“We cannot expect the world to believe unless…”
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This passage displays some structure that suggests John’s thought process as he was writing. The same ideas enclose what he says, like “bookends” at 1 John 3:24 and 4:13. Even his wording is similar at the beginning and at the end of this section. Within those boundaries John addresses his readers as “beloved” three times. In each of those three paragraphs he gives related exhortations before coming back to his starting point: “abiding in Him.”
Bookends
The handout used for this discussion divided the passage using the structure observed in the “bookends.”
The one who keeps His commandments abides in Him, and He in him. We know by this that He abides in us, by the Spirit whom He has given us. (1 John 3:24)
…
By this we know that we abide in Him and He in us, because He has given us of His Spirit. (1 John 4:13)
At the beginning and at the end of this section John is describing evidence: “we know by this” and “by this we know.” As our group discussed, John is writing to correct conflicting claims about knowing God and genuine Christianity. Recall his first statement about the goal of his letter.
what we have seen and heard we proclaim to you also, so that you too may have fellowship with us; and indeed our fellowship is with the Father, and with His Son Jesus Christ. These things we write, so that our joy may be made complete.
(1 John 1:3-4, emphasis added)
In this current passage he describes that Trinitarian fellowship as ongoing reciprocal relationships: “we abide in Him and He in us.” John wants to distinguish clearly the genuine from the deceptive claims. Repeatedly throughout his letter he points to evidence of genuine faith (2:3, 2:5, 3:10, 3:19, 3:24, 4:2, 4:6, 4:13, 4:17, 5:2). In this passage he provides three important exhortations for evaluating that evidence. His affection for his audience is clear as he begins each point with “beloved,” calling them to the careful discernment of truth, to a confident assurance in faith, and to the complete experience of God’s love.
Careful Discernment
John attributes our assurance, at least in part, to the Spirit from God (v. 24b), and he repeats that truth at the end of this passage (4:13; forming the second “bookend”). However, immediately after this affirmation, he clarifies with a warning to his “beloved” audience. Like John, C. S. Lewis’s Elwin Ransom knew something about the spiritual world.
“Look here,” said Ransom, “one wants to be careful about this sort of thing. There are spirits and spirits, you know.”[1]
John’s test is to “prove” (δοκιμάζω, dokimazō; “to test, assay, metals; to prove, try, examine, scrutinize”)[2] spiritual claims. His test does not reduce evidence to mere personal emotions or only to subjective experiences. Rather, John’s intent “to head off mystical appeals to possession of the Spirit, not to encourage them, is confirmed in the next section.”[3]
Two factors guard against such individualistic independence: the nature of John’s test, and the standard of objective obedience.
John’ Test
John defines the absolute proof that divides godly spirits (or the Spirit) from pretenders.
By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God;
(1 John 4:2)
The test is available (and necessary) for believers since John says “By this you can know.…” It is important to consider each segment of the test.
-
- Jesus – He is not a myth or legend (existing “nobody knows when or where” like Greek or Roman gods of paganism) but “a historical Person crucified (it is all in order) under Pontius Pilate.”[4]
- Christ – He is the Anointed One, Χριστός (christos, the Greek translation of the Hebrew “Messiah”), the divine Son of God (cf. 4:15), and not merely a “great moral teacher…. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”[5]
- has come – Expressed in the Greek perfect tense “indicating not the past action as such but the present ‘state of affairs’ resulting from the past action.” The perfect tense “denotes the continuance of a completed action.”[6] As our group observed, this means that just as Jesus ascended physically in His resurrection body, He is still in that body, the “state of affairs” and “the continuance of a completed action.” He still has “rich wounds yet visible above, in beauty glorified.”[7]
- in the flesh – He is an authentic human being, not a phantom or other apparition that only appeared to have a body and only appeared to die, as claimed by the heresy of Docetism (from the Greek word for “apparition”).
Remember that John is dealing with deceivers. Proof of godly origin is not a one-time event, checking a box on a form or reciting the right phrase like a password. John uses the present tense, which most English versions translate simply as “confesses.”[8] The continuous-action force of the Greek present tense might be communicated more clearly as in Disciples’ Literal New Testament:[9]
By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that is confessing Jesus Christ as having come in the flesh is from God.
(1 John 4:2, DLNT, emphasis added)
Continuously “confessing that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh” is a frame of mind, a world view that shapes the thinking and the actions and the relationships of a genuine believer.
