Deeper Commentary
1 John 4
4:1
Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits,
whether they are of God. Because many false prophets have gone out into
the world- In John's Gospel and letters, the defining feature
of true believers and teachers is that they have received the spirit of
the Lord Jesus, the Comforter. The authenticity of teachers / "prophets"
was to be demonstrated according to whether they had the fruits of the
Spirit, which are summarized in love for our brethren as the Lord loved us
unto death. This is the test of the spirits.
There were other tests of these prophets- if they didn’t accept that
Jesus was Lord, they didn’t have the Spirit (1 Cor. 12:3). If they held
false teaching about whether Jesus came in the flesh, and walked in hatred
of the other Christians, they also were to be rejected (1 Jn. 4:1-10).
When Paul says that God and the Holy Spirit witness to the truth of what
he is writing, he is presumably referring to how those with the gift of
discerning spirits had tested and approved what he was saying (Rom. 1:9;
9:1 cp. 2 Cor. 11:31; Gal. 1:20; 1 Tim. 2:7). What all this means is that
as soon as a genuine New Testament prophet gave a prophecy, it was
immediately
recognized as such, because all these methods of ‘testing the spirit’ had
been followed. This, by the way, explains the very ‘dogmatic’ and
self-assured tone of some of the writers. They insist that their commands
have God’s authority (1 Thess. 4:2; 2 Thess. 2:15), and therefore must be
obeyed (2 Thess. 3:14). They can insist that what they are saying is
actually the will and command of the Lord (1 Cor. 14:37); and their
inspired preaching was “of the Holy Spirit” (1 Cor. 2:13). These claims
would have come over as arrogant and baseless- unless there had indeed
been the process of confirmation of their words explained above. The
writers can ask for their letters to be read at the gatherings of the
early church- which initially would have been based around the synagogue
practice of reading from the Old Testament Scriptures. Their writings were
clearly accepted on a par with those writings- as soon as they were issued
(1 Thess. 5:27; Col. 4:16; Rev. 1:3). The testings of the various claims
to Holy Spirit inspiration are to be found in Gal. 1, 1 Cor. 14 etc. But
the letters of John, written at the end of the New Testament period, have
the most warnings about the need to test the various claims of Holy Spirit
inspiration- understandably, as John was writing towards the end of the
period when inspired writings were being given (1 Jn. 4:2,3; 5:6; 2 Jn.
7). See on 1 Cor. 14:29; 1 Tim. 5:18.
4:2
Hereby do you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses
that Jesus Christ came in the flesh is of God- The Judaist
infiltrators claimed to have the Spirit, as the true Christians did. For
being without the spirit of Christ makes a man "none of His". So exactly
what "spirit" they claimed to have needed to be tested. People here are
called 'spirits' because of the close identification between a person and
their 'spirit'. True Christians would have the spirit of Christ at their
core and would thereby be personally, openly identified with Him. John's
Gospel has spoken of the difference between claiming faith in Christ, and
confessing or professing Him before men. The cross elicited open and total
confession of Him before men. John the Baptist is presented as an example
of a man who confessed and did not deny the Lord (Jn. 1:20), and Joseph
and Nicodemus are presented as examples of men who went from secret faith
to the open confession required of a true Christian. Many Jewish
'believers' refused to confess Jesus as Christ because the penalty for
such confession was exclusion from the synagogue system and the Jewish
world (Jn. 9:22; 12:42); see on 2:23.
So firstly, a person filled with the spirit of Christ, the Messiah,
would actually confess Jesus as Christ, as Messiah. The Judaist
infiltrators would not openly confess Him in this way. But they must
confess that He "came in the flesh". They had to openly accept that Jesus
was a real person; for already incipient ideas of Docetism ['seeming'] and
Gnosticism were being advocated by the Jews as a way of clouding the whole
issue- that a man born of Mary was Son of God and Messiah, having a
perfect character, and now risen, was able to share His spirit with
believers in Him. I demonstrated in
The Real Christ
that much false teaching about the nature of the Lord began with Jewish
attempts to cloud the true Christian teaching about the Lord; and these
attempts later morphed by further extension into the absurdities of
Trinitarian doctrine.
