Christians in this world."
18. "There is no fear in love." The thought of boldness, by a mental law of suggestion, calls up the theme of fear in contrast as naturally existing in sinful men. Fear and love are mutually exclusive according to the intensity of love. "Fear cannot co-exist with perfect love which occupies the whole heart. The fear of which St. John speaks is, of course, not the reverence of a son (Heb. v. 7, 8), but the dread of the criminal or of the slave." (Westcott.) Says Augustine, "It is one thing to fear God lest He may send thee into Gehenna with the devil; and quite a different feeling to fear God lest He depart from thee." With a theological insight, and an epigrammatic expression unparalleled, Bengel groups all mankind in four classes:
- 1st. Those who are without fear and without love;
- 2d. Those who are with fear and without love;
- 3d. Those who are with fear and with love;
- 4th. Those who are without fear and with love.
"Where dwells the Lord our Righteousness,
And keeps his own in perfect peace
And everlasting rest."
And keeps his own in perfect peace
And everlasting rest."
"Fear hath punishment." In anticipation of divinely inflicted suffering. Such punishment is not future only but present. See John iii. 18.
19. "We love." In the critical manuscript there is no expressed object, because Christian love of every kind is meant.
"Because He first loved us." This is more than gratitude. Evangelical love originates in God's love. This enkindles love in us as a fruit of the Spirit. (Rom. v. 5; Gal. v. 22.)
20 If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar: for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, cannot love God whom he hath not seen
20. "If a man say." Here appears again the Gnostic objector with whom we became acquainted in chap. i. 6, 8, 10. By his baneful doctrine of dualism, ascribing all evil to matter, and declaring his spirit by its nature free from sin, he vainly imagines that he can combine in his own person love toward God and hatred of his brother in Christ or his fellow-man made in the image of God. Says Dr. Plummer in the Cambridge Bible for Schools, "The case here contemplated is one form of the man that feareth not. His freedom from fear is caused, however, not by the perfection of love but by presumption. He is either morally blind or a conscious hypocrite." Compare 14, 9. He neither fears nor loves. His fearlessness may result from, indifference, or ignorance, or inveterate wickedness veneered with a pretentious philosophy.
"He cannot love God." John's argument is that if a man fails in the duty of love to one with whom he is in daily intercourse, he cannot perform the far more difficult duty of loving one whom he has never seen and of whose form he cannot conceive, and whose invisible existence is kept in mind by the strenuous effort of faith.
21 And this commandment have we from him, that he who loveth God love his brother also
21. "Commandment . . . from him." Exegetes find it difficult to determine in this verse, as also in several other passages, whether John is speaking of the Son or of the Father. Both are authors of this command. (Lev. xix. 18; John xiii. 34.) But this difficulty is not without doctrinal significance. It argues that the apostle thoroughly believed in the supreme Godhead of the Incarnate Son of God who Shared his Father's glory before the world was. If John had believed that the Son of God was a creature he would not have so confused the Personal Son with his Father's personality.
John's reasoning, in a nutshell, is this, no man can do so contradictory an act as to love God and hate his image in his brother man, and, especially, in his Christian brother.
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