And *we* have known and have believed the love which God has to us. God is love, and he that abides in love abides in God, and God in him.
John's letter has already said that God is love; here he says it again and ties it to where a believer lives. The verse joins three things: a love we know and believe, a God whose very nature is that love, and a person who stays in it.
The certainty in this verse is not a mood. Writing on the phrase "we have come to know and to believe," one commentator says the love is a fact standing outside us. That is what makes it solid:
There are no vague uncertainties here, but a living knowledge of the love of God. This is true Christianity: "We have known and believed." Notice too that this does not treat love as a mere feeling inside us. That has become a trap for too many. To know and enjoy love properly, it must rest on something outside ourselves. Feelings are no basis for reasoning at all. It is not a question of feeling that I am loved, but of knowing and believing it because the fact is true.
Readers often expect the reverse order — believing first, then knowing. Commentators differ on why John writes it this way. One writer explains that the Spirit must first give the heart a sense of the love. Only then can it take in the testimony of the cross:
Naturally we would have said, "believed and known." We would have put believing first. But that is not how it comes to us here. The Spirit pours that love into our hearts, and we must know it before we can accept the testimony to it in the death of Jesus... And dwelling in that love the heart dwells in God, because if God is love, and I dwell in love, I dwell in God, and God in me. What an atmosphere of heavenly and divine affections!
Another writer puts the two the other way round: we learn the love first by faith, and afterwards know it consciously by the Spirit in fellowship with God — and the two together are the believer's portion, so that we both "have the faith and the conscious knowledge of His love."
"God is love" is not a description of how God acts from time to time. It is a statement about what He is, and everything else follows from it:
He begins here: love comes from God. It is His nature; He is its source. So the one who loves is born of God, and he shares His nature. He also knows God, for he knows what love is, and God is love in its fullness. So everything here depends on our sharing in God's own nature.
Talk of dwelling in love could easily float free of anything real. What anchors it are the solid facts recorded just before this verse:
But this would be mysticism, if there were not the testimony of verses 9 and 10 to the actual, substantial facts. For all mystics the love of God is only a quality. But God, who is love, has loved us. That also sets the law aside; for it is not, We ought to love God, but, God has loved us.
To "abide" in love is not an occasional experience. It is the settled place a Christian lives in, and God abides there in return:
His love flows from His own goodness. It gave Christ to die, so that righteousness might be granted in full. That love forgives my sins, makes me His child though I have earned nothing, and leads Him to abide in me. The love in Him (and no wonder) produces love in me; and abiding in love I abide in God, and God in me. It is not merely a visit now and a visit again, but there the Christian abides; it is his habit and his home to dwell in love.
The same writer sets two things side by side: what every Christian can say, and what a believer enjoys in closer fellowship with God:
The least Christian should be able to say that God dwells in him and he in God. The most spiritual believer cannot rise higher than this: as he dwells in God, God dwells in him. This is the privilege of communion, as that is of faith.
Love received does not stay still. A heart that has welcomed God's love moves toward God and toward others. One writer calls this the fruit of a new nature, not an achievement:
God's infinite love fills and warms the heart. Out of that heart flows love to God and Christ, love to fellow believers, and love to all people. This is impossible for a person who has not turned to God. To all who are born of the Holy Spirit it is the most natural thing imaginable.
- Nature. Love is not one of God's moods but His being — He is its source, and everything here depends on sharing that nature.
- Proof. Solid facts keep this love from turning into vague mysticism. It is not that we ought to love God, but that God has loved us.
- Faith. The love stands outside me. It is true apart from my feelings, so I know and believe it rather than just feel it.
- Home. Abiding in love is not an occasional visit — it is where the Christian lives, and God abides there too.
- Overflow. A heart warmed by that love loves back, toward God and toward others, as naturally as a new nature must express itself.
Herein has love been perfected with us that we may have boldness in the day of judgment, that even as *he* is, *we* also are in this world.
Here John says that love has reached its goal. The proof is a confidence that can face the day of judgment without fear. The reason given is not what we have become, but what Christ is — and what we already are while still in this world.
The ESV reads "love perfected with us." Older translations read "our love is made perfect," which sends the reader looking inward at the wrong thing. One commentator presses the correction:
Verse 17 reads: "Herein is our love made perfect." Now our love, our response to the love of God, is never perfect. It is never what it should be… No child of God, unless deceived, would claim that his love for God is perfect. Some Bibles correct this very serious fault of translation in the margin. They give "Love with us" instead of "our love." So we should read, "Herein is love with us made perfect," which gives a completely different sense. Clearly the apostle is not thinking of our love for God, but of the love which God has shown.
"Perfected" describes love reaching its goal. One writer names that goal:
Verse 17 teaches us God's purposes and plans about us as saints: "Herein is love with us made perfect, that we may have boldness in the day of judgment…" This is a very different thing from His first coming to us in our sins. The perfection of God's love towards His saints shows itself in bringing them to be like Christ Himself.
The day is still future. The confidence is not something handed out when we arrive there.
This is not a state given to us in the day of judgment. God deals with us this way now. And that gives boldness even when we think of the day of judgment ahead. How could it be otherwise? Suppose I truly believe and am sure that God has made me now to be what Christ is. What can the day of judgment then do, except display the perfections — not only of what Christ is for me, but of what you and I are by and in Christ our Lord? And this we are now.