The idea of "Christ comes..." cannot be pressed to support any idea of
pre-existence. It was a standard Jewish phrase to refer to the arrival of
the Messiah (so used in Mt. 24:5; Jn. 4:25; 7:27,31,41,42; 11:27). So the
idea would be that Jesus was the Christ, the Messiah who should "come";
and He came as an actual human being, "in the flesh". He was the
manifestation of God "in the flesh" (1 Tim. 3:16). Already Judaism was
beginning to suggest that Messiah was just some abstract, idealistic
personification rather than a literal person. That idea is popular in
reform Judaism to this day.
There is another possibility. The Lord had promised that despite His
physical departure, He would "come" to the disciples, in that the gift of
His Spirit in their hearts would make His presence as real [and moreso] as
when He was literally with them (Jn. 14:18). His 'coming' to His people
was therefore through His Spirit indwelling their flesh. The very same
Greek words are used when Paul explains that the life of the risen Jesus,
His Spirit, is made manifest "in our mortal flesh" right now (see on 2
Cor. 4:11). The Spirit gift would be given to "all flesh" (Acts 2:17
s.w.). Hence Paul could say that "Christ lives in me... in the flesh"
(Gal. 2:20). In this case, the "spirit", the person claiming to have the
Spirit, would confess that the spirit of the Lord Jesus had entered them,
their "flesh”.
4:3- see on Jn. 12:42.
And every spirit that does not confess that Jesus came in the
flesh is not of God, and they are proved to be of the antichrist; of whom
you have heard that it comes, and now is already in the world-
"Of God" suggests 'born of God'. The believer is born "of the Spirit", not
of the will of man but "of God" (Jn. 1:13; 3:5). There were false claims
of Spirit possession in the first century; as I have noted on 1
Corinthians and 1 Timothy [regarding the claims made in Ephesus]. The
Judaist infiltrators claimed to have the spirit of Christ, and even did
false miracles to support their claims, in Corinth they were talking in
glossolalia, "mumbo jumbo", and falsely claiming this was the gift of
tongues / languages. Those who had been truly born again, of the Spirit,
would openly confess the Lord Jesus as Messiah, as a real person "in the
flesh". By refusing to do so, they demonstrated that they were
"antichrist", the fake, imitation Christ. "You have heard that it comes"
must refer to the Lord's predictions that there would be false Christs.
These false versions of Messiah refer to the ideas being pushed in the
Jewish world and spread into the churches by the Judaist infiltrators.
They were specifically entering the [Jewish] world.
4:4
You are of God, little children, and have overcome them. Because
greater is he that is in you than he that is in the world- By
being born of God by the Spirit (Jn. 1:13; 3:5), what was in them (the
Spirit) was greater than the supposed 'spirit' in the Jewish world. The
believers were "little children" of God, having been born of Him by the
Spirit. The Spirit is personified ["he"] not because the Holy Spirit is a
personal being, but because the presence of the Spirit would be as real
for the believers as if the Lord were physically present with them as a
person.
John makes such a fuss about believing that the Lord Jesus came in the
flesh because he wants his brethren to have the same Spirit that was in
Jesus dwelling in
their flesh (1 Jn. 4:2,4). He wants them to see that
being human, being in the flesh, is no barrier for God to dwell in. As He
was in the world, so are we to be in the world (1 Jn. 4:17 Gk.).
This is why it's so important to understand that the Lord
Jesus was genuinely human.
4:5
They are of the world. Therefore speak they of the world and the
world hears them- The world of the first century didn't
generally hear the Jewish false teachers; but the Jewish world did. This
confirms that we are correct in viewing "the world" here as the Jewish
world. The message of these people, their teaching / 'speaking', was of
the Jewish world, and therefore attractive to the Jewish world.
4:6
We are of God. He that knows God hears us. He who is not of God
does not hear us. By this we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of
error- Being "of God", born of Him by the Spirit (Jn. 1:13;
3:5), is presented as being in opposition to being "of the [Jewish]
world". John himself was a Jew and was not at all personally anti-Jewish;
but he clearly presents the world of Judaism, with their conscious denial
of Jesus as Messiah, as being absolutely opposed to the things of God.
