Herein as to us has been manifested the love of God, that God has sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him.
Love can stay just an idea until someone acts. John points to an event in history that answers three questions: whom God sent, where, and why life comes first as the proof of love.
(Older translations read "only begotten Son" where the ESV has "his only Son." The writers quoted below use the older wording.)
Just before this, John writes about being born of God and knowing God. That can tempt a reader to look inside himself for proof of love. One writer shows where the verse sends us instead.
John speaks of the one who loves as born of God and knowing God. That might have thrown the soul right back on itself, to search for love there and fall into mysticism. But the Spirit of God clearly lays down this sharing in the divine nature. At once He turns the eye of faith to what is wholly outside us. So we may have the proof of divine love and learn its character... I was dead then — I live through another. It was pure and perfect love in the mind of God Himself. It expressed what He is in this love, for there was nothing in me to attract it or awaken it.
The phrase "only begotten" is not decoration. It tells us who the Person sent is.
There was no life here, and no one else could give it. It was not enough to point to the Son in heaven; that would not satisfy God. No, God sent His Son into the world that we might live through Him; and this is the way souls do live. He sets this One before us, and tells us who the Son of God is. He is Jesus — truly the Son of Man, but also the Son of God. He is the only-begotten Son of the Father, yet God just as much as His Father.
"Into the world" fixes the place. It was here, among fallen people, that God chose to make Himself known.
Men may guess about other worlds. But no one has any real ground to say that God has ever revealed Himself except here... It is here that He sent His Son; it is here that He sent Him to be a man — a witness of His grace towards man beyond all words! — and remember, when man was fallen. Not until then was there the smallest word of it from God; but man had no sooner fallen than He speaks.
The purpose named here assumes something. If the aim was life, then the state before was death — and a dead person cannot respond.
Without the new life it would have been impossible for us to respond to God's love. The sweetest music, the finest beauty, the most delicate perfume — none of it stirs desire or wakes pleasure in a corpse. And by nature we are spiritually dead towards God, unaware of Him. But with God's gift of life we have gained a capacity for enjoying Him, and our hearts can now enter into His love.
"Live" in this verse is not survival. It describes a quality of life that had no source in man.
When God did send His Son into the world, it was to deal with sin and with Satan. It was to bring in what man could find nowhere else — LIFE, eternal life! Life that could feel according to God! Life that could take pleasure in His presence, and delight in His will. Life able to know and enjoy God! And where was this found? Is it in man's heart? In religious ceremonies? Nowhere but in the Son of God!
Earlier names of God did not carry this gift. One writer draws the contrast.
The name "Almighty" does not carry eternal life. "Jehovah" fulfils promises, but does not give eternal life. But the Father sent the Son, "so that we might live through him."
Life alone leaves something unsettled. The next verse adds propitiation — the Son sent to deal with our sins.
For we were dead towards God, and in Him alone was the life that could serve God, which we entirely lacked... But even this possession of life in Him does not satisfy His love, any more than it fits us to enjoy, serve, and worship Him. There is a burden which nothing on our part could remove. So it follows: this is love — not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son as propitiation for our sins.
- Manifested — hidden love proves nothing. John points to an event outside us, not to feelings inside us.
- Only begotten — the measure of the love is the worth of the One sent: the Son of the Father, God as much as His Father.
- Into the world — God sent Him here, to fallen people. He has revealed Himself nowhere else as He has here.
- That we might live — the gift assumes we were dead; a corpse feels nothing, so life had to come before response.
- Through Him — this life is nowhere but in the Son. Verse 10 then adds propitiation, because life alone leaves the burden of sin in place.
Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son a propitiation for our sins.
God is love — but where is that proved? This verse turns away from what we feel toward God and points to what God did about our sins.
So where should a person look for proof?
God is love. That is a firm statement. If people look for proof of it in the sinful and disordered world around them, they will fail to find it. We must look in the right direction. There has been a perfect display of God's love, but only in one direction, as verses 9 and 10 so plainly state.
The verse rules out one starting point before it names the real one. Nothing in us set this love in motion.