The one who will judge that day is the one we resemble. That is why the day loses its terror:
In truth, what could give us a more complete assurance for that day than to be as Jesus Himself — like the judge? He who will judge in righteousness is our righteousness. We are in Him the righteousness according to which He will judge. We are, as far as judgment goes, as He is. This can truly give us perfect peace. But notice: this is not only true for the day of judgment (it gives us boldness for it) — we are this in this world. Not as He was, but in this world we are as He is.
This likeness is about where God has placed us, not about how well we are doing.
Few things in the Bible carry deeper meaning for the child of God than the statement that "as He is" — the Lord Jesus Christ in glory — "so are we in this world"… Notice, then, that the Holy Spirit is speaking of a positive and absolute standing in the sight of God, not of a practical condition. Notice too that it is a present, everyday standing before Him, held by believers while they are in the world.
Some have used the verse to claim they have reached moral perfection. One writer answers that the verse's own logic rules this out:
His standing is in Christ, and therefore as Christ. To use "As He is, so are we in this world" (1 John 4:17) as proof of our actual state is monstrous, though the writer who does it is by no means alone. The apostle connects it with "boldness in the day of judgment; because as He is, so are we in this world"! Think of a man finding boldness for that day in the belief that he himself is morally as perfect as Christ.
Christ Himself is beyond all judgment now. He bore it in full at the cross, and the believer stands where He stands:
Love has given His Son to bear my judgment, fully, absolutely. Then the day of judgment is no cause for fear at all… Is Christ not completely free from judgment now? In grace He bore that judgment at Calvary. The full, unsoftened penalty against sin was laid on Him, the willing sacrifice… And as far as judgment goes, the believer, even now, "in this world" is "as He is," past all possibility of it.
- Source. Love is perfected with us, not by us. The older reading "our love" points the wrong way and leaves us measuring ourselves.
- Gift. Love reaches its peak by placing the believer where Christ is. The day of judgment then holds nothing against him.
- Timing. The boldness is ours now, not a state handed out later. God deals with us this way today.
- Ground. The Judge Himself is our righteousness, so judgment can only display what Christ is for us and what we are in Him.
- Limit. This is standing, not achievement. Use the verse to claim sinless living, and you lose the very confidence it offers.
There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has torment, and he that fears has not been made perfect in love.
John ties fear to punishment, and the commentators press two questions: whose love is meant, God's or ours, and which fear love drives out. Older translations put "torment" where the ESV has "punishment," and the writers quoted below use that older word.
One writer starts from ordinary experience of being loved.
Now in love there is no fear; there is confidence. If I am sure that a person loves me, I do not fear him. If I am only wanting to be the object of his affection, I may fear that I am not, and may even fear him. And this fear would always tend to destroy my love for him and my desire to be loved by him. There is an incompatibility between the two feelings — there is no fear in love.
One writer says the older English wording "our love is made perfect" is a mistranslation.
So love has been perfected with us. It is not "our love is made perfect," as the older translation wrongly puts it. God's love has been perfected toward us. It has found its way and done its full work in blessing us, and it is not satisfied while it sees the smallest trace of fear left in us.
One writer separates what gives peace from what removes fear.
God is love, and that is first openly seen at the cross of Christ; and then in the new nature we have a capacity to enjoy that love. But the fear must be taken away, because fear has torment, and torment is not enjoyment. Then he shows what removes the fear. "Perfect love casts out fear" — not perfect righteousness. That had given the peace before God, but the revelation of Himself, and what He is, alone casts out fear.
One writer says the believer stands in the righteousness of the One who will judge him.
Judgment is no longer something to dread, because I am as clear as my Judge. He judges by His own righteousness, and that righteousness is mine. If I am dreading my Father, I cannot enjoy His love. There is torment in that. Love casts out fear. There is nothing to fear if God loves me perfectly, and does nothing but love me.
One writer marks the gap between God's side and ours.
On God's side love has been perfected in regard to us; on our side we may not be made perfect in regard to it. We may truly believe that God loves us, and still not rest in that love enough to leave fear no place in our hearts.
Another writer lets the troubled believer speak for himself.
Think of a Christian who is unsettled by this question. Nothing chills his love more than the fear he is bound to feel if judgment is still waiting at the end of his life. Can you love someone freely and at ease when at times you cannot help fearing Him, because He may cast you into hell? "There is no fear in love," says the apostle. "There is fear in my love," says the plain believer, aware of his many failures.
Love drives out one fear, but one writer keeps another in place.
"There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment." But there is a godly fear that stops evil before it starts. If a believer were saying, "I should like to do this or that," this fear would make him think, "but the eye of God will be looking at me," and give it up.
One writer says freedom from fear releases love in return.
So perfect love casts out fear. Freed from the fear of torment, we are made perfect in love. This great love to us draws out our love: "We love because He first loved us."
- Source. The perfect love here is God's love toward us, not the quality of our love for Him. One writer calls the older reading "our love is made perfect" a mistranslation.
- Ground. Righteousness gives peace before God. Seeing who God is drives fear out of the heart. Judgment stops being dreadful once the believer is as clear as his Judge.
- Reach. Love is not satisfied while any element of fear remains, so the aim is not managed anxiety but its removal.
- Diagnosis. Someone who still fears is not condemned, only incomplete. He believes God loves him, but does not yet rest in that love.
- Result. Dread leaves and godly fear stays. The heart freed from torment loves back, because He first loved us.