Those who were not born of God by the Spirit would not "hear" the teaching
of John and his team. Yet they surely had the Spirit; to refuse their
teaching, which they had been taught by the Comforter, was another proof
that these hearers were not "of God". There is an intuitive bonding
between all who have the Lord's spirit. Those who were out of step with
the teaching of spirit-filled teachers like John were thereby discernible
as of "the spirit of error". "Error" is more 'deceit' in the Greek, the
same word used of the spirit of deceit which the Lord would send upon the
Jewish world (2 Thess. 2:11; see note there).
4:7
Beloved, let us love one another. For love is of God, and
everyone that loves is begotten of God and knows God- Another
proof of having been born of God through the Spirit (Jn. 1:13; 3:5) is
whether we love one another. The love in view is not of a secular nature;
but the love of the new commandment, to love as the Lord loved us, unto
death on a cross. To be born "of God" is to have the love which is "of
God", the love which came to its ultimate term in the gift of His Son for
the sins of the world (Jn. 3:16). Although John's audience were all born
of God, they still had to be exhorted to "love one another". The love
between us is not as it were imposed by the Spirit against our will; the
work of the Spirit requires our willing partnership. Knowing God means
living in the sacrificial love of the Father and Son. Clearly we do not
'know' God simply by perceiving the correct theologies about Him and
placing a mental tick of agreement against them.
4:8- see on Jn. 3:3.
He that does not love, does not know God. For God is love-
As noted on :8, to know God in the Hebraic sense of having a relationship
with Him will issue in love- His unique, self-sacrificial love which led
to the events of the cross as their acme. To 'see' or 'know' both
the Father and Son is to become like them; beholding their glory results
in the glory of their person and Name shining off from our faces (see on 2
Cor. 3:18). So a litmus test of false brethren is whether or not they have
love. And so often those who appear the most conservative in their
teaching totally fail the
agape test.
To experience God is to know Him. So often the Hebrew prophets speak of
‘knowing God’ as meaning ‘to experience God’. Because God is love, to love
is to know God. Quite simply, how deeply we have loved [and I am speaking
of ‘love’ in its Biblical sense] is how deeply we have known God- and vice
versa. And that love is worked out in the very earthliness and worldliness
of human life in practice.
4:9
Herein was the love of God manifested to us, in that God has sent
His only Son into the world that we might live through him-
The allusion is again to Jn. 3:16. The manifestation of God's love was in the cross.
He was "manifest [s.w.] to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself" (Heb.
9:26). "He was manifested to take away our sins" (1 Jn. 3:5), which He did
through death on the cross. He was "manifest [s.w.] in these last times
for you" in that He was the sacrificial Passover lamb without blemist (1
Pet. 1:19,20). We live through
Him in that He gives to us the gift of His life, His spirit, the kind of
thinking He thinks and life He lives, breathing it into every open heart
through the gift of the Comforter. As the Father sent the Son into the
world, so we are sent into the world in obedience to the great commission
(Jn. 17:18). Our mission likewise is to manifest His love and to give
others the gift of His life, acting as a channel for the movement and gift
of His life / Spirit.
4:10
Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and
sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins- The love of
the Father and Son is not "love" as the world understands it; but the love
of the cross, which was "the propitiation for our sins", that men might be eternally forgiven and saved. One
dimension of that love is that it totally takes the initiative; it is not
a kind, positive response to those perceived to have loved us. It is the
initiative of dying for ones' enemies, in the hope they shall come over to
your side- as Romans 5 expresses it. The Judaism which John was up against
had much to say of their boasts to "love God"; but it is not our love of
Him which is to be the focus, but His love of us whilst we were sinners,
and His supreme gift of His Son for our sins and weaknesses, rather than
to complement our supposed righteousness.
John seems to purposefully make the point that the Lord
was sent [as a one time act in the past] “to be the
propitiation for our sins" (1 Jn. 4:10). In His blood covered body, He was
the place of propitiation, the blood-sprinkled mercy seat (s.w. "mercy
seat" Rom. 3:25; Heb. 9:5). And yet: “If any man sin, we have an advocate
with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous: for He
is
[right now, each time we sin] the propitiation for our sins" (1 Jn.
