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).
7. "Every one that loveth" with evangelical, pure, unselfish affection "is begotten of God." This excludes sexual love and the merely natural love of kindred. Some who have never heard of Christ, such as Socrates and Marcus Aurelius, have exhibited Christian philanthropy, which evinces that they were born of God. They had the spirit of faith, i. e., the disposition to embrace the object of saving faith, Christ, were He presented to them; and they had the purpose of righteousness, the disposition to conform to Christian ethics when revealed to them. "Such are saved through the historic Christ, though they know him not." (Wesley.) They have the essential Christ, i. e., the outlines of His moral character.
8. "Knoweth not God." Literally "knew Him not" when they professed to know Him by receiving baptism or by testimony of the lips.
"God is love." This is more than to say God is amiable. Only if He is love in His essential being, is the statement true, that to have no personal, experimental knowledge of love is to have no real knowledge of God. The Gnostics were doubtless in John's mind, who knew much about God, but they did not by a heart experience know God, for instead of loving those humble brethren who were not their equals in intellectual attainments they treated them with an arrogant and heartless contempt.
"They had recognized that 'God is spirit,' and to some extent that 'God is light;' for they knew Him to be an immaterial Being and the highest Intelligence; but they had wholly failed to appreciate that God is love." (Dr. A. Plummer.)
The heathen regard God as terrible, whose fierce anger needs to be averted with offerings. The Jews believed that He was just and jealous, and, possibly, merciful, whose inmost being was to them a mystery beyond what was revealed in His name Jehovah, "I am that I am." To the regenerate alone is He known as Love.
Says Augustine,
"If nothing whatever throughout the other pages of the Scriptures were said in praise of love, and this one thing only were all we, were told by the voice of the Spirit of God, 'For God is love,' nothing more ought we to require."
9. "Herein was the love of God manifested," and in John iii. 16, "For God so loved the world." Bishop Westcott says, "The revelation of the divine love is referred to an absolute (eternal) moment, both in relation to the Son and also to the world and to men." God's love is made known chiefly through redemption, which is a definite act. The gift of the Son was absolutely free and spontaneous. If it had been of necessity it would not be a proof of love.
"In us." It was love towards us, but the form of this phrase shows that God's love is revealed not only in His Son, but also in us as a transparent medium. "The Christian shares the life of Christ and so becomes himself a secondary sign of God's love." (Westcott.) The new creation is a more clear and expressive revelation of love than the first creation: "For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God, in the face of Jesus Christ."
"His only begotten Son." Shallow and weak indeed is the Unitarian exegesis — "best beloved son." It is in vain that extreme liberalism teaches that all men are incarnations of God in a lower degree than Jesus. "Only begotten" denotes unique sonship, an existence unshared which is grounded in God's nature, while the existence of all men and of all things is grounded in God's will. This is the difference between the generation of the Son outside of time limits, "before the world was," and the creation of the universe by His own volition. "Christ is the One only Son, the One to whom the title belongs in a sense completely unique and singular, as distinguished from that in which there are many children of God. (John i. 12-14.)
"That we might live." Activity, not safety, is accentuated.
"Through Him." Christ is the efficient cause of spiritual life. He lives in the true believer. (Chap. v. 12, 20; Gal. ii. 20; 2 Cor. iv. 10-12; Col. iii. 4.) He is the substance of the Christian's life. (Phil. i. 21.) Also the aim of his life. (Rom. vi. 10, 11, xiv. 8; Gal. ii. 19.)
10. "In this is love." Real love in its origin is not human, but divine. Its source is not a blind impulse, but an intelligent movement of God's free will pitying a sinful race and approving those who trust in His Son, whom He sent into a fallen world. In this act God's love reached its climax. Human love at best is only responsive; it is never original and spontaneous. It is never strictly disinterested, as the love of God is. The theology that requires of mankind such love is too high for the holiest men and angels to reach.
The great secret of God's method with men is that He loves them into loving. There is no other force so mighty as love, and nothing else so contagious. It is the royal law of the Christian life, because it has been the regal force in God's dealing with His children. Having been won to the Father by the Father's love, the child is bound by the very nature of the new life to show the same love to others.