Objective Obedience
Both of the “bookends” enclosing this passage (3:24, 4:13) refer to the Spirit given by God as the evidence (“we know by this”) of a genuine relationship with God (“we abide in Him and He in us”). However, John’s tests for spirits and prophets (and anyone promoting unorthodox teaching) are not just about doctrinal details.
From what John has already written, his readers would understand that along with doctrine, ethics and love are equally important calling cards of gospel truth.[10]
In fact, John has just specified commandment-keeping as such a “calling card” to identify an authentic, abiding relationship.
The one who keeps His commandments abides in Him, and He in him.
(1 John 3:24a)
What commandments? John has just summarized in the preceding sentence.
This is His commandment, that we believe in the name of His Son Jesus Christ, and love one another, just as He commanded us.
(1 John 3:23)
This is one more example of something we have seen before in this letter. John uses poetry-like forms and repetition to impress truth on his readers.
This is His commandment,
. that we believe in the name of His Son Jesus Christ,
. and love one another,
just as He commanded us.
Then John makes another of his “we know by this” statements, providing evidence of authentic relational knowledge of God.
We know by this that He abides in us, by the Spirit whom He has given us.
(1 John 3:24b, emphasis added)
A commentator poses a question that did not come up in our group discussion.
John concludes by stating, “And we know by this that he abides in our midst, by the Spirit whom he gave to us” (3:24c). An important question arises. Does “by this” … point forward to the Spirit? …. Or does “by this” point back to the abiding that comes with the commandment-keeping John has just mentioned? [11]
Perhaps we are not forced to choose (various scholars have various opinions). But the alternatives (pointing forward or pointing back) are not necessarily mutually exclusive. John intertwines evidence of the Spirit and doctrine with evidence of behavior and obedience. Our obedience is enabled by the Spirit, and that same obedience is used by that same Spirit to confirm our abiding relationship with God.
Believers know, by the Spirit that God (or Christ) gives them, that they abide in Christ and Christ in them as they keep the commandments to trust and love.[12]
Confident Assurance
Establishing the criteria for truth is essential for confidence in the Christian life.
False prophets and bogus spirits make the matter of deciding who truly hears and echoes God’s voice acute.[13]
Now John has given the criteria for carefully discerning truth, and he turns to the resulting confident assurance available to believers.
He addresses his beloved congregation with the core of the true message and the compelling evidence.
By this the love of God was manifested in us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world so that we might live through Him.
(1 John 4:9)
John says that God’s love was “manifested” or made plain (φανερόω, phaneroō; reveal, make know, show),[14] from the same root that was translated “obvious” in 1 John 3:10. What God did makes His love unmistakably obvious.
That statement forms the solid foundation of our eternal salvation. It also establishes the rationale for trusting God in our day-to-day circumstances. The infinitely loving, perfectly wise, and absolutely sovereign God[15] has demonstrated His absolute commitment to His children in the most costly way possible.
You can always trust the God Who died for you.[16]
God’s trustworthy love, manifested by sending His Son, moves us to obey His commandment, to believe in the Son and to love one another (3:23). (Note that John refers to “commandment,” singular, but describes that commandment as the combination of two parts. This seems to echo Jesus’ summary of the Law and the Prophets, “love God, love others,” in Matthew 22:36-40.)
John indicates that God’s love motivates our love for one another. That connection provides evidence of true versus false faith.
Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.
(1 John 4:7)
Then, to clarify godly love even further, John emphasizes the origin of genuine love.
In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.
(1 John 4:10)
Love was not our idea. As in everything else, creation to salvation to sanctification to glorification, the initiative is God’s. He loved us, and He acted sacrificially to express that love.
Love initiated and demonstrated by God is more sure and more stable than anything we might do. Our attempts at love can come and go and vary in depth. Love, with God as the Source, is constant, infinite, and eternal. That love that originated among the Three-Personal God[17] is the source of our confidence. Because we are confident in His love, we can love one another.
Complete Experience
So far in this passage John exhorts careful discernment (4:1-6) of spirits and the teachers they inspire. Once that discernment establishes trustworthy doctrine, he points out that believers are secure in the love that God showed in sending His Son (4:7-10). As our group has discussed many times, the essential meaning of Christ’s propitiation (4:10b) is the assurance, “God is not angry with us.” Our amazed gratitude motivates our obedience and particularly our love for one another (4:7).
Now John moves to his third point, and he begins once more with the affectionate address of “beloved” (4:11).
We Ought to Love
In this section, John uses slightly stronger language to call his audience to love one another.
Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.