2:1,2 s.w.). In obtaining forgiveness for us He in some way goes through
again the essence of His sacrifice. It is too simplistic to say that we
repent, and God forgives. He does, but only on the basis of Christ’s
atoning act that must come ever before Him in the granting of forgiveness.
The Mosaic offerings of blood “before Yahweh" all pointed forward to this
fact. Awful as His actual physical sufferings were 2000 years ago, we
should not separate them from the work He came to do- of obtaining our
redemption. He worked this work in His life, on the cross, and continues
it until this day. The daily morning and evening sacrifice had to be of a
first year lamb without blemish- the identical specification for the
Passover lamb. His death on the cross at Passover was the same as His
daily life of sacrifice.
4:11
Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another-
The allusion is clearly to Jn. 3:16; God "so" loved the world in
that He gave His Son. He loved the world "so", in this way, that He gave
His son. Typical of John's letters, we have here the practical
interpretation of the well known phrases in the Gospel of John. This sets the standard so high. For the love of God toward us is not
"love" as the world understands it, but the love of utter, total
self-sacrifice expressed on the cross (:10). It is with that love that we
"ought to love one another". Anything which may damage the path to
salvation of the other must not be done; and every effort and sacrifice is
to be made to help others on the path toward salvation.
4:12 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 allusion is to the prologue of John's Gospel; we have not seen God, but the Son has revealed Him in who He was (Jn. 1:18). And thereby we who have seen the Son have seen / understood / believe in the Father for all the Father is.
"Seen" is theaomai ,
from whence "theater". It is not the word used in Jn. 1:18, and so John is
interpreting that passage more specifically in the context of people going
off to wrong religious views. God is not theater, mere religion, a show
that we go to see in theater at the weekends. The mentality of church life
is often no different to that of going to the theater at the weekend-
dressing up the same way, conscious of the image we cut with other
attenders, and certainly going for coffee with others in the pub or cafe
before or after the show. John's audience were very familiar with
'theater' and would immediately have seen the idea. 'Seeing' Him is not
possible physically and literally, but we see Him through His Son and
specifically through the cross.
"If we love one another..." is a conditional clause, implying that not all within the "we" did "love one another", and of course nudging "us" all towards greater love for one another. Although John speaks in black and white terms of category throughout his letters, he constantly builds in hints that he accepts we can be in the "light", confident of salvation by grace, although we also sin (1 Jn. 1:8-10; 2:1,2). He comments in 1 Jn. 2 that the darkness is passing away for us, and the true light of Christ's love is growing stronger. But he defines the darkness as unlove, failure to love our brethren. He accepts that we still have that darkness, but it is decreasing. But by category, we are "in the light". And here too we have the tacit acceptance that we do not love as we ought, in the light of the cross. And so likewise in :11 "we ought also to love one another"; "we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren" as the Lord did for us (1 Jn. 3:16). Because the Lord washed our feet, in an act which looked ahead to His servant like death on the cross, "you also ought to wash one another's feet" (Jn. 13:14) as the lowest slave. We "ought" implies we are not fully compliant. For who can perceive the love of the cross, and claim to have responded adequately? Paul had the same sense in Eph. 5:28; as the Lord died for us, "so ought men to love their wives as their own bodies". In these passages, "ought" is the word for debt. We have a debt which is huge and can never be repaid, according to the Lord's parables (Mt. 18:28,30; Lk. 7:41).
The abiding of the Father within believers is through the indwelling of
the Spirit in our hearts (3:24). The litmus proof of that is that we will
love one another within the believing community; for we are to love as the
Lord loved us and died for us to save us.