"And this is just as practical a law for the conduct of home. The love of a mother for her child is the great example and sanction of the love of the children one for another. Here in the home it is an indisputable fact that we are loved into loving. And business, which is supposed to be the sphere least subject to the sway of altruistic law, is no less subject to the general principle. Every employer can do more by love, which is always just, than he can by the rigorous enforcement of definite rules. Workmen are loved into loving the work they do and into placing the interests of their employers first. In fact, there is no department of our complex life which is not subject to this spiritual and natural law we love because He first loved us."
"The propitiation for our sins." See on chap. ii. 1. The Greek word ἱλασμός (hilasmos) occurs in the New Testament only in these two passages, and without reference to the person to whom it is offered. The same is true of the corresponding verb found only twice in the New Testament. The Scriptural conception is not that of appeasing one who is personally angry, but rather that of altering the conditions which prevent pardon and raise up an inevitable obstacle to fellowship. These are two: God's relation as moral governor and protector of His law, and the natural inclination of fallen man to commit sin. God as the executive of law cannot by mere prerogative pardon the sinner, nor is a sinful being fit for fellowship with his holy Creator. The propitiation offered by Christ declares God's righteousness while pardoning the ungodly that repent and trust in the Son of God, receiving Him as both Saviour and Lord. Such are at the same time forgiven and regenerated, or made new creatures. Thus both the obstacles to acceptance are removed.
Such phrases as "propitiating God" and "God being reconciled" are foreign to New Testament diction.
11. "If God so loved us." Here "if" does not intimate a doubt. It is nearly equivalent to "since." Compare John xiii. 14, "If I then have washed your feet."
"We also ought." As spiritual children of God we must honor Him by representing His moral attributes and by following His example in loving those whom He loves. See iii. 16, note. The obligation which God's love here lays upon us is not that we should love Him in return, as we would naturally expect, but that we should "love one another." It was when Jesus was "knowing that the Father had given all things into His hands and that He was come from God, and was going to God," that He put on the livery of a servant and washed His disciples' feet. His followers should learn that the spiritual nobility implied by adoption into the family of God imposes corresponding obligation. The higher the rank the more service to humanity is rightly expected.
12. "God hath no man ever yet beheld." In all the history of the saints from Enoch to John the Baptist, however close their fellowship with God, no one had beheld His essential Being. The various theophanies of the Old Testament were not His real Person, but only fringes of His robe. But faith is a good substitute for sight. Says Bede, "Where we are not yet permitted to enjoy the Divine vision what comfort we experience!" For the invisible God is not only near to us, but to the full believer in Christ, "He is in us, the Life of our lives."
"God abideth in us." He is in the genuine believer not as a stranger in an inn lodging for a night, but He is a permanent inhabitant. This fact should banish fear, begird with strength, afford unbroken peace and unfailing joy, and tireless activity in promoting His glory on the earth. We may not always be conscious of the Holy Spirit abiding within, but there will be periods of wonderful spiritual illumination and crises of indescribable joy. Professor Phelps calls it "almost intolerable joy."
"His love is perfected in us." It is our love toward God which is here spoken of as perfected. God's love is always perfect. To say that God's love for us is perfected is to imply that His love may be imperfect, and that His love is not perfected until Christians "love one another." This would make a Divine perfection depend on a human volition. We have perfect love when the Spirit sheds abroad the love of God to such a degree as to exclude everything antagonistic thereto. The claim that we have perfect love to God is manifestly erroneous if love toward our fellow Christians is absent. Love is the only particular in which perfection can be predicated of man marred and dwarfed by sin, and that love is shed abroad in the heart by the Holy Spirit (Rom. v. 5), the author of that circumcision of heart requisite for loving God with all the heart and all the soul. (Deut. xx x. 6.) In chap. ii. 5 the sign of the perfect love of God in the believer is his estimate of His revelation and his vigilance in obeying its commandments. Here it is love to one another. Evangelical perfection may consist with many intellectual infirmities.
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