Love has come in to deal with our sins as well as with our state... The gift God gave measures His love in all its infinite greatness. So do the depths of sorrow and judgment His dear Son entered to do this great work of propitiation — depths beyond our understanding... No feeling of love toward God on our side prompted the love that sent His Son. In our natural state as guilty sinners we did not love Him. It all began in God's own heart. The work was finished on the cross long before we ever thought of Him. That work enabled God to forgive our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
The phrase does not mean we were free from any duty to love Him. It means we failed at it.
"Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son a propitiation for our sins." Indeed He loved us beyond compare, and doubly. We were dead in sins; and God's love was shown in sending His only-begotten Son, that we might live through Him. We were guilty sinners; and He sent His Son as the only and effective sacrifice for our sins.
Does the word mean God had to be won over? One writer answers plainly.
The Bible does not teach that God is set against us. He is not a frowning God who has to be kept calm by sacrifices that change His feelings toward us. That is the corrupt pagan idea... Far from our having to change His heart toward us by a sacrifice, His heart, which is toward man, is the very source of all our blessing. Our sins had made propitiation necessary, but He Himself provided the necessary sacrifice.
Verse 9 speaks of life; verse 10 speaks of propitiation. Our ruin had two sides, and God's love meets both.
But we were guilty also, as responsible beings before Him. Here His love has met us. He has given His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. It is not law, nor duty, though duty was there... Love is not that we love God. That is what we must look for in our hearts if we seek the proof of life there — but then we are under law, and the law required just that, and required it justly. Love is that God loved us and sent His Son to be a propitiation for our sins. It is not requiring from us what we ought to be, but putting away, making a holy propitiation for our sins. We are dead in sins, and He gives us life. We were guilty, and He has given Him to make propitiation for our sins. He has met our whole case, in both its aspects as sinners.
The wording here is exact, and it reaches all the way to the conscience.
John does not speak of the Son here as making propitiation, but as being a propitiation. God sends Him as the One who, in His own Person, is able to do this great work that no one else could do. All the power of propitiation stays in Him, and it is available for all. We could never have received or enjoyed divine life if our sins had not been put away. The conscience must be free from all sense of guilt and defilement first. Only then can we enjoy the relationships and affections with God that He, in His great love, has given us.
A person may have life and still carry the weight of past sin. This verse speaks to that distress.
In the gospel God removes this distress. He purges the believer's conscience and fills him with peace through faith in Christ's sacrifice. That is why 1 John 4:10 adds, "In this is love, not that we have loved God" (which we surely do now, living in Christ), "but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins." This alone is fully effective. The Spirit seals us on the strength of it, and grace brings us into liberty and spiritual power.
- Direction. The state of the world does not prove God's love. One event does: God sent His Son.
- Origin. Nothing in us started it. There was not a single feeling of love toward God prompting the gift; it all began in God's own heart.
- Correction. Propitiation never means an angry God bought off. Our sins made it necessary; God Himself supplied it.
- Completeness. We were dead in sins, and He gives life; guilty, and He gives propitiation. He meets our whole case.
- Effect. Because the Son Himself is the propitiation, God purges the conscience and brings the believer into liberty.
Beloved, if God has so loved us, we also ought to love one another.
God's love reached its highest point in the gift of His only Son. John now turns from what God has done to what we owe each other. One small word, "so," joins the two. How can people answer a love they can never repay?
The appeal rests on a measure, not on a general idea of God's kindness. One writer presses on that small word:
"Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another." Can we emphasize that little word "so" enough? Such unselfish concern led to such an amazing sacrifice. It should capture the heart and enlarge it, so that we serve the need of others in complete self-denial.
The command comes with a reason, and the reason lies outside us:
The Apostle does not say, "Now that you have the divine nature you should love one another." No — he tells us to look away from ourselves to the wonderful expression of God's love. That love thought about us in all our ruin and need, in death and guilt. It made the fullest provision for our eternal blessing. It cost God His only Son… We must not claim that there is no motive to love.
Commentators also notice what the verse does not say. The word "ought" points to one another, never to God:
First, let me remind you of a distinction. Scripture never says that we ought to love God, but it does say that we ought to love one another. The law said, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart," and so on. Christianity lays no such duty on us. It is only our brothers and sisters whom we "ought" to love. The reason is obvious. We love God because He first loved us… We love Him because we cannot help ourselves.