The idea of "perfected" is of an ongoing process. John writes often in
absolute terms, according to our status "in Christ"; as if it is simply so
that those who know the Father therefore automatically live in and with
the kind of love exhibited by Him in Christ. But we know from observed
experience that this is a process and doesn't happen instantaneously; even
Paul felt he had not yet been "perfected" (Phil. 3:12 s.w.). Love, the
love unto the death of a cross, is developed and "perfected" in us; this
results in the Christian community being "perfected" into a profound
unity, unseen in any other human social relationship (Jn. 17:23 s.w.). Our
life paths are therefore directed towards the development of that love;
and when our lives are over and the next we know we stand before the Lord
at the judgment, our love should have been perfected, matured and
developed to such a point that we assure our fluttering hearts before Him
and find boldness there. We shall then have reached the point the Lord
did, who was "perfected" until the very point when He died- for that was
the ultimate term and maturity of the process of love being "perfected" in
a person (Heb. 2:10; 5:9; 7:28). We note from His example and path that
whilst the process of 'perfecting' is still in operation, we may be not
fully mature, but lack of full maturity is not sinful. For the Lord never
sinned. It is the Spirit which 'perfects' us, until on death we can be
spoken of as being amongst the spirits of just men who were perfected
(Heb. 12:23). It is by keeping the word of the Lord Jesus ever before us
that this love is perfected in us (2:5).
4:13
Hereby we know that we abide in him and He in us, because He has
given us of his Spirit- This complements the statement in :12
that we know He abides in us if we live in love. The presence of the
Spirit will produce love, the love of Christ, which is the cardinal
feature of His entire Spirit. The Spirit is a gift, given- and not
cultivated by our own steel willed effort or felicity in Biblical
exposition. The Spirit was given when the Lord was glorified (Jn. 7:39);
there is a specific gift given to each believer at the time of water
baptism.
4:14
And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent the Son to
be the Saviour of the world- This continues to comment on the
result of the gift of the Spirit (:13), which was given through
the cross, and perhaps John himself had literally "seen" the crucifixion
and the outflow of blood and water [representing the gift of the Spirit].
Jn. 19:35 says as much: "blood and water came out of his side. And he who
has seen has testified, and his testimony is true; and he knows that he is
telling the truth". But John says that "we have seen...". We all as it
were have beheld the cross just as John did literally. For it was the Comforter who would
"testify" of the Lord, "and you also shall testify" (Jn. 15:26,27; 1 Jn.
5:6). The power to witness is given in the strength of the Spirit we are
given; otherwise shy individuals somehow find the power to bear major
witness, circumstances are arranged whereby the most reserved of us have
meetings with others who are searching for the truth of Christ we have
encountered and can share with them. John and his fellow apostles had
testified of what they had seen, in the preaching which the Gospel of John
is a transcript of (s.w. Jn. 3:11; 19:25; 21:24; Rev. 1:2). John sees
himself as following the example of the Gentile Samaritan woman, who
'testified' that the Lord was the saviour of the world (Jn. 4:39,42 s.w.).
"Saviour of the world" may at first blush appear a statement and belief that was harmless. But we must appreciate that this very term was exclusively used of Caesar. "The world" was effectively the Roman empire, and within the cult of emperor, the "saviour of the world" was Caesar, and this term could not be applied to anyone else. It was thereby to proclaim that "there is another king, one Jesus", another Emperor with another, eternal, Kingdom / Empire. The apparent reality of the surrounding empire was in fact transient and soon to be overthrown, indeed it had already been superceded and shown to be a pathetic fake compared with the ultimate truth of the Lord Jesus and His Kingdom. It is no less radical for us today, in the world of postmodernism, to declare that there is only One Saviour, and there is salvation in no other. John's writings, Revelation especially, are full of such deconstructions of the cult of empire- to the point that his writings would have been banned as illegal material. And the counter-cultural spirit of true Christianity is no less radical today.
4:15
Whoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in
him and he in God- As noted on :2 and :3, confession was
required, not just secret 'belief'; and such confession meant being put
out of the synagogues and thereby out of the Jewish world / society.
Therefore many 'believed' but would not "confess" (Jn. 9:22; 12:42); see
on 2:23. God's abiding in a person is through the Spirit (:13). And yet
the Comforter passages promise that the indwelling spirit will empower our
witness or confession. This therefore is another evidence of having
received the Spirit; that we shall testify, in the power of the Spirit.