(1 John 4:11, emphasis added)
In the preceding paragraph he urges them gently to obedience.
Beloved, let us love one another, (NASB1995)
Beloved, may we love one another, (YLT)[18]
(1 John 4:7a, emphasis added)
Now he says more directly, “We ought” (ὀφείλω, opheilō; to owe, be in debt; be bound by oath; be obligated, ought, must).[19] This “obligation” cannot be a requirement to appease God or to provide penance for sin – remember the point of propitiation. Since the cross, there is no anger to appease nor any guilt requiring penance. Our love is motivated by His greater love, as in the parable Jesus told (Matthew 18:23-35) describing two slaves indebted beyond their means. The master’s conclusion makes the same point.
Should you not also have had mercy on your fellow slave, in the same way that I had mercy on you?
(Mathew 18:33)
Our love for others, imitating the sacrificial initiative of God, grows out of gratitude.
Perfected Love
It is interesting to note the relative lengths of the three “beloved” paragraphs. John spends the most time ensuring that his beloved audience can discern truth from falsehood (vv. 1-6; 139 words in the original). Then he needs a shorter section to communicate the confident assurance they can enjoy based on that correct belief (vv. 7-10; 85 words). Finally, he concludes with his brief application (vv. 11-12; only 32 words). When John has made his lengthy case for discerning right doctrine, his encouraging assurance is simply a short summary of that doctrine. With that assurance in mind, the amazing application requires few words.
Those few words carry wonderful weight.
if we love one another, God abides in us, and His love is perfected in us.
(1 John 4:12b).
What does John mean about God’s love being “perfected in us”? The word John uses for “perfect” (τελειόω, teleioō) means to complete, to reach a goal, to fulfill.[20] The sentence just before this statement provides a better understanding of John’s point.
No one has seen God at any time.
(1 John 4:12a)
Some comments in our group questioned that statement. One person pointed out that John, along with thousands of other people had seen Jesus, and Jesus is God. Another comment quoted John’s own earlier writing when Jesus said, “He who has seen Me has seen the Father” (John 14:9b). And someone else mentioned the “theophanies” (an appearance of God) in the Old Testament). The Lord appeared to Abram in Genesis 12:7. In Deuteronomy 31:14-15, God appeared to Moses and Joshua. In all these Biblical examples, it would seem that people saw God.
However, John draws a contrast between those who “saw” God in those examples and the effect of the love Christians have for one another.
No one has seen God at any time;
if we love one another, God abides in us, and His love is perfected in us.
(1 John 4:12)
The connection between those seemingly unrelated statements is how we perceive God. The following extended quotation was part of our discussion.
That no man has ever seen God is evident. The Old Testament theophanies … did not involve the full revelation of God as he is in himself but only a suggestion of what he is in forms that a human being could understand. But how then is a person to know him? The reply of this verse is almost breathtaking, for it is John’s clear statement that although God cannot be seen in himself, he can be seen in those in whom he abides and in whom his love is perfected. How are men and women who do not yet know God to know him? he seems to ask. The answer is this: When we who do know him love one another. Bruce writes well on this point, saying,
The love of God displayed in his people is the strongest apologetic that God has in the world. When his love is planted in their hearts, and he himself thus dwells within them, his love is “perfected” in the complementary response which it finds in them, towards him and towards their fellows. It is in this way that they are not only holy and merciful as he is holy and merciful, but, as enjoined by their Lord in the Matthaean version of the Sermon on the Mount, “perfect” as their “heavenly Father is perfect” (Matt. 5:48), and all through that perfection of love poured out for them in the sacrifice of the cross.[21]
How could fallen, finite creatures perceive the “full revelation” of the infinite, holy Creator? And even if anyone could, how could they communicate that reality in human language?
Consider a poetic attempt to illustrate the impossibility of such a description. At the end of Paradiso, Dante does his best to express what he imagined of the Beatific Vision.
In the deep, transparent essence of the lofty Light
there appeared to me three circles
having three colors but the same extent,
and each one seemed reflected by the other
as rainbow is by rainbow, while the third seemed fire,
equally breathe forth by one and by the other.
O how scant is speech, too weak to frame my thoughts.
Compared to what I still recall my words are faint –
to call them “little” is to praise them much.
O eternal Light, abiding in yourself alone,
knowing yourself alone, and, know to yourself
and knowing, loving and smiling on yourself![22]
xxxiii.115-126
Or, more briefly and more recently, at the end of the Chronicles of Narnia, the description is likewise only partial at best.