The word "ought" carries the sense of something owed — one debt a Christian never finishes paying:
We ought to love one another; it is a debt that we should constantly be paying. If God has so loved us, we owe to one another to love, as being born of God. We will never pay this debt off. But we owe it to one another to love — even though we should take on no other kind of debt.
Other writers are careful that "duty" is not the last word:
When the apostle says, "If God so loved us, we also ought to love one another," we must not take him to mean that loving one another is a mere duty. A duty it certainly is. But that is not the spirit of the love he calls us to. He urges us to a love shaped after the love we see in God. "We also ought to love one another" means, then, using the divine life we have received — practising it towards one another. However far we fail in this, we fail that far to show the divine bond in the family of God.
Love that stays hidden inside helps no one. It has to show:
The nature of the obligation is simple. We should act towards one another as God has acted towards us… So the obligation reaches, if the occasion arises, to the manner and the measure of the love of Christ!… Only do not forget that the apostle speaks of love shown towards one another. You can see this from the case he names: a brother in need… It is good if you love me in your heart. But I will never benefit from it if you never let me see it shown.
One writer ties this call back to John 1:18, where Christ shows God to us:
It is a wonderful word, clearly connected… with what John 1:18 says. There Christ stands as the display of God in love. Here God calls the saints to be no less. Dear friends, how far do we display our God and Father by this divine love? It never seeks its own. Whatever the cost, it is set on the good of those it loves — His children, yes, all, even enemies.
- Source. The command starts outside us: we look away from ourselves to the love that cost God His only Son, not to our own new nature.
- Measure. The small word "so" fixes the standard: the obligation reaches to the manner and the measure of Christ's love.
- Direction. Scripture never says we ought to love God. We love Him because He first loved us. The "ought" turns towards one another.
- Debt. Love here is the one account never closed. It is owed constantly, yet it is more than duty; it is the divine life practised towards each other.
- Display. Love kept in the heart benefits no one. Shown in action, it displays God the Father in His children.
No one has seen God at any time if we love one another, God abides in us, and his love is perfected in us.
The verse repeats the opening words of John 1:18 — no one has ever seen God — but it answers the problem in a new way. The Son who declared the Father is now in heaven, so where can the world see God today?
John's Gospel meets the same problem with a different answer. Darby sets the two verses side by side, using an older wording of John 1:18.
"No one has ever seen God." How can I know and love a being I have never seen? "The only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has declared Him." In the Gospel, which is meant to bring Christ before us, I find the sense to be this. You have not seen God, and yet you have. He who was the very delight of the Father — who is in the bosom of the Father, the closest object of the Father's delight — has declared Him. So I do know Him. This is the answer to the difficulty that no one ever saw God. Christ has made Him known to me. Here, in the letter, it is, "No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and His love is perfected in us." What is revealed in Christ comes straight into our own hearts, because the Holy Spirit is in us.
Christ showed God in full while He was here. So what happens now that He has gone?
But now the Lord is gone. He who declared God is in heaven. Is there no present living witness of God? … His love was in all perfection in Christ; He stood in contrast with all human imperfections. Where is the resource? "If we love one another." Is it not very solemn that God points to Christians to let this dark world see what God is? God calls us to be His witnesses to a world that doubts anything can be known about Him. He does it above all by the working of divine love in our souls and in our ways.
The same writer names what such love in us rests on:
1 John 4:12 could not have been without John 1:18, and more too — Christ's death for us and the gift of the Spirit to us. Christ must be our life before such love can appear in us.
The phrase is not a figure of speech for good feelings. Writers take it as God Himself present, known from the inside.
What is the answer in our epistle to this same difficulty? "If we love one another, God dwells in us, and His love is perfected in us." By the communication of the divine nature, and by the dwelling of God in us, we inwardly enjoy Him as He has been manifested and declared by His only Son. His love is perfect in us, known to the heart, as it has been declared in Jesus. The God who has been declared by Him dwells in us.
Because that nature is active by definition, the love shows itself:
The moral nature of God is in us. This, as we have already seen, is an active nature. If it is present at all in a man, it is present in activity. Since it is the moral nature of God, it is proper to say God is dwelling in us. God dwells in us by a nature and life from Himself. It is His love that is in us. In loving one another, that love is having its normal activity in us. This is what is meant by the expression, "And His love is perfected in us."