The false teachers and infiltrators didn't do so; and were not therefore
"of God" and their claims to Spirit possession were false.
There is a repeated Biblical theme that the believer's relationship
with the Father is essentially
mutual. For example, we dwell
in God (Ps. 90:1), and He dwells in us (1 Cor. 3:16). And here too: "God
abides in him and he in God". We work out our salvation, and God in
response works in us both to will and to work (Phil. 2:12,13 RV). This is
the mutuality which arises from the Spirit.
4:16- see on 1 Jn. 2:24.
And we know and have believed the love which God has toward us.
God is love, and he that abides in love abides in God, and God abides in
him- The love God has toward us is supremely in the gift of
His Son to die for us (Jn. 3:16). This love is an essential part of God,
and for Him to abide in us and we in Him means living in the sphere of
self-sacrificial love, with that love touching every part of our thinking
and doing. And this is empowered by the action of the Spirit within us,
which is the means through which He abides in us and we in Him (:13). This
speaks of nothing less than a complete psychological takeover of the
natural spirit and personality. If we are open to it, we shall be filled
with "the fruit of the Spirit", which is finally just one thing- love, in
its various manifestations.
The fact the Lord Jesus didn't pre-exist as a person needs some
meditation. The kind of thoughts that come to us as we stand alone at
night, gazing into the sky. It seems evident that there must have been
some kind of previous creation(s), e.g. for the creation of the Angels.
God existed from infinity, and yet only 2,000 years ago did He have His
only and His
begotten Son. And that Son was a human being in order to save
humans- only a few million of us (if that), who lived in a 6,000 year time
span. In the spectre of infinite time and space, this is wondrous. That
the Only Son of God should die for a very few of us here, we who crawled
on the surface of this tiny planet for such a fleeting moment of time. He
died so that God could work out our salvation; and the love of God for us
is likened to a young man marrying a virgin (Is. 62:5). Almighty God, who
existed from eternity, is likened to a first timer, with all the intensity
and joyful expectation and lack of disillusion. And more than this. The
Jesus who didn't pre-exist but was like me, died for
me, in the shameful way that
He did. Our hearts and minds, with all their powers, are in the boundless
prospect lost. His pure
love for us, His
condescension, should mean that we also ought to reach out into the lives
of all men, never thinking they are beneath us or too insignificant or
distant from us. No wonder 1 Jn. 4:15,16 describes believing that Jesus is
the Son of God as believing the love that God has to us.
4:17 - see on 1 Cor. 15:10; 1 Jn. 4:4.
In this way is love made perfect with us, so that we may have boldness in the day of judgment- As discussed above, the love of God through the cross, and the Lord's love there, is to motivate us to love others with that same love. This is the work of 'perfecting' or 'developing towards an end'. This however doesn't mean that we will respond by reaching the level of love that the Lord had. The darkness of unlove is still "passing", we are not totally dominated by the Lord's love. But His love in dying for us can perfect our faith that He wants to save us, and so the end result of His love on the cross is that we can be confident of acceptance as we come before Him at the day of judgment. And so we will not live in fear of rejectiton by Him, because fear is associated with condemnation. Belief in His love means that we are assured of acceptance and therefore not being condemned.
In the grace of Christ, we can have a certain "boldness" in prayer (Heb.
4:16); but we will have "boldness in the day of judgment" (1 Jn. 4:17) in
the sense that the attitude we have in prayer now and the experience of
the Lord we know now will be that we have in the day of judgment. If He is
no more than a black box in our brain we call 'God' or 'Jesus', if for all
our Christianity we haven't known Him, so it will be then as we face Him.
The connection is with how Jn. 14:2,3 taught that
through the gift of the Comforter, we can be with the Lord "where I am",
or "as he is", where He was and is in His relationship with the Father. He
prayed for this in John 17; that His relationship with the Father might be
ours. And this is effected by the gift of the Comforter, as often noted on
John 14-16.
