<p>4:12 <em>No one has seen God at any time. If we love one another, God abides in us, and His love is perfected in us</em>- 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.</p><p>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.</p><p>The idea of &quot;perfected&quot; is of an ongoing process. John writes often in absolute terms, according to our status &quot;in Christ&quot;; 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 &quot;perfected&quot; (Phil. 3:12 s.w.). Love, the love unto the death of a cross, is developed and &quot;perfected&quot; in us; this results in the Christian community being &quot;perfected&quot; 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 &quot;perfected&quot; until the very point when He died- for that was the ultimate term and maturity of the process of love being &quot;perfected&quot; 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).</p>