The word points to love reaching its full growth, not to a score for our effort.
This is the proof that God abides in us. And His love is perfected in us in this way: it is producing its matured fruit. He is not speaking of how much we love one another, but of the fact. But a fact will always manifest itself. How much we love will depend on how much we enjoy God's love, but the apostle is not speaking of that here.
"Perfected" does not mean we become flawless:
Of course it does not mean the strange error of the man's own perfection. The flesh is never rooted out while we live, but God dealt with it in Christ's cross… So His love is perfected in the one who keeps His word, and it is perfected as we love one another. We submit to His word, and we walk together in love despite all difficulties. That is how God's love is perfected in us: it is carried out according to the mind of God.
Because God is unseen, anyone can claim to love Him. The verse points to a test you can see:
A careless, self-centred man does not see God, so he will assume he loves God even though his claimed love never takes any practical shape. But the test of this is in whether or not he loves the children of God.
Once God dwells there, the source of that love changes:
There is no stint in God's love, but marvellous meagreness in man's love. But when God dwells in us, the human heart, selfish by nature, becomes a fountain of kindness to others — kindness of a divine character.
- Unseen — The same difficulty opens John 1:18 and this verse: no one has seen God. Both passages answer it, one by the Son declaring Him, one by God dwelling in His children.
- Indwelt — The answer now is not a sight but a home. God dwells in us by a nature and life from Himself.
- Active — That nature never lies idle. If it is present at all, it is present in activity, and its normal activity is loving one another.
- Perfected — Love reaching its matured fruit, carried out according to the mind of God. It never means we are flawless; the flesh is never rooted out while we live.
- Visible — What the world cannot see in God it is meant to see in Christians. God points to believers to let a doubting world behold what He is.
Hereby we know that we abide in him and he in us, that he has given to us of his Spirit.
No one has ever seen God, so how can anyone be sure of a living link with Him? John points to something a believer can know: the gift of the Spirit.
John said something close to this at the end of chapter 3.
In 1 John 4:13 we find an expression found nowhere else in the New Testament: "He has given us of His own Spirit." That expression is powerful enough to show us how we become "partakers of the divine nature," 2 Peter 1:4. The apostle had already said, "And by this we know that He abides in us, by the Spirit whom He has given us," 1 John 3:24. The various effects of His power made the Spirit's presence felt, and proved that God lived in Christians. But this passage of 1 John 4:13 goes much further. It is evident not only that God dwells in us, but that we dwell in Him, because He has given us of His Spirit.
The small word "of" is doing real work. It moves the subject from proof of God's presence in us to our own conscious enjoyment of being in Him.
He has given us, not here "His Spirit" — the proof that He dwells in us — but "of His Spirit." By His presence in us we share in divine affection through the Spirit. So we know more than that He dwells in us. The presence of the Spirit, acting in a nature which is that of God in us, makes us conscious that we dwell in Him. For He is the infinite fullness and perfection of what is now in us.
The same phrase also sets this blessing apart from the Spirit's work in other people.
It is not merely "the Spirit." God worked by the Spirit in many a person where no one could say it was "of His Spirit." We often hear of the Spirit working in the Old Testament, and still more in the New. We find partakers of the Holy Spirit and powers of the world to come spoken of in Hebrews 6:4-5, where they fell away fatally from God. Scripture never says these were born of the Spirit, still less that God gave them "of His Spirit." This implies real communion with God.
What God gives is someone, not something.
John passes on to speak of the love of God that has been "perfected in us." That love is bound up with the great truth of the Spirit given to us. This is more than having a new nature, for the Spirit is a divine Person. "No one has ever seen God"; but we know that "the only Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He has made Him known." The Holy Spirit makes the Son's declaration of God real to our souls. He bears witness to Christ, brings to our remembrance what Christ has said, and takes of the things of Christ and shows them to us (John 14:26; John 15:26; John 16:14). The very perfection of love, the greatest privilege that love can confer, is that "we abide in Him and He in us."
In this letter "abiding in Him" points sometimes to Christ and sometimes to God.
For instance, in 1 John 2:6, 1 John 2:28, 1 John 3:6, the reference seems clearly to be to Christ. In 1 John 3:24, 1 John 4:13, 15, 16, it is to God. … The whole treatment of this matter here is meant to teach us how truly the Son is one with the Father. We cannot be in the Son without being in the Father, and we can only be in the Father by being in the Son.