As explained on :12, the work of the Spirit is to perfect or develop
our characters towards an ever deeper love, approximating progressively
closer to the love of the Lord for us on the cross. By the end of our
lives we will have reached the maturity of love intended for us, and
thereby we shall be confident in the day of judgment. We shall know that
we have the spirit of Christ, which in simplest essence is love like His
love; and in this sense, we will have received the eternal life, the
spirit of living as He lived, and we can confidently expect to resume
living that eternal life through the process of resurrection and
glorification.
4:18
There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear;
because fear has punishment- If we reach the level of love intended for us, then we will have no fear
at the day of judgment, but rather "boldness" (:17) and assured hearts
(see on 3:19).
Murderers often reveal that their psychological motivation was not
merely hatred, but often fear- fear of what that person might do, or who
they might show them up to be. Fear, therefore, is at the root of all lack
of love and respect for our brethren. We fear the poor image of ourselves
which they reveal by their actions or examples; and so slander and hatred
of them in the heart [Biblical murder] develops. If only we can cast away
this kind of fear, then love will take its place; for perfect love comes
when fear has been cast out (1 Jn. 4:18). The Greek for 'drive out' is
that used in Mt. 8:12; 22:13; 25:30 to describe how the wicked are driven
out into darkness at the last day. If we now in this life can cast out or
condemn our own fear of rejection, then we will not live in fear...
because fear has, or is, its own condemnation (1 Jn. 4:18 Gk.). If we are
still consumed by fear, in whatever way, in this life- then this,
according to John's logic, appears to be a sign that we will not be
accepted in the last day. Fear as a purely nervous reaction is not what he
is speaking of. Rather is it the crippling moral fear of which we have
spoken.
We are saved by grace, already, we are elevated to the heights of heavenly
places on account of being in Christ. A perfect love casts out fear (1 Jn.
4:16,18), fear is associated with bondage rather than the freedom of
sonship which we enjoy (Rom. 8:15). Yet all this can in no way erase the
very clear teaching of many other passages: that we ought to fear God,
really fear Him. What's the resolution of all this? It may be that
ideally,
we are called to live a life without any fear in the sense of
phobos- in the same way as we are asked to be perfect, even as
God is (Mt. 5:48). Yet the reality is that we are not perfect. And perhaps
in a similar way, we are invited to live a life without
phobos, but in reality, it is
necessary to have it if we truly realize our weak position. We ought to be
able to say with confidence that should Christ come now, we will by grace
continue to be in His Kingdom. Yet in the same way as we always assume a
future, so we inevitably look ahead to the possibility of our
future apostasy;
as we grow spiritually, there is an altogether finer appreciation of the
purity of God's righteousness. The risk of rejection, the sense of the
future we may miss, and the faint grasp of the gap between God's
righteousness and our present moral achievement, will
inevitably provoke a sense of
fear in every serious believer. And yet fearing God, unlike fear on a
human level, is a motivating and creative fear. Our fear of and yet
confidence with God is a strange synthesis.
Psychologists suggest that there is something within the human psyche that
needs to fear, that wants to fear. Just look at the huge success of terror
stories, movies, images, Stephen King novels; and the way that the media
realizes that their global audience laps up fear and sensationalism about
terror. One common thread throughout all the pagan forerunners of the
‘personal Satan’ idea is that the pagan concepts all involved the
generation of fear and terror. True Christianity aims to “cast out” such
fear through its revelation of the ultimate love of God (1 Jn. 4:18). So
many control systems have played upon fear of the Devil – to bring
children into subdued obedience, flocks into submission to pastors, etc.
It’s now high time to realize that this is not how the true God works.
“For fear has torment” (1 Jn. 4:18), and this is exactly what true
understanding of the cross of Christ saves us from. God isn’t a
psychological manipulator, and He doesn’t coax us into submission through
fear. And yet it could be said that humanity is increasingly addicted to
fear. People may mock fearing a Loch Ness monster, werewolves, funny
sounds at night... but they still buy in big time to fearing a personal
Devil. There’s something in us that wants to fear something; that just
loves the popular idea of a personal Satan. This is why it’s hard to budge
this mentality.
