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.
Love Known, Not Merely Felt
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.
The Order: Known Before Believed
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."
Love as God's Nature
"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.
Guarded from Vague Mysticism
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.
Abiding: A Home, Not a Visit
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.
What Comes Out
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.
Summary
- 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.