God's abiding in us rests on His gift. Our abiding in Him is daily dependence, and it can break off.
But abiding in God is a matter of practical, spiritual dependence on Him. It could not happen unless the Spirit who abides in the believer kept the believer looking to God without grieving Him, and drawing from Him. If I were grieving the Lord at the time, I am no longer abiding in Him. I have slipped out of His presence, and for a while I may be following my own thought and way and will.
The same writer warns against testing this verse by our feelings.
There are many devout people who confuse a certain happiness in their souls with God's abiding in them. This danger usually takes a mystical form. They look inward at themselves and live by their feelings. … It is an effort to love God, and a readiness to credit the effort; not the faith of God's redeeming love and His unsparing judgment of the flesh, which finds an infinitely better portion in Christ the Lord.
- Gift. God has given us of His Spirit — an expression found nowhere else in the New Testament.
- Proof. The earlier verse used that gift to show God abides in us; here it shows more, that we also abide in Him.
- Communion. "Of His Spirit" means real communion with God, not just power at work — something Scripture never says of those who fell away.
- Person. God gives a divine Person, who makes the Son's declaration of God real to us and shows us the things of Christ.
- Practice. God's abiding rests on His gift. Ours is dependence lived out. We test it by faith in Christ, not by measuring good feelings.
And *we* have seen, and testify, that the Father has sent the Son [as] Saviour of the world.
In verse 13 John speaks of the gift of the Spirit, and in verse 15 of confessing Jesus as the Son of God; between them he sets a plain fact — eyewitnesses tell what they saw. The verse raises three questions: who these witnesses are, what the Father's sending of the Son means, and how far "the world" reaches.
The force of the verse sits on the verb. John does not tell his readers to look inward at their own love. He points them back to a Person that human eyes watched.
Notice how carefully inspiration has guarded against the mystical school in the next verse. The blessed truth of Christ — the facts the Gospels reveal — is the best cure for this habit of looking inside ourselves. It sets and establishes the heart on its divine foundation... "And we have beheld" — there is the emphatic word of the inspired witnesses — "and testify that the Father has sent the Son as Saviour of the world."
Commentators differ here. Some hold that the seeing belongs strictly to those who walked with Him:
Here we listen to apostolic speech. "We" means the apostles, not us, the believers. We haven't seen Him with our eyes. But the apostles could say, "We have seen, and testify."
Others link the verse to what comes just before it: the Spirit given to every believer. From that they draw a practical conclusion:
Because the Spirit lives in us, our testimony goes out to the world. "We" must not be limited to the gifted only... It is a great wrong to the unsaved to make evangelizing the work of a few. No official position and no gift is essential for this — the Holy Spirit is. There are gifts, but all who are saved, and so know the Saviour, are each to bear testimony in his or her own sphere.
Sending needs two: one who sends, and one who is sent. Older translations read "the Son" here, not the ESV's "his Son," and the point below turns on that wording.
In the same way, the act of sending involves two Persons — the Sender and the Sent: "the Father sent the Son to be Saviour of the world." "The Son" was what He was before the sending. The "Saviour of the world" was what He was to become when sent.
Another writer reads the two halves of the sentence as a guard on both sides of who Christ is:
All the great controversies in the Christian Church, from the days of the early church fathers down to today, have centred on this very point. It has always been Satan's ceaseless attack. Reduce our Lord to mere manhood, refuse His Deity, and the whole of Scripture becomes a fraud. Refuse His true Manhood, pure and sinless, and you have lost the Saviour. "The Father sent the Son [Deity] to be the Saviour [Manhood] of the world."
The title breaks through every boundary a religious mind might want to draw. It also turns this testimony into a test of whether a person has understood Christianity.
"We have seen" — what a sight! Greater than Moses ever saw! Until He, the Lord Jesus, came, no one knew that the Father sent the Son to be the Saviour of the world. Now it is the testimony of every Christian. The believer who does not testify this does not understand Christianity... here it is Christian testimony: "the Father sent the Son to be the Saviour," not of Israel only, but "of the world." However bad, however far off, however dark a sinner may be, He is the Saviour.