And as [Aslan] spoke He no longer looked to them like a lion; but the things that began to happen after that were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them.[23]
Even the best of writers cannot describe things “so great and beautiful.” All they can do is stir our longing for that future full revelation.
We may not be able to see or even imagine the “full revelation” of God, at least not yet. But John reveals the closest we can approach that vision. And he says that believers are an integral part. The clearest expression of God’s nature is seen in the relational interaction among believers. What others (believers and non-believers) see in our relationships provides the most “complete” (or “perfect”) perception of love. That perception of love is also the most complete expression we can experience of the God Who is love (v. 8b).
That complete or perfected love provides observable evidence for the God Who cannot be seen. That love is encouragement to believers who experience genuine Christian community. And, as John recorded in the prayer of Jesus, that love is authentication for non-believers. Just before His arrest, He prayed for unity among his followers,
that they may all be one; even as You, Father, are in Me and I in You, that they also may be in Us, so that the world may believe that You sent Me. The glory which You have given Me I have given to them, that they may be one, just as We are one; I in them and You in Me, that they may be perfected in unity, so that the world may know that You sent Me, and loved them, even as You have loved Me.
(John 17:21-23, emphasis added)
Twice in that short section of His prayer, He defined “the final apologetic.”
Now comes the sobering part. Jesus goes on in this 21st verse to same something that always causes me to cringe. If as Christians we do not cringe, it seems to me we are not very sensitive or very honest, because Jesus here gives us the final apologetic. …
We cannot expect the world to believe that the Father sent the Son, that Jesus’ claims are true, and that Christianity is true, unless the world sees some reality of the oneness of true Christians.
Now that is frightening. Should we not feel some emotion at this point?[24]
Does our doctrine result in the assurance John described? And does that assurance result in the perfecting of God’s love in us? Or in our imperfect attempts at loving one another, how much do we cringe at that final apologetic? May the Lord increase our unity as a convincing display that the Father has sent the Son.
[1] C. S. Lewis, Perelandra (New York: Scribner Paperback Fiction, 1996), 93.
[2] https://www.billmounce.com/greek-dictionary/dokimazo
[3] Robert W. Yarbrough, 1-3 John, Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Academic, 2008), 216.
[4] C. S. Lewis, “Myth Became Fact” in God in the Dock (Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1970), 67.
[5] C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis Signature Classics (New York: HarperCollins Publishers Inc., 2021) Kindle Edition, location 791, p. 52.
[6] Daniel B. Wallace, Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan Publishing House, 1996), 573.
[7] Matthew Bridges, Crown Him With Many Crowns, 1851.
https://hymnary.org/text/crown_him_with_many_crowns
[8] https://www.biblegateway.com/verse/en/1%20John%204%3A2
[9] https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1%20John%204%3A1-3&version=DLNT
[10] Robert W. Yarbrough, 1-3 John, Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Academic, 2008), 223.
[11] Robert W. Yarbrough, 1-3 John, Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Academic, 2008), 216.
[12] Robert W. Yarbrough, 1-3 John, Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Academic, 2008), 216.
[13] Robert W. Yarbrough, 1-3 John, Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Academic, 2008), 216.
[14] https://www.billmounce.com/greek-dictionary/phaneroo
[15] Jerry Bridges, You Can Trust God (Colorado Springs: NavPress, 1989), 6,
[16] Larry Crabb, by Ken Crabb quoting his father, “Remembering Larry Crabb”, Moody Radio broadcast, March 5, 2021;
at 38:16
https://www.moodyradio.org/radioplayer.aspx?episode=367535
[17] C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis Signature Classics (New York: HarperCollins Publishers Inc., 2021) Kindle Edition location 2025, page 160.
[18] https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=1%20john%204%3A7&version=NASB1995,%20YLT
[19] https://www.billmounce.com/greek-dictionary/opheilo
[20] https://www.billmounce.com/greek-dictionary/teleioo
[21] J. M. Boice, The Epistles of John: an expositional commentary (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Books, 2004), 116, emphasis added;
quoting from F. F. Bruce, The Gospel & Epistles of John (Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company), 109.
[22] Robert Hollander & Jean Hollander, Paradiso (New York: Anchor Books, 2007), 915-917.
[23] C. S. Lewis, The Last Battle (Chronicles of Narnia Book 7) (New York: Collier Books, 1973), 183.
[24] Francis A. Schaeffer, The Mark of the Chrisitan (Downers Grove, Illinois: Inter-Varsity Press, 1971), 15.