A
4:19
We love, because He first loved us- The love in view
is the love unto death of the cross, the "new commandment". The 'first
love' He showed us was in the death of the cross; and it was this death
which enabled Him to give His life spirit to us in the gift of the Spirit
(Jn. 7:39) which provokes love within us (Rom. 5:5) because love to the
end was the dominant aspect of His Spirit. Again we are reminded that this
"love" is the love that takes the initiative, in dying for others whilst
they are yet alienated from us- rather than being kind and generous to
those we perceive as having first been that to us.
4:20
If a man says, I love God, and hates his fellow believers, he is
a liar- Again the allusion is to Jn 8:44, where the Jewish
opposition is likened to Cain, the first liar and murderer. His first lie
was in relation to his covering his hatred for his brother. This exactly
fits the Judaist infiltrators; their religion had slain their brother, the
Lord Jesus, and they were out to slay His brethren. Yet they were trying
to hide that fact by slipping into the churches as false brethren (Gal.
2:4). The "liar" is the antichrist, which in John's first context was the
Jewish system (see on 2:22).
For he that does not love his fellow believers whom he has seen,
cannot love God whom he has not seen- These Judaists, for all
their talk about 'loving God' [a very Jewish monotheistic term], in fact
did not love Him because they did not love His children. We cannot
literally see God, but we can 'see' Him insofar as we 'see' His Son. For
the Son alone has fully 'seen' the Father (Jn. 6:46). To love the Father
is to have His Spirit abiding in us, which elicits sacrificial love for
His children, our fellow believers. Any hatred of those begotten by His
Spirit therefore reveals that we lack His Spirit, and do not love Him.
Our attitude to others is simply so eternally important. John’s
writings are characterized by seeing everything in terms of dualism, black
and white, good and evil. He describes those who do not love their
brethren as having not seen God, as not being a child of God. Martin
Hengel has observed: “How one behaves towards a Christian brother at one’s
own front door is the deciding factor over faith and unbelief, life or
death, light and darkness”. John demonstrates with piercing logic that
hating our brother means that we hate our God. But it is so easy to adopt
the position of the man whom John sets up. We can even think that our love
of God is articulated in a hating of our brother, for the sake of God’s
Truth. It is relatively easy to love God, apparently, anyway. But it’s
hard to love all our brethren. And yet this means that a
true unfeigned love of God is not quite so natural and easy as
we think. 1 Jn. 5:1-3 make it clear that it is axiomatic within loving God
that we love all His children. If we don’t love them, we don’t love Him.
So if we think that loving God is easy, think again. Think who He really
is,
of the inclusive and saving and seeking grace which is so central to His
character, and the imperative which there is within it to be like Him.
Biblically, it's impossible to have a relationship with God without
relating with His children. This point is hammered home by John, writing
as he was to ecclesias riven with factionism and accusation. The result of
believing that Christ laid down His life for us, is that we lay down our
lives for our brethren (3:16). All believers are the children of God. If
we love God, we will love His children (5:1,2). God and His children, the
believers, are inseparable. And yet within our human nature is the
tendency to try to make a distinction between them. John was fully aware
of this: "If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is a liar:
for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath seen, how can he love God
whom he hath not seen? And this commandment have we from him, That he who
loveth God love his brother also" (4:20,21). Loving our brother is
therefore the litmus test as to whether we are “of God", whether we have
"passed from death unto life" (3:10,14). It is simply impossible to claim
to love God but politely disregard His children. It's not that we must
love God
and also
our brother. If we love God we will love our brother, by
loving our brother we love God. These things are axiomatic. The intimacy
this implies between the Father and His sons is so deep. As those "in
Christ", all that is true of the Son of God, Jesus our Lord, becomes true
of us. We share His relationship with the Father.
4:21- see on Lk. 10:28.
And this commandment have we from him, that he who loves God,
loves his fellow believers also- The "commandment" is to love
our brethren as He has loved us on the cross (Jn. 13:34). Here the
implications of that are unpacked further. That love of our fellow
believers is part and parcel of our love of God, as noted extensively on
:20. John keeps on repeating the same things from different angles and
slightly playing with the words- in a desperate attempt to get us all to
perceive the utterly fundamental importance of love for all our fellow
believers.
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