Outsiders had already used this title. In John's Gospel it comes from Samaritans, a people the Jews looked down on:
It was not only a Saviour, and not only for the people of Israel who were expecting the Messiah, but "the Saviour of the world." Even then the truth broke through the clouds. The light shone into the hearts of the despised and ignorant Samaritans, and they were the first to confess Him in this way.
The title says what He actually does for people — and what it cost Him:
Saviour means someone who brings salvation. He takes people out of their state of ruin and brings them into salvation, into nearness to God, into His communion. But for this He had to die. The Son of God had to die on the cross of Calvary.
- Sent — the Father is the Sender and the Son the Sent; He was the Son before He was sent, and became Saviour in being sent.
- Seen — the verse rests on eyewitness fact, not on inner feeling. The facts of Christ cure endless self-examination.
- Saviour — the word means being taken out of ruin and brought into nearness to God, and it cost Him death on the cross.
- World — not Israel only; no sinner is too bad, too distant or too dark for this title, and Samaritans were the first to own it.
- Said — what was seen must be told out. Commentators differ over who "we" covers: the apostles alone, or every believer who has the Spirit of verse 13.
Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God.
This verse ties a huge promise to a short confession. Own Jesus as the Son of God, and God makes His home in you, and you in Him. Two questions follow. What does John mean by confessing, and how far does the promise reach?
Some assume that dwelling in God like this belongs only to a few great believers. The first word of the verse rules that out.
But some might say, God dwelling in us and we in God belongs only to a very few. Not so. Such is the grace of God that "whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God." This gracious word "whoever" has eased the troubled souls of thousands. It has emboldened multitudes to come to God. It has encouraged countless lost sinners to claim gospel mercies for themselves. It embraces every believer. It lifts him up into those privileges of nearness to God that the greatest of the apostles enjoyed.
John does not write "whoever believes." He writes "whoever confesses." That step marks a person who has stopped wavering, and it carries the highest blessing there is.
Nothing can be wider than the word "whoever." He does not only believe; he confesses. He has overcome all difficulties, doubts or fears. He has weighed the truth, felt the grace, judged himself, and no longer hesitates. And now the blessing of the Lord comes on his head in full measure. The striking fact here is that whoever confesses Jesus to be the Son of God has not only life, forgiveness of sins and the Holy Spirit, but the highest spiritual privileges that can be imagined.
Words on their own are not the confession John means.
A saving confession must start with a believing heart (Romans 10:10). Wherever the one comes first, the other is sure to follow (2 Corinthians 4:13). So if there is no true faith, there can be no true confession. But a heart that believes as it should will always show itself by a confessing tongue.
The title is not a courtesy. It cannot be watered down into the sonship that believers receive by adoption.
This cannot be separated from the verses before it, as if someone could deny the Trinity and still speak lightly of Christ being the Son of God. Such talk reduces His Sonship to that of a mere creature. It places Him on a level with others who have become "sons" by adoption (Galatians 4:5). He Himself is the Son in His very nature, "whose coming forth is from of old, from ancient days" (Micah 5:2; older translations read "from everlasting"). To confess Him as Son of God must include this eternal dignity and glory of His Person. Otherwise it is no confession at all.
Notice what the verse asks you to confess: who He is, not what He did. One writer ties lasting doubt to a thin grasp of His Person.
Note, it is the confession of His Person, not of His work. Many know something of the work of Christ. They tell you they are clinging to the cross, yet they are still full of doubts and fears. Why? I believe the reason is that they have no deep or adequate idea of the fulness of His Person.
This dwelling is not a figure of speech. God dwells by His Spirit, and that Spirit shapes how a believer lives.
Where a person is truly a Christian, God dwells in him. He does not simply have life. He is sealed with the Holy Spirit, and that Spirit is the power for all moral conduct. If we only believed that the Spirit of God dwells in us, what obedience there would be! What kind of people we would be, not grieving that Spirit!
The other half of the promise is the believer in God. That is where the heart comes to rest, even when human friendship fails.
The heart has an abiding rest in God. I am certain of God; I can be certain of no one else. You may have the most faithful, blameless, devoted friend. Ah, you are not always certain of your friend. There may come a moment when your friend disappoints you. God never will.
Confessing this out loud costs something. The world in view rejected Him.
Great energy is needed to keep saying, before the world that crucified Jesus, that this rejected Man was the Son of God. And only the energy of the love of God can keep that testimony going.
- Whoever — the promise leaves no one out. The simplest believer comes as near to God as the apostles did.
- Confess — the word marks a settled soul, not a formula. The heart believes first, then the tongue confesses.
- Son — the confession owns His Person in its eternal dignity, not a sonship shared with creatures. A thin view of Him leaves the soul in doubt.
- Abides — God takes up residence by His Spirit, which is power for daily conduct and a reason not to grieve Him.
- In God — the believer's side is a rest no friendship can match, held in a world that crucified Him.
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.
*We* love because *he* has first loved us.
God's love is the beginning of the whole story, and our love is only the echo. It settles that order for good. It also shows why every try at loving God out of our own strength collapses.
The verse answers a question about where love comes from. It tells us how love for God ever started in hearts that had none.
The proof of God's love is that He has given His Son; the perfection of it is that we are as He is; and it drives fear out, even when we face the day of judgment. But how did this happen? The answer is, "We love Him because He first loved us." That brings us back to the simplest truths. We did not come to God because of His loveliness. We do not come in by loving God; that comes later. We come in as sinners who owe everything to His grace. Once we are in, we find God to be what He is: love that meets us in our every need. Then we love Him.
The law demanded love from people. One writer shows the difference between a demand and a revelation of love.
The law demanded love from people, but never got it. But God has won it by showing His great love to us in the death of His only Son: "We love Him because He first loved us." Our love is not forced out of us by threats of wrath. Threats never produced love in any human heart. They produced terror, but not love. Love produces love, wherever that love is valued.
Notice that John does not tell his readers to start loving. He reports what has happened to them.
First he shows how God has displayed His love. God has given His Son. He has given His Spirit to live in us. He has made His love perfect with us, so that we may have boldness on the day of judgment. Then John says, "We love Him because He first loved us." He does not say we ought to love Him. The heart has drunk in all that this love has brought: eternal life, propitiation for our sins, the gift of the Spirit, and boldness on the day of judgment, because we will be like the Judge. All this streams into the heart. So we can say, "We love Him because He first loved us."
Some people try to work up warm feelings toward God. One writer explains why that fails, and where to look instead.
This reaction is spontaneous and natural. I put no effort into it at all — no pushing myself, no working up my emotions by artificial means. Love must be spontaneous, or it is not love at all… Our hearts are no fountain of love. We must look elsewhere: "we love because He first loved us." Receiving the love of God is the only source of love for God or for others… What is the use of putting all our energy into pumping to draw water from a well that yields only poison gas?
Many readers know the verse as "we love Him." One writer says the shorter reading, without "Him," takes in more, not less.
You may have noticed that the true reading of 1 John 4:19 is, "We love, because He first loved us." You may feel, as I did, disappointed that the old familiar words have changed. But the true reading still includes the old words we all love so much, and it takes in much more. It is a wide, absolute love. It includes love for Him, love for one another, love of the Word, and love of prayer… And the only way for that love to grow is to know more and more of His love to us.
The same reading, another writer argues, works as a check on spiritual self-admiration.
All is included in "we love." Yet none of it would be possible unless we begin in the dust of death, "because He first loved us." So these words correct us, and our hearts badly need it. They strip away our focus on self and our admiration of self.
One writer asks what our love for God actually rests on.
This holy sentence tells us that we can only love God when we know He first loved us. We love Him because we trust His love for us. If it were the other way round, we would be assuming that our love is greater than God's… So the only true love for God grows out of confidence in His love toward us.
- First — God loved first, and His love is the cause of ours. We came to Him as debtors to His grace, not as admirers of His loveliness.
- Given — The proof of that first love is the gift of His Son. With Him come eternal life, propitiation, the Spirit, and boldness for the day of judgment.
- Received — Love is not pumped up from our own hearts; it is the spontaneous return of a love taken in. The law demanded it and got terror instead.
- Spread — "We love" is left wide open: love to God, to one another, to His Word and to prayer, growing only as we know His love better.
- Tested — Real love for God rests on confidence in His love for us, never on admiration of our own love.